<Senate Republicans have quietly reversed course on trying to rebuke or embarrass the Biden White House, concerned it could help Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stay in power.

House and Senate GOP leaders had been pitting Democrats against Biden with Congressional Review Act votes, which allows Congress to overturn federal government rules and regulations.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told Axios they were "not actually getting anything done" with the votes, but it created a situation in which Democrats "can send a message that they're pretending to back home."

"These are awfully hard votes to explain" to voters, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) told Axios last year after votes on ESG investing, crime, COVID-19 and clean-water regulations.

But more recently that approach has backfired, giving endangered Senate Democrats an opportunity to vote against Biden.

CRA votes can give the White House a black eye. But they also gave vulnerable Democrats a chance to signal to voters they aren't just a rubber stamp for Biden.

Lankford told Axios that one of his CRA resolutions — on White House policy on nursing homes — hasn't gotten a vote because, in part, it is an easy way for vulnerable Democrats to distance themselves from Biden.

A senior Senate GOP aide acknowledged that a part of the shift was to stop giving vulnerable Democrats free votes to signal more moderate or right-leaning stances.

Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), two of Schumer's most vulnerable members, have used such votes to keep Biden at arms' length on energy and the environment.

After a busy CRA schedule in 2023, a CRA vote hasn't been held in the Senate since May.

As a substantive matter, the votes allow Congress to overturn federal rules promulgated by departments and agencies.

As a political exercise, Republicans have used them as a way to rebuke the Biden administration from what they call "woke" policies.

It takes 30 senators to sign on to a petition to force a floor vote on a CRA.

Fending off certain Biden administration policies has been a core feature of Tester's and Brown's high-stakes campaigns.

Tester got a major victory in March when the Senate voted to overturn a rule from the Department of Agriculture that would end a ban on beef imports from Paraguay.

Tester and Brown both voted for a CRA that would overturn a Biden administration rule on measuring and setting greenhouse gas emission standards.

Schumer needs Tester and Brown to win in red states in November if he wants to be Senate majority leader in 2025.>

<Dave Yost, the Republican Attorney General of Ohio, took a shellacking Monday afternoon after a CNN host debunked some of his claims made in support of Donald Trump’s lies that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating residents’ pets, including cats and dogs, as well as geese. Yost also downplayed the bomb threats in Springfield that have closed public schools for days, saying he has no information on who is responsible, and suggesting it could be someone from anywhere in the world.

Donald Trump’s lie that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets has been refuted and debunked by the Republican Governor of Ohio, and the city’s mayor and city manager, along with local law enforcement.

But Yost wrongly insisted that there are credible reports that have been called in to city officials, claims he made days ago on social media that were quickly also debunked.

“There’s a recorded police call from a witness who saw immigrants capturing geese for food in Springfield. Citizens testified to City Council. These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?” Yost asked on X last Wednesday.

AG Yost over the weekend also weighed in on the alleged 20,000 Haitian immigrants (city officials estimate 12,000 to 15,000) who now live in Springfield.

“There’s not a town in America that could absorb a quarter to a third of its population of new immigrants. Don’t buy the shrill ‘debunking’ by the leftist media outlets that desperately want to shut down this debate just weeks before voting starts,” he wrote on X, appearing to use his office to make a political statement.

Yost is perhaps most well–known for falsely denying that 10-year old rape victim who wanted an abortion had been raped. He also tried to block President Joe Biden from appearing on the November 2024 ballot, and has published 28 statements attacking President Biden or his administration on a wide variety of issues. Among them: COVID and vaccines, abortion, the Supreme Court, the teaching of history in public schools, and election laws. Yost also signed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to disenfranchise the votes of thousands of Pennsylvania voters.

On Monday, CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked Yost how concerned is he about the bomb threats that have shuttered schools and other government facilities, including city hall and a motor vehicle office.

“Look, in Ohio, a bomb threat, particularly one that disrupts something like a school, is very serious crime. It’s felony, and my message is, whoever is responsible, knock it off,” Yost replied. “So let’s understand what there really is no evidence of, which is that these bomb threats are coming domestically. They might, they might not. That’s why we have investigations.”

Keilar also told Yost, “So you’ve been tweeting about this controversy, giving credence to what is so far and after quite a lot of investigation and unsubstantiated allegation that Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield as well as waterfowl in public places there, and local authorities have investigated both, and they have found nothing to support that. The mayor says this is the case. Do you think the mayor is lying?”

“No, my comment, and by the way, most of my tweets have been about the impact, the real impacts on this town, but my tweet was about the media’s disregard of citizen interactions, citizen reports with their government,” Yost replied, despite the citizen reports having been debunked.

Yost went on to complain about the increase in the number of school children in Springfield needing translators.

Later, he complained, “I’m trying desperately to bring attention to the very serious issues, that’s mostly what I’ve been talking about. You’re the one that’s taking one tweet and trying to make a national news story out of it. How much time have we spent on this? In this interview?” he asked.

“It’s not my tweets, sir, it’s your tweets,” Keilar replied.>

Not to worry, Davey boy: you can drop trou for Couch and Criminal whenever it strikes you. If they are tied up, <fredremf> is nearby.

<Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and other allies of former President Donald Trump have been urging him to distance himself from far-right conspiracy theorist and 9/11 truther Laura Loomer, who flew with him to Philadelphia for his September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Loomer has been bombarded with criticism following an overtly racist attack on Vice President Kamala Harris in a September 8 post on X, formerly Twitter. And the Florida-based MAGA activist, Graham and Greene have warned, could be harmful to Trump's presidential campaign.

But The New Republic's Michael Tomasky, in an article published on September 16, argues that Loomer is merely a symptom — not the cause — of dysfunction within the GOP and the MAGA movement.

Trump, Tomasky emphasizes, makes bad decisions — for example, promoting someone as extreme as Loomer — because his enablers in right-wing media and the Republican Party are afraid to openly disagree with him.

"It's incredible how much disqualifying stuff gets swept under the rug on the excuse that MAGA Land thrills to it," Tomasky observes. "But there are two more factors in play here that tell the full story. The first is that Trump lives mostly inside the bubble of a right-wing media that will never challenge him about things like this. If they did challenge him, I mean actually challenge him, and not just ask one pro forma question and move on, things would be different. But the right-wing media sees its job as not only electing Trump but protecting him, rebutting any and all criticism that comes from liberals or the mainstream media — two different things, it's worth remembering."

The New Republic editor continues, "The second is that elected Republicans won't challenge him. And that's the biggie — this takes us back to the famous Access Hollywood crossroads; the moment GOP elected officials weighed what they were signing up for and plunged ahead. This is their original sin. If elected Republicans had had the courage to say 'no,' this whole train would have been derailed at some point. But they are almost to a person moral cowards, beyond the known exceptions who've paid for their principles with excommunication from the Republican Party."

Tomasky notes that MSNBC's Chris Hayes "summed up the importance" of the Loomer controversy on his Friday, September 13 broadcast.

Hayes told viewers, "This is not just guilt by association, OK? She’s flying on his plane. He is using their rhetoric. He’s choosing to empower people like Laura Loomer. Those are the sorts of people who will enjoy greater power in a second term.">

<Libertarians have clashed online over a tweet appearing to glorify the assassination of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The official account for the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire wrote in a now deleted post on X, formerly Twitter: "Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American Hero."

The tweet was replying to a post about toning down threatening rhetoric and came hours after the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump at Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday. Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested and charged with gun offenses after fleeing the scene.

Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee posted a condemnation of the post, writing on X: "I 100% condemn the statement from LPNH regarding Kamala Harris. It is abhorrent and should never have been posted."

But the local branch snapped back at the party leader, writing "F*** off and read any book on libertarianism, you infiltrating leftist f****t."

The party had deleted the post, writing in a later post "we don't want to break the terms of this website we agreed to."

"It's a shame that even on a 'free speech' website that libertarians cannot speak freely. Libertarians are truly the most oppressed minority."

Newsweek has contacted Harris's campaign, and X via email and Oliver via online form.

X's terms of service define violent conduct as "content that threatens, incites, glorifies, or expresses desire for violence or harm."

It states that "explicitly threatening, inciting, glorifying, or expressing desire for violence is not allowed."

One of the page owners, Jeremy Kauffman, was visited by two FBI agents who wanted to question him about the post but the agents left his home after he refused.

Kauffman filmed the agents in the street in a confrontational manner after they asked politely not to be broadcast or be publicly identified and stated they just wanted to talk to him.

Asking Kauffman for comment and whether it was right or in the public interest for him to continue to film the encounter with the FBI, he said, "any news publication that would ask whether it's in the 'public interest' to record law enforcement officers who refuse to state their names is too far gone to respond to at length. Think about what you've become, and be better."

Newsweek has contacted the FBI via telephone for comment.

The New Hampshire Libertarian Party account later posted a statement outlining its reasoning for the post, and denying that the post was advocating the assassination of Harris, but merely describing how the account moderators would respond if she were assassinated.

A claim by the New Hampshire Libertarian Party that X is oppressing its free speech is one of many recent claims by right-leaning figures that social media companies have "censored" conservative voices.

Under the ownership of Elon Musk, X has marketed itself as a pro-free speech social media platform, but as a private company, it can set its own terms of service, and can demote, promote, or remove any post it chooses to.

The recent Supreme Court Ruling NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton clarified that the right of social media companies to moderate content on their own properties is protected by the First Amendment.>

<Trump's surprise post on SALT deductions Tuesday has forced Senate Republicans into a pickle: contradict their party's leader or their old positions.

For Republican leaders, it's a taste of what's to come if Trump wins back the White House.

They'll have to harmonize their own positions — in real time — with a president who is constantly changing his.

Trump posted he would "get SALT back."

That's a strong indication he wants to let those in high-tax states deduct more than $10,000 from their federal taxes — a limit he championed in his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Zoom in: "We'll take a look at all the suggestions," Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who is running for leader, told reporters, noting it "got litigated extensively in 2017."

"I don't think we ought to be subsidizing state taxes," Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told Axios repeatedly, adding Republicans need to win the House, Senate and White House first before there's a real discussion on what to do about SALT.

"I personally, at this point in time, believe we should extend the TCJA SALT provisions," said Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. "But like I said, everything's up for negotiations."

The new Trump idea does have support from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) who said he has "always been for eliminating the cap on SALT."

Schumer called the Trump tax bill "a nasty piece of legislation," which was "aimed at the blue states."

Republicans in blue states, especially in New York, have made repealing the SALT cap a calling card and have been willing to challenge their Republican colleagues on it.

Trump's new position might make it easier for them to return to Congress.

The $10,000 SALT cap expires at the end of 2025.

If Trump — or Harris — does nothing, taxpayers in high-tax states will be able to deduct an unlimited amount from their federal returns, lowering the overall tax bill.

Removing the $10,000 SALT cap would cost an estimated $1.2 trillion over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Government.

An estimated 92% of the benefit would go to the top 10% of earners, according to CRFB.>

<California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the country’s toughest law banning digitally altered political “deepfakes” on Tuesday, following through on a vow to act after rebuking Elon Musk for sharing a doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The new California law — which will take effect before the November election — channels rising alarm about artificial intelligence’s capacity to disrupt elections by sowing misinformation, with voters increasingly confronted with deepfake images and audio impersonating candidates. Musk, who owns X, stoked that debate when he shared the AI-altered video of Harris in July, drawing Newsom’s public promise to prohibit similar practices.

“I could care less [sic] if it was Harris or Trump," Newsom told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff during a conversation on Tuesday. "It was just wrong on every level.”

Newsom also signed a companion bill on Tuesday that targets deepfakes by compelling platforms to pull down such content when users flag them, although that bill will not take effect until next year. He signed a third measure requiring disclaimers on political ads that use AI.

The new laws help cement California’s leading role in regulating emergent AI even as the state’s homegrown tech industry has pushed back and blocked some laws. Democratic state lawmakers have embraced those efforts as a divided Congress struggles to advance meaningful legislation and concerns about AI’s potentially anti-democratic downsides reverberate around the world.

Newsom signed the measures on the same day Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the front-runner to become California’s next senator, helped introduce a similar bill to ban fraudulent AI campaign ads. Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco highlighted AI threats, including those emanating from foreign adversaries, during POLITICO’s AI and Tech summit on Tuesday.

“It is the ultimate double-edged sword: it holds great promise but also exceptional peril because it's lowering the barrier to entry for all sorts of malicious actors,” Monaco said. “There will be changes in law, I’m confident, over time.”

The California ban on campaign deepfakes will allow courts to issue injunctions blocking people from distributing intentionally deceptive political content during election season, and it exposes people who share deepfakes to civil penalties.

The bill was intentionally written to take effect before the November election. Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a Santa Cruz Democrat and former county elections official who carried the bill, has repeatedly warned that the 2024 cycle represented the nation’s “first AI election.” The measure also includes deceptive content about election officials to shield against candidates and others targeting poll workers in the aftermath of elections, as former President Donald Trump has explicitly done.

The debate about AI in politics has set concerns about misinformation and election integrity against warnings about eroding free speech protections. Tech companies have argued restrictions on AI alterations may undercut the First Amendment, and Musk noted in an X reply to Newsom that “parody is legal in America.”

The back-and-forth between Newsom and Musk over AI content adds another chapter to their tumultuous, yearslong relationship.

A former San Francisco mayor with deep tech industry ties, Newsom has lauded Musk for helping to launch the electric car industry through Tesla, growing the company with the help of generous state subsidies. But they have clashed as Musk’s politics have veered to the right and he has blasted California officials for pandemic shutdown orders as well as transgender student privacy legislation.

Some of those disputes have played out in court. An appeals court recently backed X’s challenge to a 2022 law, signed by Newsom, that requires social media companies to disclose more information about their content moderation policies.>

<It’s important to establish a timeline on what happened in Springfield, Ohio, so let’s begin there.

Over the summer, right-wing extremists and others began to promote baseless rumors that Haitian immigrants in that community were stealing and eating residents’ pets. Changes the city was undergoing were newsworthy, certainly; NPR and then the New York Times wrote stories about Springfield and the way in which it encapsulated one aspect of the immigration debate. A few days after the latter story, a Facebook post making a fourth-hand allegation about someone’s cat began going viral within the right-wing social media universe. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) quickly piled on, as did his running mate, former president Donald Trump, at last week’s presidential debate.

There was no evidence for the claims being made, just rumors and misrepresentations of photos or news stories. But as Vance argued on social media, the right shouldn’t “let the crybabies in the media dissuade you” from amplifying the false story, one that mirrors past racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Instead, he said, they should “keep the cat memes flowing.”

In Springfield, all of this landed differently. There was a spate of bomb threats that prompted the closure of schools and other facilities. A community festival was canceled. Individuals in the city were threatened.

“We’ve had bomb threats the last two days,” Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, told Politico. “We’ve had personal threats the last two days, and it’s increasing, because the national stage is swirling this up. Springfield, Ohio, is caught in a political vortex, and it is a bit out of control.”

As Vance said on CNN on Sunday, though, he sees political value in amplifying claims about Haitian immigrants story, regardless of their veracity. He’s tried to suggest that those stories are the only way the press would cover the real problem, in his estimation, which is the strain posed by the immigrants — and, he alleges, the deaths and disease they brought with them. That NPR and the Times were already reporting on the city before the memes is not something Vance usually mentions.

He is, however, frustrated at having people mention how the tumult described by Rue came only after he and Trump started amplifying Springfield as an example of the purported dangers of immigrants. So at an event in Sparta, Mich., on Tuesday, he seized upon a new report to suggest that none of the negative effects on Springfield — a town he represents in the Senate — were his fault.

“A lot of people who pretend to be fair journalists, you know what they’ve been saying?” Vance began. “For the last few days, Springfield has been experiencing an unbelievable number, something like 35, 40 bomb threats in Springfield in just the last few days.

“And you know what?” he continued. “The governor of Ohio came out yesterday and said every single one of those bomb threats was a hoax. And all of those bomb threats came from foreign countries. So the American media for three days has been lying and saying that Donald Trump and I are inciting bomb threats, when in reality the American media has been laundering foreign disinformation. It is disgusting. And every single one of them owes the residents of Springfield an apology.”....>

<....Like so much of what Vance has said about Springfield, this is flatly untrue.

First of all, bomb threats are often hoaxes. The entire point is to introduce stress and panic into the target of the threat, to force law enforcement to respond or to disrupt the plans of those targeted. Vance’s argument is akin to saying that a flurry of death threats against a prominent individual — such as, say, Mayor Rue — were fake or not newsworthy because the person wasn’t actually killed. It is certainly better that there were no bombs, but that doesn’t mean that the threats were innocuous.

Vance also seems to be trying to parlay the word “hoax” as applied to the threat to describe, instead, coverage of the threats by calling them “disinformation.” Those threats, though, aren’t akin to the pet-eating claims (which, like assertions about fraud in the 2020 election, prompted a desperate and unsuccessful search by Trump supporters for evidence to back up the baseless assertion). The threats actually happened.

Vance tries to wave that away by stating that all of the bomb threats came from foreign countries. (He didn’t address the other threats, you’ll notice.) His claim wasn’t true, as a representative of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s (R) office confirmed to The Washington Post and to the Associated Press; many or most originated overseas, but not all. It’s also not clear how this is supposed to be significantly better for Vance. So it’s foreign nationals who should be accused of following up on your rhetoric? All right, if you insist.

“What they’re doing,” Vance said a moment later of the media, “is trying to shut all of us up. They’re trying to say: How dare you, citizens of Springfield, complain about this migrant inflow because now these bomb threats are happening?”

Again, the issue of immigration in Springfield had already generated media attention before Vance’s beloved cat memes, even though Vance himself was hardly focused on the city. (His first mention of it on the social media site X was his first one attempting to leverage the initial claims about pets.) Nor is there any reason to think that the bomb threats were a response to city residents complaining about immigrants, given that they all followed the amplification of the story about pets, not the concerns that drew media attention in the first place.

Vance will probably chalk this article up as a success, given that we’re still here talking about Springfield and immigration. Except, of course, that we’re not talking only about that. We’re also talking about a senator who spreads false claims about legal residents of his state for political purposes and then tries to blame the negative repercussions of those claims on the media that’s covering them.

The media, unlike many in Springfield, is able to defend itself.>

<Hezbollah has vowed to respond to an Israeli attack that killed multiple people and injured thousands across Lebanon on Tuesday when pagers belonging to members of the Iran-backed militant group exploded almost simultaneously, exposing a massive security breach and demonstrating the scale of Israeli intelligence.

A child was among at least nine killed in the blasts, which wounded about 2,800 people, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said. At least 170 people are in a critical condition, he said, though the nature of the other injuries is unclear.

The unprecedented attack risks further escalating tensions in the Middle East already heightened over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The extraordinary incident also underscores Hezbollah’s vulnerability as its communication network was compromised to deadly effect and follows a series of targeted assassinations against its commanders.

CNN has learned the explosions were the result of a joint operation between Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, and the Israeli military. While the Israeli military has said it will not comment on the explosions, both Lebanon and Hezbollah have blamed it for the attack. Iran also blamed what it referred to as “Israeli terrorism.”

Speculation has mounted over how low-tech wireless communication devices could have been exploited. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel hid explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah. A switch was embedded to detonate them remotely, it added.

Gold Apollo’s founder and chairperson told reporters Wednesday that the pagers used in the attack were made by a European distributor. Hsu Ching-kuang said his firm had signed a contract with the distributor to use the Gold Apollo brand.

Videos circulating on social media and news agencies appear to show powerful explosions in locations across Lebanon. In one CCTV video, a man is seen picking out fruit in a supermarket when an explosion tears his bag to shreds. Bystanders run after hearing the blast, while the man drops to the ground clutching his lower abdomen. After several seconds, he can be heard groaning in pain.

Other social media videos showed large numbers of injured people, including at least one child. Those wounded were covered in blood, many with facial and hand injuries.

“This criminal and treacherous enemy will definitely receive a fair punishment for this sinful assault, both in ways that are expected and unexpected,” Hezbollah said Tuesday evening.

It later said that its operations against Israel would continue and vowed “hard atonement awaiting the criminal enemy for the massacre it committed Tuesday.”

The militant group had earlier confirmed on its Telegram channel that “workers” in various Hezbollah institutions were affected by the explosions, with a “large number” of people injured.

Hezbollah has long touted secrecy as a cornerstone of its military strategy, forgoing high-tech devices to avoid infiltration from Israeli and US spyware.

Unlike other non-state actors in the Middle East, Hezbollah units are believed to communicate through an internal communications network. This is considered one of the key building blocks of the powerful group that has long been accused of operating as a state-within-a-state.

Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was among those wounded in Beirut, along with two embassy employees, according to Iranian state media. Amani has a superficial injury and is under observation in the hospital, state media IRNA reported, citing his wife.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati slammed the attack as “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards” in a cabinet meeting Tuesday, according to the state-run NNA news outlet.

The Israeli military, which has engaged in tit-for-tat strikes with Hezbollah since the start of the war in Gaza last October, said in a statement following the explosions that it had no change in its advice to Israeli civilians. “The public are asked to remain alert and vigilant, and any change in policy will be updated immediately,” it said in a statement.

The wave of explosions affected several areas in Lebanon, particularly the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.

NNA reported that “hacked” pager devices exploded in the towns of Ali Al-Nahri and Riyaq in the central Beqaa valley, resulting in a significant number of injuries. The locations are Hezbollah strongholds....>

<....Israel placed explosive material in a batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon and destined for Hezbollah, The New York Times reported, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The explosives were planted next to the battery in each pager, and a switch embedded to detonate them remotely, according to The New York Times.

CNN previously reported that the pagers that exploded had been purchased by Hezbollah in recent months, according to a Lebanese security source. The devices detonated simultaneously after receiving a message on Tuesday afternoon.

Multiple photos from Lebanon on social media appear to show damaged Gold Apollo pagers. CNN cannot geolocate the images from social media but has verified they were published on Tuesday, the same day as the explosions. At least one pager shown in the images was a Gold Apollo AR924 model.

Eyewitnesses described the carnage in Beirut following the blasts.

“We were surprised that there were a lot of people … there was blood on the roads and people were being transported in ambulances to the hospital. But we did not know what was happening,” said one witness, who did not want to be named for safety reasons.

The witness told CNN he went to a hospital to visit a friend who had been carrying one of the pagers when it exploded.

“This device was not only in the hands of people who belong to [Hezbollah], but in the hands of all people. There were people working in the security field who were using that device and they were also hurt,” he said.

David Kennedy, a former US National Security Agency intelligence analyst, told CNN the explosions seen in videos shared online appear to be “too large for this to be a remote and direct hack that would overload the pager and cause a lithium battery explosion.”

“It’s more likely that Israel had human operatives… in Hezbollah… The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and likely only to detonate when a certain message was received,” he said.

“The complexity needed to pull this off is incredible. It would have required many different intelligence components and execution. Human intelligence (HUMINT) would be the main method used to pull this off, along with intercepting the supply chain in order to make modifications to the pagers.”

Kim Ghattas, a Lebanese journalist and contributing writer to The Atlantic magazine, told CNN that Hezbollah had recently “gone low tech” in an attempt to prevent more of its operatives from being assassinated. In a February speech, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah called on his fighters to discard their mobile phones, saying, “shut it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up.”

More details emerged Wednesday of how Israeli intelligence may possibly have engineered the unprecedented attack.

Hsu, the founder of pager manufacturer Gold Apollo, said its European distributor, which he did not name, established a relationship with the Taiwanese firm about three years ago.

At first, the European company only imported Gold Apollo’s pager and communication products, he said. Later, the company told Gold Apollo they wished to make their own pager and asked for the right to use the Taiwanese firm’s brand, he said.

Hsu said Gold Apollo had encountered at least one anomaly in its dealings with the distributor, citing a wire transfer that took a long time to clear.

A senior Taiwanese security official told CNN that Gold Apollo shipped about 260,000 pagers from Taiwan, mostly to the United States and Australia. There was no record of the devices being shipped to Lebanon or the Middle East, the source said.

Lebanese officials have urged citizens with pagers to discard them, warned hospitals to be on “high alert,” and asked health workers to urgently report to work to assist with the “large number of injured people.”

The explosions come after Israel’s security cabinet voted Monday to add another war objective to its ongoing conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah: ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along its border with Lebanon to their homes.

“Israel will continue to act to implement this objective,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday.

After nearly a year of cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

The US was “not involved” in the series of pager explosions in Lebanon and was “not aware” of any attack in advance, according to a State Department spokesperson.

Following the attacks, European airlines Air France and Lufthansa suspended flights to Tel Aviv at least through Thursday “due to the security situation locally.”

<A week after President Barack Obama won reelection in November 2012, JD Vance, then a law student at Yale, wrote a scathing rebuke of the Republican Party’s stance on migrants and minorities, criticizing it for being “openly hostile to non-whites” and for alienating “Blacks, Latinos, [and] the youth.”

Four years later, as Vance considered a career in GOP politics, he asked a former college professor to delete the article. That professor, Brad Nelson, taught Vance at Ohio State University while Vance was an undergraduate student. After Vance graduated, Nelson asked him to contribute to a blog he ran for the non-partisan Center for World Conflict and Peace.

Nelson told CNN that during the 2016 Republican primary he agreed to delete the article at Vance’s request, so that Vance might have an easier time getting a job in Republican politics. However, the article, titled “A Blueprint for the GOP,” remains viewable on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

“A significant part of Republican immigration policy centers on the possibility of deporting 12 million people (or ‘self-deporting’ them),” Vance wrote. “Think about it: we conservatives (rightly) mistrust the government to efficiently administer business loans and regulate our food supply, yet we allegedly believe that it can deport millions of unregistered aliens. The notion fails to pass the laugh test. The same can be said for too much of the party’s platform.”

Twelve years later, as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance espouses many of the same anti-immigrant postures that he criticized back in 2012 as a 28-year-old law school student. In recent days, Vance has amplified baseless claims against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.

But asked on Sunday about his previous criticism of Trump’s immigration posture, Vance argued Trump’s immigration rhetoric was actually the reason he changed from a Trump critic to supporter.

“The reason that I changed my mind on Donald Trump is actually perfectly highlighted by what’s going on in Springfield,” Vance said. “Because the media and the Kamala Harris campaign, they’ve been calling the residents of Springfield racist, they’ve been lying about them. They’ve been saying that they make up these reports of migrants eating geese, and they completely ignore the public health disaster that is unfolding in Springfield at this very minute. You know who hasn’t ignored it? Donald Trump.”

Will Martin, a spokesman for Vance, told CNN that Vance has long supported strong border security measures, including deportations, and now holds one of the most conservative voting records in the Senate. He said his views on deportations had changed since the time of the blog post.

“There is nothing noteworthy about the fact that, like millions of Americans, Senator Vance’s views on certain issues have changed from when he was in his twenties,” Martin told CNN in an email....>

<....Vance’s past anti-Trump rhetoric is well-known, as he was a vocal critic of the former president during much of Trump’s first year in office. And though Vance defended many of his supporters, he wrote on Facebook in 2016, “There are, undoubtedly, vile racists at the core of Trump’s movement.”

Nelson, who spoke highly of Vance in messages with CNN, calling him one of the brightest students he’s taught, said Vance’s post had “ruffled some feathers in some campaigns” that Vance was thinking of working for.

“I was a bit surprised at the blowback he apparently received from the GOP, as I thought his post was fairly innocuous,” Nelson told CNN. “Anyway, I liked JD and wanted to help him out, and so I went ahead and deleted his post.”

“He didn’t suggest that his thinking on the topics he wrote about in his post had changed,” Nelson added in messages to CNN.

CNN found the article through X, where it was mentioned by the think tank in 2012.

Two other blog posts Vance wrote for the website are still active, but CNN noticed the “Blueprint” article had been removed from the website. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, where the post was saved, shows it was deleted sometime between March 2014 and February 2016.

Vance began his article by launching into a blistering critique of the GOP’s strategies and candidates, which he blamed for the party’s failures in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

“When the 2008 election was called for Obama, I remember thinking: maybe this will teach my party some very important lessons,” Vance wrote. “You can’t nominate people, like Sarah Palin, who scare away swing voters. You can’t actively alienate every growing bloc of the American electorate—Blacks, Latinos, the youth—and you can’t depend solely on the single shrinking bloc of the electorate—Whites. And yet, four years later, I am again forced to reflect on a party that nominated the worst kind of people, like Richard Mourdock, and tried to win an election by appealing only to White people.”

Mourdock’s Senate campaign imploded that year after he said that pregnancies resulting from rape were “something God intended.” During his own Senate run in 2022, Vance made his own controversial comments about rape and pregnancy, which have resurfaced after he secured the Republican nomination for vice president.

In the article he asked Nelson to delete, Vance argued the Republican Party would have problems if it did not adjust for the country’s changing demographics. He criticized the GOP’s adherence to supply-side economics, comparing it to supporting outdated policies like Soviet containment. He said during the Bush years this economic approach led to wage stagnation and concentrated growth, which alienated minority voters who found Democratic policies more relevant and appealing.

“Republicans lose minority voters for simple and obvious reasons: their policy proposals are tired, unoriginal, or openly hostile to non-whites,” Vance wrote.>

<Donald Trump is doubling down on his bizarre and aggressive rhetoric against Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, saying that they’re “destroying” the country.

The former president promised his rally crowd in Uniondale, New York on Long Island that he would visit the small city which suddenly found itself in the midst of a vicious news cycle as Trump and his running mate JD Vance pushed false claims circulated online that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating domestic pets.

During the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on September 10, Trump said the Biden-Harris administration has been “allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country.”

“A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it,” he added. “In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats ... They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame.”

Both the Wall Street Journal and ABC News have reported that a staffer working for JD Vance was told by a Springfield official that the rumor wasn’t true but that the Republican vice presidential hopeful still chose to spread the outlandish claim, which has led to bomb threats against schools and city buildings and feelings of fear in Haitian communities throughout the US.

“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” Heck told the Journal. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”

Vance had already tweeted about the rumor that morning. He kept the post up and pushed a more aggressive version of the claim the following morning, the day of the debate between Trump and Harris.

On Wednesday night on Long Island, Trump yet again went after the Haitian community in Springfield. Trump said he would visit the town as he continued to make false claims about the migrants in the city.

“How about in Springfield, Ohio, they had 32,000 – this is a little beautiful town, no crime, no problem – 32,000 illegal immigrants come into the town,” Trump said. “So they almost double their population in a period of a few weeks. Can you believe it? And you know what? They’ve got to get much tougher. I’m going to go there in the next two weeks. I’m going to Springfield.”

“You may never see me again, but that’s okay,” he added. “‘Whatever happened to Trump? Well, he never got out of Springfield.’”

The city of Springfield states on its website that “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Haiti is designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security for TPS. Current TPS is granted through February 3, 2026.”

“So the mayor of Springfield, and I think he’s a very nice person,” Trump continued. “But instead of saying we’re getting them all out ... he says, very simply, ‘we’re hiring teachers to teach them English.’”

“Could you believe it? ‘We are hiring interpreters.’ So when they go to school and take the place of our children in school, we have an interpreter. Each one will have a private interpreter. What the hell is wrong with our country?” he asked.

Ohio state police have been called in to help protect schools, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said on Monday. Local officials also canceled an annual celebration of cultural diversity. This comes after Springfield City Hall, several schools, and state motor vehicle offices were evacuated last week following bomb threats. DeWine added on Monday that at least 33 bomb threats were made, none of them real.

The former president said on Wednesday night, “We’re getting them out of our country. They came in illegally. They’re destroying our country. We’re getting them out. They’re going to be brought back to the country from which they came.”

Republican Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said during a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday that a visit from the former president “would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit.”

“I have to state the reality, though, that resources are really, really stretched here,” DeWine added, according to NBC News.

Meanwhile, Vance doubled down on Wednesday on calling the Haitian migrants in Springfield “illegal” even as they’re here legally.>

<Last month on Truth Social, former President Trump reposted a collage of young women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts. Most of the images clearly looked as if they’d been generated by AI.

“I accept!” Trump told his 7.1 million followers, prompting the world’s most famous childless cat lady to come at him with her claws out.

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Taylor Swift wrote on Instagram right after Vice President Kamala Harris wiped the floor with Trump in their first and probably only debate. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

And so, she wrote, she will be voting for Harris for president, and signed her post "Childless Cat Lady."

“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” Swift told her 284 million followers.

I don’t know how many of them are American voters, but it takes only a tiny fraction of that number to change an outcome in a battleground state. In 2020, for example, Wisconsin voters chose President Biden over then-President Trump by 20,682 votes. In Georgia, it was even closer. Biden won the state by 11,779 votes, prompting Trump’s infamous and arguably illegal plea to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 more votes. But I digress.

Swift also urged her legions of fans to register to vote, telling them, “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. ... Remember, that in order to vote, you have to be registered!” She linked to a voter registration site operated by the federal government and the effect was immediate. More than 405,000 visitors clicked on the link in the 24 hours after Swift posted.

Those clicks alone don't necessarily translate into new registrations, or to votes. But Tom Bonier, of the data firm TargetSmart, said they might. “What we saw was this massive increase, we’re calling it the Swift Effect now,” Bonier said last week on “Face the Nation.” And, he added, according to data compiled since 2020, about 80% of voters who register this late in the election cycle actually end up voting.

A day after Swift’s endorsement, Trump melted down like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” he screeched on Truth Social.

That seemed even less presidential than usual for Trump. The outburst prompted MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to declare that he “has the most hateful mind and spirit in presidential history.”

O’Donnell researched presidential statements and was able to find only one other president who used the word “hate” so publicly, George H.W. Bush. I thought O’Donnell was going to mention Bush’s famous antipathy for broccoli, but he was referring to Bush’s 2002 profession of hatred for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The thing about hate is that, like fear, it’s a powerful motivator. Hatred and fear, in fact, are the most important arrows in Trump’s political quiver, integral to his dark vision of an America that is falling apart and in need of a savior.

The Trump-Vance campaign's scapegoating of legal immigrants from Haiti who have settled in Springfield, Ohio, is a natural, if inexcusable, extension of the politics of hate. Likewise, his bizarrely close relationship with kooky racist Islamophobe Laura Loomer and, of course, his enduring embrace of the white nationalists and Holocaust deniers who swirl around Mar-a-Lago.

His vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is an exemplar of how hatred is integral to Trump’s success.

“I think our people hate the right people,” Vance said in an interview with the American Conservative in 2021, when he was seeking his Senate seat. Maybe this was supposed to be a clever throwaway quote, along the lines of comparing Democrats to childless cat ladies, a trope Vance originated at around the same time.

In profound ways, Vance's hate comment distills the very ethos of the MAGA movement.

It’s too soon to know whether turning Trump's hose of hatred on Swift will backfire on him.

But how delightful would it be for a Harris victory to come in on little cat feet?>

<The House shot down a temporary spending deal that would extend government funding for the next six months, sending lawmakers back to square one with less than two weeks until a scheduled shutdown and lapse in federal funding.

Lawmakers rejected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) proposed continuing resolution that would extend current government spending levels into late March, leaving it for the next Congress and White House administration to negotiate. As an incentive, Johnson sought to appease hardline conservatives who are generally against continuing resolutions of any length by attaching the GOP-led SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship for voter registration.

However, that effort failed in a 202-220 vote as 14 Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in rejecting the spending package, falling short of the majority needed to advance the lower chamber. Three Democrats voted yes: Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Donald Davis of North Carolina. Johnson knew the bill was likely to fail well before it came to the floor as several of his GOP colleagues publicly opposed the package and he was forced to pull the vote last week. Because of his slim majority, Johnson can only afford to lose four GOP votes on any given piece of legislation — a margin that was far surpassed on the floor on Wednesday.

However, the speaker was adamant to hold a vote, calling it crucial to tackle election integrity concerns ahead of the November contest. Johnson also framed it as a way to put Democrats on the record after nearly House Democrats voted against the SAVE Act when it passed the House earlier this year.

“We're going to give them another chance. We're going to let them try to vote with us,” Johnson said ahead of the vote on Wednesday.

But Democrats have slammed the proposal as “unserious and unacceptable,” accusing Republicans of holding the government hostage to advance their own agenda.

“In order to avert a GOP-driven government shutdown that will hurt everyday Americans, Congress must pass a short-term continuing resolution that will permit us to complete the appropriations process during this calendar year and is free of partisan policy changes inspired by Trump’s Project 2025,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a statement earlier this month. “There is no other viable path forward that protects the health, safety and economic well-being of hardworking American taxpayers.”

It’s not clear how congressional leaders will move forward with finalizing a spending deal, and lawmakers only have until midnight on Oct. 1 to pass some sort of agreement to avoid a shutdown. Making things more complicated, Johnson has refused to communicate any sort of backup plan.

“No Plan B,” said Rep. Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL), a top appropriator in the House, after emerging from a closed-door meeting with the speaker on Tuesday. “The speaker has elected to call the play. He’s calling the play and I’m supporting his play there. He’s been very clear: There’s no Plan B. This is what he’s trying to get done.”

That could place the power in the Senate’s hands, which could move forward with its own clean CR extending funding into mid-December. That could anger some hardline conservatives in the House, while other GOP lawmakers have acknowledged a short-term CR may be the only way to avoid a shutdown.

“Plan B is always the only plan,” one House Republican told the Washington Examiner.

But it also remains unclear whether Johnson will allow a shutdown to take effect if the SAVE Act isn't attached to the final deal — something former President Donald Trump has pushed for.

“President Trump and I have talked a lot about this. We talked a lot about it with our colleagues who are building consensus on the plan," Johnson said.

Trump reiterated his calls for a shutdown just hours before the vote, telling Republicans not to agree to a continuing resolution unless it has "every ounce of" the SAVE Act included. The former president urged lawmakers to ensure the election integrity bill is passed before November, claiming "Democrats are registering Illegal Voters by the TENS OF THOUSANDS as we speak."

"A Vote must happen BEFORE the Election, not AFTER the Election when it's too late," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU'VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS. DON'T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN."

'Full disclosure of perks? Eff that! I can do anything I want!'

<The good folks at ProPublica remain on the Judges Gone Wild beat. Their latest subject, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, is Judge Aileen Cannon, the former president*’s concierge judge down in Florida who currently is waiting for an appeals court to throw her ludicrous dismissal of the Pool Shed Papers case back in her teeth.

Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.” A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.

It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize.

The Sage Lodge will run you between from $698 and $1,063 a night. Being a conservative legal hack is a nice racket, at least for the perks. This network is so fundamentally corrupt that its members likely don’t even realize it anymore. There is so little to restrain the corruption that it has come to seem like an entitlement of office. Hobnobbing in luxury with oligarchs on whose behalf you may one day rule is now the same as your car and driver. And doing so with complete confidence that you hold a lifetime position with nobody holding you accountable for anything. This is royalism, pure and simple.

Cannon’s annual disclosure form for 2023, which was due in May and offers another chance to report gifts and reimbursements from outside parties, has yet to be posted. (Cannon reported the two Montana trips on her annual disclosure forms, but the required 30-day privately funded seminar reports had not been posted. In 2021, Cannon incorrectly listed the school as “George Madison University.”)

Of course she did. She’s not exactly what George Madison and the rest of the Founders had in mind for judges.>

<My husband and I have three children. This makes us many things: Proud, exhausted, delighted, occasionally irritated, perpetually anxious, often overwhelmed by love and strangely aware of the varying quality of chicken strips in grocery store freezer sections.

It does not, however, make us better people, more engaged citizens or entitled to have a greater say in this country’s political future. Do I have more sunscreen, band-aids and hair ties on my person than my child-free relatives, friends and colleagues at any given time? Perhaps. Does this make me more valuable to society than they are? Most certainly not.

So on behalf of parents everywhere, I would like to respectfully request that Republicans — including but not limited to Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders — stop trying to drive yet another wedge into our already divided nation by suggesting (and, in Vance’s case, outright stating) that people who have children are superior to those who don't.

Because honestly, you are giving parents a bad name. And what with the school shootings, the lack of subsidized childcare and the current attack on reproductive rights, not to mention the fact that Christmas will arrive in stores on Nov. 1, we have enough to deal with.

Vance has spent much of his political career denouncing nonparents. Now, as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, he is targeting Vice President Kamala Harris and her now-infamous circle of “childless cat ladies.” (In Vance’s definition of parenting, Harris' two stepchildren don’t count.)

On Tuesday, Huckabee Sanders jumped onto this perilous and bizarre bandwagon. While introducing former President Trump at a rally in Michigan, Sanders underlined the importance of humility in politics by telling a quaint story from motherhood. But the true purpose of the anecdote became clear in her follow-up. “So my kids keep me humble,” she said. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”

Which is pretty much when I began screaming.

First of all, if you are relying on your children to keep you “humble” while you turn one of their innocent remarks into a political barb on national television, you really need to re-think your parenting priorities.

Second, Harris does have children, and though I do not have any experience as a stepmother, I cannot imagine anything more humbling, or difficult, than becoming a co-parent of children who have experienced divorce, something Harris has done with apparent success.

Most important: Stop trying to create a pro-natalist social hierarchy where none exists. It’s anti-democratic and, in this particular case, outrageously sexist. To suggest that a woman is somehow lacking because she has not had the physical experience of giving birth or raising a child from infancy is absurd and dangerous. (For what it's worth, Vance's wife, Usha, recently attempted to assure those who at least tried to have children that his attacks weren't about them. Feel better yet?)

Also absurd and dangerous is the argument that parents — a role that can encompass all manner of love, support, dysfunction and hideous abuse — are intrinsically more valuable than people who are not. Linking procreation to political power or patriotism is never a good sign for a society; given that women still do the majority of parenting in this country, there is more than a little whiff of Germany's “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (children, kitchen, church) about this new sanctification of parenthood.

It's also insulting to the growing number of Americans who say they simply do not want to have children. Which I personally applaud. Mercifully, most Americans no longer need to have children to work the farm, earn money as child laborers or be traded away in marriage. Birth control allows heterosexual couples to engage in sex without leading to bushels of children and women dead of exhaustion. People of all gender and sexual identities are allowed to marry and have children or do neither of those things without being cast out of society.

Yes, humans, like virtually every life form, have a need to procreate — but in aggregate, not individually. And thank God. Overpopulation drives climate change, ecological degradation, housing scarcity and food scarcity. One in five American children already live with hunger.

So isn’t it great that, unlike our ancestors, most of us get to choose when and if we have children?

Not according to Vance and a growing number of pro-natalist politicians who seem determined to turn parents against nonparents. (Good luck with that. Who but the nonparents will buy your kids the super fancy Christmas presents? Who but the parents can dispatch a team of teenagers to help you move?)....>

<....Vance regularly points to declining birth rates in the U.S. and other developed nations as the impetus for his sanctification of parenthood. Our culture, he says, has become “anti-family.” This is patently ridiculous. Our cultural narratives remain overwhelmed by celebrations of adults who choose to have and/or raise children (with the added demographic bonus of including queer and single-parent households), just as they continue to celebrate monogamous couples. "The Bachelor” franchise has moved into the “golden years,” for heaven’s sake!

If anything is "anti-family" in America, it's our social infrastructure — certainly the one that Vance, Sanders and other conservatives envision. Their policies are diametrically opposed to their purported desire for Americans to have more babies: No national childcare program, no federal IVF protections, draconian and deadly abortion laws and deep cuts to food assistance, healthcare, childcare and education.

Here’s a tip from someone in the trenches: If you want to improve the birth rate, make it easier for people to actually have children. Including by supporting their reproductive right to decide when and with whom.

What does not help, in any way, is the vilification of people who do not have children.

Particularly when the refusal to admit that stepchildren “count” is perilously close to the suggestion that “having children” means “having your own biological children.” Thereby discounting adoption, surrogacy, the use of donor eggs or sperm, fostering, extended family care and all of the myriad types of parenting that do not involve a heterosexual couple bearing and raising the fruit of their combined chromosomes.

So if not your family, then half of your friends' families.

But even if Republican ire is directed only at those who simply choose not to produce or parent a child, the suggestion that a child-free voter is less invested in the future remains bigoted and ridiculous. Five presidents, including George Washington (if stepkids don’t count), did not have children. Neither did Plato, Beethoven, Isaac Newton, Michelangelo, Susan B. Anthony, Julia Child, Leonardo Da Vinci, Queen Elizabeth I or, of course, Jesus of Nazareth.

Yet somehow they all managed to have quite an impact on the future.

Of course, historical examples and evidence of social impact should not be required to see nonparents as whole people, and full citizens. Most of us parents will not make “noteworthy” lists of any kind. People are allowed to choose whether or not to be parents because that is their right. Full stop. They do not owe anyone an explanation any more than a parent owes anyone an answer to “Why did you have all these kids?”

Parents who view their child-free peers as inherently selfish or lazy or “not humble” reveal more about themselves than the people they are judging. Do you not like your kids for themselves? Do you need to tell yourself a story about how they are making you a better, more significant person?

Society needs all sorts of people with a variety of life experiences and viewpoints to function well, and diversity comes in many forms. Happiness with your choice is most evident when you’re not trying to foist it onto someone else or make the choices of others into a weird crusade. Because having kids is (or should be) a personal decision based on desire and self-knowledge not familial, social or political pressure.

Children are not status symbols, political or otherwise. No child should be raised by people who do not really want to have children in the first place; it’s a difficult enough task for those of us who do.>

<It’s never a good thing when the moderator of a candidate’s event makes more news than the candidate himself — which is exactly what Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders did at a town hall event for former President Donald Trump in Michigan earlier this week.

In what looks like an attempt to appeal to women voters, the Trump team decided to deploy Sanders as a surrogate. But that seems to have backfired. During her introduction of Trump, Sanders talked about her children and how they keep her humble. She then added, “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”

At first blush, it’s easy to write off her words as another misstep that was poorly thought through from the Trump camp. And didn’t Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, do enough damage with his comments about “childless cat ladies” already? But it appears there’s something more vicious in Sanders’ comments, which seek to stigmatize a fellow woman in politics.

Knowing that Vice President Kamala Harris has two stepchildren who call her “Momala,” Sanders clearly meant it as a slight against Harris, personally, for not having biological children. The cruelty in this line should not be overlooked.

Nor should the political strategy. Sanders is no political novice. Before being elected the governor of Arkansas, she served two years as White House press secretary for Trump. There, according to her official website, she was “a trusted confidant of the President, she advised him on everything from press and communications strategy to personnel and policy.” By all accounts, Sanders is a seasoned professional and knows what Trump likes to hear — and also how to provide cover for him, which is why neither she nor the campaign should get a pass for remarks like those she delivered in Michigan.

Further, Sanders knows that Trump loves to use false characterizations, and sometimes nicknames, to attack his opponents. The problem for Trump is that nothing is sticking to Harris, which is why he often resorts to imposing an “us vs. them” narrative.

And Tuesday, Sanders sought to modify that narrative into an equally ugly one: “She’s not like us,” suggesting that because Harris doesn’t have her own biological children, she’s an other, and should be reviled for it.

Trump’s campaign has often thrived off the most vile, controversial figures. It seems he will never turn away an endorsement, no matter how repugnant, if he thinks it will get him a couple of votes. In 2016, he would not disavow or condemn the endorsement of Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, claiming, “I don’t know anything about David Duke.”

Fast forward to 2024, and we see Trump palling around with the far-right, racist, hate spewing, conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, shocking even some of his closest allies with the very public association. But, she does have a huge following, albeit among the most homophobic, bigoted haters on the internet — so it’s no surprise if Trump sees her as an asset.

Sanders’ comments have been ridiculed in the media and even condemned by Bryan Lanza, a senior campaign adviser to the Trump campaign, who said, “I found that comment to be actually offensive. I don’t know what more to say about that.” Of course, Trump himself consistently uses identity as a means for division; Sanders just took it to another level.

Ironically, Sanders was probably chosen to moderate the event because Trump is facing a tremendous, perhaps historic, gender gap with women. Trump is desperate for female surrogates. But with friends such as Sanders and Loomer, perhaps Trump should just go it alone. He certainly can’t do much worse. Then again, he's Donald Trump.>

<In his play for Latino voters, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is running the risk that whatever Latino support he’s assembled will crumble in the final weeks of the campaign. He and his campaign are looking silly at best and dangerous at worst.

Let’s start with the silly.

In his quest for more celebrity endorsements from reggaeton stars, Trump misgendered Nicky Jam at a Las Vegas rally Friday. “Latin music superstar Nicky Jam. Do you know Nicky? She’s hot,” Trump said. Only when the music superstar, who’s a man, walked onto the stage, did Trump notice his mistake. “Oh, look, I’m glad he came up,” the former president said.

Despite the awkward moment, Jam eventually proclaimed in Spanish that “it’s been four years and nothing has happened. We need Trump. Let’s make America great again.”

Trump's Latino strategy is bankrupt on ideas that will help Latino communities.

It was yet another instance of Trump insulting a Latino endorser before receiving their praise. A few weeks ago in Pennsylvania, Trump told Puerto Rican rapper Anuel AA, “I don’t know if these people know who the hell you are, but it’s good for the Puerto Rican vote. Every Puerto Rican is going to vote for Trump right now. We’ll take it.”

Ignoring the shot at his popularity, Anuel called Trump “the best president the world has seen, this country has ever seen” and urged Puerto Ricans to unite and vote Trump.

Many of Jam’s Latino fans, however, were clearly not voting for Trump. Jam deleted his Instagram endorsement after so many online comments blasted him. The legendary Mexican rock band Maná announced it would remove a 2016 song collaboration with Jam from music streamers, saying on Instagram that “Maná does not work with racists.”

Jam also heard it from "Dreamers," who called him out for what they said was his hypocrisy after publicly supporting undocumented youth just seven years ago. Now, Jam was backing a presidential candidate who openly calls for the “largest deportation” in U.S. history. As one immigrant rights activist texted me, “It all feels like a betrayal.”

That sense of treachery from MAGA-supporting superstars in the Latino community is no surprise. There are indeed Latinos moving to the extreme right based on the same beliefs other extreme Trump supporters espouse. Still, at a time when Trump and Republicans continue to cast all migrants as criminals not worthy of being in this country, such rhetoric feels directed at any Latino living in this country.

There’s no indication that the hostile rhetoric will stop....>

<....That brings us to the dangerous side of conservatives’ chaotic strategy. With Hispanic Heritage Month in full swing, a new Spanish-language ad from a Trump-allied group warns U.S. Latinos that while citizens have a right to vote, they should be aware that noncitizens cannot. The ad even stresses that noncitizens risk getting arrested for committing a federal crime even though, as the Brennan Center notes, such a crime is “vanishingly rare.”

This commercial could only have been made by people entirely out of touch with Latino voters, people who assume that all Latinos in the U.S. are surrounded by noncitizens. Read the 2024 Republican platform with its emphasis on mass deportation and you’ll likely walk away with the impression that all U.S. Latinos are foreign noncitizens.

The data, of course, would prove that wrong. As Pew Research noted just last week, for example, 3 out of every 10 Latino newlyweds are married to non-Latinos, with 41% of those new brides and grooms born in this country. That data slice tells a story of a changing demographic that is more English-dominant and crossing cultures. Painting Latinos as foreign invaders is a dehumanizing tactic now part of an official political campaign. The country’s Latino community is an integral part of the permanent fabric of this country, and the way Trump and Republicans continue to insist otherwise is insulting and politically dangerous.

But because Trump is Trump and his Latino strategy is bankrupt on ideas that will help Latino communities, this is likely what Latinos can expect till the election. There’s no indication that the hostile rhetoric will stop or that he’ll bother to learn who the Latinos who endorse him are. The sense of Latino community betrayal will be there and, each day, it will likely bring another old idea that won’t stick to the wall.

For instance, after the Nicky Jam mess and the noncitizen voting ad, the Trump campaign published a video in which the former president, in the words of El País English, “seems to dance to the rhythm of a well-known salsa song from the 1990s that no longer says ‘Juliana, qué mala eres’ (Juliana, you’re so bad) but rather ‘Kamala, qué mala eres.’” (Goya Foods CEO and Trump supporter Bob Unanue also said this during his remarks at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.)

It’s not a new strategy. In 2020, a Spanish-language song about voting for Trump, from a Miami-based salsa band, became a social media smash. Back then, many Latinos questioned the judgment. Trump lost that election.

Trump’s frantic Latino strategy has not only been insulting, but also predictable and dull. While it remains unclear how many Latino votes he’ll get, he has done a good job of pitting Latinos against one another and exposed those who’ve blindly worshipped a politician whose central tenet is xenophobia.>

<The city of Surprise, Ariz., on Tuesday repealed its long-standing public-comment rule that bans criticism of local officials in response to a federal lawsuit filed by a woman who was arrested during a city-council meeting last month for criticizing a government lawyer’s salary.

The plaintiff, Rebekah Massie, alleges her First Amendment rights were violated in the tense August 20 exchange, which went viral on social media. In the video, she started complaining about how much money a city attorney was making. Surprise mayor Skip Hall interrupted her, citing a form she signed that prohibits any public speakers from orally lodging “charges or complaints” against city employees. The mayor then ordered her arrest.

Refusing to leave, Massie was escorted by a police officer in handcuffs and cited for trespassing. Massie’s ten-year-old daughter was present at the hearing.

Weeks later, the Surprise City Council voted to abandon the public-comment rule that Massie argues is unconstitutional. The policy has been a part of the city’s speaker decorum for more than 20 years, the city said.

“As this area of the law is constantly evolving, and in light of recent events,” the statement continued, “the City has decided to repeal this rule and review its speaker rules to ensure they set forth appropriate time, manner, and place guidelines that protect both the public’s right to speak and the City’s right, and expectation of citizens in attendance, to conduct its meetings efficiently, effectively, and with appropriate decorum and civility.”

Despite the repealed rule, the lawsuit remains ongoing. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said “the damage has already been done” and will continue to represent Massie until she’s compensated.

“Twenty-eight days ago, police dragged a local mom out of the meeting for criticizing a city attorney’s pay,” FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said in a statement provided to National Review. “Twenty-eight days ago, Mayor Skip Hall abused his power to stifle dissent. This decision comes 28 days too late for Rebekah Massie.”

FIRE’s lawsuit asked for a preliminary and permanent injunction preventing Surprise from enforcing the council-criticism policy again. Now that the rule no longer exists, the free-speech advocacy group intends to hold the city and mayor accountable for their actions.

“This rule shouldn’t have been in place for 20 minutes, let alone 20 years,” Fitzpatrick told Phoenix television-station brand Arizona’s Family. “So the fact that this rule stayed in place for two decades is frankly a rather damning indictment of the City of Surprise’s respect for the First Amendment over these last two decades.”

In the lawsuit filed September 3, Massie is joined by co-plaintiff Quintus Schulzke, a concerned citizen afraid to vocally criticize Surprise officials as he has done in the past. Schulzke is currently withholding complaints against officials during Surprise city council meetings until the case is resolved.

Massie is seeking monetary damages and a trial by jury for Surprise’s free-speech violations. She is due for her arraignment on October 22.>