#the last election without trump was 2012

[thebreakfastgenie]

There are people who will be old enough to vote this year who don't remember a presidential election without Donald Trump as one of the candidates.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mike Hixenbaugh and Allan Smith at NBC News:

Six years ago, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing provocateur who founded the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, strongly criticized the evangelical political movement he now helps lead. Kirk, known then primarily for his work mobilizing college-age Republicans, described Jesus as welcoming and tolerant and denounced Christians’ “sanctimonious approach” to homosexuality and other issues. He argued politics should be advanced through a “secular worldview” and slammed attempts by the evangelical right, beginning in the 1970s, to “impose” their version of morality “through government policy.”

“We do have a separation of church and state,” Kirk told the conservative commentator Dave Rubin in 2018, “and we should support that.” Kirk, now 30, has since reversed his position. It’s a transformation that, according to political and religious scholars, embodies and reinforces a growing embrace of Christian nationalist thinking within the Republican Party in the era of Donald Trump. “There is no separation of church and state,” Kirk said on his podcast in 2022. “It’s a fabrication. It’s a fiction. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”

Today, Kirk and Turning Point are dominant forces in the Republican Party and MAGA movement, working directly with the Trump campaign on voter outreach while reaching millions of listeners through Kirk’s daily radio show and podcast. Along the way, Kirk has become one of the nation’s most prominent voices calling on Christians to view conservative political activism as central to Jesus’ calling for their lives. Kirk routinely rails against what he calls the “LGBTQ agenda,” which he claims is harming children. He has invoked the Seven Mountains Mandate, a philosophy increasingly popular among Trump supporters that calls on conservative Christians to claim positions of power in seven key mountains of society, including government, media, business and education. And he promotes Trump as crucial to restoring Christian morality in America. “I worship a God that defeats evil,” Kirk said last week while introducing the former president at a rally hosted by Turning Point and the Trump campaign at an Arizona megachurch. “And we worship a God that wins in the end.”

By appealing to conservative Christians’ fears of shifting cultural norms around LGBTQ acceptance, and by portraying the election as part of a spiritual struggle, Kirk and Turning Point are banking that they can drive evangelical turnout to secure Trump victories in key swing states. But extremism experts warn that this framing — the idea Trump is on a mission from God to restore Christian righteousness in America — could lead followers to take radical action if he doesn’t prevail in November. “There’s this growing sense that American politics are so broken,” said Paul Matzko, a historian of American conservatism, “that there’s a decreasing willingness to imagine the other side being allowed to exercise power without doing it in apocalyptic terms, which fuels things like the insurrection on Jan. 6.” Kirk, whose organization bused supporters to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, to rally Congress to reject the presidential election outcome, declined to be interviewed. Andrew Kolvet, a Turning Point USA spokesperson, said Kirk has never advocated for violence.

[...] Kirk grew up attending church in the Chicago suburbs and identified as an evangelical when he founded Turning Point at the age of 18 in 2012 to promote the libertarian values of “free markets and limited government.” Kirk referred to the Bible in his 2016 manifesto, “Time for a Turning Point,” but argued publicly that — much like a plumber or an electrician — it was not his job as a political activist to proselytize his faith. “You don’t want to be too offsetting and off-putting,” he said in 2018.

Kolvet said Kirk started to become more serious about his faith six years ago, after traveling to Israel to witness the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem during the Trump administration. But Kirk’s views on the role of religion in politics really began to shift in 2020, Kolvet said, after churches were forced to close to slow the spread of Covid, which Kirk and others depicted as an attempt by a tyrannical government to control Christians. A year earlier, Kirk says he’d begun meeting with California megachurch pastor Rob McCoy, who helped convince him that America was a Christian nation whose founding documents were derived from the Bible. (Although some Founding Fathers wrote of the importance of religion in maintaining a virtuous society, historians dispute the notion that America was established as an explicitly Christian nation.) In 2021, Kirk and McCoy created TPUSA Faith, a division of Turning Point USA, to mobilize conservative Christians to advance their vision.

[...] Matzko, a recent fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said Kirk has aligned himself with a once-fringe strand of apocalyptic political theology popularized by a network of Pentecostal and charismatic Christian influencers in recent decades. With the Seven Mountains Mandate as a key organizing principle, ambassadors of this movement — sometimes referred to as the New Apostolic Reformation — present politics as a spiritual clash between good and evil and Trump as a generational leader ordained by God to save America from the forces of darkness. “He’s pitching his message to people who do believe that we’re in the end-times, and that if we don’t seize the Seven Mountains of cultural influence, then the other side, the satanic side, will,” Matzko said. “That sense of threat, that sense of anxiety, it just drips from his comments.” In 2021, soon after launching TPUSA Faith, Kirk told a church congregation in Washington state that it was time for Christians “to rise and stand.” He then quoted a Bible passage from the book of Luke often cited by Seven Mountains adherents to make the case that Christians are meant to rule over society until Jesus returns: “The Bible says very clearly,” Kirk said, “to ‘Occupy until I come.’” [...]

Nevertheless, Kirk has closely aligned himself with leading figures promoting the Seven Mountains worldview, including Lance Wallnau, a self-identified prophet who coined and popularized the concept two decades ago. Kirk has appeared on “FlashPoint,” a national TV program that’s won viewers with a blend of pro-Trump political commentary and prophetic messages about God’s divine plans for America. And he has partnered with Sean Feucht, a Christian musician who’s been hosting political worship rallies at all 50 state Capitols to promote the idea of a Christian America. “We want God writing the laws of the land,” Feucht said at a TPUSA Faith-sponsored event outside the Wisconsin statehouse last year. “Guilty as charged.”

This mindset, which can be traced to the Moral Majority movement of the 1970s and ’80s that Kirk once condemned, has helped fuel recent GOP initiatives chipping away at church-state separation. That includes the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision imperiling women’s access to in vitro fertilization, and a wave of state bills to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, place religious chaplains in public schools and require students to learn from the Bible. Trump has also sought to court pastors and voters who believe America was meant for Christian rule, promising if elected to restore evangelical power in government and to begin screening immigrants based on their faith and rejecting any who “don’t like our religion.” With more than 30 full-time staff members, according to the group’s website, TPUSA Faith has worked to create a nationwide network of churches to wage political and spiritual warfare against Democrats by mobilizing pastors and registering Christian conservative voters to restore “traditional biblical values in our nation.” 

NBC News reports on Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and his organization’s turn to Christian Nationalism and Seven Mountains Dominionism.

During the early days of Kirk’s running of TPUSA, his organization generally avoided focusing on religious-type social issues that appealed to conservative evangelical Christians by running a secular operation.

However, during the 2020s, Kirk and his organization pivoted hard towards Christian nationalism and 7MD as a result of backlash against COVID measures that forced churches to close in-person services or reduce capacity. Thus, TPUSA Faith was launched.

[beardedmrbean]

In the winter of January 2020, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a member of the party’s informal left-wing House bloc dubbed “The Squad,” temporarily backed away from the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses, after enthusiastically supporting him.

Among the reasons she reportedly “grew less interested in helping Sanders’ campaign” was Joe Rogan.

Sanders’ campaign had touted a quasi-endorsement from the wildly popular podcaster, who has a record of inviting controversial guests on to spew conspiracies and bigotry while dabbling in both himself, apparently unnerving Ocasio-Cortez and her team in the process.

Four years later, the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has Ocasio Cortez’s fervent backing, is in discussions to appear on Rogan’s The Joe Rogan Experience.

It marks a dramatic 180 from the Democratic movement’s response to Sanders merely noting Rogan’s praise four years ago.

Reuters reported Monday that Harris campaign officials were in talks with Rogan’s team about having her on the show, which former president Donald Trump has said he plans to appear on before election day.

The arguments for and against appearing on Rogan remain little changed.

First, there’s the baggage.

Rogan falsely claimed “activists” were behind California wildfires and touted a conspiracy theory associated with climate change denial that claims shifts in the earth’s magnetic poles bring about natural, apocalyptic catastrophes like the flood in the biblical story of Noah’s Ark.

Nearly 300 doctors, physicians and science educators wrote to Rogan's distributor, Spotify, when he spread Covid-19 information, including claiming young people didn’t need to get vaccinated and promoting the taking of veterinary drug ivermectin to treat the disease.

In 2022, he apologized after a compilation of clips of him repeatedly saying the N-word went viral.

Among his past guests are Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right neo-fascist group Proud Boys, and Alex Jones, the malicious conspiracist who waged a years-long campaign against parents whose children were murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.

It could be pointed out that Howard Stern, the reformed shock jock whose show Harris appeared on last week, has a decades long archive of sexist and racist broadcasts. But Stern has backed away from his past antics in recent years—though he’s also paid his way into the Democratic fold, attending top dollar fundraisers.

But, unlike Stern, one need not reach years into the past to find Rogan’s controversies. Earlier this year, his Netflix standup special Burn the Boats was criticized for his mocking trans people and preaching vaccine skepticism—and, arguably more important for a standup special, it was also unfunny, reviewers agreed.

But then there is the case for Rogan, for which the Sanders campaign made a compelling argument for in 2020.

Rogan has a giant audience—tens of millions of subscribers across Spotify, YouTube, Instagram and X. That audience skews heavily male (81%) and young (56% between 18 and 34), demographics relatively immune to legacy media (only 12% of Rogan’s audience says they trust newspapers).

The best way to reach them—agree or disagree with all of their views—is on their turf. If some of them join the Democratic fold and help defeat Donald Trump, great.

Sanders, in fact, had already appeared on Rogan’s show months before the endorsement controversy. In his interview, he took advantage of Rogan’s deferential interview style—part of the reason why right-wing guests on the show frequently make crazed claims without being challenged—to hammer home his message of economic justice directly to the host’s massive audience.

“The goal of our campaign is to build a multi-racial, multi-generational movement that is large enough to defeat Donald Trump and the powerful special interests whose greed and corruption is the root cause of the outrageous inequality in America,” the Sanders campaign told Vanity Fair in 2020. “Sharing a big tent requires including those who do not share every one of our beliefs, while always making clear that we will never compromise our values.”

Sanders was pilloried by Democratic aligned organizations like MoveOn and the Human Rights Campaign. They may yet issue similar reprisals if Harris does ultimately agree to appear on Rogan.

[kaputalism]

I'm not going to do a very good job of organizing this but I just like, can't stand listening to people try to browbeat my friends into voting again. I'm sick of hearing about how we are "enabling fascism" by not voting for Harris. I feel like it shows how short sighted our entire political project is. Whether people intended it to be this way or not, every person who tells me "we have to think strategically/big picture/long game" does not appear to be thinking in those terms, and instead we are stuck on a treadmill of the current election cycle perpetually being the "most important election of our lives," wherein all other concerns, all objections, all violations of good sense can be hand-waved away by trying to avoid the current Bad Republican Fascist. When I ask people "okay say Kamala wins, what stops Trump from running again? Do we think he's just going to go away? How do we contend with a successor?" Not to mention, I do sincerely believe that Trump is not as bad or dangerous as just like, the average career Republican, ie a person totally soullessly devoted to the GOP who has spent 5 decades of their life relentlessly building the project and movement that Trump kind of just waltzed into. Unfortunately, he's been built up for almost a decade now as a singular apocalyptic threat. The Democrats are so myopic that they've moved the goalposts to incorporate and welcome with open arms every mother fucker that they told me in 2008 and 2012 that they were the alternative to, when that was the most important election of our lives. I knocked on doors to keep these people out of the white house and now I'm supposed to be inspired that they are "on our side". But Mitt Romney didn't suddenly become a moderate: the Democrats are simply more in line with what he and people like Dick Cheney believe now than they used to be. That should disturb us! Especially because now basically any Republican who can be moderately polite and couch the awful shit they believe in passive enough language gets to look like an incredibly reasonable and sane pragmatist in comparison to Trump. Laser focusing your party around opposition to one mortal guy is a bad move. But yeah so many people talk as if beating Trump now is the end-all-be-all of everything, ignoring the fact that like, he's just going to keep running until he dies (unless of course, if I'm more cynical, they are banking on that happening because he's such a good fundraiser for Democrats).

But the last thing is just beating people over the head with the "fascist" shit is so fucking dumb. Kamala is running based on the argument that Trump is incompetent to accomplish the fascist claims he makes, whether it's increasing our military might and how feared we are by other nations, instituting draconian anti-immigration policies, or the genocide in Gaza. Biden allowed my governor to commit treason and did nothing. I've watched my friends'rights get stripped away with no response and I'm just expected to ignore that, "hold my nose" and vote for Harris. I'm sorry, but the calculation of "exactly which groups of immigrants, people in other countries, queer Americans, and American POC am I okay with being sacrificed so that I can get a tax credit and infrastructure spending and people can get some of their student loans forgiven" is a fascist calculation that I won't be engaging in. If the Democrats are willing to retrofit 70 percent of their platform to the Republicans over the course of roughly a decade how am I supposed to believe helping the Democrats win would provide them any effective incentive to change? If they don't know that they will lose without the left and/or ideological progressives then they have zero incentive to ever change. We've seen the net result of "elect them and push them left." It just hasn't borne out in reality.

[mariacallous]

In the United States, the polls in the run-up to the Nov. 5 presidential election show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are neck and neck. But if the voting were limited to Israelis, Trump could begin writing his inaugural address. Israel is Trump country, and Trump’s No. 1 supporter is its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet, Trump’s record, his mercurial personality, and his public remarks on Israel during the campaign offer little to justify the enthusiasm.

The war Israel has been fighting for the past year has made it more dependent on the United States than at any time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Israel needs the full support of the next U.S. president no matter who they are. Yet Netanyahu seems willing to give a cold shoulder to one candidate and place all his chips on another whose policy instincts mostly run counter to Israel’s interests.

Netanyahu has always felt more at home with Republicans than Democrats. In the 2012 election, he made his preference for Sen. Mitt Romney known, over the incumbent Barack Obama. Romney was given head-of-state treatment in a July visit that year, and Netanyahu appeared (supposedly without his foreknowledge) in an Obama attack ad. Netanyahu held back in the next two elections, but this time around, he has been playing favorites again.

It began with a reconciliation of sorts. Trump took umbrage over the fact that Netanyahu  congratulated President Joe Biden on his election victory in 2020. For the next four years, the two men didn’t speak. In an interview with Time last April, Trump blamed Netanyahu for the failures that enabled Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. It was a sharp dig for an Israeli leader who has refused to accept any responsibility for the security failure.

Netanyahu broke the ice last July in a visit to Mar-a-Lago. Since then, the two have reportedly spoken by phone several times. Whatever the two men really think of one another, both find it useful politically to be seen as friends and allies.

Israelis stand out among Western democracies in their support of Trump. A recent poll by Channel 12, an Israeli broadcaster, found that 66 percent said he was their preferred candidate, versus just 17 percent for Harris (another 17 percent expressed no opinion). By comparison, a survey conducted by Gallup International of 43 countries (but not Israel) found that 54 percent of respondents preferred Harris, more than double the level of support for Trump. Even in Serbia and Hungary, the two countries most supportive of Trump, he was favored by no more than 49 and 59 percent of those polled, respectively.

The average Israeli probably prefers Trump partly because Harris is an unknown. Little or none of the appreciation they feel for Biden’s enormous help over the course of the war in Gaza has been passed on to his vice president.

But Trump’s popularity is mostly due to his first term in office, when he moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal and orchestrated the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and a clutch of Arab countries. The fact that Trump also proposed a peace plan that called for a Palestinian state and that he scotched Netanyahu’s plans to annex part of the West Bank seems to have been forgotten.

Israelis tend to see the positive gestures as a demonstration of Trump’s love for Israel. But the record doesn’t quite bear that out. Trump only made one visit to Israel during his term as president. By contrast, Biden has traveled to Israel twice, including in the early days of the war in Gaza, in a powerful and personal show of support days after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Early in his 2016 campaign, Trump got his pro-Israel talking points wrong and told a CNN interviewer that, in regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict, he “would love to be neutral if it’s possible.” He corrected himself quickly after he recognized the gaffe, but it is safe to assume it reflected a strong personal impulse.

In his current campaign, Trump has offered a mixed and often nebulous mélange of stances on Israel in regards to the most pressing issues it faces, namely Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran.

In the first few months of the Israel-Hamas war, Trump spoke about the need to “finish up your war”  and “get it done quickly.” In the September debate with Harris, he said, “I will get that settled and fast.” More recently, he has moved a little more in the direction of supporting the war effort, telling Netanyahu in a phone call, “Do what you have to do.” But Trump has never spoken of the “total victory,” which Netanyahu says is Israel’s goal.

Trump advisors have been quoted as saying it is quite possible Trump would follow Biden’s approach by pressuring Israel to agree to a cease-fire and hostage deal. And, since Trump appears keen on crowning his Abraham Accords achievement with a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu might find himself under pressure from a Trump administration to meet Saudi demands for progress toward Palestinian statehood.

On Iran, Trump has taken a tough line publicly, but not as tough as Netanyahu would like. Trump has spoken of stepping up his campaign of “maximum pressure” on Tehran but by that he means more onerous economic sanctions, not a war. “Overall, he has a huge aversion to war,” one advisor recently told the Financial Times.

And that speaks to Trump’s larger worldview, which doesn’t align well with Israeli interests. Trump is suspicious of allies, especially those who don’t pay their own way in terms of defense. He most certainly doesn’t like multilateralism. In all these areas, Israel would be vulnerable in a Trump administration.

In the past, Israel might have been regarded as the kind of ally Trump appreciates. Yes, it was the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. aid and was hardly paying its way, but at least Israel never asked for American troops to defend it. And its powerful and effective military often served U.S. interests.

The war with Hamas and the parallel conflicts with Hezbollah and Iran have changed that dynamic. The United States has spent at least $22.7 billion on direct military aid to Israel and related U.S. operations in the region as of September 30, according to a study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Since then, the price tag has grown, as Washington extended more assistance amid tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran.

Beyond the money, the United States has, at various times, dispatched additional aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and troops to the region. Earlier this month, it sent a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system to Israel and 100 personnel to operate it to close gaps in Israel’s air defenses. The United States has also been supplying massive quantities of arms to Israel that could never be sourced from any other country or produced at home. To the credit of multilateralism, Biden twice organized a coalition of Western and Arab powers to aid Israel when Iran launched missile attacks.

The fighting will eventually come to an end, but Israel’s reliance on the United States is likely to remain elevated for the foreseeable future. Israeli planners are assuming it will have to increase defense spending considerably in the years ahead, costs that it might struggle to cover, especially if economic growth slows.

Trump’s defenders will counter that Israel is a special case. Unlike other allies, it has a homegrown constituency in the United States among evangelical Christians and many Jews. In the Republican Party, support for Israel is a sine qua non. But will that be enough?

Trump will never have to face voters again if he wins next week and can do as he chooses. He and Netanyahu might have made up for now because they need each other politically, but Trump isn’t the forgiving type and doesn’t take defiance lightly. If the two clash on Iran, Palestinian policy, or the terms for Saudi normalization, the friendship could easily fall apart.

Trump’s foreign-policy team is likely to contain a large number of “America first” supporters who might like Israel but are loath to entangle the United States in the Middle East’s forever wars, even when Israel is a party. Those among his advisors who advocate a more activist U.S. foreign policy are focused on China. Like the Biden administration, they see Iran as secondary and don’t want to commit resources to the threat.

Netanyahu is presumably more calculating and pragmatic than the ordinary Israelis whose support for Trump is visceral. The prime minister might be reasoning that he can’t afford to alienate Trump and that if Harris wins she’ll behave like Biden and continue supporting Israel despite any bad blood.

No matter who wins, the next four years of Israel-U.S. relations are likely to be rockier than those of the Biden presidency. Biden was a true friend of Israel and was prepared to go a long way to help it in a crisis at a great political cost. The White House’s next occupant—whether Trump or Harris—is unlikely to do the same.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 11, 2023 (Tuesday)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 12, 2023

The dramatic events in Nashville last week, when Republican legislators expelled state representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black men, for speaking out of turn when they joined protesters calling for gun safety, highlighted a demographic problem facing the Republican Party. Members of Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, grew up doing active shooter drills in their schools, and they want gun safety legislation. And yet, Republicans are so wedded to the gun industry and guns as part of party members’ identity that today, one day after five people died in a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky—including a close friend of Kentucky governor Andrew Beshear—the Indiana Senate Republicans passed a resolution honoring the National Rifle Association (NRA). Later this week, Republican leaders will speak at the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis, where firearms, as well as backpacks, glass containers, signs, and umbrellas, are prohibited. Those speakers will include former president Trump and former vice president Mike Pence. The resolution and the speeches at the NRA convention seem an unfortunate juxtaposition to the recent mass shootings. Abortion rights are also a place where the Republican Party is out of step with the majority of Americans and especially with people of childbearing age. Last Tuesday, Janet Protasiewicz, who promised to protect reproductive rights, won the election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court by an astonishing 11 points in a state where elections are often decided by less than a point. Victor Shi of Voters of Tomorrow reported that the youth turnout of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, increased 240% since the last spring general election in 2019. Youth turnout at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, increased 232%. Almost 90% of those young people voted for Protasiewicz. And yet the party needs to grapple with last Friday’s ruling by Trump-appointed Texas federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone, a drug used for more than 50% of medically induced abortions, and that it must be removed from the market. The party also must grapple with a new Idaho law that makes it illegal for minors to leave the state to get an abortion without the consent of their parents. In New York today, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg pushed back against Republican overreach of a different sort when he filed a lawsuit in federal court against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) in his official role as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee itself, and Mark Pomerantz, whom the committee recently subpoenaed, in response to a “brazen and unconstitutional attack by members of Congress on an ongoing New York State criminal prosecution and investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.” The lawsuit accuses Jordan of engaging in “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack District Attorney Bragg” and to use congressional powers to intervene improperly in a state criminal prosecution. Like any defendant, the lawsuit says, Trump had every right to challenge his indictment in court. But rather than let that process play out, Jordan and the Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee “are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation, and obstruction” that has led to multiple death threats against Bragg. Bragg’s office "has received more than 1,000 calls and emails from Mr. Trump's supporters,“ the complaint reads, “many of which are threatening and racially charged." “Members of Congress are not free to invade New York’s sovereign authority for their or Mr. Trump’s political aims,” the document says. “Congress has no authority to ‘conduct oversight’ into District Attorney Bragg’s exercise of his duties under New York Law in a single case involving a single defendant.” While Jordan and the Republicans defend Trump, there is a mounting crisis in the West, where two decades of drought have brought water levels in the region’s rivers to dangerously low levels. According to Benji Jones of Vox, who interviewed the former director of the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico, John Fleck, last year about the crisis, the problem has deep roots. One hundred years ago, government officials significantly overestimated the water available in the Colorado River System when they divided it among Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming through the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The compact provided a formula for dividing up the water in the 1450 miles of the Colorado River. It was designed to stop the states from fighting over the resource, although an Arizona challenge to the system was not resolved until the 1960s. On the basis of the water promised by the compact, the region filled with people—40 million—and with farms that grow much of the country’s supply of winter vegetables. Now, after decades of drought exacerbated by the overuse permitted by the Colorado River Compact and by climate change, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have fallen to critical levels. Something must be done before the river water disappears not only from the U.S., but also from Mexico, which in 1944 was also guaranteed a cut of the water from the Colorado River. The seven states in the compact have been unable to reach an agreement about cutting water use. Today the Interior Department released an environmental review of the situation that offered three possible solutions. One is to continue to follow established water rights, which would prioritize the California farmland that produces food. This would largely shut off water to Phoenix and Los Angeles. Another option is to cut water distribution evenly across Arizona, California, and Nevada. The third option, doing nothing, risks destroying the water supply entirely, as well as cutting the hydropower produced by the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. There is a 45-day period for public comment on the plans, and it appears that the threat of the federal government to impose a solution may light a fire under the states to come up with their own agreement, but it is unlikely they will worry much about Mexico’s share of the water. Historically, states have been unable to agree on how to divide a precious resource, and the federal government has had to step in to create a fair agreement. Meanwhile, back in Tennessee, the fallout from last week’s events continues. Judd Legum has reported in Popular Information that Tennessee House speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, doesn’t live in his district as state law requires. And Tennessee investigative reporter Phil Williams of News Channel 5 reports that state representative Paul Sherrell, “who recently suggested bringing back lynching as a form of capital punishment, has been removed from the House Criminal Justice Committee.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[dhaaruni]

Here are my extremely vibes-based 2024 Senate predictions:

Imo the most likely case is a 48D-52R Senate because I think Dems can win Arizona since Biden likely wins it, but lose Ohio/Montana/West Virginia. No matter what the denizens of Election Twitter wishcast, I'm skeptical that Sherrod Brown OR Jon Tester are favored even with flawed candidates!

Here's the reality:

There's MUCH less ticket-splitting since 2012 which was the presidential year when this Senate class was last up for re-election. 2018 was a blue-wave year without a presidential race!

Trump won Montana by twice as much as he won Ohio, and Tester is a good incumbent in a small state but that doesn't mean he can outrun Biden by 20

[dankusner]

An Allred upset of Cruz could be Democrats’ best shot to flip a seat

ELECTION 2024 Long-shot Senate contests to watch Riley Beggin

WASHINGTON – One of the Senate’s most recognized faces is fighting for another term in Texas.

Over in Nebraska, a Senate race that hasn’t gotten much national attention features a populist independent shaking up a reliably Republican state.

In Florida, a Spanish- speaking former congresswoman is running against one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies in the Senate.

And in Democrat-leaning Maryland, an anti-Trump Republican is trying to carve out a spot in the center.

While a large chunk of the national attention in the 2024 battle for control of the Senate rests in the same presidential battlegrounds - think Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada - several other states that are likely slam dunks for Kamala Harris or Trump also have potentially competitive contests too.

It’s a long shot that the challengers in any of these races will be able to unseat the likely favorites.

But with three weeks to go and mail-in voting already underway, the candidates are duking it out on debate stages and in TV ads while spending tens of millions of dollars to get their messages out before

INSIDE

Allred touts support for veterans in El Paso after debate with Cruz.

1B

Election Day.

The victor in these states could determine which party controls the Senate.

Without a Senate controlled by their own party, the next president will likely struggle to pass the most ambitious parts of their campaign platform.

The Senate is also solely responsible for confirming a president’s Cabinet officials and judges, from federal district courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where four of the nine justices will soon be in their 70s.

Texas

The Lone Star state has emerged as one of the Democrats’ best chances of flipping a Senate seat in this election.

The position is currently held by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who served in the George W. Bush administration and as Texas solicitor general before being elected to the Senate in 2012.

Cruz narrowly won his last race six years ago when former Rep. Beto O’Rourke came within 3 percentage points of toppling him in the traditionally deep-red state.

Democrats cite that race as reason for them to think that a win in Texas in 2024 is possible.

This year, they’ve drafted former NFL linebacker and current U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, who grew up in Dallas and played for the Tennessee Titans for five seasons before going to work in the Obama administration.

Allred has served in the House since 2019.

If he won, he would be Texas’ first Black senator.

Allred is running to the center, campaigning on Democratic mainstays like abortion rights while he distances himself from party leaders and pledges to be tough on border security.

Cruz is also arguing he’s transformed from a partisan bomb-thrower to a bipartisan dealmaker in the Senate and is attacking Allred on immigration, the economy and transgender policies.

Despite challenging Trump in a bitter fight for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, Cruz has become a supporter of the former president.

Cruz and Allred duked it out in a tense debate Tuesday night, where both candidates aimed to paint the other as extreme.

In one notable moment, Allred slammed Cruz as “a threat to democracy” and said Cruz was “hiding in a supply closet” when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the senator objected to the certification of Arizona’s election results.

Recent polls indicate Cruz has about a 4-percentage-point lead on Allred, a split that has narrowed slightly as Election Day approaches.

Texas voters don’t register by party, but recent election turnout data indicate Republicans still have the advantage:

In the 2022 gubernatorial primaries, almost 2 million Republicans voted in the state while just over 1 million Democrats did.

In the 2020 presidential primary – when Trump faced no serious primary challenger and there were multiple candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, giving Democrats more of a reason to show up – Republicans and Democrats still turned out in nearly equal numbers to vote.

Democrats haven’t won a statewide office in Texas for 30 years.

But as Montana increasingly appears out of reach, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced it would put millions more into the race to boost Allred, who has already outspent Cruz.

It’s now ranked one of the most expensive Senate races in the country, according to OpenSecrets.

Cruz’s campaign and affiliated PACs have raised $90 million this election cycle, according to campaign finance filings, while Allred and his affiliated PAC have raised $76.3 million.

Florida

Democrats in Florida are hoping two state referendums – one to protect abortion rights and one to legalize recreational marijuana – will help drive enough liberal voters to the polls to help them flip this seat in a state that is increasingly voting Republican.

Incumbent GOP Sen. Rick Scott is defending the seat against former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who immigrated to the U.S. from Ecuador as a teenager and worked for nonprofits before serving in the House from 2019 to 2021.

If she won, Mucarsel-Powell would be the first Hispanic woman to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate.

Scott, who served as Florida’s governor before being elected to the Senate in 2018, benefits from statewide name recognition.

He’s also a former CEO of a major for-profit health care provider who poured at least $8 million of his own money into the race and has massively outspent Mucarsel-Powell.

Scott’s campaign committee and affiliated PACs have raised $41.4 million to support him so far this cycle, according to campaign finance filings, while Mucarsel- Powell has raised $27.2 million.

Like Texas, national Democrats made a last-minute cash dump into the Florida race as their chances in Montana began to slip.

Trump has long had Scott’s support.

The senator endorsed Trump in 2016 when many Republicans were still hesitant to embrace the rookie presidential candidate, and Scott has remained a steadfast ally.

In the Senate, Scott has become a leader of a group of the chamber’s most right-wing senators and unsuccessfully challenged Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for the role of Senate GOP leader in 2022.

Now that McConnell is stepping down from leadership, Scott is running to replace him against Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, both McConnell allies.

The Florida Senate race has been complicated by recent Hurricanes Helene and Milton that flattened some communities and put federal support for victims in the spotlight.

Both candidates have taken out ads related to the disaster and its aftermath.

Registered Republicans in Florida outnumber registered Democrats by more than 1 million, according to the Florida secretary of state.

About 3.6 million voters remain unaffiliated. Scott has consistently polled ahead of Mucarsel-Powell, though recent polls indicate that lead might be narrowing.

Nebraska

Deep-red Nebraska was thought to be an easy win for Republicans this year.

But independent candidate Dan Osborn is throwing that into question with a populist campaign message that might bring him within striking distance of two-term incumbent GOP Sen. Deb Fischer.

Osborn is an industrial mechanic and a union leader who led the 2021 strike at the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha.

He hasn’t said whether he would caucus with Republicans or Democrats if elected to the Senate and distanced himself from the state’s Democratic Party.

However, liberal outside groups have spent money to support him and attack Fischer.

Fischer is a cattle rancher who served in the Legislature for eight years before running for Senate in 2012.

She won her last two Senate elections by 16 and 19 percentage points. She has been touting her endorsement from Trump and criticizing Osborn for not saying who he supports for president.

As of this month, almost 50% of registered voters in Nebraska are Republicans, compared with only 27% registering as Democrats.

However, about 22% are registered as nonpartisan.

Outside spending by national political groups has picked up in recent weeks, and both campaigns plan to step up their spending in the final stretch.

Osborn’s campaign has raised $4.9 million so far this cycle, according to campaign finance filings, while Fischer reported raising $7.8 million across her campaign committee and affiliated PAC, though another GOP super PAC recently bought $2 million in TV ads to attack Osborn.

Political analysts say Fischer remains the favorite. But the two candidates have both released recent internal polls showing themselves ahead by a modest margin, so it might be tighter than expected.

Maryland

Reliably blue Maryland was on a glide path to filling its soon-to-be open Senate seat with another Democrat.

Then former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan stepped into the race, immediately making the race with Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks competitive.

Hogan aims to persuade some of the state’s Democratic voters to split their ticket and choose him as well as Harris by distancing himself from Trump and pledging to protect abortion rights if he’s elected.

Hogan has long been critical of the former president, saying Trump has led Republicans in the wrong direction.

He has also said he would have voted in the Senate to convict Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Hogan’s name recognition – and tendency to clash with his own party – has some history behind it.

Hogan’s father, Lawrence Hogan, was the only GOP member of the House Judiciary Committee to vote for all three articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal.

Alsobrooks has worked to communicate to voters that Hogan would still be a Republican in the upper chamber – which could determine who controls the Senate and its agenda, regardless of how he votes on issues. She has pitched herself as a defender of abortion rights and economic opportunity. If she wins, she would be the first Black senator from Maryland.

Alsobrooks has a significant edge in the polls. More than 52% of registered voters in Maryland are Democrats, while only 24% are Republicans. About 24% are unaffiliated or align with a third party. Still, the race has become one of the most expensive in the nation as the campaigns and outside groups spend millions for the opposing candidates.

So far this cycle, Alsobrooks’ campaign committee and affiliated PAC raised $32.6 million, according to campaign finance filings. Hogan’s campaign committee and affiliated PAC raised $22.2 million, but he is also benefitting from an independent PAC called Maryland’s Future that raised $27 million through September and spent almost $11 million.

Longer longshots

Several other races are even more off the radar of national political groups that are busy going after easier targets. But campaigns in North Dakota, New Jersey, Missouri and Minnesota say they have a shot at beating their statistically favored opponents.

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s resignation after being convicted in a federal corruption trial left an open seat in the Garden State, where voters have skewed Democratic for decades. U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., won the competitive Democratic primary. He faces hotelier Curtis Bashaw, who beat a Trumpendorsed candidate in the primary and is running as a moderate. Polling from earlier this year puts Kim at an advantage.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a firstterm Republican, is being challenged by Democratic candidate Lucas Kunce, a Marine veteran who ran for the Senate unsuccessfully in 2022. Internal polls from Kunce’s campaign indicated he might be just 4 percentage points behind Hawley in the GOP-leaning state. However, independent polling puts Hawley at a safer distance.

In North Dakota, engineering professor and Democrat Katrina Christiansen is challenging Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer. Her campaign says she has outraised Cramer and narrowed their polling gap significantly, according to a campaign-sponsored poll. However, recent independent polling from the North Dakota News Cooperative shows Cramer with a safe lead.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is defending her seat in a Democratic state that Republicans have hoped might lean their way this election cycle. She’s running against Royce White, a former NBA player who has a history of controversial remarks that have left him without the support of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Recent polls give her an 8-point advantage over White

[altecisbit]

General Clayton - if the australian media think of going after me - think of the "cost" to the Australian Federal Government and us - no - "copyright and licence" - switch the surveillance off - please - or we all lose - G.C - press release - 12/12/2023.

the "formula for gold" - s6-h-Kr=Ri - attach s6-Kr to the hydrogen atom (excite) using the exchange electron theory and split the hydrogen atom - the bonding of the noble gas and produce gold - 79 - see notes

General Clayton -  it is believed fission the bonding of a noble gas - s6-h-Kr=Ri - is enough to produce - gold - kryptons6 - press release - 16:24P.M A.E.S.D.T 18/3/2024

the USGoV has said it can not conduct any nuclear experiments at this time kryptons6 is a hydrogen bomb vladmir putin has just announced he will start testing weapons if any tests are conducted by the U.SGoV

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3768410590151718&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz damages - u.k patents court

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3766482030344574&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz see - ALTECISBIT G+ (unregistered buisness)  - "copyright and licence" - fee - 380M - u.k patents court - justice drewett - if joe "hunter" "s" biden/u.s president does not agree to buy me out for 3 billion dollars and 5% to the clayton sinkovich families of the profits from production - of the (methonine aspartic inhibitor) the "formula for gold" - s6-h-Kr=Ri - "anti matter engine" I am going to run my company ALTECISBIT G+ - Alex m.m Clayton - as authorised officer negotiate the terms of "copyright and licences" - for the formulas my Intellectual property - the (methonine aspartic inhibitor) the "formula for gold" - s6-h-Kr=Ri - "anti matter engine"- 12/12/2023 - fn: a request of justice drewett u.k patents court to "enforce" - the - "contract"- and recover licence fees on behalf of Alex m.m Clayton - ALTECISBIT G+ - 22:45 P.M A.E.S.D.T 12/12/2023 

close of business #finance see deal for the "formula" in the interests of trade with #china -"copyright and licence" for the"formula for gold" - to #china - belt and road - as a sale to joe hunter s biden/u.s president d.j.t "trump industries" and a.u governments asking price for a limited licence per 3mth of 380M for licence

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3797237823935661&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz my administrators  (last testament and will) Alex m.m Clayton (see medical report)

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3668148460177932&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz copyright and licences

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3763858423940268&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz a report for the cheif justice gageler and the australian prime minister - see application for #payout #qt

.General Clayton - d.j.t "trump industries" received the hard copy of the formula for gold in 2020 as the U.SGoV received in 2012/13-15 the research associated with the formulas I have updated all records online since -the  U.SGoV after the democrats received the research in 2012/13-15 - d.j.t "trump industries" was in control of the research and since the election joe "hunter" "s" biden/u.s president has had control - without my consent I have never been approached by AuSGoV or U.SGoV - n.y.p.d s.o.d inform the u.s president if he does not buy the research the chinese government could buy in and own the research and if not d.j.t "trump industries" could make good a offer - G.C - press release - 16/12/2023.

@ABC_Australia said I have the whole world trying to make gold "why" it was said it was supposed to be a secret - ABC the formulas stolen of me by AuSGoV and sold of in the u.k and the united states as I updated the stolen notes online and shared as it has been the motive of the AuSGoV and U.SGoV not to negotiate "contracts" I have written whilst testing the stolen research "yes" it is right it is no secret since 1992/93 and 2012/12-15 - 2020 the thefts occurred I have not been contacted by the interested parties it is now possible china could win "contract' in protest by the australian federal government the deceit shown by past and present Australian Prime Ministers - and the U.SGoV

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3672206096438835&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz a report for the u.s president

17/12/2023 - the u.k prime minister said justice drewett u.k patents court said Smythe Glaxco and klyne must pay - if the court would like to expedite the claim on my behalf - 0431644158 by text message I can be contacted.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3768655813460529&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz Smythe Glaxco and Klyne

U.K PATENTS COURT N.Y.P.D S.O.D SAID THE U.SGoV plans to go into production with my Intellectual property - the "formula for gold" - THE U.S GOVERNMENT FROM THE FORMULAS IN THIS REPORT DISCOVERED HOW TO MAKE GOLD I CAN CONFIRM I REGISTERED WITH THE U.K PATENTS COURT JUSTICE DREWETT I AM THE OWNER AND COPYRIGHT HOLDER OF THIS WORK - 22/2/2024 - fn: the AuSGoV and U.SGoV say the "surveillance" is to protect me it's lies why are the AuSGoV AND U.SGoV taking out "contracts" on my life

National Press Club of Australia - p.m - AAMHR "two ways to make gold one of them impossible to complete the other requires a chain reaction" - 25/1/2024

#finance Alan Kohler - the experiment for the "formula for gold" I would not arrived at the formula from "einstein" if I hadn't written the "formula for gold" do not rule out the two experiments one of wich has not been tested

#buisness - einstein's final work - s6-h-Kr=Ri derived from writing the formula for gold

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3787691364890307&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz joe "hunter" "s" biden - the (methonine aspartic inhibitor) and the "formula for gold" s6-h-Kr=Ri - "anti matter engine"

#planetamerica fire side chat - joe "hunter "s" biden "of course I can trust al he sold me the formulas I just haven't paid him yet"  20:20-25P.M A.E.S.D.T 12/1/2024 - fn: a report for justice drewett u.k patents court - G.C

#buisness I rely on the honesty of the U.SGoV testing my formulas formula for gold s6-h-Kr=Ri - "anti matter engine" - I have been told the formula is a success

O2 -6-3=6 - Ri - Kr) = hydrogen -fuel --s6-h-kr = rubidium.- Ri - Kr  = O2 - 6 - 3 = 6 = 100 x T2/E2 /C2  Rubidium  T = logic therefore (C2 = T X 100 X 1 = M /E2) - RCM = M/CE2 -antimatter- derived from the formula for gold.-= O2 -h -h2 - Ri = Kr- s6 (sum 6) - krypton s6 - bonding of a noble gas.-frequency = space - E/M =C2 - C2 = space/ time - time = M/C2 × 100/1= E = C2/M = matter travelling through a black hole  - C.E.R.N©®

General Clayton -  it is believed fission the bonding of a noble gas - s6-h-Kr=Ri - is enough to produce - gold - kryptons6 - press release - 16:24P.M A.E.S.D.T 18/3/2024

Hypothesis

"it has been established sister pairs of atoms form the basis of a element once extracted from each - other" the theory of a black hole as the black hole formed the galaxy as gravity exists throughout the universe.

the periodic table and it's reordering with sister pairs of atoms the exchange electron theory form the basis of a element once extracted from each - other

sister pairs of atoms on the periodic table to find new elements (bonding a noble gas  kr - (36) =  s6 (11) = (16 &17) = - h (1) - Kr (36) = Ri (37) it's how - I found mercury 80 rubidium 37 extracting rubidium from mercury(80) to find - (s6-h- Kr =Ri) = gold (79) - ((80) mercury - split (excite) the hydrogen atom - s6-h-Kr =Ri - radio active isotype (37)) = gold (79) a new way to look at chemistry - einstein - alex m.m clayton ©®

sister atom (element) of the nuclear isotope - and confirm by the noble gas on the periodic table - the relationship between the noble gas and the isotope sister pairs with sodium - 6 - 0:33A.M A.E.S.D.T 18/1/2024 © ®

mercury (80) / s6-h-kr (36) a sister element to rubidium (37) s6-h-kr = rubidium extracted from mercury (80) (79)- gold sister pairs of atoms for the basis of element once extracted from each other - (16) phosphorus and (17) chlorine - s6 (11) - eg: - by a factor of - 1 and 10 x 2 + or - for the isotope and - s6 (11) + - h (1) =  correctly ordering the periodic table ©®

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3791717937820983&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz the theory

Formula for gold - s6-h-Kr = rubidium - the extraction of rubidium from mercury to find gold = s6-h-Kr - a nuclear reactor split the (atom) s6-h-Kr formula for gold = O2 - h - h2 - Ri = Kr = s6 - krypton s6 - the chain reaction is the rubidium isotope wich is the fuel for spaceflight it is believed a way of bonding the noble gas sodium with krypton gas in the chain reaction - einstein's final work by Alex m.m Clayton - 17/9/2023 fn: krypton s6 nuclear isotype - s6-h-Kr=Ri/h/O2 - finding a inexhaustible way to store rocket fuel and energy for life support systems (mercury -  Ri - s6-h-Kr= chain reaction/gold) - #jcheifofstaffs kim jong un is testing kryptons6 solid with gas and primed with a radioactive isotope s6-h-kr derived from mecury - bonding noble gas. - is all that is needed to store as everything else can be produced by the nuclear reactor.

#qt it is true I found out what einstein was talking about S6-H-KR=Ri - "anti matter engine" by writing the formula for gold - bonding a noble gas and away to write the perodic table and verify the table - and the spin offs in medical science and astrophysics - quantum mechanics - G.C 

close of #buisness its established the study of lithium hydroxide led to the development of the "formula of gold" as we know is all related see "medical science and astrophysics" - and the investments in to our rare earths and lithium and the backing of the u.s government in our clean energy policies #theworld - and the formula for gold - S6-H-KR = RI - "ANTIMATTER ENGINE" - einstein's final work it is now known the technologies for space travel are efficient as reports state - the "anti matter engine" travels at the speed of light and its sub systems are compatible and work from the same source of power making more effecient -in its own right - from life support systems to a nuclear powered engine - fully sustainable for the effecient and safe travel through a black hole to travel at light speed through a black hole rotating the spaceship (cloaking is achieved) the trajectory of the spaceship is important to achieve the successful flight.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3253853171607465&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz "einstein's final work"-  by Alex m.m Clayton.

@ABC_Australia said I am working on the theory of the black hole - periodic table and it's reordering with sister pairs of atoms - spies (highly classfied)  I have had to lock off my research based on this theory/u.s government a update to the gates principal and oppenheimers law - einstein s6-h-Kr=Ri - "anti matter engine"

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=194344463661823&id=100092588104148&mibextid=Nif5oz pre existing - "contract" - l.n.p - barack obama and joe "hunter" "s" biden - 2012/13-15 - expression of interest - the (methonine aspartic inhibitor) the "formula for gold" -  s6-h-Kr=Ri - "anti matter engine"  - see l.n.p and "contract" with d.j.t "trump industries" #qt - dr jim chalmers - "breach of "contract" a.l.p with joe "hunter" "s" biden/u.s president a report for justice drewett u.k patents court see pre existing "contract" - ALTECISBIT G+ with barack obama joe "hunter" "s" biden/u.s president 2012/13-15  - G.C - 28/1/2024

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3798653153794128&id=100009484426712&mibextid=Nif5oz the 6 - "contracts" - u.k patents court justice drewett.

General Clayton - u.k patents court justice drewett - how can the U.SGoV and AuSGoV and d.j.t "trump industries" be allowed to test my experiments "my Intellectual property" without a fee I have requested 380M it is stolen property stolen by AuSGoV it needs to stop - I have not been contacted I have stayed in touch with the U.SGoV through n.y.p.d s.o.d and joe hunter s biden has promised 3billion dollars as I requested as a starting price - see 6 "contracts" - on offer - justice drewett you have to decide whether a fee is applicable for continued testing of my intellectual property (experiments) with a view to sale of my intellectual property - G.C - press release - 15/3/2024

General Clayton - I do not know what the chinese a.u governments and d.j.t "trump industries" - are complaining about - joe "hunter""s" biden/u.s president is the only one who has agreed to my request of 3 billion dollars with royalties - a report for justice drewett u.k patents court - G.C - press release - 15/3/2024.

joe "hunter" "s" biden/u.s president has thrown me too the wolves as I hacked the "eye in the sky" sattilite (infra red with A.I) and deactivated the mind reading sattilite on me as n.y.p.d s.o.d worked around the hack and reinitiated the SATTILITTE - on "orders of joe "hunter" "s" biden/u.s president I site IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCE WITH THE U.SGoV and cancel the "contract" for my intellectual property a report for justice drewett u.k patents court - G.C - 20:20P.M A.E.S.D.T 15/3/2024 - fn: if and only when a fee is paid for testing the formula the U.SGoV would again be eligible to buy my Intellectual property - G.C - 20:11P.M A.E.S.D.T 16/3/2024

General Clayton - some would say I have failed us releasing the research einstein's final work - and it's use my apologies to joe "hunter" "s" biden/u.s president who I  know is interested in the research - as I said the research was released because I had a fight on my hands the AuSGoV claiming it was theirs as it was stolen by AuSGoV and u.k patents court has evidence of this  - it is only available to those who can use nuclear fission technology I am willing to accept a offer for the fee to test my research it's all I can do in all fairness - G.C - press release - 18/3/2024

N.Y.P.D S.O.D I SUFFER FROM BAD THOUGHTS A SYMPTOM OF #SCIZOPHRENIA  IS THE REASON I DON'T LIKE "EYE IN THE SKY" SATTILITTE (INFRA RED WITH A.I) MIND READING SATTILITE IT IS BEING USED ON ME TO CONFUSE AND CONTROL - in use by the media to "overdubb" on too "content" prerecorded live  - (voices)

N.Y.P.D S.O.D TRYING TO SAY I HAD A DEAL WITH U.SGoV and use @ABC_Australia to publicise it is a case of irreconcilable difference I have worked 23 years u.s military service 23 years no pay no honor's n.y.p.d s.o.d have been promising payment in the 10 - 15 years I have worked for them bribing me to stay in service - police corruption - "police fire and media" working together in a extorsion racket

u.k patents court justice drewett I am trying to get back the rights of my intellectual property stolen by the australian federal government for the U.SGoV and d.j.t "trump industries" -  AuKuS - 1992/93 - 2012/13 - 15 2016 - 2020 the intellectual property is being tested illegally by these entities

Show quoted text

[msclaritea]

Some Prominent Silicon Valley Investors Shift to the Right (SHOCKER!) 🙄

- The New York Times

Some Prominent Silicon Valley Investors Shift to the Right

Marc Andreessen, Chamath Palihapitiya and several other tech venture capitalists are increasingly criticizing President Biden and making their disaffection known in an election year.

Credit...Barbara Gibson

By Erin Griffith

May 23, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET

In 2021, David Sacks, a prominent venture capital investor and podcast host, said former President Donald J. Trump’s behavior around the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol had disqualified him from being a future political candidate.

At a tech conference last week, Mr. Sacks said his view had changed.

“I have bigger disagreements with Biden than with Trump,” the investor said. Mr. Sacks said he and his podcast co-hosts were working on hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Trump, which could include an interview for their “All In” show. They also extended an invitation to President Biden, he said, but the Trump camp was more open to it.

Such public support for Mr. Trump used to be taboo in Silicon Valley, which has long been seen as a liberal bastion. But frustration with Mr. Biden, Democrats and the state of the world has increasingly driven some of tech’s most prominent venture capitalists to the right.

Some investors, like Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital, backed Democrats in the past. (He is set to co-host the fund-raiser for Mr. Trump alongside Mr. Sacks.) Others, like Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz and Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital, have criticized Mr. Biden without expressing support for Mr. Trump. Still others, like Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, are focusing their efforts on electing Republicans to Congress.

The activity may amount to more noise than formal support or personal donations for Mr. Trump’s campaign. And it is by no means everyone. Much of Silicon Valley, including prominent donors like the investors Reid Hoffman and Vinod Khosla, remains loyal to Democrats. Peter Thiel, the investor who backed Mr. Trump in the past, has said he is disillusioned with politics and plans to stay out of the 2024 race.

Jacob Helberg, Vinod Khosla and Senator Todd Young are seated in blue armchairs on a stage, with U.S. flags behind them.

Jacob Helberg, left, an adviser to Palantir, spoke with the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, center, and Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, at a forum in Washington. Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

But the tech investors who are leaning right are influential, with enormous followings on social media and lots of money — and they are becoming more politically engaged. That reflects how the start-up industry has grown — soaring eightfold between 2012 and 2022 to $344 billion, according to PitchBook, which tracks start-ups — with more of the industry’s issues turning political in nature.

“When I started, everybody cared about tax issues and immigration issues,” said Bobby Franklin, who has led the National Venture Capital Association, a trade group, since 2013. “Now it is so much more complex.”

Delian Asparouhov, an investor at Founders Fund, the investment firm founded by Mr. Thiel, recently marveled at how much the political winds had shifted. This month, Mr. Trump made a virtual appearance at a venture capital conference in Washington. There, he thanked attendees for “keeping your chin up” and said he looked forward to meeting them.

“Four years ago you had to issue an apology if you voted for him,” Mr. Asparouhov wrote on X.

Delian Asparouhov, an investor at Founders Fund, recently marveled at how much the political winds had shifted in tech.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

Mr. Sacks, Mr. Palihapitiya and Founders Fund did not respond to a request for comment. Sequoia Capital declined to comment.

The comments and activity by the group of tech investors are particularly noticeable given Silicon Valley’s blue background. The circle of Republican donors in the nation’s tech capital has long been limited to a few tech executives such as Scott McNealy, a founder of Sun Microsystems; Meg Whitman, a former chief executive of eBay; Carly Fiorina, a former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard; Larry Ellison, the executive chairman of Oracle; and Doug Leone, a former managing partner of Sequoia Capital.

But mostly, the tech industry cultivated close ties with Democrats. Al Gore, the former Democratic vice president, joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in 2007. Over the next decade, tech companies including Airbnb, Google, Uber and Apple eagerly hired former members of the Obama administration.

Mr. Thiel’s loud and enthusiastic support for Mr. Trump in 2016, which included a $1.25 million donation and a speech at the Republican National Convention, came as a shock. Even more surprising to some in the industry was the way that, after Mr. Trump won the election that year, the world seemed to blame tech companies for his victory. The resulting “techlash” against Facebook and others caused some industry leaders to reassess their political views, a trend that continued through the social and political turmoil of the pandemic.

During that time, Democrats moved further to the left and demonized successful people who made a lot of money, further alienating some tech leaders, said Bradley Tusk, a venture capital investor and political strategist who is a Democrat.

“If you keep telling someone over and over that they’re evil, they’re eventually not going to like that,” he said. “I see that in venture capital.”

That feeling has hardened under President Biden. Some investors said they were frustrated that his pick for chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, has aggressively moved to block acquisitions, one of the main ways venture capitalists make money. They said they were also unhappy that Mr. Biden’s pick for head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, had been hostile to cryptocurrency companies.

The start-up industry has also been in a downturn since 2022, with higher interest rates sending capital fleeing from risky bets and a dismal market for initial public offerings crimping opportunities for investors to cash in on their valuable investments.

Some also said they disliked Mr. Biden’s proposal in March to raise taxes, including a 25 percent “billionaire tax” on certain holdings that could include start-up stock, as well as a higher tax rate on profits from successful investments..."

WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED. THEY'RE WORRIED... ABOUT THEIR MONEY; ABOUT THEIR BILLIONS. America has been under relentless assault from SILICON VALLEY since it's inception. You saw the reports from Keri Kukral an SV whistleblower. The place was teeming with criminal behavior. Foreign money flowing in from foreign adversaries like China Russia India, etc. There were prostitution rings and access run rampant, as Main Street kept having everything stolen from it. Practically every Cryptocurrency company was engaged in illegal activities.

Perhaps Mr Thiel (who is very much NOT out of politics. He's a backer of NYC Eric Adams) should not have tried to crash our Banks and the Stock Market and allow me to find the article where some of these 'former liberals' including Thiel, used to wax on about wanting a Monarchy; about wanting to 'REPLACE GOVERNMENT ' With THEY'RE OWN VERSION. He is also close to the Fascist wing of the Catholic Church They're all full of shit. And I don't know how impressive Al Gore is with that WEF leash. Tech is/was working with the World Economic Forum to gain more control.

#VoteBlue #BidenHarris2024 because our country desperately needs to get some of these billionaires under control or they will NEVER leave us alone. I'll admit to not being happy about everything right now, but I'm smart and adult enough to know that right now, it's not about me. It's about saving this country from Silicon Valley.

#SanFrancisco #KhoslaVentures #SequoiaCapital #ToddYoung #JacobHelberg #Palantir #ScottMcNealy #SunMicrosystems; #MegWhitman #Ebay #CarlyFiorina #hewlettpackard #larryellison #Oracle #dougleone #airbnb #GooglePlay #uber #apple #Obama #LinaKhan #garygensler

[ez-ra-zed]

2009. a random white boy named Ethan Jones in a timeline where i kept my dads last name was killed by a random oncoming car and creamed. 2010, i accidentally did something that lead to a butterfly effect of Hillary Clinton dying from a disease i had that kept being passed on to random ppl and eventually her, in that fake alternate timeline thst i find funny right now. 2011, my mom got another abortion after aborting her two other children that are alive in this reality, and then i killed myself later cuz i didnt have my sister, and then my mom drank herself to death and without four children was a mean hospice nurse instead of a nice one. 2012, everybody but 44million random white people, 44 million random black people, 44 million random all the other races, dies for no reason and then some random people had to raise me in this really cool reality that is more wholesome in the long-term. 2013, this random person online kills themselves after i target them and bully them to death on iFunny. oh wait it was like dozens of random people targeting one person and slowly killing them over multiple years when they fucked up some weak peoples minds when they could've just deleted iFunny. 2014, so many random people in the military tried to initaite a coup in an alternate timeline that lead to a second black man ending up in office in 2016 and he was completely black, dark black. but that only happened when the military killed so many politcians in DC in 2014 in an alternate timeline. 2015, Russia decides to have more random social media platforms than iFunny and did a lot more good damage in an alternate reality

Imagine iFunny never existed and I never learned about disinformation from Daddy Russia who is so Mother (Mother Russia)

Imagine Hillary won the election and I never learned from Trump I could fuck shit up and decide decades prior to run for office and then just do it, like that man I learned more from that Hillary Clinton

Alternate timelines where she won are so boring and sad

[toshootforthestars]

From the report by Roger Sollenberger, posted 22 Nov 2023:

The nonprofit, called American Compass, included the names of five donor organizations on a schedule in its 2022 tax statement, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. The page header says, “Do Not File” and “Not Open to Public Inspection,” indicating the donors may have been accidentally disclosed. Of the five groups, two stand out for their prominent histories of supporting liberal causes—the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network Foundation.

* * * *

The donations are striking because American Compass is a partner organization in Project 2025, a controversial right-wing think tank that has been building the policy and personnel firmament for a second Trump administration. Project 2025 is an arm of the Heritage Foundation and it has been criticized for its hard-right, authoritarian agenda—including “dehumanizing” rhetoric towards the LGBTQ community, re-upping Trump’s attempt to include citizenship on the census, leveraging the power of the Justice Department to crack down on critics, and a potentially unconstitutional plan to sic U.S. troops on domestic protesters. Project 2025 backers include xenophobic Trump advisers Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, as well as Christian nationalist and former Trump budget chief Russ Vought, one of the group’s top advisers. According to The Washington Post, Project 2025 has been crafting “specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents,” with Trump himself “naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute.” The group is also “drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations,” the Post reported. American Compass—whose specific political allegiances lie with the so-called “New Right”—boasts other ties to anti-democratic, pro-Trump luminaries. For instance, the address on its tax filing is inside the Conservative Partnership Institute, which employs Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and political attorney Cleta Mitchell, another architect of Trump’s potentially criminal plot to overturn the 2020 election. CPI is another key force behind Project 2025.

* * * *

American Compass founder Oren Cass—a former Bain executive and adviser to Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential bid—has staked out what he casts as a more labor-friendly economic conservatism. While he has advocated for “genuine” bipartisanship, Cass is also aligned with the New Right. He rejects many of the absolutist tenets of laissez-faire capitalism that the GOP has held dear for so long, arguing that free-market fundamentals have failed the American worker. Last year, Cass drew a salary of $275,000 from his nonprofit—more than one out of every four dollars raised. Writing about Cass and his New Right peers in June, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt emphasized the caveat that, while these Republicans rage against the free market, “they really are conservative.” This movement, Leonhardt cautioned, should not be mistaken for “disaffected right-wingers who have become moderates without admitting it,” noting that they “support abortion restrictions and oppose gun laws” and “make excuses for Donald Trump’s anti-democratic behavior or even spread his falsehoods.” The departures from traditional conservatism are indeed stark enough to be deceptive, or at least distracting. For instance, while American Compass criticized the Trump and Bush tax cuts, the group has also called to abolish corporate income tax altogether, replacing it with a tax on asset trading in the secondary market. But the rhetoric has apparently been good for fundraising. In 2020, the group’s founding year, Cass trashed free-market absolutism in a Hewlett Foundation interview; that year, Hewlett donated $611,000 to American Compass—nearly half the group’s total founding revenue, and half of what Hewlett gave NPR in 2020. About $198,000 of American Compass’ 2020 revenue went to Cass’ salary. While Cass delivers sharp, almost heretical rebukes of historical conservative economic principles, he also carries conservative banners—for instance, cultural and economic criticism of college education and student debt relief, for instance. He and his New Right cohort are not inclusive, pushing a fierce nationalism with an illiberal agenda of its own. (Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and J.D. Vance (R-OH) are all seen as flag bearers.) That position has been most broadly articulated by a group called American Moment, a conservative nonprofit that is close with Cass and has featured him in its lecture series. (American Moment’s board includes hard-right up-and-comers like Ryan Girdusky and anti-LGBTQ activist Terry Schilling. The board also has strong ties to the right-wing Clermont Institute.) As analysts unravel Project 2025’s 902-page “Mandate for Leadership,” they’ve found something of an underlying Christian nationalist manifesto.

[beardedmrbean]

FIRST ON FOX: A report from the Heritage Foundation shows that homicide rates have been higher in Democrat-run "blue counties" than they have been in "red counties" since 2002 – contradicting a popular talking point recited by prominent liberals like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and billionaire George Soros.

Newsom has publicly stated that "8 of the top 10 murder states are red" while liberal mega-donor Soros wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year that "violent crime in recent years has generally been increasing more quickly in jurisdictions without reform-minded prosecutors" and "murder rates have been rising fastest in some Republican states led by tough-on-crime politicians."

The problem, according to Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Dayaratna, who authored the report along with former research assistant Alexander Gage, is that studies cited by Democrats to make that argument – including a recent study from Third Way titled "The Two-Decade Red State Murder Problem" – use a "flawed" methodology because crime is a local issue and, therefore, crime analysis must be undertaken at the local level.

"It is true that red states have higher homicide rates than blue states, but the problem with this is that crime is a hyper-localized phenomenon," Dayaratna told Fox News Digital. "It doesn't make sense to talk about at the state level. It makes sense to talk about at the local level because that's where the prosecutions occur. The local level crime is handled at the local level by local police, so when you look at this question on a local basis, namely the county level, you'll see that the trend is reversed."

"If you look at the analysis on a state-by-state level, it's 34% higher in red states and blue states, according to the most recent data we analyzed, but then when you look at it as a county-by-county level, it is 60% higher in blue counties than red counties."

The study says that "drawing conclusions from state-level homicide data in such a manner is flawed, as each state consists of a combination of federal, state, county, and local law enforcement agencies, as well as prosecutors with different approaches to law enforcement often based on highly divergent political beliefs."

"Violations of state law are prosecuted largely at the county or city level and, thus, amalgamating data across such units neglects important variation in these different approaches," the study continues.

"Looking at homicide rates by county, states show skewed distributions with many counties having little or no homicides, and a handful of counties with excessively high homicide rates. Thus, state homicide rates can be heavily influenced by a few counties. When those counties have different politics from the rest of the state, it can flip the conclusion about the association between political identifications and homicides."

Dayaratna also told Fox News Digital that Third Way’s conclusion that homicide rates are higher in red states is flawed because it did not update the changes in red states and blue states, in terms of how they shifted in presidential elections over the past 20 years, when compiling the data.

ANDREW CUOMO BLASTS FAR LEFT DEMS FOR BEING SOFT ON CRIME, HARMING MINORITIES THEY CLAIM TO REPRESENT

"Third Way held ‘red’ states and ‘blue’ states constant in terms of how they voted in the 2020 presidential election. This approach is fundamentally flawed because electoral sentiment changed across the time period used for the study," the report states.

"For example, although President Biden won Arizona in 2020, the previous Democrat who won the state was Bill Clinton in 1996. Similarly, Donald Trump won Florida in both 2016 and 2020, despite the fact that Barack Obama had won the state in 2008 and 2012."

Dayaratna said that between 2002 and 2008, there was an 88% higher rate of homicide in blue counties than red counties and between 2014 and 2022 there was a 62% increase.

"It is undoubtable that this blue county murder problem has been persisting for quite some time," Dayaratna told Fox News Digital. "And it is quite disingenuous for the Third Way to just present the data as they did. We analyze it from a variety of perspectives at the Heritage Foundation. And we wanted to make sure we put out the proper story."

Last year, Dayaratna partnered with fellow Heritage scholars Cully Stimson and Zack Smith and released a study showing that of the 30 American cities with the highest murder rates, 27 have Democratic mayors, and at least 14 Soros-backed prosecutors.

A spokesperson for Third Way told Fox News Digital that "data is missing or suppressed for many suburban and rural counties, making a complete county-level analysis impossible. But to test a prevalent narrative, we removed the county containing the largest city from only the red states and we found that even after removing the murders from the biggest cities in red states, red state murder rates were still significantly higher than in blue states, which were given no similar advantage."

In response to not updating the electoral map, the spokesperson said they "chose an approach that categorized states consistently across all 21 years" and that "including electoral changes would only increase red state murder rates."

A spokesperson for Newsom's office told Fox News Digital that Newsom has cited more localized crime studies in the past and pointed to a specific interview where he did so in September. 

[sinceileftyoublog]

Run The Jewels Live Show Review: 9/28, The Salt Shed, Chicago

Run The Jewels (El-P & Killer Mike)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Over the past several years, Run The Jewels albums have seemed primed for the time they came out. Run The Jewels 3 was released digitally in between the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and Donald Trump's subsequent inauguration, El-P and Killer Mike's penchant for grand political statements and even cheeky conspiracy theories nestled alongside their statements of self-triumph. RTJ4 was released in 2020, two days earlier than planned in response to the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests of police brutality and institutional racism all over the world. Songs like "Just", featuring the unforgettable line, "Look at all these slavemasters posin' on yo' dollar," were both timely and ever-relevant. Reflecting, though, it's always been Run The Jewels 2 that's the duo's crowning achievement, where it felt like the potential of the collaboration reached its full potential. In 2012, El-P lent his dystopian production to Mike's southern fried R.A.P. Music, Mike a verse to Cancer 4 Cure standout "Tougher Colder Killer". 2013 saw the two realize the group for the first time with a self-titled album, which at the time was a welcome surprise and perhaps a victory lap. Turns out, it was just a warm-up.

Run The Jewels (Killer Mike & El-P)

That is, Run the Jewels 2 showcased everything you love about hip hop: MCs with distinct, but complementary flows and styles, unique production, and social awareness combined with a firecracker sense of humor, the potential to burn it all down, and unmistakably horny braggadocio. It was my obvious choice when deciding which of four nights to see RTJ perform an album in full, also knowing they'd cherry pick highlights from their back catalog in a second set. On stage at The Salt Shed last Thursday, Mike and El sounded as clear as ever without losing their bruising momentum, shouting words to a crowd who replied back every single one. (The two joked that playing this album in full was a bad idea, considering the amount of mushrooms they consumed when making it, fearing they wouldn't be able to remember their lines.) Trackstar the DJ rattled the stereo-busting bass of "Oh My Darling Don't Cry" and "Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)" as the crowd jumped up and down and moshed. Mike likened himself to William "Refrigerator" Perry during "Blockbuster Night Part 1", successfully pandering to those members of the crowd who were fans of the Chicago Bears, aka didn't travel from all over the Midwest to see the show.

Killer Mike

Though the first four RTJ2 songs are all-timers, it was the back half that shone brightest. Before RTJ performed nihilist anthem "Lie, Cheat, Steal", El-P remarked, based on the younger age of the crowd, that they'd have "a front row seat to the apocalypse," which put into perspective for a lot of us why we gravitated towards their magnum opus in the first place. When it came out 9 years ago, it foreshadowed the shit that would truly hit the fan a couple years later, providing a worthwhile soundtrack to said gradually looming apocalypse, all without being self-serious. The magic of the record is that a song like "Early", which Mike introduced by dedicating it to anybody who has been terrorized by the police and declaring that "the state should fear the people" as opposed to the other way around, is immediately followed by, in the duo's words, "two of the most ignorant songs we've ever written." By "ignorant," they really meant sexually charged tunes that provide necessary moments of levity. Specifically, when performing "Love Again (Akinyele Back)", the duo let the raunchy verse from the late, great Gangsta Boo, play uninterrupted, cementing her as the most important spirit in the room at that moment.

Mr. Len

It's no secret that Run the Jewels in general have a diverse fanbase. Folks I spoke with in the crowd ranged from hardcore kids to hip-hop heads, as expected from the type of group that has Pharrell Williams rub elbows with Zach De La Rocha. For the old school fans, an unexpected gift was in store: an opening DJ set from Mr. Len of Company Flow, the hip hop trio where El-P cut his teeth before going solo. (According to El, Bigg Jus was also in the house, though he never came out on stage.) Mr. Len treated us to tracks from Company Flow, El-P produced tunes from Cannibal Ox, and classics from Goodie Mob, Gang Starr, and A Tribe Called Quest. Though it was a callback to a bygone era, I couldn't help but think how Run the Jewels--along with the Backwoodz Studioz and Griselda crew--are this generation's possible forebears to whatever comes next, whether that's 20 years of RTJ or something else.

[robertreich]

The Greatest Danger to American Democracy

The greatest danger to American democracy right now is not coming from Russia, China, or North Korea. It is coming from the Republican Party. 

Only 25 percent of voters self-identify as Republican, the GOP’s worst showing against Democrats since 2012 and sharply down since last November. But those who remain in the Party are far angrier, more ideological, more truth-denying, and more racist than Republicans who preceded them. 

And so are the lawmakers who represent them. 

Today’s Republican Party increasingly is defined not by its shared beliefs but by its shared delusions.

Last Friday, 54 U.S. senators voted in favor of proceeding to debate a House-passed bill to establish a commission to investigate the causes and events of the January 6th insurrection. This was 6 votes short of the number of votes needed for “cloture,” or stopping debate -- meaning any further consideration of the bill would have been filibustered by Republicans indefinitely. 

So there will be no investigation. 

The 54 Senators who voted yes to cloture – in favor of the commission -- represent 189 million Americans, or 58% of the American population. The 35 who voted no represent 104 million Americans, or 32% of the population.

In other words, 32% of American voters got to decide that the nation would not know about what happened to American democracy on January 6. 

Furthermore, the 35 who voted against the commission were all Republicans. They did not want such an inquiry because it might jeopardize their chances of gaining a majority of the House or Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. They also wanted to stay in the good graces of Donald Trump, whose participation in that insurrection might have been more fully revealed. 

Eight of these Republicans voted against certifying Joe Biden as president on January 6. Some of their constituents were responsible for the insurrection in the first place. 

The Republican Party is also pursuing new laws in many states making it harder for likely Democrats to vote and opposing voting reforms in Congress.

It is actively purging any Republican who has temerity to criticize Trump. They have removed from her leadership position Liz Cheney, who called Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and his role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot the greatest “betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.” 

Local Republicans leaders have either stepped down or been forced out of their party positions for not supporting Trump’s baseless election claims or for criticizing the former president’s role in inciting the deadly Capitol riot.

American democracy is at an inflection point. 

Senate Democrats must get rid of the filibuster and push through major reforms – voting rights, as well as policies that will enable more Americans in the bottom half -- most of them without college educations, many of whom cling to the Republican Party -- to do better. 

In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt noted that the survival of American democracy depended on the adoption of policies that comprised the New Deal. In that Depression decade, democracy was under siege around the world, and dictators were on the rise. 

Joe Biden understands that America and the world face a similar challenge. And like FDR, Biden is making a strong case that the adoption of his policies will buttress democracy against the forces of tyranny, not only as an example to the rest of the world but here at home. 

[mariacallous]

In the days and weeks after the attack on the Capitol, Republican leaders publicly acknowledged Donald Trump’s culpability. Last week’s January 6 hearings presented footage of House minority leader Kevin McCarthy declaring Trump should have “immediately denounced” the attack and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell accusing Trump of ignoring his duty as president. It was a striking reminder that immediately after the insurrection, elected Republicans as well as some of Trump’s allies in the rightwing media were rattled by what had happened, uncertain of how to continue.

But the moment quickly passed. January 6 obviously wasn’t enough for Republicans in Congress to actually impeach or for conservatives to break with Trump in any meaningful way. Instead, they closed ranks and rallied behind Trump: Republicans first acquitted him, then they started obstructing every attempt to hold him accountable, and now a majority of GOP candidates are running on the big lie, denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election. The few who broke with Trump have been fully marginalized or even ostracized from the party. Republicans did not come to see January 6 as the end of the line, the outrageous conclusion of the Trumpian experiment – they have come to see it as a blueprint: never concede an election, never accept defeat at the hands of what they see as a fundamentally “un-American” enemy.

Was there a viable alternative path after January 6? Was that road not taken ever as realistically an option as the statements by McConnell and McCarthy may suggest, at least at first sight? I’m skeptical. I have no doubt that many Republicans, like McConnell himself, personally despise Trump for summoning a mob to attack the Capitol. They may consider Trump too crass, just as they probably aren’t entirely comfortable with the rise of Trump-endorsed white Christian nationalist extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Doug Mastriano.

But they certainly don’t consider any of that a dealbreaker. That’s partly because Republican elites understand they can’t win without the base, and the base remains committed to Trumpism. But there is more to consider than just opportunism. Almost every time the right is at a crossroads, they choose the path of radicalization, even when it’s not at all clear that’s a reasonable choice from a purely electoral standpoint – even when, for instance, it makes winning statewide races on the west coast nearly impossible.

The problem runs a lot deeper than Trump. It is crucial to grapple with the underlying ideas and dynamics that have animated the Republican party’s path for a long time. They have led to a situation in which moments of brief uncertainty almost always result in a further radicalization of the Republican party and the right in general. What happened after the 2012 election defeat that shook conservatives to the core is an instructive example: the Republican National Committee famously released an “autopsy” report that called for moderation and outreach to traditionally marginalized groups. But instead, the GOP doubled down – and went with Trumpism.

There are ideological factors at play that severely restrict the realm of possibility and significantly privilege the more radical over the more restraint forces within the Republican party. It has become dogma on the right to define “us” (conservative white Christians) as the sole proponents of “real America” – and “them” (Democrats, liberals, “the left”) as a fundamentally illegitimate, “un-American” threat. Within the confines of such a worldview, it’s hard to justify compromise and restraint.

Every crisis situation only heightens the sense of being under siege that’s animating so much of what is happening on the right, legitimizing and amplifying calls to hit harder, more aggressively. There’s always permission to escalate, hardly ever to pull back. This underlying permission structure is absolutely key, and it is always the same: it states that “real Americans” are constantly being victimized, made to suffer under the yoke of crazy leftist politics, besieged by “un-American” forces of leftism; “we” have to fight back, by whatever means. In the minds of conservatives, they are never the aggressors, always the ones under assault. Building up this supposedly totalitarian, violent threat from the “left” allows them to justify their actions within the long-established framework of conservative self-victimization.

It’s a permission structure that doesn’t allow for lines that can’t be crossed. It has proven remarkably adaptable, fully capable of handling even the most outlandish rhetoric, actions, transgressions, even crimes. As crass or radical or outrageous as some on the right might have initially perceived January 6, nothing Trump has ever done has betrayed the accepted dogma of conservative politics: that only white conservatives – and the party that represents them – are entitled to rule in America, that Democratic governance is inherently illegitimate.

And so, the permission structure of conservative politics remained fully intact and quickly allowed for a realignment behind Trump: anything is justified to fight back against the supposed onslaught from a radically “un-American,” extremist “left.” This fundamental logic of conservative politics was always likely to drown out everything else after a brief moment of shock. It is the reason why former attorney general William Barr, while leaving no doubt that Trump was responsible for an attempted coup and is completely detached from reality, still maintains that “the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party”. And it finds its most extreme iteration in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim that it is time for “freedom-loving Americans” to fight back because “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they already started the killings”. Greene’s rhetoric constitutes a breathtaking assault on the very pillars of democratic political culture, on the demand that we accept the legitimacy of the political opponent and denounce the use of violence. But it is fully in line with, and justified by, the underlying logic of escalation.

Trump himself was never the cause, and always a result of these dynamics – this permission structure that overrides all else. It has shaped Republican politics for a long time and has almost always overwhelmed attempts to moderate since at least the 1990s, an era in which a more explicitly anti-democratic populism moved to the center of Republican politics. GOP elites and more “moderate” conservatives have often tried to harness the extremist, far-right popular energies on the base to prevent egalitarian, multiracial, pluralistic democracy from ever upending traditional hierarchies. And purely in terms of Trump’s legislative agenda, the Republican establishment has mostly gotten what it wanted – which is why Mike Pence, for instance, still doesn’t think he and Donald Trump “differ on issues”. But elites and “moderates” have never been able to control the accelerating radicalization that is now threatening constitutional government in America: not when the Tea Party rose after Barack Obama’s election, not when Trumpism came to dominate the GOP, not when militant white Christian nationalist extremists are reveling in the idea of using fascistic violence against their enemies.

We are now at the point where an attack on the Capitol was not nearly enough to break this logic of escalation. That dynamic continued to shape the right after January 6. And it not only explains past instances of radicalization in moments when it looked like there could have been an alternative path. It should also shape our expectations going forward and our understanding of what American democracy is up against.