#Conservative Partnership Institute

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Madeline Peltz and John Knefel at MMFA:

Media Matters found significant ties between authors, contributors, and partner organizations involved in Project 2025 — an extreme right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican presidential administration — and the ongoing right-wing efforts to disenfranchise voters and sow confusion about the 2024 election. The Heritage Foundation itself is at the center of many of these efforts; The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer identified the conservative think tank as one of the election denial movement’s “leaders” following the 2020 election. Heritage has extensive connections to election denial groups through both direct collaboration on voter suppression policies and the Project 2025 advisory board, which includes more than 110 conservative groups.  According to the Brennan Center for Justice, “Project 2025 threatens to reverse progress made over the last four years by stripping crucial federal resources from election officials and weaponizing the Department of Justice against officials who make decisions the administration disagrees with.” The Project 2025 policy book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, recommends dismantling the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which plays a key role in protecting American elections. Mandate’s chapter on the Federal Election Commission was written by Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage legal fellow with a decades-long career spreading voter fraud myths. The Heritage Foundation’s political arm, Heritage Action, is a member of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition — a collection of election denial activists and right-wing groups that voting rights experts say are spreading misinformation about noncitizen voting. Only Citizens Vote was organized by prominent election denier Cleta Mitchell, a Project 2025 contributor, and many of the Heritage plan’s advisory board members are also Only Citizen Vote Coalition partners. In collaboration with The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, the groups and individuals listed here are at the forefront of efforts to sow chaos and confusion in the 2024 election.

Project 2025 partner groups are seeking a redux of their unsuccessful 2020 election-stealing efforts to sow chaos about a potential Kamala Harris win with their bogus crusade against the essentially nonexistent bogeyman of noncitizen voting.

PDF:

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Steps from the Capitol, Trump allies buy up properties to build MAGA campus | The Washington Post

At first glance, the flurry of real estate sales two blocks east of the U.S. Capitol appeared unremarkable in a city where such sales are common. In the span of a year, a seemingly unrelated gaggle of recently formed companies bought nine properties, all within steps of one another.

But the sales were not coincidental. Unbeknown to most of the sellers, the limited liability companies making the purchases — a shopping spree that added up to $41 million — are connected to a conservative nonprofit led by Mark Meadows, who was Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump. The organization has promoted MAGA stars like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

The Conservative Partnership Institute, as the nonprofit is known, now controls four commercial properties along a single Pennsylvania Avenue block, three adjoining rowhouses around the corner, and a garage and carriage house in the rear alley. CPI’s aim, as expressed in its annual report, is to transform the swath of prime real estate into a campus it calls “Patriots’ Row.”

The acquisitions strike some Capitol Hill regulars as puzzling, considering that Republicans have long made a sport of denigrating Washington as a dysfunctional “swamp,” the latest evidence being a successful GOP-led effort to block local D.C. legislation to revise the city’s criminal code.

“So you don’t respect how we administer our city and then you secretly buy up chunks of it?” said Tim Krepp, a Capitol Hill resident who works as a tour guide and has written about the neighborhood’s history. “If it’s such a hellhole, go to Virginia.”

Reached on his cellphone, Edward Corrigan, CPI’s president, whose name appears on public documents related to the sales, had no immediate comment on the purchases, which were first reported by Grid News and confirmed by The Washington Post. “I’ll get back to you,” Corrigan said. He did not respond to follow-up messages.

Former senator Jim DeMint, CPI’s founder, and Meadows, a senior partner at the organization, did not respond to emails seeking comment. Cameron Seward, CPI’s general counsel and director of operations, whose name appears on incorporation documents related to the companies making the purchases, did not respond to a text or an email.

As Congress’s neighbors, denizens of the Capitol Hill neighborhood are accustomed to existing in close quarters with all varieties of official Washington. Walk the neighborhood and you might catch a glimpse of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, among those who own homes near the Capitol. The Republican and Democratic national committees both have offices in the neighborhood.

But it’s rare, if not unprecedented, for a nonprofit to purchase as many properties in such proximity and in so short a period of time as CPI has assembled through its related companies, a roster with names like Clear Plains Holdings, Brunswick Partners, Houston Group, Newpoint and Pennsylvania Avenue Holdings. The companies list Seward as an officer on corporate filings, as well as CPI’s Independence Avenue headquarters as their principal address.

Now, in what may be an only-in-Washington vista, a single Pennsylvania Avenue block is occupied by Public Citizen, the left-leaning consumer advocacy group, the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, and CPI, which bought four properties through its affiliates.

In addition to the nine D.C. parcels CPI’s network has bought since January 2022, another affiliated company, Federal Investors, paid $7.2 million for a sprawling 11-bedroom retreat on the Eastern Shore. In 2020, CPI, under its own name, also spent $1.5 million for a rowhouse next to its headquarters, which it leases, a few blocks from the Capitol.

DeMint, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, started CPI in 2017, shortly after he was ousted as Heritage’s leader amid criticism that the think tank had become too political under his direction. Meadows joined in 2021, after working as Trump’s Chief of Staff. He was by Trump’s side during the administration’s final calamitous days, before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and as the President’s allies were seeking to overturn election results.

On its 2021 tax returns, CPI reported $45 million in revenue, most of it generated through contributions and grants, and paid DeMint and Meadows compensation packages of $542,000 and $559,000, respectively. Its current offices, a three-story townhouse at the corner of Third Street and Independence Avenue SE, is a hub of GOP activity. During the chaotic lead-up to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s election as House Speaker, dissident Republican lawmakers were observed congregating at CPI.

CPI also provides grants to a cluster of nonprofits headed by Trump allies. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, for example, leads America First Legal, which received $1.3 million from CPI in 2021 and bills itself as a check on “lawless executive actions and the Radical Left.”

Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who was on the call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger seeking to reverse votes in the 2020 election, runs what the organization bills as its “Election Integrity Network,” which has cast doubt on the validity of President Biden’s 2020 victory.

“The election was rigged,” EIN tweeted last July. “Trump won.”

CLOSE TO THE CAPITOL

At an introductory meeting in December, recalled Gerald Sroufe, an advisory neighborhood commissioner on Capitol Hill, a CPI representative said the group planned to move its headquarters to a three-story building it had bought on Pennsylvania Avenue, next to Heritage’s office. Until the pandemic forced it to close, the Capitol Lounge had occupied the 130-year-old building. The bar had served a nightly bipartisan swarm of congressional staffers and lobbyists for more than two decades.

The CPI official, Sroufe said, indicated that the group planned to use the new Pennsylvania Avenue properties to “expand” its offices and “provide new retail.” But the official made no mention of Patriots’ Row, Sroufe said, or the three rowhouses the group’s affiliates had bought around the corner on Third Street SE. All of the properties are in the neighborhood’s historic district, which protects them from being altered without city review.

“This is much grander than what we were talking about,” Sroufe said after learning from a reporter about the other purchases. “On the Hill, people are always talking about how wonderful it is to be close to the Capitol and Congress. It’s kind of like a curse.”

As in many commercial corridors hit hard by the pandemic, businesses along Pennsylvania Avenue have struggled over the past couple of years. Tony Tomelden, executive director of the Capitol Hill Association of Merchants and Professionals, said CPI could energize a strip pocked with vacant storefronts.

“I welcome any business because the only thing opening right now are marijuana shops,” said Tomelden, an H Street NE bar owner who helped open the Capitol Lounge in 1996 and, as it happens, instituted a rule that patrons could not talk politics while imbibing. “If they’re going to pay a lot of money and raise property values, I’m all for it. I don’t care about anybody’s politics as long as they pay their tab.”

In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, finding those who are less sanguine about CPI’s growing footprint is not exactly difficult.

Yet politics is only part of the issue, as far as Krepp is concerned. CPI’s purchases, he said, threaten the area’s neighborhood vibe, as would be the case if any group, no matter its ideological leaning, bought as many properties. “I don’t want to create another downtown on Capitol Hill,” he said. “There’s a glut of available office space downtown. You don’t have to buy up neighborhoods.”

Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a regular commuter to the Capitol from his home in Montgomery County, sees CPI’s acquisitions in terms more political than geographic.

“It just seems like a massive real estate coming-out party for the extreme right wing of the Republican Party,” Raskin said. “This is a very explicit and well-financed statement of intent. They set out to take over the Republican Party and they’re very close to clenching the power.”

Instead of Patriots’ Row, Raskin suggested an alternative name: Seditionist Square.

“Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene can be their advisory neighborhood commissioner,” he said.

A ‘PERMANENT BULWARK’ IN D.C.

On its 2021 tax return, CPI said its mission is to be a “platform” for the “conservative movement,” and to provide “public policy” training for “government and nonprofit staffers” and meeting space for gatherings and policy debates.

Although not required to identify donors, CPI reported seven contributions in excess of $1 million, including one of more than $25 million. Trump’s Save America political action committee gave $1 million in 2021, according to campaign finance records. Billionaire Richard Uihlein, a major Republican donor, gave $1.25 million a couple of years ago through his foundation, records show.

A CPI-related entity, the Conservative Partnership Center, rented space to two political action committees as of early January, the House Freedom Fund and Senate Conservative Fund, according to campaign finance records. CPI also received $4,000 from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who has recorded his “Firebrand” podcast at the group’s studio, as has the host of the “Gosar Minute,” Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), according to the group’s annual report. Greene paid CPI $437.73 for “catering for political meetings” in 2021, the records show.

“No one stood up to the Left as courageously as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,” CPI declared in its 2021 annual report, hailing her as a “hero” who “endured sexist fury that always lurks just beneath the progressive surface.” The report described Boebert as a “gun rights advocate” who “wants to protect our environment more than anyone else.”

It was in CPI’s 2022 annual report that the group briefly referred to its expansion plans, writing that it has strengthened “its ability to serve the movement by beginning renovations to Patriots’ Row on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“In 2022, the Left tried to drag America further into a dark future of totalitarianism, chaotic elections and cultural decay,” the report asserts in an introduction from DeMint and Meadows. “The Washington establishment, per usual, did nothing to stop them. But neither the Left nor the establishment could stop the culture and community we’re building here at the Conservative Partnership Institute.”

“With our expanded presence in D.C.,” they add, “we’re launching CPI academy — a formal program of training for congressional staff and current and future members of the movement.”

“Even if we can’t change Washington, we can create a permanent bulwark against its worst tendencies.”

A SPATE OF SALES

CPI began its expansion in 2020, purchasing the rowhouse next door to its headquarters and christening it “The Rydin House” for Mike Rydin, a construction magnate and prominent conservative donor. When Federal Investors bought the Eastern Shore property, the group named it “Camp Rydin.”

On Capitol Hill, several property owners who sold their buildings to CPI-linked companies were surprised to learn that the buyers were connected to a group led by Meadows and DeMint.

“I did not know,” said Jacqueline Lewis, who sold a townhouse on Third Street SE to 116 Holdings for $5.1 million in July. The company’s officer, according to its corporate filing, is Seward, and the principal address it lists is the same as CPI’s headquarters. A trust document related to the transaction is signed by Corrigan, CPI’s president.

Brunswick Partners, which lists CPI and Seward as contacts on its corporate filing, bought the neighboring rowhouse for $1.8 million in January, according to property records. Brian Wise, the seller, said he did not know of the company’s CPI connection. An attorney who approached him and his wife, he said, “asked if we were willing to sell and we agreed on a price. It was a business sale.”

Keith and Amanda Catanzano also were unaware of CPI when they sold a garage in the alley behind Third Street SE to Newpoint for $1 million in June. Newpoint lists Seward as an officer and the same mailing address as CPI. “We had no idea,” said a woman who answered the phone at a number listed for the Catanzanos before hanging up.

Eric Kassoff, who sold the former site of the Capitol Lounge to Clear Plains, said he knew of the company’s CPI ties before the $11.3 million deal was finalized in January. He also sold the group a carriage house behind the building for $400,000.

Kassoff said he did not want to lease the space to a fast-food restaurant or a convenience store. He said CPI’s political leanings were not a factor in his decision to sell to the organization.

“Why would I have any issue selling my property to proud Americans?” asked Kassoff, who described himself as an independent. “We need to get past the labeling and demonizing and talk to each other, and that’s true in politics as well as commerce. If we were all to take that position we wouldn’t have much of a country left, would we?”

Although the Capitol Lounge closed more than two years ago, vestiges of its past remain on the building’s exterior, including a rendering of Benjamin Franklin beneath a quote concocted by the bar’s founder, Joe Englert: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

James Silk, the bar’s former owner, said he left behind memorabilia when he vacated the building that could be suitable for the new owner: Richard M. Nixon campaign posters still hanging on the walls of what the owners cheekily dubbed the Nixon Room (located across from the Kennedy Room).

“Nixon is finally with his people,” Silk said. He laughed and added: “Nixon was a Republican, right?”

[directactionforhope]

"Starting this month [June 2024], thousands of young people will begin doing climate-related work around the West as part of a new service-based federal jobs program, the American Climate Corps, or ACC. The jobs they do will vary, from wildland firefighters and “lawn busters” to urban farm fellows and traditional ecological knowledge stewards. Some will work on food security or energy conservation in cities, while others will tackle invasive species and stream restoration on public land. 

The Climate Corps was modeled on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, with the goal of eventually creating tens of thousands of jobs while simultaneously addressing the impacts of climate change. 

Applications were released on Earth Day, and Maggie Thomas, President Joe Biden’s special assistant on climate, told High Country News that the program’s website has already had hundreds of thousands of views. Since its launch, nearly 250 jobs across the West have been posted, accounting for more than half of all the listed ACC positions. 

“Obviously, the West is facing tremendous impacts of climate change,” Thomas said. “It’s changing faster than many other parts of the country. If you look at wildfire, if you look at extreme heat, there are so many impacts. I think that there’s a huge role for the American Climate Corps to be tackling those crises.”  

Most of the current positions are staffed through state or nonprofit entities, such as the Montana Conservation Corps or Great Basin Institute, many of which work in partnership with federal agencies that manage public lands across the West. In New Mexico, for example, members of Conservation Legacy’s Ecological Monitoring Crew will help the Bureau of Land Management collect soil and vegetation data. In Oregon, young people will join the U.S. Department of Agriculture, working in firefighting, fuel reduction and timber management in national forests. 

New jobs are being added regularly. Deadlines for summer positions have largely passed, but new postings for hundreds more positions are due later this year or on a rolling basis, such as the Working Lands Program, which is focused on “climate-smart agriculture.”  ...

On the ACC website, applicants can sort jobs by state, work environment and focus area, such as “Indigenous knowledge reclamation” or “food waste reduction.” Job descriptions include an hourly pay equivalent — some corps jobs pay weekly or term-based stipends instead of an hourly wage — and benefits. The site is fairly user-friendly, in part owing to suggestions made by the young people who participated in the ACC listening sessions earlier this year...

The sessions helped determine other priorities as well, Thomas said, including creating good-paying jobs that could lead to long-term careers, as well as alignment with the president’s Justice40 initiative, which mandates that at least 40% of federal climate funds must go to marginalized communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change and pollution. 

High Country News found that 30% of jobs listed across the West have explicit justice and equity language, from affordable housing in low-income communities to Indigenous knowledge and cultural reclamation for Native youth...

While the administration aims for all positions to pay at least $15 an hour, the lowest-paid position in the West is currently listed at $11 an hour. Benefits also vary widely, though most include an education benefit, and, in some cases, health care, child care and housing. 

All corps members will have access to pre-apprenticeship curriculum through the North America’s Building Trades Union. Matthew Mayers, director of the Green Workers Alliance, called this an important step for young people who want to pursue union jobs in renewable energy. Some members will also be eligible for the federal pathways program, which was recently expanded to increase opportunities for permanent positions in the federal government...

 “To think that there will be young people in every community across the country working on climate solutions and really being equipped with the tools they need to succeed in the workforce of the future,” Thomas said, “to me, that is going to be an incredible thing to see.”"

-via High Country News, June 6, 2024

--

Note: You can browse Climate Corps job postings here, on the Climate Corps website. There are currently 314 jobs posted at time of writing!

Also, it says the goal is to pay at least $15 an hour for all jobs (not 100% meeting that goal rn), but lots of postings pay higher than that, including some over $20/hour!!

[reasonsforhope]

"Seven federal agencies are partnering to implement President Biden’s American Climate Corps, announcing this week they would work together to recruit 20,000 young Americans and fulfill the administration's vision for the new program. 

The goals spelled out in the memorandum of understanding include comprehensively tackling climate change, creating partnerships throughout various levels of government and the private sector, building a diverse corps and serving all American communities.

The agencies—which included the departments of Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Energy, as well the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps—also vowed to ensure a “range of compensation and benefits” that open the positions up to a wider array of individuals and to create pathways to “high-quality employment.”  

Leaders from each of the seven agencies will form an executive committee for the Climate Corps, which Biden established in September, that will coordinate efforts with an accompanying working group. They will create the standards for ACC programs, set compensation guidelines and minimum terms of service, develop recruitment strategies, launch a centralized website and establish performance goals and objectives. The ACC groups will, beginning in January, hold listening sessions with potential applicants, labor unions, state and local governments, educational institutions and other stakeholders. 

The working group will also review all federal statutes and hiring authorities to remove any barriers to onboarding for the corps and standardize the practices across all participating agencies. Benefits for corps members will include housing, transportation, health care, child care, educational credit, scholarships and student loan forgiveness, stipends and non-financial services.

As part of the goal of the ACC, agencies will develop the corps so they can transition to “high-quality, family-sustaining careers with mobility potential” in the federal or other sectors. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said the initiative would prepare young people for “good-paying union jobs.” 

Within three weeks of rolling out the ACC, EPA said more than 40,000 people—mostly in the 18-35 age range—expressed interest in joining the corps. The administration set an ambitious goal for getting the program underway, aiming to establish the corps’ first cohort in the summer of 2024. 

The corps members will work in roles related to ecosystem restoration and conservation, reforestation, waterway protection, recycling, energy conservation, clean energy deployment, disaster preparedness and recovery, fire resilience, resilient recreation infrastructure, research and outreach. The administration will look to ensure 40% of the climate-related investments flow to disadvantaged communities as part of its Justice40 initiative.  

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the MOU would allow the ACC to “work across the federal family” to push public projects focused on environmental justice and clean energy. 

“The Climate Corps represents a significant step forward in engaging and nurturing young leaders who are passionate about climate action, furthering our journey towards a sustainable and equitable future,” Regan said. 

The ACC’s executive committee will hold its first meeting within the next 30 days. It will draw support from a new climate hub within AmeriCorps, as well as any staffing the agency heads designate."

-via Government Executive, December 20, 2023

-

This news comes with your regularly scheduled reminder that WE GOT THE AMERICAN CLIMATE CORPS ESTABLISHED LAST YEAR and basically no one know about/remembers it!!! Also if you want more info about the Climate Corps, inc. how to join, you can sign up to get updates here.

[updatingranboo]

ranboo retweeted this thread on different resources that help animals affected by the genocide in Palestine! 🐶🍉

Animals:

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Palestinian Animal League - leading voice for animal protection in the West Bank, Palestine -website -donate

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Wildlife/nature organizations:

Nature Palestine Society - focus in research, protection, conservation, and education about nature, biodiversity and environment in Palestine -website

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Palestinian Institute for Biodiversity & Sustainability - focus in research, education, conservation, culture and heritage, plus promotion of responsible human interactions with the environment -website -donate

[sarahjacobs]

happy late labor day let's talk about how unionism in the newsies film and broadway production are represented differently.

broadly speaking, there are two different ways to organize labor. there are business unions, also referred to as trade unions, the more conservative mode of labor organizing that has been recuperated into capitalism. why it's deemed as a lesser threat is obvious once we consider its historical exclusion of women, people of color, and so-called "unskilled" workers, as well as its long collaboration with government and businesses at the expense of workers, especially the more radical ones. its ultimate prize is short term gains, such as higher pay, typically via the contract; long term transformative/revolutionary political projects are absent in its aims.

revolutionary unions, on the other hand, are explicitly hostile towards capitalism, with the end goal of instituting socialism always in mind. as one of their newspapers reminds us, "momentary phenomena must not blind us to our ultimate aim."

hard promises has some pretty clear cut references to the latter kind of unionism — mayer quotes and names eugene debs, who in 1905 established the industrial workers of the world (iww), a well known revolutionary union.

its hostility to all proponents of capitalism can be seen by its assessment that —

MAYER: The problem is, Jack, that the working class and the hiring class got nothing in common.

this sentiment comes from the iww's preamble to its constitution:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

in the iww's eyes, the world can be divided in two, the capitalists and the workers, between which "there can be no peace."

as for the business unionist's point of view —

When rightly considered, the interests of employer and employed are identical. In the first place both make their living out of the same business or undertaking. . . . [A]ny business is a partnership to a certain extent.

[This union wishes to] prevent unnecessary clashes between employer and employed.

— which states that workers and capitalists have common interests and should work together.

ironically enough, these excerpts were drawn from eugene debs himself, the essay "employer and employed." it was penned in 1884, before his involvement in the pullman strike and his subsequent prison sentence later that year, which reformed him into a socialist.

from debs's 1902 essay, "how i became a socialist," on the topic of his time as a business unionist:

. . . [N]o shadow of a "system" fell athwart my pathway; no thought of ending wage-misery marred my plans. I was too deeply absorbed in perfecting wage-servitude and making it a "thing of beauty and a joy forever."

the key issue of business unions is that they don't know their enemy. what's desired is a more "[perfect] wage-servitude," a more prolonged and humanitarian and fair suffering.

newsies live, too, doesn't know its enemy — i've already talked at length about how fierstein mistakenly places the heart of the struggle in a generational divide rather than the structure of capitalism itself. and because the "shadow of a 'system'" is absent, what we end up with, in both business unionism and broadway's take on newsies, is a labor struggle rife with conciliation and contradiction.

DAVEY: We're done being treated like kids. From now on they will treat us as equals.

KATHERINE: "For the sake of all the kids in every sweatshop, factory, and slaughter house in New York, I beg you… join us." With those words, the strike stopped being just about the newsies. You challenged our whole generation to stand up and demand a place at the table.

throughout newsies live, we see time and time again that there's a disconnect at hand, between the material reality of the conditions that caused the strike and what the writers have them say they're striking against. the oppressive work conditions and horrifically low pay are attributed to them "being treated like kids," and this fight is purported to belong to "our whole generation" — when there's a very real difference between katherine and someone like sarah, why they're working, and the kind of work they can access.

ultimately, the issue fierstein presents is not just a generational divide but one of power not being shared. the rhetoric of wanting to be treated "like equals" and demanding "a place at the table" seem to a) posit that there's such a thing as workers being equal with their employer, and b) voice a desire to share power (the table) with the employer. but an even split of power is impossible when the employer/pulitzer has state power (police, armed strikebreakers, the court) and funds at his disposal in such a way that the workers/newsies are systematically cut off from. the democratization of the workplace is worthless so long as the structures which privilege certain classes are intact.

the proposed solution is that the "[older] generation step aside and invite the young to share the day," as roosevelt puts it. this looks an awful lot like the partnership that debs so exalted in "employer and employed," and i think this connection becomes especially apparent in how negotiations play out.

on broadway, roosevelt has an almost overwhelming presence in the negotiating room. this is a bizarre choice because not only is it a missed opportunity to showcase the strengths of the characters we actually care about, it's also a noticeable departure from 92, which brings roosevelt in primarily to handle the refuge.

SEITZ: And the [trolley] strike's about to be settled. Governor Roosevelt just put his support behind the workers.

it's this line, also a new addition, that indicates the increased role of roosevelt is due to a lack of trust in worker power. or, put more simply, the writer's belief that the government needs to — and should — step in, in order for workers to get any wins; otherwise, labor and capital would be at a standstill. but we should always be skeptical of the government because the employer’s monopoly on state power/violence shows that government is in and of itself a kind of class relation. even when the government places restrictions on employers, it often restricts workers as well (ie taft-hartley act).

the increased emphasis on government intervention undermines revolutionary unionism's argument for and commitment to direct action, or action undertaken to address a problem, without the help of authority figures like union bureaucrats, government officials, and so on… direct action is everywhere in newsies — the newsies tearing up papers and overturning wagons, their various methods of dealing with scabs, and the decision to make their own newspaper in light of the total press blackout.

what drives direct action is an understanding of where the power is located — in the people. the film's negotiation scene understood this well —

true power doesn't lie in pulitzer, or even strike leaders. it's in the rank and file, in solidarity and withholding your labor, in direct action.

the broadway scene lacks this kind of analysis, which is why its take on negotiation falls flat for me. another difference is that jack says they win when in fact, they only win concessions, while in 92, they win all of their demands. this raises a lot of questions for me. was there any discussion beforehand in which the newsies collectively agreed what they were willing to give up — if they were willing to concede anything at all? or did jack make a unilateral decision on behalf of the newsies? on a doylist level, why was this change made in the first place? it can't be for realism. jack getting offered what essentially amounts to a promotion at the end is incredibly unrealistic when we consider how common it is for companies to retaliate against workers after a strike ends, ie the workers who were charged with felony vandalism and conspiracy to commit a crime, all for chalk on a sidewalk while picketing.

concessions are part and parcel of business unionism. using "employer and employed" again to draw comparisons —

[The boss should listen] with respect to the demand and affords relief if he can or a reason why if he cannot.

Both sides ought to give and take. . . . [B]oth sides ought to be willing to compromise.

Capital should extend its hand to labor and labor should grasp it in a friendly manner.

this last tidbit mirrors an earlier negotiation, where jack and les argue over how they should split earnings between them. they go back and forth (70-30, 50-50, 60-40 and that's final) until they agree and spit shake; someone comments "that's disgusting," and jack replies that it's "just business."

this mirroring implies a sense of partnership — after all, the spit shake is what marks the beginning of jack, les, and david being business partners — therefore implying equality. but david and les are more equal to jack than jack and pulitzer could ever be.

additionally, jack's final offer to les is 60-40, a split which favors him. similarly, the offer to the newsies favors pulitzer. what business unions and newsies live fail to understand is that labor and capital are enemies on uneven ground. labor has more to lose, so concessions will always disproportionately hurt the workers. they're the ones who truly have to count pennies, not pulitzer. and, well, maybe the speech the historical kid blink gave at a rally puts it best —

I’m trying to figure out how 10 cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to a newsboy, and I can’t see it. We can do more with 10 cents than he can with twenty-five.

[mimi-0007]

****†** EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BEFORE YOU VOTE. ****Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of policy proposals to thoroughly reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Established in 2022, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of conservatives to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants—whom Republicans characterize as part of the "deep state"—and to further the objectives of the next Republican president. It adopts a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory—which asserts that the president has absolute power over the executive branch upon inauguration. Unitary executive theory is a disputed interpretation of Article II of the Constitution of the United States. Project 2025 envisions widespread changes across the entire government, particularly with regard to economic and social policies and the role of the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes slashing funding for the Department of Justice (DOJ), dismantling the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sharply reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor of fossil fuel production, eliminating the Department of Commerce, and ending the independence of various federal agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts, though its writers disagree on the wisdom of protectionism. .

Project 2025 recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be either transferred to other government agencies, or terminated. Scientific research would receive federal funding only if it suits conservative principles. The Project urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care and to restrict access to contraception. The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank that leads the development of Project 2025, asserted in April 2024 that "the radical Left hates families" and "wants to eliminate the family and replace it with the state" while driving the country to emulate totalitarian nations, such as North Korea. The Project seeks to infuse the government with elements of Christianity, stating in its Mandate that "freedom is defined by God, not man." Project 2025 proposes criminalizing pornography, removing protections against discrimination based on sexual or gender identity, and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, as well as affirmative action. The Project advises the future president to immediately deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and to direct the DOJ to pursue Donald Trump's adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. It recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants across the country. It promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of such sentences. Project director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, explained that Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state." Dans admitted that it was "counterintuitive" to recruit so many people to join the government in order to shrink it, but pointed out the need for a future President to "regain control" of the federal government. Although the project does not promote a specific presidential candidate, many contributors have close ties to Donald Trump and his presidential campaign. The Heritage Foundation has developed Project 2025 in collaboration with over 100 partners including Turning Point USA, led by its executive director Charlie Kirk; the Conservative Partnership Institute including former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as senior partner; the Center for Renewing America, led by former Trump Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought; and America First Legal, led by former Trump Senior Advisor Stephen Miller. The Project is detailed in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, a version of which Heritage has written as transition plans for each prospective Republican president since 1980. Critics of Project 2025 have described it as an authoritarian Christian nationalist movement and a path for the United States to become an autocracy. Several experts in law have indicated that it would undermine the rule of law and the separation of powers. Some conservatives and Republicans also criticized the plan, for example in the contexts of centralizing power, climate change, and foreign trade.

[marta-bee]

John Oliver said something about voting last night, that I've been struggling with how to talk about. Namely, that when you vote it doesn't have to be for someone you mostly agree with or even just agree more with than the other candidate; sometimes it can just be the person you'd most like to hold accountable.

I like Harris in a lot of ways. Her message of inclusion is one I think a lot of Americans need just now. Her big beautiful blended family (and her biracial self!) resembles America more than any presidential candidate we've seen. Her policies aren't sweeping, they're practical and specific in a way I think sees what working people are struggling with. And there are things I like much less. Her "public-private partnerships" buy into capitalism and free market as the solution for everything, to give one example. Not every problem can be solved with a tax break or even a check. But this is America, so what do you expect, and also her tax breaks are at least targeted toward people who most need them. Her immigration policy might be a bit too heavy on enforcement for my tastes and not enough on better welcoming my new neighbors in a way that lets them fully participate in society, but on the other hand, she's not talking revulsion and promising the purge.

With Gaza, it's hard to judge because so much of foreign policy happens behind closed doors. Joe is clearly no fan of Netanyahu and has tried to restrain him, Kamala too, but they've clearly not had much impact on him. What they're doing out of the public eye, how much worse things would be for Gaza without their involvement, it's impossible to say. I do hate Harris feels like she had to be more inclusive for conservatives and probably that's why she was less working publicly with the uncommitted movement. It sucks. It's been a weird election all around, and the traditional conservatives who feel like they've lost their party to Trump aren't the only ones suffering: traditional liberals, much less leftists, have lost the coalition that should be advocating and organizing around their priorities. Hopefully we'll soon have a reasonable opposition we can work with rather than a single functioning party forced to be too big a tent than would be ideal versus a dangerous madman on the other side. We'd all be better off.

But my point on Gaza, and this circles back to Oliver. Bernie Sanders has promised to introduce legislation barring more sale of weapons to Israel in the next Congress. And I know what president I'd want to be working with on that. Even if Gaza is the only issue you're concerned about, even if you think Harris is inexcusable here, you can still see her as the lever of power you'd rather hold accountable.

God (or whatever secular impulses and institutions we've set up in His stead) bless the United States of America. God save us all. If anyone wants to talk about anything privately to help you work out how you want to square your conscience with your vote, I'm around today and my Tumblr messages are open. And if not, I'll see you all on the other side.

[communistkenobi]

Hi, you tend to have well-thought-out political opinions (I don't always agree with you, but your reading liveblog were the kick in the ass to make me read Orientalism, and you have managed to change my mind more than once), maybe might have a better answer here than me.

Is there an ideological reason that American (b/c it typically is, god help me) left-of-center types love electoralism so much online (and offline too, tbh. College continues to deal new and fun kinds of psychic damage), but only in the context of the general national elections? I so often receive various extensive breakdowns of reasons that I MUST vote for Biden in 2024, but less about the benefits of, like, getting really invested in my city council elections or the school board.

We have so many freaking elections for goddamn everything because the US/Canada are fuck-off huge that it's super easy to argue for the importance of participating in electoralism and instead I (especially recently) see so many people picking the worst hill to die on, that I really struggle to. Well. Understand why.

I’ll speak mostly to Canada since that’s where most of my formal knowledge comes from and also because I live here lol. Also a lot of what I’m talking about is coming from books I’ve read - Still Renovating by Greg Suttor for example is a pretty in depth history of social policy (primarily housing) in Canada, it’s very dry but is useful for this conversation. This is off the dome and not meant as a PSA or anything, it’s my own perspective, if people want sources for what I’m discussing I can go dig those up, but I’m just putting this disclaimer at the top in case this post leaves my circle.

To answer your question, my instinct is that it’s because north american democracy is increasingly necrotic and disconnected from the general public (with the usual list of caveats about how much liberal capitalist democracies have ever been “for the people”). Reading up on social policy in Canada directly post-WWII is pretty bleak when comparing it to today - social housing used to be a robust part of the housing market, people were paid far better and had far more economic security, our healthcare was freshly socialised and invigorated, the promises of the Keynesian welfare state were generally being met (for a predominantly white middle class electorate, of course), and so on. Even conservatives were basically on board with these things in the 60s, at least in Canada, although that obviously did not last long. And over the decades we have become entrenched in neoliberal cutbacks, the gutting of public institutions, the sale of public space and utilities, the downloading of responsibility for social welfare onto provincial and then municipal governments who have smaller budgets and more limited institutional power, the massive expansion in public-private partnerships, the militarisation of the police - these things really kicked off in the 80s/90s in Canada and have showed little signs of stopping or even really slowing down since (something that also obviously happened in the US). People make the joke that if libraries were suggested as a policy goal today it would be called a communist plot, but it’s true - all of the shit the government offered us forty years ago is unthinkable to even suggest now. Life in general has gotten more difficult as private wealth and deregulation has taken a progressively stronger hold on domestic affairs. This happened slowly over the course of decades, and as political horizons shrunk in terms of what you could expect/demand of your government, there was a real air of this being inevitable, not a result of conscious political decisions but just some organic outcome that no one had control over (“the invisible hand of the market”). Democratic civic responsibility demands we vote as citizens of our country, but for all the reasons outlined above plus a bunch of others I’m sure I’m forgetting, the liberal conception of democratic participation shrunk to the ballot box alone.

And while we all joke about everyone having the historical memory of a goldfish, I think the pandemic made this a deeply dissonant position to hold onto - we saw the government seemingly awake from a long slumber to exercise its might. It placed eviction bans on landlords, enforced mass quarantines and social distancing measures, provided economic relief to people who lost their jobs, stationed itself inside every building and public space to enforce mask mandates, rolled-out universal vaccination programs that were mandatory if you wanted to keep your job - we saw the government flex its power in labour, in housing, in healthcare, in civic life, and at the border in a way previously unheard of, particularly for people who were not alive to experience the welfare state of the 50s and 60s and even 70s. The state revealed itself as the life-structuring force it always had been before receding again, telling everyone to go back to normal as if nothing had happened, as if millions of people had not died in a global plague, as if it had not just demonstrated to everyone in the country that the state can at the drop of a hat order your landlord to stop evicting you and your boss to give you paid time off. This of course didn’t really happen in the US, or at least not nearly to this degree, which resulted in the deaths of over a million people.

So now when politicians perform this same incapacity to do anything, when they trot out hyper-specific policies that might benefit a couple thousand people at most, when they make stupid non-promises and shrink away from even mild forms of social democracy (eg Sanders-style campaign promises), I don’t know how much people buy it. I’m not particularly optimistic about the pandemic radicalising large amounts of people, but I think even if it doesn’t, we saw what happened! And we’ve all seen a million fucking articles about how people don’t want to go to work anymore, about labour shortages, we’ve seen essentially every sector of labour go on some kind of strike in the past two or three years - there is popular organised political participation happening far away from the ballot box, and is only growing in power by the day. Socialism is now a word that exists in the national consciousness, something that was unthinkable even a decade ago. Currently right now we are seeing an international conversation about (and global popular support for) indigenous sovereignty, we are seeing a full-throated articulation of what a LandBack policy would look like, and this comes on the heels of the national Canadian conversation of residential schools and missing and murdered indigenous women. Decolonisation is now a household term. In the case of the US, we are seeing people make the very obvious point that America can conjure billions of dollars to bomb hospitals and civilians, but any social policy to help its own citizens is too expensive, pie in the sky fantasy nonsense.

And by the same token, there is organised right-wing and fascist violence happening in the streets, massive increases in hate crimes, insane political stunts and demonstrations like the Freedom Convoy and 1 Million March 4 Children (inspired by the Capitol Hill storming in the US), Qanon plots to kidnap and execute elected officials - things that right wing parties are actively encouraging, particularly the PPC and CPC. More and more we see that electoral politics is the domain of the far-right, whose culture war issues have the best chance of being realised through the sacred portal of the ballot box. Democrats can’t even offer people legalised abortion now!

I think this is why liberals are in a state of hysteria. A healthy liberal democracy does not require constant, unrelenting reminders to “vote your ass off.” Liberals are very much aware, even unconsciously, that voting does less and less of what they want every single day - you see this openly admitted to by American liberals, who are now doing Hitler % meter calculations about which fascist to vote for come the next federal election. Voting itself is what matters, even as they openly, frantically admit it will do nothing but slightly delay the inevitable.

So to like directly answer your question: I think it has less to do with federal elections as a specific political strategy and more just an expression of anxiety about the fact that voting does not do what you want it to do, or what it once did - perhaps encouraging larger questions if voting does anything at all. If national federal elections don’t do anything, if you voting for the most powerful position on the planet doesn’t really change very much regardless of who’s in power, what is the point of voting at all? So I don’t think they are articulating an actual political strategy or way of doing politics, because by their own admission it’s not going to do much of anything (while at the same time being an existential crisis). I’m in a similar boat to you, I vote in smaller elections where I feel they will do some measure of good (in part because municipalities are responsible for so much more of civic life than they were a few decades ago), I have engaged with the Ontario NDP for several years (although that has come to an end now because of their position on Palestine). Electoralism is a compromise, it is an avenue for potential good, but not always, or even most of the time.

Thankfully there are other avenues for politics - labour organising, protesting, mutual aid support networks, getting involved with community work, even something like local neighbourhood councils. Those are places of political potential, and a single person’s presence in them can make a legitimate noticeable difference (speaking from several years of heavy involvement in community orgs). I have never really felt like I was making a change while voting, but I have felt that way helping community members not get evicted, or offering them free daycare a few times a week, or running programs from lgbtq kids who don’t want to go home after school. Those things legit save peoples’ lives, a lot of them are low stakes relative to their benefit, and they help stave off the alienation and loneliness I know everyone feels. Obviously you run into the same structural problems you would everywhere else, it’s not a paradise by any stretch of the imagination, but they are so many avenues outside of voting that do actually help people around you.

And I think if liberals admit that these actions are more powerful, more effective than voting, they are admitting to themselves that their core beliefs are wrong, that the communists and anarchists are correct and have been correct long before their dumbass was born. They can no longer point to any institution that gives a fuck about them as a defense against left-wing critiques of liberal electoralism. I think that is part of what animates their hysteria, their temper tantrums, their screaming about the only thing to do is do nothing at all. It is a full-throated defense of self-defeat. They are wailing as everything they believe in dies. I’d be pretty upset too if that were me! Luckily I grew out of that when I was like 19

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Project 2025 :: blueprint for a second Trump term of office]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 4, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 05, 2024

Monday, July 1, was a busy day. That morning the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States that gives the president absolute immunity for committing crimes while engaging in official acts. On the same day, Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon began a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress at a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Before he began serving his sentence, he swore he would “be more powerful in prison than I am now.” 

“On July 2, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, went onto Bannon’s webcast War Room to hearten Bannon’s right-wing followers after Bannon’s incarceration. Former representative Dave Brat (R-VA) was sitting in for Bannon and conducted the interview.  

“[W]e are going to win,” Roberts told them. “We're in the process of taking this country back…. We ought to be really encouraged by what happened yesterday. And in spite of all of the injustice, which, of course, friends and audience of this show, of our friend Steve know, we are going to prevail.”

“That Supreme Court ruling yesterday on immunity is vital, and it's vital for a lot of reasons,” Roberts said, adding that the nation needs a strong leader because “the radical left…has taken over our institutions.” “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution,” he said, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts took over the presidency of the Heritage Foundation in 2021, and he shifted it from a conservative think tank to an organization devoted to “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Central to that project for Roberts has been working to bring the policies of Hungary’s president Viktor Orbán, a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, to the United States. 

In 2023, Roberts brought the Heritage Foundation into a formal partnership with Hungary’s Danube Institute, a think tank overseen by a foundation that is directly funded by the Hungarian government; as journalist Casey Michel reported, it is, “for all intents and purposes, a state-funded front for pushing pro-Orbán rhetoric.” The Danube Institute has given grants to far-right figures in the U.S., and, Michel noted in March, “we have no idea how much funding may be flowing directly from Orbán’s regime to the Heritage Foundation.” Roberts has called modern Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

Orbán has been open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy and replace it with what he has, on different occasions, called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” He wants to replace the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stop the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture, and reject “adaptable family models” in favor of “the Christian family model.” He is moving Hungary away from the stabilizing international systems supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

No matter what he calls it, Orbán’s model is not democracy at all. As soon as he retook office in 2010, he began to establish control over the media, cracking down on those critical of his far-right political party, Fidesz, and rewarding those who toed the party line. In 2012 his supporters rewrote the country’s constitution to strengthen his hand, and extreme gerrymandering gave his party more power while changes to election rules benefited his campaigns. Increasingly, he used the power of the state to concentrate wealth among his cronies, and he reworked the country’s judicial system and civil service system to stack it with his loyalists, who attacked immigrants, women, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals. While Hungary still holds elections, state control of the media and the apparatus of voting means that it is impossible for the people of Hungary to remove him from power.

Trump supporters have long admired Orbán’s nationalism and centering of Christianity, while the fact that Hungary continues to have elections enables them to pretend that the country remains a democracy.

The tight cooperation between Heritage and Orbán illuminates Project 2025, the blueprint for a new kind of government dictated by Trump or a Trump-like figure. In January 2024, Roberts told Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times that Project 2025 was designed to jump-start a right-wing takeover of the government. “[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Roberts said. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country must embrace: the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

In almost 1,000 pages, the document explains what these policies mean for ordinary Americans. Restoring the family and protecting children means using “government power…to restore the American family.” That, the document says, means eliminating any words associated with sexual orientation or gender identity, gender, abortion, reproductive health, or reproductive rights from any government rule, regulation, or law. Any reference to transgenderism is “pornography” and must be banned. 

The overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the right to abortion must be gratefully celebrated, the document says, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision accomplishing that end “is just the beginning.” 

Dismantling the administrative state starts from the premise that “people are policy.” Frustrated because nonpartisan civil employees thwarted much of Trump’s agenda in his first term, the authors of Project 2025 call for firing much of the current government workforce—about 2 million people work for the U.S. government—and replacing it with loyalists who will carry out a right-wing president’s demands. 

The plan asserts “the existential need” for an authoritarian leader to dismantle the current government that regulates business, provides a social safety net, and protects civil rights. Instead of the government Americans have built since 1933, the plan says the national government must “decentralize and privatize as much as possible” and leave “the great majority of domestic activities to state, local, and private governance.”

It attacks “America’s largest corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture,” for their embrace of international organizations like the United Nations and the European Union and for their willingness to work with other countries. It calls for abandoning all of those partnerships and alliances. 

Also on July 1, Orbán took over the rotating presidency of the European Union. He will be operating for six months in that position under a slogan taken from Trump and adapted to Europe: “Make Europe Great Again.” The day before taking that office, Orbán announced that his political party was forming a new alliance with far-right parties in Austria and the Czech Republic in order to launch a “new era of European politics.”

Tomorrow, Orbán will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin. On July 2, Orbán met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, where he urged Zelensky to accept a “ceasefire.” In the U.S., Trump’s team has suggested that, if reelected, Trump will call for an immediate ceasefire and will negotiate with Putin over how much of Ukraine Putin can keep while also rejecting Ukraine for NATO membership and scaling back U.S. commitment to NATO. 

“I would expect a very quick end to the conflict,” Kevin Roberts said. Putin says he supports Trump’s plan. 

Roberts’s “second American revolution,” which would destroy American democracy in an echo of a small-time dictator like Orbán and align our country with authoritarian leaders, seems a lot less patriotic than the first American Revolution. 

For my part, I will stand with the words written 248 years ago today, saying that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andrew Perez and Adam Rawnsley at Rolling Stone:

THE CONSULTING FIRM led by Leonard Leo, the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, has worked for billionaire Charles Koch’s political advocacy network and a dark-money group that is currently arguing a Supreme Court case designed to preempt a wealth tax, according to documents obtained by Rolling Stone. The firm even worked to promote a book by Donald Trump cronies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. Leo has played a central role in shifting the high court and its decisions far to the right. As former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices. He also leads a dark-money network that boosted their confirmations and helps determine what cases the justices hear and shape their rulings. The Supreme Court connection has paid off for Leo — big time. In 2021, he was gifted control of a $1.6 billion political advocacy slush fund. Over the past decade, Leo’s dark money network has plowed more than $100 million into his for-profit consulting firm, CRC Advisors. 

Leo co-chairs the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers network. He is also the chairman of CRC. Like many consulting firms, CRC does not publicly disclose its clients. However, several of the firm’s clients were named in resumes that applicants submitted to an online jobs bank hosted by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which accidentally left the files exposed online. One CRC employee’s 2024 resume says his clients include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a dark-money group arguing a case before the Supreme Court this term that is designed to slam the door shut on a federal wealth tax. Experts say the case could upend the nation’s tax code.  “In the last Congress, legislation to establish a wealth tax was introduced in both the House and the Senate,” CEI wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court, adding that justices should act now to “head off a major constitutional clash down the line.” During oral arguments in December, Justice Samuel Alito presented a hypothetical where “somebody graduates from school and starts up a little business in his garage, and 20 years later, 30 years later, the person is a billionaire,” and asked whether the government “can Congress tax all of that.” According to the CRC employee’s 2024 resume, Leo’s firm has also worked for the Koch network’s political advocacy arm, Americans for Prosperity. AFP’s super PAC spent more than $40 million supporting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s failed Republican primary campaign against Trump this election cycle. AFP’s charitable arm has supported a case at the Supreme Court this term pushing justices to block the government from influencing content moderation by social media platforms.

Rolling Stone exposes radical right-wing SCOTUS puppetmaster Leonard Leo's consulting firm CRC Advisors, whose clients were leaked online.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Kyle Rittenhouse, the rifle-wielding teenager who shot two unarmed racial justice protesters to death in Kenosha, Wisconsin, two years ago, met with members of the GOP Second Amendment House caucus on Thursday.

Rittenhouse, found not guilty of homicide charges last year for killings his lawyers argued were self-defense, met with members of the pro-gun caucus at a gathering at the Conservative Partnership Institute office near the Capitol.

Rittenhouse repeated his self-serving defense and held a question-and-answer session, The Hill reported. He has been hailed as a right-wing celebrity since the killings.

The caucus is chaired by Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Rittenhouse posed for a photo with both of them, and with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

He also posed for a wild Twitter photo in front of the Capitol, writing: “T- 5 years until I can call this place my office?” Given Twitter’s meltdown, it was unclear whether it was an actual message, though his profile did have a “verified” blue check.

“It was an honor to have Kyle join the Second Amendment Caucus,” Boebert, whose close election appears headed for a recount, told The Hill in a statement. “He is a powerful example of why we must never give an inch on our Second Amendment rights, and his perseverance and love for our country was an inspiration.”

Rittenhouse was charged after he killed two unarmed protesters following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The shooter, then 17, used an assault-style rifle purchased by a friend to fatally shoot Joseph Rosenbaum, who had run after him for an unknown reason, and Anthony Huber, who attempted to use his skateboard to strike Rittenhouse’s rifle out of his hands.

Rittenhouse also injured Gaige Grosskreutz, who was holding a pistol the night of the protests.

[mariacallous]

BERLIN — The latest effort to craft a path to survival for Germany’s beleaguered rabbinical schools is underway — with help from thousands of miles away in California and Jerusalem.

An American Conservative rabbi and an Israeli Reform rabbi have been tapped to lead seminaries associated with the University of Potsdam.

The Los Angeles-based American Jewish University and its Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies this week announced a “groundbreaking partnership” with the Central Council of Jews in Germany to promote “sustainable” Jewish clergy training at the University of Potsdam.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, Ziegler’s dean, accepted the Central Council’s invitation as the founding leader of a new German seminary associated with the Masorti or Conservative movement.

“It’s absurd to have an American rabbi running the school,” Artson said he told the Central Council. “The only thing more absurd is not having a school.”

Meanwhile, Rabbi Yehodaya Amir, professor emeritus at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, will oversee a liberal or Reform seminary being launched at the university.

The new leaders are stepping into a tumultuous situation.

The University of Potsdam has long been home to two rabbinical schools, the liberal/Reform seminary Abraham Geiger College and its Masorti/Conservative sibling, Zacharias Frankel College, founded in 1999 and 2013 respectively by Rabbi Walter Homolka.

But in late 2022, Homolka resigned from all positions in German Jewish institutions following allegations that he had abused his power and created an atmosphere of fear among students and staff. He eventually sold all his shares of Geiger and Frankel for 25,000 euros to the Jewish Community of Berlin, which intended to keep them going.

The organized Jewish community has since struggled to fund the schools, which previously had the Central Council and the German government as their main backers. In the wake of the Homolka scandal, the Central Council had declared it could no longer support the institutions as they stood. It announced plans to revamp rabbinical training so that no one figure would wield too much power.

This month, the council announced a new foundation to support two new schools — a liberal one named for Regina Jonas and a Masorti one named for Abraham Joshua Heschel, both pioneering rabbis in early 20th-century Germany with global and enduring significance. They are also launching a cantorial school under the name of the 19th-century composer of Jewish liturgical music Louis Lewandowski.

Now, the council has made official its chosen partners to operate the schools — and for both it looked outside Germany.

For the Masorti seminary, it turned to Artson, who also served as dean of the Frankel seminary after Homolka cold-called him to ask for his support — a request that he said had conferred a “sacred mission” upon him.

“I thought that this was an opportunity to step up and to help Europeans get the training they would want, to energize the Jewish community,” Artson told JTA. “And that’s really what we’ve done.”

Artson said he anticipated a limited future for his involvement and that of his fellow Ziegler dean, Rabbi Cheryl Peretz.

“We see our role as stepping in and launching this important program, and then at some point getting out of the way so that Europeans can run it without us,” he said.

Current rabbinical and cantorial students were told last week — as eight new rabbis and cantors were ordained — that they will be invited to transfer seamlessly to the new seminaries.

As for what might change for them, Artson said his focus was on “bringing transparency and equal funding and stability” as well as building stronger ties to the global Masorti movement. “This will be a way of organizing a rabbinical school that’s answerable to the public and will be able to last,” he said.

Amir, the HUC professor of Jewish thought who is heading the liberal seminary, said he was heartened by the fact that the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the North American Reform movement’s rabbinical association, was prepared to certify the new program, meaning that its graduates would have the same status in the movement as Geiger’s.

“The fact that the CCAR is considering to grant us such a status by now, before we have even taken our first steps, is a solid and wonderful expression of trust,” Amir told JTA.

Josef Schuster, chair of the Central Council, said support from the two movements augured “a good day for rabbinical and cantor training in Germany and a good day for the Jewish communities in our country.”

The appointments have elicited dissent. The World Union of Progressive Judaism and its European sister organization accused the Central Council of failing to involve them in their plans and of endangering “the unity of the Jewish community.”

And Berlin’s official Jewish community — which, as owner of the original seminaries, has the most to lose — lashed out over the selection of Artson in particular, noting that he has faced allegations of sexism at Ziegler.

Gideon Joffe, the community’s president, accused the Central Council of “conducting a public defamation campaign against the Abraham Geiger College.”

He added in a statement: “Even the appearance of an abuse of power, as is clearly evident in the allegations against Rabbi Artson, is unacceptable for the management of a rabbinical seminary,”

The investigations add to ongoing tumult at AJU and Zeigler, where Artson has worked since 1999. The school recently sold its campus in Los Angeles and slashed tuition in a bid to attract more students.

A third-party investigation of the sexism allegations commissioned by American Jewish University found no systemic misconduct, according to AJU, which did not release the full report. A second inquiry, by the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, is underway.

Artson would not comment on the ongoing investigation, except to say it “is wrapping up.” But he noted that the first investigation found “no systemic homophobia or sexism” at Ziegler. “And so I’m really focusing on building the future.”

The statement is “unworthy of them,” Artson said about the Berlin Jewish Community, known by its German nickname Gemeinde, meaning community. “But I understand that in the moment, they’re letting their emotions run things.”

He added, “I think that the Gemeinde does many valuable and important things, and we certainly want to be able to support them in those enterprises, too, just not in this particular instance.”

An irony of the new arrangement is that in seeking to distance rabbinical training as much as possible from Homolka, who chose the Gemeinde as his successor, the Central Council has selected a rabbi who long worked with him. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Artson had expenses covered but took no salary while working with the Frankel seminary.

For his part, Artson said he remains inspired by Geiger and Frankel, figures who helped make Germany a powerhouse of Jewish innovation in the century prior to the Holocaust.

“I have in my office portraits of both Rabbi Geiger and Rabbi Frankel,” Artson said. “They remain founding figures, even if their names are no longer on the school.”

But the two new namesakes — Heschel, who narrowly escaped Germany in 1940, and Jonas, the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi, who was murdered at Auschwitz — are “also very special,��� he said.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil will not renew agreement with German Spix’s macaw breeder

This measure will not impact the recovery and conservation of the endangered species, exclusive to the Caatinga, says ICMBio

The Brazilian government will not renew an agreement signed five years ago with the Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots (ACTP). This decision should not halt the reintroduction of the Spix’s macaw in the Caatinga, but it may have other socio-environmental impacts.

“This decision was made collectively with the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MMA) and the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama),” says Mauro Pires, president of ICMBio (the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation).

The partnership, established on June 7, 2019, enabled the reintroduction of birds transferred from Germany into protected areas in the Caatinga, where the species (Cyanopsitta spixii) had been extinct since the 2000s due to trafficking and environmental destruction. Some of the 20 birds released in 2022 fell prey to predators, and there have been no releases in subsequent years.

“The reintroduction of the bird in Brazil might face some delays, but the animals in other breeding centers are sufficient to maintain the species’ conservation program,” says Marcelo Marcelino de Oliveira, director of Research, Evaluation, and Monitoring of Biodiversity at ICMBio.

Continue reading.

[reasonsforhope]

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has galvanized Ukrainian society in many unexpected ways, but perhaps one of the most remarkable is how it has advanced the rights of LGBTQ people.

On Tuesday, in a move that would have been nearly unthinkable a year ago, a Ukrainian lawmaker introduced legislation in the country’s parliament that would give partnership rights to same-sex couples. This legislation, along with a prohibition against anti-LGBTQ hate speech abruptly adopted in December, reflects a sharp rejection of Russia’s effort to weaponize homophobia in support of its invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that he attacked Ukraine last year partly to protect “traditional values” against the West’s “false values” that are “contrary to human nature” — code for LGBTQ people. Perhaps he hoped this would rally conservative Ukrainians to Russia’s side — it’s a tactic Kremlin allies have tried repeatedly over the past decade. But this time, it instead appears to be convincing a growing number of Ukrainians to support equality and reject the values Putin espouses.

--

Recent History

I could not have imagined the LGBTQ movement building such momentum when I first visited Ukraine as a reporter in 2013. Ukraine was then on the verge of consummating its long-negotiated “association agreement” with the European Union, a step Russian President Vladimir Putin bitterly opposed. As the deadline to sign the agreement approached, an oligarch close to Putin funded a campaign with billboards reading, “Association with EU means same-sex marriage.” Anti-EU protesters dubbed the EU “Gayropa.”

This effort failed to dissuade Ukrainians from a European path...

But the past decade has also seen Ukrainians standing firm in their commitment to democracy, and a growing understanding that this includes protections for fundamental rights.

There was an explosion of organizing by LGBTQ people in the years that followed the Revolution of Dignity, and some slow advances were made. But it’s been the stories of queer Ukrainians fighting and dying in the war with Russia that have truly helped other Ukrainians to see them as full citizens.

Pictured: Territorial Defense member Romanova shows a unicorn insignia, a mythical creature that has become a symbol of the LGBTQ community. This patch, which depicts a "valiant" unicorn breathing fire, has become the unofficial symbol of Ukraine's LGBTQ+ military.

Today

Ukraine’s current LGBTQ rights debate is unprecedented; never before has a country under siege had such visibly out soldiers who have so few formal rights under their own country’s laws. LGBTQ rights supporters have successfully framed the question on same-sex partnership as whether Ukraine will recognize LGBTQ people as equal citizens, which has become the norm throughout much of the European Union, as well as North and South America. They are successfully flipping the proposition that, as one Ukrainian politician once infamously put it, that “a gay cannot be a patriot.” ...

“I actually think that the Russians did a good job in terms of raising awareness and changing attitudes towards the LGBT community in Ukraine,” Sovsun told me in an interview. “The more Russia insists on [homophobia] being a part of their state policy, the more rejection of this policy [there] is from inside Ukraine.”

The aspiration of many Ukrainians to join the European Union has also helped move more Ukrainians to become supportive of queer peoples’ rights, as Ukraine attempts to define itself as a European democracy in contrast to Russian autocracy. A study conducted last May by the Ukrainian LGBTQ organization “Nash Svit” and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found nearly 64 percent of Ukrainians said queer people should have equal rights. Even among respondents who said they had a “negative” view of LGBTQ people, nearly half said they still supported equal rights.

The current push for same-sex partnership rights began with a school teacher from Zaporizhzha named Anastasia Andriivna Sovenko. In June, Sovenko registered a petition with Ukraine’s government demanding same-sex couples be granted partnership rights. It said simply, “At this time, every day can be the last. Let people of the same sex get the opportunity to start a family and have an official document to prove it. They need the same rights as traditional couples.”

Sovenko said she was inspired to file the petition after reading a story about different-sex couples getting married before one partner went off to war. It felt unfair to her that queer people couldn’t take the same step to protect their rights. Signatures quickly poured in, stunning even Sovenko herself...

Under Ukrainian law, the president is required to formally respond to any petition that gets 25,000 signatures, and the partnership petition quickly cleared that threshold. But in a sign that the politics of the issue remains complicated, Zelenskyy ruled out full marriage rights in his response, arguing that this required a constitutional change that could not be carried out under the rules of martial law. Instead, [Zelensky] punted to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, to examine the creation of civil unions. His language implied support, but he stopped short of using presidential powers to make it a reality.

“Every citizen is an inseparable part of civil society, he is entitled to all the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in the referral."

-via Politico, 3/7/23

Notes:

While the fight is still ongoing, I can't underlie enough how massive this shift in public opinion is. Russia and Ukraine have generally been incredibly unsafe places to be LGBTQ, including in very recent history. This is huge, and it sounds like it will only get bigger.

This could also help bring about a wider sea change throughout Eastern Europe, which in general has a very pervasive culture of homophobia, often tied in with both religious conservatism and ethno-nationalistic conflict, though thankfully things have been improving significantly over the last decade.