#federal prosecution targets

[robertreich]

5 Facts About Trump’s Indictments

Trump’s defenders are still lying about his indictments. Here are 5 crucial facts you can share with whoever in your life needs to hear them.

1. President Biden did not indict Trump.

Four different grand juries — made up of ordinary citizens — indicted Trump after being presented with evidence they found compelling enough to warrant criminal prosecution.

The reason we have grand juries is specifically to help make sure no one gets prosecuted out of a personal vendetta.

2. This isn’t about “free speech”

In all four cases, Trump has been indicted because of what he allegedly did, not what he said. Lots of crimes involve speech, but that doesn’t stop them from being crimes. Even Trump’s hand-picked attorney general, Bill Barr, recognizes this defense is nonsense.

3. It doesn’t matter whether Trump believed the election was stolen

There’s plenty of evidence that Trump knew he lost the election fair and square. His claims of massive fraud were rejected by his own campaign manager, White House lawyers, and his hand-picked Justice Department officials. 

And privately, Trump seemed to admit that he either knew or didn’t care that his claims were false, allegedly criticizing VP Pence for being “too honest,” and allegedly admitting to his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that he lost and wanted to cover it up.

But even if Trump really did believe the election was stolen, that doesn’t give him the right to allegedly commit a criminal conspiracy to try to steal it back.

4. Trump has received preferential treatment because of who he is.

Trump’s defenders complain about a two-tiered justice system.

They’re right about that, but not in the way they claim. Trump has been given special privileges most criminal defendants would never get.

In all four criminal cases, he has been released without bail. He has repeatedly been spared the indignity of a mugshot. He has not had his passport suspended or had limits placed on his ability to travel — even though two of his criminal cases involve direct threats to national security, and even though he has used social media to issue insults and threats against potential witnesses, behavior that would cause many criminal defendants to be held without bail pending trial.

5. Trump was in legal trouble long before entering politics

Some of Trump’s defenders claim the sheer number of criminal charges and civil suits he’s now facing is proof that he’s being targeted for political reasons. But you have to remember that Trump was the subject of about 4,000 legal actions before ever running for president. From his fraudulent Trump University scam to federal lawsuits over racist housing discrimination, Trump has spent his life in court because of his own shady behavior.

Trump is being prosecuted now because, as four grand juries have found, the strength of the evidence against him merits it. If we fail to hold him fully accountable under the law, the precedent will embolden future presidents to break the law, jeopardize national security, incite insurrections, and possibly even overturn an election.

The principle that no one is above the law is only true if we make it so.

[darkmaga-returns]

National Security Attorney Mark Zaid revealed Monday that hundreds of Deep State DC officials are preparing to flee America in order to escape being held accountable for potential crimes by the incoming Donald Trump administration.

Making an appearance on CNN, Zaid admitted he’s advising certain clients to leave America because Trump has been “very clear” that Deep State figures will be targeted for legal prosecution.

Infowars.com reports: The lawyer said, “Donald Trump and those in his inner-circle have been very clear over the period of time and especially during the campaign that they intend to retaliate, and they do intend to retaliate swiftly. They’ve made those promises. He said that he intends to have his second administration one that fulfills promises, so it would be naive and foolish of us not to take any of this seriously. And, we’re prepared.”

“I’ve represented a lot of clients who have been specific targets of President Trump and those around him. We’re not just talking about my federal employee workers in different agencies who are uncomfortable like you’ve just heard in this last segment. We’re talking about people who have been specifically called out by the former president of the United States,” he added.

It’s clear that criminal elements of the U.S. government are freaked out at the prospect of the American people actually electing leadership that will legally and lawfully punish their numerous anti-constitutional actions.

[mariacallous]

Eleven abortion referendums will be in front of voters in 10 states this Election Day — the largest number of pro-choice amendments the country has ever seen during a single election cycle.

From red states like Missouri and South Dakota to blue states like New York, the abortion rights ballot measures could have a monumental impact on access throughout the country. Over 20 states have enacted abortion bans since the Supreme Court repealed federal abortion protections in 2022. Citizen-led initiatives, like most of this year’s abortion rights measures, have become the response to many of the near-total abortion bans passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures.

“This is a public health crisis that we have right now,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, who has worked with campaigns in all 10 states where an abortion rights amendment is in play. “The citizens, in the absence of their local elected officials, are addressing it. They’re taking power into their own hands.”

In 2022, there were six ballot measures addressing abortion, which at the time was the most in a single year. Voters protected abortion care in every state it was on the ballot during that election cycle, including in deeply Republican states like Kentucky. Ohio, a state with a long and extreme anti-abortion history, also voted to codify abortion rights into its state constitution just last year.

This year’s ballot measures range in their approaches to and levels of abortion protections. Nebraska will have two competing abortion measures, one to restrict access and one to expand. Maryland, New York and Colorado are all seeking to codify abortion protections throughout pregnancy — exceptions to the rest of the measures, which would primarily enshrine access until viability or around 24 weeks. Colorado’s Amendment 79 would also allow the use of public funds for abortion care. Missouri’s Amendment 3 would restore abortion access until viability and protect women from being prosecuted for pregnancy outcomes like miscarriage and stillbirth — a particularly progressive measure in a notoriously anti-abortion state.

If passed, most amendments would generally go into effect shortly after Election Day or at the start of 2025. Measures in Montana and South Dakota would tentatively go into effect in July 2025, while Nevada’s may not until 2026. There will be litigation in any state that passes a pro-choice measure; this is likely the time when states will bring legal challenges against successful ballot initiatives and fight to keep other abortion regulations like waiting periods and other long-standing targeted restrictions on abortion providers.

The historic number of abortion rights measures is emblematic of just how politically prominent abortion care has become. And despite conservatives who claim to want to “leave abortion to the states” since Roe fell, many did everything in their power to stop voters from weighing in on abortion rights measures.

“This is not just a reproductive freedom issue, it’s also a democracy issue,” Fields Figueredo said. “It’s about who has power and who has the determination to control what happens to their body.”

Arizona

Arizona’s Proposition 139 seeks to enshrine access to abortion up until fetal viability, or around 24 weeks, into the state constitution. If passed, the state of Arizona will not be able to limit access to abortion before viability unless the government “has a compelling reason and does so in the least restrictive way possible,” according to the measure. Under the amendment, also known as the Right to Abortion Initiative, abortions would be allowed after fetal viability only when the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk. The measure also bars future laws from punishing anyone who assists someone getting an abortion.

The state currently has a 15-week abortion ban in effect with no exceptions for rape or incest. Earlier this year, the Arizona state Supreme Court greenlit a near-total abortion ban that the Republican-controlled legislature voted to repeal.

The measure needs a simple majority to pass.

Colorado

Colorado’s pro-choice amendment would create a constitutional right to abortion care throughout pregnancy and mandate that Medicaid and private insurance companies cover abortion care. Amendment 79, also known as the Right to Abortion and Health Insurance Coverage Initiative, would repeal a 1984 addition in the Colorado constitution which barred the use of public funds for abortion care.

The measure is distinct for two reasons. Nearly every other state where abortion is on the ballot is trying to enshrine access until fetal viability, not throughout pregnancy. Additionally, requiring that abortion care be a covered service under all health insurance plans is a step pro-choice groups have been pushing for for decades.

The state does not currently restrict abortion at any point in pregnancy, making it a refuge for those who need abortion care later in pregnancy. The measure needs at least 55% of the vote to pass.

Florida

Amendment 4 would restore abortion access until viability by adding language to the Florida constitution that states “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” The ballot measure, also titled Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion, does not change the state’s current law that requires parental consent for a minor to obtain an abortion.

Since the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade in 2022, the state passed a 15-week abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest and then a six-week ban with exceptions for rape or incest. Under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Florida has become one of the most extreme anti-abortion states in the country. If voters restore abortion access until viability, it would reestablish Florida as a critical safe haven in the Southeast, where most states have near-total abortion bans.

Florida has a supermajority requirement for citizen-led ballot initiatives, meaning the amendment needs to get at least 60% of the vote to pass.

Maryland

Maryland’s Question 1 guarantees the right to reproductive freedom, defined in the measure as “the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end one’s own pregnancy.” The amendment specifies that the government cannot “directly or indirectly, deny, burden, or abridge the right unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”

The Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment would codify Maryland’s current law, which allows access to abortion care at any point in pregnancy and has made the state a safe haven for abortion access. It’s an exception to most other pro-choice measures on the ballot this year because it enshrines abortion access throughout pregnancy without limits. Colorado and New York are the only two other states where pro-choice groups are hoping to codify abortion access throughout pregnancy.

The amendment would pass with a simple majority.

Missouri

Amendment 3 would codify the right to reproductive freedom, including abortion access until fetal viability, into the Missouri constitution. The measure would protect the right to make decisions about other reproductive health issues including birth control, prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, miscarriage care and “respectful birthing conditions.” The Right to Reproductive Freedom initiative states plainly that, if passed, Missourians cannot be prosecuted for their pregnancy outcomes including miscarriage, stillbirth and abortion.

The initiative is extremely progressive for a deep-red state that has such a long anti-abortion history. The state only had three abortion clinics in 2017, and the last clinic closed shortly after Roe fell. Missouri currently has a near-total abortion ban with an exception to save the life of a pregnant person.

If the amendment passes, it would be a huge win for reproductive rights groups, and Missouri could become one of the few Midwest states with abortion access. But the state would still have a lot of work to do since many of the prior abortion regulations, such as Missouri’s 72-hour waiting period and ban on telemedicine, would need to be challenged in court.

The measure needs a simple majority to pass.

Montana

Montana’s Right to Abortion Initiative would enshrine the “right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion” until fetal viability. The government could regulate abortion after viability except in cases where abortion care is needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant person. The measure also protects Montanans from being prosecuted for “actual, potential, perceived or alleged pregnancy outcomes,” as well as protecting anyone who helps someone seeking abortion care.

The amendment would codify the state’s current abortion law, which restricts abortion care after 24 weeks. Montana voters need a simple majority to pass the amendment.

Nebraska

Nebraska will have two ballot measures addressing abortion, one in favor of abortion rights and one against. It’s the first time competing abortion measures will be on a state ballot since the Supreme Court repealed Roe.

The pro-choice amendment, also known as the Right to Abortion Initiative, would enshrine abortion access until fetal viability into the state constitution. The measure opposed to abortion rights seeks to codify the state’s current 12-week abortion ban, or a ban on abortion after the first trimester. The anti-choice initiative does have exceptions for rape, incest and in cases of a medical emergency.

Both amendments need a simple majority to pass.

Nevada

Nevada’s Question 6 would enshrine the right to abortion access until viability and when necessary to protect the health or life of the pregnant person throughout pregnancy. The amendment states that the right to abortion until viability “shall not be denied, burdened, or infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest that is achieved by the least restrictive means.”

The measure, which needs a simple majority to pass, would enshrine Nevada’s current abortion law into the state constitution.

New York

Proposal 1 would amend New York’s Equal Rights Amendment to include protections for “pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy” which would codify abortion protections throughout pregnancy. While it does not explicitly state abortion protections, including protections for pregnancy outcomes and reproductive decisions in the state constitution would safeguard abortion access in the state.

The state’s Equal Rights Amendment currently criminalizes the denial of rights to people based on “race, color, creed or religion.” Proposal 1 would add ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, as well as reproductive health outcomes.

The initiative is noteworthy because, if passed, it will be the first equal rights amendment to include protections for pregnant people and pregnancy outcomes. Abortion is currently legal in New York until viability. Expanding the equal rights amendment to include pregnant people would codify the current law.

South Dakota

South Dakota’s Amendment G breaks down abortion protections by trimesters, similar to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The initiative would codify abortion protections until 13 weeks or through the first trimester, and then allow the government to regulate abortion in the second trimester “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.” In the third trimester, the state could regulate or ban abortions except in instances when the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk.

If the measure passes it would be a huge win for abortion rights groups because the state currently has a near-total abortion ban with no exceptions other than to save the life of a pregnant person. Pro-choice groups would still have a long way to go in restoring abortion access in the state, however. Even before Roe fell, South Dakota only had one abortion clinic left and zero in-state providers, and some regulations — like the state’s 72-hour waiting period before being able to access care — would likely need to be challenged in court.

The initiative needs a simple majority to pass.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez at Rolling Stone:

In the highly tumultuous closing days of Donald Trump’s first term in office, BuzzFeed News received an angry letter from his outgoing administration. The subpoena, issued on December 1, 2020, was delivered as Trump was preoccupied with efforts to overturn the democratic order and nullify the results of the presidential election he had just lost to Joe Biden. As BuzzFeed reported at the time, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators issued a subpoena this week demanding BuzzFeed News identify its sources — an extraordinary attempt by the government to interfere with a news outlet acting under the protections of the First Amendment, and a move that the agency’s former chief lambasted as ‘embarrassing.’” 

The aggressive letter from the Trump-era ICE read: “Failure to comply with this summons will render you liable to proceedings in a U.S. District Court to enforce compliance with this summons as well as other sanctions.” It added, “You are requested not to disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time. Any such disclosure will impede this investigation and thereby interfere with the enforcement of federal law.”

To many media and political observers — including officials who served in the Trump administration who were aware of the document at the time — the subpoena wasn’t worth the price of the paper on which it was printed. It was a temper tantrum, not a real legal threat. For starters, Trump and his officials would be out of a job in less than two months. There wasn’t much will, much less the time, within the federal government to make good on this threat to an investigative reporter, his sources, and his publication. There wasn’t even a chilling effect, per se, because their guy had failed at winning reelection. That was then. Now, after vanquishing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Trump and his team have four more years to try to intimidate and target leakers, whistleblowers, and foes in the media — especially if situations involve what they claim is highly sensitive information or classified intel. They intend to use the opportunity.

In reporting this story, Rolling Stone spoke with attorneys close to the president-elect, incoming Trump administration officials, and other Republicans who’ve talked to Trump about staunching embarrassing press leaks during a second administration. Two of the sources with knowledge of the matter specifically cited the Dec. 1 subpoena as a model, and something that Trump allies and lieutenants are expecting to issue more of during the second term — this time, with the benefit of years, not days. It’s merely one facet of sprawling plans to clamp down on whistleblowers and bully Trump’s enemies in the press, after Trump’s inauguration once again in late January. Expect more communications seizures, more whistleblower prosecutions, and more personal lawsuits or legal threats from Trump against news outlets.  “Oh, it’ll be brutal,” says one conservative lawyer who’s discussed certain plans and ideas with Trump and his inner circle. “Gloves off [because] we’ve learned our lessons from the first time and one lesson is you have got to be even more aggressive.”

[...] This is, of course, a matter that Trump cares about deeply. During his first term in the Oval Office, intra-office paranoia and frenzied leak hunts — both officially by federal investigators and informally by zealous Trump aides — were a hallmark of the administration. But Trumpland isn’t only worried about stamping out leaks, of classified information and other details, from members of what the president-elect and his cronies deride as the “Deep State.” Often, the backstabbing is coming from inside the house. According to two sources familiar with the matter, Trump has personally grown furious about some of the leaks that have occurred from the current presidential transition process, and has in some instances fumingly demanded to know who in his midst could have possibly whispered certain information to the press.

[...] Among committed Trumpists close to the president-elect, there has also been discussion of potentially creating new offices in the FBI or DOJ to focus exclusively on hunting for leaks and plugging the deluge of media leaks. In the summer of 2017, Trumps’ first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, mentioned that the FBI had formed a new unit to deal with leaks, including of classified info. Sessions also announced that the Trump administration had tripled the number of criminal leak investigations in the time since President Barack Obama left office. “In cases where there have been leaks that are criminal in nature, U.S. law enforcement and the incoming attorney general should follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of what the prior administraiton’s attorney general thinks, or what the internal memorandum was,” says Steven Groves, who worked as a lawyer in Trump’s first White House.

Both the Obama and Trump administration attracted significant uproar from press-freedom groups for their secret DOJ seizures of records from reporters and others. Whatever record Obama and his Justice Department set, Trump and his senior officials were determined to shatter it. Gurgling beneath the first Trump administration’s rhetorical and propaganda war on his nemeses in political media, there was a ton of real action. For instance, the first Trump administration referred a record number of leaks to the feds for criminal investigations.  “Obama’s Justice Department indicted eight journalistic sources under the Espionage Act, more than all U.S. presidents before him combined,” The Intercept reported back in 2019. “Donald Trump is now surpassing Obama’s eight-year record in just over two years in office.”

That amped-up war on government whistleblowers was powered in part by the same Espionage Act under which Trump was criminally investigated and charged in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s now-defunct case. The war is set to come roaring back and then some after Trump is sworn in. So far, the twice-impeached former (and future) president, who also became a convicted felon during his 2024 campaign, has named ultra-loyalist Pam Bondi as his choice to lead the Justice Department. Early this month, Trump announced that another hyper-MAGA-devotee, Kash Patel, was his new pick to serve as FBI director. 

[...] The sources close to Trump add that non-government actors will be integral to their plans for combatting who they deem overly meddlesome reporters. Multiple sources say that as sitting president, Trump still intends to have his small armada of personal lawyers who aren’t working in the administration handle his (often frivolous) lawsuits — or, more often than not, enraged legal threats that don’t result in suits — against media outlets that cross him during a new term. 

[...] In campaigning on a platform of retribution, bloodlust, and authoritarian impulse, Trump made no secret of his longstanding desire to punish his enemies in the media. In recent years, Trump has even made the idea of journalists getting raped in prison — and thus tortured into naming their confidential sources’ identities — into an audience-pleasing laugh line at some of his rallies. As he prepares to take office once again, the president-elect is not hiding his interest in going after journalists.  Last month, the president-elect personally pressured Republican senators to sink the PRESS Act, bipartisan reporter-shield legislation. Trump posted to social media that conservatives “MUST KILL THIS BILL.” But it wasn’t just a social-media post. Trump was invested enough in this matter that he spoke privately and on the phone with certain GOP lawmakers about making sure President Biden never signs this bill, a source with knowledge of the situation and another person briefed on it tell Rolling Stone. This week, Senate Republicans dutifully blocked it.

Rolling Stone has a good piece on Donald Trump’s war on the press and those who leak to the press. Times are going to get scary indeed.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, headed by Justice Jules Deschênes, completed an important report into its investigation on Holocaust war criminals living in Canada in 1986. It was accompanied by an assessment by scholar Alti Rodal, a document that Justice Deschênes said deserved “wide distribution.”

But it’s been 38 years, and we’re still waiting to read Ms. Rodal’s report as well as the full version of the Deschênes report itself. To this day, many Canadian Holocaust-related records and investigations are inaccessible[...]

The U.S. government provides researchers and the public various avenues of access to Holocaust records through its National Archives and the robust Freedom of Information Act, where scholars and others are empowered to access sensitive documents about Nazi war criminals who took refuge in the U.S. No such system exists in Canada, neither through Library and Archives Canada nor via the federal Access to Information Act.[...]

Most governments became aware of the hundreds, if not thousands, of potential war criminals living in their societies in the late 1970s and 80s, and Canada was no different. In response, Canada decided to conduct the Deschênes Commission, an internal two-year investigation tasked with finding out if and how Nazis found refuge in Canada. The final report, which was released publicly with extensive deletions, marked the premature end of investigations into hundreds of war criminals and called for the federal Justice and Immigration departments to take the lead on future prosecution.[...]

The post-Deschênes era has been a failure. The commission asked for 218 individuals to be investigated, and specifically targeted 20 “really bad guys,” as Ms. Rodal recently remarked. The 218 other cases were bad, too – they included gas chamber operators, policemen who shot thousands of Jews and murderers of Jewish children. The Canadian government has charged just four alleged Holocaust perpetrators over four decades, all of whom were acquitted. [...]

The fact that a soldier of the Third Reich was welcomed into the Canadian Parliament, and that there was such shock as to how this could happen, demonstrates how Canada has yet to confront its past relationship with Nazi war criminals in earnest. And perhaps the blanket denial of access to the nation’s own government records and investigations is an underlying cause. In response to the Yaroslav Hunka affair, the federal government has flirted with new disclosures. In October, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remarked, “There are top public servants looking very carefully into the issue, including digging into the archives. We’re going to make recommendations.” Months have passed – we are still waiting.

27 Jan 24

[1americanconservative]

@CRRJA5

Everyone has missed the real revelation of the Durham Report: Obama committed Treason.

We now know for a fact this was a fraud made up by Hillary. We also know that Hillary laid out this scam to Obama and Biden in the Oval Office. Obama gave his approval. Then Obama rigged the game even further, making sure his hand-picked DOJ and FBI would never prosecute these high crimes.

Obama also made sure they'd continue spying on the now-president Trump. And use the weaponized federal government filled with Obama hacks to target, frame, demonize and destroy Trump the president.

[seraphica]

A Walkthrough of Project 2025

By Emily Galvin-Almanza, originally on Twitter.

You may have heard the term “Project 2025” floating around, and you may even have cracked open the 900+ page document yourself, only to see a lot of kind of bland, policy-wonk text. So let me crack through the policy-speak and tell you WTF is in this document.

This is, um, a long thread. But if you want a lot of info about Project 2025, all in one place, you've come to the right place.

This document is what Trump and his team will do if elected. It’s their document, their plan, their platform. So like…it’s not *me* saying what they’ll do, this is *them* saying so. documentcloud.org/documents/2408…

Shall we dig in? I’ll organize and give you page numbers. I’m going to start with criminal justice stuff (of course) and then we’ll wander through other topics like repro rights (none), discrimination (fine, unless it’s against nuclear power), environmental protection (gone), etc

Predictably, this is a document full of states-rights claims, but (true to form) there is very little left to the states when it comes to a Trump criminal legal system.

Generally, the Constitution reserves criminal law to the states, allowing localities to create criminal accountability as they see fit. But under a Trump regime, “small government” just means “no EPA or medicare and HUGE expansions of DOJ’s criminal division power.”

A primary target? The discretion and decision-making of local prosecutors.

Prosecutorial discretion is part of the foundation of our legal system—the idea that the people elect their prosecutor, and can elect (or not elect) a person whose judgment they agree with when it comes to what to focus on when it comes to criminal prosecution.

The Trump DOJ will basically override local voters and prosecutors, bringing federal charges where they deem states not punitive enough. (553)

I should note that this is a ridiculous, massively difficult thing to do—our criminal court system is spread across 3,143 counties.

So what it really means is that the Trump DOJ will troll for cases they find politically meaningful, and use the full weight of the federal government to prosecute specific individuals who stand for stuff they don’t like.

They’re not just going to take on targeted prosecutions, they’re also going to legally come after prosecutors who they feel aren’t prosecuting enough. (553) It’s like this, but EVERYWHERE politico.com/news/2024/04/1…

And somehow they’re also going to do everything they can to make sentences harsher, and increase utilization of the death penalty (553-554).

They’re going to double down on the war on drugs, prosecuting interstate drug cases much more harshly (and by “interstate drug trade” they also mean “mailing abortion pills”) (555, 562).

They will also take election integrity out of the hands of the Civil Rights Division and put it in to DOJ’s criminal division (563), which means you see a lot more cases like Crystal Mason’s, but at a federal level: nytimes.com/2024/03/28/us/…

The long and short of it is, we often think of “prosecution of political enemies” as, like, Donald Trump sending DOJ after Liz Cheney or Rachel Maddow or something. And we forget that this can also mean persecution of ordinary people like Crystal Mason.

People who are not high profile themselves, but whose conduct (or even mistake!) is in a subject matter area that makes them the political target. Under this regime, being in a state that would not choose to prosecute them may be no help.

It’s also important to remember the ramifications of highly punitive policies. A DOJ that seeks the max on every case, seeks the death penalty, increases immigration detention (below), is a federal government expanding (& lining the pockets of) the prison industrial complex.

We already live in a country where basically all social ills are funneled into our criminal court system. SCOTUS just increased that trend by allowing people who are living on the street with nowhere else to go to be prosecuted for…existing…outdoors.

But in this administration, we can see an expansion of what is criminal. You’ll see a lot of Torquemada-esque interrogatory stuff in the doc (especially at Treasury?!) but the most obvious expansion of the criminal system is into the zone of women’s health.

In other words, reproductive rights? Never heard of her. The document is pretty fixated on abortion, unsurprisingly, with plans to end all forms of abortion access (including pills) throughout the document (6, 104, 284, 450, 455 - 459, 503 - 529, 562)

There’s one point I’d like to hit on in particular: this week SCOTUS punted a case back to Idaho which was covered as a case allowing emergency abortions to save a woman's life.

But in fact, that's not what really happened here---the Court punted the issue back to the Circuit court, leaving the question of whether women need to be actively dying to receive an abortion open.

Reminder: long as there is legal uncertainty, there are doctors doing nothing while wondering what they're supposed to do as a woman lies bleeding and septic on their table. msmagazine.com/2024/06/28/emt…

The fact of the matter is, under a Trump administration, they could (and would) simply choose to stop fighting to make hospitals to offer abortion in cases where it is necessary to save a woman's life.

They could simply stop fighting for EMTALA, the statute that says hospitals that get federal dollars have to offer emergency care.

And also, in Project 2025, they want to go even farther than that, farther than banning abortion. They want to MAKE SURE DOCTORS DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO DO IT.

Specifically, this doc makes the Dept of Health and Human Services responsible for ensuring that training for doctors, nurses, and doulas doesn’t include anything about abortion (485-486).

Oh also DOJ is going to be the Abortion Police and go after anyone mailing abortion pills (562).

Side note: I don’t actually disagree with ensuring more coverage for things relating to women’s preventative healthcare but Project 2025 weirdly endorsing the rhythm method is hilarious

So they're gonna make you have all these babies. Who is going to take care of these babies? Were you thinking maybe you could get access to daycare? Oh no, mama, we want YOU to take care of the babies. What’s that? You had a job? Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.

HHS now, under Trump, thinks the gay agenda is destroying families, but the presence of a biological father can prevent all manner of bad things up to and including teen pregnancy (presumably because dad is going to meet your date at the door with a shotgun)

But also….having an adult male father figure who is NOT your bio dad is apparently the worst and most evil thing in the world. BAN BOYFRIENDS.

The Trump administration would like to make the federal government close its eyes, put its fingers in its ears, and hum loudly when anyone says “gender." Specifically...

...they will scrub out any mention of the existence of trans/nonbinary/LGBTQIA+ Americans in federal agencies, policies, regulations, and legislation (4-5, 62, 259, 333, 475).

To quote, “the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights”

These terms are getting cut “out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” (p 4-5)

Damn, who's the language police now?

This document—in a quest to be really, really fundamentalist about gender identity—also completely abandons the idea of supporting gender equality as a whole. Efforts to protect women and girls internationally? Hell no.

Like, USAID should “remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, in agency publications and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants that include the following terms"

And the terms are “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individu- als,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive” (259)

They would very much like to kick trans people—and anyone gender nonconforming!---out of the military (103-104). Remember Demi Moore in GI Jane? Yeah the second she gets that buzz cut she’s OUT.

What about race discrimination, you say? Well, we will have no idea, because the Trump administration plans to stop collecting any data about that. The EEOC will stop collecting data about race entirely (583).

BTW when I say this is a tricky document, this is what I mean...

The document justifies ditching any data collection by saying that “Crudely categorizing employees by race or ethnicity fails to recognize the diversity of the American workforce and forces individuals into categories that do not fully reflect their racial and ethnic heritage.”

Which at first glance, a person could be like, yes! Racial identity is complex! Let’s not put people in boxes!

But then you step back and realize that NO LONGER HAVING DATA ABOUT WHETHER BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE ARE OR ARE NOT GETTING HIRED does exactly ZERO GOOD THINGS it just makes us UNABLE TO TELL IF BAD THINGS ARE HAPPENING.

The document is full of this—really normal-sounding pablum that actually means “we are choosing to have no idea whether Black and Brown people are being shut out of the workforce, why would the government want to know that?”

The government doesn’t need to know! Because they don’t think disparate impact—when a particular group is disadvantaged in the workplace—matters anyway!

They would “eliminate disparate impact as a valid theory of discrimination for race and other bases under Title VII and other laws. Disparities do not (and should not legally) imply discrimination per se.” (583).

BTW on this point they get hella hella weird about the idea of racial equity at the Treasury Dept…where they would essentially like to have an Inquisition:

Essentially, under this administration, any agency that wants to think about whether race is playing a role in the fairness of their sector can GTFO.

If you go into the original doc and search for “DEI” you basically enter a forest of grandpas yelling I DON’T SEE COLOR YOU CAN BE BLACK WHITE GREEN PURPLE OR POLKA DOT FOR ALL I CARE

BTW you were hoping that a Democratic Senate could be an effective check of some kind, first thing in this doc is that they want to kind of tell the Senate to F off

Specifically, the plan is to get Trump-loyalist appointees into position, scrap the Senate confirmation process for a lot of these appointees and let the rest start working even before Senate confirmation. (p136-137, 173)

All of the agency heads are clearly designated as political in this doc, not expert/neutral. So EPA (428), DOJ (560), FBI (552), HUD (508), DOL (615)...basically the doc calls for the insertion of as many loyalists as possible

And yes, the job of these loyalists is, in many cases, to dismantle the agency they head.

I don’t really know where to categorize this, so I’ll put it here: they think the Department of Homeland Security suffers from “wokeness.” I’m not making that up, they said in black-and-white serif font. I can’t make this stuff up. Page 135.

So like, to be clear, in the same breath as they’re talking about the wokeness of DHS, they would also like to reinstate the Border Patrol officers (who work under DHS mind you) who were accused of galloping up on migrant families and whipping them from horseback.

“CBP should restart & expand use of the horseback-mounted Border Patrol. As part of this announcement, the Secretary should clear the records & personnel files of those who were falsely accused by Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas of whipping migrants and issue a formal apology” (139).

FWIW what they’re referring to is some CBP agents who nearly trampled a kid and used their reins in a way that was, er, whip-like (and before you accuse ME of being overly sensitive, I have ridden exactly this way in my life BUT I WAS MOVING CATTLE NOT HUMAN BEINGS.) politico.com/news/2022/07/0…

Anyway, because DHS is too woke, they need to shrink it down until it mostly just detains and deports immigrants.

They’re gonna bust its union and remove most of its programs and privatize both the TSA and also FEMA’s flood insurance program so you can get bilked if you live in a region prone to flooding (shhhh don’t say the floods are due to climate change).

SPEAKING OF CLIMATE, we’re definitely going back to the same “if you don’t have any information about the problem, the problem cannot exist” strategy they use on race.

To that end, they would like to get rid of Offices of: Domestic Climate Policy (61) Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) (61) Clean Energy Demonstration (381) The Clean Energy Corps (386) Environmental Justice & External Civil Rights (442)

This means getting rid of climate efforts in foreign aid programs (257), stopping the USDA’s efforts to focus on sustainable food production (293—who will need to eat in 20 years anyway? Certainly not our children, they will have evolved to photosynthesize and graze on plastic)

Anyway they’re getting rid of energy efficiency standards for appliances (378) as well as cutting down all EPA activity related to climate change, including repealing the Inflation Reduction Act programs providing grants for environmental science activities (440)

BTW, I think it’s worth noting that there are a lot of things stated as binaries that aren’t binary. Ending energy efficiency requirements for appliances, for example, to focus on cycle time and reparability.

I also want a right to repair! I also hate it that my car’s internal computer makes it really hard to work on my own car! I just think that we, as consumers, have the right to demand BOTH and this doc incorrectly insists that we have to CHOOSE.

I don’t have to choose between repairing an appliance that massively pollutes the planet or having an energy efficient one that will lower my bills but break every two years. WE CAN DEMAND BOTH. False binaries are a sneaky, crappy constant in this document.

I’m highlighting them in particular because false binaries are also a way of dividing us. There are things I can agree with conservative friends on…literally Monday I was having a fun, productive, common-ground convo w/a conservative friend. False binaries are toxic bullshit.

Toxic ideas abound in here. You know how TX created an abortion regulation scheme that incentivized members of the public to effectively be abortion bounty hunters? Project 2025 would do the same for *science.*

Project 2025 would incentivize citizens to come after scientists under the False Claims Act for research misconduct. This is p 438. Fun times!

This is all part of diluting expertise so that the scientists who are trying to warn us about massive danger ahead can get drowned out by “citizen scientists” whose research the EPA will…equally prioritize??? 438.

Housing and Urban Development also gets their climate programs cut (508) because, much like food, who will need housing in the future? We will return to caves, as we should.

Oh, if how much oil drilling the US is doing matters to you as a voter, Project 2025 basically says maximum drilling, all the drilling, all the time (523-524).

Just a quick note in case you were thinking this was a serious policy document: note the contrast between the doc’s desire to let states drill as much as they want bc “States are better resource managers than the federal government because they must live with the results” (524)

And revoking CA’s ability to set its own air quality standards (627)…because…states…shouldn’t be allowed to self-regulate, I guess, if their regulations make things harder for the oil industry?

Oh also they’re gonna freeze all EPA activity which wasn’t Congressionally authorized on Day One (436). How often does stuff get through Congress anymore? This one echoes the recent SCOTUS decision which also strips regulatory authority.

Basically more drilling, no windmills, don’t even think about encouraging electric cars (286).

Also open season on wolves and bears (534) and let’s just mass execute America’s wild horses (529)

To break it down, if you, like me, are a mom who is concerned about the quality of water your kids are drinking at school, and wants the gov’t to be quickly responsive to new discoveries and problems (like PFAS!) that might give your kids cancer, well, you’re fucked.

If there’s a new thing that is discovered that we should regulate/know about, too bad, because of things like this: “Remove the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) for any source category that is not currently being regulated.” (425).

Climate, of course, impacts migration. The more the US contributes to climate catastrophe, the more the consequences will be felt by the developing world, particularly in regions close to the equator and low-lying regions.

What will we do about immigration? Build more prisons for immigrants (142), send unaccompanied children away (148) increase the fees to apply for asylum + generally make immigration more expensive (146) & make it so gang violence & domestic violence no longer justify asylum (148)

Cut funding for NGOs that help immigrants find safety, and instead spend that on walls and jails (149).

Eliminate prosecutorial discretion on immigration cases (150). Oh and we’re doing the head-in-sand thing again by eliminating the office that tracks immigration jailing. 165. They don’t want an “impediment to detention.”

For Americans who rely on government programs to do things like feed their children, keep a roof over their heads, or get healthcare, things will also get worse.

They really hate healthcare: “In essence, our deficit problem is a Medicare and Medicaid problem.” (283).

Even though they want people to have a lot of babies, they’re putting in new requirements on SNAP (299), reducing eligibility for Medicaid (467), cutting school lunch programs (302-303), and eliminating Head Start (482).

Oh and also fuck Sesame Street (247) (and public broadcasting generally).

Safe baby formula? Not a priority. “As for baby formula regulations generally, labeling regulations and regulations that unnecessarily delay the manufacture and sale of baby formula should be re-evaluated.” (302).

Speaking of schools, they’re going to get rid of the Dept of Education, which they say is “a convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel,“ (285, 319).

Instead of schools, let’s give teens more dangerous jobs. “Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs...DOL should amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.” (595).

There’s kind of a sharp contrast here between high trust of parents in some contexts (to let their kids work dangerous jobs) and low trust of parents in others (if a father isn’t father-y enough terminate parental rights as fast as you can (481-482)).

Obviously, the Biden efforts to forgive student loans are toast (354) but also public service loan forgiveness is toast! “End time-based and occupation-based student loan forgiveness.” (361).

Having a job may be overrated anyway, and so the Trump Admin will tell the Fed to only think about price stability, eliminating full employment as an economic goal (661). Actually WTH maybe abolish the federal reserve completely (also 661).

Oh also if you were looking forward to lower drug costs, they want to end the program where the gov’t can negotiate lower prescription drug costs. 465.

As a matter of fact, no one will protect consumers against fraud and dangerous products under this admin…they are going to eliminate the CFPB completely and return consumer protection to banking regulators who are SO GOOD AT CONSUMER PROTECTION OF COURSE (/s/) 839.

Education, of course, is critical to the ability to distinguish misinformation. Under Trump, we better get ready for a lot more disinfo, because they’re going to yank federal efforts to combat misinfo/disinfo online. Facebook free for all, now with AI generated videos! (155, 550)

Speaking of misinfo, there will be no more independent Federal Election Commission.

Headed by a Trump official (with or without Senate confirmation!) the FEC will only investigate claims the Trump administration wants investigated, and remove its authority to decide what to litigate by handing that over to DOJ. (803, 865)

Oh also the new president will have to have a way to quickly deal with any ongoing, er, litigation, like, uh, criminal cases (but also ongoing litigation that conflicts with his agenda, like, say, civil rights consent decrees or environmental enforcement litigation. (28)

In the name of EXPEDIENCY, they say, the President’s lawyer (the White House Counsel) should give high-level super fast advice without wasting time on, like, researched legal memos or anything.

In other words, what Trump does will be on the advice of a counsel who doesn’t write stuff down. Not great!

Oh also the person chosen need not have fancy credentials (oh okay I'm all for that) as long as they’re LOYAL (oh wait no). Also p 28.

I’m sorry to tell you guys this, but this is like…scratching the surface. This is the beginning. This is the stuff you should know now.

If there is something you care about in this world, I think you should dip into this document and search for it, because you might find something hideous. documentcloud.org/documents/2408…

[original thread]

[qqueenofhades]

-Quickly skitters into the inbox, with a boom box and an increasingly bass boosted version-

🎶I PUT MY HANDS UP THEY’RE PLAYING MY SONG THE BUTTERFLIES FLY AWAY-🎶

- Party In The USA anon, on the recent glorious news

Look. LOOK. I know we've had technically bigger fish, but the Georgia case is a Big Fucking Deal. Because:

It is a MAJOR indictment both in terms of scope and seriousness of charges. Not just Trump, but *eighteen* of his allies and cronies got charged with RICO (anti-racketeering, often used against mob bosses) felonies, including Rudy Giuliani (I repeat, HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA), Jeff Clark, Mark Meadows, and other high-profile Trumpworld enablers

No Lindsey Graham (at least yet) but I guess we can't have everything

It encompasses both in Georgia and other states where Trump illegally tried to alter election results (Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania), as those activities related to a conspiracy centered on Georgia/Fulton County

This is the big whopper: TRUMP CANNOT CANCEL THIS INVESTIGATION EVEN IF HE GETS RE-ELECTED. He can shut down the federal Special Counsel investigations run through the DoJ, but this? Bupkis. And Georgia governor Brian Kemp, another of the Republicans who dutifully continues to defend Trump even as Trump slanders him up and down, CAN'T PARDON HIM.

That drives the Republicans NUTS. So nuts that they were, you guessed it, already on Faux News whining about how they should make Georgia change that law.

Boo-fucking-hoo, you absolute fucking wankers.

Also: we need to remember that Trump rose to political prominence by being wildly racist and xenophobic about America's first Black president. He has coddled and exalted white supremacists and white supremacist rhetoric at every turn, it has been the central defining feature of his campaign, and his election subversion efforts were chiefly aimed at canceling the votes of heavily Black cities (Atlanta, Philly, Detroit, etc.)

Trump also won in 2016 thanks to the Electoral College, itself designed as an element of structural racism, by defeating probably the most qualified and beyond any doubt most historic candidate there has ever been, after it was revealed that he was a serial sexual assaulter and after he screamed for months about LOCK HER UP (every Republican accusation is a confession, etc)

All that said, with Trump's vile, derogatory bile spewed at everyone, but especially a) Black people, b) women, and c) powerful Black women, it is a Big Fucking Deal that a powerful Black woman, aka his worst nightmare, pulled this trigger on him.

Don't get me wrong. I deeply appreciate me some Jack Smith. But he is also a white male special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice, and who used to work for the Hague prosecuting war crimes (true story). It's in his brief to do this.

Fani Willis is a county district attorney AND a Black woman, as Trump's nonstop shitgibbering on Truth Social just can't help himself from pointing out. This kind of sprawling, country-wide investigation against a wildly corrupt ex-president and his cohort of equally corrupt cronies is not something she is, in the normal course of things, ever expected to do, but she did it.

NINETEEN DEFENDANTS, Y'ALL. Including Trump. On 41 different charges. That's a hell of an indictment, and she knows it puts a target on her back, while (as noted) she doesn't have the resources and protections of the federal government/DOJ to do it.

Let's hear it for Fani Willis (and Judge Chutkan, who informed Trump the other day the more he runs his mouth, the faster she will proceed to trial) y'all.

Black Women Get Shit Done.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Crime more than climate is to blame for record fires in the Amazon

An investigation by SUMAÚMA suggests land grabbers and ranchers are committing arson for commercial and political objectives, safe in the knowledge that investigations are few and punishments weak

The area burned in the Brazilian Amazon in the first ten months of this year would cover a space equal to 100 times the size of São Paulo, Latin America’s most populous city. From January to October, over 120,000 fires destroyed 15 million hectares in the biome, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. Despite a record number of blazes and certainty that human action is what caused them, only a few dozen people have been arrested, as found in a SUMAÚMA survey of federal and state police departments. There are cases like São Félix do Xingu, Pará. In this municipality, which holds the country’s largest herd of cattle and the record for most area burned in 2024, nobody has been punished for a single fire thus far.

The numbers illustrate how weak the laws are and how difficult and insufficient the investigations are in the Amazon, leading crime to continue rising. This year, the area lost to fire in the Amazon grew by at least 114% compared to 2023, according to the MapBiomas organization’s Fire Monitor. Police, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, and environmental authorities have a hard time obtaining evidence that would lead to a criminal prosecution of the people behind the fires. And when this happens, forest arsonists receive a slap on the wrist: their entire sentence can be served with work release or in home confinement.

According to the Fire Monitor, most of what burned in the Amazon from January to October 2024 was forest. Yet over half (55%) of fires started in areas where cattle are farmed – the vast majority (86%) of which were cleared after 2015. This means that most of the fires began in regions where there are agricultural activities, but they spread to native vegetation areas. At this point, 14% of the Amazon’s forests have been replaced with pasture.

That is why it is no surprise that the few suspects arrested and charged with causing these fires are ranchers and land-grabbers who use fire as a tool to remove native vegetation and clear space for their cattle. That is what investigations by the Federal Police and Civil Police in Mato Grosso and Pará have found.

According to the Federal Police, 112 investigations were opened to look into fires that happened in 2024 in every region of the country (there is no Amazon-specific data). Seven people were arrested and ten were formally charged after sufficient evidence was found to file a criminal complaint. Some of these investigations led to operations like Dracarys, which is targeting those responsible for the deforestation of 1,672 hectares and for setting fire to 2,368 hectares of forest located on public land in the municipalities of Boca do Acre and Pauini, in the southeast of the state of Amazonas – burning an area equal to 15 Ibirapuera Parks, the city of São Paulo’s largest urban green area. According to the Federal Police, “the leader of the criminal scheme” and the “main financial backer and articulator of illegal operations in the two cities in Amazonas resides in an upscale condominium in Campinas [in the interior of the state of São Paulo].” His name was not disclosed.

“In various cases [as with Dracarys] we have signs of planned and coordinated criminal activities, aimed at a subsequent crime, the theft of public lands for livestock farming,” Humberto Freire, a chief of police and the Federal Police’s director of the Amazon and Environment, told SUMAÚMA. Another two police operations in the state targeted public forest arsonists. One of them is looking into fires that ravaged 5,000 hectares of forest to create pastures. Although the crime was committed in Apuí, in southeastern Amazonas, one of the suspects lives in Novo Progresso, in the state of Pará. Two sources in the city told SUMAÚMA the Federal Police were looking at a rancher involved with illegal mining and deforestation in the Jamanxim National Forest, where 17% of the plant cover has already been illegally cleared by land-grabbers in the region.

Continue reading.

[mtnman451]

Further Evidence

If the Targeted Prosecutions, Raid on Mar a Largo weren't enough to make you think Your Government has been "Weaponized" against Trump or anyone who supports him, here's some more evidence.

[eretzyisrael]

by Noah Pollack

How hard would it have been on Sunday, given the quantity of police on hand, to move the Hamas group a safe distance away from the entrance to the synagogue and ensure freedom of entry and exit? And it’s not just that this was entirely possible—it’s that this would have been the right thing to do, consistent with basic American values. We don’t do heckler’s vetoes here, or mob rule, and we don’t let masked thugs push around good citizens in broad daylight. Or at least that’s what I thought.

It was only in talking to people on the outskirts of the protest that I learned that the event was still on—you just had to find the alleyway behind the synagogue and knock on the right door, and there’d be an armed security guard who would let you in. So we did end up attending—but through the back door. 

In the midst of all this, my wife arrived, and also first tried to go in the front door. She was also stopped by the police and told “You’re not going in and you have to leave this area.”

I guided her via text messages toward the alleyway entrance. It was only as we left the event that the street fighting really picked up in front of the synagogue and, later, in front of Jewish restaurants and establishments along Pico Boulevard. A friend of ours who owns a small kosher restaurant a block from Adas Torah texted us a picture that afternoon of her and her staff standing in front of their restaurant holding baseball bats and knives, ready to protect their business. I immediately thought of the rooftop Koreans during the L.A. riots. Why did it have to escalate like this? Because, as they have realized on elite college campuses and in blue cities across the country, anti-Israel activists understand that they enjoy something like immunity. They can’t murder or severely beat people, but pretty much all other criminality—vandalism, graffiti, trespassing, harassment—will go unpunished. It’s one thing to understand that from watching the news. It’s quite another to witness it—to have to rush your kids away from a synagogue because Hamas supporters are getting violent outside and the police are letting it happen.

The groups organizing and carrying out these regular campaigns of violence across the country are well known. They fundraise for and promote their criminal enterprise openly. They boast on social media about carrying out violence. Their assaults are documented on video from a dozen angles. They routinely break numerous state and federal civil rights and hate crime laws. They could be prosecuted under a half-dozen different statutes. But it never seems to happen. So it is very difficult to reach any other conclusion than this is all quite intentional.

If you think that’s unfair, just look at the statement released yesterday by Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass. She pledged to take three actions in response to the Pico pogrom: convene meetings, increase coordination between the LAPD and Jewish institutions, and ask for more state money for security. Notice anything missing? The mayor of Los Angeles isn’t even pretending that she will ask law enforcement to prosecute criminals who target Jews.

[beardedmrbean]

The death of a woman this week in a car crash involving a police officer who was responding to a bomb threat against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Georgia home demonstrates the growing danger of swatting, police and experts said.

Swatting refers to when a false threat is made to draw police and first responders to a location.

The woman, identified by police as Tammie Pickelsimer, was killed after crashing into a bomb squad member who was responding to the call, according to a statement from the Rome Police Department.

According to police, the threat was sent by email to them last week, but it was re-routed to a junk folder. Police on Monday discovered the email which correctly listed the congresswoman's home address.

Greene was not home at the time, but the message from the email specifically targeted the congresswoman's mailbox, Greene posted on X.

The email spurred a response from police who then sent an officer to monitor the mailbox while waiting for the bomb squad.MORE: Massachusetts congresswoman says family was targeted with a bomb threat

Rome police sergeant and bomb squad member David Metroka was en route to join the bomb squad at their headquarters when he crashed into the 66-year-old Pickelsimer, Georgia State Patrol said.

Picklesimer suffered significant injuries and later died at the hospital, according to GSP. The officer had minor injuries and was later released from the hospital.

Police did not find a bomb at Greene's home. In a statement, the Rome Police Department addressed the dangers of swatting incidents.

"The Rome Police Department continues to work closely with Congresswoman Greene's staff to address the growing concern of swatting incidents and has implemented protocols to ensure that emergency responses are only triggered when truly necessary," the police department said in a statement. "This particular situation did not require an emergency response."

The police department added, "The Rome Police Department extends its heartfelt condolences to the Pickelsimer family during this difficult time. The department holds the individual responsible for sending the threatening email fully accountable for setting this tragic chain of events into motion. In collaboration with Congresswoman Greene's office, the Rome Police Department is working with federal authorities to ensure the perpetrator is apprehended and brought to justice."

The Rome Police Department told ABC News the email had an IP address linked to Russia.

Greene said she "felt heartsick," and expressed her concern over violent political threats in a statement on X.

"These violent political threats have fatal consequences," she said. "It’s an undue strain on our law enforcement who must treat them seriously. The officer was responding to protect my life. And now, a woman has lost her life because of this despicable act."MORE: Democratic members of Congress get bomb threats on Thanksgiving

According to John Bandler, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, swatting is a harassment tactic used to dispatch an "arm of government" for emergency services.

Bandler believes the uptick in swatting stems from cyber crimes allowing criminals to commit a crime against someone else without having to get close to it, he said.

"It is a way people can do a crime and they think they won't get caught doing it," Bandler said. "And it seems much more an indirect way of doing it."

Most people are never going to be swatted, Bandler said. But he notes it will be hard to protect yourself from this sort of crime, just like it is to protect yourself from all crime, he said.

Bandler calls for all swatting attempts to be prosecuted as a felony in every state and on the federal level. Swatting becomes a felony on the federal level when it crosses state lines.

He said swatting is extremely dangerous and scatters police efforts.

"Not only are you wasting law enforcement's time, but you're triggering that emergency response and that is always going to be dangerous," Bandler said.

Greene said her office is cooperating with local law enforcement and the FBI as they investigate the threat.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Judging by the video that Kamala Harris’s campaign is circulating, her aides are pleased with one particular exchange during her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier. In it, Harris dressed down Baier for playing video of Donald Trump that sanitized away his threat to unleash the military on ���the enemy within.”

Many observers immediately surmised that this moment—which showed Harris digging in hard against Baier—could wreck Trump’s most cherished spin about Harris. As Andrew Egger noted at The Bulwark, Harris punctured the “right-wing caricature” of her as “an insipid airhead with no ability to think on her feet.”

But this is a seminal moment for another reason as well. It starkly revealed the degree to which Fox News—and by extension Trump’s other right-wing media propagandists—has constructed an informational universe around Trump that, at the most fundamental level, is comprehensively fictional.

MAGA’s biggest deception of all may be its portrayal of Trump as enjoying public support that is not just authentically, broadly, deeply majoritarian but also is only constrained from realizing its full explosive potential by interference from corrupt institutions like the media and the Deep State. The reality is the opposite: Without the massive propaganda support system he benefits from—and the gravitational pull it exerts on mainstream news outlets—Trump, who has never enjoyed majority support in this country, probably could not long politically survive.

Harris’s confrontation with Baier illustrates the point. After Harris pointed out that Trump has threatened to target an “enemy within,” Baier said that Fox News had asked Trump to address those comments at its town hall on Wednesday. Baier then played Trump’s response at that town hall, but he left out the footage of Trump recommitting to targeting the “enemy within,” only airing Trump’s insistence that he is the one treated as the enemy.

That makes Trump look uniformly like the victim of corrupt political prosecutions—prosecutions that are actually in keeping with the rule of law—while omitting Trump’s explicit doubling down on his threat. Harris called out the omission.

“With all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about ‘the enemy within,’” Harris noted. “You didn’t show that.”

Baier protested, but Harris kept it up, essentially accusing him of concealing what he knows to be true about Trump. “You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people,” Harris said. She added:

He has talked about going after people that are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy. And in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it. And this is what is at stake.

What Harris revealed here is that, at the most basic level of all, Trump is campaigning on an explicit vow to treat the opposition and its voters as sub-American. He has threatened persecution of the “vermin” opposition, vowed to use federal disaster relief money to extort blue states into doing his bidding, floated sending the military into Democratic-run cities, and, now, made it all even more explicit with his latest “enemy within” rants.

Trump is essentially running on an open promise to serially violate his oath of office to carry out a kind of scorched-earth campaign against blue America. Baier knows all this is toxic among swing voters. And so the picture of Trump he presented was one in which the only victim of persecution is Trump himself.

What’s more, in a little-noticed move, Baier also inflated Trump’s public support. Baier asked Harris: “Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states?” But that’s false: It’s largely tied in all of them, with Harris retaining an almost imperceptible edge in enough states to win the Electoral College. Baier also repeatedly said “half” or “50 percent” of the country backs Trump. But again, Trump has never enjoyed majority support at any point.

MAGA is a minoritarian movement that derives energy from treating itself as “the people” and the non-MAGA majority as rooted in political aspirations and beliefs that are in some sense illegitimate. Yet Baier erased Trump’s lack of majority support and downplayed his explicit campaigning on a vow to violate his oath of office toward the more populous rest of America that doesn’t support him. As Matt Gertz of Media Matters has shown, Fox often downplays and sugarcoats Trump’s most explicitly antidemocratic threats and actions. Baier carried out that project at an exceptionally high-profile moment.

Something similar happened with Baier’s widely discussed questions on immigration. It’s true that Harris had trouble answering them—no one would deny that the Biden administration has struggled to manage the immigration system—but this is partly because here, again, Baier constructed a largely imaginary world. The basic premise of his questions was that under Trump, all migrants were either detained all the way through their removals or forced to wait in Mexico; that none were released here; that crimes committed by migrants occurred only during the Biden years and are directly traceable to lax border policies.

But as the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick has demonstrated, none of this is true. During the period that Trump’s Remain in Mexico program was in effect, only a small minority of apprehended migrants were forced to wait there. And according to Reichlin-Melnick’s calculations, tens of thousands of migrants were released into the interior while Remain in Mexico was in place, which debunks the Fox News host’s suggestion that the program created some sort of enforcement panacea.

In fact, as the Cato Institute’s David Bier has shown, hundreds of thousands of migrants were released all throughout the Trump presidency. That’s fewer than under Biden—in part simply because more have migrated during his presidency for all sorts of complex geopolitical reasons—but far from the migrant release–free utopia Baier presented.

Why did Trump release so many migrants? Because Congress under-resources the executive for processing and detaining them and because the law requires some releases. In Baier’s fictional portrayal of the situation, if migrants are released, it can only be a function of the executive’s permissiveness. But every administration has done this—including Trump’s. How many migrants released by Trump then committed crimes? We don’t know—in part because Democrats don’t highlight such crimes to demonize immigrants the way Republicans do. In the universe Baier constructed, none of these complications exist.

Harris deserves credit for calling out Baier’s MAGA cleanup efforts. But all this raises a bigger question: How much public support would Trump have right now if Fox and other right-wing outlets had not been pumping out sanitizing propaganda about him and his presidency for the last 10 years?

Greg Sargent @GregTSargent

Greg Sargent is a staff writer at The New Republic and the host of the podcast The Daily Blast. A seasoned political commentator with over two decades of experience, he was a prominent columnist and blogger at The Washington Post from 2010 to 2023 and has worked at Talking Points Memo, New York magazine, and the New York Observer. Greg is also the author of the critically acclaimedbook An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics.  

[mariacallous]

On Monday, United States prosecutors in Sacramento, California, unveiled a 15-count indictment accusing Dallas Erin Humber, 34, and Matthew Robert Allison, 37, of serving as core members of a virulent neo-Nazi propaganda network that solicited attacks on federal officials, power infrastructure, people of color, and material support for acts of terrorism both within the US and overseas.

The group, known as the Terrorgram Collective, has produced four publications to date—a blend of ideological motivation, mass murder worship, neofascist indoctrination, and how-to manuals for chemical weapons attacks, infrastructure sabotage, and ethnic cleansing. The screeds have directly inspired a series of ideologically motivated attacks around the world, including a 2022 mass shooting at an LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia; successful attacks on power infrastructure in North Carolina and similar failed plots in Baltimore and New Jersey; and a stabbing spree in the Turkish city of Eskisehir.

Federal prosecutors allege Humber, Allison, and other Terrorgram Collective members were in the process of compiling a fifth, yet-to-be-released publication devoted to a pantheon of “saints”—neofascist mass murderers like Timothy McVeigh and Anders Breivik. The point of this guide, prosecutors claim, was to “inspire Terrorgram users to commit acts of violence.”

Humber and Allison were both federal targets as early as early 2023, but authorities appear to have waited for a year and a half to compile evidence of potential attacks around the world, and for the British government’s decision this April to formally ban the Terrorgram Collective, before filing an indictment that could land the defendants in prison for more than two centuries. To date, American authorities have charged at least four individuals allegedly involved in the Terrorgram Collective with terrorism-related offenses.

While the arrests are not the first targeting the Terrorgram Collective—Slovakian Pavol “SlovakBro” Beňadik and former Atomwaffen Division founder Brandon Russell hold that honor—the charges against Humber and Allison represent a major change from how the FBI and US Department of Justice approach diffuse “accelerationist” terrorism—the nihilist brand of neofascism that seeks to speed up societal collapse and the ascent of a Fourth Reich through mass shootings, bombings, and other acts of terrorism by “lone wolf” actors. Relying on the UK government’s April order declaring the Terrorgram Collective a banned terrorist group and a little-employed section of the “material support for terrorism” section of the US criminal code, federal prosecutors are finally taking an aggressive, whole-of-law approach to violent neofascist extremism.

“What it shows is exactly what I’ve been arguing for years: All the tools they need to do this work, they have,” says Michael German, a former FBI special agent and a liberty and national security fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, an NYU School of Law nonprofit. German points to years of arguments by the FBI and Department of Justice that they are hamstrung by existing laws when it comes to tackling violent extremists within the United States. “It also reveals the false separation that the government makes about international and domestic terrorism—white supremacy has always been transnational.”

In 2018, German coauthored a study of federal domestic terrorism prosecutions that argued existing laws were sufficient to tackle domestic terrorism, pointing to a particular statute used to charge Humber and Allison with material support. “It’s the material support statute the DOJ forgot,” says German.

The UK’s order against the Terrorgram Collective provided American authorities a basis for labeling a diffusive, ostensibly domestic propaganda group as a “transnational terrorist organization” in a detention motion filed on Tuesday, potentially opening Humber and Allison up to deleterious additional charges and sentencing enhancements. In other words, the US is treating Terrorgram in ways similar to how it has treated Islamist terrorist organizations.

“I would think of this case more like an old-school terrorism investigation, where you have a leadership cell that pushed info to followers and radicalized them into action,” says Seamus Hughes, a terrorism researcher at the University of Nebraska Omaha, of the indictment’s allegations against Humber and Allison.

The role of undercover agents in at least two of the Terrorgram federal prosecutions, the DOJ’s repeated citation of the group’s outlawed status in Great Britain as basis for labeling it a transnational terrorism organization, and the alleged targeting of power infrastructure by participants in the propaganda network, Hughes says, all point to US law enforcement taking a new approach to tackling violent right-wing extremism.

“The vast majority of material support cases are jihadi, but right here, they [allegedly] inspired an individual to plot an attack against a power plant,” he adds. “That’s critical infrastructure and is the lynchpin for the material support of terrorism charge.”

The power infrastructure plot Hughes references is the case of Andrew Takhistov, an 18-year-old New Jersey man charged in July with soliciting another individual to attack energy facilities. Court documents describe Tahkistov as a virulently hateful young man who fantasized about attacking a synagogue and participated in a March 2024 demonstration by an Atlantic City–based “active club” in support of jailed neo-Nazi leader Robert Rundo, was ever-present in the Terrogram Collective’s Telegram channels.

Along with allegedly circulating propaganda from the Terrorgram Collective and urging lone-wolf attacks, the feds claim in court records that Tahkistov bragged about participating in the production of the group’s “Hard Reset” publication, describing it as “the perfect starting guide” for a lone-wolf terrorist. “It has ideology, it has how-to guides, it has ideas for funny things, it goes into how you should plan it, it goes into the thought process,” Takhistov allegedly told an undercover FBI agent with whom he plotted the erstwhile attack on power stations near North Brunswick and New Brunswick, New Jersey.

These details were included in Tahkistov’s indictment, which also outlined his alleged plans to travel to Russia and join the Russian Volunteer Corps, a neo-Nazi combat battalion fighting for the Ukrainian military, which was founded by Denis Kapustin, an Azov Movement–connected extremist who tried to help Rundo flee the US in 2018, in order to gain weapons expertise and military training that would allow him to carry out more effective acts of ideologically motivated terrorism once back in the United States.

Takhistov is in custody and will next appear in court on October 9. He has pleaded not guilty.

Humber and Allison are longtime radicals. Humber’s radicalization appeared to start decades ago, per a report by extremism researchers at Left Coast Right Watch. Research obtained by this reporter shows Humber ran more than two dozen extreme right-wing propaganda channels on Telegram, which circulated the Terrorgram Collective’s material as well as other accelerationist content.

In recent years, aside from narrating audio books of neofascist manifestos and propaganda tracts, Humber also corresponded with convicted domestic terrorist Dylann Roof and with Atomwaffen Division founder Brandon Russell, who ended up joining their collective. “There’s no quitting our worldview. It’s a lifelong commitment,” Humber allegedly told Russell in a recorded jailhouse call following the latter’s arrest in February 2023. Her participation in the network, according to a March 15, 2022, Telegram post included in court filings by prosecutors, was to mold potential terrorists for action. “No military is fighting for us. No govt is protecting our people and defending our interests. The ONLY people fighting for us are lone wolves,” Humber wrote, in reference to a teenager she was trying to indoctrinate. “He’s like 18 yo and seems very impressionable, I’m trying to radicalize him.”

When the FBI raided Humber’s Elk Grove home last week, they recovered reams of Nazi propaganda, 3D-printed firearms—including a homemade AR-15 pattern rifle—a short-barreled rifle, a 3D printer, unregistered handguns, and high-capacity magazines, which remain illegal in California. She remains held without bail.

Allison, who was born in Southern California, lives in a high-end apartment building in downtown Boise, Idaho, and, according to court documents, does not hold a steady job. He doesn’t appear to have a criminal record, aside from a June 2022 misdemeanor. There are very few traces of Allison online, but details cobbled together by researchers indicate he drifted steadily to the right from 2018 onward, starting with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s content and then moving steadily in the direction of Timothy McVeigh, The Order founder Robert Jay Mathews, and finally, the skull-masked, nihilistic neofascism popularized by the Atomwaffen Division at the end of the last decade.

Under the alias “BanThisChannel,” Allison was one of the most prolific disseminators of Terrorgram’s propaganda materials and was prolific in extreme-right-wing Telegram channels, commiserating with other SoCal skinheads about racial attacks in days gone by and connecting other individuals to militant groups like the Atomwaffen Division. Research obtained by this reporter indicates he worked part-time as a video producer and was the editor who compiled a number of “sizzle reels” for the Terrorgram Collective’s propaganda output online, including a set entitled “The BTC Movie Trilogy” that Takhistov sought out for inspiration.

Nineteen-year-old Slovakian teenager Juraj Krajčík, the perpetrator of the 2022 Bratislava massacre, was in extensive contact with Humber and Allison for at least a year prior to the attack, and sent his manifesto to Allison after he carried out his mass murder, which explicitly cited Terrorgram Collective publications and thanked the group for inspiring him to act. Allison then circulated the manifesto through the group’s Telegram channels. The group proceeded to claim Krajčík as “their first saint.”

Allison’s commitment to neofascism and white supremacy appears to have run deep—“I won’t quit til I’m dead. my only goal in life is to fucking destroy the enemy,” Allison declared in a Telegram post cited by federal prosecutors. Both he and Humber, according to a government detention motion, sought to identify the informant in Brandon Russell’s criminal case. Allison advocated adding the suspected snitch to “The List” (a collection of federal officials, journalists, businessmen, and other perceived enemies circulated by the Terrorgram Collective as potential assassination targets), while Humber allegedly told Russell in a recorded jailhouse call in August 2023 that she had photographs of the suspected informant and was running them through facial recognition software.

When Allison was arrested last week, authorities say, he had a backpack loaded with what appeared to be a “bug-out kit” comprised of zip ties, a gun, duct tape, ammunition, a knife, lockpicking tools, two phones, and a thumb drive. When law enforcement searched his apartment, they turned up an assault rifle, two laptops, an external hard drive, and another “go bag” containing $1,500 in cash, clothes, a passport, ziplock bags full of pills, ammunition, a skull mask balaclava, sim cards, and a birth certificate.

In a videotaped interview following his arrest, Allison allegedly confessed to his participation in the Terrorgram Collective and “engaging in acts alleged in the General Allegations of the Indictment.”

Law enforcement consider Humber and Allison threats to their community, and to authorities as well: Humber allegedly worked with Russell to try to identify a suspected government witness in the Atomwaffen Division founder’s current criminal case in Baltimore, according to recorded jailhouse phone calls. Witnesses in Russell’s upcoming trial this November will testify in a closed courtroom to avoid being identified, a highly unusual precaution. In a sealing motion, prosecutors state that not only are additional arrests of Terrogram Collective members likely, but the group’s membership poses a severe danger to law enforcement and cooperating witnesses alike: “Defendants' many associates, both in the United States and internationally, may seek to harm perceived law enforcement or law enforcement cooperators in retribution for their role in this investigation.”

Allison is currently detained without bail and is set to appear in federal court in Boise on September 18 for a detention hearing.

The volume of evidence laid out against Humber and Allison in both the indictment and detention motion, says Hughes, shows the feds have significantly altered their approach to both far-right terrorism and particularly "lone wolf" accelerationists who have perpetrated massacres ranging from Christchurch in 2019 to Buffalo in 2022.

“When they go further than they have in the past to lay out the transnational connections and overlay a material support charge, it shows that either the feds are trying to make a point, or they were very concerned about these particular actors,” Hughes says.

Senior attorneys from the DOJ’s Civil Rights and National Security divisions are listed on the court filings in this matter, another indication that the top ranks of the Biden administration’s Justice Department called the shots on the Terrorgram Collective investigation.

“To build a case in this fashion is a decision that gets made at Main Justice,” Hughes says. “Someone high up decided to sign off on this.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alice Herman at The Guardian:

With Joe Biden reportedly considering issuing blanket pardons for top critics of Donald Trump, numerous high profile Democrats have emerged urging the president to do so on behalf of their colleagues who they worry could face legal retribution from Trump in the coming years. Preemptive pardons would shield Trump’s political opponents from a possible barrage of legal attacks while setting a new precedent for sweeping, mass pardons, which some warn Trump will consequently pursue himself. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, said Biden should “very seriously consider” the use of preemptive pardons to protect members of Congress who investigated Trump’s role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Trump has threatened to prosecute those involved in the 6 January congressional investigation and other top Democrats, including the California senator Adam Schiff, the California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and the former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney. “This is what authoritarianism is all about, it’s what dictatorship is all about – you do not arrest elected officials who disagree with you,” Sanders said on NBC News on 15 December. [...] Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Kash Patel, has echoed Trump’s calls for revenge, maintaining his own “enemies list”. Patel and Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice, have both projected near-total fealty to Trump – sparking worry they would willingly go along with Trump at whatever cost. In addition to Schiff, Pelosi, and Cheney, Trump’s former chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci has also been a target of widespread anger from the right for prescribing social distancing, lockdown measures and vaccines to slow the spread of Covid-19. Cheney has spoken against Trump’s threats. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic,” she said. Whether those on the receiving end of Trump’s ire want, or would accept blanket pardons, is unclear. If figures like Cheney receive such clemency, they would potentially be spared years of litigation, massive legal fees and criminal convictions. On the other hand, accepting a preemptive pardon could give the impression of guilt – and offer Trump the precedent to issue mass preemptive pardons to associates accused of improprieties.

Happy to see President Joe Biden potentially hand out preemptive pardons of top anti-Trump voices such as Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and Liz Cheney.

[kemetic-dreams]

Political motivations

Two years after the Civil War ended, Congress overrode a veto from President Andrew Johnson to pass the Reconstruction Act of 1867. The law required former Confederate states to provide universal voting rights for all men. African men in the South voted for the first time, and African politicians soon held large shares of legislative seats in South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida.

The Ku Klux Klan responded with systematic, violent intimidation of African Americans, including lynchings specifically meant to deter voting, Williams finds. The klan killed more than 2,000 African people in 1868 in Louisiana alone, according to the paper.

“It’s hard to get rid of that trauma, and it does span generation to generation,” Williams says.

Few, if any, of the thousands of lynchings carried out from 1882 to 1930 were criminally prosecuted, and past research has demonstrated lynchings suppressed African voter turnout in the months leading to an election.

“We think of racial domination as social practices, like segregation and racial violence, being about intimidation in the social sphere,” says Ohio State University economics professor Trevon Logan, who was not involved in Williams’ analysis but provided feedback as she developed her research. “But there always has been a very pertinent political end to the story of racialized violence.”

Some states are restricting voting, others are expanding it

Williams’ paper reveals how violence from decades past affects current voting patterns at the same time states have passed or are considering laws to restrict voting.

In March, the Georgia legislature attracted news coverage when it passed a law making it harder to vote absentee. Georgia counties can now limit early voting on Sundays ahead of an election — a move critics contend targets “souls to the polls” get-out-the-vote efforts at African churches. The law does require that counties hold two Saturday advance voting sessions for general elections.

Republican lawmakers in Ohio have proposed legislation that would restrict mail ballots for most voters there and ban drop box voting. At least 18 states have passed laws restricting voting this year, while 25 states have expanded voting access through mail ballots and other measures, according to a tally by the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

At the federal level, the House of Representatives last week passed voting rights legislation that would restore provisions the Supreme Court stripped in recent years from the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Most notably, the court in 2013 ruled that states could change their voting laws without federal approval. At the time of the ruling, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and select counties in other states were subject to federal oversight because of historical evidence of racial discrimination in voting access.

The lingering effects of violence from decades ago are “a huge factor, and why African people in particular are not voting,” Williams says. “So now, when we add legislation to make it more difficult to vote, to me that is why it’s really important. Do we want to have a healthy electorate or not? When we have a healthy electorate, we have policies that represent everyone.”

Historical events ripple through time: A growing body of research

To conduct her analysis, Williams used data from the Historical American Lynching Data Collection Project from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, which covers 1882 to 1930. She also used voter registration rolls from 2000 to 2012, and other academic and government data.

Williams focused on the historical lynching rate per 10,000 African Americans during that roughly half century across 267 counties in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina. She analyzed those states because they ask voters to identify their race when registering.

“In a place like Lafayette County, Florida, there were eight lynchings during those years,” Williams explains in a 2020 video for the Economic Policy Institute, where she was an economist before joining RAND. “This means for every 1,000 African people, one of them was lynched. Today, the African voter registration rate is about 15% in that county. If those people hadn’t been killed, you would expect to see a African voter registration rate of 55%.”

The relationship between historical lynchings and voter registration today that holds for African voters doesn’t show for white voters.

“Further analyses suggest that this result is unlikely to be driven by education, earnings, incarceration rates of Africans, institutions that remained after slavery, geographic sorting, or contemporary barriers to voting,” Williams writes. Her forthcoming paper adds to a growing body of research investigating how violence and legislation from decades ago reverberates today.

Michigan State University economics and international relations professor Lisa Cook has found that violence in the decades after Reconstruction suppressed the patent output of African inventors, writing that a “lynching signaled that personal security — and with it the freedom to work and innovate — was not guaranteed.”

Princeton University economics professor Ellora Derenoncourt, along with University of California, Berkeley economics professor Claire Montialoux, have shown how a minimum wage expansion in 1966 narrowed the earnings gap between African and European workers throughout the 1970s.

Logan, the Ohio State professor, has linked higher taxes during Reconstruction — when the American South was decimated and needed funding to rebuild — with more violence against African officeholders. Referring to Williams’ current work, Logan says: “This is not something I think a traditional economic historian would address. It speaks to the need to have diverse voices in the profession.”