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[ipaftraining]

via Twitter https://twitter.com/ipaftraininguk

[mesetacadre]

In April 15th, 1920, the National Committee of the Federation of Socialist Youths met in Madrid to, taking the initiative over the PSOE, take the decision of joining the Third International, founded by the Bolshevik party. After a convoluted process that lasted until the 14th of November of 1921, the Communist Party of Spain (Spanish Section of the Communist International) was born, pejoratively called "The party of the 100 children" by its opponents.

The Komintern's policy in its early days was one of the "only front", stating that capital could only be beat via the united effort of all communists in all spheres of life. Its motto became "Towards the Masses!". In Spain, this period was marked by Primo de Rivera's dictatorship between 1923 and 1930, during which almost every political group was banned. The social-democratic PSOE and UGT avoided this by remaining "neutral" towards the dictatorship. Some members of the PSOE even collaborated, like Largo Caballero, who became Rivera's Minister of State. The Communist Party maintained its sole struggle during this time, gaining popularity among the Spanish proletariat.

When the dictatorship ended and the Second Republic was proclaimed in April of 1932, in the midst of the effects of the 1929 capitalist crisis, the 1931 strike in Sevilla and 1932 general strike, the PCE had found itself unable to work outside the dynamics imposed by the dictatorship's repression, and only began to regain its force after the selection of José Diaz as general secretary in September of 1932. The party corrected some of the left-communist and sectarian mistakes that characterized the period of the dictatorship.

The PCE took on an even bigger role in the organization of our class after its crucial role in the October insurrection of 1934 in Asturias, during which the proletariat took power in the mining basin and most of Oviedo, via the Peasant and Worker Alliances, expressions of the aforementioned only front strategy decided by the Third International. The government of the Second Republic, carrying out the needs of a section of the Spanish bourgeoisie, brutally repressed the Asturian revolutionaries, with general Francisco Franco at the helm of the military's intervention. Among the victims was Aida Lafuente, a militant of the Communist Youth and an example of bravery.

This glimmer of worker power was contextualized in the Black Biennium (1933-1935), a period of the Republic when reactionaries accessed the government and expressed the most violent tendencies of the Spanish bourgeoisie against the more than 30,000 political prisoners they took, and against the rapidly developing workers' movement.

It was during this time in Spain and the whole world, when the Third International identified the generalized rise of fascism and reactionarism, and adopted in its 7th Congress, during the summer of 1935, the policy of the Popular Front, failing to link the anti-fascist struggle with the struggle for workers' power, instead advocating for alliances with "socialist" parties and other bourgeois-democratic parties, placing the fight for socialism-communism in the background.

Half a year after this decision, the Popular Front alliance won the elections in the 16th of February, 1936. Shortly after, and only a year after the 7th Congress, sections of the Spanish and international bourgeoisie countered this victory with a failed coup d'etat by fascist generals in the 18th of July, 1936. They had the backing of the nazi-fascist powers in Europe and the complicity of the "democratic" capitalist powers, who were anxious about the strengthening proletariat in Spain. Curiously, the plane that carried Franco from his exile in the African colonies to Tetuán in north Africa, the Dragon Rapide, originally took off from London.

The biggest supporter of the Spanish Republic was the USSR, that, through the enormous effort of the Third International and the Communist Parties in 52 countries, against the banning of volunteering by many of those 52 countries, organized the enlistment, falsification of documents, logistics, arrival and other matters for the arrival of around 35,000 workers, peasants and intellectuals from all over the world. Under the single banner of the International Brigades, and for the first time materializing the historic slogan Workers of the World, Unite!, the Volunteers of Liberty, as they also came to be known, gave their mind and their body to the cause of the Spanish people, armed with the teachings of marxism-leninism. They knew that it was no longer a fight for only the Spanish. As J. V. Stalin put it in October of 1936:

The workers of the Soviet Union are merely carrying out their duty in giving help within their power to the revolutionary masses of Spain. They are aware that the liberation of Spain from the yoke of fascist reactionaries is not a private affair of the Spanish people but the common cause of the whole of advanced and progressive mankind.

In July of 1936 there already were Brigadiers present in Spain, for the occasion of the Popular Olympics (in boycott of the Berlin Olympics) organized by the Red Sport International and the Socialist Worker Sport International in Barcelona, they were among the first to take up arms against the coup d'etat. The Executive Committee's Secretariat of the Third International formalized in the 18th and 19th of September the creation of the International Brigades, which began to arrive in Spain the 14th of October of 1936. Despite the propaganda levied by fascists and bourgeois historiography, the importance of the International Brigades is undeniable today.

After the integration of the Brigades into the Popular Militias in the 22nd of October, the Brigadiers began their training in Albacete and saw action for the first time the 8th of November in Madrid, with the 11th and 12th Brigade. Militarily, the Brigades were present and indispensable in every major battle of the war, but they also played a moral role. After every capitalist power had abandoned the Spanish people to their fate with the policy of non-intervention, the compact and disciplined columns that marched through the streets of Madrid singing songs like The Internationale, Young Guard, or The Marseillaise, made up of workers who barely knew the language but were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, decidedly improved the morale of every militia and civilian in Madrid and in Spain.

But even greater than the support of the Brigades were the more than 300,000 strong military detachments sent by Germany and Italy, with the implicit approval of capitalist democracies, including the Popular Front in France, whose efforts of non-intervention focused exclusively on the republic. And it was the strategy of the popular front that forced the PCE to sideline the revolutionary potential of the hundreds of thousands of militants, instead preserving the legitimacy of the bourgeois republic.

By 1938, the republic was on its last legs and, wishing to evidence the foreign involvement on the fascist side, declared to the League of Nations in the 21st of September that they would disband all volunteers enlisted after the 18th of July, 1936. The 16th of October, 2 years and 2 days after the arrival of the Brigades, the League of Nations' International Committee arrived in Spain to verify the disbandment and departure of the Brigadiers. No such inspection was ever made on the fascist side.

According to the International Committee's report published on the 18th of January, 1939, there were a total of 12,673 Brigadiers in Spain, less than half of the total number of volunteers at around 35,000. They began to depart Spain on the 2nd of November, 1938, through the French border. During the process of departures, some Brigadiers were murdered in Spain, others died protecting the fleeing republicans and hundreds of thousands of refugees at the crossing in France. This was when Mexico, and especially the Communist Party of Mexico which pressured the government, took on around 1,600 brigadiers, mainly Germans, Poles, Italians, Austrians, Czechoslovaks and Yugoslavians, who could not safely return to their homes due to the advance of fascism within their countries. The debt owed by the workers of the world, especially the Spanish, to the Communist Party of Mexico is immeasurable, along with every other Communist Party that helped and the Third International.

The dissolution of the International Brigades did not achieve the result desired by the Republic. Instead, their retreat towards the end of the Battle of the Ebro only accelerated the morale defeat of the republican militias. Most of the brigadiers who survived the war but could not be repatriated in time did not have a pleasant fate. Most of those ended up in the French concentration camps of Gurs, Argèles-sur-Mer, Saint-Cyprien and Barcarès, Septfonds, Riversaltes, or Vernet d'Ariège.

Their fight was not in vein. The experience gained by the few who survived at a high cost proved essential in the development of their own parties, and soon enough, anti-fascist resistance. Everywhere that people took up arms against the fascist occupation, whether inside or outside the concentration camps, ex-Brigadiers were present, continuing the fight they started in the 18th of July, 1936, well after the war that had began that day was history.

Back in Spain, while the moribund republic thrashed for the last few times, the bourgeois republican government, headed by the social-democrat Juan Negrín, began to isolate the PCE with the support of the trotskyists and anarchists. It came to a close after the coup d'etat by the republican general Casado, during and after which the communist militancy was oppressed, and the fascist fifth column that had remained in Madrid opened its gates to the fascist military. This is how the fascist dictatorship began in Spain, with a betrayal by the Popular Front's social-democrats and by the democratic-bourgeois powers of the world. They couldn't help but mirror the collaborationism happening on the world stage; the UK was actively looking for an alliance with Germany, and every other capitalist country was making business with the looted property. All for one purpose that united them; the destruction of workers' power in the form of the marxist-leninist parties that around the world were beginning to challenge the capitalists, with the Third International at the helm.

These are the lessons that Spain and the world learnt during and after its fierce resistance against fascism. No popular front with bourgeois-democrats is sustainable, and their class character will always prevail above the superficial differences with fascism. The only viable tool is the organization of the social majority within the Communist Party, with proletarian internationalism and an altruist disposition as principles. No matter how much social-democracy may fear fascist privatization, and no matter how much they disrespect bourgeois democracy, the class interests that guide them will always prevail when faced with a capable mass of organized workers.

The progressive Popular Front in France, the "appeasing" government in the UK, and the nominally anti-violence liberal democracies, did not ever attempt to do anything else than giving carte blanche to the fascists and hindering their rivals. The betrayal of Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland were all made with the same reasoning: the alliance with fascism to destroy communism. There are no reasons that make the opposite possible today. When reactionarism picks up traction in lockstep with the deepening capitalist crises, all of these bourgeois-democrats some "leftists" like to place their hope in will not vary substantially from the script they followed 85 years ago.

Quedad, que así lo quieren los árboles, los llanos, las mínimas partículas de la luz que reanima un solo sentimiento que el mar sacude. ¡Hermanos! Madrid con vuestro nombre se agranda e ilumina

Rafael Alberti, A las Brigadas Internacionales

[simply-ivanka]

Jack Smith’s Half-True Report

Publishing it makes a mockery of America’s adversarial system of criminal justice.

By Alan M. Dershowitz and Andrew Stein Wall Street Journal

The publication of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on his unsuccessful investigations of Donald Trump was lawful, but it shouldn’t be. It’s a fundamental violation of due process that undercuts our adversarial system of justice.

The pretrial role of prosecutors—special or ordinary—is to make a binary decision: to seek an indictment or not. If a grand jury hands up an indictment, the Sixth Amendment guarantees the defendant a jury trial at which he can confront witnesses against him and present exculpatory evidence.

Mr. Smith has no basis to declare that the evidence was sufficient to convict Mr. Trump. The standard for obtaining an indictment is probable cause, which means there is enough admissible evidence to lead a reasonable juror to believe a crime has been committed. Grand jurors aren’t in a position to judge the credibility of the prosecution witnesses since there is no cross-examination, and they don’t hear from defense witnesses or even know who they might be.

Mr. Trump can try to refute Mr. Smith’s conclusions by challenging their credibility and presenting contrary evidence. But Mr. Smith’s report bears the imprimatur of government, while Mr. Trump’s response doesn’t, even after he becomes president again. When charges aren’t brought or are dismissed before a trial, the defendant has no power to subpoena documents or witnesses in his own defense. And Mr. Trump gained access to the report at the same time as the rest of the public did, so that any detailed response will be delayed—during which time the public will digest Mr. Smith’s one-sided, specific report and Mr. Trump’s blanket denial.

Had this case been investigated by an ordinary federal prosecutor, there would be no published report. The same should hold true for special prosecutors. Any reports they write to the attorney general should be internal. That applies as well to Robert Hur’s report about Joe Biden’s handling of classified material, which also resulted in no indictment, and David Weiss’s report on Hunter Biden’s offenses, which resulted in indictments, guilty pleas and a pardon.

We favor transparency in government and don’t lightly oppose publication of a report. But defendants deserve protection here for the same reasons that grand-jury proceedings are almost always kept secret. Transparency must be balanced against other values, including fairness and privacy.

Since Mr. Smith’s report has been published, how should the media treat it? With the skepticism that rightly applies to half-truths. But many are acting as if it is a verdict produced by a fair and adversarial process.

The law should be changed to require any special-counsel report to be kept confidential. Alternatively, if it is to be published, the subject should be given the opportunity to challenge the prosecution’s case and to present his own, and the resulting report should reflect both sides. The current approach is partisan lawfare at its worst.

[patriottruth]

2024 U.S. Presidential Election: Ronald Reagan's Informed Patriotism: donald j. trump Is Not the President Elect Because No Sworn Official Can Count Even One Vote For An Insurrectionist. The Immediate Disbarring of All 6 MAGA SCOTUS Injustices, Denying donald j. trump Even One American/Electoral Vote, Denying donald j. trump and all of his allies Access to Their MAGA Insurrectionist SCOTUS Injustices For All 2024 Election Litigation, and Immediately Restoring National Roe vs. Wade Protections Via The Remaining Three SCOTUS Justices.

After Democratic nominee Joe Biden easily won the 2020 United States presidential election with a massive American mandate and landslide victory of 81 million votes, failed Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack by donald j. trump's deranged and vicious cult of supporters in an attempted self-coup d'état where a police officer died after being assaulted by deposed donald j. trump's insurrectionist rioters. Many people were injured, including 174 police officers, and donald j. trump's uncivilized and mindless MAGA cult members defecated and smeared their feces all over the U.S. Capitol complex. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damage caused by donald j. trump's and his MAGA cult's insurrection against the United States of America, We The People of the United States of America, and the U.S. Capitol complex exceeded $2.7 million.

A week after the attack, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached the failed and undeniably deposed U.S. President donald j. trump for incitement of insurrection, making him the only U.S. president to be impeached twice while also legally and constitutionally disqualifying him from running for reelection in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, or holding any public office anywhere in the United States of America ever again due to his betrayal of his Presidential Oath of Office, the United States of America, the U.S. government, and We The People of the United States of America.

Trump and his allies used the "big lie" propaganda technique to promote false claims and conspiracy theories asserting the election was stolen by means of rigged voting machines, electoral fraud and an international conspiracy. Trump pressed Department of Justice leaders to challenge the results and publicly state the election was corrupt. However, the attorney general, director of National Intelligence, and director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – as well as some Trump campaign staff – dismissed these claims. State and federal judges, election officials, and state governors also determined the claims were baseless. Trump's legal team sought to bring a case before the Supreme Court, but none of the 63 lawsuits they filed were successful. They pinned their hopes on Texas v. Pennsylvania, but on December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Afterward, Trump considered ways to remain in power, including military intervention, seizing voting machines, and another appeal to the Supreme Court.

In June 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack said it had enough evidence to recommend that the Department of Justice indict the failed and undeniably deposed former U.S. President donald j. trump, and on December 19, the committee formally made the criminal referral to the Justice Department. On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted by a D.C. grand jury for conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Republicans in support of the indictment Mike Pence, who was Trump's vice president and, at the time, was also running for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election, issued a statement strongly condemning Trump, stating that this indictment was "an important reminder [that] anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States". In an interview with reporters at the Indiana State Fair the next day, he expanded on his comments, stating that he could not have overturned the election results as vice president.

Former U.S. attorney general William Barr said the case against Trump was legitimate and that he will testify if he is called.

Adam Kinzinger, a member of the January 6 Committee and a former Illinois representative, tweeted that "Today is the beginning of justice" and added that Trump is "a cancer on our democracy".

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was running for the 2024 presidential Republican nomination at the time, said Trump "swore an oath to the Constitution, violated his oath & brought shame to his presidency."

Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who was running for the 2024 presidential Republican nomination at the time, said "Trump has disqualified himself from ever holding our nation's highest office again."

On August 14, 2023, nearly a dozen former judges and federal legal officials, all appointed by Republicans, submitted an amicus brief saying they agreed with Jack Smith's 1proposed trial date of January 2, 2024. The brief states "There is no more important issue facing America and the American people—and to the very functioning of democracy—than whether the former president is guilty of criminally undermining America's elections and American democracy in order to remain in power […]".

On August 14, Trump and 18 co-defendants, were indicted in Fulton County, Georgia for their efforts to overturn the election results in that state. Ten leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups have been convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Capitol attack. As of May 6, 2024, of the 1,424 people charged with federal crimes relating to the event, 820 have pleaded guilty (255 to felonies and 565 to misdemeanors), and 884 defendants have been sentenced, 541 of whom received a jail sentence. Failed and deposed U.S. President and insurrectionist presidential candidate donald j. trump hails and salutes his imprisoned insurrectionist supporters at his 2024 presidential election rallies while he plays their January 6 Insurrectionist Choir version of a completely corrupted and deranged anti-American version of the U.S. National Anthem, and then he repeatedly promises to pardon all of his caged animal, shit-smearing, anti-American MAGA Nazi cult traitors should he be elected back into the White House on November 5, 2024.

LAW AND ORDER!!! United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Waltine Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira is a federal criminal case against Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, Walt Nauta, his personal aide and valet, and Mar-a-Lago maintenance chief Carlos De Oliveira. The grand jury indictment brought 40 felony counts against Trump related to his mishandling of classified documents after his presidency. The case marks the first federal indictment of a former U.S. president.

In May 2022, a grand jury issued a subpoena for any remaining documents in Trump's possession. Trump certified that he was returning all the remaining documents on June 3, 2022, but the FBI later obtained evidence that he had intentionally moved documents to hide them from his lawyers and the FBI and thus had not fulfilled the subpoena.

This led to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, in which the FBI recovered over 13,000 government documents, over 300 of which were classified, with some relating to national defense secrets covered under the Espionage Act.

On June 8, 2023, the original indictment with 37 felony counts against Trump was filed in the federal district court in Miami by the office of the Smith special counsel investigation. On July 27, a superseding indictment charged an additional three felonies against Trump. Trump was charged separately for each of 32 documents under the Espionage Act. The other eight charges against him included making false statements and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. The most serious charges against Trump and Nauta carried a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

LAW AND ORDER!!! The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Section 3: Disqualification from office for insurrection or rebellion Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The President of the United States of America is the Chief Executive and Judicial Officer over ALL U.S. states and territories both individually and as a whole. Therefore, there was never a question for the Supreme Court to decide regarding impeached insurrectionist donald j. trump appearing on any U.S. presidential election ballot on any U.S. state or territory. The Supreme Court of the United States is one of two checks and balances for the President of the United States; and the individual states, and all U.S. residents and citizens, can and do attempt to have matters settled at a local and state level by the Supreme Court of the United States. The "Take Care" clause of the United States Constitution firmly places the responsibility of ensuring the SCOTUS doesn't go rogue or overstep their authority upon the President of the United States as the Chief Executive and Judicial Officer over the entire United States as a whole, and each state and territory individually, via Presidential Executive Orders and the U.S. Department of Justice. Congress then serves as the other check and balance for both the President of the United States and the SCOTUS.

On December 19, 2023, in the case Anderson v. Griswold, the Colorado Supreme Court held that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Furthermore, the court held it would be a "wrongful act" under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot. This decision was stayed until January 4, 2024, in the expectation that Trump would seek certiorari from the United States Supreme Court. The Colorado Republican Party appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Colorado Secretary of State announced that Trump will be included on the primary ballot "unless the U.S. Supreme Court declines to take the case or otherwise affirms the Colorado Supreme Court ruling."

On December 28, 2023, Maine announced that Trump would not appear on the ballot when the Secretary of State decided that Trump had committed insurrection, although the ruling was stayed for judicial review. Trump appealed to Kennebec County Superior Court. On January 17, the case was remanded back to the Maine Secretary of State for reconsideration after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the Colorado case.

On January 3, 2024, Trump appealed to the US Supreme Court on the Colorado matter. His attorneys argued that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment should not apply to the presidency because the president is not an Officer of the United States. The Supreme Court announced on January 5, 2024, that it would hear the Colorado case, scheduling oral arguments for February 8.

"As President, I was never an 'officer of the United States' and I did not take an oath 'to support the Constitution of the United States'. Therefore, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn't apply to me, can't be applied to me, and can't prevent me from running for or holding office for my actions on January 6, 2021."- donald j. trump (November 27, 2023)

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick suggested that President Joe Biden could be removed from the ballot via Section 3 due to his immigration policy having permitted "invasion". Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft threatened to take such action in retaliation. Three Republican members of state Houses of Representatives announced intent to parody the Colorado decision via introducing legislation towards removing Biden as an insurrectionist from their states' ballots.

On January 30, 2024, a challenge that cited Section 3 to argue against inclusion of Biden on the Illinois Democratic primary ballot was dismissed by the Illinois State Board of Elections.

On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson reversed the Colorado Supreme Court decision, holding that Congress determines eligibility under Section 3 for federal officeholders and states may only bar candidates from state office.

While all nine justices agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment grants this power to the federal government, and not to the individual states, two separate opinions were issued. Justice Amy Coney Barrett concurred in the Court's decision that states cannot enforce Section 3 against federal officials, but wrote that the court should not have addressed "the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced." Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in an opinion co-signed by all three Justices, concurred in the judgment, but said that the court went beyond what was needed for the case and should not have declared that Congress has the exclusive power to decide Section 3 eligibility questions, stating that the Court's opinion had decided "novel constitutional questions to insulate this court and petitioner [Trump] from future controversy."

On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–3 decision, that failed and deposed insurrectionist 2020 election loser and former president donald j. trump had absolute immunity for acts he committed as president within his core constitutional purview, at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility, and no immunity for unofficial acts.

Berger v. United States, 255 U.S. 22 (1921), is a United States Supreme Court decision overruling a trial court decision by U.S. District Court Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis against Rep. Victor L. Berger, a Congressman for Wisconsin's 5th district and the founder of the Social Democratic Party of America, and several other German-American defendants who were convicted of violating the Espionage Act by publicizing anti-interventionist views during World War I.

The case was argued on December 9, 1920, and decided on January 31, 1921, with an opinion by Justice Joseph McKenna and dissents by Justices William R. Day, James Clark McReynolds, and Mahlon Pitney. The Supreme Court held that Judge Landis was properly disqualified as trial judge based on an affidavit filed by the German defendants asserting that Judge Landis' public anti-German statements should disqualify him from presiding over the trial of the defendants.

The House of Representatives twice denied Berger his seat in the House due to his original conviction for espionage using Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution regarding denying office to those who supported "insurrection or rebellion". The Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 1921 in Berger v. U.S., and Berger won three successive terms in the House in the 1920s.

Per the United States Supreme Court's "Berger test" that states that to disqualify ANY judge in the United States of America: 1) a party files an affidavit claiming personal bias or prejudice demonstrating an "objectionable inclination or disposition of the judge" and 2) claim of bias is based on facts antedating the trial.

All 6 criminal MAGA insurrectionist and trump-loyalist U.S. Supreme Court Justices who've repeatedly and illegally ruled in donald j. trump's favor are as disqualified from issuing any rulings pertaining to donald j. trump (a German immigrant) as the United States Supreme Court ruled U.S. District Court Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was when he attempted to deny Victor L. Berger (a German immigrant) from holding office for violating the Espionage Act and supporting or engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States of America.

Again, as the text of the Fourteenth Amendment clearly reads, and ONLY reads:

Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 3 clearly and ONLY gives Congress the power to remove a disability of an insurrectionist to "be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State".

Section 3 clearly DOESN'T give Congress the power to impose or enforce a disability of an insurrectionist to "be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State". That's what Impeachment is for, and donald j. trump was impeached for insurrection and referred to the Department of Justice by a Congressional committee for prosecution for his and his supporters acts of insurrection against the United States of America on January 6, 2021.

Section 3 clearly DOESN'T give the United States Supreme Court the authority to illegally and criminally engage in insurrection against the United States of America by MODIFYING the U.S. Constitution AND LEGISLATING from the bench to relieve their own political party and the former insurrectionist U.S. President who appointed them from needing a two-thirds vote of each House to remove the disability of an insurrectionist to run for President of the United States and hold the office of the President of the United States should they be legally elected in a free and fair election. The insurrectionist MAGA cult that's taken over the former Republican Party of the United States knows that there was no way they were getting a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress to put impeached insurrectionist and convicted felon donald j. trump on the ballot, and so they had their six legally disqualified U.S. Supreme Court criminal MAGA insurrectionist injustices legislate from the bench AND ILLEGALLY and CRIMINALLY modify the U.S. Constitution to put Espionage Act traitor, convicted felon, and impeached insurrectionist donald j. trump on the 2024 U.S. presidential election ballot.

There are two steps in the amendment process of modifying the U.S. Constitution. Proposals to amend the Constitution must be properly adopted and ratified before they change the Constitution. First, there are two procedures for adopting the language of a proposed amendment, either by (a) Congress, by two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, or (b) national convention (which shall take place whenever two-thirds of the state legislatures collectively call for one). Second, there are two procedures for ratifying the proposed amendment, which requires three-fourths of the states' (presently 38 of 50) approval: (a) consent of the state legislatures, or (b) consent of state ratifying conventions. The ratification method is chosen by Congress for each amendment. (Wikipedia)

The necessary CONTEXT for the LEGAL UNMODIFIED ORIGINAL text of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution is this: At the time of the drafting of the United States Constitution, the Americans known as "We The People" were fighting and dying to liberate themselves out from under a tyrannical king! Obviously, a President or Vice President who'd engage in insurrection against the United States of America DURING OR IMMEDIATELY AFTER the creation of the United States Constitution would be executed for TREASON; and because it'd be impossible for "a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any officeholder, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State" to BE IN A POSISTION TO IMMEDIATELY PROCLAIM THEMSELVES THE NEW TYRANNICAL DIVINE KING FOR LIFE OVER THE UNITED STATES AMERICA; and because all traitors were being actively and immediately executed for TREASON, it'd have been impossible for an insurrectionist traitor President or Vice President to run for any office again - because they'd be dead; therefore, it was unnecessary to include an executed treasonous President and/or Vice President in Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. With full knowledge and understanding of these facts, the criminal insurrectionist MAGA extremist U.S. Supreme Court injustices ILLEGALLY and CRIMINALLY legislated from the bench to modify Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution so that, as far as the 6 MAGA extremist U.S. Supreme Court injustices are concerned, it now reads as such WITHOUT having been LEGALLY amended by a both two-thirds vote of both houses of the U.S. Congress AND the approval of 38 of 50 U.S. states:

Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. As of March 4, 2024, six partisan Justices on the United States Supreme Court bypassed the legal and proper constitutional amendment process, legislated from the bench, and added the following illegal and unenforceable legislation to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution without Congressional or States approval and ratification: "Only Congress determines eligibility of insurrectionist candidates under Section 3 for federal officeholders and states may only bar insurrectionist candidates from state office. Federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced upon insurrectionist candidates for federal office."

How many elected Republicans, Democrats, and Independents in the House of Representatives and the Senate provided the necessary two-thirds vote to amend the U.S. Constitution in this manner? What are the names of all of these so-called elected officials and where are the official voting records? What dates did these voting sessions occur?

Which of the 38 U.S. states ratified this Congressional two-thirds-vote-approved constitutional amendment so that the Espionage Act traitor, convicted felon, and insurrectionist donald j. trump could appear on the 2024 U.S. presidential ballot?

This is where the presidential Take Care Clause is automatically activated and the U.S. president enforces the laws of the United States and upholds, protects, and defends the U.S. Constitution, and perpetuates American democracy.

This is where all six MAGA criminal insurrectionist SCOTUS injustices face both immediate and permanent disbarment from ever practicing law anywhere in the United States of America AND Congressional Impeachment and removal from the Supreme Court of the United States of America for giving aid, comfort, and support to criminal defendant donald j. trump's felonies involving moral turpitude, forgery, fraud, a history of dishonesty, consistent lack of attention to the American people, the United States, his oath of office, and the U.S. Constitution, drug abuse, thefts of taxpayer and U.S. government monies, thefts of at least 13,000 classified documents and other U.S. government property, and a pattern of violations of all professional codes of ethics.

Article Two of the United States Constitution establishes the executive branch of the federal government, which carries out and enforces federal laws. Article Two vests the power of the executive branch in the office of the president of the United States, lays out the procedures for electing and removing the president, and establishes the president's powers and responsibilities.

Clause 5: Caring for the faithful execution of the law The president must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." This clause in the Constitution imposes a duty on the president to enforce the laws of the United States and is called the Take Care Clause, also known as the Faithful Execution Clause or Faithfully Executed Clause. This clause is meant to ensure that a law is faithfully executed by the president even if he disagrees with the purpose of that law. The Take Care Clause demands that the president obey the law, the Supreme Court said in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, and repudiates any notion that he may dispense with the law's execution. In Printz v. United States, the Supreme Court explained how the president executes the law: "The Constitution does not leave to speculation who is to administer the laws enacted by Congress; the president, it says, "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," Art. II, §3, personally and through officers whom he appoints (save for such inferior officers as Congress may authorize to be appointed by the "Courts of Law" or by "the Heads of Departments" with other presidential appointees), Art. II, §2." In Mississippi v. Johnson, 71 U.S. 475 (1867), the Supreme Court ruled that the judiciary may not restrain the president in the execution of the laws. In that case the Supreme Court refused to entertain a request for an injunction preventing President Andrew Johnson from executing the Reconstruction Acts, which were claimed to be unconstitutional. The Court found that "[t]he Congress is the legislative department of the government; the president is the executive department. Neither can be restrained in its action by the judicial department; though the acts of both, when performed, are, in proper cases, subject to its cognizance." Thus, the courts cannot bar the passage of a law by Congress, though it may later strike down such a law as unconstitutional. A similar construction applies to the executive branch. (Wikipedia)

The Take Care Clause is the constitutional checks and balances guardrail to counter judicial activism, legislating from the bench, and a rogue U.S. Supreme Court that's supporting and actively engaging in insurrection against the United States of America and We The People of the United States with the purpose of overthrowing the U.S. government, installing a dictator/King for life, ending American democracy, and engaging in tyranny against We The People of the United States of America. Due to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity, President Joe Biden can simply overrule MAGA SCOTUS, remove donald j. trump from the 2024 U.S. presidential ballot, demand a new election with a new Republican or Independent candidate, and issue an Executive Order barring all six of the criminal insurrectionist MAGA extremist SCOTUS injustices from taking or ruling on any 2024 U.S. presidential election matters and/or any matters pertaining to donald j. trump, per the Berger Test that legally disqualifies them from doing so. President Biden can also simply issue an Executive Order proclaiming that no sworn election official or law enforcement official anywhere in the U.S. or its territories can attempt to cause even one vote for the Espionage Act traitor, convicted felon, and insurrectionist donald j. trump to be counted for the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

And all of that is EXACTLY why dumbass dumpster diaper cryin' lyin' anti-American MAGA Nazi and convicted felon, insurrectionist, serial sex offender, serial adulterer, serial rapist, lifetime incestuous pedophile groomer and lowlife sleazeball scum and failed, fraudulent and repeatedly bankrupted "businessman" and grifter/con artist donald j. trump and all of his supporters, enablers, donors, and voters want to destroy and abolish the U.S. Department of Education AND THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

Anti-American MAGA School Book Bans:

What Would a Reagan Republican Do?

"Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the People.' 'We the People' tell the government what to do; it doesn't tell us. 'We the People' are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast.

Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the People' tell the government what it is allowed to do. 'We the People' are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I've tried to do these past 8 years.

An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-60s.

So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important -- why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, four years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, 'we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.' Well, let's help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.

And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the 'shining city upon a hill.' The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still." - Ronald Reagan (1989 Farewell Speech)

[mariacallous]

As one of his first acts after being sworn in, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency by reorganizing and renaming an existing entity, the US Digital Services (USDS), as the US DOGE Service. And while some have noted that this version of DOGE moves away from the sweeping vision of deregulation outlined in a November Wall Street Journal op-ed, it's a move that will give centibillionaire Elon Musk and his allies seemingly unprecedented insight across the government and access to troves of federal data.

“It’s quite a clever way of integrating DOGE into the federal government that I think will work, in the sense of giving it a platform for surveillance and recommendations,” says Richard Pierce, a law professor at George Washington University.

Soon after his election victory, Trump announced that he would form DOGE, led by Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, to provide ​​“advice and guidance from outside the government”—something that would generally require it be formed as a federal advisory committee. The idea was that DOGE would provide recommendations for how to cut some $2 trillion from the federal budget. (Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Ramaswamy exited the DOGE project.)

Both Ramaswamy and Musk supported Trump during his campaign, but Musk emerged as one of the president’s most important financial backers, donating close to $200 million to the Trump-supporting America PAC. Additionally, he used the power of his own celebrity to drum up support for Trump both online and off, joining the president on the campaign trail and amplifying Trump's messaging on X, the social media platform he owns. Almost immediately after the election, Musk began to take a central role in the transition, joining Trump on calls with foreign leaders and making staffing recommendations.

Meanwhile, Musk put out a call for people to work with DOGE onlin, and turned the Washington, DC office of his company SpaceX into a staging ground for the entity while bringing in other major figures from Silicon Valley to assist in the effort. Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen apparently joined the effort as a self-proclaimed “unpaid intern.”

But under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, committees of the sort DOGE seemed to be shaping up to be have several legal requirements, including making all meetings publicly accessible and requiring a diversity of perspectives on the committee itself. By repurposing the USDS, which was already part of the Office of Management and Budget, Trump managed to skirt both the requirements of a formal advisory committee and the congressional oversight required when creating a new federal agency. In short, it meant DOGE would get more access to sensitive data than an advisory committee would likely have, while offering less transparency.

The USDS was created by former president Barack Obama to untangle dysfunctional or failing technology across the federal government in the wake of the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov. The Service’s mandate allows it the wide-ranging ability to enter any government agency and access its software or technical systems with the goal of helping to streamline or reform existing systems.

Under the executive order, DOGE teams, which “will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney” will be dispatched to various agencies. They will be granted “access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” ostensibly with the goal of streamlining data sharing across federal agencies.

A former USDS employee who spoke to WIRED who was granted anonymity to preserve their privacy called the repurposing of the Digital Service an “A+ bureaucratic jiujitsu move.” But, they say, they’re concerned that DOGE’s access to sensitive information could be used to do more than just streamline government operations.

“Is this technical talent going to be pointed toward using data from the federal government to track down opponents?” they ask. “To track down particular populations of interest to this administration for the purposes of either targeting them or singling them out or whatever it might end up being?”

It appears, however, that the first order of DOGE is to weed out people in agencies that might push back on the Trump administration’s agenda, starting with existing USDS staff, and hire new people.

“DOGE teams have a lawyer, an HR director, and an engineer. If you were looking to identify functions to cut, people to cut, having an HR director there and having a lawyer say ‘here's what we're allowed to do or not do’ would be one way that you would facilitate that,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, noting that DOGE’s potential access to federal employee data could put “them in some sort of crosshairs to be fired.”

When Musk took over Twitter, he brought in outside help from his close circle as well as his other companies to transform the company, a move he appears to be repeating.

Who exactly is going to be part of DOGE is a particularly thorny issue, because there are technically two DOGEs. One is the permanent organization, the revamped USDS—now the US DOGE Service. The other is a temporary organization, with a termination date of July 4, 2026. Creating this organization means the temporary DOGE can operate under a special set of rules. It can sequester employees from other parts of the government and can accept people who want to work for the government as volunteers. Temporary organizations can also hire what are known as special government employees—experts in a given field who can bypass the rigors of the regular federal hiring processes. They’re also not subject to the same transparency requirements as other government employees.

In the best-case scenario, this would allow DOGE to move quickly to address issues and fast-track necessary talent, as well as build systems that make government services more seamless by facilitating the flow of information and data. But in the worst case, this could mean less transparency around the interests of people working on important government projects, while enabling possible surveillance.

“I think part of the reason they're wanting to use special government employees is because so long as they all work less than 60 days, the financial reporting requirements are less, which is going to be attractive to billionaires who have a lot of financial things they don't want to disclose,” says Nick Bednar, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Law. “And with agency approval, these individuals are allowed to continue contracting with the federal government if they represent, say, a corporation that has a lot of contracts with the government.”

Musk alone has over received billions of dollars via contracts with the federal government through his company SpaceX.

“To me, [the temporary organization] suggests there's some sort of, there's some reason for that which probably has to do with skirting disclosure and conflicts of interest requirements,” claims Moynihan.

Noah Kunin, former infrastructure director at the US General Services Administration, tells WIRED that “the government has access to incredible amounts of sensitive or proprietary business information that [businesses] had to share with the government in order to get a contract or take some action.” And while not everyone gets to access this—it generally requires some form of clearance, and government employees are not supposed to share it—this kind of information could be particularly useful to someone like Musk or other members of the business community who might be brought into DOGE.

“You always have concerns whenever you have private sector individuals entering government for a temporary position,” says Bednar. “This is how regulatory capture occurs.”

Even with all these special maneuvers, DOGE will likely still face hurdles. Sharing data across government departments and systems is tricky, particularly when different laws govern different agencies and the information they collect. Similarly, sensitive data often requires some form of government authorization, which DOGE volunteers and employees might not be able to get.

“There are legal restrictions to sharing data between organizations, and those agreements take an enormous amount of effort to put into place,” the former USDS employee says. “There are tons of examples of obstacles to information sharing like that. So maybe this is more aspirational than it is possible.”

“DOGE has just sort of added this element of unpredictability to what happens next in government,” says Moynihan. “It could be a bipartisan effort to make government technology work better. It could be an oligarch extracting resources from the government. We just really don't know. We're all gazing at tea leaves right now.”

[misfitwashere]

Musk’s dangerous bullying

ROBERT REICH

DEC 2

Friends,

No one better illustrates the sinister consequences of great wealth turned into unaccountable power than Elon Musk. 

Musk, the richest person in the world, is not only claiming presidential authority to fire federal workers, but he’s posting the identities of those whose jobs he wants to eliminate — with the clear intention that his followers harass and threaten them so they quit. 

Musk is utterly unaccountable. He has never been elected to anything, but he spent $120 million helping Trump become the president-elect and is now acting as if he’s Trump’s co-president, calling himself Trump’s “First Buddy.”

After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk turned it into a cesspool of disinformation and conspiracy theories and manipulated its algorithm to give himself 205 million followers, to whom he is now distributing treacherous lies. 

In recent days, Musk boosted posts on his website singling out the names and job titles of four federal employees working in climate policy and regulation who have done nothing other than hold titles Musk dislikes. All four targets are women. 

In one instance, Musk quote-tweeted a post highlighting the role of 37-year-old Ashley Thomas, a little-known director of climate diversification at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. 

Musk’s repost — “So many fake jobs” — garnered 32 million views, triggering a tsunami of taunts against Thomas, such as, “Sorry Ashley Thomas Gravy Train is Over” and “A tough way for Ashley Thomas to find out she’s losing her job.”

Musk apparently took the word “diversification” in Thomas’s title to mean the “D” in “DEI,” which Musk considers “woke.” 

Thomas (who holds degrees in engineering, business, and water science from Oxford and MIT) is focused on climate diversification to protect agriculture and infrastructure from extreme weather events.

Following Musk’s tweet, Thomas shut down several of her social media accounts. 

In another repost, Musk mocked Alexis Pelosi, a relative of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who works as a senior adviser to climate change at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Nancy Pelosi’s niece should not be paid $181,648.00 by the U.S. Taxpayer to be the ‘Climate Advisor’ at HUD,” the original account wrote. “But maybe her advice is amazing 🤣🤣” Musk snarked. 

Musk also singled out the chief climate officer in the Department of Energy’s loan programs office and shared the name of an employee serving as senior adviser on environmental justice and climate change at the Department of Health and Human Services.

IMHO, Musk’s targets should sue him for defamation. 

This is hardly the first time Musk has targeted specific people, and he obviously knows how dangerous such targeting can be. 

After taking over Twitter in 2022, Musk targeted Yoel Roth, the platform’s former head of trust and safety, who had recently left the company. Musk tweeted, incorrectly, that it looked like Roth had argued “in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services.” Some platform users interpreted this as Musk calling Roth a pedophile, and they posted calls for Roth’s death. 

Roth moved out of his house because of the threats. 

Musk has also singled out specific civil servants. In 2021, he targeted Missy Cummings, a former fighter pilot and senior adviser at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, whom Musk claimed was “extremely biased against Tesla” because she questioned the safety of Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system. 

Cummings said she received death threats and was forced to leave her home as a result of Musk’s posts.

Musk’s current targeting is even more dangerous because he has the apparent authority of the president-elect. Although the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” that Musk is co-heading (with Vivek Ramaswamy) isn’t a real department and has not been authorized by Congress, Musk is acting as if it’s real. 

Cummings says Musk’s personal intimidation is already leading some longtime federal employees to leave their jobs: “He intended for them, for people just like this, to be intimidated and just go ahead and quit so he didn’t have to fire them. So his plan, to some extent, is working.”

**

I worked in the federal government between 1974 and 1980, first at the Federal Trade Commission and then at the Justice Department, and from 1993 to 1997 I served as secretary of labor. 

Most of the federal employees I came to know cared deeply about the common good. The vast majority did their work carefully and thoughtfully. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. 

But ever since Richard Nixon attacked “unelected bureaucrats” as America’s enemy and Ronald Reagan blamed “liberal bureaucrats” for government’s failings, government employees have been scapegoated. And now Trump is preparing to attack the so-called “deep state.”

In fact, America spends less each year on the federal government’s civilian workforce (roughly $200 billion) than we spend annually on federal contractors ($750 billion). 

Much of the “fat” is found in these private, for-profit contractors, who aren’t accountable to anyone except the office that draws up the contracts. 

The biggest waste is in the Defense Department, where many contractors have avoided competitive bidding because they have a monopoly over critical technologies. 

Which brings me back to Musk, whose businesses are fast becoming among the government’s largest contract monopolists. According to USASpending.gov (the government database that tracks federal spending), Musk’s SpaceX and his Starlink satellite division have signed contracts totaling nearly $20 billion. 

I don’t know how much waste and inefficiency are to be found in Musk’s government contracts because I haven’t been able to find any reports on them — which is precisely the problem. 

While Musk seeks to intimidate federal civil servants whose job titles he dislikes, forcing some to leave government because his postings have elicited threats to their lives, Musk is distracting attention from himself and his own profitable dips into the taxpayer trough. 

I invite any of you with an inclination to root out waste and inefficiency to find out what you can about any likely abuses in Musk’s government contracts, and let us know what you come up with.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Trudy Ring at The Advocate:

If you’re looking for yet another reason that Donald Trump shouldn’t be elected president again, we have two words for you: Project 2025. You’ve probably been hearing these words, but you may be sketchy on what they mean. We’re here to fill you in on the details thanks to a report by Accountable.US.

What is Project 2025?

Basically, Project 2025 is a blueprint of what far-right activists want from the next conservative president — and Trump is the conservative who’s running. It includes plans to fire as many as 50,000 career federal employees and replace them with people who have unquestionable loyalty to the president; restrict access to contraception; possibly implement a national abortion ban; cut federal health care programs; and much more, designed to make the U.S. an authoritarian nation. And LGBTQ+ people are directly in its crosshairs. “Project 2025 couldn’t make its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda any more clear. With far-right extremists at the helm, the project is a power grab by conservatives attempting to turn back the clock on hard-fought progress and fundamental rights,” Accountable.US President Caroline Ciccone said in a statement to The Advocate. “Project 2025 doesn’t just pose an existential threat to our democracy but seriously threatens the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ communities across the country.”

[...]

How will it affect LGBTQ+ Americans?

Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” is a document taking up 900 pages, but Accountable.US has put together a succinct summary of what Project 2025 would mean to LGBTQ+ Americans, and The Advocate has a first look. Here are the key points. The project urges the next conservative president to basically ignore the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the court found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in banning sex discrimination in the workplace, also bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. President Joe Biden, in contrast, had directed all federal agencies to implement the provisions of Bostock not just in the workplace but in health care, education, and other aspects of life. It calls for barring transgender people from the military and to stop what it considers the “toxic normalization of transgenderism” across the government and American society. It seeks to abolish the president’s Gender Policy Council, “which it views as promoting abortion and the ‘new woke gender ideology,’” Accountable.US notes.

The next Health and Human Services secretary, Project 2025 recommends, should reverse what it calls a focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage, replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.” “The Project 2025 playbook laments the fact that family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are ‘fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,”’ making it clear that they intend to roll those agenda items back,” Accountable.US explains. It further calls for the Department of Justice “to defend the First Amendment right of those who would discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. It also objects to the DOJ notifying states that their bans on abortion and medical services to transgender persons may violate federal law,” Accountable.US reports. On foreign policy, Project 2025 says a new conservative president should dismantle and U.S. Agency for International Development programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as what it dubs “the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda.”

Project 2025’s harmful anti-LGBTQ+ agenda is just one piece of the radical right-wing Heritage Foundation document. Project 2025’s goals are to make life harder for LGBTQ+ Americans.

[thelovesystem]

Youth have no rights in the U.S. - and that puts them most at risk from the Far-Right.

TL;DR: Kids can be legally tortured in the U.S. or forced out of their homes to escape this (which puts them at direct risk of sex trafficking, LGBT youth are one of the most trafficked groups for this exact reason) so protect queer and trans youth. If a minor asks you to use different pronouns than their parents use for them or expresses a crush on a kid of the same gender, no they didn’t or if they did it was a joke. If you’re directly told by a minor they are queer or trans in a forced outting state, you didn’t understand what they were talking about, you’re just an old person who doesn’t understand the youths’ slang. But make sure you do inform that minor about the law before they tell anyone else and tell them you’re there for them if they need someone. Also, be aware youth aren’t the only ones at risk. Adults can now be discriminated against in housing, employment, etc. and hate crimes including cyber-crimes are rising so if you have social media under your legal name or with your face on it, going private on those is something to consider if you’re higher risk.

The treatment of queer and trans youth highlights the underlying childism in our society. Before the age of 18, people are viewed as property rather than people. They are the only group that are legally allowed to be intentionally physically hurt by someone else for reasons other than self-defense, and they have no legal recourse to fight back or escape this unless another person over 18 deems their suffering to be “too far” (they don’t get to decide for themselves as the sufferer). There is a multi-billion dollar industry to kidnap, incarcerate, and psychologically, and often also physically, torture youth at the behest of their parents or guardians. Anyone else can only be incarcerated against their will if they commit a crime or are deemed medically to be a danger to themselves or others, but youth can be sentenced with the unilateral power of one person.

And these kids have even less freedoms and oversights for their safety than prisoners do and far less than patients in actual psychiatric facilities do. Prisoners are (generally) allowed to contact their loved ones and the outside world at will or at least regularly and can report abuse and have an outside person look into it. People in psychiatric hospitals are the same and the people overseeing them are accountable to licensing boards, are all mandated reporters, etc. Kids in Troubled Teen Industry facilities don’t even have any of that recourse, the people incarcerating them are accountable to no one and they have no uncontrolled contact to the outside world. (No, I’m not saying prisons or psychiatric facilities are perfect and abuse free, I’m just highlighting how much worse youth are treated and how much they have literally no rights, not even the bare minimum ones the least free people in our society have, if their parent decides they don’t).

And a large part of why we have these problems because Far-Right Fundamentalist Christian Extremists have been systematically infiltrating our government (locally to federally) and undermining the rule of the majority for decades behind the scenes. We are finally seeing it and fighting back. They’ve been lowering statutes of limitations on child sexual abuse, lowering protections for children, etc. “Protect the children” has always meant “protect our property rights to isolate, indoctrinate, and torture our children with no interference”. Do you know what The Convention On The Rights Of The Child is? You probably don’t but it’s the most widely and quickly ratified international treaty in the world, even more than The Geneva Convention. It lays out children’s fundamental rights to safety, education, access to resources, treated with dignity, all that. And we were going to sign it, but Far-Right Christian Fundamentalist groups including “Focus On The Family” lobbied hard against it. And the main reason they cited was their “religious freedom” to beat children… Yeah, it’s disgusting. They literally admitted they are a child abuse cult. Also, many of those Troubled Teen Industry facilities are run by Mormons and other fundie cults, especially in Utah.

And now they are targeting LGBTQIA+ youth even more publicly than they have been. This is terrifying because it’s already established in the U.S. that minors can be forced into incarceration and torture conditions with no recourse. Conversion “Therapy” is condemned as a debunked non-science and as torture by every credible human rights, psychological, and medical association in the world. And, yet, these people are fighting for youth to be forcibly taken to these facilities and when that happens, even if they escape the cops will bring them back because they don’t have the human right to freedom. They don’t even have the human right to avoid torture. We are seeing laws to make this happen, to keep or reinstate conversion therapy and to forcibly out queer youth to their parents regardless of their safety because they aren’t seen as having a right to privacy, their parent is the one with the right to know what their property is saying, feeling, and doing. These kids could not only be sent to be tortured or kicked out to be sex trafficked, some could be murdered in honor or hate killings. So, if you know a kid is queer or trans, no you fucking don’t and no one can prove you do (make sure they can’t).

[darkmaga-returns]

Palisades Fire ‘Crime Scene’. MAUI 2.0. Trump Plans to End the IRS. Trump’s going to WEF Davos 2025. S. Korea’s president detained. Pezeshkian: Iran never plotted to kill Trump. Mark Zuckerberg Lied.

Lioness of Judah Ministry

Jan 15, 2025

Return Of Strong Winds Spark "Dangerous Situation" Across Fire-Ravaged Palisades

One week after the fires in Los Angeles County began, the blazes remain out of control, scorching nearly 40,000 acres and leveling entire neighborhoods.

On Tuesday, winds are expected to gust between 45 and 70 mph, accompanied by dry air, significantly increasing the risk of fire spread. The National Weather Service has issued "Particularly Dangerous Situation Red Flag Warnings" for L.A. and Ventura counties through Wednesday evening, warning that "this setup is about as bad as it gets." Strong gusts could derail any progress made by firefighters early this week across two of the main fires, the Palisades and Eaton fires. The blazes have burned upwards of 40,000 and leveled entire neighborhoods and burned more than 12,000 structures. At least 24 people have died, with the death toll expected to rise.

Palisades Fire ‘Crime Scene’ Gives Clues to Inferno’s Origin

Investigators trying to trace the origin of a Los Angeles County wildfire that is devastating parts of America’s second-largest city believe it may have originated in a known hiking area.

Authorities have taped off a ridge overlooking Los Angeles as they investigate the origin of the Palisades Fire, describing the area as a “crime scene.” The wildfire, which caused the destruction of thousands of homes and businesses and claimed at least eight lives, remains uncertain. However, investigators are scrutinizing the site for clues, as evidenced by the police tape. Dominic Choi, the assistant Los Angeles police chief, says “there has been no definitive determination that it is arson”—but he has not ruled it out.

Wildfire Woes: California Regulators Halted Palisades Fire Prevention Project to Save Rare Shrub

Nearly 24,000 acres - including much of Topanga Canyon - have gone up in smoke...

California’s eco-regulators halted a critical wildfire prevention project near Pacific Palisades to protect an endangered shrub - only for that same area to be engulfed in flames during the Palisades Fire, the most destructive blaze in Los Angeles history. In 2019, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) set out to replace aging wooden power poles - some nearly a century old - with fire-resistant steel poles and widen fire-access lanes in the wildfire-prone Topanga State Park. The $2 million project was designed to bolster fire safety after the area was deemed an "elevated fire risk."

MAUI 2.0: They just admitted LA Fires are a carbon copy of Lahaina

Trump Announces Plan to End the IRS

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced he intends to create a new revenue agency that will effectively end the need for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which oversees the federal taxation of Americans.

Instead, the President-elect proposes an External Revenue Service (ERS), which will serve as the central point for collecting tariffs, duties, and other taxes and fees on foreign goods. This revenue source, he believes, will supplant the need for the federal income tax. “For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Through soft and pathetically weak Trade agreements, the American Economy has delivered growth and prosperity to the World, while taxing ourselves.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Drew Sheneman, The Star-Ledger

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 22, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 23, 2024

Former president Trump’s closing economic argument for the American people is that putting a high tariff wall around the country will bring in so much foreign money that it will fund domestic programs and bring down the deficit, enabling massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. 

Vice President Kamala Harris’s closing economic argument is that the government should invest in the middle class by permitting Medicare to pay for in-home health aides for the elderly, cutting taxes for small businesses and families, and passing a federal law against price gouging for groceries during emergencies. 

The two candidates are presenting quite stark differences in the futures they propose for the American people. 

Trump has indicated his determination to take the nation’s economy back to that of the 1890s, back to a time when capital was concentrated among a few industrialists and financiers. This world fits the idea of modern Republicans that the government should work to protect the economic power of those on the “supply side” of the economy with the expectation that they will be able to invest more efficiently in the market than if they were regulated by business or their money taken by taxation. 

Trump has said he thinks the word “tariff” is as beautiful as “love” or “faith” and has frequently praised President William McKinley, who held office from 1897 to 1901, for leading the U.S. to become, he says, the wealthiest it ever was. Trump attributes that wealth to tariffs, but unlike leaders in the 1890s, Trump refuses to acknowledge that tariffs do not bring in money from other countries. The cost of tariffs is borne by American consumers. 

The industrialists and Republican lawmakers who pushed high tariffs in the 1890s were quite open that tariffs are a tax on ordinary Americans. In 1890, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World complained about the McKinley Tariff that raised average tariffs to 49.5%. “Under the McKinley Act the people are paying taxes of nearly $20,000,000 and a much larger sum in bounties to Carnetic, Phipps & Co., and their fellows, for the alleged purpose of benefiting the wage-earners,” it wrote, even as the powerful companies slashed wages.

Today, on CNBC’s Squawk Box, senior economics reporter Steve Liesman noted that the conservative American Enterprise Institute has called out Trump’s proposed tariffs as a tax hike on American consumers of as much as $3.9 trillion. 

Together with Trump’s promise to make deep cuts or even to end income taxes on the wealthy and corporations, his economic plan will dramatically shift the burden of supporting the country from the very wealthy to average Americans, precisely the way the U.S. economy worked until 1913, when the revenue act of that year lowered tariffs and replaced the lost income with an income tax. 

That shifting of the economic burden of the country downward showed in another way yesterday, as well, when the Committee for a Responsible Budget noted that Trump’s economic plans would hasten the insolvency of Social Security trust funds by three years, from 2034 to 2031, and would lead to dramatic cuts. 

Harris’s plan explicitly rejects the supply-side economics of the past and moves forward the policies of the Biden administration that work to make sure the “demand side” of the economy, or consumers, has access to money and opportunity. Those policies, discredited by the ideologues of the Reagan revolution, had proven their success between 1933 and 1981 and have again delivered, achieving the nation’s extraordinary post-pandemic economic growth. 

The International Monetary Fund underlined that growth again today when it outlined that the nation’s surge of investment under the Biden administration has attracted private investment, all of which is paying off in higher productivity, higher wages, and higher stock prices, enabling the U.S. to pull ahead of the world’s other advanced economies.

And it is continuing to deliver. Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission’s final rule banning fake online reviews and testimonials that mislead consumers and hurt real businesses went into effect. Today the Department of Health and Human Services reported that in the first half of 2024, nearly 1.5 million people with Medicare Part D saved almost $1 billion in out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs thanks to the drug negotiations authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Harris has expanded that plan to focus on small businesses and families. In addition to her plan to permit start-ups to deduct $50,000 in costs rather than the current $5,000 and to cut taxes for families by extending the Child Tax Credit, she has called for raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, lower than it was before the Trump tax cuts and lower than the rate President Joe Biden proposed in his 2024 budget. She has proposed $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers and promised to work with the private sector to build 3 million new housing units by the end of her first term. 

Her recent proposal to enable Medicare to pay for home health aides has flown largely under the radar, although it would be a major benefit to many Americans. She proposes to pay for that benefit with additional savings from drug price negotiations. By keeping seniors in their homes longer, it would save families from having to meet the high cost of residential care.  

Yesterday the White House proposed an expansion of the Affordable Care Act to make over-the-counter contraceptives free under health plans. Currently, only prescription contraceptives are covered. If the rule is finalized, it would expand contraceptive coverage to the 52 million women of reproductive age covered by private health plans.

As the campaigns enter the last two weeks before the election, the difference between their economic vision is stark. 

So, it seems, is the difference between the candidates.

Today, Trump canceled another event, this one a roundtable with Robert Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic representative Tulsi Gabbard, both members of Trump’s transition team, that was supposed to highlight Kennedy’s vision for America’s health and their contributions to the campaign. He later held a rally in North Carolina.

Harris, meanwhile, sat down with Hallie Jackson of NBC News and participated in an interview with Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Tonight, rapper Eminem introduced former president Barack Obama at a rally for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Harris’s campaign announced today that on Friday she will campaign in Houston, Texas, where she will emphasize the dangers of abortion bans in the heart of Trump country.

The biggest news about the candidates today, though, appears to be an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic exploring Trump’s disparagement of the U.S. military. Noting that it is an odd thing for a president to remain popular when he is openly dismissive of soldiers and their decorated officers, Goldberg explores Trump’s inability to understand any relationship that is not transactional. He noted Trump’s dismissal of soldiers as “losers,“ his astonishment at how little pay they make, and his dislike of wounded personnel who, he thinks, made him look bad.

Unable to understand the principles of honor or patriotism, Trump could not comprehend that Army generals were loyal to the U.S. Constitution rather than him. He yearned for generals, he said, like those of autocratic rulers. He said he wanted generals like Hitler’s, a leader he sometimes praised. “Do you really believe you’re not loyal to me?” Trump asked then–chief of staff General John Kelly. Kelly was clear: “I’m certainly part of the administration, but my ultimate loyalty is to the rule of law.”

That was not an answer Trump liked. When the generals refused to shoot protesters or deploy U.S. troops against American citizens, Trump screamed: “You are all f*cking losers!” 

Finally, General Kelly spoke up himself. In an interview with Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times published tonight, Kelly noted that he had decided not to speak out about Trump unless Trump said something deeply troubling or something that involved Kelly and was wildly inaccurate. For Kelly, Trump’s recent talk about the “enemy within” was dangerous enough that he felt obliged to make a public comment. 

The retired U.S. Marine Corps general confirmed that Trump is “certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government—he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that.” 

Kelly added that “in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[foreverlogical]

Expanded overtime guarantees for millions

First over-the-counter birth control pill to hit U.S. stores in 2024

Gun violence prevention and gun safety get a boost

Renewable power is the No. 2 source of electricity in the U.S. — and climbing

Preventing discriminatory mortgage lending

A sweeping crackdown on “junk fees” and overdraft charges

Forcing Chinese companies to open their books

Preventing another Jan. 6

Building armies of drones to counter China

The nation’s farms get big bucks to go “climate-smart”

The Biden administration helps broker a deal to save the Colorado River

Giving smaller food producers a boost

Biden recommends loosening federal restrictions on marijuana

A penalty for college programs that trap students in debt

Biden moves to bring microchip production home

Tech firms face new international restrictions on data and privacy

Cracking down on cyberattacks

Countering China with a new alliance between Japan and South Korea

Reinvigorating cancer research to lower death rates

Making medication more accessible through telemedicine

Union-busting gets riskier

Biden inks blueprint to fix 5G chaos

Biden empowers federal agencies to monitor AI

Fixing bridges, building tunnels and expanding broadband

The U.S. is producing more oil than anytime in history

Strengthening military ties to Asian allies

A new agency to investigate cyberattacks

Making airlines pay up when flights are delayed or canceled

READ THE DETAILS HERE

I'm going to add one more here

[ipaftraining]

via Twitter https://twitter.com/ipaftraininguk

[rjzimmerman]

Oil Interests Gave More Than $75 Million to Trump PACs, New Analysis Shows. (New York Times)

Oil and gas interests have given an estimated $75 million to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee and affiliated committees, far more than has been previously known, according to a new analysis of federal campaign data.

The billionaires Harold Hamm of Continental Resources, Kelcy Warren of Energy Transfer Partners and Jeffery Hildebrand of Hilcorp Energy Co. are among the highest-profile oil and gas contributors to Mr. Trump, giving along with their spouses and companies more than $15 million this cycle.

But the total amount of money flowing to Mr. Trump and his allies from donors with links to fossil fuels is more than five times greater, according to an analysis by the environmental group Climate Power. It comes from mine operators, shipbuilders, engineering firms, hedge funds and little-known oil producers.

That is just the campaign cash that can be found in public records; donations made to nonprofits such as 501(c)(4) organizations, also known as dark money, are usually not publicly disclosed.

“It’s important to start by looking at this systematically and structurally,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who is investigating oil industry campaign donations.

Mr. Whitehouse referred to an analysis by the International Monetary Fund that found American fossil fuel companies receive $700 billion of subsidies each year, when accounting for federal tax breaks and undercharging of environmental costs. He was not surprised by the contributions from oil interests to Mr. Trump.

“To protect a $700 billion subsidy, what is the amount that would be economically reasonable to spend in its defense?” Mr. Whitehouse asked.

Mr. Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

He has promised the oil and gas industry unfettered access to drilling on public lands and in federal waters, reducing his energy platform to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

At an April 11 dinner with oil executives at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida, he asked them to donate $1 billion to his campaign, saying they would save far more than that in avoided taxes and legal fees after he repealed environmental regulations, according to several attendees who requested anonymity to discuss a private event.

[darkeagleruins]

WEAPONIZATION: Biden's DHS sought to declare 'being conservative' a public health emergency to justify mass surveillance of Trump supporters as recently as 2023.

Internal documents from Biden’s DHS reveal a disturbing strategy: targeting Trump supporters as domestic extremists. This revelation, forced into the open by America First Legal's litigation with Richard Grenell, highlights Biden's misuse of federal agencies for political purposes.

On September 19, 2023, the DHS announced the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group. However, AFL and Grenell sued, alleging it violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The settlement requires DHS to wind down the Experts Group within 30 days, cease future meetings, and avoid reconstituting the group in a manner inconsistent with FACA or the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

Highlighted by AFL, one document from the Brennan-Clapper intel group asserts that:

“most of the domestic terrorism threat now comes from supporters of the former president.”

This paints a significant portion of American citizens as threats to national security based solely on their political beliefs. The group’s strategy to label Trump supporters as domestic terrorists is a blatant and illegal power grab designed to silence opposition.

Other documents expose plans to classify Trump supporters, military personnel, and religious individuals as potential "domestic violent extremists." Under the Brennan-Clapper committee’s approach, DHS should profile people in the military or with religious beliefs, tagging them as having “indicators of extremists and terrorism” to justify spying on them.

Still more documents reveal that the advisory committee discussed ways for DHS to increase efforts to collect intelligence on Americans, including attempting to “get into local communities in a non-threatening way.” By the time the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group was announced in September 2023, the Group had already been meeting for as long as four months. When it held a discussion on “Collection Posture and Associated Challenges,” a Group member complained that there was “no mandate for state and local partners” to collect information, resulting in “limited access in I&A.”

These documents prove the Biden administration is leveraging federal agencies to target and intimidate political opponents. This weaponization of government power is a clear violation of democratic principles and threatens the foundation of our republic. This discriminatory profiling undermines freedom and equality, casting suspicion on military service members and religious individuals, leading to widespread abuse and mistrust.

Shockingly, the documents reveal the DHS Intelligence Group's planned to require Americans to report their neighbors to the federal government. They discussed reclassifying political dissent under the guise of “public health” to give them more power to spy on Trump supporters more easily. They even planned to encourage “mothers and teachers” to report perceived threats. This tactic, using public health as a cover to silence political opposition, creates a culture of suspicion and fear, where neighbors spy on neighbors, undermining trust within communities further dividing the nation.

The group discussed the current threat landscape, domestic terrorism strategy, collection posture, and associated challenges, civil liberties and privacy challenges. Concerning the efforts to collect, it is interesting to see how we have collected and reported since January 6th. Support for this mission set has varied but changed after January 6th as their mission to combat domestic terrorism gained departmental and political support. This context shows how the DHS Intelligence Group was pushing to expand surveillance and intelligence collection efforts, using any pretext necessary to justify their actions.

The Group noted that the “See Something, Say Something” campaign after 9/11 fell short because “Americans have an ambivalent feeling of telling on each other.” The problem, as one attendee phrased it, is, “How do we get into local communities in a non-threatening way? How do people safely report a concern about their neighbors?” Where DHS lacks capabilities and cannot convince mothers and teachers to report their own children, one contributor suggested turning to corporate America as a resource.

Biden was forced to dissolve the unlawful DHS Intelligence Experts Group, stacked with deep state partisans like James Clapper and John Brennan but I have no doubt the effort to target Trump supporters continues in earnest.

[marveltrumpshate]

Health

Between the pandemic, disabilities, trauma, and the wear and tear that comes with being a human, physical and mental health are always on the forefront of our minds. The organizations below strive to address the structural inequity of healthcare access, disability rights, and safety and well-being.

For more information on donation methods and accepted currencies, please refer to our list of organizations page.

Amputee Coalition

The Amputee Coalition supports, educates, and advocates for people impacted by limb loss and limb difference as well as their families and caretakers. They developed the National Limb Loss Resource Center, have a large focus on peer support programs, advocate on the federal and state level, and offer educational programming. They also fund local chapters that serve amputees across the globe.  

Assistance Dogs International

Assistance dogs are essential to millions around the world but are cost-prohibitive for many. Supporting this organization will mean that this essential service is less of an economic burden for those who need it. In addition to training and placement, ADI advocates for the legal rights of people with disabilities partnered with assistance dogs and sets standards, guidelines, and ethics for training the dogs.

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism. ASAN believes that the goal of autism advocacy should be a world in which autistic people enjoy equal access, rights, and opportunities and have their voices heard. For that reason, the organization is run by individuals on the autism spectrum. ASAN's primary focuses are advocating for policies that protect disability and civil rights, creating tools and leadership training for autistic self-advocates, and offering educational resources. 

Center for Reproductive Rights

The Center for Reproductive Rights is the only global legal advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring reproductive rights are protected in law as fundamental human rights for the dignity, equality, health, and well-being of every person. With local partners across five continents, they have secured legal victories before national courts, UN Committees, and regional human rights bodies on issues such as access to life-saving obstetrics care, contraception, maternal health, and safe abortion services and the prevention of forced sterilization and child marriage.

Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund

DREDF is the leading civil rights organization in the United States that fights for and is directed by people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities. Not only does DREDF work directly with their clients to help them know their own rights, but they train and educate lawyers, lawmakers, and other societal gatekeepers to make sure they know those rights as well.

International Association for Suicide Prevention

IASP tackles suicide and suicidal behavior prevention and creates a space for academics, mental health professionals, crisis workers, volunteers, and people with lived experience to come together. They push for evidence-based research, suicide prevention efforts across all cultures, sectors, and regions globally, and the facilitation of mentorships between countries with more established prevention strategies and countries at earlier stages of strategy development.

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

Odds are you’ve heard of MSF, the global organization that sends trained medical professionals to the places they’re needed most. MSF has been working globally for over 50 years, providing medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare—no matter what. They’re guided by principles of independence, impartiality, and neutrality to global political policies or movements. 

National Network of Abortion Funds

The National Network of Abortion Funds builds power with members to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access by centering people who have abortions and organizing at the intersections of racial, economic, and reproductive justice. They provide their grassroots base of over 100 autonomous, diverse organizations/abortion funds in the U.S. and abroad with leadership development, infrastructure support, and technical assistance. Some fund procedures while others cover abortion pills, transportation, lodging, childcare, doula services, and other forms of support.

The Pad Project

Period stigma and lack of access to affordable, safe, and effective menstrual products are a global problem. The Pad Project partners with local communities internationally to serve people who menstruate across all genders through funding the placement of pad machines and implementing washable pad programs. They also pair menstrual product access with education—workshops on menstrual hygiene management and sexual and reproductive health and their award-winning documentary, Period. End of Sentence.

Palestine Children's Relief Fund

PCRF delivers crucial, life-saving medical relief and humanitarian aid to children and families in Palestine and throughout the Middle East, especially those in Gaza and Lebanon's refugee camps. In addition to providing free medical care, equipment, medicine, and treatment, PCRF also supplies clean water, hygiene kits, food, and other necessities. Their programs include mental health and amputee projects, support for infrastructure plans such as hospital expansions to improve healthcare access, and sponsorships for children who are disabled, orphaned, or in need of medical treatment or surgery.

Partners In Health

Founded by Paul Farmer when he was still in medical school, PIH is committed to bringing exceptional health care to every corner of the planet. PIH also works to provide access to food, transportation, housing, and other key components of healing to the most vulnerable. Their work started in Haiti but has expanded rapidly across the globe. 

Undue Medical Debt

Over 100 million Americans (one in three) are struggling with paying off medical bills. COVID has only added to those numbers, putting people under significant financial burden and emotional distress. This organization buys up medical debt in order to forgive it with no tax consequences to donors or recipients. Donate just $1 and you wipe out $100 of someone's medical debt, $100 to get rid of $10,000 in debt, and so on—the ripple effect is real. Through their work, Undue Medical Debt not only helps with financial relief but also brings attention to the need for a more compassionate, transparent, equitable, and affordable healthcare system.

[mariacallous]

The US Patent and Trademark Office banned the use of generative artificial intelligence for any purpose last year, citing security concerns with the technology as well as the propensity of some tools to exhibit “bias, unpredictability, and malicious behavior,” according to an April 2023 internal guidance memo obtained by WIRED through a public records request. Jamie Holcombe, the chief information officer of the USPTO, wrote that the office is “committed to pursuing innovation within our agency” but are still “working to bring these capabilities to the office in a responsible way.”

Paul Fucito, press secretary for the USPTO, clarified to WIRED that employees can use “state-of-the-art generative AI models” at work—but only inside the agency’s internal testing environment. “Innovators from across the USPTO are now using the AI Lab to better understand generative AI's capabilities and limitations and to prototype AI-powered solutions to critical business needs,” Fucito wrote in an email.

Outside of the testing environment, USPTO staff are barred from relying on AI programs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude for work tasks. The guidance memo from last year also prohibits the use of any outputs from the tools, including images and videos generated by AI. But Patent Office employees can use some approved AI programs, such as those within the agency’s own public database for looking up registered patents and patent applications. Earlier this year, the USPTO approved a $75 million contract with Accenture Federal Services to update its patent database with enhanced AI-powered search features.

The US Patent and Trademark Office, an agency within the Department of Commerce, is in charge of protecting inventors, awarding patents, and registering trademarks. It also “advises the president of the United States, the secretary of commerce, and US government agencies on intellectual property (IP) policy, protection, and enforcement,” according to the USPTO’s website.

At a Google-sponsored event in 2023, Holcombe, the author of the guidance memo, said government bureaucracy makes it difficult for the public sector to use new technologies. “Everything we do in the government is pretty stupid, when you compare it to the commercial world, right?” he said. Holcombe specifically cited cumbersome budgeting, procurement, and compliance processes, arguing that they hamper the government's ability to rapidly adopt innovations like artificial intelligence.

The USPTO is not the only government agency to ban staff from using generative AI, at least for some purposes. Earlier this year, the National Archives and Records Administration prohibited the use of ChatGPT on government-issued laptops, according to 404 Media. But soon afterward, the National Archives hosted an internal presentation that encouraged employees to “think of [Google’s] Gemini as a co-worker.” During the meeting, some archivists reportedly expressed concerns about the accuracy of generative AI. Next month, the National Archives is planning to release a new public chatbot for accessing archival records developed with technology from Google.

Other US government agencies are using—or avoiding—generative AI in different ways. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for example, specifically banned the use of AI chatbots for sensitive data. NASA did decide, however, to experiment with the technology for writing code and summarizing research. The agency also announced last week that it’s working with Microsoft on an AI chatbot that can aggregate satellite data to make it easily searchable. That tool is available only to NASA scientists and researchers, but the goal is to “democratize access to spaceborne data.”