#That it was created by democrats and sent to Florida

[sassypotatoe1]

Scientists: we've looked at the evidence and readings and the gasses we release into the atmosphere are trapping solar radiation that would otherwise have been reflected back into space, we expect more extreme weather events in unexpected places, higher temperatures and more uv-radiation. We need to reduce these emissions or we might cause rapid ecological collapse in a few decades.

The public: you're making shit up we aren't powerful enough to affect the entire planet's climate, nothing will change.

Weather: I'm unpredictable, more powerful and warmer now, plants, corals and animals are dying, people are getting skin cancer more often, and places that shouldn't be are experiencing floods, droughts, extreme temperatures and crazy winds.

The public: THE LIBERALS ARE CONTROLLING THE WEATHER AND THE SUN FROM MY CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A HOTTER BRIGHTER ONE BY BIG GOVERNMENT

[zvaigzdelasas]

“I don’t worry much about it,” Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence directorate, told CNN in an exclusive interview in Kyiv.

Trump “is an experienced person. He has fallen many times and gotten back up again. And this is a very serious trait,” Budanov said of the former president[...]

“We are expecting a positive decision anyway,” Budanov said of the US debate over aid, “To say that [Trump] and the Republican Party are lovers of the Russian Federation is complete nonsense.”

“I’m confident that the United States will remain a staunch ally” no matter who wins, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview Wednesday during his dayslong visit to Washington.

The NATO chief is in town to make his pitch that supporting Ukraine and rearming NATO — issues that are inexorably intertwined — helps the U.S. in the Pacific and creates American jobs.

“I worked with former President Trump for the four years he was president,” Stoltenberg told POLITICO[...]

The NATO chief also pointed to the traditional bipartisan support for NATO in Congress, something he said he witnessed on Tuesday while meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Stoltenberg also noted that Trump’s criticism of NATO wasn’t really aimed at the alliance, but at individual countries that have failed to live up to the 2014 pledge to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense by 2024. “It’s important to listen,” he said, because the criticism from Trump “is not a criticism of NATO not investing enough in NATO.”

The comments came immediately after the NATO leader made a pitch to conservatives in Washington that supporting Ukraine and re-arming Europe is good for America.

“NATO is a good deal for the United States,” Stoltenberg said at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank closely aligned with Trump.[...]

The NATO leader didn’t just come to rebut critics, however. He also arrived with a story to tell.

“NATO creates a market for defense sales,” he said, noting that member states have purchased $120 billion worth of weapons from U.S. defense companies over the past two years, including 600 F-35 fighters by 2030.

“From Arizona to Virginia, Florida to Washington state, American jobs depend on American sales to defense markets in Europe and Canada,” he said.

That line of thinking is similar to the message being touted by the White House: supporting Ukraine is good for the American economy. U.S. manufacturers build weapons that are sent to European capitals, which are looking to restock after donating their machinery to Ukraine.[...]

“We must organize ourselves for enduring competition with China,” Stoltenberg said, adding that since Trump began pushing shifting U.S. priorities toward the Indo-Pacific in 2017, “NATO has gone a long way in helping European allies fully appreciate the challenge posed by China.”

31 Jan 24

Trump Calls on Europe To Shoulder ‘Equal’ Ukraine Burden - RealClearPolitics

Former President Trump does not sound like a man ready to abandon Ukraine as some fear. This week, he instead called on Europe to match dollar-for-dollar the amount of aid the U.S. has sent to counter Russian aggression. “I say pay, and they’ll pay too,” he said. “You have to equal it.”[...]

“Ukraine is an interesting case,” Trump said Tuesday at a Las Vegas rally. “People always want to know my feeling.”

“Number one, we’re in for $200 billion plus, and the European nations are in for $20 billion, and it’s more important for them,” he continued. “And don’t you think they should equalize?”[...]

When it comes to how the land war in Eastern Europe affects American politics, it isn’t a clear-cut case of dove vs hawk, however. While Trump regularly warns of the possibility of “World War III” and promises to negotiate a peace deal, he has left the door open to continued support for Ukraine.[...]

After calling on European allies to “retroactively” pay back the U.S. for support already rendered, Trump said that Ukraine ought to be told “that there will be little more money coming from us, UNLESS RUSSIA CONTINUES TO PROSECUTE THE WAR.”[...]

“I feel strongly if elected president, Trump would not abandon Ukraine,” said James Carafano, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation[...]

“The first step he would take would be to sit down with European allies and have a heart-to-heart talk,” added Carafano, who advised Trump’s presidential transition, “saying we all have to be realistic, step up to the plate, and do the sensible, responsible things we need to do, to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, help them retain their freedom and look after our interests, and everyone needs to step to the plate and take this seriously. If you do, the U.S. will.”

A former senior White House official familiar with Trump’s thinking told RCP that he expected Trump to immediately make good, if elected, on his promise to reach out to Putin and Zelensky. If Russia rejects a peace deal, the official said he anticipates that Trump “would give Zelensky everything needed to complete the operation, which this administration has not done.”

2 Feb 24

[muddypolitics]

(via Sue's News: A Round-Up of Screw Yous)

Fuck you to the aforementioned motherfuckers—Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Doug Burgum—for making the 2024 race even more of a clown show that could once again hand the nomination to Donald Trump.

Fuck you to the Florida lawmakers who passed the Stand Your Ground laws for which delayed the arrest of a white woman who shot and killed her unarmed Black neighbor through her locked door.

Twin fuck yous to presidential candidate Nikki Haley (R) for saying in the same town hall that it’s a middle-ground position that people who have abortions shouldn’t be executed, and for making the disgusting false claim that transgender student athletes are to blame for teen girls’ suicidal ideation.

Another double fuck you to the Republican governors of Texas and Missouri for signing bills to ban gender-affirming care for minors. The Missouri bill also bans Medicaid coverage of the care for adults. (Louisiana’s Democratic governor said he’ll veto a healthcare ban sent to his desk, but the Republicans hold veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers.)

Fuck you to the five Mississippi members of Congress who demanded that the Department of Veterans Affairs remove a temporary Pride flag from a cemetery in Biloxi, MS, claiming it’s disrespectful.

Fuck you to North Carolina State Rep. Tricia Cotham (R)—the woman who was vocally pro-choice before switching parties and voting to ban abortion—for telling reporters that abortion “never been an issue that I was always out there for at all.” Ma’am, we printed your Planned Parenthood endorsement questionnaire where you pledged to oppose any bill that restricted abortion access.

Fuck you to Utah Republicans and activists for getting mad that a school district used a book-banning law to remove the Bible from classrooms due to its references to incest, rape, and sex work. Fuck around and find out, you clowns.

Fuck you to the New York state prison system for thinking it would be fine to further restrict the ability of incarcerated people to create art, write, and produce journalism and to prohibit them from getting paid for that work. (Thankfully, they reversed the directive after swift backlash.)

Fuck you to presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the only Black Republican Senator, for saying that the concept of systemic racism is a “dangerous, offensive, and disgusting message to send to our young people today.”

Fuck you to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for making the ludicrous claim that the $886 billion defense budget means the military “is radically underfunded related to the Chinese threat.”

Fuck you to whichever awful person tore down the temporary repairs at an Illinois abortion clinic under construction that a 73-year-old man plowed his car into weeks earlier. The clinic has a GoFundMe.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t conclude this post with a hearty rest in piss to televangelist Pat Robertson, a terrible person and raging homophobe who blamed 9/11 on gay people, who died this week. Fuck you forever, Pat.

[reasoningdaily]

Yahoo News: Civil rights groups warn tourists about Florida in wake of 'hostile' laws

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The NAACP over the weekend issued a travel advisory for Florida, joining two other civil rights groups in warning potential tourists that recent laws and policies championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida lawmakers are “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.”

The NAACP, long an advocate for Black Americans, joined the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization, and Equality Florida, a gay rights advocacy group, in issuing travel advisories for the Sunshine State, where tourism is one of the state's largest job sectors.

The warning approved Saturday by the NAACP's board of directors tells tourists that, before traveling to Florida, they should understand the state of Florida "devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

An email was sent Sunday morning to DeSantis' office seeking comment. The Republican governor is expected to announce a run for the GOP presidential nomination this week.

Florida is one of the most popular states in the U.S. for tourists, and tourism is one of its biggest industries. More than 137.5 million tourists visited Florida last year, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels, according to Visit Florida, the state's tourism promotion agency. Tourism supports 1.6 million full-time and part-time jobs, and visitors spent $98.8 billion in Florida in 2019, the last year figures are available.

Several of Florida's Democratic mayors were quick to say Sunday that their cities welcomed diversity and inclusion.

“EVERYONE is always welcome and will be treated with dignity and respect,” tweeted Mayor Ken Welch of St. Petersburg in a message echoed by the mayor across the bay in Tampa.

“That will never change, regardless of what happens in Tallahassee,” tweeted Mayor Jane Castor of Tampa.

The NAACP's decision comes after the DeSantis' administration in January rejected the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies course. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers also have pressed forward with measures that ban state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as critical race theory, and also passed the Stop WOKE Act that restricts certain race-based conversations and analysis in schools and businesses.

In its warning for Hispanic travelers considering a visit to Florida, LULAC cited a new law that prohibits local governments from providing money to organizations that issue identification cards to people illegally in the country and invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses held by undocumented immigrants, among other things. The law also requires hospitals that accept Medicaid to include a citizenship question on intake forms, which critics have said is intended to dissuade immigrants living in the U.S. illegally from seeking medical care.

“The actions taken by Governor DeSantis have created a shadow of fear within communities across the state,” said Lydia Medrano, a LULAC vice president for the Southeast region.

Recent efforts to limit discussion on LGBTQ topics in schools, the removal of books with gay characters from school libraries, a recent ban on gender-affirming care for minors, new restrictions on abortion access and a law allowing Floridians to carry concealed guns without a permit contributed to Equality Florida's warning.

“Taken in their totality, Florida’s slate of laws and policies targeting basic freedoms and rights pose a serious risk to the health and safety of those traveling to the state,” Equality Florida's advisory said.

[bllsbailey]

Another Hurricane Barreling Toward Florida...and FEMA Is Out of Money

Hurricane Milton is barreling toward Florida, having been formed in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s likely to reach major hurricane status—a category four or five storm Tuesday—before smashing into the Sunshine State on Wednesday. Tampa is projected to take the brunt of the storm. Milton will be the worst storm to hit the Tampa area in 100 years. Gov. Ron DeSantis is preparing to launch the largest evacuation operations since 2017’s Irma. The state’s highway shoulders will be open to traffic to aid people fleeing for safety. 

West-central Florida braces for Hurricane Milton —potentially the region’s worst storm in 100 years https://t.co/paX4eRzZcZ pic.twitter.com/2Fsptu4EyC— New York Post (@nypost) October 6, 2024

For those wondering, yes, it's very unusual to get a Category 4 or 5 hurricane solidly over the Gulf this late in the hurricane season. If Milton's forecast verifies, it would be the first recorded Cat 4/5 Gulf hurricane this deep in the season since Michael in 2018. pic.twitter.com/OunKW15jCf— Michael Lowry (@MichaelRLowry) October 6, 2024

— Andrew Powell (@AndrewPow3ll) October 7, 2024

— Blake Mathews (@BlakeMathews08) October 6, 2024

Given how Biden-Harris responded to Hurricane Helene in Georgia and North Carolina, Washington has sent the message to Florida: you’re on your own. 

Helene’s aftermath volumes regarding how Democrats react to natural disasters when a) the states impacted are crucial in the upcoming election and b) they are chock full of rural pro-Trump supporters. It’s also going to be another highlight reel regarding how this administration is piss-poor in disaster response. They don’t care, and it doesn’t help that the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced they didn’t have enough funds to make it through hurricane season because they diverted funds to help illegal aliens, something that the agency tried to push back on Sunday (via Fox News): 

In the wake of Hurricane Helene’s destruction in the southeastern U.S., the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said it was "just plain false" that the agency was short on disaster relief funds because the money was spent on illegal immigrants.  FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was interviewed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."  "Let's let's talk about some of the misinformation that is out there, including these claims from former President Trump that FEMA is about $1 billion short because money has been going to undocumented immigrants," Stephanopoulos said.  "You know, it’s frankly ridiculous and just plain false," Criswell said. "This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people. You know, it’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do. We have had the complete support of the state."  […]  Stephanopoulos then asked Criswell about the misinformation spreading online and going viral, with one social media user suggesting a militia should go against FEMA.  "It has a tremendous impact on the comfort level of our own employees to be able to go out there. But it's also demoralizing to all of the first responders that have been out there in their communities helping people, FEMA staff, volunteers, the private sector that are working side by side with local officials to go out and help people," she said. "I need to make sure I can get the resources to where they are needed. And when you have this dangerous rhetoric like you're hearing, it creates fear in our own employees. We need to make sure we're getting help to the people who need it." 

Oh, shut up, lady. FEMA is not the victim here. Also, you’re lying, or at the very least, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is: 

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 4, 2024

— Alex Pfeiffer (@__Pfeiffer) October 4, 2024

Flashback: Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre admitting to allocating FEMA funds for immigrants pic.twitter.com/qj3YOHRUnp— SHO’NUFF (@IAMSHO_NUFF) October 6, 2024

Also, if this is how we prepare for natural disasters under Biden and Kamala, we're screwed:

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 7, 2024

Brace yourselves, folks. Pray for those in Florida and be prepared for another round of abject incompetence from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the latter of which sat down for an interview on a sex podcast during Helene relief efforts. Again, this government doesn’t care about anyone who isn’t a Democrat.

Trending on Townhall Videos

[cattarattat]

The sheer irony of Jan.-6th.-insurrection-provoking Trump relying upon the 'Insurrection Act' to take over this country as America's first dictator. 🙄

"Campaigning in Iowa this year, Donald Trump said he was prevented during his presidency from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states.

Calling New York City and Chicago 'crime dens,' the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination told his audience, 'The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,' he said. 'Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.'

Trump has not spelled out precisely how he might use the military during a second term, although he and his advisers have suggested they would have wide latitude to call up units. While deploying the military regularly within the country's borders would be a departure from tradition, the former president already has signaled an aggressive agenda if he wins, from mass deportations to travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries.

A law first crafted in the nation’s infancy would give Trump as commander in chief almost unfettered power to do so, military and legal experts said in a series of interviews.

The Insurrection Act allows presidents to call on reserve or active-duty military units to respond to unrest in the states, an authority that is not reviewable by the courts. One of its few guardrails merely requires the president to request that the participants disperse.

'The principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street,' said Joseph Nunn, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. 'There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand.'

A spokesman for Trump’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about what authority Trump might use to pursue his plans.

Congress passed the act in 1792, just four years after the Constitution was ratified. Nunn said it's an amalgamation of different statutes enacted between then and the 1870s, a time when there was little in the way of local law enforcement.

'It is a law that in many ways was created for a country that doesn’t exist anymore,' he said.

It also is one of the most substantial exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits using the military for law enforcement purposes.

Trump has spoken openly about his plans should he win the presidency, including using the military at the border and in cities struggling with violent crime. His plans also have included using the military against foreign drug cartels, a view echoed by other Republican primary candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor.

The threats have raised questions about the meaning of military oaths, presidential power and who Trump could appoint to support his approach.

Trump already has suggested he might bring back retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser and twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russian influence probe before being pardoned by Trump. Flynn suggested in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Trump could seize voting machines and order the military in some states to help rerun the election.

Attempts to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military for domestic policing would likely elicit pushback from the Pentagon, where the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is Gen. Charles Q. Brown. He was one of the eight members of the Joint Chiefs who signed a memo to military personnel in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The memo emphasized the oaths they took and called the events of that day, which were intended to stop certification of Democrat Joe Biden's victory over Trump, 'sedition and insurrection.'

Trump and his party nevertheless retain wide support among those who have served in the military. AP VoteCast, an in-depth survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide, showed that 59% of U.S. military veterans voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. In the 2022 midterms, 57% of military veterans supported Republican candidates.

Presidents have issued a total of 40 proclamations invoking the law, some of those done multiple times for the same crisis, Nunn said. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times — in Baltimore, Chicago and Washington — in response to the unrest in cities after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

During the Civil Rights era, Presidents Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower used the law to protect activists and students desegregating schools. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students integrating Central High School after that state’s governor activated the National Guard to keep the students out.

George H.W. Bush was the last president to use the Insurrection Act, a response to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King in an incident that was videotaped.

Repeated attempts to invoke the act in a new Trump presidency could put pressure on military leaders, who could face consequences for their actions even if done at the direction of the president.

Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the question is whether the military is being imaginative enough with the scenarios it has been presenting to future officers. Ambiguity, especially when force is involved, is not something military personnel are comfortable with, he said.

'There are a lot of institutional checks and balances in our country that are pretty well-developed legally, and it’ll make it hard for a president to just do something randomly out of the blue,' said O’Hanlon, who specializes in U.S. defense strategy and the use of military force. 'But Trump is good at developing a semi-logical train of thought that might lead to a place where there’s enough mayhem, there’s enough violence and legal murkiness' to call in the military.

Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, the first graduate of the U.S. Military Academy to represent the congressional district that includes West Point, said he took the oath three times while he was at the school and additional times during his military career. He said there was extensive classroom focus on an officer’s responsibilities to the Constitution and the people under his or her command.

'They really hammer into us the seriousness of the oath and who it was to, and who it wasn’t to,' he said.

Ryan said he thought it was universally understood, but Jan. 6 'was deeply disturbing and a wakeup call for me.' Several veterans and active-duty military personnel were charged with crimes in connection with the assault.

While those connections were troubling, he said he thinks those who harbor similar sentiments make up a very small percentage of the military.

William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor and expert in national security law, said a military officer is not forced to follow “unlawful orders." That could create a difficult situation for leaders whose units are called on for domestic policing, since they can face charges for taking unlawful actions.

'But there is a big thumb on the scale in favor of the president’s interpretation of whether the order is lawful,' Banks said. 'You’d have a really big row to hoe and you would have a big fuss inside the military if you chose not to follow a presidential order.'

Nunn, who has suggested steps to restrict the invocation of the law, said military personnel cannot be ordered to break the law.

'Members of the military are legally obliged to disobey an unlawful order. At the same time, that is a lot to ask of the military because they are also obliged to obey orders,' he said. 'And the punishment for disobeying an order that turns out to be lawful is your career is over, and you may well be going to jail for a very long time. The stakes for them are extraordinarily high.'"

[crispysnakes]

Buried within the 2,912 pages of the America COMPETES Act of 2022 lie Lacey Act amendments that affect all non-domesticated pet owners and the greater pet community. COMPETES is an acronym for Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology and Economic Strength. The stated purpose of the Act is to strengthen America’s economic and national security but obviously, this was slipped into the massive bill in hopes to go unnoticed. The amendments would reverse the USARK federal lawsuit victory by reinstating the ban on interstate transportation of species listed as injurious under the Lacey Act. The bill would also create a “white list” (see #2 below) that could affect millions of pet owners, as well as pet businesses. If your species of interest, even your pet, is listed as injurious (which could happen because it can survive outside somewhere in the U.S.), then it cannot be transported across state lines. That means you could not even take a pet with you if you moved to another state or needed veterinary care across a state border. This does not just ban sales but prohibits all interstate transportation. This will trickle down to hundreds or thousands of common pet species. The America COMPETES Act may pass in the House next week. If passed in the House, it will then be sent to the Senate to be reconciled with an innovation policy package called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, or USICA, that passed in the Senate last year. The America COMPETES Act is the House Democrats' response to USICA (which does not contain the Lacey Act Amendment). The House Rules Committee will hear the America COMPETES Act on February 1, 2022. This is the same language we saw introduced by Florida Senator Marco Rubio as Senate Bill 626 in 2021. Briefly, the amendments will: 1. Provide that the Lacey Act bans the interstate transport of species listed as injurious. Specifically, it replaces Lacey’s current language ‘‘shipment between the continental United States’’ with ‘‘transport between the States." 2. Create a “white list” of species that can be imported. This means that any animal (reptile, amphibian, fish, bird, mammal, invertebrate) that is not on the white list is by default treated as an injurious species and is banned from importation. 3. Create a new authority allowing FWS to use an “emergency designation” that becomes effective immediately after being published in the Federal Register unless an extension of no more than 60 days is allowed. That means no due process, public input, hearings, advanced notice, etc. for injurious listings. 4. Permit FWS to not allow importation if a species has not been imported in “minimal quantities” (to be defined) in the year prior to the enactment of this Act. 5. The effective date would be one year after the enactment of this Act. Read the relevant amendment text (these are pages 1661-1665) at https://usark.org/.../upl.../2022/01/2022-HR4521-excerpt.pdf. We will provide more details on actions to take. In our landmark court decision, four federal judges agreed that USARK was correct and that the Lacey Act (Title 18 Section 42 of the U.S. Code) did not ban interstate transportation of injurious species based on the original language of the Lacey Act and the intent of Congress. As a result of this fight for our members and the herpetocultural community, this meant animals domestically bred under human care could be moved and sold across state lines (within the continental United States). For herpetoculturists’ concerns, this included some species of constrictor snakes and 201 species of salamanders. SAMPLE MESSAGING and more at https://usark.org/2022lacey/. 

[beardedmrbean]

EL PASO, Texas Oct 6 (Reuters) - The Democrat-led border city of El Paso, Texas, has sent more migrants on buses to New York City and Chicago than a campaign by Texas' Republican governor, a twist in an ongoing partisan battle over U.S. border security.

El Paso, which sits across the border from Juarez, Mexico, has bused roughly 7,000 migrants to New York City since late August and sent more than 1,800 to Chicago, a city-run effort that far exceeds the more ad-hoc transportation of the past.

The city's busing effort has received less attention than a separate statewide campaign by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is seeking a third term in Nov. 8 midterm elections. Abbott has bused more than 3,000 migrants to New York City and more than 900 to Chicago as part of a high profile campaign to put a spotlight on the record crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Texas and Arizona combined have also bused over 10,000 migrants to Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis recently flew a group of about 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, but those who boarded the planes have said they were misled.

The Republican initiatives to move migrants, including those seeking asylum, away from the border have called attention to the issue with the election just weeks away. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed U.S. voters prefer them over Democrats for addressing immigration issues. read more

The Democratic administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Democratic mayors receiving the migrants have criticized the Republican governors for creating confusion with surprise drop-offs and say the busing campaign strains resources.

But El Paso's Democratic leaders say they are coordinating with receiving cities and that migrants take their chartered buses voluntarily. City officials say their buses were needed because up to 2,000 migrants were arriving daily, including impoverished Venezuelans without family in the United States to pay for onward travel.

Coordination between sending and receiving cities is crucial, according to Theresa Cardinal Brown, a managing director with the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank.

"If there's not coordination," she said, "you're basically dropping penniless people who don't speak the language in an unknown city and saying, 'Fend for yourself.'"

Still, El Paso's coordination could be better, said New York City mayoral spokesperson Kate Smart. El Paso informs New York when a bus is traveling to the city, but, she adds, officials from both states should discuss beforehand whether the bus actually needs to go New York and how many migrants are onboard.

Many of those sent to New York are Venezuelans, who have been arrested at the border in higher numbers than ever before. The United States cannot expel them to Mexico under a pandemic-era order as it can other migrants.

El Paso's program is not new: last year, the city hired a handful charter buses to transport migrants to nearby cities, a city official said.

But when overwhelmed U.S. border authorities began releasing hundreds of migrants at a time in El Paso in August and September, the city started busing to New York and Chicago.

'COMPLETELY DIFFERENT'

The buses now depart from a converted warehouse in northeast El Paso that serves as a migrant processing center. On Monday, several hundred migrants waited for buses to New York City and Chicago, among them Frederick Pinango, 28, and his wife and 3-year-old daughter.

The Venezuelan family trekked through the Darien Gap, an often dangerous passage through a jungle separating Colombia and Panama. They worked their way through Central America and Mexico by cleaning bathrooms, emptying trash and begging, according to Pinango.

They took a bus to New York because they had no contacts in the United States and it was free.

"I have faith that they will help us with some shelter, so I can start to work," he said.

Edwin Rico, a 28-year-old Venezuelan who boarded a bus to Chicago on Monday, said the food that El Paso officials provided for the trip was not enough, but he rationed it.

"I don’t have money, so I’m grateful for the help," he said.

El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser, a Democrat, said the city's program is "completely different" than the other busing efforts and that they seek to "treat people with respect."

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, also a Democrat, has slammed Abbott, the Republican governor, for his refusal to share information about bus arrivals. Adams said in a mid-September press conference that Leeser, unlike Abbott, was willing to meet and "figure out a humane way to coordinate."

New York City officials traveled to El Paso last month to watch the process firsthand. During the visit, they discussed adding drop-off points in cities on the way to New York, Leeser said.

El Paso keeps in contact with the Biden administration and is seeking federal reimbursement for busing costs, Leeser said, and a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed the coordination.

"This is a federal issue," Leeser said. "They’re not coming to El Paso, they’re coming to the United States."

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

August 8, 2022 (Monday)

It’s been quite a day.It began with Axios sharing photos of what purported to be White House toilets with torn up paper in them. The notes on that paper appear to have former president Trump’s distinctive handwriting on them. Axios got them from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who has previously reported that Trump used to get rid of documents by flushing them. (By law, all presidential records must be retained.) 

I am skeptical of these photos, myself—they seem a bit too perfect—but I do find the timing significant. If the photos are real, someone has had them for a long time but now feels that it is worth sharing them. If they are fake, they nonetheless demonstrate that Trump is a significantly diminished figure.

Next came news from the 2016 Trump campaign. Trump’s 2016 campaign chair, Paul Manafort, has written a book, and to sell it, he gave a long interview to Mattathias Schwartz of Insider. In the interview, Manafort admitted what the Senate Intelligence Committee said in their report about Russian interference in the 2016 election: he gave internal polling data from the Trump campaign to Konstantin Kilimnik, who, according to the Senate report, was a Russian intelligence agent. Manafort had previously denied this story.

Manafort told Schwartz that he was not trying to swing the election but hoped to convince pro-Russian oligarchs to do business deals with him by showing that he had access to Trump and that Trump could beat Democratic presidential candidate Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Manafort says he didn’t know Kilimnick worked for Russian intelligence. Reached for the story, Kilimnick says he is a victim of people’s dislike of Russia. 

Then, Trump’s presidency. In the New Yorker today, Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker revealed that Trump and the generals of the United States Army were fundamentally at odds about how they viewed the United States. Trump wanted the generals to be loyal to him, as he believed “the German generals in World War II” were loyal to Adolf Hitler. (In fact, they tried repeatedly to assassinate him.) Trump tried to pack the military with loyalists; military leaders insisted that the military must not be taken over by a single leader. 

After June 1, 2020, when Trump had nonviolent protesters cleared from Lafayette Square with tear gas and batons, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley drafted a resignation letter in which he told Trump, “It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country” with his actions over the past weeks. 

Milley explained that our Constitution means that “[a]ll men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans.”

But Trump, he said, was siding with “tyrannies and dictatorships,” “fascism,” “Nazism,” and “extremism” and “ruining the international order” that the Greatest Generation defended in World War II. While Milley did not, in the end, resign, he did take a public stand against Trump’s use of the military against Americans. 

The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was also in the news today: CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported that two years of text messages to and from conspiracy theorist and January 5 rally speaker Alex Jones have been sent to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Jones’s lawyer had inadvertently sent the messages to opposing counsel during his recent trial.

And then, although the Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t tip off anyone about this, even after it had begun, Trump tonight released a statement saying that the FBI was raiding Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, property. “They even broke into my safe!” he complained. He called it “an attack by Radical Left Democrats” and said it was a sign that America has become a third-world country. But Trump himself appointed the current director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, after firing former director James Comey for investigating the ties of his 2016 campaign to Russia. Wray is hardly a “Left Democrat”; he served in the George W. Bush administration and is a member of the Federalist Society. 

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance reminded people on Twitter: “We don't know yet what crimes the FBI had sufficient evidence of to convince a federal judge there was probable cause to search Trump's residence, but the execution of a search warrant isn't a raid. It's a judicially overseen process.” It appears that the search was about Trump’s removal of classified documents from the White House. (I told you: no one with any brains at all ever messes with archivists.)

As legal analyst Asha Rangappa noted, “a search warrant has to demonstrate probable cause that evidence of a crime will be found in the places and things searched.” And legal analyst Renato Mariotti adds that the Department of Justice doesn’t usually prosecute cases unless the material was deliberately transferred to a third party, and that it is unlikely DOJ would have obtained a search warrant if it did not expect to pursue a case. 

Tonight, chief White House correspondent for CNN Kaitlan Collins reported that in early June, investigators had gone to Mar-a-Lago to learn more about the materials Trump had taken when he left the White House. They asked to see where the documents were stored, and Trump’s lawyers took them to a basement room. The search warrant executed today included a safe in Trump’s office, and journalist Laura Rozen reported that agents suspected that Trump had taken and was holding other classified documents after he returned many of them.

Political commentators noted that the law disqualifies from “holding any office under the United States” anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys…any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk of officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States.”

Tonight, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is expressing outrage, the Fox News Channel is talking about Hunter Biden, and Trump’s base is calling for war, but Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is silent. For his part, Trump is fundraising off the executed search warrant.

One final story from today illustrates a central principle of democracy: the principle of accountability.Today, U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced the men who stalked and murdered Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020 as he was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia. She sentenced Travis McMichael and his father Greg McMichael to an additional life sentence in prison on federal hate crime charges. Unlike the other two, their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan did not bring a gun to the scene, a fact the judge noted when she sentenced him to 35 years. They will serve their sentences in state prison, although they asked for federal custody, saying they feared for their lives in state prison.

Accountability is not only about justice; it’s about deterrence. 

On this day in 1974, President Richard Nixon announced that he would resign the office of the presidency the next day at noon. He did not admit wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal, although the House Judiciary Committee had voted to impeach him, the full House was sure to follow, and Republican senators warned him the Senate would vote to convict. 

He never did admit wrongdoing, and he was never held accountable. Instead, the next president, Gerald R. Ford, pardoned him. And here we are, 48 years later, with a president and his followers outraged that he, like everyone else, must abide by the law.

FROM A FB POST:

I confess I am gobsmacked yet again by the stunning revelations of illegal, inappropriate, ill considered actions by former President Trump.  My father served in WWII as a stenographer/assistant to Gen. Omar Bradley at Central Command, then at Nuremberg, finally at the CIA at the Pentagon and I have no doubt he would understand the peril and harm done by the mishandling of classified documents such as is being revealed -- in terms of military justice, a similar breach would be a capital offense. 

 I cannot understand any service men or women continuing to support the ex president.  I have never understood his supporters being comfortable with his close association with historic adversaries of our country or his close association with both Neo-nazis and Communists. 

 His fascist subversion of our democracy is simply mind-numbing and there is no sense in which I can look upon his supporters as being well intentioned Americans of differing perspectives. You can be for democracy or you can be for Trump: you cannot be both.

[itsmassivecollectionpatrolus]

- Court Filings Sidney Powell’s Michigan Lawsuit Michigan Document 26/11/2020 11:35 AM Sidney Powell’s Georgia Lawsuit Georgia Document 26/11/2020 11:22 AM 1 - Voting Legislation 4 PA court rules against post-election vote curing Pennsylvania Court Ruling 12/11/2020 07:30 PM 4 2 Voting machine vendors are without regulation or security standards Nationwide Court Ruling 14/11/2020 04:51 PM 1 1 45 day after election, federal official assess if foreign governments had any effect Nationwide Document 16/11/2020 06:46 PM 4 2 - Illegal Votes 4! 2,689 fraudulent addresses used in GA and PA Wisconsin Material 24/11/2020 11:07 PM 4 4! 1093% more Indefinitely Confined granted (Covid not a qualification) than 2016 Wisconsin Material 24/11/2020 11:01 PM 4 4! 138,444 swing state votes were cast from voters with residence in another state Nationwide Material 24/11/2020 10:59 PM 4 4! 23.2% of absentee ballots returned by voters, were not received in swing states Nationwide Statistical 24/11/2020 10:56 PM 4 4! 27.4% of absentee ballots were likely fraudently requested in AZ, GA, MI, PA, WI Nationwide Statistical 24/11/2020 10:55 PM 4 4! 40,000 mail-in ballots were cast in the names of deceased voters in PA Pennsylvania Material 22/11/2020 07:59 AM 4 4 61% of signatures were found invalid after State Senator Obama initiated challenge Illinois Historical Context 23/11/2020 10:15 PM 4 4 Determining the legality of a ballot is "optional" for absentee counting boards Michigan Document 21/11/2020 12:54 PM 4 4 40,875+ ballots were cast in the name of another voter without their consent Pennsylvania Statistical 20/11/2020 04:09 AM 4 4 40 of CO's 64 counties have more voter registrations than voting-age citizens Colorado Material 19/11/2020 10:01 AM 4 4 353 counties in 29 states have more voter registrations than voting-age citizens Nationwide Material 19/11/2020 09:53 AM 4 4 834 counts of mail-in voter fraud prosecuted by OAG since 2004 Texas Court Ruling 19/11/2020 12:40 AM 4 4 9,500 dead people returned mail-in ballots Michigan Material 18/11/2020 10:17 PM 4 4 2,000 ballots found in single sweep, despite numerous prior sweeps Pennsylvania Material 18/11/2020 10:03 PM 4 4 Mail-in ballots were "returned" for counting before they were mailed Pennsylvania Material 18/11/2020 09:02 PM 4 4 223,000 intractable mail-in ballots sent to wrong addresses Nevada Material 18/11/2020 07:23 PM 4 4 8,000 voter application submitted by couple on behalf of homeless and the dead California Material 18/11/2020 06:33 PM 3 4 9,626 vote error discovered by recount monitor Georgia Witness 18/11/2020 03:29 PM 4 4 15,000 Nevada voters suspected to have also voted outside state Nevada Material 18/11/2020 11:36 AM 3 4 32.6% of 1706 sample received absentee ballots without their request Pennsylvania Material 17/11/2020 08:07 PM 3 4 6,000 illegal votes in NV, according to NV District Attorney Nevada Material 17/11/2020 05:11 AM 4 4 1,600+ voters born 1800 and 1900 voted by mail in NC North Carolina Document 17/11/2020 12:07 AM 4 4 Claim that Maiden name was used to vote in election Nationwide Witness 16/11/2020 11:21 PM 1 4 "X" used for signatures for in fraudulent voter registrations Pennsylvania Witness 16/11/2020 06:29 PM 3 4 132,000 "Change of Address" flags in single GA county Georgia Material 16/11/2020 02:03 PM 4 4 PA DoS removed signature verification from all mail-in ballots Pennsylvania Court Ruling 16/11/2020 01:49 PM 4 4 18,000 mail-in ballots didn't have a "Mailed Date" only a return date after Nov 3rd Pennsylvania Material 16/11/2020 12:40 PM 4 4 3,000 instances of alleged voter fraud filed with AG by Nevada GOP Nevada Witness 16/11/2020 11:14 AM 4 4 66% of dead registered voters, born between 1800 and 1899, voted Pennsylvania Material 15/11/2020 01:38 PM 4 4 Rejected absentee ballots: 3.5% in 2018 to 0.3% in 2020 despite 500% more votes Georgia Statistical 14/11/2020 07:08 PM 4 3 Upwards of 45% of Indefinitely Confined voters shown to not qualify Wisconsin Statistical 24/11/2020 11:05 PM 4 3 1.2% of newly moved voters had votes cast in their name without consent Nationwide Statistical 24/11/2020 10:58 PM 4 3 1.3% of newly registered voters had votes cast in their name without consent Nationwide Statistical 24/11/2020 10:57 PM 4 3 32,000 Michigan residents sign request for independed audit Michigan Document 23/11/2020 10:11 PM 4 3 149,772 vote batch is 96% for single canidate Michigan Statistical 23/11/2020 10:10 PM 4 3 143,379 vote dump at 3:42am had a 93% leaning towards single candidate Wisconsin Statistical 18/11/2020 11:44 PM 4 3 500 absentee ballots missing, never delivered by postal service Minnesota Document 17/11/2020 05:56 PM 4 3 1,298 proven instances of voter fraud with 1,121 criminal convictions Nationwide Historical Context 16/11/2020 12:11 PM 4 3 Jill Stein contested the results in 3 states 2016 for similar irregularities Nationwide Historical Context 16/11/2020 12:09 PM 4 3 95% registered voter turnout in Philadelphia Pennsylvania Statistical 15/11/2020 11:51 AM 4 3 1994: Judge rules Democrat stole State Senate election in Philadelphia scheme Pennsylvania Historical Context 14/11/2020 04:42 PM 4 2 Benford Analysis shows irregular Nationwide Statistical 19/11/2020 07:50 PM 2 2 139 unexplainable discrepancies in Clark County Commission race Georgia Material 19/11/2020 12:55 AM 3 2 Lowest recorded mail-in ballot rejection rate in swing states Nationwide Statistical 19/11/2020 12:50 AM 3 2 95% of Bellwether counties break voting pattern, creating statistical anomaly Nationwide Statistical 18/11/2020 11:56 PM 2 2 Statistical anomalies in multiple states have a time correlation Nationwide Statistical 16/11/2020 06:36 PM 2 2 Biden's Mail-in votes dramatically fail Benford Test Atlanta, all others pass. Georgia Statistical 16/11/2020 11:00 AM 2 2 782 more votes than than registered voters in Detroit from 2016 election Michigan Historical Context 14/11/2020 04:32 PM 4 2 NYT FLASHBACK: Error and fraud at issue as absentee voting rises (2012) Nationwide Historical Context 13/11/2020 08:31 AM 3 2 PA Auditors Warned of Dead People, Duplicates on State Voter Rolls Pennsylvania Historical Context 12/11/2020 10:34 PM 3 2 US decried Ukraine election due to expelled observers, mail-in ballots and 90% turnout Nationwide Historical Context 12/11/2020 10:14 PM 4 1 Former Texas ivoting official certified fictitious ballot for Lyndon Johnson Texas Historical Context 23/11/2020 11:18 PM 1 1 Campaign offical ask for volenteers to track down ballot in PA Wisconsin Photo/Audio/Video 20/11/2020 10:47 AM 2 1 GA Secretary of State withholds ballot image from public viewing Georgia Document 19/11/2020 12:02 AM 1 1 Double mail-in ballots received by serval dozen voters Virginia Document 16/11/2020 09:20 PM 3 1 Double mail-in ballot received by around 1000 voters Virginia Document 16/11/2020 09:18 PM 3 1 19,888 counterfeit U.S. driver's licenses from China seized by authorities Illinois Document 16/11/2020 02:14 PM 1 1 Joe Biden states he put together the most "extensive... voter fraud organization" Nationwide Photo/Audio/Video 16/11/2020 11:57 AM 1 1 FL precinct reports more than 100% voter turnout due to UCF Florida Material 12/11/2020 10:47 PM 1 3 - Polling Place Irregularities 4 9 witness videos from Precinct 13: Congressman, Senator, Dominion employee Michigan Photo/Audio/Video 24/11/2020 04:46 PM 4 4 Recount monitors unable to track multiple tables with constant recount errors Georgia Witness 19/11/2020 01:08 AM 3 4 Poll Challengers were kick out for challenging suspect ballots Michigan Photo/Audio/Video 18/11/2020 10:27 PM 3 4 Observers forced to stand 30 feet away from ballot counting, despite state laws Pennsylvania Witness 18/11/2020 09:42 PM 3 4 Polling place illegally handed out handed out gift cards for absentee ballots Nevada Photo/Audio/Video 18/11/2020 07:50 PM 3 4 200,000 mail-in ballots cast with the unverifyable "indefinitely confined" status Wisconsin Material 18/11/2020 06:48 PM 4 4 2,600 new votes found in county's recount Georgia Material 18/11/2020 04:43 PM 4 4 Recount protocol breached by workers silently passing on ballots Georgia Witness 18/11/2020 03:27 PM 4 4 39% of 1137 Republican ballots never arrived for counting, despite being mailed. Pennsylvania Material 17/11/2020 08:11 PM 3 4 72% of Detroit's absentee ballot counts were off, Canvassers discovers Michigan Digital (aka Glitch) 17/11/2020 07:44 PM 4 4 70% of Detroit's 134 absentee counting boards had unexplained counting errors Michigan Digital (aka Glitch) 17/11/2020 07:43 PM 4 4 Poll observers forced to use binoculars to watch voting process, despite court order Pennsylvania Photo/Audio/Video 16/11/2020 06:45 PM 3 4 Pre-canvassing ballots in some counties weeks early, violating election laws Pennsylvania Witness 14/11/2020 05:19 PM 4 4 234 pages of sworn affidavits for election irregularities from single county Michigan Witness 12/11/2020 10:26 PM 4 4 500 sworn affidavits and 11,000 reports of irregularities Nationwide Witness 12/11/2020 12:47 PM 4 3 GOP Reps certified election on as an attempted to protecting their families Michigan Witness 19/11/2020 09:38 AM 4 3 6 recount monitors witness batches of ballots appearing to be marked by machines Georgia Witness 18/11/2020 11:09 PM 4 3 9,000 ballot counting error caught by recount moderators Georgia Material 18/11/2020 10:53 PM 4 3 List of poll watchers being denied entry Pennsylvania Photo/Audio/Video 16/11/2020 10:56 PM 2 3 Dominion IT worker submits affidavit describing poll workers signing ballots Michigan Expert Witness 16/11/2020 11:15 AM 4 3 Dems receive new election after affidavits show an absentee ballot scheme North Carolina Historical Context 15/11/2020 01:06 PM 4 3 89% failure rate with verifying signatures in Clark county Nevada Statistical 14/11/2020 05:11 PM 3 3 NV whistleblower describes Biden van vote factory Nevada Witness 12/11/2020 10:03 PM 4 3 State and Election Officials acted against ballot curing Court Order Pennsylvania Witness 12/11/2020 09:32 PM 4 2 Clerk signals that non-party workers may be in party worker slots Michigan Photo/Audio/Video 23/11/2020 08:11 PM 4 2 200,000 ballots counted without human verification Nevada Witness 18/11/2020 07:56 PM 2 2 Email from Election Official Stressing Issues with Voters Using Sharpies Arizona Document 18/11/2020 02:44 PM 4 2 2,349 undated ballots counted after Board of Elections voted 2-1 against Elections Code Pennsylvania Material 17/11/2020 08:33 AM 4 2 Poll worker instructed to adjust the mailing date of absentee ballot packages Michigan Witness 16/11/2020 06:35 PM 4 2 Detroit contracted poll workers from firm owned by key figure in corruption case Michigan Material 14/11/2020 06:40 PM 2 2 1 monitor for 10 tables of counters in recount Georgia Document 14/11/2020 05:07 PM 2 2 Memory sticks used to program Philly’s voting machines, stolen from warehouse Pennsylvania Witness 14/11/2020 04:54 PM 4 2 MI state senators request a full audit of the election Michigan Expert Witness 12/11/2020 09:56 PM 4 2 FEC chair believes there may be fraud since observers banned Nationwide Expert Witness 12/11/2020 09:02 PM 2 4 - Discarded or Destroyed Ballots 2 Ballot envelopes visibly identify the voter's party affiliation Florida Material 19/11/2020 09:39 PM 2 1 1,314 pieces of mail discard in wood by USPS working New York Material 19/11/2020 09:33 PM 1 1 18 mail-in ballots stolen from mailboxes Arizona Material 16/11/2020 09:01 PM 3 1 Found Navy ballot envelopes in the dumpster. Georgia Material 11/11/2020 10:20 PM 1 1 Discarded Mail-in Ballots Found Outside ATM California Material 11/11/2020 10:16 PM 1 5 - Voting Machine Irregularities 4 2,755 ballots found on memory card by recount auditors Georgia Digital (aka Glitch) 18/11/2020 11:30 PM 4 4 Scanning results incorrect and officials unsure if it was hardware or software Georgia Digital (aka Glitch) 18/11/2020 10:08 PM 4 4 15,000 ballots found on flash drive after first being rejection by software filters Virginia Digital (aka Glitch) 16/11/2020 08:51 PM 4 4 ES&S misrepresented their machines as EAC Certified to US officials Nationwide Document 16/11/2020 11:10 AM 4 4 CISA only did a critical product evaluation (CPE) on some vendor supplied systems Nationwide Document 16/11/2020 10:55 AM 2 4 Electronic voting unprotected, has little accountability and not transparent Nationwide Expert Witness 14/11/2020 07:33 PM 1 4 Electronic voting systems rely on abandoned operating systems in PA counties Pennsylvania Digital (aka Glitch) 14/11/2020 07:00 PM 4 4 Computer scientist proves voting systems can be hacked to steal votes Nationwide Expert Witness 14/11/2020 06:35 PM 4 4 Dominion manual states high risk vulnerabilities, remedy is invalidate election Nationwide Document 14/11/2020 06:22 PM 4 3 Voting machine "glitches" in Toronto election in Canada Nationwide Historical Context 16/11/2020 11:08 AM 3 3 Litigation Smartmatic “glitches” alleges impacted in two Philippine elections Nationwide Historical Context 14/11/2020 06:56 PM 4 3 CIA expert explains how most electronic voting isn't secure Nationwide Expert Witness 14/11/2020 06:42 PM 3 3 TX Officials rejected Dominion due to security concerns Texas Expert Witness 12/11/2020 09:37 PM 4 3 6,000 unofficial votes incorrectly show as votes for other candidate Michigan Witness 11/11/2020 10:10 PM 3 2 Vulnerabilities give access to change the "Official" Databases Nationwide Expert Witness 18/11/2020 09:28 PM 2 2 Votes erased from memory card and story withheld from press Maryland Historical Context 18/11/2020 08:19 PM 3 2 Dominion and Smartmatic have had contracts outside of public knowledge Nationwide Historical Context 17/11/2020 12:14 PM 3 2 Dominion licenses it's software to Smartmatic Nationwide Photo/Audio/Video 17/11/2020 12:08 PM 4 2 1,127 ballots wrongly labeled through technical glitch Michigan Digital (aka Glitch) 16/11/2020 10:15 PM 2 2 93% of errors go unnoticed by users of ballot marking devices security Nationwide Statistical 16/11/2020 06:03 PM 2 2 Dominion Security Chief states he "made sure" Trump would not win Nationwide Witness 16/11/2020 11:47 AM 2 2 Confidential: Smartmatic is web of holding companies, suspected of fraud Nationwide Document 16/11/2020 10:27 AM 4 2 Voting machine firm states Venezuela election rigged "without any doubt" Nationwide Historical Context 14/11/2020 06:48 PM 3 2 PA DoS requested a function from Dominion to re-mark and re-scan ballots Pennsylvania Document 12/11/2020 10:20 PM 3 1 Chicago Election Board approved remote work for nonessenial employees Illinois Photo/Audio/Video 21/11/2020 05:16 PM 4 6 - General 4 30 times lower rejection rate for mail-in ballots than in 2016 Pennsylvania Statistical 16/11/2020 06:49 PM 2 3 MN disabled public verification of ballot status, despite official instructions Michigan Material 22/11/2020 03:32 PM 4 2 84,108 mail-in ballots were not counted or invalidated New York Material 18/11/2020 07:35 PM 2 2 Dem Rep intimidates GOP Rep by insinuating his kids will become a public target Michigan Photo/Audio/Video 18/11/2020 04:30 PM 3 2 20 seniors voted for a canidate under pressure from a care giver Wisconsin Witness 16/11/2020 09:23 PM 3 1 Zuckerberg-Funded ‘Safe Elections’ Project gave $18m to PA districts Pennsylvania Material 22/11/2020 11:10 AM 2 1 Google searches for ‘election fraud punishment,’ increased ahead of election Nationwide Statistical 16/11/2020 10:33 PM 1 1 2016: GA had evidence that DoHS IP address tried to hack voter database Georgia Historical Context 14/11/2020 06:12 PM 1 7 - Unverified (new submissions) Pollpad Wifi Available at Eaton Eletrical in Smyrna GA Georgia Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 08:14 PM 139 unexplained discrepancies in Clark County Commission race Georgia Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 05:41 PM Disavowed Smartmatic relationship with Dominion Voting systems is challenged California Historical Context 29/11/2020 05:31 PM Dominion employee (worked for Kamala Harris) worked at polls? Georgia Document 29/11/2020 05:16 PM PA Poll Worker Admits to Throwing All Donald Trump Ballots in Garbage Pennsylvania Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 04:43 PM Voting machine found dumped in the woods in Fulton County, GA. Georgia Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 04:35 PM I was kicked out of a polling station that wouldnt allow me to observe the count Georgia Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 04:33 PM Real Time Vote Data shows Deduction from Trump and Addition to Biden in Florida Florida Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 04:26 PM Macron has stolen the french election by using fraudulent voting systems Nationwide Digital (aka Glitch) 29/11/2020 04:22 PM Benny Smith expert on voting software fraud Michigan Expert Witness 29/11/2020 04:15 PM Software changing names, over 30+, no one voted as Rashad Texas Expert Witness 29/11/2020 03:55 PM Vote By Mail Fraud On Tape Texas Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 03:42 PM NH Govornor Chris Sununu wins overwhelming majority but same votes go to Biden!? New Hampshire Statistical 29/11/2020 03:30 PM Roughly Same Rep votes for Vermont Phill scott went to Biden Vermont Statistical 29/11/2020 03:24 PM Software Changing Voters - Dallas, TX Texas Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 03:16 PM Biden Campaign Operative, Texas State Senator Accused of Mail-in Ballot Fraud Texas Witness 29/11/2020 02:54 PM Service dog registered as human mail-in voter voted in election Nationwide Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 02:36 PM WeChat Video of Chinese printing premade fraud ballots to ship to the US Nationwide Photo/Audio/Video 29/11/2020 02:30 PM Sequoia website w/hack videos & see Manufacturers Profile at bottom Arizona Historical Context 29/11/2020 02:24 PM X'S MARK 48 THEFT > 4% WORTH 5754 VOTES in Wayne County MI. SEE PNG,CSV,LOG. Michigan Statistical 29/11/2020 02:15 PM Nebraska Dist 2 Omaha "glitch" of 29,737 votes at 11-07 00:47:23Z per NYT Edison Nebraska Digital (aka Glitch) 29/11/2020 01:58 PM Michigan votes statistically suspect Michigan Statistical 29/11/2020 01:10 PM Host Steven Crowder registered in TWO DIFFERENT states. Someone else got ballot Nationwide Witness 29/11/2020 12:30 PM Detroit poll workers taught how to thwart poll watchers Michigan Witness 29/11/2020 11:41 AM Rigorous Statistical Analysis Points to Voter Fraud in Montgomery County Pennsylvania Statistical 29/11/2020 11:29 AM CA couple had ballots cast in their name California Document 29/11/2020 11:17 AM Anomalies in Vote Counts and Their Effect on Election 2020 Michigan

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook vs Robert Bork

Unless you're a certain kind of conservative, you probably haven't heard of Robert Bork, but he's one of the most important people you've never heard of. The best way to understand Bork is that he was Ronald Reagan's court sorcerer.

Reagan was an empty vessel with the hands of ruthless plutocrats shoved up his asshole*, operating him like a hand puppet for their collective will to power.

He served as a kind of dowsing rod for policies that would transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

*Hence the polyps

That dowsing rod pointed straight at Bork. Bork was an alternate history writer, a fabulist with a unique and wildly improbable theory of antitrust statutes: that if you studied the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act with Qanon-style fervor, you'd find hidden messages in them.

Specifically, you would discover that the lawmakers who drafted, debated, amended and passed these laws thought monopolies were good, actually. They were only concerned with a small and possibly mythical minority of monopolies that were "harmful."

Not just any harms: Bork said that these ancient sages were worried about *consumer* harms, which, practically speaking, means monopolies that use their power to raise prices. This, he said, was the only thing that the government should step in to prevent.

Since it is nearly impossible to prove that a given merger or tactic would result in higher prices before the fact, and *also* it's nearly impossible to prove that a price rise after the fact was attributable to monopolism we should probably just forget about antitrust.

Reagan loved this. By shifting antitrust's focus from *democratic* harms (like reducing choice, distorting regulation, hurting workers, etc) to *consumer* harms, he could demote "citizens" (who have a role in shaping policies) to "consumers" - mere ambulatory wallets.

Reagan tried to get Bork a seat on the Supreme Court, but there was a little problem. Bork had committed a string of disgusting crimes while serving as Nixon's Solicitor General, and the Senate refused to confirm him for a seat.

(Conservatives were outraged that committing crimes at the highest level of government disqualified you from the Supreme Court and coined the term "Borked" to describe rich, powerful people who had to face the unfair prospect of being held accountable for their actions)

But Bork - along with the Chicago School economists - went on to completely revolutionize the world's conception of anti-monopoly enforcement, as neoliberal leaders all over the world (Thatcher, Mulroney, Pinochet, Kohl, etc) took up his theories and tuned them into policy.

Bork was a fringe figure, but he was preaching a gospel that stood to make the richest people on Earth *so much richer*, and they bankrolled the hell out of his theories.

For example, 40% of US federal judges have attended "continuing education" seminars at an annual lush Florida junket where they are initiated into the bizarre world of "consumer harm" theory.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/10/18/law-and-economics/

40 years later, monopolism has surged in every industry, from bottlecaps to pharma, from poultry to pro wrestling, from eyeglasses to emergency rooms, from oil to car parts, from music to publishing to movies to online services to telecoms.

All driven by mergers, all resulting in higher prices (so much for "consumer harm") all wildly distorting of public policy (the decision to let Boeing self-certify the 737 Max is repeated in thousands of ways across hundreds of industries), all brutal news for workers.

It's a disaster, but it's one that we have been powerless to avert or address for so long as "consumer harm" ruled antitrust enforcement.

Finally, that's changing.

In 2019, Dina Srinivasan published a landmark paper: "The Antitrust Case Against Facebook," which made *incredibly* clever arguments showing that FB's democratic harms were also consumer harms, meaning FB could be sued without first undoing Borkism.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

But the magic of this work was in revealing the poverty of the consumer harm standard: she laid out the innumerable ways in which FB is bad for society and showed how a sliver of these harms were technically illegal, raising the question: why isn't *all* this stuff illegal?

Today, Facebook was hit with *two* antitrust suits, one from the FTC and the other from almost every US state (including California!).

The complaints say that FB's acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were anticompetitive.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/9/22158483/facebook-antitrust-lawsuit-anti-competition-behavior-attorneys-general

Of course, they *were* anticompetitive. We know, because Zuck - who specializes in tripping over his own dick - sent out memos extolling the acquisitions' anticompetitive advantages, proving he hasn't learned a thing since he traded incriminating IMs about founding FB.

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

The complaints build on Srinivasan's work and they carry the same flavor: claiming "consumer harms" in the acquisitions, but winking and nodding toward a broader, more democracy-focused (and less consumer-focused) critique of monopoly.

It's a weird tightrope act: they want to win, so their argument is designed to balance on the single, fragile hair that borkism stretches across the chasm of monopoly enforcement, but they wanna make sure we see that big sturdy bridge of nonbork antitrust right there.

If there was any doubt, it was erased by the remedies demanded in the complaints. The prosecutors aren't asking for money damages - a fine is a price, after all - instead, they want FB to sell off the companies it bought for illegal purposes.

And they want FB to get regulatory approval for future acquisitions (though the states will let it buy companies for less than $10m without approval). These are not "consumer harm" remedies - they're "democracy" remedies, aimed at removing the company's source of power.

Facebook has stood up a website explaining why it's a cuddly mom-and-pop business that's being bullied by mean government meanies:

https://about.fb.com/building-to-compete/

The argument's pretty similar to the one laid out in a leaked memo in October:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#dnr

Basically: it would be really hard for us to unwind these illegal, anticompetitive mergers. Seriously, it would cost a bundle and take so much work!

This is an unserious argument, and it shows how badly FB has misgauged the mood.

All of FB's arguments are garbage, really. Take the line that ex-British-Deputy-PM-turned-FB-salesdroid Nick Clegg has been peddling: "STOP TRYING TO BREAK UP FACEBOOK OR THE CHINESE WILL WIN!"

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-nick-clegiden-must-unite-global-powers-to-shape-internet-amid-china-threat

The company's best arguments are about "market definition" - to claim that they don't have a monopoly because of all the competitors they face, provided you define FB's market broadly enough.

Like, "Here at Facebook, we are in the 'using computers' business. Now, just think of how much time you spend using a computer without interacting with FB! Your car has a computer and it's not on FB! How can you say we have a monopoly?!"

If you want to see someone making this argument as well as it can possibly be made and literally getting laughed at by a University of Chicago (!) audience, check out this debate from 2019:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Jp-GJ9LM0

Forcing FB to divest itself of Whatsapp and Instagram is a no-brainer. The company lied to secure those mergers, broke the promises it made to get permission to make them, and the penalty for that should be unwinding those mergers.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

And if FB fights this for a decade the way IBM fought its antitrust action, fine - IBM outspent the entire DoJ antitrust division every year for 12 years (Bork called it "antitrust's Vietnam"), but even though Big Blue wasn't broken up, they had their spirit broken.

It was fear of another tangle with antitrust regulators that caused IBM to sit idly by while Phoenix cloned the PC ROMs and created the PC clone industry, which became the US computing industry.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

And it was the same fear that caused IBM to hire an outside company to make the OS for its PCs, getting a couple of nerds named Paul Allen and Bill Gates to supply one for them.

IBM's 12 years of antitrust hell focused the attention of every tech giant of the age, letting them know what was on their horizon if they acted like IBM had. It created the US tech industry.

Today, VCs call the businesses that Big Tech dominates "the kill zones" because they know that monopolists have the market power to destroy any startup that tries to compete with them.

There is an entire - better, more pluralistic - tech industry that's been suppressed by Big Tech. If FB and Goog and Apple and the other tech giants spend the next decades throwing billions at the FTC and the states attorneys general, it will be money well-spent.

Because it will be money that these companies don't get to spend destroying the next wave of tech companies, co-ops, and platforms.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 20, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

So many stories landed today that some will have to wait. Tonight’s news, though, boils down to Republican attempts to retake control of the government in the 2022 elections…and, if Trump has his way, even earlier.

This morning, CNN revealed another bombshell story from the forthcoming book by veteran reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa: a six-point memo from pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman laying out a plan for then–vice president Mike Pence to steal the 2020 election for Trump.

The memo started by falsely claiming that seven states had sent competing slates of electors to the President of the Senate; in fact, Trump loyalists demanded their own electors, but each state had certified one official slate of electors. If Pence—or, if Pence recused himself, the then–Senate president pro tempore, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley—rejected the ballots from those seven states, Eastman claimed, Trump would have ten more electoral votes than Biden and would win the election.

When Democrats howled, Pence could instead assert that neither candidate had a majority and throw the election into the House of Representatives, where each state would get a single vote. Since 26 of the 50 states were dominated by Republicans, Trump would win there, too.

“The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter,” Eastman wrote. “We should take all of our actions with that in mind.”

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani tried to convince Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to back the scheme; someone also ran the idea past Republican senator Mike Lee of Utah. Both dismissed it. But, notably, neither revealed this extraordinary attempt to destroy our democracy.

When Pence ultimately refused to go along, Trump turned on him and told attendees at the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that “if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.” He explained that “the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country,” had offered a plan, and that “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us….”

Aside from the obvious, Eastman’s memo raises three interesting points. First, it refers to the idea that Pence might hand over the count to Grassley, a plan that needs more investigation. Second, it relies on the work of emeritus Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe, who tweeted that it took snippets of his work out of context to create “a totally fake web of ‘law’ that no halfway decent lawyer would take seriously…. Ludicrous but scary as hell. Think 2024. Those guys mean business....” And, third, it debunks the current right-wing talking point that Trump wanted only to question the results of the election. Clearly, he wanted to be declared the winner.

Even after President Joe Biden was sworn in, Trump supporters continued to insist that the election had been fraudulent. Famously, the Arizona state senate hired a company called Cyber Ninjas to reexamine the votes from Maricopa County, although the county board of supervisors, a majority of whom were Republicans, had already audited the ballots and the machines and found no problems. The county board strongly opposed the new “audit.”

The Cyber Ninjas examined ballots for bamboo to see if China had hacked the election, used insecure practices, rejected observers, and finally sent voting information to Montana for analysis. Documents released by the state senate under a court order in late August revealed that groups backed by pro-Trump loyalists Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and two correspondents from the One America News Network paid for the Arizona investigation.

Last week, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the state senate and the Cyber Ninjas had to release the records concerning their activities. Cyber Ninjas is refusing to do so, offering as a reason—among others—that it is busy writing its report (which is already four months late) and document production will take time away from that effort. Its lawyer says it will “produce documents out of goodwill and its commitment to transparency” when it has time, but does not recognize any legal obligation to do so.

Seeking an Arizona-type “audit” in Pennsylvania, Republicans in that state’s legislature last Wednesday voted to issue subpoenas for personal information of about 6.9 million state voters, including names, addresses, birth dates, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Republicans say a private company needs that information to fix issues in election procedures uncovered in 2020, but the Republican leader of the investigation has declined to say how the information will be used.

Democrats sued Friday to stop the release of the voter information, and two Democratic representatives to Congress have asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether the subpoenas could violate federal laws by leading to voter intimidation.

A new story sheds more light on the election reform Republicans are talking about. On May 6, 2021, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis raised eyebrows when he signed a new election law in front of television cameras for the Fox News Channel, excluding all other media. While Republicans insisted they wrote new election laws to prevent voter fraud—despite the lack of evidence of any such widespread fraud—internal emails and text messages from Florida Republicans revealed today by Politico show that their concerns were actually about gaining advantage in the 2022 elections.

Joe Gruters, the state senator who chairs the Florida Republican Party, repeatedly said in public that the new bill would “make it as easy as possible to vote, and hard as possible to cheat.” But in private text exchanges with state representative Blaise Ingoglia, the former chair of the Florida party, Gruters called for getting rid of existing mail-in ballot requests, saying that keeping them would be “devastating,” since Democrats used them more frequently than Republicans. “We cannot make up ground,” Gruters wrote. “Trump campaign spent 10 million. Could not cut down lead….” Ingoglia told Politico: “This was a policy decision all along and had nothing to do with partisan reasons.”

Finally, tonight, the immigration issue is back in the news. Republicans have tried to make immigration their key issue for 2022, but the terrible surge in coronavirus in Republican-dominated states like Texas has captured the news cycle. For the past few days, though, the rise in Haitian refugees on the U.S. southern border has reclaimed headlines. Haitians have long come to the southern border for admission to the U.S., but the recent earthquake in Haiti, along with the assassination of the country’s president and hopes that the Biden administration will be welcoming, has brought 12,000–15,000 Haitians in the past few weeks.

The situation there remains much as it has always been under Biden: the administration kept the public health guidelines established during the pandemic under former president Trump, and it is turning away most adult immigrants and refugees. It has been returning Haitians to Haiti by plane, with seven flights daily set to begin on Wednesday.

But right-wing media is, once again, insisting that Biden is allowing a flood of immigrants to overrun the U.S. At the same time, images of white border patrol agents on horseback riding down Haitian migrants, with their reins swinging, has horrified those who see in them the history of southern slave patrols hunting enslaved Americans. The Biden administration will have to thread a very thin political needle: disavowing the actions of the border patrol agents without opening itself to Republican attacks that it is “soft” on immigration. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has launched an inquiry into the agents’ behavior.

For his part, Trump does not want to wait until 2022 for a change in government. On Friday, he wrote to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger charging that 43,000 Georgia ballots were “invalid.” He called for Raffensperger to decertify the 2020 election “and announce the true winner,” warning that the nation “is being systematically destroyed by an illegitimate president and his administration.”

Trump is under criminal investigation in Georgia for his previous attempts to overturn the state’s election results.

—

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/09/20/devastating-florida-republicans-worried-about-2022-as-they-crafted-election-law-1391121

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21065006-arizona-senate-status-report-and-renewed-motion-to-consolidate#document/p328/a2054912

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arizona-audit-2020-election-recount-gop-maricopa-county/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cyber-ninjas-arizona-vote-audit-court-order_n_614678cce4b0efa77f80caf1

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/20/eastman.memo.pdf

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/politics/trump-pence-election-memo/index.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/09/15/pennsylvania-election-audit-gets-off-to-wild-start-as-gop-subpoenas-personal-details-on-every-voter-in-state/

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/pa-democrats-sue-over-gop-election-investigation/2963753/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/17/this-is-how-embarrassing-trumps-fraud-claims-have-gotten/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/20/us-begins-deportation-flights-haitians-texas-border-town

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/border-haitians-horses-agents/2021/09/20/c489c3ae-1a41-11ec-914a-99d701398e5a_story.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/17/politics/georgia-probe-trump-election/index.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson

January 2, 2021 (Saturday)

Today the fight to pick up Trump’s supporters continued. Eleven senators, led by Ted Cruz (R-TX), said they would object to certifying certain state electoral votes when Congress meets on Wednesday, January 6, to count them. They want a commission appointed to audit the results. This attempt is separate from the one launched yesterday by Josh Hawley (R-MO) to object to the counting of the electoral votes from Pennsylvania, but both are a transparent attempt to court Trump voters before 2022 and 2024.

The senators signing onto the effort are: Ron Johnson (R-WI), James Lankford (R-OK), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Kennedy (R-LA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Mike Braun (R-IN), and Senators-Elect Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

President-Elect Joe Biden’s transition spokesperson Michael Gwin called their efforts a “stunt.” He isn’t wrong. This plan is unfounded. Biden won the election by more than 7 million votes and by a margin of 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. The Trump campaign tried to challenge the results in the courts, and lost or had dismissed for lack of evidence 60 out of 61 cases, including two they tried to take to the Supreme Court, where three justices appointed by Trump himself sit. Although Trump supporters grabbed headlines with their accusations of irregularities and fraud when they made them in conference rooms and in parking lots in front of landscaping companies, they could produce no evidence in courtrooms, where there are penalties for lying. The suggestion that there is somehow a problem with this election, when they could produce no evidence of wrongdoing in front of judges in 60 cases, is laughable.

But there is more to their efforts than just creating a show to attract the future support of Trump voters. The attempt of these Trump Republicans to launch yet another baseless investigation is in keeping with their use of investigations to discredit Democrats since at least the 2012 attack on two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans. Ten investigations of the circumstances that led to that attack resulted in no evidence that members of the Obama administration acted inappropriately in that crisis. But the constant repetition of accusations convinced many Americans that something had gone terribly wrong and Obama’s people, especially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were to blame.

As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, then in running for Speaker of the House, said to Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity in 2015, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she's untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought."

The repeated Republican investigations into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails were similar. Although the State Department’s final report on Clinton’s email use, issued in October 2019, declared there was no systematic or deliberate mishandling of classified information, the constant barrage of accusations made the email story the most important story of the 2016 election. It outweighed all the scandals involving then-candidate Donald Trump: the ones involving sexual assault, financial corruption, mocking of a disabled reporter, attacks on immigrants, and so on.

A study by Duncan J. Watts and David M. Rothschild in the Columbia Journalism Review noted that in the 2016 election season there were 65,000 sentences in the media about Clinton’s email use but only 40,000 about all of Trump’s scandals combined. There were twice as many sentences about Clinton’s emails than about her policies. The authors wrote, "in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” The email scandal likely cost Clinton the 2016 election, and even now, after the State Department cleared her of wrongdoing, many Americans still think Clinton mishandled classified information in her emails.

Trump tried the same tactic in 2020. Smearing an opponent through investigations was at the heart of the Ukraine scandal of 2019. Trump pressured new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, not to start an investigation of Hunter Biden and the company on whose board he had sat, but rather simply to announce that he was starting an investigation. An announcement would be enough to get picked up by the American news media so that story after story would convince voters that Hunter Biden and, by extension, his father were involved in corruption, even without evidence.

Then, just before the election, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani drummed up the story that Hunter Biden had left a laptop that contained incriminating evidence against both Bidens at a repair shop, and Republican leadership clamored for investigations-- this time to no avail because the story was so outrageous.

Now, they are alleging the need for an investigation into irregularities in the 2020 election, although they have failed repeatedly to produce any evidence of such irregularities in court. Their argument is that the country needs an investigation to relieve people’s worries about the legitimacy of the election, but those worries have been created precisely by the unjustified accusations of Republican leaders. An investigation would simply convince people that the election results are questionable. They are not.

The attempt of the senators to get Congress to appoint an investigatory committee into alleged fraud in the election is dangerous and unprecedented, and they know it. In their statement, they tried to suggest they are simply following the precedent established by Congress after the chaotic 1876 election, but the two situations are very different.

In 1876, elections were organized by the parties themselves and were notoriously corrupt. Parties printed their own ballots in a distinctive color with only their own slate of electors. Men dropped the ballots for their party, unmarked, into a box, but their votes were not secret: how men voted was obvious from the colored ballots, at the very least. Politicians watching the polls knew exactly what the counts would be, and it was not unusual for ballot boxes to be either stuffed or broken open before results were reported.

In Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina in 1876, Democrats appeared to have won the election, but there was no dispute that they had terrorized Republican voters to keep them from the polls. The results were a hopeless mess: in South Carolina, for example, 101% of all eligible voters cast ballots. Florida and Louisiana both reported more reasonable numbers of voters, but they each sent competing sets of electors to Congress. In both states, different officials signed off on different certificates of election, so it was not at all clear which certificate was the official one. In this utter confusion, Congress established a committee to figure out what had actually happened.

None of that is the case today. The processes were transparent and observed by Republicans as well as Democrats. The Trump campaign had the right to challenge vote counts and did so; each turned up virtually the same result as the original count: Biden won, by a lot. Each state in the country has delivered to Congress certified results that have been signed by the state governors, who nowadays have the final say in the state certification process.

This should be a done deal. But Trump Republicans are trying to undermine the election, and Biden’s administration, with a disinformation campaign. This is about more than this particular election. It is clear that a faction of today’s Republican Party refuses to accept the legitimacy of a Democratic president, no matter how big the victory. They are working to smear Biden by investigation, as has become their signature move.

Democracy depends on a willingness to transfer power peacefully from one group of leaders to another. By revealing that they refuse to do so, the members of the “Sedition Caucus,” as they are being called on social media, are proving they are unworthy of elected office.

[giftofshewbread]

It’s Over!  ( Biblical Update )

By Daymond Duck     Published  on: August 15, 2021

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come” (II Tim. 3:1).

Be aware that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (II Tim. 3:13).

The right of U.S. citizens to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to buy and sell, etc., is being challenged by the shadow government’s desire to restrict and/or control American’s freedom of religion, speech, right to buy and sell, etc.

Covid is a global medical crisis that the godless shadow government created to justify the establishment of a world government, world religion, and worldwide tracking system to enslave everyone on earth.

The public is being told that proof of vaccination (passports, I.D. cards, or whatever) is needed to bring Covid-19 under control when the truth of the matter is that Covid-19 and the variants are a tool that the rich and powerful are using to bring all people under their control.

It is possible and perhaps likely that this proof of vaccination will eventually be followed by the lockdown and persecution of Christian groups and institutions based on their support for Bible teaching and lack of support for the globalist agenda (the godless world government, godless world religion, abortion, gay rights, etc.).

Before the persecution reaches its peak, Christians will be removed (Raptured) from this earth, and the door will be thrown wide open for the godless shadow government to select a leader to take dictatorial power on earth.

Following his appearance, their so-called proof of vaccination will probably evolve into a data system that will be used to determine who can buy and sell, who can live or die, etc. (Don’t overlook the fact that some of the leaders that want to force everyone to be vaccinated are the same people that want to reduce the population of the earth from almost 8 billion to about half a billion; many support abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, etc.).

God will allow these godless globalists to select a leader to rule for seven years, but God will ultimately cause them to regret what they have done for all eternity.

A reader recently sent an e-mail to this writer containing part of a message that Dr. Franklin Graham delivered at a Baptist Church in Florida.

Dr. Graham said, “The American Dream has ended.”

Readers need to understand that the one who said “The American Dream has ended” is one of the most highly respected preachers in the world, not a fanatic and not a prophecy teacher, but America must decline if the globalists are going to meet their goal of a world government and a world religion by 2030 or before.

Here is a repeat from the article I wrote last week: On July 27, 2021, former Sec. of State Mike Pompeo said, “Collapse from within is possible… Immigration without assimilation, illicit drugs, human trafficking, disputed elections, inflationary risks have become the tools to disassemble our republic in what must surely be an attempt at national suicide.”

I want to close my opening remarks this way: We are not seeing the Mark of the Beast yet (people are not being jabbed in their right hand or forehead; people are not taking the name, number, or Mark of the Beast; unvaccinated people can still buy and sell in most places; etc.).

On the other hand, we are seeing the global development and advancement of technology and policies that many excellent Bible prophecy teachers believe will lead to the Mark of the Beast (forced compliance, loss of one’s job, development of passports or passes, a demand for government databases to track people, a demand to prevent the unvaccinated from entering stores to buy or sell, the spread of anti-Christian rhetoric, etc.).

Also, keep in mind the fact that the Church will be Raptured a minimum of 3 ½ years (and perhaps more) before the global development and advancement of the technology and policies goes into effect as the Mark of the Beast (the Gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church).

Here are other reasons to believe that history is approaching end of the age Bible predictions and the American Dream is over.

One, when Jesus was asked about the signs of His coming, He listed famines, pestilences, earthquakes, etc. (notice that the words are plural as in more than one famine, more than one pestilence, etc.; Matt. 24:7).

Today, the world is trying to deal with Covid-19, the Delta (India variant), Lambda (Peru variant), and Epsilon variant (pestilences plural).

Two, on Aug. 6, 2021, California announced that a low water level caused by drought has forced the shutdown of the state’s second largest hydroelectric plant for the first time since the dam was completed in 1977.

The state will be able to get electricity from other systems.

More: On Aug. 4, 2021, the Dixie wildfire destroyed Greenville, Cal., a gold rush town of about 1,200 people (5 days later, Fox News reported that about 600 buildings have burned and about 13,000 are in danger).

More: On Aug. 6, 2021, it was reported that Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border, the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and Lake Mead in Nevada have hit record lows this summer.

FYI: Drought is having a devastating impact on crops, cattle, hog, and sheep production in the U.S. (a very large part of America’s food supply).

FYI: Unprecedented wildfires are also taking place in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon, and Russia.

Three, during the Tribulation Period, the world will be divided into two groups: those that take the Mark of the Beast and those that refuse to take the Mark of the Beast.

Today, the world is being divided into two groups: those that have been vaccinated and those that have not been vaccinated.

Four, on Aug. 9, 2021, World Net Daily posted an article by Wayne Allen Root that said:

Republicans asked for “papers” from migrants who had broken into our country. Criminals. Democrats said, “No, that’s racism.”

Republicans asked for “papers” once every two years for federal elections to prove you have a right to vote. Democrats said, “No, that’s racism.”

Now Democrats want American citizens, not illegal aliens, not criminals, but patriots born in this country to produce papers 24/7. We’ll need papers to enter restaurants, bars, nightclubs, concerts, casinos, conventions, and hotels and to board a train, plane, or bus. We’ll need papers to enter a supermarket, or we’ll starve to death—all for the crime of being unvaccinated.

Note: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said the U.S. is at a crossroads, and he is urging U.S. citizens to “resist the mandates, lockdowns, and the harmful policies of the petty tyrants and bureaucrats.”

Five, on Aug. 6, 2021, Natural News reported that the U.K. has admitted that it is building storage areas for bodies in the 32 boroughs of London and the city itself.

These storage areas are being built because the government expects an increase in deaths over the next five years due to their attempts to force people to be vaccinated (some people that are not allowed to buy and sell will go hungry, get sick, etc.).

Writer’s Comment: It is common for some people to ask how bad will God let it get before He Raptures His Church. No one knows the answer to this, but the situation is worsening, and Christians everywhere need to pray about it.

Six, on July 31, 2021, the Carnival Cruise Ship Vista left Galveston, TX with everyone or board vaccinated (every guest, every crew member, every staff member, everyone vaccinated; no unvaccinated people on board).

On Aug. 8, 2021, it was reported that a small number of people on the ship have tested positive for Covid.

Seven, God promised to bless those that bless Israel and to curse those that curse Israel (Gen. 12:3).

On Aug. 4, 2021, the Iranian-backed terrorist group that controls Lebanon, Hezbollah, fired three rockets into Israel.

On Aug. 5, 2021, Israeli jets struck terrorist targets in Lebanon for the first time in 15 years, and Pres. Biden announced that he will give the terrorist government $100 million dollars in economic aid (borrowed money that will add to inflation in the U.S.).

On Aug. 6, 2021, Hezbollah forces fired 19 rockets from Lebanon into Israel, and Israel responded with artillery fire.

On Aug. 8, 2021, new hardline Iranian Pres. Raisi met with leaders of the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Houthis, and promised to support their terrorist activities until Israel is defeated.

Writer’s Comment: This could easily get out of hand and lead to the fulfillment of several prophecies (Psa. 83 if that is a war; the Destruction of Damascus as prophesied in Isa. 17; the Battle of Gog and Magog as prophesied in Ezek. 38-39; time will tell.).

Eight, violence is on the increase, and some politicians want to defund the police and take the guns away from law-abiding citizens, but the globalist goal is only partly to prevent citizens from defending themselves against criminals.

The globalist goal is primarily to prevent citizens from defending the U.S. against the shadow government’s takeover of the U.S.

For whatever it is worth, thousands of people have marched in Paris and other French cities four weeks in a row to protest the loss of their freedoms.

On Aug. 6, protests erupted in Turin, Italy.

Nine, on Aug. 6, 2021, a guest on Fox & Friends said the strongest outbreak of the Covid Delta Variant is in Texas and Florida, and those two states are where the Biden administration has taken the largest number of Covid-infected migrants.

Ten, concerning global pandemics and the Mark of the Beast, on July 25, 2021, The Times of Israel reported on a study that found that people vaccinated before Feb. 2021 are twice as likely to get Covid as those vaccinated in June 2021 for two reasons: 1) Their vaccine effectiveness decreases over time and is becoming less effective every day; and 2) The Delta Variant is more contagious than the original Covid-19, and therefore more able to overcome the resistance of their declining vaccination.

The doctor that headed up the study said, “We definitely need to think about a third vaccine.”

It is the opinion of this writer that the globalists will want people to take a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. vaccination until they bring in the Mark of the Beast.

Update: On Aug. 5, 2021, Moderna said data shows a noticeable drop in antibody levels 6-8 months after a vaccinated person’s second jab, so vaccinated people will need to get a booster shot this fall.

Writer’s Comment: Just a reminder to U.S. citizens that Pres. Biden said, “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccines.”

Eleven, concerning world government: it is widely known that the World Economic Forum (WEF) wants to establish a world government and eliminate private property ownership by 2030 or before.

The WEF even produced a video saying, “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”

My article “Developing Now,” posted two weeks ago, quoted Tony Koretz who said, “A global medical dictatorship is rising.”

I added that “It is hard to deny that the shadow government is using unelected individuals to dictate policies to nations all over the world.”

On Aug. 3, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) extended the U.S. government’s eviction moratorium, a document that allows renters in areas that have a high level of Covid to not pay their rent.

Put another way, property owners that have rented their house, apartment, etc., to someone else must make the mortgage payments (if the property owner has a mortgage payment), pay to keep the house, apartment, etc., repaired, and the property owner cannot evict the renter for not paying their rent (the renter can live in the house free, and the property owner must pay the bills).

The fact that the CDC (a medical group) can force private property owners to make the property payments and let renters live in the property free sure looks like a global medical dictatorship has taken over.

The real owners of the property are not happy with making the payments and receiving no rent.

Twelve, on Aug. 4, 2021, concerning a Mark on the forehead to buy and sell, it was reported that Amazon is now using palm scanners at 53 Amazon-owned stores, and it plans to expand the program to other stores in the U.S.

Customers can use a simple hand scan to pay, enter or I.D. themselves, and Amazon will give them a $10 promotional credit to sign up.

Before my final word, pastor Keith Watts asked me to include this paragraph in my article (something I can’t start doing for ministries all over the world): “I am asking all prayer warriors from around the world to join with us for a day of prayer, fasting, and repentance on August 16, 2021, for the sake of the Philippines and on behalf of over 110,950,213 precious souls. We will be fasting from the time we wake up until we go to bed, interceding on behalf of the lost souls in the Philippines.”

Finally, are you Rapture Ready?

If you want to be rapture ready and go to heaven, you must be born again (John 3:3). God loves you, and if you have not done so, sincerely admit that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus is the virgin-born, sinless Son of God who died for the sins of the world, was buried, and raised from the dead; ask Him to forgive your sins, cleanse you, come into your heart and be your Saviour; then tell someone that you have done this.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.3

752 – Mayan king Bird Jaguar IV of Yaxchilan in modern-day Chiapas, Mexico, assumes the throne. 1481 – The largest of three earthquakes strikes the island of Rhodes and causes an estimated 30,000 casualties. 1491 – Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I. 1616 – Treaty of Loudun ends a French civil war. 1715 – A total solar eclipse is visible across northern Europe and northern Asia, as predicted by Edmond Halley to within four minutes accuracy. 1791 – The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) is proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. 1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city after Congress abolishes the Board of Commissioners, the District's founding government. The "City of Washington" is given a mayor-council form of government. 1808 – Finnish War: Sweden loses the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia. 1808 – Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels who rose up on May 2 are executed near Príncipe Pío hill. 1815 – Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples, is defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war. 1830 – The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway is opened; it is the first steam-hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel. 1837 – The University of Athens is founded in Athens, Greece. 1848 – The boar-crested Anglo-Saxon Benty Grange helmet is discovered in a barrow on the Benty Grange farm in Derbyshire. 1849 – The May Uprising in Dresden begins: The last of the German revolutions of 1848–49. 1855 – American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua. 1901 – The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida. 1913 – Raja Harishchandra, the first full-length Indian feature film, is released, marking the beginning of the Indian film industry. 1920 – A Bolshevik coup fails in the Democratic Republic of Georgia. 1921 – Ireland is partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. 1921 – West Virginia becomes the first state to legislate a broad sales tax, but does not implement it until a number of years later due to enforcement issues. 1928 – The Jinan incident begins with the deaths of twelve Japanese civilians by Chinese forces in Jinan, China, which leads to Japanese retaliation and the deaths of over 2,000 Chinese civilians in the following days. 1939 – The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. 1942 – World War II: Japanese naval troops invade Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo that results in the Battle of the Coral Sea between Japanese forces and forces from the United States and Australia. 1945 – World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay. 1947 – New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect. 1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable. 1951 – London's Royal Festival Hall opens with the Festival of Britain. 1951 – The United States Senate Committee on Armed Services and United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations begin their closed door hearings into the relief of Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman. 1952 – Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States land a plane at the North Pole. 1952 – The Kentucky Derby is televised nationally for the first time, on the CBS network. 1957 – Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. 1963 – The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responds with violent force to stop the "Birmingham campaign" protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing new-found attention to the civil rights movement. 1971 – Erich Honecker becomes First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, remaining in power until 1989. 1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States. 1979 – Margaret Thatcher wins the United Kingdom general election. The following day, she becomes the first female British Prime Minister. 1986 – Twenty-one people are killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb explodes on Air Lanka Flight 512 at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka. 1987 – A crash by Bobby Allison at the Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama fencing at the start-finish line would lead NASCAR to develop the restrictor plate for the following season both at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega. 1999 – The southwestern portion of Oklahoma City is devastated by an F5 tornado, killing forty-five people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. The tornado is one of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak. This tornado also produces the highest wind speed ever recorded, measured at 301 +/- 20 mph (484 +/- 32 km/h). 1999 – Infiltration of Pakistani soldiers on Indian side results in the Kargil War. 2000 – The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet. 2001 – The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947. 2007 – The three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann disappears in Praia da Luz, Portugal, starting "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". 2015 – Two gunmen launch an attempted attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was held in response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting. 2016 – Eighty-eight thousand people are evacuated from their homes in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada as a wildfire rips through the community, destroying approximately 2,400 homes and buildings.

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Thursday, June 24, 2021

World’s most expensive cities for expats in 2021 revealed (CNN) Ashgabat in Turkmenistan is the most expensive city in the world for overseas workers, according to this year’s Mercer Cost of Living Survey. The annual report ranks 209 cities based on the comparative cost of expenses including housing, transportation, food and entertainment, with New York City used as a baseline comparison. The Turkmenistan capital, which was number two on last year’s list, is something of an outlier in the top 10, which mostly features business hubs like Hong Kong (last year’s priciest city and this year’s second priciest), Tokyo (number four for 2021), Zurich (number five for 2021) and Singapore (number seven for 2021). Perhaps the biggest change from last year’s Mercer survey sees Beirut rising from the 45th most expensive city for international workers in 2020 to the third priciest for 2021. Mercer puts this development down to Lebanon’s economic depression, which was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Port of Beirut explosion in August last year. Meanwhile, as the Euro gained almost 11% against the US dollar, European cities were ranked comparatively more expensive than their US counterparts. This led to New York City dropping out of the Mercer top 10 altogether, while Paris climbed the rankings from number 50 in 2020 to number 33 in 2021.

Pressure builds to open U.S.-Canada border (Washington Post) A Florida man takes out ads to call out the U.S. and Canadian governments for failing to lift border restrictions. Lawmakers use salty-ish language. Business owners worry about losing a second lucrative summer season. As restrictions on nonessential travel across the U.S.-Canada land border enter their 16th month this week, pressure is rising on both sides for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Biden to crack it open—even a little—or to provide something, anything, about what a reopening plan might look like. Ottawa on Monday did announce some changes at the border, to start July 5. They’d allow Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are fully inoculated with a Health Canada-authorized vaccine, and who test negative for covid-19 before and after arrival, to bypass some quarantine and testing requirements. But the announcement means most fully vaccinated foreigners, including Americans, who hope to enter Canada for nonessential purposes are out of luck. And a growing number of lawmakers, residents and business groups on both sides of the world’s longest undefended border are out of patience.

GOP filibuster blocks Democrats’ big voting rights bill (AP) The Democrats’ sweeping attempt to rewrite U.S. election and voting law suffered a major setback in the Senate Tuesday, blocked by a filibuster wall of Republican opposition to what would be the largest overhaul of the electoral system in a generation. The vote leaves the Democrats with no clear path forward, though President Joe Biden declared, “This fight is far from over.” The bill, known as the For the People Act, would touch on virtually every aspect of how elections are conducted, striking down hurdles to voting that advocates view as the Civil Rights fight of the era, while also curbing the influence of money in politics and limiting partisan influence over the drawing of congressional districts. But many in the GOP say the measure represents instead a breathtaking federal infringement on states’ authority to conduct their own elections without fraud—and is meant to ultimately benefit Democrats. The rejection forces Democrats to reckon with what comes next for their top legislative priority in a narrowly divided Senate.

The Cuba embargo (Foreign Policy) The U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote to condemn the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, in a resumption of what has become an annual tradition at the body following a pandemic-related pause in 2020. Up until last year, the assembly had overwhelmingly voted to admonish the United States over the embargo each year since 1992. The United States and Israel tend to be the only two nations to reject the resolution, although Brazil joined them in 2019. The vote coincides with increased U.S. support for a temporary suspension of the embargo during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a recent poll showing 66 percent of Americans surveyed supporting a suspension in order for Cuba to export its home-grown vaccines. On Monday, Cuba announced that its Abdala vaccine—one of several vaccine candidates—was roughly 92 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 infection.

France’s Macron Pushes Controls on Religion to Pressure Mosques (WSJ) President Emmanuel Macron is redrawing the line that separates religion and state, in a battle to force Islamic organizations into the mold of French secularism. In recent months, his administration has ousted the leadership of a mosque after temporarily closing it and poring over its finances. Another mosque gave up millions in subsidies after the government pressured local officials over the funding. A dozen other mosques have faced orders to close temporarily for safety or fire-code violations. The government has taken these actions as a precursor to a much broader push to rein in the independence of mosques and other religious organizations across France. Mr. Macron has submitted a bill to Parliament, called the Law Reinforcing Respect of the Principles of the Republic, that would empower the government to permanently close houses of worship and dissolve religious organizations, without court order, if it finds that any of their members are provoking violence or inciting hatred. In addition, the bill would allow temporary closure of any religious group that spreads ideas that incite hatred or violence. Religious organizations would have to obtain government permits every five years to continue operating, and have their accounts certified annually if they receive foreign funding.

Can pandemic recovery plan end Italy’s years of stagnation? (AP) The COVID-19 pandemic hit Italy especially hard, killing more than 127,000 people and sending the European Union’s third-largest economy into a devastating tailspin. Yet out of that tragedy may come solutions for decades-old problems that have held back growth and productivity—and with them, a new sense of stability for the euro, the currency shared by 19 of the European Union’s 27 members. Backed by 261 billion euros from the EU and Italian government, the country’s plan for recovering from the pandemic calls for a top-to-bottom shakeup of a major industrial economy long hampered by red tape, political reluctance to change, and bureaucratic and educational inertia. The challenge is formidable: Italy has failed to show robust growth in the more than two decades since it joined the euro currency union in 1999. Execution of the recovery plan remains a risk given Italy’s often-fractious politics. But “if they succeed with even half, it will have a big impact,” said Guntram Wolff, director of the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.

Militias in Afghanistan’s north are taking up the fight against the Taliban (Washington Post) A sweeping Taliban offensive across northern Afghanistan, unchecked by overstretched government forces, has triggered a sudden resurgence of anti-Taliban militias in half a dozen provinces, raising concerns that the country could plunge into a prolonged civil war. President Ashraf Ghani has endorsed the sudden call to arms by former ethnic rival groups. The Ghani government hopes the added support will shore up the beleaguered national defense forces, which have struggled to send reinforcements and supplies to troops facing repeated Taliban attacks. But the prospect of unleashing a hodgepodge of rogue warriors to repel their old enemies also raises the specter of civil war, a state of violent anarchy that Afghans remember all too well from the 1990s. And although the armed groups have pledged to coordinate with government forces, it is also possible that effort could unravel into confused, competing clashes among purported allies. In the past several days, fighting has been reported in nine provinces across the north, and armed militias or civilian groups have formed to repel the insurgents, often fighting alongside state forces. All are loyal to local leaders from minority Tajik, Uzbek or other ethnic groups that have no love for Ghani, a member of the dominant ethnic Pashtun group based in southern Afghanistan.

China prepares for Communist Party centenary in secret (AP) Chinese authorities have closed Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square to the public, eight days ahead of a major celebration being planned to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party. The square, which normally attracts tourists from around the country, was barricaded Wednesday and will remain closed until July 2. The party will showcase the country’s rise from civil war and disastrous political campaigns in the early years of communist rule to market reforms that have created the world’s second largest economy, with a superpower status rivaled only by the United States. Old habits die hard, however, and arrangements for the July 1 anniversary remain shrouded in secrecy. Around Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City former palace complex and other scenic sites are also closed. Flyovers by air force squadrons suggest an aerial review is in the planning, but authorities have yet to release details. The ruling party was established in secrecy in 1921, following the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912. It held its first session at a girl’s school in Shanghai, and later moved to a lake boat to evade agents of the local warlord.

Apple Daily Shuts Down (Foreign Policy) On Wednesday, crowds of Hong Kong residents gathered in support outside the headquarters of Apple Daily, one of the last bastions of media resistance to Beijing, as it sent its final edition to print. The paper announced it would close after the arrests of senior leadership this week under the draconian national security law introduced last year. Banks froze the newspaper’s assets to avoid being charged themselves. The rollout of the national security law has seen successive groups targeted: first protest leaders, then democratic politicians, and now journalists. More than 800 Apple Daily staff have lost their jobs while Hong Kong has lost its long-cherished freedom of speech. But the impact of the closure goes far beyond journalism in Hong Kong. Each move like this raises the stakes for other sectors, especially academia and entertainment. Any challenge to the government has become a risk, making self-censorship even more likely. This kind of sweeping coercion has long been the norm on the mainland; in Hong Kong, it provides more proof China has shattered its promise to maintain “One Country, Two Systems” until 2047.

Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics (AP) The Tokyo Olympics, already delayed by the pandemic, are not looking like much fun: Not for athletes. Not for fans. And not for the Japanese public. They are caught between concerns about the coronavirus at a time when few are vaccinated on one side and politicians who hope to save face by holding the games and the International Olympic Committee with billions of dollars on the line on the other. Japan is famous for running on consensus. But the decision to proceed with the Olympics—and this week to permit some fans, if only locals—has shredded it. The official cost of the Tokyo Olympics is $15.4 billion, but government audits suggest it’s twice that. All but $6.7 billion is public money. The IOC chips in only about $1.5 billion to the overall cost. The pressure to hold the games is largely financial for the Switzerland-based IOC, a nonprofit but highly commercial body that earns 91% of its income from broadcast rights and sponsorship.

World Powers Gather for Libya Conference (Foreign Policy) World powers gather today in Berlin to discuss a path forward for Libya, ten years after a NATO-led coalition helped oust former leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and eight months since warring factions agreed to a cease-fire in the country’s six-year civil war. The group of countries last met in January 2020. Since then, the October cease-fire has been followed by the selection in February of a transitional government. Today’s discussion will focus on the next steps in Libya’s transition, including preparations for elections in December and the removal of foreign fighters still active in the country. According to United Nations estimates, more than 20,000 foreign fighters and mercenaries from Syria, Russia, Sudan, and Chad remain in Libya. Although today’s meeting is a time to improve on positive developments, Libya is still far from a functioning state. Nearly 20 percent of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance, and the country remains a magnet for human traffickers as they move desperate migrants across the Mediterranean and into Europe.

Witnesses say airstrike in Ethiopia's Tigray kills dozens (AP) An airstrike hit a busy market in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray village of Togoga on Tuesday, according to health workers who said soldiers blocked medical teams from traveling to the scene. Dozens of people were killed, they and a former resident said, citing witnesses. Two doctors and a nurse in Tigray’s regional capital, Mekele, told The Associated Press they were unable to confirm how many people were killed, but one doctor said health workers at the scene reported “more than 80 civilian deaths.” The health workers spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The alleged airstrike comes amid some of the fiercest fighting in the Tigray region since the conflict began in November as Ethiopian forces supported by those from neighboring Eritrea pursue Tigray’s former leaders.

No laundry day in space (AP) On the International Space Station, there is no such thing as laundry day. Right now, an astronaut needs about 150 pounds of clothes in space per year, and will wear their clothes—gym, underwear, all of it—until they cannot stand the smell, and then throw the clothes away, ejecting the shirts to eventually burn up in the atmosphere. A new study, a collaboration between NASA and Procter & Gamble Co., will attempt to find a good way to clean clothes in space.