#do NOT tell this to your republican relatives

[man1cpixiedreamcowboy]

vet told my roommate that her cat might need sex reassignment surgery and i'm not even joking

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[contemplatingoutlander]

“'We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,' Russell Vought [co-author of Project 2025], who has been tapped by Mr. Trump to lead the Office of Management and Budget, has said. 'When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.'”

If we want federal civil servants not to just abandon their jobs under the pressure of a hostile Trump administration, they will need support from the public. In this essay by Stacey Young, a lawyer in the DOJ civil rights division, explains the help that is needed. This is a gift 🎁 link, so there is no paywall. Below are some excerpts.

Federal employees like me have been hearing a lot in recent weeks about how important it is for us to stay in our jobs, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s open animosity toward much of the federal work force. We’ve been told by friends, relatives and good-government advocates that a well-functioning government — and the survival of our democracy — depends on it. We know. We understand what will happen if Mr. Trump fills the civil service with unqualified, inexperienced people selected for their political loyalty. But to stay in our jobs, we will need more than exhortation; we will need legal, psychological and other practical support. One reason many federal employees are thinking of leaving government — often after decades of serving our country, under Republican and Democratic presidents — is that we’re afraid. The incoming leaders of the government have told us in aggressive terms that they want us either gone or miserable.  [...]

What sorts of practical support would help? For one thing, lawyers and mental health providers could offer pro bono or significantly discounted services to federal employees.... Data-removal companies that specialize in taking down personal information online could offer free or discounted plans to federal employees who are being harassed or at risk of harassment. Friends and family members of federal employees with young children or other caregiving responsibilities could offer to pitch in. (Without their help, employees who are stripped of their ability to do some remote work or forced to adhere to overly rigid work schedules may have no choice but to leave their jobs.) Concerned citizens could urge their elected representatives to promote legislation that protects civil servants and oppose draconian bills that would harm them. Those with money to spare could donate to organizations that work to protect public servants. And if you value the civil service, don’t just tell us; tell your friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members too — especially whenever the pernicious “deep state” narrative rears its ugly head.

[mesetacadre]

A brief look at the history of liberal democracy will show that oppression of minorities and the absence of certain rights is not only compatible with but even the norm for liberal democracies. This expansion in broad rights is a relatively very recent development, awarded by the expansion and enrichment of the worker aristocracy originated under the pressure of the socialist USSR and Eastern Europe mostly spearheaded by social-democracy. Denounce the loss of rights, of course, and don't just grow depressedly despondent or delude yourself by getting an aesthetically progressive hobby. But to properly deliver that demand you need to be aware of how it comes to be. It's not "the end of democracy", nor is it fascistic when you lose rights. Liberal democracy started constituting a reactionary force as soon as the proletariat was consolidated as a class within capitalism in the mid-late 19th century, which means that you can't take the mantle of the defense of liberal democracy in the struggle to gain or keep these rights, because liberal democracy simply is not on that side of the struggle.

Neither Trump nor the US Republican party have invented the regression in rights, and they are not doing this because they're all personally evil. In a context of economic stagnation and a beginning of a recession, plus the gearing up of a war economy, social spending is cut, and the precarity the capitalist class demands to achieve a temporary boost in the falling rate of profit creates social discontent. This discontent is distracted and rerouted to reactionary sentiments, useful to the capitalist class, such as the mounting xenophobia, blaming the cheap labor brought by immigrants that the capitalist class simultaneously needs to maintain the rate of profit at an acceptable level. They play into nationalism to insulate each country's working class from the rest of the world and to convince workers their interests and their nation's (their nation's capitalists') interests are the same. They play into homophobia and transphobia to further divide and distract the working class, and to keep those minorities exerting a downwards pressure on wages and conditions as they're forced into desperation. They play into the fairy tale of a democracy to defend as well. They convince millions and millions that the other party, whichever it is, will save you from the evil doing of all the other parties. They tell you to defend the very apparatus that attacks and represses you and your fellow workers, the apparatus that has, since its birth, served the interests of a single class, the capitalist class. The US Democrats, the green parties, the socialdemocrats, the feminists and their mothers all defend the interests of whichever sector of the capitalist class by binding those to the institutions of workers.

Donald Trump is not a fascist. Even if part of his support base is, even if his campaign donors also fund actual fascists abroad and salute Hitler, he isn't one because he doesn't need to be. If liberal democracy can protect the reflux of the capitalist system into a more brutal one, then it has no need to put a fascist gorilla in charge. Do not be convinced that liberal democracy is something to be defended and something antithetical to the most reactionary tendencies in a society, because it isn't. It has never served your class interests and it never will. Only a classist, organized opposition can truly defend you. It doesn't even have to complete an overthrow, all of the rights you enjoy as a worker, especially the most robust ones, have been taken from their claws through an organized class opposition. The only rights a liberal democracy has ever awarded by its own volition are the rights of the capitalists. The right to own the press, the right to employ a workforce, the right to private property, etc, because it originally had to take the reins away from the feudal forms of the economy. And it is only through those partial, organized and classist struggles that we can work towards ridding ourselves of the government of the industrialist and of the corner store owner. Not by having a good time with your 5 friends, not by doing whatever you feel like doing whenever you want. By creating a collective strategy of the working class, in the single party of the working class. This is not a dream, it has a vast historical precedent from which we can only learn from.

[findme-at1am]

DONT LET THE ABOVE FOOL YOU INTO THINKING ITS JUST ONE ACT, THEY'VE ENACTED PROJECT 2025 BY ROLLING BACK MANY ENVIRONMENT PROTECTIONS AND FEDERAL MINING REGULATIONS.

Of course the above article catches me making a masterpost for KY TODAY and I gotta redo the beginning. This is just the start but better late than never. Link for article published MARCH 3RD:

https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article301177474.html

The bill above is House Bill 6, dubbed the "REINS Act"for "Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny," from Rep. Wade Williams, R-Earlington, disallows state agencies (judicial branch I believe) from taking action that isn't explicitly authorized by the Kentucky General Assembly if it costs more than $500,000 over two years.

Link for the bill:

Gov. Beshear's veto/280 page response:

A nice highlight: (from the effects of Legislator's REIN Act on Beshear's powers as Gov.)

"Had the General Assembly chosen to adopt a "disaster fund" as most states have, and as I have proposed in the past, there would be a separate mechanism to provide financing to address exigent circumstances without requiring a delay to seek additional funding."

For a Gov. Abusing his power it's amazing the 280 page veto where he had very informed information for his appeals to each clause: Just some below.

Gov. Andy Beshear has passed bills assisting the Energy and Environment Cabinet, he's been a dem "on the fence" (he so badly wants to be energy efficient if everyone here didn't prioritize coal or hate change (ahem with no programs I've seen to streamline coal miners to other energy efficient jobs)) over the balance of the environment and oil like any average Kentuckian is. But he's made comments congratulating Biden on his administrations efforts of balancing a new age of electric and energy efficiency with oils/"natural energy" and he's definitely fell to Biden's side.

Donald Trash of course doesn't like any pushback to his Project 2025 plans and his oil companies backing him definitely helped buy out Republicans as seen below @ the bottom of the article:

Delaying our AG's response time to bring relief to kentuckians and needing disaster relief authorized by the General Assembly for floods that usually overtake most of the water state is so much bigger than being "unelected" when Beshear has for the general part, done right by Kentuckians in terms of flood relief and responding to disasters and have exceptional bills passed.

TELL YOUR SENATOR TO REJECT SENATE BILL 257 AGAINST "K.O.G.E" AND YOUR REPS/LEGISLATORS TO SPEAK UP!!

KY WRITE YOUR REPS TO HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE AND WRITE YOUR SENATORS TO APPEAL HOUSE BILL 6 THEY PLAN ON USING TO DAMPEN THE GOVERNOR'S/AG/CABINETS POWERS.

APPEAL HOUSE BILL 6 TO ALLOW THE ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT CABINET TO DO THEIR JOBS WITHOUT DELAYED APPROVAL!!

Below are more topics to bring up to KY representatives:

More Topics To Send To Representatives

Link for DOGE Cuts To Federal Offices, Many Relating to Safety Standards to our main production value as a water state; coal.

Right After Pushing Back Protections for the state MOSTLY AFFECT BY RAIN WATER AND FLOODS SO WHY NOT DIG INTO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AND TAKE A CHANCE NEXT RAIN SHOWER!!! AFTER ADDING EXTRA DELAYS TO DISASTER RELIEF!!! SMART!!!! ESPECIALLY WITH RECORD HIGH WATER LEVELS THIS YEAR WHILE DEPRIORITISING ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT CABINET AND THE REGULATIONS THAT WATCH SAID WATER LEVEL!! WOOOHWEE!

This last one's my favorite.

(Btw they're clinging to that unelected argument as if AG's/Governor doesn't go through the process, and not just labelled "the president's specialest person" like their leader Musky that's paying them through other contracted billionaires.)

And here's a copy paste to the main sponsor of the last article, Senate Bill 89:

(Context:"Sen. Scott Madon, R-Pineville, the bill’s primary sponsor, reiterated his criticism of “government overreach” by the state’s environmental protection cabinet in its decisions about coal-industry permits."

“God put coal under our feet so that we can use it. It’s one of the greatest natural resources, and it’s our job to push back on unelected bureaucrats,” Madon said on the Senate floor.)

Start Script:

“God put coal under our feet so that we can use it. It’s one of the greatest natural resources, and it’s our job to push back on unelected bureaucrats,” you said on the Senate floor.

So suddenly we're standing up to the unelected? Is this why there's a personal attack on the Democratic governor by suppressing his legal powers with extra and unexplained checks and balances that have yet to be justified in 2024? More delays to disaster relief isn't what Kentuckians voted you in for. Allowing an unelected and unqualified individual to run a recently presented branch of government called DOGE is the epitome of humiliating for ALL Americans who live to see this administration just for a good Governor to be attacked. But we're yet to see anyone call Elon Musk or any overseer of DOGE out.

A threat to democracy means a threat to the bureaucracy that defends us from hostile contracts and allows safety training and stricter regulations for coal mining in a state with literal "Rocky Mountains." That's been dealt with tremendous floods not seen in decades in some areas and polluted drinking water in some counties relying on a boil water advisory because no one came forth with an apology for rolling back environment protections in a state that needed it most during the Biden administration.

"The bill changes the definition of regulated state waters by removing “all rivers, streams, creeks, lakes, ponds, impounding reservoirs, springs, wells, marshes, and all other bodies of surface or underground water, natural or artificial.” The definition would be changed to directly refer to the federal definition of “navigable waters.” The bill also designates bonding requirements for coal companies seeking permits for long-term treatment of water leaving mine sites."

Kentucky specifically needs to regulate its own waters as we, and only ourselves, know the true expanse of dangers civilians have to deal with when the drainage from other states target specific counties. We are known for water, despite no great lakes for a reason. Waiting for a general assembly is one of the worst possible outcomes from all of the registration passed this year when Kentucky's latest flooding was horrific but thankfully due to our Governor foresight, we were still struggling in terms of relief response and a measly 500,000 won't cut it for immediate help like calling the national guard for areas unreachable by regular vehicles. We had 24 people die, I've never heard of such a high number of deaths in floods but I'm lucky to be 23 and not know of Pineville's specifically, I had the benefit of the doubt thinking you did. I was wrong.

The second being "-impounding reservoirs, springs, wells, marshes, and all other bodies of surface or underground water, natural or artificial."

Those "marshes" include the yards of houses and homes that aren't covered for flooding from insurance companies because "they're in an area known for flooding". Not enforcing insurance for home's yards and then retracting back environmental protections is intentionally in bad faith to those who will be affected, those being homeowners, landlords and those looking to build anything energy efficient in the long run. You being a main sponsor in this bill is a disgrace to anyone who knows the Bell County area.

Rolling over and allowing cuts to our water protection agencies and people still on waiting lists for SS just for a whole office to be closed by DOGE? It only further threatens the state's and cabinets approach to relief when our state has yet to make an Emergency Fund. We 100% rely on the fast acting of our most crucial employees and Gov. if we want to react and prevent and future deaths. Your complacent role in all of this will be seen under God.

End Script.

Pls add whatever you want or feel compelled to speak about, I take important sentences in articles I find important and love contributions. (Edit: I detailed up the script a bit.)

[hidefdoritos]

If I didn't have good parents for the holidays, I would absolutely participate in the Rent-A-Queer market.

Options include:

Manic Pixie Dream Elf: I will arrive in a galaxy-printed cloak with elf ears and a sword. I know entirely too much about Lord of the Rings and can entertain your cousins with the ley of Beren and Luthien from memory. Egregious glittery eyeshadow is $10.

Dirtbag: I'll cuss my ex all night until it's painfully clear that I'm obsessed with them. I'll whisper obscenities to you and slap your butt when you get up from the table. Hitting on other relatives is $20 per relative.

Punk: Will wear all black with lots of chains and enormous headphones. Will tell your little cousin what ACAB stands for. Will sulk menacingly in a corner so you can sit on your phone next to me. Fake piercings $10, temporary tattoos $20, hair dye $40.

Punk Poser: Do you share blood with a pretentious gatekeep-y punk? I'll wear safety-pinned jeans and a Fall Out Boy shirt. I will corner them and ramble about how I only like MCR's new stuff and TX2. Clip-on furry tail is $15.

Religious Leftist: Want someone who knows their Bible cover to cover? Who offers to say grace? Who prays openly for the racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, Republicans, and capitalists to find the light of Jesus' love? Who has a prepackaged rant on the Image of God to explain why they don't shave? I'll do this job for free.

Dom: This requires extensive pre-negotiation. However, whether you want to scandalize your family with lesbian affection, T4T affection, femboy x Butch affection, or simply being "straight" in an "incorrect" way, I will take any action agreed upon to make it clear that I own you. And you like it.

Social Justice Warrior: Is your family racist? Are you the only vegan in the room? Do you want another trans person? Is your aunt weird about unions or minimum wage? I am 240 lbs of white nonbinary weightlifter who is passionate about a cause of your choice. Prices vary based on whether your relatives fight with passive-aggression, actual arguments, or punches.

Build-a-Butch: This is my most flexible package. Tailor to annoy your family! Options include Trucker Butch (has opinions about every company and dock layout in the area), Sports Butch (roots for the opposite football team), Hunter Butch (will lie through my teeth about my rifle jamming when I had a 12-point buck in my sight), Business Butch (uses degree to dunk on crypto and Elon Musk), and Redneck Butch (tells your uncle directly that his moonshine tastes like crap).

Normal Partner: Have you been single just a little too long, and Nana is just a little too invested? I'll be so sweet and considerate that everyone will approve. There will be a bonus fee if you actually fall in love with me. I will refund it in cash and cry happy tears during our wedding vows.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

This image by Doug Mills NYT of today's new conference is really something.

(Amy Siskind)

* * * *

Special Counsel: "Trump would have been convicted."

January 14, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

[Note: Due to the late release of the special counsel’s report, this newsletter is a bit disjointed. I wanted to publish on schedule despite the late-breaking news, so I ask your understanding for the seeming lack of organization.]

Last Saturday, I spoke to readers on a Substack livestream. My thesis was that the next week will be among the most challenging we will face as Americans who care about the rule of law.

We will witness a president-elect—who tried to overturn the Constitution in his prior term—swear that he will “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”—words that will metastasize into a lie the moment he utters them. He will desecrate the Bible on which he places his hand.

The oath will be administered by a Chief Justice who granted the president-elect immunity from criminal liability, freeing Trump to ignore, attack, and undermine the Constitution.

We will watch confirmation hearings in which woefully unqualified nominees are hypocritically defended by a Republican Party that pays lip service to patriotism, law and order, and morality—except when it comes to GOP nominees credibly accused of rape, sexual assault, addictions, national security concerns, and promises to use the DOJ to exact vengeance on the president’s political opponents.

Those anticipated events are enough to make a rational person take to their bed and pull the covers over their head for the next four years. But it gets worse. Trump and MAGA are threatening to hold the victims of the Los Angeles wildfires as hostages to their efforts to raise the national debt limit (necessary to extend the 2017 tax cuts to billionaires and corporations). See Daily Beast, Republicans Float Holding California Fire Aid Hostage for Key Trump Policy.

It simply doesn’t get any more despicable than that. Every Republican who suggests that aid for victims should be conditioned on tax breaks for billionaires deserves their own circle in Dante’s Inferno.

Today’s newsletter touches on a fair number of stories that can be viewed as “bad news.” Readers sometimes tell me that they stop reading such newsletters. I get it. But I don’t make up the news; I just comment on it.

The advice that I gave to readers on Saturday is that they should adopt two strategies to remain engaged during rough times:

First, don’t collapse the future into the present moment. The future comes at us one day at a time. We will have time to deal with potential crises as they unfold. We don’t have to “fix” everything today. To be sure, we should plan, prepare, and strategize. But not everything we are worried about will materialize. We may successfully stop or delay threats from materializing.

Second, maintain “emotional distance” from bad news. Recognize that you can’t control most of what Trump says or does. Given that fact, recognize that unchanneled anxiety and fear will not change the outcome. Focus on what you can do to change, impede, obstruct, or reverse policies we oppose. I am not saying “Don’t care” or “Hide your feelings.” Feeling anxious or fearful is understandable and natural. But recognize that we have a professional responsibility as citizens to remain informed so we can be effective advocates for the rule of law.

Okay, with that longer-than-usual throat clearing, let’s look at the stories that came at us with high velocity and frequency on Monday.

Judge Cannon continues to act in a lawless manner by obstructing release of portion of Jack Smith reports

Judge Aileen Cannon continues to issue orders regarding the reports of special counsel Jack Smith. As to the portion of the report relating to Trump's unlawful retention of national defense documents, Cannon has slowed the release of that document—including to Congress. Her order permitted the release of the portion of the report relating to Trump's election interference—a case over which she has no jurisdiction.

See MSNBC, Jack Smith's report on Trump election interference set for release after Cannon order

By the time you read this newsletter, it is highly likely that a portion of Jack Smith’s report will have been posted on the DOJ website. If so, I will address that report in Tuesday evening’s newsletter.

Judge Cannon’s unrestrained, lawless assertion of jurisdiction over matters plainly beyond her constitutional authority is a scandal for the federal judiciary. At one point in her order issued on January 13, Cannon says she doesn’t understand why the report regarding the national defense documents needs to be released to Congress. Cannon knows full well that one of Trump's nominees under consideration by the Senate (Kash Patel) is mentioned in the special counsel report.

Her order denying the report to Congress is nothing less than an effort to interfere with the Senate’s constitutional duty of “advice and consent.” See Emptywheel on Substack, Aileen Cannon Interfering with Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin's Constitutional Duty.

Both the 11th Circuit and the US Supreme Court are to blame for Cannon’s lawless actions—actions that undermine the faith of the American people in the third branch of government. Removal of Cannon from the cases (if not the bench) is long overdue.

UPDATE: Jack Smith’s report is released; says Trump would have been convicted

Per the NYTimes, Jack Smith’s report on Trump's election interference was released on Tuesday morning. See New York Times, Special Counsel Report Says Trump Would Have Been Convicted in Election Case. (Accessible to all.)

Per the Times, the report concluded:

The department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind.

Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.

Jack Smith’s reached the right conclusion—as is obvious to anyone who watched the January 6 insurrection and related coup unfold on live television.

Hearing on Hegseth nomination set for Tuesday

Despite his manifest unfitness, Pete Hegseth will sit for a confirmation hearing in the Senate on Tuesday. Hegseth lacks the experience and temperament to run a 2 million+ person organization. Hegseth has been accused of rape and sexual harassment. He has been accused of financial mismanagement. His chest is tattooed with symbols associated with Christian nationalists. He opposes women in combat positions in the military. He opposes diversity initiatives in the military.

Trump and his acolytes have turned support for Hegseth into a test of loyalty to Trump. See Intelligencer, Pete Hegseth Is a Test.

The FBI appears to have omitted important witnesses from Hegseth’s background check—including his former wives and the woman who told police in 2017 that Hegseth sexually assaulted her. See NBC News, Pete Hegseth's FBI background check doesn't include interviews with key women from his past.

Hegseth faces a long list of allegations of misconduct. See Mother Jones, A Running List of the Allegations Against Pete Hegseth – Mother Jones. We should expect Republicans to run interference for Hegseth while Democrats try to uncover the truth about Hegseth’s past.

[..]

Concluding Thoughts

January 20, 2025, is Martin Luther King Day. It is also Inauguration Day. I know that many readers will make plans to avoid watching the Inauguration. I know I will—because the Inauguration of Donald Trump will be a moment of national disgrace and desecration rather than an occasion for celebration of the peaceful transfer of power.

If you have other plans, I encourage you to keep them. But if you do not currently have other plans during the Inauguration, join me on a livestream on Substack. While I don’t have the program planned (because of the fires in LA), I intend—among other things—to read portions of Letter From Birmingham Jail and other appropriate documents. I am open to suggestions.

I can’t promise a glossy, high-value production. I can promise we will be together in community on a difficult day for everyone who holds America dear. Details to follow.

Stay strong! Talk to you tomorrow!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[ceilidhtransing]

I see people saying “a vote for a third party isn't a vote for Trump, no matter how much you try to tell me it is” and while this statement makes sense from one perspective, it also sadly just misunderstands the material reality of politics.

If we're talking about voting purely as something that affects the moral tally of your individual heart, then yes, a vote for the Greens or whatever isn't morally equivalent to a vote for Trump. If the way you think about this is in terms of getting to the pearly gates and being asked “and did you always vote for the purest and most morally clean person?” then yes, a Green vote is not the same as having to say “actually I voted for Trump”.

But down here in the real world where voting isn't about maintaining your own personal sense of having a Morally Untarnished Heart but about, you know, real material consequences, a vote for a third party is functionally, if not morally, equivalent to a vote for Trump. You might not be voting for Trump but you are voting in a way that only makes it harder for the only candidate that has an actual chance in hell of beating Trump to win. There is no world in which that does not simply help Trump. You are splitting the anti-Trump vote and making it easier for him to win because that is how this voting system unfortunately works. Frankly, you may as well be voting for Trump.

“But my vote isn't an endorsement of Trump! It's an endorsement of the exact opposite values of Trump!” Yes, but again, this terrible first-past-the-post voting system does not produce “the average of all the values that people voted for”. Any votes that don't go towards the winner are wasted votes. And the winner, especially if that winner is Trump, will not care that you voted Green. They will govern just the same, and your voice will carry no weight at all electorally.

“Stop blaming people who vote third party for all the terrible things Republicans decide to do! Those things aren't my fault; I didn't vote for them.” There is a certain value to the argument “it's not my fault for voting third party; it's the Democrats' fault for not putting up a candidate I could vote for”. But this slightly falls apart when it comes to the people who have already decided they will always vote third party, regardless of how perfect a candidate the Democrats run, so this whole “it's the Democrats' job to convince me” is purely theoretical. And I too hate the way our society often defaults to blaming leftists for whatever the right does, as if leftists are the only ones with political agency and the right can never be held accountable for anything. But when leftists had an opportunity to prevent the right from doing something evil and they chose their own moral purity over an imperfect choice that would nevertheless have prevented some harm, then no, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to place some of the blame on those people.

US presidential elections hang on relatively tiny numbers of people in only a few crucial swing states. And because 132,476 people in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin decided to vote Green rather than Democrat in 2016, abortion is illegal in 13 states. That's less than 0.04% of the US population. Even margins that small matter. And no, those people didn't vote “against abortion”, but their failure to tactically unite behind the candidate who would have protected reproductive rights and who had a chance of actually winning directly led to the victory of the anti-abortion candidate. I'm sure all the people who now can't access abortion (ironically, none of whom lives in MI, PA or WI) are really glad that those people voted with their hearts rather than strategically. Votes have consequences, and things do change (for the worse, as well as for the better), much as some people like to harp on about how “nothing ever changes” and “your vote doesn't matter”.

“But why are you blaming those people? What about the people who actually voted Republican? Or the people who didn't vote at all?” Well, first off, this post is about third-party voting, not Republican voters or non-voters. But I do feel there is more ground to be gained by talking about the consequences of third-party voting than by discussing the others. Many Republican voters are essentially unreachable; they're not remotely progressive, so trying to convince them that they should be voting Democrat is mostly like talking to a brick wall. And non-voters are the people who didn't show up anyway; arguably they should have shown up, but they didn't. But third-party voters got involved, made sure they were registered to vote, got all the way to the voting booth, and then decided to vote not in the way that would defend at least some progressive values, but in the way that would only make it harder to beat the ultra-regressive candidate. There's an understanding that a lot of third-party voters are on the right side, they're just not making the right strategic decision, which is why so much more progressive energy gets put towards trying to convince e.g. Green voters than towards trying to convince people who aren't even remotely on our side to begin with.

“But both major candidates are agents of capital who will ultimately work for the continuation of the American empire. I'm voting for the benefit of the world, not just for the benefit of a few people in the US.” I'm not going to argue with you over that first sentence, because yes, you are correct. Both Democrats and Republicans ultimately support capitalism and both Democratic and Republican presidents have been responsible for some absolutely heinous crimes of US foreign and military policy. But as a non-American, the idea that voting in a way that makes it easier for Trump to win rather than uniting behind the person who might actually beat him - who is still flawed, but orders of magnitude better than him - is in some way liberatory to the rest of the world is just... what??? Do you not hear the people who are screaming “please stop the guy who's basically in favour of Putin annihilating Ukraine and endangering the rest of Central and Eastern Europe”? The people who are screaming “please stop the guy who seems like he just can't wait to drop nukes somewhere”? The people who are screaming “please stop the guy whose victory will only embolden the far right in our own countries and make it harder for us to beat them here”? Non-Americans are, by and large, not saying “ah yes, we are grateful that you chose moral purity rather than supporting one of the two capitalist candidates who will continue US imperialism”; we are screaming “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LET TRUMP GET ELECTED; THIS WILL MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE FOR ALL OF US”. Your Green vote does not help the world right now. Please get behind the person who isn't a massive, immediate, almost unprecedented threat to everything we hold dear, and then we can fight for a better world together.

[lynxindisguise]

Obviously Project 2025 and the attack on women and members of the LGBTQ+ community is absolutely horrifying and very much real, no matter how much Trump has tried to distance himself from it.

But I want to talk about what's in the Republican Party's actual plan, because these are probably the things that will happen first, and it may also be helpful in terms of speaking to conservative relatives (especially the ones who are not fully gone far-right MAGA worshippers and are, instead, confused as to why everyone is so upset) about what exactly they voted for.

Mass deportations. This is the main platform he ran on. On a human level, this is horrifying, and it's going to cause unthinkable and unconscionable suffering. Maybe it'd be helpful to discuss how immigrants (including privileged white legal immigrants) pay taxes, can't vote, don't have access to benefits, and cannot risk committing even minor crimes for fear of deportation. Maybe it wouldn't. So. On an inhuman level, this is very expensive and a massive waste of resources. If you can't get people to give a shit about other human beings, you can at the very least ask how these deportations are not going to detract resources and attention away from the 'American needs' they keep harping on about.

Getting rid of all environmental regulations and AI regulations and amping up use of coal and oil. This is devastating for the entire world in the fight against climate change. I think this is how Trump means to reduce inflation, though his entire 'reduce taxes and reduce inflation' plan is so incredibly vague. At best, it's more trickle down theory bullshit.

Reducing American involvement in foreign conflicts. This sounds really great, actually. And yet. No foreign conflicts are specified—except for strengthening support to Israel. So. It would seem that the US is becoming even more involved in genocide, and most likely less involved in aiding Ukraine.

Improving the American education system. Hilariously, Trump's solution to a failing education system is to get rid of the Department of Education and leave everything up to the states? When you read on, it becomes clear that this is so schools can teach exclusively American history—and a very specific, propagandized version of it at that.

He mentions wanting to build a DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD around the US? Why is no one talking about this? This is formally written down. What the fuck does that mean?

He also talks about REDUCING censorship and protecting freedom of speech. In the coming years, I would ask your conservative relatives to hold him to that.

They also promised affordable housing, college, and healthcare. There's no plan for how the fuck they're going to do this while decreasing taxes, but I'd tell your conservative relatives to hold him to that as well.

The whole plan is here if you feel like reading the word 'great' 800 times. If you don't want propaganized idiots telling you you've fallen for the 'leftist propaganda,' come armed with indisputable facts of what the Republican Party has said they will do.

[slasherscream]

Hello! Hope all is well! So I saw your post about the election and I just wanted to say that we (republicans) don’t want anyone to kill themselves. I am sorry to anyone who is scared after the election results and I don’t hope that you all find somewhere you feel safe to process everything but I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t spread such nasty misinformation.

Are there probably republicans who think that? Unfortunately there probably are some people who wish ill on others who don’t share their beliefs but the same can be said about the Democratic Party. So please, please don’t say that republicans want democrats to kill themselves. I have a lot of democratic/independent friends and I don’t what I’d do if I lost them.

So again I truly do empathize with anyone who is suffering because of the results but please don’t try and spread misinformation. All that does is spread seeds of deceit and cause communities to ripe apart and divide. Which in turn, will make life harder and more filled with hate.

So from a republican, please don’t hurt or end your life because of this. I do hope everyone has a good day/night!

unfortunately, and i mean this with all the empathy i can muster, if you voted for donald trump in this election you do not care about the lives of the people i was telling not to harm or kill themselves.

you are now experiencing guilt for voting for the "leopards eat my face party" and over the next four years, as the man you voted into office slowly but surely worsens the quality of life for those democratic and independent friends you love "so much", you probably will lose a great deal of those friendships.

i am absolutely not spreading misinformation. what i did was make a post telling people to fight emotionally against nihilism, apathy, and defeatism.

while your message was relatively respectful it's so out of touch i need you to log off and go spend time with those people you love so much.

[cleoselene]

btw when i was yelling at one of Byron Donalds' aides today he tried to tell me he was fresh out of the Navy and was "deployed to Ukraine" and acted like it was the exact same thing as serving in any war and i fucking checked him SO hard and said "you were NOT deployed in a combat capacity, Ukraine has not asked for a SINGLE drop of our blood, do NOT act like you fought Russia when you are simping for an administration filled with Russian fucking assets

He also asked me, "Don't you want peace?" And I said, "Everyone wants peace, but not at the expensive of surrendering territory in a war of pure aggression."

I also talked about having relatives fight communism in Vietnam (okay this was bullshit lmao but he doesn't need to know it) and they didn't serve just to surrender to KGB Putin who wants to revive the Soviet Union and he was like "your relatives didn't fight Russia either in Vietnam" and I was like DO YOU KNOW WHAT A PROXY WAR IS? DO I HAVE TO EXPLAIN WHAT A PROXY WAR IS TO A CONGRESSIONAL AIDE?

But listening to a fucking US Republican CLAIM he was deployed to Ukraine and ACT like it was combat is frankly fucking galling. Absolutely galling. Ukraine has not asked for soldiers. They have asked for some of our comically oversized arsenal, and providing those weapons has provided American weapons manufacturers with jobs. Anyone who claims traditional Republican values and aligns with this administration is doing some serious doublethink

And this fucker was trying to sell me on valor he was stealing from the Ukrainian people.

[sokumotanaka]

Nah realistically this is how it'd go.

---

I got alot to say about this so let's go down the line.

First and foremost;

The specific lyrics don't correlate on a comparison front. RWBY never showed Adam the light of day, they killed him, could of easily jailed him, fixed the racism in the world no need for it to be like our own. But the white writers were lazy and then tried to blame it on them being white! When they hired expensive voice actors and yes men all the time!

Second; My hero failed really hard in terms of addressing the prejudice they set at the start of the series. Apparently this was better adressed in the manga but I looked at it and it seems exactly the same there. It's very late that they talk about mutant prejudice and it's in the lense of a back flash where all the characters say it sucks but then never talk about it again. I don't know about you but when me and my friends talk about prejudice and anti POC racism, it's never just one time, we discuss it often.

It was weird to think that certain stores wouldn't let Froppy and Ojiro in cause they're mutated. (Despite a quirk being a mutation for everyone but SURE) You'd think the heroes would have opinions on this. And Izuku has the worst opinion on prejudice. In the later arcs people start not letting mutants into places, not even shelters while villains are roaming around! Deku comes across this giant fox girl that's being attacked by random dudes who claim that because she's walking around looking like that it scared them...scared them into attacking with lethal weapons on an unarmed woman.

Now if this were well written you'd have some form of social commentary, but Horikoshi sucks as a writer and Deku tells the woman who was attacked "I'm sure those guys were scared too." Which is horrible to tell a person attacked based on her appearance but SUUURE! That's def what I want to hear from the HERO PROTAGONIST! Then during the great ninja war they have a bunch of mutants turn towards the only black character in MHA and repeat things like "Don't shoot, we aren't looters, you'll never understand!" like black people don't face racism and prejudices....ever!

Quirks are still relatively new to the world, they didn't exist forever, it's not uncommon for your grandparents to be quirkless so it's not like mutants have faced decades of racial segregation (And that's not me brushing aside their suffering but having them turn to a black person and say 'you won't understand' is ...tone deaf.) And not to mention the only villain Spinner fighting for mutant equality by trying to take down the system, gets stopped by Shoji, a character who didn't get to BE one until he had to step in to fight another mutant- then him telling spinner "You're gonna set us back 40 years!" Is so silly and funny coming from a character the narrative didn't want to give and growth to till he had to fight his own people so they can stay marginalized I guess.

MHA has the same issue as RWBY where the narrative and writers think that second class citizens should sit on their hands and just *Wait* till racist and republicans want to give us equality, then, we'll earn in.

Series like these embarrass me, especially when people compare them too X-men cause neither of these shows have a dark skinned poc even in the main roster- Ororo, STOMPS on your all pale skinned cast of fictional races and people with tails who don't get to do crap. That series at least addresses the sigma, the prejudice, the unfairness and people get to be angry and tell off racist.

MHA and RWBY? They'd so much as FAINT if they had to talk about racial and societal issues.

[black-rabbit-razumikhin]

Raz Reads Les Mis (XIX)

Marius - The Grandfather and the Grandson

So Gillenormand is a royalist

Which if the Waterloo chapter is anything to go by, is not the greatest thing to be in this book

But if the opening chapter (do we remember bishop Charlie?) has anything to say, then being a revolutionary is not great either

(Do we call them revolutionaries or republicans?)

But Gillenormand goes to taverns often, the sort of taverns whose drinking songs are all about how bad Napoleon is

Agreed, but certainly not for the same reasons

This is important because Gillenormand's daughter marries Pontmercy

The Pontmercy from the Waterloo chapter

Who is certainly no royalist

But he's a modest man and wears a scar from a sabre across his face and looks after flowers in his little garden

And he has a son called Marius

The Marius that this part of the book is named for

Pontmercy the father gives Marius to the custody of Gillenourmand because Gillenourmand can furnish Marius with a better inheritance

The catch? Pontmercy can never speak to his son for as long as he lives

Marius grows up believing his father hates him because he's never made contact with him

And Marius is 18 now? Somewhere around there I think

A letter arrives

Pontmercy is dying and wants to see Marius

Between the few hours that Marius delays his visit, Pontmercy dies, leaving only a letter to Marius to do good by Thernadier

Thernadier, the person who pickpocketed a dying Pontmercy and who hurt my poor, lovely Cosette

After his father's death and after a character-building visit to a church, Marius comes to learn how much his father loved him and how his lack of visits were due to impossibility not disinterest

He looks at the history of the French libertarian struggle, of Waterloo and of Napoleon

His royalist upbringing has been shattered

He adds to his name the title of 'Baron'

And prints out 100 cards to announce this

But he has nobody to give the cards to

There is some scene about him having a cousin named Theodule whom he has never met and who is a favourite of a mutual relative

Theodule's biggest gripe with life is the fact that he wasn't named Alfred

Pick your battles I suppose

But this anti-royalist sentiment that Marius now holds is not doing well for his family life

"A baron and a bourgious cannot remain under the same roof"

Marius goes packing

Nobody told me that Waterloo chapter actually mattered to the story! I thought it was set dressing! Suspense building! Adding to the atmosphere! And now I find out it matters? There is also something to be said about the sadness of the missed connections of parents forced to give up their children. I can't help but think that the relationship between Marius and his father mirrors that of Fantine and Cosette. Where the parent gives up their child for what they assume will be a better life and yearn for them and that longing can't be realised. And only too late does the child learn how much the parent loved them. Tragic familial love is something I never considered in stories, but it has been something this book has done really well.

Side question, but did Hugo enjoy writing Les Mis? Reading this sounds like he's excited and he's passionate about the story, but I can't tell if that's how French literature just sounds (I felt the same thing reading Dumas) or if he's actually having the time of his life going through this story.

[captaindibbzy]

I think we know the answer, but as it's coming up to Thanksgiving I wish you all a very "Why does the GOVERNMENT get to tell ME what books to read? What is this? Socialism? Think they can tell me where to piss too! AND what I can do with MY money!" At all your conservative republican relatives.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Leopards Are Telling You That They Will Eat YOUR Face

By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

Do you know this widely cited meme, introduced in a 2015 tweet?

“I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

It’s hard to explain why this is perfect, but it is. If Donald Trump wins, there will eventually be a lot of sobbing among people who voted for him.

Some of this will involve the frightening reality of authoritarianism; if you think you’ll be unaffected by a second Trump presidency because you aren’t undocumented or Puerto Rican or a Democratic politician, I encourage you to reassess. But I’ll get to that next week. Today I want to talk about more prosaic economic issues.

Many analysts have pointed out that Trump’s proposed tariffs would hurt most Americans, with only high-income individuals gaining enough from his tax cuts to make up the difference. Trump, of course, insists that taxes on imports — which are, essentially, a sales tax — won’t hurt American consumers. But, as The Washington Post reports, corporations are already getting ready to raise prices.

The inflationary impact of tariffs will, however, probably be only the beginning of the pain for millions of Americans if Trump wins. Over the past few days, two people who will very likely have a lot of policy influence if Republicans prevail have let the leopard out of the bag on what else we should expect from a Trump administration.

Perhaps most notably, Elon Musk — who Trump promises to appoint as the head of a government efficiency commission — says he could cut “at least $2 trillion” in federal spending, around 30 percent of the budget, declaring that it would be relatively easy given the amount of government waste, although he recently acknowledged that doing so “necessarily involves some temporary hardship.”

Those remarks alone tell you two things. First, that Musk doesn’t understand federal spending. Second, a new Trump administration would probably inflict a lot of hardship on millions of Americans, and it’s unlikely that it would be temporary.

Does the government waste money? Of course it does; so does every large organization — do you believe that every dollar Tesla disburses is well spent? But anyone asserting that waste accounts for a large fraction of federal spending really has no idea what the government does.

The federal government is best thought of as an insurance company with an army. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military spending, plus veterans’ benefits and interest payments on the debt account for about three-quarters of overall spending. Much of the rest involves essential functions of government, from operating the courts to providing air traffic control.

So any attempt at spending reductions on the scale Musk is talking about would necessarily involve savage cuts in programs millions of people depend on. Trump has said that he won’t cut Social Security or Medicare, but his tax proposals would undermine their finances, and he conspicuously hasn’t exempted Medicaid, which covers around 70 million people.

Musk-style spending cuts, then, would almost certainly result in hardship for many Americans.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson is promising “massive reform” of the Affordable Care Act — “no Obamacare,” he declared. We don’t need to speculate about what that would mean. In 2017, Trump and his congressional allies almost passed a health care “reform” that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would have increased, by 2026, the number of Americans without health insurance by 23 million; those losing coverage would disproportionately be Americans with preexisting conditions, who need insurance most.

Many potential Trump voters are probably unaware of what’s in store and imagine that Trump would just snap his fingers and “fix” what he insists is a terrible economy. The reality, however, is that America’s economic performance under the Biden-Harris administration has been very good, especially compared with that of other countries. We’ve grown much faster than any other major wealthy nation, and we’ve substantially outperformed projections, both those made before Covid-19 struck and those made at the beginning of the Biden administration.

This achievement, says The Wall Street Journal, is “remarkable”; The Economist calls it “glorious.” Neither is what you’d call a left-wing rag.

It’s true that we had a burst of inflation in 2021 and 2022. But that was a global phenomenon; other nations had similar bursts. Furthermore, inflation has come way down, and although many remain upset, understandably, about the higher level of prices, most workers, especially the lowest paid, have seen wages outpace inflation since the start of the pandemic.

By the way: When Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign proclaimed “It’s morning again in America,” both unemployment and inflation were substantially higher than they are now.

Would Trump do even better than Biden? Or better than Kamala Harris? There’s an unusual consensus among economists that Trump would preside over a worse economy, especially higher inflation, than Harris.

If he wins, many Trump voters are likely to experience buyer’s remorse.

Will they express their disappointment at the ballot box in 2028? They will if they can. But that assumes a free and fair election. Trump has given us plenty of reason to believe that if he wins, 2024 may be the last time America has anything resembling that.

[mariacallous]

As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the US are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it.

All the evidence states otherwise. But in recent weeks, these groups have held training sessions about how to organize on a hyperlocal level to monitor polling places and drop boxes, challenge voter registrations en masse, and intimidate and harass voters and election officials. And some are preparing to roll out new technology to fast-track all of these efforts: One of the groups claims they’re launching a new platform for checking voter rolls that contains billions of “data elements” on every single US citizen.

These groups could have a major impact on the 2024 election. In addition to disenfranchising voters and putting additional pressure on already overstretched election offices, they could convince more and more people that US elections are fraudulent.

Catherine Engelbrecht and her organization True the Vote have effectively tried to disenfranchise voters for more than a decade by claiming that voter rolls are filled with phony voter registrations. Engelbrecht’s rhetoric was given an unprecedented boost in the wake of 2020, when Trump and other elected officials mainstreamed conspiracies that the elections had been rigged in favor of Democrats. Hundreds of national and local election denial groups were formed, and many of them amassed huge followings on social media platforms like Telegram. As the 2024 presidential election looms, they are ramping up efforts to do it again.

“It could be exponentially worse than what we saw in 2020, but we're going to be awake, we're going to be engaged, we are going to understand the process, and we're going to have options to continue to hold to those truths,” Engelbrecht said during a March webinar titled “Election Integrity Team Building 101.” “We're not going to back down. There's too much to lose.”

The hour-long presentation was delivered from a hotel room in Denver, with Engelbrecht laying out what could sound like a relatively benign plan to monitor elections and check voter rolls. “Keep a soft heart, keep a kind word in your mouth, approach people irrespective of party with love. You will find that things will be much better if that is the approach that is taken,” Engelbrecht said. The session, she said, was overbooked.

Engelbrecht then began speaking about elections being “perilously close to cracking in half,” and her presentation became a highlight reel of election conspiracies, references to crystals, Christian nationalist rhetoric, and militaristic jargon. “If this republic’s to be saved, it's because [of] people like all of you that are on this webinar right now. There are some bad actors out there and we live in particularly chaotic and caustic times,” said Engelbrecht. “If we wait on somebody to do something, we will watch freedom slip away on our watch. That's how close we are.”

“These groups are trying to lay the groundwork to potentially make later claims about the election that very well may be false. But the more chaos that can be caused along the way will give more fodder to that disinformation,” Andrew Garber, an expert at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, tells WIRED. “It's not just bad if there's a mass voter challenge because people might get kicked off the rolls. It's also bad if people then take that challenge and say, ‘See, look at all these ineligible voters,’ when in fact that's not the case.”

Engelbrecht founded True the Vote in 2010, when she was an activist for the right-wing populist Tea Party movement. After the 2020 election, Engelbrecht and her collaborator Gregg Phillips became central figures in the Stop the Steal movement, and starred in the widely-debunked election conspiracy film 2000 Mules. They were also arrested for contempt of court after refusing to identify their source behind allegations that the Chinese government had accessed US election data. True the Vote also made wild allegations of widespread ballot stuffing in Georgia during the 2020 vote and a subsequent runoff in 2021. Earlier this year, True the Vote was forced to admit in court that the group had no evidence to back up its claims.

In 2022, the group rolled out a slick new software tool known as IV3, based on technology developed by Phillips, that compared names on voter rolls to a database maintained by the US Postal Service, allowing anyone to challenge voter registrations across the country if they spotted a discrepancy. A WIRED investigation, however, revealed that the information used to challenge the registration of hundreds of thousands of people was based on unreliable data.

Undeterred, True the Vote announced last week that it was relaunching IV3. Phillips claims that the software’s database now has close to “100 billion data elements about every single voter in the United States.” WIRED has not seen proof of this claim. The new IV3 system will soon be available in all 50 states, the organization said. On Thursday, the group held a webinar to train local activists on how to use it. The new system also relies on data from the US Postal Service, but Engelbrecht claimed during the presentation that Phillips and his team had “normalized” the data from all 50 states to ensure the system would not produce inaccurate results. She also said that thousands of people across the country were already registered, and that they had a long waiting list.

Additionally, she said that another software tool developed by Phillips’ team, called Ground Fusion, would be released soon; it is aimed at organizations and PACs looking to identify voting irregularities across larger geographic regions.

Engelbrecht declined to comment, claiming without evidence that WIRED had “written unfairly about True the Vote and IV3 in the past.”

True the Vote is not the only group seeking to leverage technology to supercharge the spread of election conspiracies. A secretive Georgia-based firm called EagleAI NETwork has developed a voter information database to fast-track the deletion of ineligible voters from the system. Voter rights groups have advised against its use, as insignificant errors—such as a missing comma before the suffix “Jr.”—have led to eligible names being removed. Still, at least one county in Georgia has agreed to use EagleAI to review voter challenges and conduct list maintenance activities.

One of EagleAI’s key backers is former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, who in the past two years has become central to the push to spread election conspiracies on a national level through her well-funded Election Integrity Network.

The group has held in-person training seminars in recent years, with session topics including how to protect “Vulnerable Voters from Leftist Activists” and “Monitoring Voting Equipment and Systems.” More recently, the group has made its training sessions available online, and is now once again ramping up its efforts ahead of the 2024 election with an initiative called Soles to the Rolls, aimed at boosting challenges to voter registration.

Mitchell, EagleAI, and the Election Integrity Network did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Another training webinar called “We the People” was also hosted last month by the America Project and its offshoot, Vote Your Vision. Broadcasted online to hundreds of attendees, the webinar featured a lineup of election conspiracists, Republican lawmakers, a guy who wrote a book about fifth-generation warfare, and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

The webinar, the group’s website said, was designed to give people “the secrets to reclaiming our power and reshaping history” by using “state-of-the-art election tools,” including those involving artificial intelligence technology. While the details of exactly what these tools will look like and how they will be used are unclear, the America Project has already scheduled more training sessions in the coming weeks to give supporters more information. The group also did not reply to requests for comment.

The America Project was cofounded by disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO and conspiracist Patrick Byrne, who also funds part of the organization. Both Flynn and Byrne reportedly attended a White House meeting in late 2020 to urge Trump to essentially declare martial law and seize voting machines.

While Flynn didn’t speak during last month’s webinar, he has arguably done more than anyone since 2020 to push the notion that America’s elections are fundamentally fraudulent, appearing at conferences, in podcasts, and on right-wing news shows on a near-daily basis. Trump has also indicated that Flynn will be brought back into his administration should he win.

These efforts have been given the seal of approval by the Republican National Committee, which was recently restructured by Trump to include election deniers and family members in top positions while cutting minority outreach efforts. One of those election deniers is Christina Bobb, who will be running the “election integrity unit.” A former Trump lawyer and TV presenter on far-right channel One America News, Bobb is a major promoter of the myth that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. The RNC’s election-related priorities, according to an internal memo recently obtained by NPR, include “a broader effort over the coming months to [legally] challenge voter identification and signature verification rules which were put into place for the 2020 election.”

During the America Project webinar last month, one of the hosts apologized to listeners for being unable to get Bobb to join the call that day, but promised that she would join a future session—highlighting just how closely these conspiracy-focused groups work with the mainstream GOP apparatus.

“These groups have a playbook nationally that they tend to deploy locally,” says Garber. “Some of these playbooks that have an intended national reach are then deployed through local activists, and it's concerning because it's the voters at the local level who suffer the effects. It's the election officials at the local level trying to keep order at the polls, trying to make sure their voter rolls are up to date, who have to deal with this stuff.”

One of Flynn’s core messages over the past four years has been that “local action equals national impact” —an expression that revolves around a concept called “precinct strategy,” which aims to get people into key positions on local committees in order to push their narratives at the local level. In 2024, that strategy has been primed and polished.

“This concept of precinct strategy was actually endorsed by President Trump in the last election cycle,” Yehuda Miller, a Republican county committee member in New Jersey, said during the America Project seminar. “We want to take the strategy to the next level. We want to get more organized, we want to start organizing across multiple counties in a state, we want to start organizing across multiple states. We have the power to direct our elected officials.”