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justinspoliticalcorner · 4 months ago

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Kevin Robillard at HuffPost:

In June 2015, former President Donald Trump infamously came down a golden escalator and declared himself the man who couldn’t be bought. “I’m using my own money,” Trump said in the opening speech of his presidential election campaign. “I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.” Trump, who did self-fund large portions of his 2016 primary campaign, would return to this theme again and again. He would run against a field of more mainstream GOP politicians, each backed by super PACs filled with million-dollar checks from wealthy donors, and then against Democrat Hillary Clinton, who many voters saw as the embodiment of a moneyed class of Washington insiders. Now, almost a decade later, he is running as a candidate who is openly for sale. He has said he’ll offer plum jobs to major donors like Elon Musk, promised favors to oil executives, bragged to the wealthy about the tax cuts he can deliver and has even taken time away from his campaign to pitch a cryptocurrency project for his sons.

Americans can even buy DJT on the stock market, in the form of shares in the publicly traded holding company that owns his social media site, Truth Social. That company’s revenues are meager, with the share price hitting all-time lows, but it’s still being propped up by the former president’s loyal political fandom. “He just thinks he operates in his own world,” Fred Wertheimer, a veteran of decades of fights over campaign finance and government ethics, told HuffPost. “What he’s doing is incredibly brazen in both asking for large amounts of money and telling people what he’s going to do for them in return.” “Bottom line, I’ve never seen anyone do what he’s doing,” Wertheimer said. Trump’s campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story. His new strategy may have created an opening for Democrats, if Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign can seize it.

[...] Trump’s image as an outsider/businessman, unafraid to upset political apple carts, powered his run through the 2016 GOP primaries. He took special aim at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the beneficiary of the outside group Right to Rise, which had stunned observers with its explosive fundraising. “They will be bombarded by their lobbyists that donated a lot of money to them,” Trump told a crowd in Iowa of his primary rivals, not long after his campaign’s launch. “Jeb raised $107 million, OK? They’re not putting that money up because it’s a wonderful charity.” Standing on a debate stage in Boulder, Colorado, that October, Trump decried how super PACs were corrupting his fellow candidates. “Super PACs are a disaster,” he said. “They’re a scam. They cause dishonesty. And you better get rid of them because they are causing a lot of bad decisions to be made by some very good people.”

Republicans who worked on the campaigns against Trump remember the message as particularly devastating, if not especially novel. Alex Conant, who was then the communications director for the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), noted plenty of candidates had tried to run as outsiders taking on the establishment before, but said the tactic was far more effective for a New York real estate developer. “That was his most salient message in 2016,” Conant said. “He was a uniquely good messenger for it, because he was such an outsider, and it also kind of excused all the unconventional stuff — attacking John McCain, attacking Republican Party leaders. A more typical politician, if they were doing that, you would think they were idiots. For him, it was part of what made him so authentic.” In the general election, Trump relied more on outside groups and traditional fundraising than he did during the primary campaign. But as he took on a rival from a second political dynasty ― Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton, who was battling scandals about her email account and a trio of paid speeches she delivered to Goldman Sachs — he still ran as an insurgent.

[...]

‘Always Will Be A Con Man’

Despite his rhetoric, Trump did little to “drain the swamp” upon taking office. He failed to follow through on a promise to divest his business holdings. His hotel quickly became a gathering spot where those hoping to win Trump’s favor could also line his pockets. He appointed lobbyists to key government positions overseeing defense, trade and environmental protection. He took in up to $160 million from international business deals while he was president. “He has and always will be a con man who’s really only looking out for himself and whatever helps him to obtain power,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of the Democratic campaign finance group End Citizens United. “All his promises went out the window. Instead of draining the swamp, he brought the swamp to him and his properties and cashed in.”

Donald Trump and his supporters have long pushed the baseless refrain that “he can’t be bought.”

Well, I have some news that the MAGAdonians don’t like: Trump didn’t drain the swamp but expanded the swamp and has been bought by Super PACs to fulfill their agendas.

#Donald Trump #2024 Presidential Election #2024 Elections #Super PACs #Hillary Clinton #Jeb Bush #Marco Rubio #2016 Presidential Election #2016 Elections

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moobs-lover-9000 · 2 months ago

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Losing your faith in U.S. democracy as a kid, watching one candidate win the vote and the other get elected, is hard. Somehow losing faith you didn’t know was left as a voting adult is even harder.

Fuck political propaganda. Fuck fear-mongering. Fuck lobbyists and corporations and super PACs and Elon Musk in particular. Fuck every voter who couldn’t bear to vote for a woman, a person of color, an intelligent and educated person. You didn’t have to agree with her but you had to understand that Trump’s presidency makes the lives of SO MANY PEOPLE more dangerous.

When the republican agenda trickles down to you I hope you suffer the most.

#I hope you feel the consequences of your actions #us politics #election 2024 #harris walz 2024

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femmecelworld · 30 days ago

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intro to american political campaigns:

a romencken bestie asked me what campaigns were like/how they work, so I tried to do a brief overview… lol. I work in politics and I’m an overexplainer, so this is probably way more information than they intended. BUT if you were ever curious about the weird wild world of american political campaigns or wanted to write a political AU fic, this should help!

wow where to even begin 🫠

First I should clarify that while the Dems and Republicans have more in common in political gamesmanship / campaigning than either party would like to admit, Republicans don’t run electoral campaigns the way Dems do. They don’t do a lot of what we call “ground game”, or “organizing”—which means the person -> person part of campaigns; people who knock on doors and make calls or send texts, organize rallies and voter events, etc.

if anything, they run “paid canvasses”: when the campaign or PAC group will just pay people to knock on doors and read a script and hand out lit (those flyers/pamphlets). How is that different from Democratic organizers? A Dem organizer also knocks on doors, but they’re responsible for a lot more and they should (🙃) have more agency and flexibility to make decisions about their particular area. Also they actually care very deeply about the issues or the candidate(s), whereas a paid canvasser might not—organizers get paid absolute shit wages and have terrible working conditions, so it’s not about the money. If an organizer want to hold a rally or organize some kind of action, or even start up a weekly activist book club or something—that should be within their purview. (Whether or not their boss okays it is another thing)

Republicans don’t respect people at all, Dems at least pretend to (if anyone wants, I’m happy to do a longer expanded version of this rant with the way the DNC treats entry level workers, unions, hourly workers, and marginalized people). So the GOP doesn’t really care about “organizing”—despite the fact I think they might even be better at it—because they do it in the shadows. And if anyone wants me to get into *that* on an expanded scale, I will, it’ll just be too long for a campaign overview here. Officially, the RNC doesn’t do things… but subgroups and PACs and “local organizations” will. The truth is, the GOP is deeply involved with all of that, it’s just not “officially” and not on their financial disclosures.

For example, this year, the Trump campaign basically didn’t even hire campaign staff on the ground. Like at all. And coincidentally, El0n Musk ran a national PAC that did a paid canvass program in the swing states (that was a garbage program but I’ll sideline that)

guess I should try to highlight the different kinds of campaigns.

501(c)(4) vs 501(c)(3)

OKAY STAY WITH ME HERE lol!!

You’ll hear this tossed around a lot if you work in politics; it’s the IRS filing designations between political candidates, campaigns, PACs, lobbyists VS. nonprofits and “non-political” orgs. basically it means directly campaigning for a candidate/group/issue and non-profit organizing—which is tax exempt, and that’s why this is important. So for instance, in America, a church could run a “get out the vote!” campaign without risking their tax-exempt status, because they aren’t advocating for a candidate or position. If they did, that would be considered a political contribution and they’d have to pay taxes.

Example that is definitely fake and for sure not a mess I had to sort out last spring COUGH— I had to repeatedly tell someone that I couldn’t help them unless they register with [redacted] because I’m a political operative and my time counts as an in-kind campaign contribution unless they go through my bosses.

Like you can’t just do someone a favor, as much as it might not seem like a big deal. Even if I were to write a basic script or help someone get access to, idk, an event space, that’s all going to get me and them in huge trouble with the FEC if they’re not filing properly.

Now I say that, yet republicans pull this bullshit *all the time*. The problem is, the courts are stacked, Citizens United fucked this country so badly we might never recover, and it’s really hard to nail them on this because they always have money for lawyers. But I don’t, so I don’t play about the FEC.

Think of c3 vs c4 as a firewall—we don’t coordinate. (The GOP does but everyone in America decided to turn a blind eye to that I guess)

501(c)(4) political operations:

Cool so let’s talk about what that means, practically speaking:

The DNC (stands for Democratic National Committee or Democratic National Convention) runs most campaigns, followed by candidates’ individual campaigns, then sometimes we see issue-campaigns or movements. In a presidential general election year, everyone comes out to play and we call that “coordinated campaigns”. That means the DNC or Dem state party (they’re synonymous for this context) will coordinate with the candidates and county parties to run one big machine (that’s how it’s supposed to work in theory, almost never that smooth in actuality)

I think what a lot of folks don’t understand is there are DNC campaigns and candidate campaigns. So in Pennsylvania 2024, there was the Democratic statewide campaign, the Harris-Walz campaign, the Bob Casey campaign—etc etc. All running at the same time. Now if the coordinated campaign was working properly (lol it was not) they all would have flowed together into ONE campaign, like tributaries running into a delta. Because you don’t want 5 different groups doing the same thing.

Top of the ticket / all the way down the ticket:

When political people say this, they’re talking about a ballot and all the candidates listed there. In the context of campaigns, they are probably talking about working for all party candidates at once. Like I was explaining above ^ why would we have 5-8 democratic campaigns who are essentially doing the same thing when we could just have one campaign talking about all the Dem candidates?

1. money. Coordinated campaigns are taxed differently than an individual candidates campaign (more, basically)

2. ego. There are a lot of candidates, who shall remain nameless, who think they know more than everyone else so they want to be in charge of their own campaign instead of allowing someone in dc to call shots for the coordinated.

3. competence. Now to immediately play devils advocate to my own point, sometimes they’re right about this! sometimes (almost always) the dnc/d.c./hq is absolute trash or the people they hire suck. I’m going to just ref this quickly but if anyone wants an expanded note on this I’ll do it: the congressional district in Nebraska that ran to the left, in the middle of a very red state. That candidate ran as an independent not a Dem, but this isn’t why (or not the whole reason) he won. He ran his own campaign without working with the dnc and it was absolutely the right move for his district and his brand.

4. But. More often than not, I see a candidate (or their campaign manager) who lets their ego run the show and it doesn’t end well

Presidential vs Senate vs Congressional etc:

Now I think you asked about a Senate campaign—I’ll say really the only difference in campaigns, outside of “coordinated” or not is just scale. Like obviously it’s harder to run a Senate campaign than a city council campaign (unless that city council campaign is in NYC) BUT the overall picture is pretty similar. You still need a campaign manager, good field math, excellent data, comms strategy, a treasurer, and a plan for ground game.

Your budget and fundraising projections will determine how much staff you can hire and the various phases of your field plan (I’ll get into more detail on a campaign simulation later) but your campaign still runs with the same kind of philosophy and method, just on a different scale.

Like on a small scale campaign, the campaign manager might end up wearing 7 different hats, doing strategy and comms and arranging political relationships AND management, whereas on a better funded or bigger campaign, they’re able to delegate better because they can hire more people.

In my experience, a big difference in culture is that you get a lot more true believers on candidates’ campaigns. People apply because they’re there for that person, not the general cause or issue. A little more hero worship, and people who just want to get that specific person into office. There is way more money in coordinated campaigns but I would pick my first candidate campaign over that in a D.C. minute.

(Lowkey if I could quit my current job and go back to working for my first candidate, making about 1/3 of what I do now, I absolutely fucking would {that was probably the last time I had faith in a politician lol})

NY does spending caps and small dollar matching, it’s very cool and the whole country should be doing it:

Outside the DNC:

Now there are also a lot of groups who essentially fall into D-branding or the Dem umbrella but aren’t technically part of the party. PACs like SwingLeft, NextGen, Run For Something, Emily’s List, NARAL, MoveOn, Human Rights Campaign, etc etc I’m not going to list them all because I don’t got time like that. But they will run campaigns exactly like the DNC. Campaign finance laws have been changing a lot in the last 8 years and coordination is getting murkier and murkier and it often depends what state you’re in. So there are some states where these PACs actually can coordinate with the DNC (which, my 2017 brain still gets hung up on that).

Then there are even more groups that do campaigns, but they aren’t the DNC or PACs, strictly speaking. And that would be like, the AFL-CIO, greenpeace, sunrise movement, etc. those campaigns vary a LOT year to year and candidate to candidate.

{If anyone ever has questions about mutual aid / issue advocacy campaigns, lmk, happy to ramble! I won’t get into it here because it’s a bit of a side tangent. But an example that everyone in America should be paying attention to is the stop cop city campaign in Atlanta Georgia. Absolutely horrific consequences for the country and the future of protest movements.}

So. Yeah. Political campaigns are a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States; they’re complex and insane and unfortunately not going anywhere.

Okay now I’m finally going to talk about the inside of a campaign lol 🤪🫠

Different parts/departments of a political campaign:

Field/Organizing. Comms. Data. Digital. Political. Finance. Operations (Ops).

Any of these departments (except Political) you can essentially start entry-level, like fresh out of college or completely new to the industry. Politics runs pretty young, and campaigns ESPECIALLY so. Most campaign staff are under 35. another time I’ll rant about how the dnc loves to snatch up wide-eyed college kids who don’t know how to advocate for themselves and pay them shit wages to do horrible endless work. Part of the reason for the age gap is ^ that, but also campaigns are so fucking grueling that you need the elixir of youth to survive them. You can’t do campaigns endlessly, you just can’t. The burnout is insane. And the turnover rate is very very high.

I know people who started doing paid campaign work while they were still in college, and were managing statewide races about 3 years later.

Now, 12 years ago, campaigns were a rich kids/nepo baby’s game. You didn’t get hired onto a campaign unless your parents were Important People with Connections. Entry level campaign positions often weren’t paid (and if they were, it was minimum wage), so no one could afford to work them unless they had parents helping them or other money. reason for that was of course keeping power consolidated with the elite. and you can imagine how diverse campaign staff was (cough)

plus, if you want to make it as a campaigner, you have to be able to pick up and move a thousand miles with a few days’ notice. you’ll work one campaign for 3-6 months, longer if you’re lucky, then the election, then you have to find a new job and 9 times out of 10, that means moving to another state to start all over again. It means you have to own a car, you have to be able to fit your whole life in said car, and you have to have savings for new apartment deposits or moving costs. Most people can’t afford to live like that.

But things have changed—not fast enough but making progress. Now wages are increasing (slowly) and they have healthcare and caps on working hours.

The first union campaign was in 2018 but wages were secondary to the other massive issue on political campaigns: sexual harassment. You would think that progressive spaces would have less of a problem with that, right? Nope. Sexual harassment was rampant on campaigns (still a huge problem even now tbh). The reason for that is campaigns cross a lot of boundaries: you work insane hours, at weird times, and you have to push yourself to ignore or blur typical social norms, like, you know, working up the nerve to talk to complete strangers about their political views and personal ideology. So there are a lot of late hours in the office, talking about politics and deeply personal issues, and you’re running on empty because the work is exhausting—yeah, shit happens. And bad actors take advantage of these situations.

(Once, with a friend from 2020, I was talking about this and realized campaign working conditions almost perfectly match the conditions necessary for captor bonding and psychological conditioning 🙃)

Anyway! Like I said in that earlier section, each of these departments is determined by the scale of the campaign and how much money you have. On a city council campaign, I worked up a campaign plan that allocated for about 5 staffers—that was for Manhattan, so you’d think there was more money than a typical race but! NYC does have some very cool campaign finance regulation, YAY for that!!! You would not believe how much money gets spent on some of these other cc races. If you were running a cc race for… idk, St. Louis? I’d budget for maybe 3 staffers including your campaign manager, and they will probably mostly be doing organizing work while the CM does everything else (strategy data comms political finance)

The one position you never short is the campaign treasurer. Most states legally require you to have one. But, that isn’t really a full time job thing or even a paid position. A lot of campaigns will just designate someone to keep an eye on the books and make sure the money adds up, but not pay them.

Believe it or not, your candidate will do the bulk of the fundraising. Check out AOC’s page for more on this; she has some great explainers on how much time members of Congress have to spend fundraising. That’s called “call time” or “candidate call time” and sometimes you’ll even have a finance person sit on the candidate to do this because candidates fucking hate it. And I get it, cold calling people for money sucks, but people are way more likely to write a check if the candidate themself calls. And I don’t work with candidates who won’t. I don’t have a lot of black and white rules, but one is I do not work with candidates who won’t fundraise their own race and won’t knock doors. Hell no. Because if you won’t put in the real work, why the fuck should I?

For a Senate race, you’re going to have more money (or you fucking better lol) so you’re probably looking at… it really does depend how big the state/race is, but I’d say somewhere from 12-20. Maybe more! Covid changed campaigns a lot too, and hiring has been a nightmare since 2020. And for a Senate campaign, you *should* have at least one person staffing each of the departments I mentioned.

Just a very very vague simulation of what your staffing timeline could look like—obviously I would be more specific for a certain state or candidate, but as an example:

{timeline for hiring staff and campaign phases}

For a statewide (senate, gubernatorial) or a high-profile congressional, I would have:

campaign manager hired 9 months out min

senior staff hired 6 months out min, depending on budget and campaign needs

other staffers, entry level and otherwise, hired 3 months out

if the campaign just doesn’t have the money, you can adjust all these maybe 6 weeks, and possibly get away with cutting other staffers or hiring organizers only for the final four weeks

Field/organizing will always be your biggest department, because you need to hire enough organizers to cover whatever your district is, how many people can feasibly knock/call/text/etc all your constituents. Hopefully you’ll get volunteers, but your staff is going to do the biggest piece of it.

Now my advice is to *never hire fucking consultants because they are evil*. Snake oil salesmen. Sorry but true! And I can say that because while that isn’t technically my job title, it’s closer than I would like (🥲😩) Also consider that Shiv Roy is a political consultant. So.

But republicans always hire consultants for their campaigns, so if you’re writing a GOP campaign, you’ll need to write them in.

Also, if you can afford it, a lawyer can be a good move, sometimes. Like if the candidate doesn’t have a law background and they haven’t worked with consultants or advisors or any other group who might have a lawyer on retainer… they either need to double check some things with a lawyer to make sure they’re kosher, or get a campaign manager who will do a crash course in FEC regulation and campaign legal guidelines online (me early on working for candidates who had no money lol)

So if candidates run afoul of campaign finance law, it isn’t always the end of the world, because people make mistakes just by not knowing the law—but you never want to be in that position if you can avoid it.

Campaign structure:

Basically how campaigns start is top down: you need to sit down and figure out the big picture stuff and strategy, then you can start hiring people and doing things. A lot of first-time candidates will work with advising firms or consultants to figure themselves out. Sometimes other groups (Emily’s list and run for something dabble in this, but lots of others) work in communities to identify good potential candidates, then they’ll help them get off the ground. It might be the candidate and campaign manager rolling by themselves for a few months until they can afford more staffers. Your campaign manager is, obviously, your most important hiring decision. Not only do they need to be competent and skilled in a huge variety of work, but they need to be a cultural match with the candidate. If they’re not, it doesn’t work. They don’t have to line up on every single ideological or political issue, BUT they do have to speak the same language. That’s something I tried to get to come through in anointed, the difference between someone like Aiden and Paul in how they relate to Mencken. Paul doesn’t give a shit about Mencken’s policies but he knows this work and he wants a Rep, any Rep, in the White House. (And I also wrote it this way because a classic party leadership move is forcing one of their own people into a candidate’s campaign after they get through the primaries and win the nom, and at that point, for a POTUS campaign at least, the simpatico thing isn’t as important because the campaign manager becomes way more about bureaucracy and task management than shaping policy) So he and Mencken don’t mesh very well and Mencken doesn’t trust him, but it doesn’t sink the campaign because of Aiden. Aiden is a true believer type—he might not have stuck around in politics if he and Mencken hadn’t built this relationship. And he’s great at his job because he gets Mencken and he’s down with the fashy shit.

A candidate does need an Aiden-type, someone who really truly believes in them, that the candidate feels like they can trust. You see chaos when candidates don’t trust their own staff or they pull too many cooks into the kitchen. There’s a good book (“Shattered”) about what went wrong with the 2016 Clinton campaign (what didn’t go wrong, damn) and a huge problem she’s always had is she doesn’t trust a lot of people and those she does trust, she listens to blindly and those people set themselves up as gatekeepers with no accountability. A whole ass mess.

If you want more detail on day in the life type stuff for a campaign, I can get into it, but it varies so much based on state and office. Basically it’s like… you work all day with little or no breaks, you put out fires constantly, everyone’s stressed, and you find yourself locking yourself in a hall closet screaming “why didn’t they do this a month ago!” Oh also there’s this thing called “floor time”—which is so fun once you get brainwashed enough. Basically it’s like, when you get overstimulated, you shut down your laptop and lay down on the floor for a while until you feel better. (I had Mencken do it on the plane in ‘a precinct short’)

🤠

Sample daily schedule:

8am start time for CM and senior staff, morning checkin call

10am start time for daily checkin call (usually per department)

***there are usually 1-2 all-staff meetings per week, with everyone from the campaign manager down to field organizers and interns

CM and senior staff would have a variety of meetings and calls, depends on campaign’s specific affiliations and political network

Meanwhile, other staffers settle in to the days work, after their department level meetings where the dept head assigns work or updates—if there’s breaking news or a special event (a rally, a debate night), all previous work gets sidelined in favor of that. Sometimes those events happen really quickly with no notice, like you get a call from HQ and they say “hey Candidate is going to be there in 3 days, put a rally together”

Field organizers do call time (not fundraising, canvassing calls to voters/constituents) or door knocking after 3/4pm. The closer it gets the election, the more contact they’ll do. So if it’s 6 months out, they might do it every other day or twice a week, but once you’re in the final 90 or 60 days, that gets moved up to every day.

Per US law, campaigns are not allowed to contact people before 9am or after 9pm.

Then there’s a nightly checkout call per department, probably at 7 or 9pm, depending on how close it is to election day (hours increase)

In other departments outside of the field/organizing, hours are much closer to a typical 9-5. BUT they will work as needed, on weekends late at night whatever, and their workload also increases exponentially the closer it is to election day. Pro and cons to working in these departments: you’re supposed to get better hours and you do get better pay. But your schedule is abused a lot more because they don’t have as strict hours and cutoffs as the field organizers. Like digital staff will get pulled on a moments notice and be expected to just work until Item X is done if there’s breaking news. Political dept staffers work just all the time, because there’s an unspoken expectation that you constantly network and go to events to gladhand in your “free time”.

Okay… wow. Not me writing a thesis on this damn 🫠

I think that’s pretty good general overview of how campaigns work, but if you’ve got more questions, go for it, I can always add more sections.

Hope you enjoyed this Proust-length novel about campaign world!

#anointed with a coke #the romencken multiverse #oh my god how did this even happen WHAT my flight was delayed way too long

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thekimspoblog · 4 months ago

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Ok, I'm sorry. But I have to make a separate post about this. I can't say with certainty that fans speculating about how far Kim could have made it in life if she had never met Jimmy, are missing the point of BCS. But if fans aren't missing the point of the show, then this just demonstrates why the show is missing the point of reality.

We live in an incredibly sexist and oligarchic country. So no, sweetie; Kim Wexler would not be the president if only she never listened to Jimmy. If she had never met Jimmy, I'm not convinced she ever would have even become a partner at HHM. But thank you for calling attention to the exact reason BCS gets under my skin so much: this series makes one of the most compelling arguments I've ever seen in a work of fiction, that the glass ceiling is real, and we cannot rely on our betters to magnanimously hand power down according to merit. While preaching out the other side of its mouth, a much less cogent argument that something something "rule-breaking is bad m'kay?" (even though we spend six seasons glamorizing it).

You want to know how to become president? You listen to the devil on your shoulder, and you stick with the one man who ever actually believed in you. You use the Sandpiper money to buy think tanks, and lobbyists, and super-pacs and all that crap. You sew yourself into the inner circle of the rich and powerful and start slitting throats when they let their guard down. You accept that Howard might have been a regrettable casualty, but he was good practice for dealing with rich white men who REALLY need to die. You use the experience to harden your heart, against the war crimes you will inevitably become complicit in if you actually achieve any notable position in global politics, even as you fight to stop the atrocities and diffuse the attacks on women's civil liberties.

I don't like Kim's character arc, because the resolution seemed to amount to "You might think you won't regret destroying someone you perceive as an obstacle to your success, but you will in the light of day". And I just have to ask... what if you're wrong? What if I won't be? I agree with 5x10 Kim way more than I do 6x09 Kim; you don't know me, Vince Gilligan. You don't know ruthless women, or where our priorities lie. You don't know what I'm capable of doing, without losing much sleep over it. Honestly the fact that the series doesn't mention abortion rights once, makes me feel like maybe I understood the stakes and scope of Kim's story better than the writers did. Because if the aesop is "the ends don't justify the means", I'm sorry but I'm not persuaded.

Where would Kim be without Jimmy? Still tiring herself out on the hamster wheel, that's where!

#better call saul #kim wexler #slippin kimmy #and if you like this interpretation check out my fanfics #vote harris

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ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly · 9 days ago

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By Kenneth P. VogelMaggie Haberman and Theodore Schleifer

Since his victory in November, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies have raised well over $200 million for a constellation of groups that will fund his inauguration, his political operation and eventually his presidential library, according to four people involved in the fund-raising.

It is a staggering sum that underscores efforts by donors and corporate interests to curry favor with Mr. Trump ahead of a second presidential term after a number of business leaders denounced him following the violence by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump has promised to gut the “deep state” and made various promises to industry supporters. Among the pledged donors for the inaugural events are Pfizer, OpenAI, Amazon and Meta, along with cryptocurrency firms.

The total haul for the committee financing his inaugural festivities — at least $150 million raised, with more expected — will eclipse the record-setting $107 million raised for his 2017 inauguration, according to three people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share internal financial information.

Other committees benefiting from the fund-raising blitz include a super PAC called Make America Great Again Inc. and its associated nonprofit group, which is expected to be used by Mr. Trump’s team to back his agenda and candidates who support it, while opposing dissenters.

Mr. Trump has boasted about the haul, telling people during the Christmas holiday season that he had raised more than $200 million since the election. Mr. Trump’s team has repeatedly noted how many people have wanted to find ways to donate to him since his election win.

The Trump transition and inaugural committee did not return emails seeking comment about the fund-raising haul.

David Tamasi, a lobbyist who has raised money for Mr. Trump, dismissed a suggestion that corporate interests were giving to avoid Mr. Trump’s wrath, though he acknowledged that some donors may be trying to atone for having previously maintained distance from the president-elect.

“It is a time-honored D.C. tradition that corporations are enthusiastically embracing this cycle in all manners, largely because they were on the sidelines during previous Trump cycles,” he said. “They no longer have to hedge their political bets.”

Inaugural committees can accept unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations, but not foreign nationals. Major corporations that try to avoid partisan politics have long donated to inaugural funds to signal a willingness to work with new administrations and support for the democratic transfer of power, regardless of the incoming president’s party.

But there is cross-pollination among top fund-raisers for Mr. Trump’s inauguration and his political efforts, including several partners at lobbying firms that represent major corporate interests. Raising money for the inauguration can help lobbyists secure access for clients, and cachet for themselves with the incoming administration.

Among the four finance chairs for Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee are the lobbyist Jeff Miller and Reince Priebus, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House who is not a lobbyist but is chairman of the board of advisers of the lobbying firm Michael Best Strategies. Their firms represent companies with much at stake in the forthcoming administration, some of which plan to donate to the inauguration.

Mr. Miller’s firm, Miller Strategies, represents Pfizer and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, each of which has pledged donations. Their executives met after the election at Mar-a-Lago with Mr. Trump and his choice for health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., amid concerns about how the drug industry might be affected by Mr. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic.

Since the election, Mr. Miller’s firm has registered to lobby for the ride-share tech company Uber, which has donated $1 million, as has, separately, its chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi. The firm also represents the tech company OpenAI, whose chief executive, Sam Altman, plans to give $1 million. Michael Best Strategies has represented the cryptocurrency firm Ripple for nearly four years. It has pledged $5 million in its own cryptocurrency, XRP — among the largest known donations to the inaugural committee.

After the election, Ripple retained the lobbyist Brian Ballard, a top Trump fund-raiser.

Another Ballard client, Robinhood, a leading cryptocurrency trading platform, has donated $2 million.

“We look forward to working with President Trump and the incoming administration to drive positive change in the markets, be an active voice for customers and pursue our mission to democratize finance for all,” Mary Elizabeth Taylor, Robinhood’s vice president of global government and external affairs, said in a statement.

Other companies associated with cryptocurrency are expected to be major contributors as well, reflecting optimism that Mr. Trump will deliver on his campaign trail promises to dial back federal scrutiny that figures in the industry say have stifled its growth.

Amazon, a Ballard client that found itself crosswise with the first Trump administration, said it planned to donate $1 million in cash.

Donations of at least $1 million grant access to the top package of perks related to several days of festivities in the run-up to the inauguration on Jan. 20, including what are touted as “intimate” dinners with Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, though often with many attendees, as well as black-tie balls after the swearing-in.

Other entities, ranging from companies like Meta to previous Trump critics like the billionaire Ken Griffin, have made $1 million donations to the inaugural.

Contributions to inaugural committees, which are required to be publicly disclosed to the Federal Election Commission months after the inauguration, are one of the last major opportunities to financially support a second-term president.

Mr. Tamasi and Oswaldo Palomo, who are partners in the lobbying firm Chartwell Strategy Group, raised more than $3 million for the inaugural. Their firm represents companies that could be affected by Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs, including the South Korean automaker Hyundai and a U.S. subsidiary of the South Korean conglomerate SK Group.

The deadline for donating to the inaugural to be eligible for the perks of the weekend is Jan. 10, according to documents distributed to potential donors.

If the inaugural committee’s fund-raising exceeds the amount budgeted for the festivities, the expectation among fund-raisers is that the excess would be transferred to the committee collecting money toward a presidential library for Mr. Trump after he leaves office, according to two people involved in the effort.

The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund Inc. was incorporated in Florida on Dec. 20, six days after it was revealed that ABC News had agreed to donate $15 million to Mr. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum to settle a defamation claim he had brought against the network.

The fund was incorporated by a lawyer in Florida, Jacob Roth, who has previously created Trump groups, including the inaugural committee, according to state corporate records. The purpose of the entity, according to the Florida articles of incorporation, is “to preserve and steward the legacy of President Donald J. Trump and his presidency.”

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hoursofreading · 2 months ago

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Where Bernie and I differed was that he seemed to see the dysfunction of our politics almost solely as a problem of money, whereas I thought ideology and tribalism also played significant roles. Bernie talked as if 99 percent of Americans would back his agenda if only the lobbyists and super PACs disappeared. But that wouldn’t turn small-government conservatives into Scandinavian Socialists or make religious fundamentalists embrace marriage equality and reproductive rights. I also was—and am—concerned about the Republican-led assault on voting rights, their efforts to gerrymander safe congressional districts, and the breakdown of comity in Congress. In addition to getting big money out of politics, I thought we had to wage and win the battle of ideas, while also reaching across the aisle more aggressively to hammer out compromises. That’s how we can start to break down the gridlock and actually get things done again.

What Happened -- Clinton, Hillary Rodham -- 2017 -- Simon & Schuster -- c0c38de3052d9851d39aae72bcbf1c3c -- Anna’s Archive

#quote

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pashterlengkap · 8 months ago

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Texas’ governor is spending millions & using anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric to defund public education

Greg Abbott, the anti-LGBTQ+ Republican governor of Texas, is actively campaigning against state GOP candidates and incumbents who oppose his plan for a statewide school voucher program that would give taxpayer funds to private schools — and out-of-state donors are spending millions to help him. Abbott has said parents should support the program so that their kids aren’t educated by LGBTQ+ teachers. Even though Republicans dominate the Texas legislature, school voucher bills supported by Abbott have repeatedly failed to pass into law because of Republican legislators who oppose the plan. Such so-called “school choice” programs claim to promote “parental rights” by giving families financial support to send their children to private schools. However, critics of school vouchers say such programs defund public schools and benefit predominantly wealthier families whose children already attend schools outside the public school system. . Related GOP governor promises to “end” careers of trans & gender nonconforming teachers Greg Abbott called out a teacher who wore dresses to school events and said he was “trying to normalize” gender nonconformity. Insights for the LGBTQ+ community Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Abbott’s latest proposal would give 40,000 students access to $10,500 in vouchers for private schooling or $1,000 for homeschooling. Some Republican and Democratic legislators have opposed his proposal, saying it could cost the state $2 billion annually by 2028. But to make his case for the vouchers, Abbott has shared social media posts from Chaya Raichik, an anti-LGBTQ+ activist who goes by Libs of TikTok. Earlier this year, Raichik targeted Rachmad Tjachyadi, a now-former teacher in Lewisville, Texas, who wore dresses to various school events. Raichik claimed without evidence that he had a “fetish for wearing women’s clothing.” In February, he shared Raichik’s posts and wrote, “No parent should be forced by the state to send their child to this school.” In a March speech to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he added, “If you’re a parent in that situation, should you be trapped within a school district that’s focusing on issues like that? Of course not.” Abbott’s rhetoric is part of a larger goal of voucher advocates: encouraging parents to file lawsuits accusing public schools of violating their rights by teaching students about racial and LGBTQ+ issues. These lawsuits could eventually secure a U.S. Supreme Court victory that would redirect billions of taxpayer funds from public schools to religious homeschools, private schools, and charter schools. This election cycle, Abbott has endorsed pro-voucher candidates and appeared next to them on the campaign trail. Abbott is expected to spend $11 million in his state’s primary races, including donations to political action committees (PACs) — including his own — to promote candidates who support his plans. In the past, Abbott spent only around $500,000 in primaries, one source told Politico. John Colyandro, a Texas lobbyist and former top aide to Abbott, said, “It’s just so unusual for an incumbent governor to campaign against members of his own party.” Abbott considers vouchers a top priority and even called special legislative sessions to unsuccessfully try and pass pro-voucher legislation the issue. “I came out with no ambiguity about where I stood or what I expected,” Abbott said. “If the governor puts something on the emergency item list, that means this is something that must pass. And if it doesn’t pass, there’s going to be challenges to deal with.” Typically, PACs and campaigns spend around $250,000 in a state legislative race. This year, that amount has increased to $1 million per race, thanks to out-of-state pro-voucher groups. The Libertarian PAC Make Liberty Win successfully attacked incumbent state Rep. Glenn Rogers (R) with mailers that accused him of… http://dlvr.it/T7Mslt

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 1 year ago

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DeSantis Latest Relaunch to Save Failing Campaign

"James Uthmeier has zero campaign political experience, he is a lawyer with specific economic and legal skills related to his former job at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce where he served as legal counsel. Given the nature of the reason for the Wall Street Sea Island group to support the 2024 DeSantis operation, having a multinational advocate in the role of campaign manager oddly does make sense. There are trillions at stake."

Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, said in a statement that allowing Uthmeier to take a leave of absence is “a blatant middle finger to the people of Florida — who’s actually going to run the state while he’s gone? It’s certainly not Ron.” Fried had previously filed ethics complaints against Uthmeier and Kopelousos for allegedly soliciting donations from lobbyists and lawmakers for DeSantis’ presidential campaign.

Generra Peck is out just weeks after advisers said her job was secure.

By GARY FINEOUT 08/08/2023

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Ron DeSantis has replaced his campaign manager, Generra Peck, in what is the third major reshuffling of his operations, a campaign spokesperson and a person familiar with the move confirmed to POLITICO.

Peck will be shifted to a role of chief strategist as part of the new order. Taking her place atop the campaign will be James Uthmeier, who has served as chief of staff in DeSantis’ governor’s office. In a text message, Uthmeier said the change was happening “ASAP.”

The move comes just weeks after the DeSantis campaign and close advisers insisted that Peck’s job was secure, even after the team shed a third of its staffers amid a budget crunch and concern about the direction of the operation.

The governor’s team pledged to scale back, build an insurgent operation, and do more mainstream media outreach. They’ve done all that. But the results have yet to be reflected in the polls.

One person close to the campaign, who was granted anonymity to freely discuss the issue, said that Peck’s removal, which was first reported by The Messenger, was “no surprise. Should have happened a few weeks ago.”

DeSantis’ campaign spokesperson, Andrew Romeo, also confirmed the staff moves in a statement, saying that “Uthmeier has been one of Governor DeSantis’ top advisors for years and he is needed where it matters most: working hand in hand with Generra Peck and the rest of the team to put the governor in the best possible position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden.”

He added that David Polyansky, who worked with Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting DeSantis, will also move to the campaign.

One person familiar with the shake-up said that Uthmeier, who had conducted a review of campaign operations before the switch, has the “trust” of DeSantis and his wife, Casey, and is also well-regarded by campaign staff. This person, who was not authorized to speak about the matter, said there was “managerial angst” with Peck who had “lost [the] confidence” of the campaign team.

The person also described Uthmeier’s role as “CEO” of the campaign but who will rely on David Polyansky —and Marc Reichelderfer, a veteran political consultant from Tallahassee — as “senior vice presidents” with national campaign experience.

Ryan Tyson, a well-regarded pollster, is also expected to have an elevated role in the campaign.

Uthmeier has served as DeSantis’ chief of staff since October 2021 and worked as the governor’s general counsel before he became his top aide. He has been involved in some of the governor’s most high profile initiatives, including the controversial program to transport migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard last year.

Uthmeier also worked as a senior adviser to former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross but his background is primarily in legal work and not in running political campaigns.

Uthmeier is taking an unpaid leave of absence from the administration to work on the campaign and is not resigning permanently from his job as chief of staff, according to the governor’s office.

Alex Kelly, a former top deputy to DeSantis who was recently appointed to be the secretary of the Department of Commerce, will step in as acting chief of staff while Uthmeier works with the campaign, which operates out of an office building in Tallahassee.

This is not the first time that DeSantis — whose inner circle is very tight — has leaned into people who worked for him in the governor’s office to help with his presidential aspirations.

In early July, Stephanie Kopelousos, the governor’s long-time legislative affairs director, left to work for the DeSantis campaign while Taryn Fenske, the governor’s communications director, departed to work for Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting DeSantis.

It was Peck who tried to reassure donors and supporters during a retreat held late last month in Utah. During the event, she acknowledged that the campaign had spent too much money ramping up its operation and that the campaign would turn to a leaner “insurgent” posture.

Since that time, DeSantis has been relying on smaller campaign events — some of which are being done in concert with Never Back Down — while also sitting down for interviews with mainstream media outlets. This week, for example, DeSantis did an interview with NBC News just months after a top spokesperson in office said they were boycotting the network.

DeSantis: 2020 election theories ‘did not prove to be true’

Fried had previously filed ethics complaints against Uthmeier and Kopelousos for allegedly soliciting donations from lobbyists and lawmakers for DeSantis’ presidential campaign.

Despite polls showing him trailing former President Donald Trump, DeSantis has vowed to plow ahead in the early states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

While brushing aside some of his poll numbers, DeSantis told NBC News this week that “I would much rather be underestimated” when asked about some of the problems with his campaign so far.

From The Messenger

Outgoing campaign manager Generra Peck will remain as chief strategist on the campaign as part of the restructuring. Peck guided DeSantis’s blowout reelection bid last year, but she quickly became the subject of criticism from DeSantis advisers and donors in mid-July after his presidential campaign stalled and money dried up.

The campaign then twice cut staff and expenses and retooled DeSantis’s press strategy to make him more available to the mainstream media.

But donors and some outside advisers weren’t satisfied, leading DeSantis last week to ask Uthmeier to diagnose problems with the campaign and see if he could fix them. Ultimately, it led the governor to ask Uthmeier to take the job.

Uthmeier shies away from calling the reshuffling a “reboot.” It’s a despised word in the campaign, where advisers prefer to call this the last campaign “reload” -- and they're going to win, despite the naysayers and early polling.

“People have written Governor DeSantis’s obituary many times,” Uthmeier said in a written statement to The Messenger. “From his race against establishment primary candidate Adam Putnam, to his victory over legacy media-favored candidate Andrew Gillum [in 2018], to his twenty point win over Charlie Crist [in 2022], Governor DeSantis has proven that he knows how to win. He’s breaking records on fundraising and has a supporting super PAC with $100 million in the bank and an incredible ground game. Get ready.”

Joining Uthmeier as a deputy campaign manager will be David Polyansky, an experienced Iowa operative who boasts of never losing a Republican presidential primary in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. Polyansky is currently an adviser to the pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down. He spent extensive time with DeSantis this month on his repeat visits to the first-in-the-nation state, which is crucial to DeSantis’s chances against frontrunner Donald Trump.

The campaign’s senior adviser and pollster, Ryan Tyson, will have an elevated role along with Marc Reichelderfer, a seasoned political operative and Tallahassee lobbyist who is currently advising the campaign.

Replacing Uthmeier in the governor’s office as acting chief of staff will be Alex Kelley, who is currently Florida’s Secretary of Commerce. Kelley will work side-by-side with David Dewhirst, who was hired last month as an adviser in the governor’s office and was the former solicitor general of Montana and deputy attorney general in Idaho.

Uthmeier and Peck have been close allies ever since the governor’s reelection campaign. As chief of staff, Uthmeier was actively engaged in raising money for DeSantis’s presidential campaign. In a written statement, Peck pledged help DeSantis notch a comeback win against Trump.

“Governor DeSantis is running one of the most aggressive early state campaigns in modern history,” Peck said. “Our organization welcomes the best of the best and James is one of my closest colleagues and friends — we are better for his joining and providing day to day leadership. This team is built to last and built to win.”

At 35 with no campaign management experience, Uthmeier has risen in the ranks of the governor’s office to become the top political and policy adviser to DeSantis. A member of the conservative Federalist Society legal group with DeSantis, Uthmeier began serving as deputy legal counsel after DeSantis was first sworn into office in Tallahassee in 2019 and was soon elevated to chief legal counsel before becoming chief of staff in the fall of 2021.

Over the years, Uthmeier earned a reputation in Florida political circles as the governor’s always-on-offense conservative fixer. He has had a key role in nearly every conservative and controversial policy that built the DeSantis brand with conservatives.

Uthmeier led DeSantis’s legal efforts to prohibit local government mask mandates, ban private business vaccine passports and reopen schools quickly in response to COVID. That earned DeSantis national condemnation from health experts and widespread negative mainstream media coverage but the support of Florida voters, who went on to reelect him by his historic margin in 2022. It also propelled him into the top tier of GOP presidential contenders.

Uthmeier also helped direct the controversial effort by DeSantis to redraw Florida’s congressional maps and eliminate a Black-held congressional seat. He also helped recruit legislative and school board candidates favorable to DeSantis’s conservative pro-business tax-cutting agenda.

During the fight over Florida’s law limiting the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms, Uthmeier managed the state’s strategy to remove Disney’s special treatment under Florida law, earning DeSantis more criticism and legal challenges. Closely involved in the establishment of the governor’s Faith Office, which liaises with numerous state agencies, Uthmeier helped ensure that the “heartbeat bill” 6-week abortion ban made it through the legislature.

That abortion legislation recently led DeSantis’s biggest contributor, billionaire Robert Bigelow, to announce he would no longer fund the governor’s presidential campaign if he didn’t moderate. Bigelow has contributed a total of $30 million toward DeSantis’s reelection and presidential campaign efforts.

Almost as important as gaining DeSantis’s trust, Uthmeier is also a top ally of First Lady Casey DeSantis, who plays an outsized role as the governor’s eyes and ears and his campaign trail surrogate. Uthmeier took a keen interest in her “Hope Initiative” to help lift people out of poverty, which she talks about on the campaign trail.

One senior campaign staffer described Uthmeier as “loyal, honest, and a true believer in the conservative principles that Governor DeSantis fights for. Over the years, James has earned the governor's trust and confidence — and the team enjoys working with him. He is exactly the right person to manage this campaign so we can help Governor DeSantis win the White House and save our country.”

Last week, Uthmeier took time off from his government job to lead the review of the state of the campaign at headquarters in Tallahassee, where he worked alongside Florida’s first lady reviewing strategic plans and interviewing staffers about what changes need to be made. DeSantis’s policy director, Chris Spencer, also took time off in a volunteer capacity and reviewed the finances of the campaign.

The DeSantis campaign’s financial problems only became apparent to the candidate and broader campaign in the final days of the financial quarter ending July 1. Though DeSantis hauled in a sizable $20 million in his first quarter of fundraising, it masked structural issues with his campaign’s high burn rate because of extensive private jet travel and a huge staff of more than 90.

In mid-July, the layoffs began in waves, instead of all at once. That led to a steady drip of negative media coverage – from the financial problems, to staffers who created a controversial homophobic (yet strangely homoerotic) web ad and then another created by another staffer that used Nazi imagery. In both cases, the campaign initially and falsely denied its staffers created the videos.

Peck offered to resign late last month at a donor retreat in Utah where some DeSantis advisers began criticizing her to the governor. Casey DeSantis, who is also close to Peck and appreciated her hard work and loyalty, balked, according to two sources.

“If you talk to Generra, she’ll be the first to tell you that she made mistakes.,” said a donor who attended the Utah meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Messenger to freely discuss the campaign. “She admitted her mistakes and lots of people appreciate that honesty. I like her. I think she’s great. But this is the NFL. This is about winning.”

In a press release issued after publication of this story, DeSantis communications director Andrew Romeo said that “Uthmeier has been one of Governor DeSantis' top advisors for years and he is needed where it matters most: working hand in hand with Generra Peck and the rest of the team to put the governor in the best possible position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden. David Polyansky will also be a critical addition to the team given his presidential campaign experience in Iowa and work at Never Back Down. We are excited about these additions as we continue to spread the governor's message across the country. It's time to reverse our nation's decline and revive America's future."

#ron desanctimonious #ron desantis #Dishonest DeSantis #florida #RNC #jill casey black pga #Casey DeSantis #never back down #iowa #new hampshire #south carolina #N2America #Generra Peck

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automatismoateo · 2 years ago

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Christian tried to block me from making friends during freshman year of college via /r/atheism

Christian tried to block me from making friends during freshman year of college

I'll start off by saying that I grew up without religion. I've never had the ability to have faith in something without evidence. I was always very neutral about the beliefs of others until I went to college and had first hand experience of evangelical christianity.

During my freshman year of college, I tried to make a few quick friends so that I had someone to hang out with during the football games and after classes. I met a group (2 guys and 3 girls) and started hanging out with them. They were pleasant to be around and (initially) didn't talk about religion.

About a month into college, another one of their friends (who lived on a different area of campus) visited our dorm and asked me if we could have a private conversation. I said sure and she took me off to the side and grilled me with questions about my religious beliefs. I told her that I don't have any. She asked me if I liked one of the guys I had been hanging out with and I said "yeah, he's been nice and we go to the football games as a group." She clarified if I liked him romantically and I said no. She said that was good because he's looking for a girl whose "heart is on fire for Jesus" and is waiting for someone who he can properly court. At the time I hadn't done much reading on evangelical culture so I was highly confused. I said ok and that I wasn't trying to date him. She went on to say that if I wanted to continue to hang out with this group, that I should strongly consider attending their student ministry group since they are "devoted to their faith" and want to surround themselves with similar people. I declined and she said I need to think about it and get back to her. I didn't and stopped hanging out with them. Thankfully I made some better friends not long after.

I lived in the dorms for 2 years total and I still got hounded by these people to join their ministry cult thing. I read more about it online and found out that the group funds lobbyists and super PACs all the while the members are courting, getting married, and pumping out kids at lightning speed.

This experience jump started my morbid fascination with evangelical christianity and cults. I read the book "The Family" by Jeff Sharlet and found this college ministry group mentioned pretty early on. I highly recommend the book and the Netflix documentary.

Submitted June 23, 2023 at 04:18AM by yesampfas (From Reddit https://ift.tt/m8aFDJr)

#reddit

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justinspoliticalcorner · 7 months ago

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Alanna Vagianos at HuffPost:

Some people may believe that the end of Roe v. Wade was simply a matter of luck: Following the then-black swan event of Donald Trump winning the 2016 election, Trump got to appoint two Supreme Court Justices in his first two years and a third after an octogenarian passed away weeks before the 2020 election.

The court then had a 6-3 conservative supermajority, and that was that. But the project to overturn the federal right to abortion was much more calculated, involving an alliance of Republican groups aiming to reshape Congress, the courts and American life. And while conservatives may have won a huge battle, it’s not the end of their unholy war. That’s the story New York Times reporters Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer tell in their new book, “The Fall of Roe,” a deeply reported accounting of the machinations of anti-abortion activists and lawmakers to reverse the 1973 ruling that reshaped both society and women’s lives. The book recounts the conservative network’s past victories, yes, but is also a window into the future, highlighting just how crucial November’s elections are for our rights and freedoms. That’s because if Trump wins a second term, this conservative coalition will bring even more litigation to strip away people’s rights — and would likely face a Supreme Court that’s even more untouchable than it is now.

The group most connected to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe, is Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right Christian advocacy group. But ADF certainly didn’t do it alone, per Dias and Lerer — correspondents on religion and politics, respectively. In many ways, two other organizations laid the groundwork for this victory: The Federalist Society, a judicial group that drafted a list of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, judges Trump said were all opposed to Roe; and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion political group with an affiliated PAC.

And they’re all funded with massive amounts of dark money, including from billionaires like the Koch brothers. The 30,000-foot view is that these groups worked together to draft and pass unpopular state laws and have conservative lawyers defend them in front of friendly judges who had been confirmed to lifetime appointments by Republican senators. The network could use this playbook on any number of issues in the future. ADF wrote Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban at issue in the Dobbs litigation. Dias and Lerer report that a conservative Wisconsin lawyer suggested crafting a ban at exactly 15 weeks basically as a dare for abortion rights proponents to challenge it, believing the Supreme Court would find the ban reasonable and gut Roe without fully overturning it.

The lawyer, Misha Tseytlin, allegedly floated the idea at a Trump victory party hosted by Federalist Society Chair Leonard Leo, and then someone connected to ADF heard it, and the organization had Tseytlin present his theory at a July 2017 ADF summit. (This story shows that conservatives picked 15 weeks not because of emerging medical research, but because abortion rights advocates had chosen not to sue over previous 20-week bans designed to challenge Roe.) ADF drafted a model bill, identified states that might pass it and that had anti-abortion attorneys general who would defend it, and started talking to lobbyists. Then-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) signed the 15-week ban into law in 2018, and litigation began. By the time the Supreme Court was considering taking the case, it was early September 2020. Then Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, giving a 5-4 court a 6-3 conservative supermajority, with three Justices appointed by Trump — a president who lost the popular vote. The court agreed to hear the case in May 2021, and the rest is history.

That playbook worked for striking down Roe, but the coalition is not done. Dias and Lerer write that ADF, in particular, will “work to restore an understanding of marriage, the family and sexuality that reflects God’s creative order.” First, abortion opponents think Dobbs is not enough; they want a nationwide ban starting at egg fertilization.

[...] ADF also has its sights set on reversing the 2015 ruling establishing marriage equality, but Waggoner also seems to resent when journalists ask her about Obergefell v. Hodges. (That ruling was 5-4, and two of the Justices in the majority are no longer on the court — you only need four votes out of nine to take a case.) “I’m worried you’re gonna just use a choice little quote, and anybody that reads the article is going to think I’m abandoning Obergefell, and I am not,” she told The New Yorker. “I think it is wrong and it should be reversed, but I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about how to do that.” The group wants to roll back transgender rights in employment (Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020) and expand parental rights (Troxel v. Granville, 2000) so that parents can override the medical needs of their children with gender dysphoria, The New Yorker reports. ADF is also behind the rash of state laws banning gender-affirming care for minors and trans kids’ participation in sports — the group wrote model legislation. We’re watching a redux of the anti-abortion battle plan in real time. “It’s not that the Court is going to say, ‘Gender ideology is bad,’” Waggoner told The New Yorker. “But I do think the Court could say, ‘Parental rights are fundamental rights.’”

The Fall of Roe book by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, a pair of New York Times reporters, takes a vital look at how anti-abortion activists delivered a win for their cause by overturning Roe in Dobbs and that they want more.

#Roe v. Wade #Women #Abortion #The Fall Of Roe #Elizabeth Dias #Lara Lerer #Books #Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America #Federalist Society #Alliance Defending Freedom #Mississippi HB1510 #Misha Tseytlin #Leonard Leo #Fetal Personhood #Kristen Waggoner

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karen-anti-r-cml · 2 years ago

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Don't Trust Republican-Confederate MAGA Loyalist, Billionaires Are Paying Them More Than "We The People" Can Afford.

Dick Uihlein Gave $1 Million + to an Ohio R-CML PAC to Support This Resolution

2022: Dick and Liz Uihlein gave $40 Million + to Support Campaigns for... Ron Johnson, Herschel Walker and others.

2023: The Uihlein's Are Reportedly the 4th Biggest Campaign Donors in the U.S., giving $190 million +

"Secret IRS Files Reveal How Much the Ultrawealthy Gained by Shaping Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Tax Cut”

"Ohio House R-CML votes to send amendment to special election in August"

"Richard/Liz Uihlein"

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worldwatcher3072 · 2 years ago

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Citizens United

Money in politics is a highly debated topic, as it has the potential to influence political decisions and undermine the democratic process. In this context, here are 10 facts about money in politics:

The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision removed restrictions on campaign spending by corporations and unions, opening the floodgates for outside spending in politics.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, spending on federal elections has skyrocketed since Citizens United, with more than $14 billion spent on the 2020 elections alone.

Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, have become a major force in American politics since the Citizens United decision.

Wealthy donors have an outsized influence on the political process. In the 2020 elections, just 1.5% of donors contributed 68% of all donations to federal candidates and political parties.

The revolving door between government and the private sector allows special interests to gain access and influence over elected officials.

Lobbying is a major industry in Washington, D.C., with more than 11,000 registered lobbyists spending billions of dollars each year to influence policymakers.

Dark money, or undisclosed political spending, is a growing problem in American politics, with more than $1 billion spent by dark money groups in the 2020 elections.

Campaign finance laws vary widely by state, with some states imposing strict limits on contributions and others allowing unlimited donations.

Public financing of elections is an alternative model used in some states and municipalities, which provides a set amount of funding to qualified candidates who agree to abide by certain rules.

The influence of money in politics has led to calls for reform, including proposals for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and limit the role of money in elections.

#Campaign finance #Money in politics #Political spending #Super PACs #Dark money #First Amendment #Supreme Court #Corporate personhood #Democracy #Election integrity

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msclaritea · 2 years ago

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A Betsy DeVos-backed group helps fuel a rapid expansion of public money for private schools

The American Federation for Children has found success amid a 20-year low in support for K-12 education and protests over lessons involving race and identity.

A growing number of states have enacted laws that offer families money for private education, which could significantly upend how K-12 schools are funded.NBC News / Getty Images

March 30, 2023, 4:00 AM MST

By Tyler Kingkade

DES MOINES, Iowa — A conservative nonprofit group founded by former Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said it poured about $9 million into state elections last year, backing nearly 200 candidates. Now, some of those candidates are pushing a wave of legislation boosting DeVos’ longtime goal: subsidizing private schools with public dollars.

Using at least $2.5 million from DeVos and her husband, the American Federation for Children has played a pivotal role in getting what supporters call “school choice” policies passed into law in at least three states and introduced in several more, according to current and former GOP legislators, lobbyists for teachers unions and academics.

Republican lawmakers in over a dozen states have recently cited complaints about liberal ideology in public schools as a reason to support helping parents pay for private education. That shift in strategy has been hailed by organizations like the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that helped spur parent protests over lessons about racism. And it has helped cement funding for private schooling as a benchmark of Republican governance.

The nonprofit group has found success amid a 20-year low in approval for the K-12 education system and after two years of protests over lessons involving race and LGBTQ identity. It is now on the verge of ushering in a transformation in how large swaths of the country fund schools.

“They’ve been quite strategic,” Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor at the University of Arkansas, said of the group. “They’ve particularly targeted rural Republicans who are opposed to school choice. They just had to take out a few marginal incumbents, and thereby put the fear of God into the rest of them.”

It’s difficult to determine whether the laws would have been enacted without the American Federation for Children’s involvement; other groups supporting the same “school choice” policies also targeted lawmakers with campaign ads last year. Each state’s political landscape is unique and subject to myriad factors. But the federation’s spending preceded a marked increase in both the scale of private school subsidies on the table at the state level and the rate at which the laws have been enacted.

In Florida, where the American Federation for Children’s state political action committee spent $1.7 million during last year’s elections, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law Monday that will allow more families to receive public funds to pay for private education, regardless of their financial need.

In Iowa and Arkansas, where the organization’s PAC put money into ousting incumbent Republicans who had resisted past proposals to subsidize private education, GOP governors signed sweeping legislation this winter to offer money for school tuition for every child in their states.

And in Texas, where the American Federation for Children’s PAC spent $1 million during last year’s election cycle, and in Georgia, where it spent $380,000, bills recently advanced in the GOP-controlled legislatures to create programs to fund private schooling.

“We’re doing a lot of winning — I’m almost getting tired of winning so much because we’re winning all across the country,” Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the federation, said in a Twitter Space on Sunday.

DeVos and other conservatives have long advocated for financially supporting families who want to move their children from public schools to private ones, calling these policies “school choice,” and arguing that they would help poor children get a better education. Opponents, including teachers unions, educators and Democrats, have pushed back, arguing that such policies would siphon students and money away from public schools.

DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist, was unsuccessful in pushing for “school choice” bills in Congress during her time in the Trump administration and was stymied in attempts to reroute federal dollars toward private education, but the political winds among the GOP base have changed since then.

DeVos said in a June 2022 C-SPAN interview that parent protests had driven increased interest in “education freedom” policies, and that this was having an electoral impact.

“Importantly, we’ve seen this issue really inform many of the primary races this year in states where there haven’t been programs and where there’s been legislation introduced in the past but there simply hasn’t been enough support,” she said. “But this issue has really popped to the top of the list for many states. And so I think in this next year or two, we’re going to see some major gains.”

Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, said the group targeted 69 incumbents in state legislatures last year and ousted 40 of them.

The group is “willing to beat opponents of either party who oppose the desires of parents who want these educational options,” Schultz said in a statement.

“Especially after 2020 and the chaos created for parents by the teachers’ unions and the education establishment,” he added, “parents are now winning one of the most important domestic policy issues of our time: school choice.”

Removing incumbents is a move that sends a strong signal, said Maurice Cunningham, a University of Massachusetts-Boston professor who studies the impact of dark money groups: “Get in our way, and you’ll be gone.”

“Politicians are rational,” Cunningham said. “It intimidates people. Who wants to be next after that?”

DeVos left her role as chairman of the American Federation for Children when she joined the Trump administration, but she remains one of its largest financial backers. She and her husband, Dick, gave at least $2.25 million to the nonprofit group’s national PAC and $250,000 to its Texas PAC last year. The organization’s national political arm also drew $1 million from Cleveland Browns co-owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam for its national election efforts. Jim Walton, a billionaire banker and son of the Walmart founder, put in $100,000 toward the group’s work in Arizona last year.

The American Federation for Children “helps make sure what’s best for students comes first by ensuring parents, not just the unions, have a seat at the table when it comes to education policy,” Nate Bailey, DeVos’ chief of staff, said in an email.

The Haslams said in a statement that they support the American Federation for Children’s efforts “to help students from all different areas and backgrounds have a chance for a quality education and a brighter future.”

You know what comes next, after the DeVos family and the Catholic Church succeed in destroying public schools? Our children under the control of an organization that historically are known as extreme abusers.

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