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halorvic · 5 months ago

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The danger is clear and present: COVID isn’t merely a respiratory illness; it’s a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body’s organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long COVID is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long COVID is now being considered a long-term chronic illness — something many people will never fully recover from. Dr. Phillip Alvelda, a former program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and the development of mRNA vaccine technology, is the founder of Medio Labs, a COVID diagnostic testing company. He has stepped forward as a strong critic of government COVID management, accusing health agencies of inadequacy and even deception. Alvelda is pushing for accountability and immediate action to tackle Long COVID and fend off future pandemics with stronger public health strategies. Contrary to public belief, he warns, COVID is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if things continue as they are, with new COVID variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long COVID. Let’s repeat that: At the current rate of infection, most Americans may get Long COVID.

[...]

LP: A recent JAMA study found that US adults with Long COVID are more prone to depression and anxiety – and they’re struggling to afford treatment. Given the virus’s impact on the brain, I guess the link to mental health issues isn’t surprising. PA: There are all kinds of weird things going on that could be related to COVID’s cognitive effects. I’ll give you an example. We’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic that accidents are increasing. A report published by TRIP, a transportation research nonprofit, found that traffic fatalities in California increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022. They also found the likelihood of being killed in a traffic crash increased by 28% over that period. Other data, like studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came to similar conclusions, reporting that traffic fatalities hit a 16-year high across the country in 2021. The TRIP report also looked at traffic fatalities on a national level and found that traffic fatalities increased by 19%. LP: What role might COVID play? PA: Research points to the various ways COVID attacks the brain. Some people who have been infected have suffered motor control damage, and that could be a factor in car crashes. News is beginning to emerge about other ways COVID impacts driving. For example, in Ireland, a driver’s COVID-related brain fog was linked to a crash that killed an elderly couple. Damage from COVID could be affecting people who are flying our planes, too. We’ve had pilots that had to quit because they couldn’t control the airplanes anymore. We know that medical events among U.S. military pilots were shown to have risen over 1,700% from 2019 to 2022, which the Pentagon attributes to the virus.

[...]

LP: You’ve criticized the track record of the CDC and the WHO – particularly their stubborn denial that COVID is airborne. PA: They knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that.

[...]

LP: How would you grade Biden on how he’s handled the pandemic? PA: I’d give him an F. In some ways, he fails worse than Trump because more people have actually died from COVID on his watch than on Trump’s, though blame has to be shared with Republican governors and legislators who picked ideological fights opposing things like responsible masking, testing, vaccination, and ventilation improvements for partisan reasons. Biden’s administration has continued to promote the false idea that the vaccine is all that is needed, perpetuating the notion that the pandemic is over and you don’t need to do anything about it. Biden stopped the funding for surveillance and he stopped the funding for renewing vaccine advancement research. Trump allowed 400,000 people to die unnecessarily. The Biden administration policies have allowed more than 800,000 to 900,000 and counting.

[...]

LP: The situation with bird flu is certainly getting more concerning with the CDC confirming that a third person in the U.S. has tested positive after being exposed to infected cows. PA: Unfortunately, we’re repeating many of the same mistakes because we now know that the bird flu has made the jump to several species. The most important one now, of course, is the dairy cows. The dairy farmers have been refusing to let the government come in and inspect and test the cows. A team from Ohio State tested milk from a supermarket and found that 50% of the milk they tested was positive for bird flu viral particles.

[...]

PA: There’s a serious risk now in allowing the virus to freely evolve within the cow population. Each cow acts as a breeding ground for countless genetic mutations, potentially leading to strains capable of jumping to other species. If any of those countless genetic experiments within each cow prove successful in developing a strain transmissible to humans, we could face another pandemic – only this one could have a 58% death rate. Did you see the movie “Contagion?” It was remarkably accurate in its apocalyptic nature. And that virus only had a 20% death rate. If the bird flu makes the jump to human-to-human transition with even half of its current lethality, that would be disastrous.

#sars cov 2 #covid 19 #h5n1 #bird flu #articles #long covid is def a global issue not just for those in the us and most countries aren't doing much better #regardless of how much lower the mortality rate for h5n1 may or may not become if/when it becomes transmissible between humans #having bird flu infect a population the majority of whose immune system has been decimated by sars2 #to the point where the average person seems to have a hard time fighting off the common cold etc...#(see the stats of whooping cough/pertussis and how they're off the CHARTS this yr in the uk and aus compared to previous yrs?#in qld average no of cases was 242 over prev 4 yrs - there have been /3783/ diagnosed as of june 9 this yr and that's just in one state.#there's a severe shortage of meds for kids in aus bc of the demand and some parents visit +10 pharmacies w/o any luck)#well.#let's just say that i miss the days when ph orgs etc adhered to the precautionary principle and were criticised for 'overreacting'#bc nothing overly terrible happened in the end (often thanks to their so-called 'overreaction')#now to simply acknowledge the reality of an obviously worsening situation is to be accused of 'fearmongering'#🤷‍♂️#also putting long covid and bird flu aside for a sec:#one of the wildest things that everyone seems to overlook that conor browne and others on twt have been saying for yrs #is that the effects of the covid pandemic extend far beyond the direct impacts of being infected by the virus itself #we know sars2 rips apart immune system+attacks organs. that in effect makes one more susceptible to other viruses/bacterial infections etc #that in turn creates increased demand for healthcare services for all kinds of carers and medications #modern medicine and technology allows us to provide often effective and necessary treatment for all kinds of ailments #but what if there's not enough to go around? what happens when the demand is so high that it can't be provided fast enough -- or at all?#(that's assuming you can even afford it)#what happens when doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers keep quitting due to burnout from increased patients and/or illness #because they themselves do not live in a separate reality and are not any more sheltered from the effects of constant infection/reinfection #of sars2 and increased susceptibility to other illnesses/diseases than the rest of the world?#this is the 'new normal' that's being cultivated (the effects of which are already blatantly obvious if you're paying attention)#and importantly: it. doesn't. have. to. be. this. way.

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satellitebroadcast · 2 months ago

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Horrific scenes emerge from the new massacre carried out by the occupation, in which IOF warplanes targeted displaced people taking shelter inside Al-Zaytoun "C" School in Gaza City, in the northern #Gaza Strip. At least 17 martyrs mostly women and children have ascended so far, including a fetus in his mother's womb (video). Glory to the martyrs.

The IOF also opened fire on ambulance teams north of Rafah City in the southern Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Ministry of Health: Preliminary... 5 workers from the Ministry of Health have been martyred and others injured as a result of the targeting of the Ministry's warehouses in the Musbah area in the southern Gaza Strip a short while ago. Ambulance crews are unable to reach the location to recover the martyrs and assist the wounded. The Ministry of Health calls on all international organizations and concerned authorities to intervene in order to protect and save the injured from the area. Palestinian Ministry of Health September 21, 2024

Government Media Office, Gaza:

The "israeli" occupation army committed a horrific and brutal massacre by bombing Al-Zaytoun "C" School in Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City. This brutal massacre claimed the lives of 21 martyrs so far, including 13 children, 6 women, and a 3-month-old fetus. Additionally, this crime resulted in 30 injuries, 9 of which were children who had limbs amputated, while the remaining injuries were severe burns. Moreover, 2 individuals are still missing. This horrific massacre, committed by the occupation, is part of the genocide being carried out by the "israeli" occupation. The number of displacement and shelter centers bombed by the occupation has reached 181. This crime comes amid the dire health situation in Gaza and northern governorates, home to 700,000 people. The remaining hospitals in these two areas are unable to provide adequate healthcare services due to the occupation's destructive plan to completely dismantle the health system. We condemn the "israeli" occupation for committing this horrific massacre and the ongoing massacres against civilians, children, and women. We call on all countries of the world to denounce these continuous crimes against displaced persons and civilians. We hold the "israeli" occupation and the U.S. administration fully responsible for the ongoing genocide war and the continuation of these massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip. We also hold them accountable for the targeting and bombing of shelters and schools. We call on the international community and all global and international organizations to pressure the occupation to stop the genocide war and halt the waterfall of blood in the Gaza Strip.

#palestine #gaza #israeli war crimes

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mariacallous · 1 month ago

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Earlier this week, journalists at WIRED and The Washington Post reported that a “Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos” appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote false sexual misconduct allegations against vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

At WIRED, David Gilbert wrote that researchers have linked a group they’re calling “Storm-1516” to the campaign against Walz. “Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West,” Gilbert explained. A few days earlier, NBC News also reported on Storm-1516, citing its work as demonstrative of Russian propaganda’s growing utilization of artificial intelligence and more sophisticated bot networks.

Two days after the WIRED report, Washington Post journalist and Russia expert Catherine Belton reported on another bad actor implicated in spreading the allegations against Walz: John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop with a long and winding record that includes internal affairs investigations, early discharge from the Marines, and a penchant for posting confidential data about thousands of police officers, federal agents, and judges on his blog, which led to 21 state charges of extortion and wiretapping. To escape that indictment, Dougan fled to Moscow, where he soon put his conspiratorial blogging skills to work, effectively enlisting in the Russian intelligence community’s “Internet war” against America.

Records show and disinformation researchers argue that Dougan is responsible for content on dozens of fake news sites with deliberately misleading names like DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle, and Atlanta Observer. Lately, he’s reportedly started using a GRU-facilitated server and AI generator to create phony videos like the deepfake video showing one of Walz’s former students accusing him of sexual abuse.

With a little more than a week until the U.S. presidential election, Meduza spoke to Renée DiResta — the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality and an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy — about Russian propaganda, how it’s evolved over the years, and how American social networks are responding (and not responding) ahead of the November 2024 vote.

Timestamps for this episode:

(5:00) The Role of Social Networks in Identifying Fake Accounts

(9:35) Government and Platform Collaboration on Inauthentic Behavior

(16:46) A Case Study: Maxim Shugaley and Russian Influence in Libya

(21:45) Twitter’s Public Data Dilemma

(24:25) Bespoke Realities and Content Moderation

(25:57) The Tenet Media Case

(27:28) The Role of Influencers in Propaganda

(35:26) Marketing and Propaganda: A Historical Perspective

(38:27) The Democratization of Propaganda

(39:36) Name Your Poison: Tyranny or Chaos

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zvaigzdelasas · 1 year ago

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Decades after many other rich countries stopped forcibly sterilizing Indigenous women, numerous activists, doctors, politicians and at least five class-action lawsuits say the practice has not ended in Canada. A Senate report last year concluded “this horrific practice is not confined to the past, but clearly is continuing today.” In May, a doctor was penalized for forcibly sterilizing an Indigenous woman in 2019.[...]

There are no solid estimates on how many women are still being sterilized against their will or without their knowledge, but Indigenous experts say they regularly hear complaints about it. Sen. Yvonne Boyer, whose office is collecting the limited data available, says at least 12,000 women have been affected since the 1970s.[...]

In 2018, the U.N. Committee Against Torture told Canada it was concerned about persistent reports of forced sterilization, saying all allegations should be investigated and those found responsible held accountable.[...]

Until the 1990s, Indigenous people were mostly treated in racially segregated hospitals, where there were reports of rampant abuse. It’s difficult to say how common sterilization — with or without consent — happens. Canada’s national health agency doesn’t routinely collect sterilization data, including the ethnicity of patients or under what conditions it happens.[...] In response to questions from the AP, the Canadian government said it has taken steps to try to stop forced sterilization, including investing more than 87 million Canadian dollars ($65 million) to improve access to “culturally safe” health services, one-third of which supports Indigenous midwifery initiatives.[...]

In 1976, the U.S. found that forced sterilizations happened in at least one-third of the regions where the government provided health services to Native Americans. The U.S. government has never formally apologized or offered compensation. Indigenous leaders in Canada say an official apology would be a critical step towards rebuilding the country’s fractured relationship with First Nations people. Only the province of Alberta has apologized and offered some compensation to those affected before 1972.

12 Jul 23

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reasoningdaily · 1 year ago

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NEWBERN, Ala. — There’s a power struggle in Newbern, Alabama, and the rural town’s first Black mayor is at war with the previous administration who he says locked him out of Town Hall.

After years of racist harassment and intimidation, Patrick Braxton is fed up, and in a federal civil rights lawsuit he is accusing town officials of conspiring to deny his civil rights and his position because of his race.

“When I first became mayor, [a white woman told me] the town was not ready for a Black mayor,” Braxton recalls.

The town is 85% Black, and 29% of Black people here live below the poverty line.

“What did she mean by the town wasn’t ready for a Black mayor? They, meaning white people?” Capital B asked.

“Yes. No change,” Braxton says.

Decades removed from a seemingly Jim Crow South, white people continue to thwart Black political progress by refusing to allow them to govern themselves or participate in the country’s democracy, several residents told Capital B. While litigation may take months or years to resolve, Braxton and community members are working to organize voter education, registration, and transportation ahead of the 2024 general election.

But the tension has been brewing for years.

Two years ago, Braxton says he was the only volunteer firefighter in his department to respond to a tree fire near a Black person’s home in the town of 275 people. As Braxton, 57, actively worked to put out the fire, he says, one of his white colleagues tried to take the keys to his fire truck to keep him from using it.

In another incident, Braxton, who was off duty at the time, overheard an emergency dispatch call for a Black woman experiencing a heart attack. He drove to the fire station to retrieve the automated external defibrillator, or AED machine, but the locks were changed, so he couldn’t get into the facility. He raced back to his house, grabbed his personal machine, and drove over to the house, but he didn’t make it in time to save her. Braxton wasn’t able to gain access to the building or equipment until the Hale County Emergency Management Agency director intervened, the lawsuit said.

“I have been on several house fires by myself,” Braxton says. “They hear the radio and wouldn’t come. I know they hear it because I called dispatch, and dispatch set the tone call three or four times for Newbern because we got a certain tone.”

Not only has he been locked out of the town hall and fought fires alone, but he’s been followed by a drone and unable to retrieve the town’s mail and financial accounts, he says. Rather than concede, Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, the former white mayor, along with his council members, reappointed themselves to their positions after ordering a special election that no one knew about.

Braxton is suing them, the People’s Bank of Greensboro, and the postmaster at the U.S. Post Office.

For at least 60 years, there’s never been an election in the town. Instead, the mantle has been treated as a “hand me down” by the small percentage of white residents, according to several residents Capital B interviewed. After being the only one to submit qualifying paperwork and statement of economic interests, Braxton became the mayor.

Stokes and his council — which consists of three white people (Gary Broussard, Jesse Leverett, Willie Tucker) and one Black person (Voncille Brown Thomas) — deny any wrongdoing in their response to the amended complaint filed on April 17. They also claim qualified immunity, which protects state and local officials from individual liability from civil lawsuits.

The attorneys for all parties, including the previous town council, the bank, and Lynn Thiebe, the postmaster at the post office, did not respond to requests for comment.

The town where voting never was

Over the past 50 years, Newbern has held a majority Black population. The town was incorporated in 1854 and became known as a farm town. The Great Depression and the mechanization of the cotton industry contributed to Newbern’s economic and population decline, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Today, across Newbern’s 1.2 square miles sits the town hall and volunteer fire department constructed by Auburn’s students, an aging library, U.S. Post Office, and Mercantile, the only store there, which Black people seldom frequent because of high prices and a lack of variety of products, Braxton says.

“They want to know why Black [people] don’t shop with them. You don’t have nothin’ the Black [people] want or need,” he says. “No gasoline. … They used to sell country-time bacon and cheese and souse meat. They stopped selling that because they say they didn’t like how it feel on their hands when they cuttin’ the meat.”

To help unify the town, Braxton began hosting annual Halloween parties for the children, and game day for the senior citizens. But his efforts haven’t been enough to stop some people from moving for better jobs, industry, and quality of life.

Residents say the white town leaders have done little to help the predominantly Black area thrive over the years. They question how the town has spent its finances, as Black residents continue to struggle. Under the American Rescue Plan Act, Newbern received $30,000, according to an estimated funding sheet by Alabama Democratic U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, but residents say they can’t see where it has gone.

At the First Baptist Church of Newbern, Braxton, three of his selected council members — Janice Quarles, 72, Barbara Patrick, 78, and James Ballard, 76 — and the Rev. James Williams, 77, could only remember two former mayors: Robert Walthall, who served as mayor for 44 years, and Paul Owens, who served on the council for 33 years and mayor for 11.

“At one point, we didn’t even know who the mayor was,” Ballard recalls. “If you knew somebody and you was white, and your grandfather was in office when he died or got sick, he passed it on down to the grandson or son, and it’s been that way throughout the history of Newbern.”

Quarles agreed, adding: “It took me a while to know that Mr. Owens was the mayor. I just thought he was just a little man cleaning up on the side of the road, sometimes picking up paper. I didn’t know until I was told that ‘Well, he’s the mayor now.’”

Braxton mentioned he heard of a Black man named Mr. Hicks who previously sought office years ago.

“This was before my time, but I heard Mr. Hicks had won the mayor seat and they took it from him the next day [or] the next night,” Braxton said. “It was another Black guy, had won years ago, and they took it from.”

“I hadn’t heard that one,” Ballard chimes in, sitting a few seats away from Braxton.

“How does someone take the seat from him, if he won?” Capital B asked.

“The same way they’re trying to do now with Mayor Braxton,” Quarles chuckled. “Maybe at that time — I know if it was Mr. Hicks — he really had nobody else to stand up with him.”

Despite the rumor, what they did know for sure: There was never an election, and Stokes had been in office since 2008.

The costs to challenging the white power structure

After years of disinvestment, Braxton’s frustrations mounted at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he says Stokes refused to commemorate state holidays or hang up American flags. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the majority-white council failed to provide supplies such as disinfectant, masks, and humidifiers to residents to mitigate the risks of contracting the virus.

Instead of waiting, Braxton made several trips to neighboring Greensboro, about 10 miles away, to get food and other items to distribute to Black and white residents. He also placed signs around town about vaccination. He later found his signs had been destroyed and put in “a burn pile,” he said.

After years of unmet needs of the community, Braxton decided to qualify for mayor. Only one Black person — Brown Thomas, who served with Stokes —has ever been named to the council. After Braxton told Stokes, the acting mayor, his intention to run, the conspiracy began, the lawsuit states.

According to the lawsuit, Stokes gave Braxton the wrong information on how to qualify for mayor. Braxton then consulted with the Alabama Conference of Black Mayors, and the organization told him to file his statement of candidacy and statement of the economic interests with the circuit clerk of Hale County and online with the state, the lawsuit states. Vickie Moore, the organization’s executive director, said it also guided Braxton on how to prepare for his first meeting and other mayoral duties.

Moore, an Alabama native and former mayor of Slocomb, said she has never heard of other cases across the state where elected officials who have never been elected are able to serve. This case with Braxton is “racism,” she said.

“The true value of a person can’t be judged by the color of their skin, and that’s what’s happening in this case here, and it’s the worst racism I’ve ever seen,” Moore said. “We have fought so hard for simple rights. It’s one of the most discouraging but encouraging things because it encourages us to continue to move forward … and continue to fight.”

Political and legal experts say what’s happening in Newbern is rare, but the tactics to suppress Black power aren’t, especially across the South. From tampering with ballot boxes to restricting reading material, “the South has been resistant to all types of changes” said Emmitt Riley III, associate professor of political science and Africana Studies at The University of the South.

“This is a clear case of white [people] attempting to seize and maintain political power in the face of someone who went through the appropriate steps to qualify and to run for office and by default wins because no one else qualified,” Riley added. “This raises a number of questions about democracy and a free and fair system of governance.”

Riley mentioned a different, but similar case in rural Greenwood, Mississippi. Sheriel Perkins, a longtime City Council member, became the first Black female mayor in 2006, serving for only two years. She ran again in 2013 and lost by 206 votes to incumbent Carolyn McAdams, who is white. Perkins contested the results, alleging voter fraud. White people allegedly paid other white people to live in the city in order to participate in the election and cast a legal vote, Riley said. In that case, the state Supreme Court dismissed the case and “found Perkins presented no evidence” that anyone voted illegally in a precinct, but rather it was the election materials that ended up in the wrong precincts.

“It was also on record that one white woman got on the witness stand and said, ‘I came back to vote because I was contacted to vote by X person.’ I think you see these tactics happening all across the South in local elections, in particular,” Riley said. “It becomes really difficult for people to really litigate these cases because in many cases it goes before the state courts, and state courts have not been really welcoming to overturning elections and ordering new elections.”

Another example: Camilla, Georgia.

In 2015, Rufus Davis was elected as the first Black male mayor of rural, predominantly Black Camilla. In 2017, the six-person City Council — half Black and half white — voted to deny him a set of keys to City Hall, which includes his office. Davis claimed the white city manager, Bennett Adams, had been keeping him from carrying out his mayoral duties.

The next year, Davis, along with Black City Council member Venterra Pollard, boycotted the city’s meetings because of “discrimination within the city government,” he told a local news outlet. Some of the claims included the absence of Black officers in the police department, and the city’s segregated cemetery, where Black people cannot be buried next to white people. (The wire fence that divided the cemetery was taken down in 2018). In 2018, some citizens of the small town of about 5,000 people wanted to remove Davis from office and circulated a petition that garnered about 200 signatures. In 2019, he did not seek re-election for office.

“You’re not the mayor”

After being the only person to qualify and submit proper paperwork for any municipal office, Braxton became mayor-elect and the first Black mayor in Newbern’s history on July 22, 2020.

Following the announcement, Braxton appointed members to join his council, consistent with the practice of previous leadership. He asked both white and Black people to serve, he said, but the white people told him they didn’t want to get involved.

The next month, Stokes and the former council members, Broussard, Leverett, Brown Thomas, and Tucker, called a secret meeting to adopt an ordinance to conduct a special election on Oct. 6 because they “allegedly forgot to qualify as candidates,” according to the lawsuit, which also alleges the meeting was not publicized. The defendants deny this claim, but admit to filing statements of candidacy to be elected at the special election, according to their response to an amended complaint filed on their behalf.

Because Stokes and his council were the only ones to qualify for the Oct. 6 election, they reappointed themselves as the town council. On Nov. 2, 2020, Braxton and his council members were sworn into office and filed an oath of office with the county probate judge’s office. Ten days later, the city attorney’s office executed an oath of office for Stokes and his council.

After Braxton held his first town meeting in November, Stokes changed the locks to Town Hall to keep him and his council from accessing the building. For months, the two went back and forth on changing the locks until Braxton could no longer gain access. At some point, Braxton says he discovered all official town records had been removed or destroyed, except for a few boxes containing meeting minutes and other documents.

Braxton also was prevented from accessing the town’s financial records with the People’s Bank of Greensboro and the city clerk, and obtaining mail from the town’s post office. At every turn, he was met with a familiar answer: “You’re not the mayor.” Separately, he’s had drones following him to his home and mother’s home and had a white guy almost run him off the road, he says.

Braxton asserts he’s experienced these levels of harassment and intimidation to keep him from being the mayor, he said.

“Not having the Lord on your side, you woulda’ gave up,” he told Capital B.

‘Ready to fire away’

In the midst of the obstacles, Braxton kept pushing. He partnered with LaQuenna Lewis, founder of Love Is What Love Does, a Selma-based nonprofit focused on enriching the lives of disadvantaged people in Dallas, Perry, and Hale counties through such means as food distribution, youth programming, and help with utility bills. While meeting with Braxton, Lewis learned more about his case and became an investigator with her friend Leslie Sebastian, a former advocacy attorney based in California.

The three began reviewing thousands of documents from the few boxes Braxton found in Town Hall, reaching out to several lawyers and state lawmakers such as Sen. Bobby Singleton and organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center. No one wanted to help.

When the white residents learned Lewis was helping Braxton, she, too, began receiving threats early last year. She received handwritten notes in the mail with swastikas and derogatory names such as the n-word and b-word. One of theletters had a drawing of her and Braxton being lynched.

Another letter said they had been watching her at the food distribution site and hoped she and Braxton died. They also made reference to her children, she said. Lewis provided photos of the letters, but Capital B will not publish them. In October, Lewis and her children found their house burned to the ground. The cause was undetermined, but she thinks it may have been connected.

Lewis, Sebastian, and Braxton continued to look for attorneys that would take the case. Braxton filed a complaint in Alabama’s circuit court last November, but his attorney at the time stopped answering his calls. In January, they found a new attorney, Richard Rouco, who filed an amended complaint in federal court.

“He went through a total of five attorneys prior to me meeting them last year, and they pretty much took his money. We ran into some big law firms who were supposed to help and they kind of misled him,” Lewis says.

Right now, the lawsuit is in the early stages, Rouco says, and the two central issues of the case center on whether the previous council with Stokes were elected as they claim and if they gave proper notice.

Braxton and his team say they are committed to still doing the work in light of the lawsuit. Despite the obstacles, Braxton is running for mayor again in 2025. Through AlabamaLove.org, the group is raising money to provide voter education and registration, and address food security and youth programming. Additionally, they all hope they can finally bring their vision of a new Newbern to life.

For Braxton, it’s bringing grocery and convenience stores to the town. Quarles wants an educational and recreational center for children. Williams, the First Baptist Church minister, wants to build partnerships to secure grants in hopes of getting internet and more stores.

“I believe we done put a spark to the rocket, and it’s going [to get ready] to fire away,” Williams says at his church. “This rocket ready to fire away, and it’s been hovering too long.”

Correction: In Newbern, Alabama, 29% of the Black population lives below the poverty line. An earlier version of this story misstated the percentage

#alabama #Newbern Alabama #A Black Man Was Elected Mayor in Rural Alabama #but the White Town Leaders Won’t Let Him Serve #Patrick Braxton #AlabamaLove.org #black lives matter

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patriottruth · 19 days ago

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MAGA and Pretty Much All Media Outlets Are Claiming that in the 2024 Presidential Election, donald j. trump received:

100% of all 36 milion Registered Republican votes,

100% of all 32.1 million Registered Independent votes,

and 6,550,754 Registered Democrat votes.

After you subtract an additional 10 million Registered Democrats that MAGA and Most Media Outlets Claim Stayed Home/Didn't Vote, That Left Kamala Harris with a Registered Democrat Electorate of 28,549,246 voters.

42,367,700 previously unregistered voters somehow came out of nowhere during early and same-day voting to vote for Kamala Harris without Republicans ranting and raving about massive cheating and fraud by Democrats? That's as many voters as all 36 million registered Republicans AND the 6,550,754 registered Democrat trump defectors that somehow just appeared out of nowhere during early and same-day voting to vote for Kamala Harris; and Republicans are fine with it? Weird.

1.5 Million Never Trump Republicans that MAGA and Most Media Outlets Are Claiming Voted For donald j. trump (but 10 million Democrats abandoned Kamala Harris by staying home, and 6,550,754 Democrats voted for trump, instead): The Lincoln Project: 1,240,000 YouTube subscribers Republican Voters Against Trump: 252,000 YouTube subscribers Republican Accountability Project: 3,140 YouTube subscribers

Here's a minimum of 23,648,000 Republicans and Independents that MAGA and Most Media Outlets Are Claiming Voted for donald j. trump:

14% of Republicans (5,040,000) said they'd never vote for trump post-felony conviction.

20% of Republicans (7,200,000) said they were undecided or refused to answer if they'd vote for trump post-felony conviction.

58% of Independents (18,618,000) said they'd never vote for trump post-felony conviction.

15% of Independents (4,815,000) said they were undecided or refused to answer if they'd vote for trump post-felony conviction.

That's a minimum of 23,648,000 "No" votes, with another 12,015,000 "Undecided" votes, for a total of 35,663,000 votes out of trump's 74,650,754 total that MAGA and Most Media Outlets Are Claiming Voted for trump Anyway...

The 2024 U.S. Elections Weren't The Only Time donald j. trump Worked With Russians Against United States' Interests: COVID-19, USA Patriot Act Sabotage, The Massive Russian SolarWinds Hack of the U.S. Government and Private Sector, and Russian 2024 Election Day Interference (compiled from Wikipedia):

In November 2019, a security researcher notified SolarWinds that credentials to a third party FTP server had a weak password of "solarwinds123", warning that "any hacker could upload malicious [code]" that would then be distributed to SolarWinds customers. The New York Times reported SolarWinds did not employ a chief information security officer and that employee passwords had been posted on GitHub in 2019.

December 1, 2019: COVID-19 pandemic: First known human case of Coronavirus disease 2019, in Wuhan, Hubei, China.

December 5, 2019: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi asks the House Judiciary Committee to begin drafting the articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump.

December 9, 2019: The World Anti-Doping Agency votes unanimously to ban Russia from international sport for four years for doping offences, meaning it will be excluded from the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

December 10, 2019: Democrats in the United States House of Representatives announce formal charges against President Donald Trump, accusing him of abusing power and "obstructing Congress"; he becomes the third U.S. president in history to face impeachment.

December 18, 2019: The U.S. House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President donald trump, making him the third president to be impeached in the nation's history.

December 29, 2019: The Taliban's ruling council agrees to a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan, opening a door to a peace agreement with the United States.

In January and February 2020, U.S. intelligence agencies delivered over a dozen classified warnings in the President's Daily Brief about COVID-19, including its potential to inflict severe political and economic damage. President Donald Trump typically did not read daily briefs and often has "little patience" for oral summaries, The Washington Post reported. Each brief was also shared with other officials in the administration. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which produces the President's Daily Brief, denied that there were repeated mentions of COVID-19.

On January 8, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a health advisory regarding an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, which was being caused by a yet-unidentified virus.

January 16, 2020: The first impeachment trial of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, begins in the U.S. Senate.

On January 27, 2020, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that "things are going to get worse before they get better". Three days later, Fauci stated that the COVID-19 outbreak "could turn into a global pandemic".

On February 10, 2020, Trump stated that "a lot of people think that [COVID-19] goes away in April with the heat … Typically, that will go away in April" (later, on April 3, he denied ever having given "a date" for the departure of the virus)

On February 13, 2020, CDC director Robert Redfield contradicted Trump, saying that the "virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year".[44] Redfield also predicted that it "will become a community virus at some point in time, this year or next year".

On February 16, 2020, Anthony Fauci warned that it was not necessarily true that COVID-19 would "disappear with the warm weather."

February 25, 2020, was the day that the CDC first warned the American public to prepare for a local outbreak.[16] That day, Nancy Messonnier, head of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that "We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare for the expectation that this is going to be bad." Messonnier predicted that "we will see community spread in this country", and it was only a matter of time. As a result, "disruption to everyday life might be severe". Messonnier stated that the CDC is preparing, and "now is the time for hospitals, schools and everyday people to begin preparing as well."

On February 25, 2020, Anthony Fauci declared that given how COVID-19 was spreading in other nations, it was "inevitable that this will come to the United States" as well. On February 26, CDC Director Robert Redfield said it would be "prudent to assume this pathogen will be with us for some time to come".

On February 26, 2020, Trump contradicted Messonnier, stating: "I don't think it's inevitable" that a U.S. outbreak would occur, "It probably will, it possibly will … Whatever happens, we're totally prepared." Trump additionally declared that the number of infected was "going very substantially down, not up".

On February 27, 2020, The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, who helped to write the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), which forms the framework for the federal response, warned a private group of his constituents that COVID-19 is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history, and is probably more akin to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. "There will be, I'm sure, times that communities, probably some in North Carolina, have a transmission rate where they say, 'Let's close schools for two weeks. Everybody stay home,' We're going to send a military hospital there; it's going to be in tents and going to be set up on the ground somewhere, It's going to be a decision the president and DOD make."

On February 27, 2020, Trump said of the virus: "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. And from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better. Could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows." Also on February 27, Trump declared that the risk to the American public from COVID-19 "remains very low".

February 27, 2020 stock market crash: Triggered by fears of the spreading of COVID-19, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunges by 1,190.95 points, or 4.4%, to close at 25,766.64, its largest one-day point decline at the time. This follows several days of large falls, marking the worst week for the index since the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

On February 29, 2020, Trump said that "additional cases in the United States are likely", but "there's no reason to panic at all." When a reporter asked Trump: "How should Americans prepare for this virus?" Trump answered: "I hope they don't change their routine".

February 29, 2020: A conditional peace agreement is signed between the United States and the Taliban. The U.S. begins gradually withdrawing combat troops from Afghanistan on March 10.

On March 4, 2020, donald trump appeared on Fox News's Hannity by phone, where he claimed a 3.4% mortality rate projected by the World Health Organization (WHO) was a "false number", and stated his "hunch" that the true figure would be "way under 1%". Trump also predicted that many people infected with COVID-19 would experience "very mild" symptoms, "get better very rapidly" and thus they "don't even call a doctor". Thus, there may be "hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better."

From March 6 to March 12, 2020, donald trump stated on four occasions that the coronavirus would "go away". On March 10, Surgeon General Jerome Adams stated that "this is likely going to get worse before it gets better."

March 2020: The nightmare of empty grocery shelves begins. Stores capping/limiting purchases.

By March 11, 2020, the virus had spread to 110 countries, and the WHO officially declared a pandemic. The CDC had already warned that large numbers of people needing hospital care could overload the healthcare system, which would lead to otherwise preventable deaths. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci said the mortality from COVID-19 was ten times higher than the common flu. By March 12, diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. exceeded a thousand. Trump declared a national emergency on March 13. On March 16, the White House advised against any gatherings of more than ten people. Three days later, the United States Department of State advised U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel.

The USA Freedom Act, which became law on June 2, 2015, reenacted the expired USA Patriot Act sections through 2019. However, Section 215 of the law was amended to disallow the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue its mass phone data collection program. Instead, phone companies will retain the data and the NSA can obtain information about targeted individuals with a federal search warrant.

On August 14, 2019, the outgoing Director of National Intelligence sent a letter to Congress stating the Trump Administration's intention to seek permanent extension of the provisions of FISA that under the terms of the USA FREEDOM Act are scheduled to expire on December 15, 2019, namely the "lone wolf" authority allowing surveillance of a suspected terrorist who is inspired by foreign ideology but is not acting at the direction of a foreign party, the roving wiretap authority regarding surveillance of a terrorist who enters the United States and the authority to allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain certain business records in a national security investigation, as well as the call detail records program undertaken by the NSA. In reference to the latter authority, the letter announced that "The National Security Agency has suspended the call detail records program that uses this authority and deleted the call detail records acquired under this authority."

Jurisdiction over the reauthorization of the expiring FISA provisions is shared by the Judiciary and Intelligence committees in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives; the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held separate public hearings on the reauthorization in September 2019 and November 2019, respectively. Opposition to the call detail records program has led to some Congressional demands that the authority for the program not be renewed. Additional complications hindering reauthorization arose from a report of the US Department of Justice Inspector General finding fault with certain FISA applications in connection with the 2016 presidential campaign, which led some members of Congress to insist on reforms to FISA as a condition of reauthorizing the expiring USA FREEDOM Act provisions. With Congressional attention focused on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in 2020, the House of Representatives passed a long-term extension of the USA FREEDOM Act on March 11, 2020, just four days before the scheduled expiration of the Act on March 15, 2020, by a wide, bipartisan margin that kept the protections of the Act largely the same. Two months later, in May of 2020, the Senate passed an extension of the Act by an 80-16 vote that expanded some privacy protections, but the Senate version did not include protection of Americans’ internet browsing and search histories from warrantless surveillance, which was proposed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and failed by one vote.

According to former KGB major Yuri Shvets, donald trump became the target of a joint Czech intelligence services and KGB spying operation after he married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova and was cultivated as an "asset" by Russian intelligence since 1977: "Russian intelligence gained an interest in Trump as far back as 1977, viewing Trump as an exploitable target." Luke Harding writes that documents show Czechoslovakia spied on donald trump during the 1970s and 1980s, when he was married to Ivana Trump, his Czechoslovakia-born first wife. Harding writes that the Czechoslovakian government spied on donald trump because of his political ambitions and notability as a businessman. It is known that there were close ties between Czechoslovakia's StB and the USSR's KGB. Harding also describes how, already since 1987, the Soviet Union was interested in Trump. In his book Collusion, Harding asserts that the "top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB." Then-KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov "wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans". Harding proceeds to describe the KGB's cultivation process, and posits that they may have opened a file on Trump as early as 1977, when he married Ivana. "According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan, … [with] periodic surveillance of the trump family in the United States."

donald j. trump and His Republican Allies Allowed the USA PATRIOT ACT/FREEDOM ACT to Expire on March 15, 2020 and They Didn't Reinstate It until May of 2020.

March 2020: SolarWinds's Orion software hotfixes were released to 33,000 Orion customers. Hackers acquired superuser access to SAML token-signing certificates. This SAML certificate was then used to forge new tokens to allow hackers trusted and highly privileged access to networks. The attack used a backdoor in a SolarWinds library; when an update to SolarWinds occurred, the malicious attack would go unnoticed due to the trusted certificate. APT29, aka Cozy Bear, working for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), was reported to be behind the 2020 attack. Victims of this attack include the cybersecurity firm FireEye, the US Treasury Department, the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, as well as the US Department of Homeland Security. Prominent international SolarWinds customers investigating whether they were impacted include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Parliament, UK Government Communications Headquarters, the UK Ministry of Defence, the UK National Health Service (NHS), the UK Home Office, and AstraZeneca.

December 13, 2020: SolarWinds begins notifying customers, including a post on its Twitter account, “SolarWinds asks all customers to upgrade immediately to Orion Platform version 2020.2.1 HF 1 to address a security vulnerability.”

December 15, 2020 SolarWinds Victims named and timeline moves back — Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Commerce and Treasury Departments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Institutes of Health, and the State Department were all affected. Various security officials and vendors expressed serious dismay that the attack was more widespread and began much earlier than expected. The initial attack date was now pegged to sometime in March 2020, which meant the attack had been underway for months before its detection.

December 17, 2020: New SolarWinds victims revealed — The Energy Department (DOE) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, were publicly named as victims of the attack.

On December 21, 2020, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all agreed that Russia was engaged in “a significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign” against the United States. Russian asset, donald j. trump, immediately replied: “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump wrote. “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”

March 16, 2020: stock market crash: The the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) falls by 2,997.10, the single largest point drop in history and the second-largest percentage drop ever at 12.93%, an even greater crash than Black Monday (1929). This follows the U.S. Federal Reserve announcing that it will cut its target interest rate to 0–0.25%.

On March 19, 2020, donald trump told journalist Bob Woodward that he was deliberately downplaying the risk when communicating with the public. "I wanted to always play it down," Trump said. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

On March 24, 2020, donald trump argued that: "We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu … But we've never closed down the country for the flu." On March 27, he stated: "You can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You know you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."

On March 24, 2020, donald trump declared that "we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel"; a day later the U.S. surpassed 1,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Throughout March and early April, several state, city, and county governments imposed "stay at home" quarantines on their populations to stem the spread of the virus. By March 26, The New York Times data showed the United States to have the highest number of known cases of any country. By March 27, the country had reported over 100,000 cases.

From March 30 to April 7, 2020, Trump stated on four occasions that COVID-19 would "go away".

On March 31, 2020, contradicting his many previous comparisons of COVID-19 to the flu, Trump said: "It's not the flu … It's vicious". When reporters asked him if his initial dismissive comments on the virus had misled Americans, he replied: "I want to give people a feeling of hope. I could be very negative … You know, I'm a cheerleader for the country." Asked further if he had known—despite his claims that the outbreak was under control—that the situation would turn out so severe, Trump replied: "I thought it could be. I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, and I knew it could be maybe good."

On November 5, 2024, during the official Election Day, several non-credible bomb threats that originated from Russia briefly disrupted voting in two polling places in Fulton County, Georgia. Both re-opened after about 30 minutes. Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Russian interference was behind the Election Day bomb hoaxes. In a statement, the FBI said it was aware of non-credible bomb threats to polling locations in several states, with many of them originating from Russian email domains.[61] The bomb threats were solely made against Democratic-leaning areas.[62] On the same day, U.S. federal officials again reported that Russian sources were actively engaged in "influence operations", citing disinformation in specific videos that falsely claimed Kamala Harris had taken a bribe and false news stories about the Democratic Party and election fraud in Georgia.

On November 8, 2024 it was reported that one of the Russian email addresses behind Election Day bomb threats was used in June 2024 bomb threats targeting LGBTQ+ events in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas.

Rachel Maddow: Why was donald trump's campaign telling his supporters not to vote, they don't need any votes, and to skip the polls?

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74,650,754 trump + 70,916,946 Harris = 145,567,700 votes counted thus far in the 2024 presidential election.

60% to 80% of voters polled across the United States believed donald trump was too old to be president leading up to the election, yet he somehow gained 426,779 votes from 2020, while Kamala Harris lost 10 million votes from 2020.

40% of the American electorate might have been willing to overlook donald trump's extreme cognitive, emotional, and physical decline and vote for him. That makes donald trump's best case scenario 58,227,080 votes for the 2024 election.

20% of the American electorate might have been willing to overlook that donald trump is clearly past his expiration date and not expected to live long enough to finish a 4-year term. That makes donald trump's worst case scenario 29,113,540 votes for the 2024 election.

33% of Republicans and 33% of Independents said for months they wouldn't be voting for donald trump again because of his failed COVID-19 response, his insurrection/January 6th assault to overturn the 2020 election, his proven sexual assault/rape, his felony convictions for his 2016 election interference and cheating on his wife the entire time his wife was pregnant and again 4 months after their son was born, and his classified documents theft, unsecured storage at mar-a-lago, and his sharing America's classified secrets with mar-a-lago guests, yet donald trump somehow gained 426,779 votes from 2020, while Kamala Harris lost 10 million votes from 2020.

2024 U.S. Registered Voter Stats (Pew Research): Republicans: 36 million voters

- 7 million (33%) Never trump voters = 29 million likely trump voters

- 11.5 million (55%) Never trump voters = 24.5 million likely trump voters

Democrats: 45.1 million voters

Independents: 32.1 million voters

- 10.6 million Never trump voters (33%) = 21.5 million possible trump voters

- 17.7 million Never trump voters (55%) = 14.4 million possible trump voters

If 100% of all registered voters actually turned out and voted in the 2024 U.S. presidential election:

trump (with a loss of 33% of Never trump voters and no Democrat defections): 50.5 million votes

Harris (with a gain of 33% of Never trump voters and no Democrat defections): 62.7 million votes

trump (with a loss of 55% of Never trump voters and no Democrat defections): 38.9 million votes

Harris (with a gain of 55% of Never trump voters and no Democrat defections): 74.3 million votes

Democrats outnumber Republicans by 9 million registered voters, and yet Kamala Harris allegedly received 10 million votes less than 2020, lost every swing state, and lost the election by 4 million votes nationwide?

Why is it that 33% of Independents said they wouldn't be voting for trump, yet he somehow received 100% of registered Independent votes?

There are approximately 41 million age 18-29 voters who usually vote Democrat, and up to 20 million of those females were expected to vote heavily for Harris/Walz in 2024, so where are all of those votes?

Why is it that hundreds of thousands of Americans are documented as voting FOR PRO-CHOICE on their state ballots, but then they all allegedly voted almost exclusively for ANTI-CHOICE donald trump instead of Kamala Harris based on HIS punitive non-Pro-Choice stance, his termination of national Roe vs. Wade protections, and nearly 1,000 women all over the United States are being raped and impregnated every week since his termination of Roe vs. Wade, women have been dying across the nation because they were denied emergency care, and 12 and 13 year old girls are being forced to carry their relatives' babies to term?

Why is it that hundreds of thousands of Americans are documented as voting for down-ballot Democrat candidates,but then they allegedly voted for donald trumpinstead of Kamala Harris?

Why is it that trump did so well in Michigan after repeatedly insulting Michigan during all of his Michigan rallies?

Why is it that trump did so well with Black men across the country after repeatedly insulting Black men across the country during his campaign and his entire life?

Why is it that hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans said they were going to put donald trump in the trash after they were called "garbage" at trump's Madison Square Garden rally, yet Puerto Ricans across the United States swung hard in his favor anyway?

Why is it that trump did better with Latinos across the United States than any other candidate in the last 40 years even after he called them rapists, scum, vermin, animals, inhuman, and murderous invaders who he's going to deport whether they're here legally, or not?

Why is it that donald trump told reporters he wasn't expecting any final results for at least 3 days immediately after he voted, but then somehow all of the nationwide election results were returned in less than 12 hours (which has NEVER happened in the United States)?

Lyin' and cryin' cowardly comrade donald j. trump has never won a championship at a course he doesn’t own and operate, always gets a turbo-charged golf cart that goes three times as fast as yours, so he’s always 200 yards ahead, and that gives him time to cheat. One time in L.A., he was playing $50 a hole with these three guys, he hits it in the pond. They see the splash. By the time they get there, it’s in the middle of the fairway, and they’re like, ‘What the F, Donald?’ And he goes, ‘It must’ve been the tide.’ He’s played in Pebble Beach, he’s played in the Tahoe one, where there are rules and judges and cameras. And in those, he’s never finished in the top half. So he wins when anybody who disagrees that he won is out of the club. That’s how he gets it.” - Rick Reilly

Kamala Harris currently has 70,916,946 votes (roughly 10 million votes less than Biden/Harris received in 2020).

Hillary Clinton beat donald trump by 3 million votes in 2016 with a total of 65,853,514 votes.

Clinton total fundraising 2016 election cycle: $769,879,088 Clinton total spending 2016 election cycle: $768,577,907 Clinton 2016 election votes: 65,853,514 Average Clinton voter 2016 presidential campaign donation: $11.69

trump total fundraising 2016 election cycle: $433,392,727 trump total spending 2016 election cycle: $422,620,473 2016 Republican Primary Voters: 31,047,313 trump 2016 election votes: 62,984,828 (202.89% 2016 national election turnout) Average trump voter 2016 presidential campaign donation: $6.88

Hillary Clinton's 2016 fundraising was 156% higher than donald trump's and she won the election by roughly 3,000,000 American votes.

Biden total fundraising 2020 election cycle: $1,624,301,628 Biden total spending 2020 election cycle: $1,614,843,740 Biden 2020 election votes: 81,283,501 Average Biden voter 2020 presidential campaign donation: $19.98

trump total fundraising 2020 election cycle: $1,087,909,269 trump total spending 2020 election cycle: $1,090,633,916 2020 Republican Primary Voters: 18,900,288 trump 2020 election votes: 74,223,975 (392.71% 2020 national election turnout) Average trump voter 2020 presidential campaign donation: $14.69

Joe Biden's 2020 fundraising was 167% higher than donald trump's and he won the election by an easy landslide victory and American patriots mandate of roughly 7,000,000 American votes.

Harris total fundraising 2024 election cycle: $1,048,224,950 9/22/2024 Harris total spending 2024 election cycle: $728,659,506 9/22/2024 Harris cash on hand 2024 election cycle: $364,537,369 9/22/2024

trump total fundraising 2024 election cycle: $802,832,560 9/22/2024 trump total spending 2024 election cycle: $603,161,559 9/22/2024 trump cash on hand 2024 election cycle: $264,091,834 9/22/2024 2024 Republican Primary Voters: 22,264,875

Kamala Harris's 2024 fundraising is 177% higher than donald trump's, her rallies are far larger and more energized, and her Fox News ratings are 2.5 times better than donald trump's. It's definitely time to turn the page on donald trump and his anti-American MAGA Nazi cult, and for American patriots to put country over party and elect the first woman American President of the United States of America; because All Lives Matter, and it's time to finally prove it once and for all by including and uniting all American women and girls at the great American "We The People" table so that President Kamala Harris will be the first woman American President, but certainly not the last.

Why is it that donald trump includes this disclaimer on his financial disclosures so everyone reading the document is supposed to understand it's completely worthless? Accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America require that personal financial statements and related footnotes to the financial statements: include a provision for current income taxes, as well as estimated income taxes on the differences between the estimated current values of assets and the estimated current amounts of liabilities and their tax bases; include the amount of unused tax credits and expiration dates; include amounts to be received in the future from estimated current values that are nonforfeitable, fixed and determinable, and do not require any future services; record the current estimated value of all closely held and other business entities as a net investment (assets net of liabilities) and disclose summarized financial information about each entity; record non-interest bearing deposits in exchange for rights or privileges; and, include all assets and liabilities of the individual whose financial statements are presented. The accompanying statement of financial condition does not reflect the above noted items. The effects of these departures from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America have not been determined. Because the significance and pervasiveness of the matters discussed above make it difficult to assess their impact on the statement of financial condition, users of this personal financial statement should recognize that they might reach different conclusions about the financial condition of Donald J. Trump if they had access to a revised statement of financial condition prepared in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Kamala Harris is a prosecutor. donald j. trump is a career criminal and convicted felon who's been found guilty of rape, massive frauds in numerous court cases, and is being prosecuted for insurrection, election tampering, election fraud, racketeering, election interference, espionage against the United States, and theft of government documents and property. There's pretty much a 0% chance that there's no election fraud and tampering going on with these 2024 election results. donald j. trump and all of his other alleged newly-elected allies have to be able to maintain those lies and not have them overturned during the canvas, confirmation, curing, certification, recount, and litigation process between November 6 and December 17, 2024.

“If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.' They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.” - donald j. trump (November 9, 2023)

"I will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” - donald j. trump (November 12, 2023)

“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.” - Liz Cheney

“Labeling a political opponent as a ‘fascist,’ risks inviting a would-be assassin.” - Hypocrites, Irony Assassins, and MAGA Nazi Cult Member Republicans Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell (Finally coondemning donald j. trump and the entire treasonous, bigoted, and misogynist anti-American MAGA Nazi cult for calling all Americans who don't support or vote for donald j. trumpor MAGA Nazi Cult Republicans "traitors, anti-American, enemies from within, very bad people, very dangerous people, racists, radicals, extremists, communists, Marxists, fascists, thugs, liars, sick, ugly, stupid, mindless, thoughtless, brainless, disabled, deranged, criminals, rapists, cheaters, sleazebags, low-lifes, scum, trash, genetically inferior, weak, poison, insects, animals, rats, snakes, and vermin" during the majority of his interviews, speeches, and rallies for years on end since 2011 - October 25, 2024)

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

"Get out and vote, just this time. "You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore.You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote," - donald j. trump to his MAGA cult supporters (July 26, 2024)

“We gotta stop the cheating. If we stop that cheating, if we don’t let them cheat, I don’t even have to campaign anymore. We’re going to win by so much. The 2024 Election, where Votes ha74,650,754 totalve just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” - donald j. trump on "truth" social (September 7, 2024)

When he was asked about "outside agitators" affecting a peaceful 2024 election, certification, and transfer of power: “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all those countries. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.” - donald j. trump (October 13, 2024)

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ateremteshezterkell · 24 days ago

Text

Where is the line?

How does this even happen? A man convicted of 34 felonies—a man directly involved in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol —somehow gets not only to run for president again but to win. How does he come back, claiming the right to lead the very democracy he undermined? How does a nation so proud of its justice system, of its ideals of law and order, look the other way? Where is the line? What does it say about a system, about a nation, that turns a blind eye to his crimes? How can a country built on principles of freedom ignore that threat? At what point does a democracy stop being one?

And what about the women who dared to speak up? At least 26 women came forward to accuse him of sexual assaul. These women—brave and vulnerable—bared their stories, hoping their voices would be enough to hold him accountable. They risked their own peace, safety, and mental health, believing in the justice system, believing in truth. And yet, as he claims his office, what does it tell them? That no matter how many speak up, power and influence will drown them out? We are told again and again that an accusation can “ruin a man’s life.” But how ruined can his life be if he’s now the president once again? How hollow do those words sound to women who dared to stand up? What message does this send to women? That no matter how brave they are, their voices don’t matter? That their pain is somehow always less important than the power a man holds? How can anyone tell women to have faith in justice when justice looks away so easily, so willingly?

Then there’s the assault on women’s rights themselves. Look at what’s happened with Roe v. Wade, the protection of bodily autonomy stripped away, leaving millions of women with no say over their own bodies. This new government, with its conservative grip on the judiciary, is likely to tighten that hold, chipping away at autonomy and bodily freedom until little remains. People scoff at comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale, but isn’t this a page straight from it? How does a woman find safety, find equality, when those who govern see her rights as disposable? And with the Supreme Court potentially packed with MAGA for decades to come, where is the hope for progress? What kind of future does that create for a generation of women? What does it say about freedom when one group’s autonomy is treated like an afterthought?

And then there’s the colossal denial of climate change. This man, who calls climate change a “hoax,” who refuses to believe in science while the world watches hurricanes grow stronger, wildfires rage hotter, and coastlines disappear. How can a leader turn his back on such a crisis? And how can voters in states already devastated by floods, wildfires, droughts still support him? How does that make sense? Are they so determined to pretend these disasters don’t exist, so eager to ignore reality? What happens when there’s no coastline left, when hurricanes devour towns whole, when the air is thick with smoke and the waters too high to contain? It feels like watching a nightmare unfold, knowing people have chosen it willingly, knowing they are burying their heads in the sand. But when that sand is swept away by rising oceans, what will be left?

And yet, people wonder how certain dictators rose to power in the past. They look back, horrified, asking how it happened, how no one stopped him, how the warning signs went ignored. But is the world not seeing the same thing now? Every sign, every pattern is there, and still, people turn away, hoping someone else will step in, that it will all work out on its own. But if no one intervenes, if the world stands by hoping for the best, where does this end?

One day, people will look back on this moment, asking how it was allowed to happen, how the world stood still and watched. And then, will they see it all with the same horror, asking why no one stopped it before it went too far?

I only hope I’m wrong. I never thought I’d have to hope this hard to be so very, very wrong.

#election 2024 #fuck trump #us elections #roe v wade #climate change #supreme court #god save us all #kamala harris #donald trump #us politics #politics #women's rights

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girlactionfigure · 10 months ago

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The Holocaust Whistle-Blower: Jan Karski

He tried to save the Jews of Europe.

Jan Karski was a Polish resistance fighter and diplomat who warned world leaders about the Nazi extermination of European Jews. Tragically, none of the leaders of Allied countries did anything to stop the atrocity – including U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.

Jan was born in 1914 in Lodz, Poland to a devout Catholic family. His father died when he was a small child, and his mother struggled to provide for her eight children. They lived in a neighborhood of overcrowded tenements where most of the residents were Jewish. Jan attended military school where he trained to be a mounted artillery officer and graduated first in his class.

He then trained to be a diplomat, and between 1935 and 1938 he worked at Polish consulates in Romania, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. At the beginning of 1939 Jan returned to Poland to work at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the fall of that year, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. Jan – Officer Karski – was called up to lead a unit of the Krakow Cavalry Brigade. On September 10 the Krakow Army was defeated by the Germans in the Battle of Tomaszow Lubelski and Jan was captured as a prisoner of war. He managed to escape and went to Warsaw, where he joined the SZP, the first resistance movement in occupied Europe.

At that time, the Polish Government in Exile, overthrown by the Germans, was based in Paris. Jan organized secret courier missions to transport important information to the exiled Polish leaders. He traveled frequently between France, Great Britain and Poland, at great risk to himself. In July 1940 his luck ran out and he was arrested by the Gestapo while traveling through Czechoslovakia on his way to France. He was imprisoned and tortured so badly that he was transferred to a hospital. Fortunately Polish resistance leaders found out where he was and managed to smuggle him out of the hospital.

Returning to Warsaw, Jan served in the information bureau of the Polish Home Army, the main resistance movement in Poland. He and other Polish resistance leaders were horrified by the Nazi persecution of Polish Jews, and increasingly aware that the Germans planned to exterminate millions of them. Desperate to alert the rest of the world about the destruction of Polish Jewry, they chose Jan to gather evidence and then travel to Paris to report to prime minister Wladyslaw Sikorski, leader of the Polish government in exile.

Jan worked with Jewish resistance leader Leon Feiner, who smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto to observe conditions there. Jan later described the experience: “My job was just to walk. And observe. And remember. The odour. The children. Dirty. I saw a man standing with blank eyes. I asked the guide, what is he doing? The guide whispered, ‘He’s just dying.’ I remember degradation, starvation and dead bodies lying on the street. We were walking the streets and my guide kept repeating, ‘Look at it, remember, remember.’ And I did remember. The dirty streets. The stench. Everywhere. Suffocating. Nervousness.”

Jan also visited a transit camp for Jews on their way to death camps. He took photographs of what he saw there and in the ghetto, and carried them out of the country on microfilm. His testimony and pictures formed the first accurate account of the genocide of European Jews. Polish Foreign Minister Edward Raczynski published Jan’s reports in a pamphlet which was widely distributed. Jan traveled to several countries and met with high-level government officials including British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, but they either didn’t believe him, or they feared the political consequences of helping Jewish refugees.

In July 1943 Jan traveled to the United States, where he personally met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Oval Office. Jan vividly described the Warsaw Ghetto and the concentration camps where Jews were being murdered en masse. After telling his grim tale, Jan expected Roosevelt to be emotionally affected and want to learn more. Instead, Roosevelt displayed no reaction and didn’t ask a single question. The president heard first-hand about the murder of millions of Jews – and saw the evidence – but he refused to help in any way and showed Jan the door. Ironically, the majority of American Jews voted for Roosevelt, and many Jews still revere him.

While in the States, Jan met with other important personages including Jewish Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Jan told his story, answered a few questions, and then the great jurist said, “I am unable to believe what you have told me.” Like Roosevelt, he chose to ignore the inconvenient truth of what was happening to the Jews of Europe. A Polish diplomat later confronted Justice Frankfurter and asked if he thought Karski was lying. “I did not say that this young man was lying. I said that I was unable to believe what he told me. There is a difference.” The difference was likely not clear to the millions of European Jews being tortured and murdered while a Jewish Supreme Court justice chose ignorance over a difficult reality.

Jan Karski’s identity was discovered by the Nazi occupiers in Poland, and he was unable to return home. He stayed in Washington DC, and earned his PhD at Georgetown University. After graduating, he began teaching at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. Jan remained at Georgetown for forty years, teaching generations of American political leaders about East European and international affairs and comparative government. Jan’s students included Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright. Jan wrote several books about the Holocaust, and gave lectures around the world about the horrors he witnessed, and the tragic inaction of world leaders. He was determined to make sure the Jews of Poland were not forgotten.

Jan said that he had two missions in life. The first was to bear witness to the genocide of the Jews of Europe. The second was to reveal the tragic indifference of Allied leaders.

In 1965, Jan married Pola Nirenska, a Polish Jew who was an acclaimed dancer and choreographer. He adored her, but Pola was scarred by losing 75 (!) members of her extended family in the Holocaust, and suffered from mental health issues. Pola tragically killed herself in 1992.

Jan Karski was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem. He was made an honorary citizen of Israel and received many other awards and honors in Poland, the United States, and Israel. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize. In 2000, Jan Karski was formally recognized as a human rights hero by the UN General Assembly. Soon after, Jan died in Georgetown at age 86. Jan continued to be honored posthumously, and in 2012 President Obama awarded him the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been the subject of multiple books, plays and movies. There is a statue of Jan sitting on a bench on Madison Avenue in New York City.

For bearing witness to genocide and speaking truth to power, we honor Jan Karski as this week’s Thursday Hero.

#Thursday Hero

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yourreddancer · 23 days ago

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Trump Won. Now What?

The United States is about to become a different kind of country.By David Frum

Donald Trump has won, and will become president for the second time. Those who voted for him will now celebrate their victory. The rest of us need to prepare to live in a different America: a country where millions of our fellow citizens voted for a president who knowingly promotes hatred and division; who lies—blatantly, shamelessly—every time he appears in public; who plotted to overturn an election in 2020 and, had he not won, was planning to try again in 2024.

Above all, we must learn to live in an America where an overwhelming number of our fellow citizens have chosen a president who holds the most fundamental values and traditions of our democracy, our Constitution, even our military in contempt. Over the past decade, opinion polls have showed Americans’ faith in their institutions waning. But no opinion poll could make this shift in values any clearer than this vote. As a result of this election, the United States will become a different kind of country.

When he was last in the White House, the president-elect ignored ethics and security guidelines, fired inspectors general and other watchdogs, leaked classified information, and used the Department of Homeland Security in the summer of 2020 as if it were the interior ministry of an authoritarian state, deploying U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Coast Guard “troops” in American cities. Trump actively encouraged the January 6, 2021, insurrection at our Capitol. When he left the White House, he stole classified documents and hid them from the FBI.

Because a critical mass of Americans aren’t bothered by that list of transgressions, any one of which would have tanked the career of another politician, Trump and his vice president–elect, J. D. Vance, will now try to transform the federal government into a loyalty machine that serves the interests of himself and his cronies.

This was the essence of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and its architects, all Trump fans, will now endeavor to make it become reality. Trump will surely try again to dismantle America’s civil service, replacing qualified scientists and regulators with partisan operatives. His allies will help him build a Department of Justice that does not serve the Constitution, but instead focuses on harassing and punishing Trump’s enemies. Trump has spoken, in the past, of using the Federal Communications Commission and the Internal Revenue Service to punish media organizations and anyone else who crosses him, and now he will have the chance to try again.

Perhaps the greater and more insidious danger is not political repression or harassment, but corruption. Autocratic populists around the world—in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela—have assaulted institutions designed to provide accountability and transparency in order to shift money and influence to their friends and families, and this may happen in America too. This is not just a theoretical threat. As loyalists take over regulatory agencies, filling not only political but also former civil-service jobs, American skies will become more polluted, American food more dangerous. As a result of this massive shift in the country’s bureaucratic culture, Trump-connected companies will prosper, even as America becomes less safe for consumers, for workers, for children, for all of us.

American foreign policy will also reflect this shift toward kleptocracy. In his first term, Trump abused the powers of his office, corrupting American foreign policy for his personal gain. He pressured the Ukrainian president to launch a fake investigation of his political opponent; altered policy toward Turkey, Qatar, and other nations in ways that suited his business interests; even used the Secret Service to funnel government money to his private properties. In a second term, he and the people around him will have every incentive to go much further. Expect them to use American foreign policy and military power to advance their personal and political goals.

There are many things a reelected President Trump cannot do. But there are some things he can do. One is to cut off aid to Ukraine. The Biden administration has three months to drop all half measures and rush supplies to Ukraine before Trump forces a Ukrainian surrender to Russia. If there’s anything in the American arsenal that Ukraine might successfully use—other than nuclear weapons—send it now, before it’s too late.

Another thing Trump can do is to impose further tariffs—and intensify a global trade war not only against China but also against former friends, partners, and allies. America First will be America Alone, no longer Ronald Reagan’s “city on a hill,” but now just another great power animated by predatory nationalism.

Around the world, illiberal politicians who seek to subvert their own democracies will follow America’s lead. With no fear of American criticism or reaction, expect harassment of press and political opponents in countries such as Mexico and Turkey to grow. Expect the Russian-backed electoral cheating recently on display in Georgia and Moldova to spread. Expect violent rhetoric in every democracy: If the American president can get away with it, others will conclude that they can too. The autocratic world, meanwhile, will celebrate the victory of someone whose disdain for the rule of law echoes and matches their own. They can assume that Trump and Vance will not promote human rights, will not care about international law, and will not reinforce our democratic alliances in Europe and Asia.

But the most difficult, most agonizing changes are the ones that will now take place deep inside our society. Radicalization of a part of the anti-Trump camp is inevitable, as people begin to understand that existential issues, such as climate change and gun violence, will not be tackled.

A parallel process will take place on the other side of the political spectrum, as right-wing militias, white supremacists, and QAnon cultists are reenergized by the election of the man whose behavior they have, over eight years, learned to imitate. The deep gaps within America will grow deeper. Politics will become even angrier. Trump won by creating division and hatred, and he will continue to do so throughout what is sure to be a stormy second term.

My generation was raised on the belief that America could always be counted upon to do the right thing, even if belatedly: reject the isolationism of America First and join the fight against Nazism; fund the Marshall Plan to stop communism; extend the promise of democracy to all people, without regard to race or sex. But maybe that belief was true only for a specific period, a unique moment. There were many chapters of history in which America did the wrong thing for years or decades. Maybe we are living through such a period now.

Or maybe the truth is that democracy is always a close-run thing, always in contention. If so, then we too must—as people in other failing democracies have learned to do—find new ways to champion wobbling institutions and threatened ideas. For supporters of the American experiment in liberal democracy, our only hope is education, organization, and the creation of a coalition of people dedicated to defending the spirit of the Constitution, the ideals of the Founders, the dream of freedom. More concretely: public civic-education campaigns to replace the lessons no longer taught in schools; teams of lawyers who can fight for the rule of law in courts; grassroots organizing, especially in rural and small-town America; citizens and journalists working to expose and fight the enormous wave of kleptocracy and corruption that will now engulf our political system.

Many of those shattered by this result will be tempted to withdraw into passivity—or recoil into performative radicalism. Reject both. We should focus, instead, on how to win back to the cause of liberal democracy a sufficient number of those Americans who voted for a candidate who denigrated this nation’s institutions and ideals.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 days ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 26, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 27, 2024

Today presented a good example of the difference between governance by social media and governance by policy.

Although incoming presidents traditionally stay out of the way of the administration currently in office, last night, Trump announced on his social media site that he intends to impose a 25% tariff on all products coming into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump claimed that they could solve the problem “easily” and that until they do, “it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

In a separate post, he held China to account for fentanyl and said he would impose a 10% tariff on all Chinese products on top of the tariffs already levied on those goods. “Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he added.

In fact, since 2023 there has been a drop of 14.5% in deaths from drug overdose, the first such decrease since the epidemic began, and border patrol apprehensions of people crossing the southern border illegally have fallen to the lowest number since August 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. In any case, a study by the libertarian Cato Institute shows that from 2019 to 2024, more than 80% of the people caught with fentanyl at ports of entry—where the vast majority of fentanyl is seized—were U.S. citizens.

Very few undocumented immigrants and very little illegal fentanyl come into the U.S. from Canada.

Washington Post economics reporter Catherine Rampell noted that Mexico and Canada are the biggest trading partners of the United States. Mexico sends cars, machinery, electrical equipment, and beer to the U.S., along with about $19 billion worth of fruits and vegetables. About half of U.S. fresh fruit imports come from Mexico, including about two thirds of our fresh tomatoes and about 90% of our avocados.

Transferring that production to the U.S. would be difficult, especially since about half of the 2 million agricultural workers in the U.S. are undocumented and Trump has vowed to deport them all. Rampell points out as well that Project 2025 calls for getting rid of the visa system that gives legal status to agricultural workers. U.S. farm industry groups have asked Trump to spare the agricultural sector, which contributed about $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product in 2023, from his mass deportations.

Canada exports a wide range of products to the U.S., including significant amounts of oil. Rampell quotes GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, as saying that a 25% tax on Canadian crude oil would increase gas prices in the Midwest and the Rockies by 25 cents to 75 cents a gallon, costing U.S. consumers about $6 billion to $10 billion more per year.

Canada is also the source of about a quarter of the lumber builders use in the U.S., as well as other home building materials. Tariffs would raise prices there, too, while construction is another industry that will be crushed by Trump’s threatened deportations. According to NPR’s Julian Aguilar, in 2022, nearly 60% of the more than half a million construction workers in Texas were undocumented.

Construction company officials are begging Trump to leave their workers alone. Deporting them “would devastate our industry, we wouldn’t finish our highways, we wouldn’t finish our schools,” the chief executive officer of a major Houston-based construction company told Aguilar. “Housing would disappear. I think they’d lose half their labor.”

Former trade negotiator under George W. Bush John Veroneau said Trump’s plans would violate U.S. trade agreements, including the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) that replaced the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump killed. The USMCA was negotiated during Trump’s own first term, and although it was based on NAFTA, he praised it as “the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law. It’s the best agreement we’ve ever made.”

Trump apologists immediately began to assure investors that he really didn’t mean it. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted that Trump wouldn’t impose the tariffs if “Mexico and Canada stop the flow of illegal immigrants and fentanyl into the U.S.” Trump’s threat simply meant that Trump “is going to use tariffs as a weapon to achieve economic and political outcomes which are in the best interest of America,” Ackman wrote.

Iowa Republican lawmaker Senator Chuck Grassley, who represents a farm state that was badly burned by Trump’s tariffs in his first term, told reporters that he sees the tariff threats as a “negotiating tool.”

Foreign leaders had no choice but to respond. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum issued an open letter to Trump pointing out that Mexico has developed a comprehensive immigration system that has reduced border encounters by 75% since December 2023, and that the U.S. CBP One program has ended the “caravans” he talks about. She noted that it is imperative for the U.S. and Mexico jointly to “arrive at another model of labor mobility that is necessary for your country and to address the causes that lead families to leave their places of origin out of necessity.”

She noted that the fentanyl problem in the U.S. is a public health problem and that Mexican authorities have this year “seized tons of different types of drugs, 10,340 weapons, and arrested 15,640 people for violence related to drug trafficking,” and added that “70% of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country.” She also suggested that Mexico would retaliate with tariffs of its own if the U.S. imposed tariffs on Mexico.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau did not go that far but talked to Trump shortly after the social media post. The U.S. is Canada’s biggest trading partner, and a 25% tariff would devastate its economy. The premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, seemed to try to keep her province’s oil out of the line of fire by agreeing with Trump that the Canadian government should work with him and adding, “The vast majority of Alberta’s energy exports to the US are delivered through secure and safe pipelines which do not in any way contribute to these illegal activities at the border.”

Trudeau has called an emergency meeting with Canada’s provincial premiers tomorrow to discuss the threat.

Spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington Liu Pengyu simply said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”

In contrast to Trump’s sudden social media posts that threaten global trade and caused a frenzy today, President Joe Biden this evening announced that, after months of negotiations, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the U.S. and France, to take effect at 4:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday. “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” Biden said.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah attacked Israel shortly after Hamas’s attack of October 7, 2023. Fighting on the border between Israel and Lebanon has turned 300,000 Lebanese people and 70,000 Israelis into refugees, with Israel bombing southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah’s tunnel system and killing its leaders. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,000 people and injured more than 13,000, while CBS News reports that about 90 Israeli soldiers and nearly 50 Israeli civilians have been killed in the fighting. Under the agreement, Israel’s forces currently occupying southern Lebanon will withdraw over the next 60 days as Lebanon’s army moves in. Hezbollah will be kept from rebuilding.

According to Laura Rozen in her newsletter Diplomatic, before the agreement went into effect, Israel increased its airstrikes in Beirut and Tyre.

When he announced the deal, Biden pushed again for a ceasefire in Gaza, whose people, he said, “have been through hell. Their…world is absolutely shattered.” Biden called again for Hamas to release the more than 100 hostages it still holds and to negotiate a ceasefire. Biden said the U.S. will “make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and others to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza with the hostages released and the end to the war without Hamas in power.”

Today’s announcement, Biden said, brings closer the realization of his vision for a peaceful Middle East where both Israel and a Palestinian state are established and recognized, a plan he tried to push before October 7 by linking Saudi Arabia’s normalization of relations with Israel to a Palestinian state. Biden has argued that such a deal is key to Israel’s long-term security, and today he pressed Israel to “be bold in turning tactical gains against Iran and its proxies into a coherent strategy that secures Israel’s long-term…safety and advances a broader peace and prosperity in the region.”

“I believe this agenda remains possible,” Biden said. “And in my remaining time in office, I will work tirelessly to advance this vision of—for an integrated, secure, and prosperous region, all of which…strengthens America’s national security.”

“Today’s announcement is a critical step in advancing that vision,” Biden said. “It reminds us that peace is possible.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #American History #justice #bribes #billionaires #rule of law #plunder #economic madness #tariffs #deportation

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odinsblog · 1 year ago

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DONALD TRUMP: MOBBED UP AF - A RETROSPECTIVE

(by @saradannerdukic)

1970s & 1980s: wave of Russian criminals arrive in New York and begin interfacing with established American organized crime networks (La Cosa Nostra/The Five Families aka Bonanno, Genovese, Colombo, Lucchese, Gambino) (source)

1977: KGB reportedly opens file on Donald Trump (source).

1979: Construction begins on Trump Tower. Trump purchases overpriced concrete from mafia bosses Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano of the Genovese and Gambino crime families (respectively). (source)

1980: Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, introduces Donald to Roger Stone. (source)

1982: New York City Housing Commissioner Anthony Gliedman received what he described as an “abusive and profane” call from someone angry that Gliedman had opposed Trump’s request for a $20 million tax abatement. Gliedman reported the call to the FBI, saying the caller was “threatening his life.” (source)

June 3, 1983: Rudy Giuliani becomes US attorney for SDNY

January, 1984: Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov, First Chief Directorate of the KGB arm responsible for gathering foreign intelligence, urges his officers to be more creative with agent recruitment - and to use money and flattery vs. alignment with Soviet ideology. Additionally, he gives the directive to find "U.S. targets to cultivate or, at the very least, official contacts...The main effort must be concentrated on acquiring valuable agents." (source)

1984: Russian émigré David Bogatin pays cash for five apartments in Trump Tower. (source). Bogatin's brother ran a $150 million stock scam with Russian mafia boss Semion Mogilevich (source)

1985: Trump reportedly “apoplectic” when he loses bid to re-develop the Coliseum at Columbus Circle to Salomon Brothers-backed Mort Zuckerman. (source) More on Trump’s proposal here.

October 1985: Trump's helicopter pilot indicted on drug trafficking charges. Trump doesn't fire him. Instead, he leases his personally-owned unit in Trump Plaza Apartments to him with an agreement of half the rent is to be paid in cash, the other half in unspecified helicopter services. Trump also writes a letter on behalf of his pilot (Weichselbaum), calling him "a credit to the community.” Who does the case end up with? Federal judge Maryanne Trump, Donald's sister. (source)

Autumn, 1986: Trump meets Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin. And per Trump's own account in Art of the Deal, “One thing led to another, and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.” (source)

1986: Trump makes the rounds in the news offering to negotiate with the Russians (source), and also angles for a Soviet posting in the Reagan administration (source)

March 16, 1987: Bogatin (who had purchased multiple apartments in Trump Tower for cash) pleads guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. The government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, because he'd used them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. (from New Republic)

April 3, 1987: Trump excluded from bidding on Australian casino deal because of mafia connections (per Australian police) (source)

July 4, 1987: Trump flies to the USSR for the first time after being personally invited - the trip is arranged by the Soviet government (source).

1987: Trump talks extensively in an interview about nuclear bombs, and states that his pilot used to work for Qaddafi. In the same interview, Trump describes the type of bomb he thinks will be possible in the future: "Carry it in your briefcase, right. I’m not even talking about airplanes and missiles. You’ll walk in with your damn tape recorder,” he says, pointing to my innocent Sony, “and you’ll say it’s a tape recorder and nobody will be able to tell the difference. I mean, that’s where it’s going to be in 20 years.” (source)

1988: Trump starts talking about running for president on Oprah (source).

1988: Trump purchases a yacht from Adnan Khashoggi, the uncle of Jamal Khashoggi (source) (source)

1988: American Media Inc. (AMI) comes into being after Enquirer owner Generoso Pope dies. (source) Among the interested parties are Robert Maxwell (source), the father of Ghislaine Maxwell - Jeffrey Epstein's partner. (source). Among the trustees of the Pope estate are Peter G. Peterson, a partner in the Blackstone Group (source) - a private equity firm founded by Steven Schwarzman (source). (More on Schwarzman and his relation to Trump here). According to Pope's son, Paul, The Enquirer was started with a $75,000 loan from the mafia (source).

October 11, 1989: helicopter crashes with 3 Trump casino execs aboard (source). Trump claimed he was supposed to be on it, but then changed his mind at the last minute. (source) After their deaths, he blamed them for the failure of his Atlantic City casino (source) The helicopter's pilot was identified by the state police as Robert Kent of Ronkonkoma, L.I., and its co-pilot as Lawrence Diener of Westbury, L.I. b/b

1990: Wall Street bond house Salomon Brothers advises institutional clients to sell bonds issue from Trump's Castle Casino in Atlantic City, due to debt and performance concerns. (source)

1991: Trump declares bankruptcy (source)

1991: Trump sells his yacht to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal (source) (source)

December 17, 1991: Fred Trump gives Donald an interest-free loan by purchasing $3.5 million worth of casino chips at Trump Castle casino, circumventing bankruptcy rules and enabling Donald to make the interest payment due on his bonds. (source)

1992: Trump declares bankruptcy an additional 3 times stemming from various properties he's over-leveraged. (source)

1994: Trump allegedly rapes and beats a 13-year-old girl at a party with Jeffrey Epstein, multiple times. In the filed complaint, the 13-year-old was threatened to be "disappeared" like another young girl had been if she told anyone. (source)

October 20, 1994: Christine Seymour, Roy Cohn's secretary (Cohn was Trump's mentor), who was set to publish a tell-all book, dies in head-on collision with tractor trailer (source)

1995: Trump reportedly in Moscow to discuss matters related to Okhotny Ryad underground mall on Manezh Square. (source)

The trip is also reference in this article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/05/19/trump-solo

1995: Trump sells Plaza Hotel to Alwaleed bin Talal (source) Barbara Corcoran brokers the deal (source)

June 8, 1995: Vyacheslav Ivankov arrested (source). Ivankov was known to be a notoriously brutal gangster in the upper echelon of the Russian mafia. (source) After having difficulty finding him, the FBI picked up his trail at Trump Taj Mahal, and then discovered that Ivankov had a luxury condo in Trump Tower. (source) According to Robert Friedman in his book, Red Mafiya, Friedman viewed Ivankov's personal phone book containing "a working number for the Trump Organization’s Trump Tower Residence, and a Trump Organization office fax machine." (this is listed as a citation at the end of the book). Ivankov is also mentioned in this 2003 DOJ paper on organized crime, with a forward by Bruce Ohr (pp 49).

1996: Trump goes to Russia with Howard Lorber (source). Lorber later donated to the Trump inaugural fund (source).

1998: Trump Taj Mahal fined for currency transaction reporting violations (source)

February 1999: Evercore Capital Partners L.L.C., headed by former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger C. Altman, acquires American Media, Inc. and places David Pecker at the helm. (source)

1999: Trump's first run for president (source)

2000/2001: Mark Burnett in negotiations with Putin for a show called "Destination Mir." (source)

October 2001: AMI offices in Boca Raton are attacked with anthrax (source). Later, in 2004, a cleaning company owned by Rudy Giuliani is contracted to clean up the anthrax, with his company, Bio-One, slated to rent/occupy the building after cleanup. (source) The contract later ended in a feud. (source)

2002: Mark Burnett begins talks with Trump regarding The Apprentice. (source)

2002 - 2011: The Bayrock Group partners with the Trump Organization on developments including the Trump SoHo hotel (source). Principals in the group include Felix Sater - believed to be connected with Semion Mogilevich (source) - and Tevfik Arif (source).

2004: Trump declares bankruptcy again. (source)

Spring 2004: The Apprentice debuts (source)

May 2004: Diamond dealer and former Trump Tower tenant (1 year prior he'd lived right below Kellyanne Conway) Eduard Nektalov is shot on 6th Avenue (source). He was reportedly cooperating with federal authorities on a money laundering investigation (source) More on money laundering and Trump properties here.

2005: at the same time Trump is unable to get a 25 million pound loan from Bank of Scotland due to being a credit risk (source), Deutsche Bank (who later is hit with massive fines for money laundering) loans Trump nearly one billion dollars. Trump's banker at Deutsche Bank is Justice Kennedy's son. (source).

2006: Felix Sater escorts the Trump children during their trip to Russia (according to Sater) (source). Later, in emails to Michael Cohen, Sater says that he'd arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin's chair. (source).

2006: Paul Manafort buys unit in Trump Tower (source).

2006 - 2009: Trump makes multiple attempts (and fails) to get a loan from the Bank of Scotland to purchase Hamilton Hall. The bank executive "expressed concern that Trump would hold the bank to 'future ransom'” (source)

2007 - 2016: Buyers tied to Russia make 86 cash purchases at Trump properties. (source)

2008: Soviet-born (Moldovia) Orly Taitz helps bring suit regarding Obama's citizenship/birth certificate. (source)

2008: Junior brags that they're getting a lot of money from Russia. (source)

2008: Russian oligarch buys a Palm Beach mansion from Trump, paying twice the value (source).

August 27, 2008: a small-time scam artist transfers a Beverly Hills, California, mansion to Donald Trump for $0. (source)

November 2008: Unable to meet his obligations for the nearly 1 billion dollar loan they gave him, Trump sues Deutsche Bank saying he shouldn't have to make good on his promise because of the economic crash. (source)

2009: Trump declares bankruptcy again. (source)

2009: a lawyer representing Trump Atlantic City casino creditors says he got threatening phone calls. The FBI traced one of them to a payphone outside the “Late Show With David Letterman,” where Trump was appearing.

“My name is Carmine,” the caller told the lawyer, Kristopher Hansen. “I don’t know why you’re fucking with Mr. Trump but if you keep fucking with Mr. Trump, we know where you live and we’re going to your house for your wife and kids.” (source)

July 23, 2009: Stormy Daniels' political advisor's car explodes (source). This was approximately 3 years after her affair with Trump (source).

August 2009: After multiple tries dating back to 2006, Trump denied a final time for loan for 25 million pounds from Bank of Scotland because the bank considered it "too risky." (source)

2010: Tevfik Arif, a principal of the Bayrock Group - which at this time is partnering with the Trump organization on a variety of projects - is arrested in a Turkish prostitution sting. (source). Charges were later dropped by Turkish authorities.

July 25, 2011: President Obama issues executive order declaring organized crime a national security emergency. (source)

2011 - 2015: Deutsche Bank, who 5 years previous had given Donald Trump nearly 1 billion dollars when Bank of Scotland wouldn't loan him 25 million pounds, is laundering billions of dollars with the help of Russians. (source)

2011: Eric Trump brags that they have access to millions of dollars from Russians. (source)

2011 - 2015: Donald Trump begins paying for his properties with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. (source)

January 1, 2012: former Trump bodyguard dies from apparent overdose (source).

2013: Trump walks out of a BBC Panorama interview when asked about his connections with Felix Sater. (source)

April 16, 2013: Preet Bharara, then US attorney for SDNY, announces charges against massive Russian organized crime ring operating out of Trump Tower. (source)

June 16, 2013: Trump announces Miss Universe pageant will be in Moscow. (source)

November 9, 2013: Miss Universe pageant (source). One of the fugitives indicted in the Trump Tower organized crime ring in April, ALIMZHAN TOKHTAKHOUNOV, is a guest of honor there. (source)

2014: Steve Bannon, while at Cambridge Analytica, orders testing on Putin messaging with Americans. (source)

February 10, 2014: Trump praises Putin on Fox & Friends. (source)

March 6, 2015: Trump Taj Mahal fined for money laundering. (source)

2015: Michael Cohen threatens a reporter covering Trump's divorce with Ivana. “I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting,” the Daily Beast’s Tim Mak, recalled Cohen telling him. “You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up … for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet.” (source) (source)

April 18, 2015: Trump's former pilot dies in head-on collision (source).

November 3, 2015: Felix Sater, who is believed to work for Semion Mogilevich (source) writes Michael Cohen stating that he'll get buy-in from Putin and that they'll engineer Trump's presidency. (source)

November 5, 2015: former head of RT Mikhail Lesin found dead in DC hotel room with blunt force trauma to head, neck and torso. He had a meeting with DOJ scheduled for following day. (source)

January 23, 2016: Trump tells the crowd at a rally that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose voters. (source)

February 23, 2016: Trump tells the crowd at a rally that he'd like to punch a protestor in the face, and "I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.” (source)

March 29, 2016: Paul Manafort joins Trump campaign. (source)

April - May 2016: George Papadopoulos in communication with “high ranking Russian official” in an attempt to set up meetings between Trump team and Russian reps, w/the promise “that the Kremlin had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails…” (source)

May 2016: Stephen Schwarzman flies to Riyadh to meet with Mohammed bin Salman - then the deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia - about infrastructure, and presumably the $20 billion fund that's announced a year later. (source) More on Schwarzman's relationship with Trump, and Saudi Arabia here. More on Schwarzman's links to Russia and Rosneft here.

Summer 2016: Stefan Halper, an FBI informant, approaches Trump campaign officials. (source)

June 9, 2016: Trump Tower meeting with Russians, Manafort, Kushner, Don Jr.. (source). Present at the meeting was Nataliya Veselnitskaya, who at the time was representing Prevezon (source), a company implicated in a money-laundering case at SDNY (source)

June 14, 2016: News breaks that the DNC has been hacked by Russians. (source)

June 14, 2016: Michael Cohen cancels his planned trip to Moscow to discuss Trump Tower Moscow (source)

Sometime after July 19, 2016: Trump warned by FBI that Russians will try to infiltrate campaign. (source)

July 2016: FBI opens counter intelligence investigation into Trump campaign. (source) (source)

September, 2016: Trump and Cohen discuss hush money and contingency for if guy gets hit by a truck. (source)

October 31, 2016: Mother Jones reports "A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump"

November 7, 2016 (one day before election day): Connie Watton, maid of Stephen Schwarzman - a Trump AND Kremlin friend - is pushed in front of a subway. (source) The woman who pushed her is assigned defense attorney Mathew Mari, known for his legal work for the Bonanno crime family. More on Schwarzman's relationship with Trump, and Saudi Arabia here. More on Schwarzman's links to Russia and Rosneft here. Schwarzman had also financed Kushner projects and gave Jared Kushner a loan (source).

November 8, 2016 (election day): Russian diplomat Sergei Krivov found unconscious at the Russian Consulate in New York and died on the scene. (source)

December 2016: FSB officers arrested in Russia. (source)

December 2016: Jared Kushner instructs Michael Flynn to sabotage US foreign policy. (source)

December 1 or 2, 2016: Kushner tries to set up secret back channel with Russians using Russians' secure facilities. (source)

December 1, 2016: Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn meet with Sergei Kislyak at Trump Tower (source)

December 13-14, 2016 (date not confirmed): Jared Kushner meets with Sergey Gorkov, "a graduate of the academy of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic intelligence arm of the former Soviet KGB, who was appointed by Putin to the post less than a year before his encounter with Kushner." (source)

December 19, 2016: Russia's ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, is killed. (source)

December 19, 2016: Russian diplomat to Latin America, Peter Polshikov, is killed. (source)

December 20, 2016: Methbot white paper published. (source)

December 26, 2016: Ex-KGB chief Oleg Erovinkin, who was suspected of helping draft the Trump dossier, found dead in the back of his car. (source)

December 29, 2016: Obama expels 35 Russian diplomats. (source)

December 29, 2016: KT McFarland sends email stating that "If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him," (source)

December 29, 2016: Flynn calls Kislyak to discuss the expelling of the diplomates and asks that the Russians not retaliate. (source)

January 6, 2017: Trump, McFarland, Pence, Flynn, Priebus, Pompeo and Bossert briefed with classified intelligence report by Brennan, Clapper, Comey. (source) That same day, DNI releases this report.

January 9, 2017: Russian Consul in Athens, Greece, Andrei Malanin, found dead in his apartment (source)

January 10, 2017: Buzzfeed publishes Steele Dossier. (source)

January 24, 2017: Peter Strzok interviews Michael Flynn. (source)

January 27, 2017: Russia's Ambassador to India, Alexander Kadakin, dies. (source)

January 30, 2017: New York State Department of Financial Services fines Deutsche Bank $425 million for massive Russian mirror trading scheme. (source)

February 2017: Trump's bodyguard, a Trump Organization lawyer and a third man raid Harold Bornstein's office, taking Trump's medical records. (source)

February 20, 2017: Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN, dies suddenly in New York (source)

March 2, 2017: Ukrainian businessman with links to Trump found dead from undetermined causes. Oronov was Michael Cohen's brother's father-in-law, and Cohen did business with him. (source)

March 11, 2017: Trump fires Preet Bharara, who as US Attorney of SDNY had led the breakup of a massive Russian organized crime ring operating out of Trump Tower. (source)

March 16, 2017: laptop stolen from Secret Service agent's car while parked in her driveway. The laptop contained highly sensitive information including floor plans and evacuation protocol for Trump Tower. (source)

March 20, 2017: It's learned that the FBI had launched a counter intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian links in July of 2016. (source) (source)

March 21, 2017: A lawyer for a Putin-foe, Nikolai Gorokhov, reportedly thrown from a window in Moscow. Gorokhov was set to testify as a U.S. government witness in a money laundering case initiated by SDNY (led by Preet Bahrara). (source) "The alleged vehicle by which these dirty assets were washed clean was a Cyprus-registered company called Prevezon Holdings Ltd." (source) Prevezon is represented by Nataliya Veselnitskaya at the time that she attends the Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016. (source)

March 23, 2017: former Russian MP, Denis Voronenkov, shot dead in Kiev. (source)

March 30, 2017: FBI raids Trump-linked casino in Saipan. (source)

March 30, 2017: Mike Flynn asks for immunity. (source)

May 1, 2017: Scott Christianson, investigative reporter for McClatchy, publishes this:

May 9, 2017: Trump fires FBI director James Comey. (source)

May 2017 (date unclear): FBI opens counter intelligence investigation into Trump. (source)

May 10: 2017: Subpoenas issued to Michael Flynn by Senate Intelligence Committee. (source)

May 10, 2017: closed-door meeting in Oval Office with Russians. (source)

May 10, 2017: Roger Ailes falls in his home at Palm Beach Country. (source)

May 11, 2017: FBI raids GOP consulting firm in Maryland. (source)

May 14, 2017: Scott Christianson dies after falling down the stairs at his home (source)

May 14 2017: Republic operative Peter Smith found dead in Minnesota 10 days after speaking with WSJ (source)

Smith had said he'd been working with Michael Flynn (source).

May 17, 2017: Robert Mueller appointed special counsel (source).

May 18, 2017: Roger Ailes dies from head injury he'd sustained 8 days earlier (source).

May 20-21, 2017: Trump takes his first overseas trip as president to Saudi Arabia. During this trip, it's announced that Blackstone, led by Stephen Schwarzman, will manage Saudi Arabia's $20 billion investment fund. (source) Most of the investment will be in US infrastructure (source) During that trip, Trump also meets with Kirill Dmitriev of VEB bank (source)

July 4, 2017: body washes up on shore of Trump golf course in California. (source) (source)

July 26, 2017: Paul Manafort's home raided (source)

July 27, 2017: George Papadopoulos arrested. (source)

August 3, 2017: Secret Service kicked out of Trump Tower (source).

August 23, 2017: Russian ambassador to Sudan, Mirgayas Shirinsky, found dead. (source)

September 1, 2017: fire at Russian consulate in San Francisco (source).

September 14, 2017: Junior ditches Secret Service to go to Canada (source).

September 25, 2017: Richard Beckler, Trump's appointee as General Counsel of GSA dies (source). Beckler is the GSA staff member who'd assured Trump that requests for materials/emails from special counsel would not be honored (source).

September 27, 2017: Paul Horner, fake news writer who took credit for Trump’s win, dies of apparent overdose (source)

October 2017: Trump muses that he'll likely get to place 4 justices on the Supreme Court because of future health issues they may have (source).

October 16, 2017: Panama Papers journalist killed with a car bomb. (source)

October 25, 2017: Jared Kushner leaves on unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia.

October 26, 2017: Investigator (Catherine Hunt, a former FBI agent) working on behalf of 9/11 families suing Saudi Arabia interviews Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi texted Saudi officials that same day.

(as claimed by the lawyer working on behalf of the families)

October 28, 2018: Jared Kushner returns from unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia.

October 30, 2017: Papadopoulos guilty plea revealed (source)

November 3, 2017: Alex van der Zwaan is interviewed by the FBI. (source)

November 4, 2017: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman consolidates power and arrests several princes, including Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal. (source) Trump had previously sold his yacht (1991) and the Plaza Hotel to Alwaleed bin-Talal (source).

November 2017: Trump picks fights with North Korea. (source)

November 17, 2017: Brett Kavanaugh added to short list of SCOTUS nominees. (source)

December 1, 2017: Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI. (source)

December 5, 2017: It's reported that Deutsche Bank received subpoena from Robert Mueller (source) In-depth Rachel Maddow segment on Deutsche Bank and the subpoena here.

December 16, 2017: Trump learns that Mueller has in his possession all of their transition emails on the .gov domain, obtained via the GSA. (source)

December 22, 2017: House Intelligence Committee interviews Rhona Graff

December 30, 2017: Fire at home linked to Ivanka's diamond business (source).

January 8, 2018: Fire at Trump Tower (source)

January 20, 2018: Former spokesman for Rick Gates, Glenn Selig, dies in Afghanistan hotel attack. Selig was a well-known Tampa Bay Area TV anchor. (source)

January 25, 2018: It's learned that Dutch intelligence had infiltrated Russian hacker group Cozy Bear and witnessed in real time as they attacked the State Department as well as the DNC. (source)

January 27, 2018: Steve Wynn resigns as RNC finance chair amid sexual assault allegations (source).

January 31, 2018: chartered train carrying GOP lawmakers to retreat crashes into truck (source).

February 16, 2018: Indictment of 12 Russians, outlining their methods of election interference (indictment sealed). (source)

February 20, 2018: Alex van der Zwaan pleads guilty to making false statements to FBI. (source)

February 22, 2018: Paul Manafort and Richard Gates indicted. (source)

February 23 - 27, 2018: Trump Tower Panama standoff with physical altercations and armed guards (source).

Week of March 4 - 10, 2018 (date unclear): FBI raids Trump-linked casino in Saipan a second time. (source)

March 4, 2018: Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, found poisoned on a park bench in Salisbury. (source)

March 16, 2018: FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe fired. (source)

April 7, 2018: ANOTHER Trump Tower Fire - art dealer Todd Brassner dies (source); Michael Cohen texts Dennis Shields with a warning to "get out ASAP" (source).

April 9, 2018: FBI raids Michael Cohen's home, hotel room, and office (source).

April 13, 2018: RNC Finance Chair Elliot Broidy resigns in midst hush money payoff scandal (source).

April 15 or 16, 2018: Matthew Mellon (finance chair, NY RNC, and who made his fortune in cryptocurrency) dies of apparent overdose (source). Note - original link/story is now gone; here are alternate sources for that story: https://twitter.com/business/status/986135482013769728

April 24, 2018: Devin Nunes sends classified letter to Jeff Sessions regarding FBI informant (source) who is later revealed to be Stefan Halper. (source)

April 28, 2018: Fire at Trump Tower Azerbaijan (source).

Week of April 29, 2018: Devin Nunes issues subpoena to DOJ seeking information about FBI informant (later revealed to be Stefan Halper). (source)

June 20, 2018: New York State Department of Financial Services fines Deutsche Bank $205 million for "unlawful, unsafe and unsound conduct in its foreign exchange trading business." (source)

June 22, 2018: Trump-backed Katie Arrington seriously injured in head-in collision (source).

June 27, 2018: Justice Kennedy, whose son was Donald Trump's banker, unexpectedly announces retirement. (source) Trump and Kennedy reportedly had a special relationship (source).

July 4, 2018: delegation of Republicans go to Moscow. (source)

July 9, 2018: Brett Kavanaugh nominated to SCOTUS. (source)

July 14, 2018: Indictment of 12 Russians/internet research agency unsealed (source).

July 16, 2018: Maria Butina criminal complaint unsealed. (source)

July 16, 2018: Trump meets with Putin in Helsinki. (source)

July 17, 2018: Secret Service agent dies in Scotland. After falling ill at Trump's golf course in Turnberry, he died the day after the Helsinki meeting (source) (source). (obituary)

July 25, 2018: dead body found in waters off Trump NYC golf course (source).

August 6, 2018: Rand Paul goes to Russia. (source)

August 10, 2018: Dennis Shields - the same guy Cohen texted back in April - found dead in Trump Tower (source)

August 15, 2018: Trump revokes John Brennan's security clearance. (source)

August 16, 2018: mystery case before grand jury initiated. (source)

October 2, 2018: Jamal Khashoggi murdered on orders from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (source) Trump later disputes the findings of the CIA and stands with MBS, stating that too much money is at stake. (source)

October 3, 2018: Nikki Hailey resigns, but resignation is not yet publicly announced. (source)

October 3, 2018: The Russian deputy attorney general (Saak Karapetyan) who reportedly directed Natalya Veselnitskaya (the lawyer who met with the Trump campaign in Trump Tower) dies in a helicopter crash (source). It was later reported that the pilot of the helicopter had been shot. (source)

October 9, 2018: Internet Research Agency (aka the troll farm) named in DOJ indictment (unsealed July 14, 2018) set on fire. (source)

October 9, 2018: Nikki Haley announces resignation.

October 9, 2018: New York Times reports that Saudi Arabia had ordered Khashoggi's murder.

October 17, 2018: Don McGahn resigns. (source)

October 19, 2018: "Project Lahkta" (Russian election interference) criminal complaint unsealed (source)

October 21, 2018: John Bolton goes to Russia to meet with Putin. (source)

October 22 - 27, 2018: week of terror begins with bombs at the home of George Soros. (source). It was followed by bombs sent to Bill and Hillary Clinton (Oct. 23); Barack Obama, CNN, John Brennan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Eric Holder and Maxine Waters (October 24); Robert de Niro and Joe Biden (October 25); and Cory Booker, James Clapper, Kamala Harris, and Tom Steyer (October 26). It ends with mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue on October 27 (source).

October 30, 2018: Whitey Bulger killed. (source)

November 21, 2018: head of GRU agency accused of DNC hacks and Skripal poisoning dies, reportedly after a long illness. (source)

November 27, 2018: Methbot indictment unsealed at EDNY. (source)

November 28, 2018: Miami Herald publishes Perversion of Justice investigative report.

November 29, 2018: Michael Cohen pleads guilty. (source)

November 29, 2018: Massive raid at Deutsche Bank. (source)

November 29, 2018: FBI raids offices of Trump's former tax attorney, Chicago Alderman Ed Burke. (source)

December 4, 2018: Epstein trial set to begin. It is settled at the last minute, avoiding testimony from witnesses. (source)

December 13, 2018: FBI allegedly raids Chicago Alderman and former Trump tax attorney Ed Burke's office a second time (FBI neither confirms nor denies whether raid took place) (source).

December 22, 2018: Government shuts down. (source)

January 8, 2019: it's learned that Manafort passed polling data to Kilimnik in the summer of 2016. (source)

January 11, 2019: it's learned/reported that the FBI had opened a counter intelligence investigation into Trump in May of 2017. (source)

January 23, 2019: Michael Cohen postpones testimony before Congress, saying it's because Trump has been threatening him. (source)

January 25, 2019: Roger Stone arrested and indicted. (source) (source)

February 21, 2019: Judge rules that federal prosecutors (including Trump labor secretary Alex Acosta) broke the law in Epstein case. (source)

February 27, 2019: Michael Cohen testifies before Congress that Trump had directed him to threaten people as many as 500 times when he worked for him. (source) He also testifies that Felix Sater's office had been located on the 26th floor of Trump Tower - the same floor as Trump's office - and, in the location that would eventually become Cohen's office. (source)

And let's not forget the acid in Steve Bannon's bathroom: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bannons-vacated-florida-home-had-a-bathroom-destroyed-by-acid-washington-post-report-985356

Or how Michael Cohen threatened this reporter: https://twitter.com/cherijacobus/status/974831949285031936

Or the threats Stormy Daniels received: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/25/politics/stormy-daniels-threat-60-minutes/index.html

A short history of Donald Trump's threats: https://www.propublica.org/article/a-short-history-of-threats-received-by-donald-trumps-opponents

#politics #donald trump #republicans #russia #money laundering #mobbed up #maria butina #ron paul #treason #traitors #tre45on #russian mafia #russian mob

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