radiofree.asia

Category: republicans

  • States Have Passed 9 Bills Making It Easier for Elections to Be Tampered With

    As Democrats’ efforts to prevent voter suppression and election tampering bills have stalled in Congress, state lawmakers are still quietly passing bills to make it easier to intimidate and criminalize voters and election officials, a new report reveals.

    In a report released last week, the Brennan Center for Justice states that, in roughly the first four months of 2022, six states have passed nine election interference laws — laws that have opened the door for partisan actors to tamper with elections and election results. Such bills have been passed in Alabama, Arizona, Flor­ida, Geor­gia, Kentucky and Oklahoma; Georgia Republicans are responsible for four of the bills.

    Three Georgia bills have made it easier for partisan forces to be appointed to or control election boards in Miller, Montgomery and Dawson counties, all counties that heavily favored Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

    Georgia and Florida lawmakers have also passed a particularly extreme set of bills that grant new powers to police forces, ostensibly to enforce election laws — though, in reality, these laws will likely disproportionately target and disenfranchise already marginalized voters.

    The Georgia bill gives the Georgia Bureau of Investigation the ability to launch a criminal probe into supposed election fraud allegations without support from another agency. Florida’s law, first proposed by far right Gov. Ron DeSantis, creates a 25-person election crimes office, which experts say will serve only to suppress voters.

    Meanwhile, Alabama, Kentucky and Oklahoma have created laws that criminalize actions that an election official would normally take to run elections smoothly; typical moves like accepting private funding in order to help with logistics like ballot sorting or registering Native American people to vote are now outlawed.

    Arizona has also made it a felony offense for an election official to fail to comply with a new complex and racist law to verify a potential voters’ citizenship status.

    Overall in the 2022 legislative session, the report finds, lawmakers have introduced at least 148 election interference bills, even as federal lawmakers have largely moved on from efforts to prevent GOP lawmakers from passing bills to skew elections in their favor. Lawmakers in 39 states have also considered at least 393 voter suppression bills in this year’s legislative session.

    On the other hand, however, lawmakers in 44 states and Washington, D.C. have introduced hundreds of bills aimed at expanding voting access so far in 2022.

    States have also enacted voter suppression laws this year. Arizona and Mississippi have created new proof of citizenship laws that would restrict voting access, while lawmakers in at least five other states have passed restrictive bills that have either been vetoed or are waiting for action from the states’ governors.

  • Some Republicans Fume at Michigan GOP for Defending Candidates Busted for Fraud

    After spending years pushing former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” the Michigan Republican Party is defending its own candidates who were caught up in a massive fraud scheme.

    The Michigan Bureau of Elections released a report on Monday recommending that leading Republican gubernatorial candidates James Craig and Perry Johnson, as well as three others, be disqualified from the ballot after submitting too many fake petition signatures. The bureau said it had identified 36 petition circulators who submitted more than 68,000 fake signatures across 10 sets of nominating contests, including the governor’s primary. The state Board of Canvassers on Thursday deadlocked on whether to accept or reject the recommendation, effectively leaving in place the bureau’s decision to disqualify all five candidates, although Republicans have vowed to challenge the outcome in court.

    Republican election attorney John Pirich told Salon that the fraud scheme uncovered by the election officials is “the largest I’ve ever seen.”

    “This is of a magnitude beyond my imagination,” he said, describing it as the “most despicable abuse of the circulation process that I’ve ever witnessed.”

    Despite the Republican Party’s years-long campaign to stoke fears of election fraud, the Michigan GOP intervened on behalf of the disqualified candidates. Paul Cordes, chief of staff of the Michigan Republican Party, told the board that disqualifying the candidates over fraudulent petition signatures would disenfranchise voters.

    “Disqualifying two of the highest polling candidates in this primary, as well as three others who have expended significant resources in their campaigns, is disenfranchising to Republican voters who ultimately should be the decision-makers,” he argued.

    Michigan GOP Chairman Ron Weiser also criticized the decision, arguing in a statement that the party was “fighting against voter disenfranchisement.”

    Pirich, a former assistant state attorney general, refuted the GOP argument, noting that “no one was on the ballot so you’re not disenfranchising anyone.”

    “Most of the people who signed these petitions of the five candidates that were involved in this process weren’t real people,” he said. “So there’s no real legal harm to anyone, in the sense that these weren’t real voters. These were fictitious signatures of fraudulent circulators. So that’s a bogus argument.”

    Other Republicans also took issue with the state party’s attempt to intervene.

    “The Michigan Republican Party candidates ran garbage operations,” tweeted Stu Sandler, political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and former executive director of the Michigan GOP. “The fact the Michigan Republican Party is defending all this fraud is embarrassing.”

    Craig called Thursday’s outcome a “travesty” and vowed to file an “immediate appeal” to the courts. An attorney for Johnson said that the process that disqualified him had “fatal flaws that didn’t follow election laws.”

    The candidates and their attorneys argued that they were the victims of the circulators’ fraud and that it was the Bureau of Elections’ responsibility to prove that every individual signature was fraudulent. The bureau said it has no evidence that the candidates were aware of the fraud but said in its report that it did not fully process all the signatures because it had already identified enough fake ones to put the candidates well short of the 15,000 valid signatures needed to qualify for the ballot.

    Republicans on the board sided with the candidates, though it would have required three votes to overturn the Bureau of Elections’ recommendation. Republican Chairman Norman Shinkle argued that the circulators “should all go to prison” but said he was “not prepared to shift any burden to the candidates.”

    Tony Daunt, the other Republican on the board, said there was no question “a widespread and disgraceful effort to defraud the voters of the state has occurred,” but insisted that Republican candidates were the real victims.

    Though the board has frequently broken down party lines, Pirich said he was surprised by the Republican members’ votes because of the “amount of evidence and the detail of the evidence.”

    “I don’t know how anyone in good conscience would say these candidates should be on the ballot when they couldn’t do something as fundamental as circulate properly registered voter signatures and turn them in,” he said. “I mean, to put them on the ballot would be an insult to the whole process.”

    Pirich argued that the candidates are responsible for the petition signatures they turn in. “If you hire scum-buckets to do your work, you’re gonna get some scum-bucket results and you should be associated with those results,” he said.

    Craig insisted that he expects to prevail in court. Pirich, however, predicted the candidate would lose his bid to get on the ballot.

    “The report of the Board of Canvassers staff was incredibly detailed and legally overcomes any presumption of validity associated with each one of those candidates’ petition drives,” he said.

    The Michigan Democratic Party criticized Republicans on the Board of Canvassers for voting to ignore the evidence of fraud and called on the disqualified Republicans to drop out rather than fight the decision in court.

    Fraud is fraud, and under Michigan law, candidates are required to submit a minimum of 15,000 lawfully collected signatures. They did not meet that requirement,” LaVora Barnes, chairwoman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said in a statement. “To keep the integrity of Michigan’s democratic process intact, all Republican gubernatorial candidates whose petitions were under consideration at today’s meeting should swiftly withdraw from the race. Michiganders deserve accountable leaders, and these candidates have shown they are not capable of that.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • After Mass Shootings, Republicans Shield White Supremacists From Scrutiny

    Last March, Texas Democrats demanded that Rep. Chip Roy resign after the Texas Republican made blatantly hateful statements during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on hate crimes against Asian Americans. Just days earlier, a racist gunman targeting Asian women had gone on a killing spree in Atlanta that left eight people dead. Roy called for bringing the “bad guys” to “justice” — and favorably invoked the legacy of lynching in Texas, where a white supremacist campaign of organized terror led to the extrajudicial murders of more than 600 people between 1882 and 1945.

    Asian American lawmakers were outraged. Rep. Ted Lieu of California tweeted about a Los Angeles lynch mob that murdered 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants in 1871. Meanwhile, Roy was angered by advocates who warned Republicans that calling COVID-19 the “China virus” put Asian people in danger. He refused to apologize for favorably invoking the legacy of lynching, insisting in a statement to the Austin-American Statesmen that his critics were “thought policing” like “Communist China.” Roy’s stunt, of course, had not been censored; it was picked up by media outlets and presumably put into the congressional record.

    This week, Roy was going on again about “thought police” — this time, in a speech against the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, which Democrats rushed to update and pass in the House in the wake of the racist massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo. The bill would require federal agencies to document and report domestic terrorism threats, including white supremacists and neo-Nazis inside law enforcement agencies. Roy said the legislation would “target us for what we believe.”

    All but one House Republican voted against the domestic terror prevention bill, including lawmakers who supported a previous version back in 2020, just a few months before former President Trump’s lies about a stolen election would inspire a right-wing mob to invade the U.S. Capitol and call for Vice President Mike Pence to hang in the gallows (which apparently pleased Trump). Senate Republicans unanimously blocked the bill, and with it, any debate on gun safety and hate crimes in the wake of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers before police finally entered the school and killed him.

    The domestic terrorism bill would not provide law enforcement with new powers or authority to surveil and make arrests; instead, it would direct federal agencies to establish offices focused on the threat of white supremacist terrorism and report any findings to Congress. Republican opposition to the bill appears to have been triggered by its focus on white supremacists, who are widely considered the greatest domestic terror threat. Thanks to Trump and others on the far right, white supremacist ideologies such as “replacement theory” that motivated the Buffalo gunman are going mainstream among GOP voters.

    Like other Republicans, Roy argued the anti-terrorism bill would be used by the Biden administration to target right-wing activists. He repeated a debunked conspiracy theory about the FBI investigating parents who speak out at school board meetings. (The FBI said it only looked into credible threats of violence against educators, which ballooned last year as Trump and the GOP whipped conservatives into a frenzy over what they erroneously call “critical race theory” and other issues.) Since the bill focuses on extremists on the right, the argument goes, Democrats would have used it to target political opponents while ignoring violence on the left.

    It’s no secret white supremacists and far right extremists have claimed far more lives with violent attacks in the U.S. than leftists. Trump and other Republicans attempt to obfuscate this fact by conflating property damage during left-wing protests with “terrorism,” even if no one gets hurt.

    Meanwhile, progressives rightly scrutinized the anti-terrorism bill, given the government’s long history of using “anti-terrorism” efforts as a cover for spying on Black activists, anti-war groups and Muslims. Abolitionists and others on the left argue white supremacy is a dangerous feature of modern law enforcement, not a bug that can be stamped out by more police. Black and Brown communities are notoriously overpoliced, and critics say policing has always been necessary to uphold white supremacy in the U.S.

    Citing opposition from civil liberties groups to a previous version of the legislation, progressives in the House amended the terrorism prevention bill to protect activists, protesters and anyone exercising their constitutional rights. They also narrowed the definition of “domestic terrorism.” The amended language is broad, and there is intense debate over how to define “violent” speech that is not protected by the First Amendment. However, the additional language was meant to protect Americans of all political stripes.

    Whether the civil liberties amendment would have protected activists from the prying eye of the government is still up for debate, as is the efficacy of relying on federal law enforcement to prevent white supremacist violence. Law enforcement routinely fails to prevent mass shootings, even when perpetrators were previously flagged by police. The Uvalde school district has its own police and a plan for responding to active shooters, but police who were at the scene are under intense scrutiny for waiting more than an hour to bust into a classroom where the gunman took most of his victims.

    However, given that the white supremacist attack in Buffalo was premeditated (and, according to some of the bill’s advocates, may have been prevented if white supremacist activities were more thoroughly tracked), it’s not a surprise that groups such the NAACP supported the legislation and hoped it could prevent the recruitment of more white supremacists into police ranks.

    The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that opposed a previous version of the bill in 2019, did not respond to a request for comment on the new amendment. The office of Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, a Democrat who championed the civil liberties amendment, did not respond to follow-up questions over email.

    Of course, Republicans’ opposition to the bill had nothing to do with its potential impacts on marginalized groups. Instead, they argued that the legislation would target his supporters for what they think and believe, even after Democrats added civil rights “guardrails” to the bill to protect people on any end of the political spectrum. And Republicans rejected the focus on identifying white supremacists working in law enforcement.

    A close reading of the failed legislation shines some light on the GOP’s actual intentions. The legislation would have directed an inter-agency effort through new offices at the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and the FBI. Those offices would be required to document domestic terror threats, including the threat of overt white supremacists infiltrating the military and the police at every level of government. These are very real and well-documented threats. White supremacists and neo-Nazis in law enforcement are trained to use weapons and wield the violent power of the state and the authority it brings. Activists also argue that lynching is not a thing of the past, and police departments, the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Services are already sources of racist terror whether or not avowed whites supremacists are wearing the uniform.

    Under the bill, terrorism prevention offices would have been required to produce reports on their findings and turn them over Congress on a biannual basis. Democrats would undoubtedly have made the reports public, which could have helped expose how deeply overt white supremacy is burrowed into the uniformed services. In the age of Trump, fascist gangs and far right militias that recruit cops and soldiers — including groups like the Oath Keepers who stormed the Capitol and now face charges — are proud members of the GOP base.

    Republicans have vocally supported “anti-terrorism” efforts in the past, when Muslims or racial justice activists were the targets. The GOP’s nearly universal opposition to the latest anti-terrorism legislation, which focuses on white supremacists, is a clear signal to armed extremists and racist police that the Republican Party has their backs.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Idaho’s GOP Voters Push Back Against Trump’s Picks

    Idaho has been a hotbed of far right organizing for decades. Back in the early 1990s, it helped seed the modern militia movement, and played host to Aryan Nation organizers and other white supremacist groups looking to set up compounds in the remote mountainous reaches of the state.

    More recently, Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin appeared as a speaker at a white nationalist event, the “America First Political Action Conference.” She has also denounced the governor, fellow Republican Brad Little, as being a sellout for permitting localities to impose mask mandates during the pandemic. At one point in 2021, she used a period when the governor was traveling to put an executive order in place to ban such mandates. (Governor Little reversed that order when he returned.)

    With former President Donald Trump’s backing, the extremist McGeachin ran against Little in the GOP primaries earlier this month. She was soundly beaten. So, too, was the far right candidate running to succeed McGeachin as lieutenant governor, a fighter pilot and state representative named Priscilla Giddings, who was censored by her own colleagues last year for circulating the name of a teenager who had alleged that another former state representative had raped her.

    Giddings soundly lost to Idaho House Speaker Scott Bedke, the epitome of “establishment” in the state’s politics. In the primary for the secretary of state’s position, a moderate county clerk, Phil McGrane, beat out two opponents who denied the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s November 2020 election victory.

    Given how conservative Idaho — which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was home to some of the most radical unions and progressive politicians in the country — has become in recent decades, the successful rearguard action fought by traditional Republicans against insurgent far right rivals was, on the surface, surprising. After all, recently, in nearby rural regions with a political makeup similar to that of rural Idaho, such as California’s far northern Shasta County, militia-backed politicians have scored big successes at the ballot box.

    Since Trump won more than 63 percent of the vote in Idaho in the 2020 presidential election, it would not be surprising if candidates either running with his backing or buying into his signature grievances around stolen elections and politicians he denounces as being “Republican in name only” (RINOs) would do well in the primaries. Instead, they have been resoundingly defeated.

    It hasn’t gotten much attention in the national press, but a battle has begun in Idaho between moderate Republicans and the wreckers of the right who want to just blow it all to kingdom come. In 2022, notwithstanding the lurch rightward of much of the GOP throughout the country, the old guard in Idaho seems to have at least temporarily emerged on top.

    In part, this may be a belated recognition by Republicans in the state that their voter majorities are not as secure as, on the surface, they would appear to be. Political insiders in Idaho have, over the past few years, talked about the conflict between ideologues and pragmatists having the potential to weaken the Republican Party even in its moment of greatest ascendance.

    Like nearby Washington, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, the state’s population is growing, with increasing numbers of newcomers from more expensive, more liberal states in the west making Idaho their home. Some have even suggested that this means the state is primed to begin a gradual march away from decades of Republican governance and toward a revitalized Democratic Party — though I wouldn’t hold my breath that this will happen any time soon.

    The GOP establishment knows that, while candidates such as McGeachin are skilled at throwing red meat to their base, they are less adept at pivoting to the middle come the general election. McGeachin’s taped address to the white nationalist America First Political Action conference earlier this year may not have phased Trump, but it surely spooked mainstream Republicans in Idaho.

    In the wake of this event, the Take Back Idaho PAC, its board of directors a who’s who of senior moderate Republicans in the state, called on McGeachin to resign. She didn’t, but her gubernatorial ambitions seem to have been effectively self-sabotaged by her incendiary action.

    It’s true that, in many states, Trump’s ongoing death-grip on the GOP remains as tight as ever. Certainly, for example, his intervention was effective in pushing J.D. Vance over the finish line in the Ohio primary contest for the party’s Senate candidate. It was also a key factor in moving Mehmet Oz into the lead in the Pennsylvania primary (although as of May 26, that race, in which Oz maintains a tiny margin over Dave McCormick, remains uncalled, with a recount looking likely).

    Yet, below the radar, in many states what remains of the pre-Trumpian “establishment” within the GOP seems to be mobilizing in support of candidates who aren’t entirely in thrall to Trump, to his outrageous claims about fraudulent elections, and to his allies within the militia and white nationalist movements.

    The primaries’ loss by Trump-aligned candidates in Idaho mirrors failings by the twice-impeached ex-president’s chosen gubernatorial candidates in Nebraska, in Georgia, and, in all likelihood, in Maryland later in primary season.

    If Trump’s star begins to wane in the GOP, as, surely, it eventually will, what happened in Idaho in the spring of 2022 will likely come to be seen as a turning point. That Trump’s backing so spectacularly failed to lift McGeachin’s candidacy shows that even the grand puppet master himself is, at the end of the day, limited in his powers of manipulation.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Top Michigan GOP Governor Hopefuls Could Be Disqualified Over Forged Signatures

    Five Republican candidates for governor in Michigan could be disqualified after the state’s election board found evidence of thousands of forged signatures in the politicians’ petitions for ballot access.

    In a report issued on Monday, the Michigan Bureau of Elections found that petition circulators had submitted at least 68,000 forged signatures across 10 sets of candidates, including James Craig and Perry Johnson, the two top Republicans candidates who are hoping to challenge Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer this fall.

    Craig, a former Detroit Police Chief, had only submitted 10,192 valid signatures alongside 11,113 forged signatures, while Johnson submitted 9,393 invalid signatures with 13,800 valid ones, the bureau reported. After the invalid signatures were removed, both candidates failed to meet the 15,000 signature threshold to qualify for the ballot. The deadline to submit petitions was in late April.

    Three other Republican candidates fell short of the threshold to qualify for the ballot, with each candidate submitting over 10,000 invalid signatures, the agency found. Errors included petition sheets with multiple signatures sharing a distinctive handwriting style, consistent errors or misspellings on the same sheet, and signatures from people who aren’t registered to vote or from voters who had died months or years ago.

    The bureau’s findings will now go to the Board of State Canvassers, a bipartisan group made up of two Republicans and two Democrats, with a Republican as the chair of the group and a Democrat as vice chair. The group is scheduled to meet on Thursday.

    If the board upholds the bureau’s findings, it would result in a major shake up for the Republican primary for the governor’s seat, which is scheduled for August. With half of the 10 gubernatorial candidates disqualified, a new leading candidate could be DeVos family- and Donald Trump-backed Tudor Dixon, who has denied the results of the 2020 presidential election.

    The fact that Republican candidates would be disqualified due to election-related fraud is ironic considering that the GOP has spent years crowing about Democrats committing election fraud in the 2020 election on a broad scale — claims that have been found to be untrue in every U.S. state. In fact, it is high-ranking Republicans who have been found to have committed voter fraud to elect Trump.

    The Michigan bureau said that this amount of forged signatures in one election cycle is potentially unprecedented. “Although it is typical for staff to encounter some signatures of dubious authenticity scattered within nominating petitions, the Bureau is unaware of another election cycle in which this many circulators submitted such a substantial volume of fraudulent petition sheets consisting of invalid signatures, nor an instance in which it affected as many candidate petitions as at present,” according to the report.

    At least one candidate, Johnson, says their team is planning to challenge the bureau’s findings. The report stated that it’s unlikely that candidates were aware of the high amount of signature forgeries.

    The investigation into the signatures was started after citizens and the state Democratic Party had submitted complaints last month about the signatures.

    “The extensive evidence of fraud and forgery found throughout the nominating petitions submitted by James Craig, Tudor Dixon, and Perry Johnson indicate not only that their irresponsible campaigns are grossly negligent, but that they are not capable of being accountable leaders,” state Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes said in a statement. The challenge to Dixon was ultimately found invalid by the bureau.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Texas GOP Sets Sights on Banning Companies From Helping Workers Get Abortions

    A group of Republican state lawmakers in Texas are threatening to ban companies from doing business in the state if they help their employees obtain an abortion in a state where the procedure is legal if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

    According to the Texas Tribune, at least 14 Republican state representatives have pledged to introduce a ban that would stop companies from being able to offer their employees abortion-related health care. Pre-Roe legislation that was never repealed would allow any shareholders of a public company to go after corporate executives for criminal prosecution, according to the lawmakers.

    The threat is the latest in Texas Republicans’ quest to place a wide-ranging chilling effect on abortion and to vastly increase criminalization of the procedure. The move is yet another show of the Republican Party’s willingness to take extreme measures to restrict and legislate the population’s bodily autonomy, even if it means contradicting their reputation as the pro-business party or even risking corporations backing out of the state.

    The plan was first announced via a letter to Lyft CEO Logan Green that lawmakers sent last week, led by state Rep. Briscoe Cain. The letter was in response to an announcement from Green that Lyft would provide its Texas- and Oklahoma-based drivers compensation for legal fees if they were sued for aiding someone in getting an abortion. The company also vowed to cover travel costs for abortion seekers within the company that have a health care plan, in order to combat undue costs under “these cruel laws.”

    “The state of Texas will take swift and decisive action if you do not immediately rescind your recently announced policy to pay for the travel expenses of women who abort their unborn children,” lawmakers wrote in the letter.

    The extent of lawmakers’ overall support for the legislation is currently unclear. But with a Republican trifecta in the state, and with many extremist right-wing legislators in office, the legislation could pass and make it even harder for people to access abortion care. In emails with the Texas Tribune, Cain appeared to be confident that the bill would get support among the party.

    Other companies, including Texas-based ones, have also announced plans to provide abortion aid to their employees in recent weeks, as the country is facing a likely overturn of Roe v. Wade. Corporations offering these benefits have likely calculated that paying for abortion care is cheaper than paying for a pregnancy and parental leave; people who plan on becoming pregnant are often discriminated against by employers.

    With many major corporations — including Amazon, Citigroup, Apple, and Starbucks — announcing plans to help employees receive aid to pursue an abortion in another state, the bill could have a vastly negative effect on the state’s economy and employment.

    Even if there are economic consequences for Republicans’ far right laws, however, the party seems increasingly willing to feud with corporations in order to get their way, threatening to withdraw companies’ government support and to boycott if corporations don’t fall in line.

    GOP lawmakers in Florida recently waged a battle with Disney over the company’s extremely tepid and largely symbolic opposition of Republicans’ homophobic and transphobic “Don’t Say Gay” bill to ban teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender in classrooms. Florida Republicans passed a measure revoking Disney’s special tax status last month in response — a move that Democrats said would cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • MSM Is Empire Fanfic For Children: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    April 2022: Zelensky speaks at the Grammy Awards

    May 2022: Zelensky speaks at Cannes Film Festival

    June 2022: Zelensky hosts SNL

    July 2022: Zelensky stars as himself in action biopic co-starring The Rock

    August 2022: Zelensky releases his own breakfast cereal and clothing line

    September 2022: Celebrities are flocking to the new Hollywood pop religion known as Zelenskyyology

    ❖

    It’s often a long, awkward process learning that literally everyone in both mainstream political factions serves the oligarchic empire. For most people you have to get your hopes dashed over and over again by your heroes before learning this lesson, and even then many don’t.

    It runs counter to everything you’re taught in life that nobody in either camp is there to help you. There’s a fundamental assumption that someone among them must be decent. But if you watch carefully with enough intellectual honesty you’ll see it again and again: there’s a line that, for one justification or another, none of them ever end up crossing, and it’s the line where they would have to begin providing meaningful opposition to the oligarchic empire.

    At first it makes no sense. How can there be no good guys? Not one? Then you realize: it’s because you’re living in an oligarchic empire which only elevates people who serve its interests, whether it’s in politics, government, or media. The “opposition” between mainstream factions is an illusion cooked up by the empire and continually reinforced by its narrative managers.

    But you only see this if you’re intellectually honest enough to overcome your own cognitive biases. Otherwise you’ll keep doing mental gymnastics to justify the bullshit coming from Bernie, AOC, TYT, Tucker Carlson, Trump, MAGA pundits, wherever your biases are located on the map.

    And then when you do see it people accuse you of being an angry hater who doesn’t have anything positive to say about anyone in politics or media, when really it’s got nothing to do with being negative but with your understanding that the machine always protects the machine.

    ❖

    This proxy war isn’t about defending Ukraine, it’s about quashing a nation which has consistently resisted absorption into the US-centralized imperial blob. That agenda is best served by keeping this war going as long as possible and making it as gruelling and costly as possible for Moscow. Peace is not on the menu.

    Even if Ukraine does somehow achieve total victory in the near term, it wouldn’t mean peace, it would mean more war. If Russia is driven out the war will just change shape into a concerted effort to oust Putin and shatter the Russian Federation.

    This war could easily have been avoided with a little diplomacy and low-cost, high-reward concessions. The US had good visibility into the Kremlin’s plans, so they knew this. They chose not to because they wanted to use this war to hurt Putin.

    ❖

    A massive percentage of the people who are getting Russia and Ukraine right are going to turn into the worst people in the world once conflict shifts to China. Pretty much only the anti-imperialist left and a specific subset of antiwar libertarians will get both issues entirely correct.

    ❖

    I get asked if I think the US should do anything if China attacks Taiwan. I tell them I don’t think the US should do anything if any nation does anything. The US is the very last nation on earth that should ever do anything about any other nation.

    ❖

    We don’t talk enough about how disturbing it is that Silicon Valley megacorporations have just accepted that it’s their job to help the US win a propaganda war against Russia and everyone’s just going along with that like it’s fine and normal.

    ❖

    Man: [steals most of everyone’s wealth]

    Everyone: Hey give that back!

    Man: You’re all just jealous of my success.

    ❖

    ❖

    Can’t believe empire managers have the gall to keep babbling about “disinformation” even as they work to extradite a journalist to the United States to defend the empire’s right to lie to us about its war crimes.

    ❖

    I’ve met some cute kids in my time but nobody’s as adorable as people who think Assange can get a fair Espionage Act trial in the United States of America.

    ❖

    I want to live in this idyllic fantasy world where the US pours weapons into foreign nations because it cares deeply about their freedom and orchestrates the military encirclement of Russia and China because it wants to protect the world from tyranny.

    The mainstream news media is empire fanfic for slow kids.

    ❖

    Your average Ivy League graduate working for a prominent military industrial complex-funded think tank has less insight into what’s happening with Russia and China than your average random citizen with internet access and sincere curiosity about those nations.

    ❖

    People who’ve escaped abusive relationships with bitchy, vindictive, passive aggressive manipulators have a natural advantage when in comes to deciphering the malevolence of the US empire.

    ___________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

     

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Republicans Gave Tours of Capitol Before Attack, According to Jan. 6 Committee

    The House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol building that took place on January 6, 2021, is requesting information from a Republican legislator who previously said that he did not host a tour of the building on the day prior to the attack.

    New evidence obtained by the committee suggests that Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s (R-Georgia) and other Republicans’ claims that such a tour never took place were false.

    “Based on our review of evidence in the Select Committee’s possession, we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” the committee wrote in a letter to Loudermilk yesterday.

    The Georgia Republican hasn’t explained why he and other Republicans lied about the fact that they provided a tour that day. After the committee stated that it had evidence showing a tour had taken place, Loudermilk did acknowledge that he led a group of people around the Capitol grounds, but claimed that no one in the group — which he and other Republicans denied even existed up until yesterday — had been criminally charged for participating in the breach of the U.S. Capitol building.

    In a press release, Loudermilk claimed that the tour group consisted of a family, not members of the mob that attacked the building. “A constituent family with young children meeting with their Member of Congress in the House Office Buildings is not a suspicious group or ‘reconnaissance tour,’” he said.

    However, any tour of the Capitol on that date is considered suspect, as the building had been closed off to the public due to restrictions relating to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s also possible that the information Loudermilk shared with members of the tour group could have been shared with people who weren’t present during the tour.

    The select committee said that Loudermilk possesses information that is critical to understanding what happened in the run-up to the violent breach of the Capitol building by the mob of Trump loyalists. The committee also said that it has evidence that such tours were used to provide information about the layout of the building.

    “The foregoing information raises questions to which the Select Committee must seek answers,” the committee’s letter to Loudermilk said. “Public reporting and witness accounts indicate some individuals and groups engaged in efforts to gather information about the layout of the U.S. Capitol, as well as the House and Senate office buildings, in advance of January 6, 2021.”

    Notably, Loudermilk was among the dozens of Republicans in the House to vote against the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which saw then-candidate Joe Biden defeat former President Donald Trump by an Electoral College vote count of 306-232. In a press release following the election, Loudermilk said that he would vote against certifying now-President Biden as the winner, citing debunked claims of fraud and other dubious evidence that was unverified at the time.

    It’s possible that the evidence the committee has regarding the tours will be showcased during its upcoming public hearings, which are set to begin on June 9 and last throughout the month. The committee’s hearings will also likely include video evidence, including testimony from individuals who have met with investigators.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Anti-Terrorism Bill Targeting White Supremacists Puts House GOP on the Defensive

    In the wake of domestic “terrorism,” civil rights groups often warn that the expansion of federal law enforcement powers will likely be used to target Muslims, Black activists, leftist protesters, and other citizens.

    So, when House Democrats rushed this week to pass legislation to prevent domestic terrorism in the wake of the racist mass shooting that left 10 Black people dead in Buffalo, New York, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and other progressives added “guardrails” to the legislation to ensure federal law enforcement remains focused violent extremists and white supremacists.

    “As an activist, I know first-hand the ways in which law enforcement agencies have targeted, surveilled and prosecuted marginalized communities,” Bush said in a statement on Thursday.

    After internal negotiations among Democrats and intense partisan debate, the House narrowly passed the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022 by a 222-203 vote on Wednesday. The legislation would direct the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the FBI to open offices that analyze and monitor domestic terror threats. The new offices would be required to submit biannual reports on threats posed by white supremacists, with a focus on “white supremacist and neo-Nazi infiltration” of law enforcement agencies and the military.

    “I was proud to lead my colleagues in a successful effort to strengthen protections in this bill for protesters, narrow the domestic terrorism definition, and enhance the scope of congressional oversight to ensure that civil rights and civil liberties continue to be protected,” Bush said.

    With the exception of Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, all Republican lawmakers opposed the bill, including those who voted for similar legislation in 2020. A few months after that voice vote in September 2020, the January 6 attack on Congress by pro-Trump fanatics, militia groups and fascist gangs changed the landscape of conservative politics.

    Republicans now argue the bill would expand federal bureaucracy and encourage law enforcement to surveil right-wing activists, including the so-called “parental rights” movement that is harassing educators and attacking public schools over conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and “critical race theory.”

    Republicans also criticized the focus on investigating white supremacists in law enforcement, a serious threat that is routinely downplayed by conservatives and pro-police pundits. Researchers have warned for years that racist hate groups have infiltrated police and immigration enforcement agencies, and journalists have exposed troves of online posts on Facebook and other sites revealing that law enforcement officers across the country embrace extremist and racist ideas.

    In an interview with NPR before the vote, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said GOP votes against the bill would effectively say that “the Republican Party is not as focused on domestic terrorism as they need to be, because they think a lot of their ‘stand back and stand by guys’ may be implicated.” Hoyer was alluding to violent groups such as the Proud Boys and far right militias that are egged on by Trump and the GOP’s turn toward Christian nationalism and conspiracy theories.

    “Unfortunately, the Republican Party has become the party of unfettered white supremacist violence,” Bush said.

    Earlier versions of the bill enjoyed some bipartisan support but raised red flags for civil rights groups. In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that an earlier version would “double down on an already flawed domestic terrorism framework that has long targeted marginalized populations, ranging from Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities and Black civil rights activists to animal and environmental rights activists, as well as other groups the government views as having ‘unpopular’ or controversial beliefs.”

    Mainstream Democrats have voted to extend controversial mass surveillance powers, for example, even when the Trump administration had control of federal law enforcement agencies. Progressives and groups such as the ACLU vigorously opposed these moves, given the government’s extensive history of targeting Muslims, anti-war activists and movements for racial justice.

    In response to these concerns, Bush and other progressives worked with Democrats to narrow the definition of domestic terrorism, expand congressional oversight of the new terrorism offices to protect civil liberties, and add a provision ensuring that people cannot come under surveillance for simply attending protests.

    Bush said she previously led efforts to hold police accountable for the “surveillance and targeting” of Black protesters who rose up in response to the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020. By adding civil liberties “guardrails” and requiring federal agencies to focus on violent white supremacists, who are widely considered the top domestic terror threat, progressives likely hope to prevent Republicans from using the law to target Black and anti-fascist activists if they win the White House.

    Black activists say lawmakers cannot rely only on law enforcement to combat far right violence. Bush said white supremacist violence “is not an aberration — it is embedded in American institutions.”

    Amara Enyia, a policy and research coordinator for the Movement for Black Lives, said white supremacists are emboldened when the government fails to hold them accountable for terror, and racial justice activists appreciate legislation acknowledging that police departments across the U.S. have been “safe havens for anti-Black domestic terrorists.” However, combating anti-Black terrorism means addressing systemic racism without providing the state with more tools for incarceration and violence.

    “While this act is timely, it is only a piece of the puzzle,” Enyia said in an email. Preventing racist terror means addressing the anti-Black racism that is embedded in institutions throughout this country from the criminal legal system, healthcare system, economic system, education systems, and so many others.”

    While the domestic terrorism bill encourages federal law enforcement to focus on violent hate groups and white supremacist chatter online, it does not enhance criminal penalties or authorize new methods of surveillance.

    The Biden administration issued a statement this week in support of the legislation and said it has already working with federal law enforcement to make domestic terrorism, including hate crimes, a priority. It’s unclear whether the bill will meet the 60-vote threshold for passing in the Senate.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Nearly All House Republicans Vote Against Bill to Alleviate Baby Food Shortage

    Nearly all House Republicans voted against a bill to provide funding to address the baby food shortage and prevent future such crises despite the GOP’s complaints over the past weeks about the White House’s approach to the issue.

    The Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act, which passed the House 231 to 192 on Wednesday, would provide $28 million in emergency funds to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in order to alleviate the current shortage and prevent future shortages. All 192 “no” votes came from Republicans, with only 12 members of the party voting with Democrats to pass the bill. House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), who introduced the bill, said that the funds are necessary to address the problem.

    “This bill takes important steps to restore supply in a safe and secure manner. Additionally, with these funds, FDA will be able to help to prevent this issue from occurring again,” DeLauro said in a statement. “While we know we have more work to do to get to the bottom of serious safety concerns at an Abbott facility and the FDA’s failure to address them with any sense of urgency, this bill is the first step to help restock shelves and end this shortage.”

    The Senate will take up the legislation soon, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said, adding that “We hope no one will block it. It is such an immediate need.”

    The House also passed a bill on Wednesday that would expand the types of baby formula that can be purchased by people who benefit from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or the WIC program, which benefits low-income families. Only nine Republicans voted against this proposal, all of them extremist right-wing lawmakers.

    Republicans opposed to the FDA funding claim that it wouldn’t address the shortage and that it politicizes the issue. The bill “does nothing – I repeat, nothing – to put more formula on store shelves or hold Biden’s FDA accountable for ignoring this crisis,” Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pennsylvania) said on the House floor ahead of the vote.

    The FDA has indeed faced scrutiny over its delay in investigating a major recall that contributed to the crisis — but commissioner Robert Califf says that the FDA’s shortcomings in the crisis are largely due to a lack of funding and resources. DeLauro also emphasized the need to build up the FDA’s infrastructure in order to fix the problem. “FDA does not have the adequate inspection force to be able to do that and to do it in a timely way,” she said.

    Despite their complaints, however, Republicans have offered little other than criticism in response to the problem. They have spent the last weeks criticizing the Biden administration for the problem, waging racist and xenophobic criticisms for unverified reports of baby food being offered in facilities located at the southern border. GOP lawmakers also held a press conference to criticize Biden for the issue while offering few solutions.

    While Biden has faced legitimate criticism for not acting to address the shortage sooner, Republicans’ dismissal of steps taken by Democrats boost supply shows, perhaps, their drive to politicize the issue. Indeed, their own party may be partially at fault for the issue, as a trade deal that President Donald Trump approved in his last year of Congress imposes high tariffs and fees on baby formula imports — mechanisms that were enough to lead the U.S. to import zero tons of baby formula from Canada in 2021.

    The monopolization of the baby food market may also be to blame, as progressive lawmakers pointed out in a letter this week. Four companies control nearly 90 percent of the U.S. baby food market, with Abbott Nutrition, which recently issued a large recall of formula products, controlling about 20 percent of it.

    Supply chain issues also factor into current shortages, and Democratic lawmakers are also scrutinizing financial activities and safety violations by Abbott in helping to cause shortages.

    On Wednesday, the president invoked the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic manufacturing to increase supply. In an attempt to speed up imports of formula, Biden also directed his administration to begin using commercial aircraft to transport FDA-approved formula to the U.S. from overseas.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Pro-Life” Republicans Complain Biden Isn’t Starving Babies at the Border

    In a layered display of cruelty, Republican lawmakers and conservative talking heads are complaining that the Biden administration appears to have sent baby formula to the southern border in order to ensure that children who are being imprisoned in detention centers by the U.S. government are able to eat.

    Using the current baby formula shortage as a political bludgeon, prominent Republican lawmakers are saying that it’s “reckless” for the administration to be providing formula for asylum seekers and migrant children, claiming that President Joe Biden is putting “America last” by choosing not to withhold formula from babies at the border — language that echoes the rhetoric of former President Donald Trump.

    Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Florida) was the first to allege that the border had baby formula in stock, tweeting that a border patrol agent sent her a photo of a shelf of baby food between two shelves of snacks for older children. She also tweeted a photo that supposedly depicts a store near her home with baby food stocked on otherwise empty shelves. There is currently no proof that the photo of the baby formula was actually taken at a border facility.

    “The first photo is from this morning at the Ursula Processing Center at the U.S. border. Shelves and pallets packed with baby formula,” Cammack wrote. “The second is from a shelf right here at home. Formula is scarce. This is what America last looks like.”

    Soon after, several Republicans began tweeting and speaking out about the issue, essentially implying that Biden shouldn’t give border facilities baby formula and that he should instead allow babies at the border to starve. Babies at the border already face inhumane conditions and are sometimes separated from their parents; others are under the care of parents who have undergone traumatic conditions that have stopped their bodies from producing breast milk.

    These same Republicans claim to be “pro-life” in their crusade to end abortion and to criminalize people who get abortions, including those who are at risk of dying due to pregnancy.

    In a press conference on Thursday, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida) blamed Biden for the baby formula shortage while also perpetuating racist stigma about drug use. “In Joe Biden’s America, it seems like it’s easier to get a crack pipe in a government funded smoking kit than it is to find baby formula,” he said.

    Waltz’s statement references a long-debunked claim that the Biden administration has been giving out drug paraphernalia for free — which is false, although harm reduction groups do give out drugs and drug-related items in order to help drug users access these items in a safe environment that could help lead them to services like medical and addiction treatment.

    Meanwhile, in a joint statement with National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, “While mothers and fathers stare at empty grocery store shelves in a panic, the Biden Administration is happy to provide baby formula to illegal immigrants coming across our southern border.” Lawmakers like Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) also joined in on the racism and xenophobia.

    “Rather than having the state of Texas help mothers, Governor Abbot [sic] apparently thinks Biden should starve babies locked in Border Patrol detention centers,” wrote senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Council Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on Thursday. “And to be clear, the amount of baby formula used at the border is infinitesimal compared to the national demand.”

    Indeed, the photo that launched the deluge of conservative complaints appears to show that border officials supposedly have at least 2,016 units of baby formula. But previous similar recalls of baby formula have affected millions of units, while manufacturers rake in billions of dollars from the U.S. infant formula market each year.

    A report from last month found that about 43 percent of formulas are currently out of stock across the country as a result of recalls and supply chain problems. A Trump-era trade agreement currently limits imports of baby food from Canada, one of the U.S.’s most prominent trading partners. Republicans are on the attack about the issue, saying that the Biden administration should have had a plan to address the shortage.

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to announce increases in imports from other countries in order to address the issue, and the White House is in talks with manufacturers and grocers about increasing access to formula. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has said that the administration is exploring all options to increase production, including invoking the Defense Production Act.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Jan. 6 Committee Subpoenas 5 GOP Members of Congress — Including Kevin McCarthy

    The House select committee investigating the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building has issued five new subpoenas to Republican lawmakers in the House, including GOP leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California).

    In addition to McCarthy, the select committee is sending subpoenas to Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Mo Brooks (R-Alabama), Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) — individuals whom committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) said in a statement have “information relevant to our investigation into the attack on January 6th and the events leading up to it.”

    The subpoenas come one month ahead of the committee’s plan to hold public hearings to directly inform the American people about its findings on the Capitol attack, which was carried out by a mob of Trump loyalists to interrupt the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election.

    The subpoenas follow previous requests from the committee for the Republican lawmakers to voluntarily testify before them. “Regrettably, the individuals receiving subpoenas today have refused and we’re forced to take this step to help ensure the committee uncovers facts concerning January 6th,” Thompson said.

    The committee’s statement also details why it is seeking the testimony of each of the five Republicans.

    McCarthy was “in communication with President Trump before, during, and after the attack on January 6th,” the committee noted. In one of those discussions, the House Minority leader reportedly got Trump to admit “some culpability for the attack.” The committee will likely ask McCarthy questions regarding his promise to Republican caucus members that he would ask Trump to resign from office due to what had transpired that day.

    The statement lists a number of reasons why the committee wants the other GOP House members to testify:

    • Perry was involved in a plot to install Jeffrey Clark, a Trump loyalist within the Department of Justice (DOJ), as acting Attorney General, in order to make the department more open to promoting state investigations into Trump’s false claims of election fraud, or investigating such claims itself;
    • Jim Jordan spoke with Trump numerous times in the days surrounding the attack, including on January 6, and was involved in meetings about overturning the 2020 presidential election results;
    • Andy Biggs attended meetings regarding the planning of events on January 6, and helped coordinate plans to bring Trump loyalists to Washington D.C.; according to the committee, he was also “involved in efforts to persuade state officials that the 2020 election was stolen”;
    • And Mo Brooks spoke at the same “Stop the Steal” rally where Trump instructed his followers to go directly to the Capitol building; in his speech, Brooks encouraged the mob of Trump loyalists to “start taking down names and kicking ass.” The committee also wants to speak to Brooks regarding his discussions with Trump about rescinding the election results and reinstalling the former president as commander in chief.

    The committee was originally reluctant to issue subpoenas to the five Republicans due to time constraints, as lawmakers will likely sue to avoid complying with the subpoenas. Such litigation could take several months and extend beyond the 2022 midterms; if Republicans win the midterms, they’ll likely dissolve the select committee, rendering the subpoenas moot.

    The committee has also expressed concern that Republicans could retaliate against committee members if the GOP wins the House during the midterm races.

    These subpoenas are rare in that congressional committees don’t typically seek to compel other members of Congress to testify. But committee member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) says that the lawmakers’ testimonies could shed light on the events of January 6, as well as the plot to keep Trump in office.

    “These are people who participated in the rally, were on the phone with the president, who the president reportedly told to rescind the election and one of whom may have been pursuing pardons for those involved,” January 6 committee member Schiff said. “It’s hard to imagine witnesses with more directly relevant evidence for our committee and more important information for the American people.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “The Squad” Doesn’t Exist Outside Of Social Media

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    The US House of Representatives has voted 368-57 to spend $40 billion on a world-threatening proxy war while ordinary Americans struggle to feed themselves and their children. All 57 “no” votes were Republicans. Every member of the small faction of progressive House Democrats popularly known as “The Squad” voted yes.

    The massive proxy war bill then went to the Senate, where it was stalled with scrutiny not from progressive superstar Bernie Sanders, but from Republican Rand Paul.

    This is because the left-wing Democrat is a myth, like the good billionaire or the happy open marriage. It’s not a real thing; it’s just a pleasant fairy tale people tell themselves so they don’t have to go through the psychological turmoil of acknowledging that their entire worldview is built on lies.

    “I’ve avoided the term, but ‘Fraud Squad’ feels pretty apt,” journalist Aaron Maté tweeted of the House vote. “Challenging the military industrial complex is leftism 101. The Squad just voted to give it another $40 billion via the Ukraine proxy war. So, insofar as they claim to be a leftist contingent, how are they not a fraud?”

    The best assessment I’ve ever read about the clique of House Democrats comprised of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman comes from Columbia University’s Anthony Zenkus, who made the following observation:

    “The Squad doesn’t exist. They have never used their power as a bloc to push for votes on progressive legislation or to block regressive legislation. They are not protesting on the Capitol steps or outside the White House. They are a media creation and a brand who won’t disrupt status quo.”

    That’s it right there. “The Squad” has no real existence outside of the media, particularly social media. It’s a glorified online PR campaign for the Democratic Party, one which only came about because the party’s gerontocratic leaders are too senile to use Twitter and Instagram.

    They don’t actually use their supposed “sisterhood” to push progressive agendas as a bloc like third parties and left-wing factions often do in other countries with parliamentary systems, they just generate viral tweets and cute Instagram photos while marching right along with the machinery of a globe-spanning empire.

    And lately they can’t even do that right.

    When you’ve got braindead Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene scoring easy Twitter dunks on Squad members for pouring money into a horrific proxy war while Americans worry about paying their bills and obtaining formula for their babies, it’s safe to say that you’ve failed at your PR campaign, and that you have ceded what would normally be progressive ground to the far right.

    Normally a brash and confrontational tweet by Marjorie Taylor Greene would have AOC Incorporated instantly scrambling to come up with a retweet-friendly retort that trends on Twitter all day fueled by US partisan culture war frenzy. But Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t tweeted anything for days. Getting embarrassed by Greene is like getting your ass kicked by a quadriplegic. Getting outflanked on the left by Greene is like getting your ass kicked by a quadriplegic who is wearing a blindfold.

    “The Squad”, and other so-called progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, are not here to oppose the oligarchic empire that is crushing people to death at home and abroad. They are here to let people feel like there’s some opposition to that empire. They exist to legitimize the Democratic Party as a valid path toward change, when in reality it exists to obstruct change at all cost.

    The elites who rule our world consider the operation of the empire too important to be left to the democratic impulses of the common riff raff who inhabit the nation that empire is built around. So they give them something to play with, something that lets them feel like they’ve got some degree of control, something that lets them feel like they’re participating. That’s what the Democratic Party is. It’s the unplugged remote control you gave your kid brother so he’d stop nagging to play video games with you.

    Younger siblings know the struggle. : r/gaming

    “The Squad” exists solely to reinforce and legitimize that illusion. To let people feel like maybe their video game controller is plugged in after all. Oh hey, I think the guy just moved left when I moved the joystick maybe? This is awesome, I’m good at this game!

    The US doesn’t have political parties, it has perception management operations disguised as political parties. An elephant and a donkey fight in a puppet show and the crowd cheers for one or the other while thieves pick their pockets. And when people start to notice their wallets are missing, they’re told they can stop the pickpocketing by cheering louder for their favorite puppet.

    That’s all they are doing with the whole “progressive Democrat” song and dance. Americans will be told at the midterm elections in November and the presidential elections in 2024 that their vote matters and this is the most important election of their lives, even after they just watched nothing meaningful change when Republicans ran things and when Democrats ran things, after being told the same thing both times. It’s just a shiny sideshow distraction to keep you from realizing that your damn controller is unplugged so you won’t stand up to your oppressors in a more meaningful and confrontational way.

    __________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • In Historic Vote, Congressional Staffers Win Right to Unionize

    The House voted on Tuesday night to allow its staffers to form unions, a major win for congressional staffers who have been organizing for over a year in order to gain power over what they say are often abusive working conditions.

    The resolution, introduced by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), passed along with a slate of other measures in a party line vote of 217 to 202. Since the resolution doesn’t need the approval of the Senate to go into effect, House staffers will now be allowed to file petitions to form unions on an office-by-office basis.

    The Congressional Workers Union celebrated the win as “a historic moment.” “Tonight is a reminder of the power of collective action and what the freedom to form a union truly means – democracy not just in our elections, but in our workplaces too,” the union said in a statement. “To our fellow congressional workers: today belongs to us. Tomorrow, we continue the fight – solidarity forever and onwards!”

    Congressional staffers wishing to unionize can now go through a similar process to that of unionizing workers across the country, with legal protections against retaliation that they didn’t have before. Thirty percent of staffers in an office can file a petition for a union election with the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights in order to go through an election.

    The union will allow the workers to negotiate provisions like promotions and working conditions – but workers are limited by congressional rules in their ability to negotiate things like health care and retirement benefits. Staffers, especially those who are nonwhite, say that they face long hours and abusive bosses in Congress with no accountability while having little to no opportunity for recourse.

    Crucially, workers will also be able to negotiate wages, which staffers hope will help to combat “brain drain” from Congress and open the door for people from poor and nonwhite backgrounds to be able to take jobs in Congress. There are still limits on wage raises, however, as members of congress get a certain allowance for their office each year – an allowance that members have said before is inadequate to pay their workers better wages.

    Last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) announced that the House would, for the first time, establish a minimum pay rate for congressional staffers. While the new minimum annual pay of $45,000 will likely be a raise for many workers, it is certainly not a living wage for a single adult without children in Washington, D.C. according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology living wage calculator.

    In a speech on the House floor ahead of the vote, Levin emphasized that passing his resolution would help congressional workers to access the same protections under labor laws as other workers across the country. “The power of workers to unite and demand fair wages, better benefits and safer working conditions was central to the creation of the American middle class, and it’s central right now for working families simply trying to get by,” Levin said in a speech on the House floor ahead of the vote.

    “For months now, our workers have been organizing in the shadows because they lack the legal protections to come forward,” he continued. “The least we can do is honor and respect their effort to organize in Congress, giving them the long overdue right to find their collective voice.”

    While Republicans didn’t speak against the measure on the House floor, not a single GOP member voted to pass it. Daniel Schuman, policy director for Demand Progress, argues that Republicans have still been waging anti-worker campaigns, however, by delegitimizing government work in part to keep staffer salaries low, the New York Times reports.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Fake Political Parties In A Fake Democracy: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    I remember feeling such solidarity with Democrats who opposed Bush’s warmongering. I sincerely did not know it was just empty political posturing for them and they’d happily sign off on any war no matter how insane as long as the president doing it had a (D) next to their name.

    ❖

    All the Democratic Party’s actions make sense when you switch from thinking of it as a political party whose job is to enact the will of voters to thinking about it as a narrative control operation whose job is to prevent the local riff raff from tampering with the gears of a globe-spanning empire.

    The US doesn’t have political parties, it has narrative control ops disguised as political parties. One of them overtly promotes capitalism and imperialism by appealing to Americans’ worst impulses, the other covertly diverts healthy impulses back into capitalism and imperialism.

    An elephant and a donkey fight in a puppet show and the crowd cheers for one or the other while thieves pick their pockets. And when people start to notice their wallets are missing, they’re told they can stop the pickpocketing by cheering louder for their favorite puppet.

    People ask why the Democrats never codified Roe vs Wade into law, and the answer is, because that’s not their job. Their job is not to enact the policies you elected them to enact. Their job is not even to win elections. Their job is to keep you staring at the puppet show while the empire has its way with the world.

    ❖

    The Democratic Party is like one of those perpetual fuckups who does all the wrong things and makes all the wrong decisions and never stops blaming all their self-generated problems on everyone else.

    ❖

    Calls for civility and polite protesting always have a lot less to do with the actual protest at hand than with elites getting nervous about the commoners figuring out that their superior numbers mean they can do whatever they want to whoever they want and nobody can stop them.

    ❖

    Democracy is when you get to vote on which oligarchic muppet will ceremonially pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving but not on whether your government should greatly escalate the risk of nuclear war.

    ❖

    Still can’t believe US officials flat out admitted to the press that they’ve been circulating disinformation to the public about the Ukraine war and then like three weeks later it came out that the US government now has a Ministry of Truth for countering disinformation.

    ❖

    Yes the Department of Homeland Security’s Ministry of Truth is headed by a weird ridiculous person. Please don’t let that distract from the vastly more significant fact that the Department of Homeland Security has a Ministry of Truth.

    I already know that my plea here is in vain, because focusing on the ridiculous shitlib has a mainstream partisan slant while focusing on empire narrative management about wars and foreign enemies does not. The mainstream partisan angle wins out every time.

    ❖

    All Americans need to really deeply ingest the fact that their government is currently decoupling Covid relief funding from Ukraine proxy war funding because it wants to make sure that the proxy war funding actually passes. Really sit with what that says about everything.

    ❖

    Imagine if instead of deliberately provoking and funding a proxy war against Russia that could get everyone killed, the US had pledged to back Zelensky militarily against the Nazi factions who were threatening to kill him if he made peace with Russia like he campaigned on doing?

    ❖

    The US proxy war in Ukraine is more serious than Iraq. It’s more serious than Vietnam. The body count is lower for now, but this is a confrontation that Russia has increasingly valid reasons to see as a direct existential threat. This war truly endangers every life on earth.

    ❖

    Ah for the good old days before 2022 when “We should try to avoid nuclear war” was an uncontroversial position.

    ❖

    It’s evident now that there’s literally no cap on how much more US interventionism the western political/media class will support in Ukraine. There’s no escalation the Biden administration could propose that they wouldn’t support and call everyone a Kremlin agent who opposes it.

    ❖

    There doesn’t seem to be any conscious, thinking force driving the escalations against Russia and China. It’s more like watching a force of nature like a hurricane or a wildfire. Just microbes mindlessly responding to the stimulus of global capitalism, with no one ultimately in the driver’s seat.

    ❖

    U2 performing in Kyiv should reassure Gen Xers that as much as people bitch about Instagram influencers and TikTok stars our phony pop culture bullshit still has everyone else beat.

    ❖

    Zelensky: So what we need from you Americans is your continued military support, your continued financial support, your continued moral support, and your LIVE FROM NEW YORK IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!

    [music starts playing, we all die a little inside]

    ❖

    Elon Musk became the Libertarian Messiah because he’s their strongest argument that capitalism can save the world. A billionaire Pentagon contractor is their strongest argument that capitalism can save the world.

    ❖

    The English language has many words for insanity. Probably for the same reason people who live way up north have many words for snow.

     

    ________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • The Most American Thing That Has Ever Happened

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    We are once again witnessing history being made, folks. Today, in the Year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-two, we get the great privilege of bearing witness to the single most American thing that has ever happened.

    The Biden administration has asked top Democrats to decouple the federal government’s Covid relief spending package from its much larger bill for funding of the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, because one of those two things is too controversial and contentious to pass quickly.

    Guess which one.

    Politico reports:

    Congressional Democratic leaders reached a bipartisan accord to send $39.8 billion to Ukraine to bolster its monthslong battle against a brutal Russian assault.

     

    And that deal is now expected to move swiftly to President Joe Biden’s desk after Democrats agreed to drop another one of their top priorities — billions of dollars in pandemic aid that has stalled on the Hill. The Ukraine aid could come to the House floor for a vote as soon as Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke candidly on condition of anonymity.

    That nearly $40 billion worth of proxy war funding eclipses the paltry $10 billion in Covid relief funding that was being debated in congress, and is in fact well in excess of the already massive $33 billion sum requested by the White House.

    “President Joe Biden and top Democrats have agreed to a GOP demand to disentangle a stalled COVID-19 response package from a separate supplemental request for military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine so the latter can move more quickly,” Roll Call reports. “At the same time, House and Senate Democrats have upped the price tag on the Ukraine package by $6.8 billion above Biden’s initial $33 billion request. Democrats proposed including an additional $3.4 billion for food aid and $3.4 billion more to replace U.S. military equipment sent to Ukraine, according to a source familiar with the offer.”

    I defy you to find me anything more American than Washington decoupling relief for its own citizens from its proxy war funding because it wants to make sure the proxy war funding actually passes.

    It’s almost too perfect. You couldn’t come up with a better summation of the US empire in a nutshell if you tried. Taking money away from needful Americans because congressional opposition to helping them so was putting too much inertia on Washington’s games of nuclear brinkmanship is the single most American thing that has ever happened.

    There’s actually a real poetic beauty to it, if you look close enough. The government which runs a globe-spanning empire is dubious about the need to help its own citizenry recover from an economy-flattening pandemic, but throws its full bipartisan support behind a proxy war which threatens the life of every living organism.

    That’s it. That’s the whole entire point I wanted to make here. It’s so insane you’ll cry if you don’t laugh. And we’ll always have those little moments of laughter. Even if these psychos get us all killed.

    ____________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    Feature image via Wikimedia Commons.

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Attacks on Libraries Are Attacks on Labor

    When Emily Drabinski was elected president of the American Library Association (ALA) in mid-April, she tweeted her excitement that someone like her, a self-proclaimed Marxist lesbian, could garner enough votes to head the oldest and largest association of library workers in the United States. The ALA was founded in 1876 “to enable librarians to do their present work more easily and at less expense,” thereby incorporating the Gilded Age’s capitalist efficiency into libraries from its very beginning. Given the now near-total dominance of neoliberalism in the field — from ever-escalating austerity budgets to constant calls to manage libraries as if they were businesses — Drabinski’s election was anything but a given. It’s exciting, because only a densely organized library workforce can have the power to push back against political entities that would strip libraries, alongside other public institutions, of what remaining power we have to make our communities better places to live for everyone. Strong libraries are what most people want. According to the Pew Research Center, almost 80 percent of American adults, across the political spectrum, believe libraries help people find trustworthy and reliable information. This comes as little surprise. After all, who could be against a library?

    Well, it turns out that enough people could be. Drabinski’s election was immediately picked up by right-wing trolls who cast her as yet another “groomer” pushing gay books on young children. These attacks mirror the attacks on library workers — particularly at school and public libraries — who have been battling challenges to books about racial inequality and gender and sexual identity at rates not seen since the McCarthy era.

    We can understand these challenges as part of a white supremacist and patriarchal backlash against social movements that have produced waves of protest against police violence, a mainstreaming of prison abolition as a political possibility, the normalization of queer life in media, and a union movement seeing wins once thought impossible against corporations, such as Starbucks and Amazon. These are also attacks against labor. Librarians are trained to select books and other resources to be shared in common by groups of readers. This is the job we are paid to do. The books that are making it to target lists, such as Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give, Kyle Lukoff’s Call Me Max and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, don’t find their way to library shelves as part of the gay or Black “agenda.” They are selected and acquired by librarians who use funds to purchase books that meet the reading needs and interests of our communities. Of course, those decisions are often made collaboratively with those communities — faculty and students make book requests, parents express concerns that are then managed through existing policy and protocols. But this current spate of highly politicized and well-organized challenges is meant to circumvent all of these ordinary library processes. What we see now are concerted attacks not just on books and authors, but on the expertise of library workers.

    Nobody knows this better than rank-and-file library workers. As many of us work a second shift pushing back against these incursions, we need the support of our institutions and the public to do our work effectively. If libraries are the terrain of struggle, we are the people most directly involved in the fight. Our efforts are made all the more difficult when our institutions actively work against us. Alongside the very public efforts to ban books from library shelves, library workers face a host of other challenges that directly impact our capacity to do the work necessary to preserve these institutions. Management rolls out absurdly strict attendance policies in the wake of a union campaign in Baltimore County, Maryland. Library boards are taken over by people who then vote to slash funding and hours in Flathead County, Montana, and Niles, Illinois. Full-time librarians flee to other employment sectors or to retirement, and are replaced by part-time positions. Core library functions, including collection development and resource description, are contracted out to for-profit private companies that lock us into expensive systems we don’t control. School librarian ranks are thinned as only wealthy ZIP codes choose to afford that staff. These issues may not be as well-discussed as Breitbart calling us all “groomers,” but they are every bit as insidious, stripping our institutions of the very people best positioned to save them.

    Libraries are crucial social infrastructure. Like the post office, they are a site for the circulation of public goods such as books and films, but also tax forms, overdose-prevention medications such as Narcan, and COVID tests. Like parks, library buildings produce space for the public where anyone can use the bathroom, grab some computer time, sit down, stay warm in the cold and cool in the heat. And like all social infrastructure, libraries are under attack from an organized right that knows well that the best way to crater public institutions is to relentlessly attack them until they become unusable, leading to their abandonment by everyone except those who have no other choice. We need a strong library workforce equipped to resist the dismantling of our public institutions. Rightfully, there has been ample public outcry in response to right-wing attacks on our libraries, the books and other materials they contain, and the people who read those books. However, what worries me is that in our focus on book burnings we’ll forget to build the power of our most potent weapon: the people who work in the library.

    Drabinski’s election to the presidency of ALA — in a year that saw more votes cast than any in the past decade — represents a vote for labor organizing as a mode of both vocational and political change. Her campaign put labor front and center, making a very public argument that organizing collectively on the behalf of the public good is the most important thing library workers can be doing right now. Whether she’ll make good on this Marxist lesbian promise remains to be seen, and will require all of us who work in and use libraries to join the fight.

  • McConnell Suggests GOP May Pursue Federal Abortion Ban If “Roe” Is Overturned

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled that the GOP could pursue a federal ban on abortion if the right-wing Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and Republicans regain control of Congress in the fast-approaching midterm elections.

    “If the leaked opinion became the final opinion, legislative bodies — not only at the state level but at the federal level — certainly could legislate in that area,” McConnell (R-Ky.) told USA Today in an interview late last week, days after the publication of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling in a Mississippi abortion-ban case sparked nationwide outrage.

    “If this were the final decision, that was the point that it should be resolved one way or another in the legislative process,” McConnell said of a federal abortion ban, which polling suggests would be broadly unpopular with the U.S. electorate. “So yeah, it’s possible.”

    While the Republican leader claimed he would not be willing to weaken the legislative filibuster to push through a federal abortion ban, the GOP’s 2017 decision to nuke the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees paved the way for the confirmation of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — each of whom is reportedly preparing to vote with Alito to end Roe.

    “No one should be surprised at what the leak of Alito’s opinion taking away abortion rights revealed. There is a plan, and this is just one part of it,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Saturday. “This is why Mitch McConnell refused to let the Senate consider Judge Merrick Garland.”

    “This is why they eliminated the filibuster for Gorsuch,” Whitehouse added. “This is why they pressured the FBI to tank the Kavanaugh investigation. This is why they broke the ‘Garland rule’ to stuff Barrett on the court mid-election. This is why $580 million was spent to capture the court. This is why the Federalist Society was the turnstile for Supreme Court nominees.”

    The Supreme Court is expected to hand down its final ruling in the case, which is centered on a sweeping abortion ban in Mississippi, in late June or early July.

    McConnell’s remarks to USA Today came as Senate Democrats geared up for a possible Wednesday vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation that would codify into federal law the right to abortion care free from medically unnecessary restrictions.

    The bill is certain to fail if Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) remains opposed to the measure and Democrats refuse to eliminate or reform the legislative filibuster.

    The last time Republicans held the Senate, they tried and failed to pass Trump-backed legislation that would have banned abortion at the federal level after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Manchin joined most Senate Republicans in supporting the 2018 proposal, which garnered 51 votes—not enough to overcome the 60-vote filibuster.

    The Washington Post reported last week that “leading anti-abortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.”

    “A group of Republican senators has discussed at multiple meetings the possibility of banning abortion at around six weeks, said Sen. James Lankford (Okla.), who was in attendance and said he would support the legislation,” the Post noted. “Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) will introduce the legislation in the Senate, according to an antiabortion advocate with knowledge of the discussions.”

    Though such a bill would go nowhere as long as Democrats control the presidency, it would lay the groundwork for a sweeping ban as the GOP seeks to win back the White House in 2024.

    With abortion rights under grave threat, people took to the streets in major U.S. cities on Saturday to voice opposition to Alito’s draft opinion and GOP efforts to roll back reproductive freedoms at the national level and in states across the country. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 26 U.S. states are “certain or likely to move quickly to ban abortion” if the Supreme Court overturns Roe.

    On Saturday evening, abortion rights advocates held protests outside the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Kavanaugh:

    Demonstrators are also expected to rally in support of reproductive rights at the U.S. Supreme Court on Sunday.

    “Mother’s Day is for us and what we deserve to take care of our families, including the right to have an abortion,” tweeted Shaunna Thomas, the co-founder of UltraViolet. “See you there.”

  • Companies Like Amazon and CVS Have Donated Millions to Anti-Abortion Politicians

    Despite claiming to support abortion and reproductive freedom, corporations are donating millions of dollars to conservative groups that oppose abortion and support bans on the medical procedure.

    As reported by Popular Information, in the last six years, corporations like Amazon, Walgreens and Google have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to anti-abortion political committees like the Republican Party’s leadership funds — the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) and the Republican Governors Asociation (RGA). Other corporations like Coca-Cola, CVS and Walmart have each given over a million dollars to such groups since 2016.

    Together, Amazon, AT&T, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, CVS, General Motors, Google, T-Mobile, Walgreens, Walmart, Wells Fargo and Verizon have spent at least $15.2 million to support anti-abortion politicians, according to publicly available political spending disclosures. This total doesn’t include donations made through private corporate lobbyists or support for right-wing nonprofits like the Heritage Foundation, as those donations don’t need to be disclosed under current campaign finance laws.

    As the Supreme Court hinted it will soon do this week, right-wingers have been working to overturn Roe v. Wade for decades, and these companies have thus contributed to the erosion of reproductive rights.

    For instance, in a 2017 report on “Women in the Economy,” Citigroup said that women are being held back by things like “restrictions on their reproductive rights,” and that the company wants to ensure “women are empowered to be free and equal participants in a robust, sustainable, and inclusive global economy.” As Popular Information finds, however, Citigroup has donated $685,000 to anti-abortion political groups since 2016.

    AT&T also claims to support “gender equity and the empowerment of women,” according to its 2020 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion report, but has given at least $1.4 million to groups that oppose abortion. The company has also become one of the largest donors to conservative groups – it is one of the top donors to politicians who supported Texas’s abortion ban and is also the primary funder for far-right outlet One America News.

    It’s important to recognize that, though people other than women can become pregnant, conservative anti-abortionists often don’t recognize this fact — and neither do many mainstream advocates of abortion rights. Thus, many corporations use trans-exclusive language to refer to abortion and reproductive rights as “women’s rights” even as they claim to be progressive. (In fact, attacks on body autonomy — such as bans on gender-affirming care or abortions — go hand-in-hand, often happening simultaneously.) At the same time, trans men and nonbinary people who can get pregnant also face gender-based discrimination that’s rooted in misogyny, patriarchy and heteropatriarchy at work and in their day-to-day lives.

    Just as the news of the Supreme Court’s draft decision on overturning Roe was breaking this week, Amazon announced that it will be giving its non-contract workers reimbursements of up to $4,000 a year for travel expenses related to an abortion. Many of the company’s poorest and most vulnerable workers would be excluded from the benefit, but the company gained positive headlines from the announcement nonetheless.

    Despite this new benefit, the company has donated to groups that are actively making it harder for its employees to get an abortion. The company has given nearly $1 million to anti-abortion groups, including nearly $780,000 to the RGA — a vital group as governors, with their veto power, can sometimes be the only person standing between a Republican-controlled legislature and the public’s reproductive rights.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Blasts Supreme Court Over “Roe” Draft Opinion Dismantling Abortion Rights

    While discussing economic issues in prepared remarks with reporters at the White House on Wednesday, President Joe Biden delved into other subject matters, including the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that was leaked earlier this week.

    That draft opinion, written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, stated that the Court was set to overturn abortion protections recognized in the 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade. Although such draft rulings do not necessarily reflect what the Court will eventually rule on any given issue, according to sources speaking with Politico, as of this week, five of the Court’s conservative bloc of justices (composing a majority of the Court overall) were prepared to back the ruling.

    The official ruling of the Court is set to be released sometime in the next month or so.

    Biden blasted that finding, expressing concern that other rights recognized by the Supreme Court over the past several decades could also be at risk of being dismantled, resulting in discrimination against several groups of people.

    “This is about a lot more than abortion,” Biden said.

    He added:

    What happens if you have states change the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children. Is that legit under the way the decision is written?

    Biden’s concerns have been echoed by other lawmakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), who earlier this week also said LGBTQ protections — including marriage equality, an issue the Supreme Court decided on just seven years ago — could be at risk of being undone.

    “As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage + civil rights,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Tuesday.

    In addition to his commentaries on the economy and the Supreme Court, Biden also took aim at the Republican Party, disparaging them for continuing to allow former President Donald Trump to have a hold on them and determining the direction of the party.

    “This MAGA crowd” — referencing Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” — “is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history, in recent American history,” Biden said.

    The president mentioned social and economic agendas from GOP lawmakers, including Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Florida) 11-point plan that includes tax increases on Americans earning low incomes.

    “Senator Rick Scott of Florida … released what he calls the ultra-MAGA agenda. It’s a MAGA agenda all right,” Biden derisively said. “Let me tell you about this ultra-MAGA agenda. It’s extreme, as most MAGA things are.”

    He went on, stating that Republicans today were a “different breed of cat” from those he’s worked with in his nearly 50-year career in Washington, D.C.

    “They’re not like what I served with for so many years,” the president said. “And the people who know better are afraid to act correctly, because they know they’ll be primaried.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Oklahoma Republicans Pass Texas-Style 6-Week Abortion Ban

    The Republican-controlled Oklahoma state legislature passed a bill on Thursday that is modeled after the six-week abortion ban that Texas implemented last fall, which allows private residents to sue abortion providers in order to enforce the ban.

    Senate Bill 1503 would ban all abortions in Oklahoma after six weeks of pregnancy, so early on in the pregnancy that often people don’t even know yet that they’re pregnant.

    Like Texas’s six-week abortion ban, the bill places the onus of enforcement on individuals rather than the state. In other words, the state wouldn’t force abortion providers to abide by the new rules — instead, it would incentivize private residents to enforce the rules by allowing them to sue medical providers or any other individual who helps someone get an abortion. If the bill is signed into law, residents would be able to sue such persons for $10,000 for every abortion performed.

    Although the enforcement method of the Texas law has been contested, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the law to stay in place while lower courts consider its legality.

    Notably, the Oklahoma bill also restricts the defenses a person can make if they are being sued by another individual that claims they’re in violation of the law — a person cannot state in their defense, for example, a belief that the abortion ban is unconstitutional.

    According to state Rep. Cyndi Munson (D), the Oklahoma bill was passed without a “questions and answers” or even a debate on the measure.

    Proponents of the bill have referred to it as the “Oklahoma Heartbeat Act,” claiming that six weeks into pregnancy is when the fetal “heartbeat” becomes detectable. But medical experts say that such characterizations of what’s happening to the embryo at that stage of pregnancy are wrong.

    “What we’re really detecting is a grouping of cells that are initiating some electrical activity. In no way is this detecting a functional cardiovascular system or a functional heart,” said Dr. Jennifer Kerns, an OB-GYN and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, in an interview with NPR last fall.

    The bill now goes to the desk of Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has pledged to sign all anti-abortion bills that are sent his way.

    Earlier this month, Stitt signed a bill into law that would make the provision of abortion services at any stage a felony. But that law won’t go into effect right away, and will likely face fierce legal challenges once it does, unless the U.S. Supreme Court dismantles or curtails abortion rights protections that were established in the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade. The bill banning abortion after six weeks, however, will go into effect immediately after Stitt signs it.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ohio Republicans’ Bill Forces Doctors to Offer Disproven Drugs to Treat COVID

    Republican lawmakers in Ohio want to force doctors in the state to offer disproven drug “treatments” for COVID-19 to their patients, and to punish them financially if they refuse to do so.

    House Bill 631, the COVID-19 Health Care Professional-Patient Relationship Protection Act, is sponsored by state Rep. Kris Jordan (R) and co-sponsored by state Rep. Ron Ferguson (R). The bill would require local boards of health to “promote and increase distribution” of four drugs to treat coronavirus — including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, two drugs that it has been definitively proven do not work against the virus.

    “This is securing that right for an individual to make, with consultation with their health care provider, the best decision for their health care plan,” Ferguson said of the bill. “More options, better health care. That’s what people are always looking for in the healthcare space.”

    The bill comes after a Cincinnati hospital refused to treat a patient with ivermectin when he and his family requested it. When his wife sued following his death, the judge sided with the hospital, finding that the drug would have provided no value in helping save the man’s life.

    According to the language of the bill, Ohio doctors would be required to promote the drugs as being “effective or deemed beneficial” for patients to use in the treatment of coronavirus. Doctors would also be forbidden from suppressing the promotion of the drugs, or limiting their patients’ access to them, and could be punished through lawsuits for doing so.

    Numerous studies have debunked claims that either hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, or ivermectin, a deworming medication typically used on farm animals, have any benefit in treating COVID-19.

    A National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinical trial in 2020 found “no clinical benefit” to using hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus, for example. And a study examining the use of ivermectin that was published late last month demonstrated that the drug also had no effect in treating COVID-19.

    In spite of these drugs having no positive effect in the treatment against or prevention of coronavirus, they have remained popular among far right groups who still refuse to get vaccinated, thanks in large part to disinformation from former President Donald Trump.

    Trump pushed for the use of hydroxychloroquine as a method of treatment early in the pandemic. When studies began pointing out that use of the drug was ineffective for COVID treatment, Trump dismissed their findings by calling them “Trump enemy” statements.

    Trump took hydroxychloroquine, reportedly as a preventative against coronavirus, up to at least May of 2020. When he contracted coronavirus in the fall of that year, his treatment regimen did not include the use of the drug, nor of any other disproven method.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump Conspiracy Theorists Made 8 Attempts to Breach Voting Systems in 5 States

    Republicans made eight attempts to breach voting systems in five states in search of evidence of a debunked conspiracy theory that voting machines flipped votes from former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden, according to a Reuters investigation.

    Trump allies targeted voting systems in Colorado, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. At least five of the breaches are under investigation by federal or local law enforcement. Four of the breaches forced officials to decertify or replace voting equipment due to security concerns. All of the attempts involved Republican officials or party activists who have pushed false claims about Trump’s election loss.

    Four voting law experts told Reuters that the extent of the breaches is “unprecedented in modern U.S. elections.”

    “You need to make sure that those ballots are maintained under strict chain of custody at all times,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, told the outlet. “It’s destroying voter confidence in the United States.”

    Surveillance video obtained by Reuters shows Republican Elbert County, Colo. Clerk Dallas Schroeder attempting to copy hard drives containing sensitive voting data. He later testified that he received instructions from a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist to make a “forensic image of everything on the election server.”

    Schroeder is under investigation for potentially violating election laws by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who also sued him to try to force him to return the data. Schroeder is refusing to comply with the state and identify a lawyer who took the hard drives. His other attorney works with an activist backed by conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow.

    Lindell is funding numerous groups involved in the years-long effort to try to find evidence of their bogus conspiracy theory. Lindell told Reuters he hired four members of the U.S. Integrity Plan (USEIP), a pro-Trump group that allegedly sent armed members door-to-door to investigate fraud claims in Colorado. He claimed he has spent about $30 million in total and hired 70 people in the failed effort.

    “We’ve got to get rid of the machines!” Lindell told the outlet. “We need to melt them down and use them for prison bars and put everyone in prison that was involved with them.”

    The breaches appear to have been inspired by the false belief that voting system upgrades or maintenance required by the state would delete evidence of their fraud conspiracy theory. Election officials told Reuters that such updates have no impact on the preservation of past data.

    But such breaches could violate voter privacy and underscore growing concerns of potential “insider threats,” officials told the outlet. Griswold’s office told Reuters that the data accessed by Schroeder likely included ballot images that showed how people cast their ballots.

    In another Colorado incident, Lindell ally Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk, allowed an unauthorized person to copy a “forensic image” of a voting system hard drive before sensitive passwords to access the voting system were published on right-wing conspiracy sites. Peters, who was indicted on 10 criminal counts over the breach, baselessly accused the voting machine company Dominion and Griswold of a conspiracy to destroy evidence of election-rigging.

    Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell repeatedly pushed baseless claims that Dominion, in an extensive conspiracy involving China, billionaire financier George Soros, and late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, rigged the election against Trump. Dominion and Smartmatic, another voting equipment company that got dragged into the conspiracy theory despite having no ties to Dominion, have filed multi-billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against Giuliani, Powell and Lindell, among others.

    Dominion told Reuters that the conspiracy theories “have been repeatedly debunked, including by bipartisan government officials.”

    It’s unclear whether any data was accessed in another apparent breach in Michigan’s Adams Township, where the key component of a ballot counting machine went missing for four days last fall before it was found at the office of a clerk who posted QAnon memes on social media. The clerk, Stephanie Scott, was stripped of her duties in October by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson after refusing to perform legally-required maintenance. She later sued Benson in February, alleging that she was unconstitutionally punished.

    In another incident in Cross Village, Michigan, a woman named Tera Jackson impersonated an official from the non-existent “Election Integrity Commission” to gain access to the town’s ballot-counting machine last January and tried to clone it. She ultimately pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge in exchange for prosecutors dropping charges of fraud and illegal access. Three men that she worked with, including a former law enforcement officer who showed up with a bulletproof vest and a gun, gained access to a vote tabulator but don’t appear to have been able to clone the drive. The men were not charged because prosecutors said they believed they were misled by Jackson.

    The most recent breach was in March in North Carolina, where Surrey County GOP Chair William Keith Senter threatened to have elections director Michella Huff fired if she did not give him access to a vote-counting machine. Senter and conspiracy theorist Douglas Frank met Huff in March to claim that a “chip” inside the machine was used to rig the election. The state election board reported the threats against Huff to law enforcement.

    “I’m very concerned for the voters,” Huff told Reuters. “Democracy starts here. It starts here in our office.”

    After the Colorado breaches, Lindell hired four USEIP members to head Cause for America, a right-wing network of election conspiracists. The group has continued to search for evidence of fraud despite coming up empty since 2020.

    “I have over probably 50 to 70 people that I pay, that all they’re doing is on this election,” Lindell told Reuters. “I guess Cause of America would be a little piece of that.”

    Griswold accused the election conspiracists of seeking to suppress opposing voters.

    “These threats are being fueled by extreme elected officials and political insiders who are spreading the Big Lie,” she told Reuters, “to further suppress the vote, destabilize American elections, and undermine voter confidence.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • GOP Senators Unveil Bill to Bar Biden From Canceling Student Debt

    Just after news broke of President Joe Biden’s plan to fulfill his campaign promise to cancel student debt, Republicans introduced a bill that would explicitly bar him from doing so, despite evidence that the current towering burden of student debt constitutes a major economic crisis.

    GOP Senators Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), John Thune (South Dakota), Richard Burr (North Carolina), and two others unveiled a measure that would bar the president from canceling student debt because of a national emergency, and limit the president’s ability to extend a student debt payment pause.

    Their proposal, which is not likely to pass Congress, would also cap any future payment pauses for borrowers with a salary over four times the federal poverty line — or a mere $54,360 for single adults with no children. This is less than the average starting salary for college graduates from the class of 2020, which was $55,260.

    The bill comes just after a potential breakthrough on the issue of student debt. Biden told House lawmakers in a meeting on Tuesday that he’s considering canceling a substantial amount of student debt after Democrats and debt activists have begged him for months to do so.

    Roughly 43 million borrowers owe $1.9 trillion in student debt, according to the Student Debt Crisis Center. Debtors are often crushed by the weight of the debt, both financially and mentally; some owe triple or quadruple their original loan amount, and are burdened by the feeling or reality that the debt will never be repaid.

    Debtors also face “hidden” costs due to their loans, with higher interest rates on things like home and car loans and credit cards. Canceling student debt could result in wide-reaching positive effects on the economy, boosting borrowers’ ability to buy a home or start a business.

    Meanwhile, the student loan payment pause, which was originally put into effect by Donald Trump during the onset of the pandemic, has saved borrowers about $200 billion over the course of two years.

    The Republicans argue that student loan cancellation and the payment freeze are a “handout” to wealthy college graduates and those who may have taken on loans for them, parroting a right-wing argument that the people who would benefit most from loan forgiveness are already wealthy and don’t need the money.

    These arguments are based on false premises, however. People who take on student loans typically come from families without generational wealth that could cover the cost of tuition in the first place, and research has found that student loan forgiveness is progressive, meaning that it would provide the biggest benefits to the least wealthy debtors. The higher the loan amount that is canceled, the more progressive the benefit, the Roosevelt Institute found last year.

    The report also found that cancellation would be crucial to closing the racial wealth gap, providing aid to Black and Latinx borrowers who suffer the most from student loan debt.

    In their press release on the bill, the senators also say that the payment pause costs taxpayers $5 billion a month, citing Education Department data that shows $5 billion a month as the amount that borrowers save as a result of the pause extension. However, that’s an oversimplification of how federal student loans work and a flattening of the reason that the government gives student loans to begin with.

    It also suggests that student loans should be a method of raising money for the government, a notion that even Trump has said is needlessly cruel. “That’s probably one of the only things the government shouldn’t make money off — I think it’s terrible that one of the only profit centers we have is student loans,” Trump said in 2015.

    Student loans are given out with the purpose of making it easier for students to afford college tuition, which is rising at astounding rates. It’s in the government’s best interest to make higher education more accessible, as this can help strengthen democratic participation in society and stave off fascism.

    To give loans, the government borrows money, adding to the deficit temporarily until the loans are paid back; the government sometimes collects a very limited profit from the loans due to interest. While it’s true that student loan cancellation may affect the deficit, a 2018 study by economic scholars found that the benefits of cancellation would be vast — not only for borrowers, but for the entire economy.

    According to the study, a one-time mass cancellation of student debt would provide an immediate boost to the GDP and would generate up to $1.1 trillion in 2016 dollars in GDP over a decade. The policy would create jobs, reduce unemployment, and have a stimulus effect that would offset some of the cost of the program, with only a moderate negative effect on the deficit and inflation.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Democrats and Republicans Agree: Trump’s Potential Return to Twitter Is No Good

    Insiders within both of the two major U.S. political parties have expressed concern that billionaire Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter could potentially result in former President Donald Trump being allowed back on the platform.

    Trump was banned from the site more than a year ago for spewing incendiary rhetoric regarding the attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of his loyalists on January 6, 2021. Although Musk has not yet stated whether he would lift Trump’s ban from the site, comments he made after his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on Monday seem to indicate that he will move in that direction.

    Musk has described himself as an “absolutist” of free speech principles, despite having a documented history of censoring his workers for expressing pro-union sentiments. He recently said in a statement that “Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

    Both Democrats and Republicans are worried that Musk’s purchase of the site could mean Trump’s return. According to reporting from CNBC, officials in the Biden White House are “closely watching the deal,” and fear that Trump’s potential Twitter comeback might result in an increase in disinformation, as the former president frequently used the platform to promote lies back when he was allowed on the site.

    “Trump will use Twitter to do far more damage to regain power in 2022 and 2024 while Elon Musk has given no indication that he will do anything to stop him,” Mary Anne Marsh, a veteran Democratic strategist, said to CNBC.

    Republicans appear to be similarly concerned about the possibility of Trump returning to Twitter. According to a report from Politico, “no one is more petrified” about the potential return of the former president to the platform “than members of Trump’s own party.”

    In a series of calls Politico reporters made on Monday night to Republican insiders, not a single one spoke positively about the possibility that Trump would be allowed to return to the platform.”Every single one of them told us that they hoped the former president stays the hell away from Twitter,” the news agency reported.

    Republican strategists are worried that if Trump returned to the site, it could hurt the GOP’s chances to flip control of either house of Congress in this year’s midterm races. While most prognosticators have predicted that Republicans will win, some polls have indicated that the race for Congress will be tight, not the slam dunk that some Republicans have said it will be.

    Allowing Trump to resume his erratic tweeting would not work to their advantage, Republicans have said.

    “If I’m a Democrat, I’d pray that Elon Musk puts Trump right back on Twitter,” one GOP House leadership aide told Politico. A Trump return to the site is “enough to create headaches — and it’s enough to probably cost us a couple seats,” that aide added.

    Trump has claimed that he won’t return to Twitter, as he is instead focused on promoting his own social media site, Truth Social. “I want everybody to come over to TRUTH — conservatives, liberals, whatever,” Trump said in a Fox News interview this week.

    But because Trump’s site has failed miserably since its opening earlier this year — and because he filed a lawsuit against Twitter last fall seeking to have his account reinstated — most are guessing Trump will attempt to return to Twitter at some point.

    Trump “loved his Twitter. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” an adviser close to Trump said.

    “The lure of Twitter … may prove as irresistible for Trump,” GOP strategist Doug Heye said to Politico, adding that there’s “no faster way for Trump to be front and center [in] the political conversation than rejoining Twitter, and he knows that.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ron DeSantis Joins Betsy DeVos in Push to Privatize Michigan Public Schools

    Donald Trump may not pay his debts, but the man vying to replace him as standard-bearer for Republican grievance politics apparently does.

    Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has received close to $500,000 in campaign contributions from the family of Betsy DeVos over the last four years, returned the favor, appearing on a “tele-townhall” with Trump’s former education secretary to promote her campaign to privatize Michigan’s public schools.

    Just days after DeSantis made national headlines by seeking to punish the Walt Disney Company for opposing his “Don’t Say Gay” law and rejecting dozens of K-12 textbooks on fictitious ideological grounds, DeVos opened their conversation by telling viewers, “With your signature on the Let Michigan Kids Learn petition, we can bring some of that Florida success here to Michigan.”

    Since late last year, DeVos has been pushing a petition drive for a ballot initiative, “Let MI Kids Learn,” which critics have described as a thinly-veiled effort to enact a school voucher system in Michigan through “an end-run around the normal legislative process,” as State Sen. Erika Geiss, chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus, told Salon earlier this month.

    Technically speaking, Let MI Kids Learn would establish hefty tax credits for companies and individuals who donate to a pass-through organization that provides scholarships for children to support “school choice,” thus circumventing Michigan’s strict constitutional prohibition on state funding of private schools. Also technically speaking, the Let MI Kids Learn campaign is gathering signatures to place the proposal on the ballot in Michigan this November. In fact, it’s unlikely that will ever happen.

    Democrats say that this petition is just the latest in a series of school voucher proposals that Michigan voters have overwhelmingly rejected — including a failed 2000 voucher push funded with about $5 million from the DeVos family — and point out that if enough signatures are gathered, neither the voters nor Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will even get the chance to weigh in.

    That’s because Let MI Kids Learn is being advanced by Republicans specifically to exploit a peculiar loophole in Michigan law that allows citizen petitions that meet a certain threshold of signatures to go directly before the state legislature, which can then pass them with a simple majority that is not subject to the governor’s veto. As Salon reported this April, Michigan Republicans are currently at work on signature drives for four such “ballot initiatives” — including two related to DeVos’ voucher scheme, another to restrict the state’s public health powers and one more to curtail voting rights — that they hope to pass through this unusual process.

    This spring, a reported shortfall in signatures for the initiatives led DeVos’ Let MI Kids Learn team to make an unusual alliance with far-right activists to try to meet the petition quota. Now it appears that DeVos is hoping that DeSantis’ star power might help boost her campaign.

    At the Wednesday night tele-townhall event, DeSantis and DeVos spoke alongside Amy Hawkins, a staffer at Let MI Kids Learn and also a publicist whose consulting firm, Generation Strategies, has worked with numerous right-wing groups, from advocacy organizations like Citizens for Traditional Values to the influential conservative Hillsdale College to charismatic Christian right leaders like Lance Wallnau and Lou Engle. In 2020, Hawkins launched a now-defunct website, VictimsofWhitmer.com, to support the Unlock Michigan campaign, which sought to strip the governor of her ability to issue emergency public health rules. This year, a follow-up campaign, Unlock Michigan 2, is also using the petition process in hopes of limiting the ability of other state bodies to address public health crises as well.

    On the call, DeSantis and DeVos suggested that conservatives have a unique window to radically alter public education in America.

    “I think there’s never been a better time to raise these issues with the general public because what you saw over the last two years is millions and millions of students throughout the United States denied opportunity to even go to school in person at all,” DeSantis said. “And that was almost entirely because of the power wielded by these entrenched special interest groups like the teachers union.”

    The Sunshine State governor went on to say that these “special interests” “should not be in charge of our kids’ education,” and that parents should “[make] sure that power is taken away from those who have proven that they cannot be trusted to wield it.”

    DeVos agreed, calling this moment “an absolutely prime and perfect time” to push for changes in education. “I’ve often cited Florida as a really prime example of continuing to push forward to give families more and more power and more and more choices over their kids’ education and futures,” she said. “And we can emulate what Florida has done to a large extent and go even further by making sure the Let Michigan Kids Learn initiative is successful.”

    DeVos has sought for years to find ways to redirect taxpayer money from public schools to private and religious institutions. In 2001, she famously called on fellow wealthy Christian activists to embrace “school choice” as a more efficient means of advancing “God’s kingdom” than simply funding private Christian schools. In Michigan, she used her influence to advocate for the expansion of for-profit charter schools in Detroit, which resulted in increased segregation and massive corruption, as millions of dollars were channeled to charters that never opened.

    In early 2020, as Trump’s secretary of education, DeVos directed COVID-19 relief funding toward private schools. After a 2020 Supreme Court decision, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which mandated that states that allow public funding of private schools must also include religious schools in those programs, she urged other states to quickly pass more “school choice” to allow more students “the freedom to pursue faith-based education.”

    Although DeVos and her supporters claim that Let MI Kids Learn would give parents $8,000 per child to spend on education as they see fit — from buying laptops to paying for tutoring or school tuition — in reality, only families with kids in private schools would see anything close to that level of support. While private school families might be eligible for $7,800 in funding, those with children in public schools could only receive a maximum benefit of $500. Democrats also estimate that, over five years, Let MI Kids Learn would drain $1 billion from the state’s pools of public school funding.

    Sam Inglot, deputy director of the liberal advocacy group Progress Michigan, part of a counter-campaign called “For MI Kids, For Our Schools,” described the townhall conversation as whitewashing the catastrophic effect DeVos’ plan would have on both public school and general public services budgets in the state.

    “This has been DeVos’ MO for decades,” said Inglot. “And now it’s happening alongside a lot of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and attacks on honesty in education and accurately teaching the history of America.”

    Not only is this “backdoor voucher scheme” insidious, Inglot continued, but so is the process by which DeVos, and the Michigan legislators she has funded for years, are pushing the initiative. “This is legislation that went through the normal checks and balances of government and was vetoed,” he said. “Essentially what they’re trying to do is buy a piece of legislation.” They are also, he said, trying to circumvent the will of the public. “If the organizers [of Let MI Kids Learn] have their way, the people of Michigan will never have a chance to vote on this.”

    Over the last year, many Republican politicians and advocates have grown surprisingly forthcoming about the long-term goals of the educational culture wars they promote. In 2021, Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran declared that Republicans would win the political “war” in education, while sketching out a plan to lure so many students out of public schools that the damage to the system would be permanent. This month, Chris Rufo, the Manhattan Institute fellow who turned “critical race theory” into an amazingly effective political scapegoat, bluntly explained that “to get universal school choice you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

    State Sen. Dayna Polehanki, the Democratic minority vice-chair of Michigan’s Senate Education and Career Readiness Committee, said that after the difficult time many parents had during the pandemic, “DeVos sees an opportunity here… She smells blood in the water.”

    Polehanki also warned that the Let MI Kids Learn initiative is being pushed by paid petition circulators who aren’t legally required to accurately describe the measures they’re promoting. Some have lied, claiming the measure would “help special-ed kids in Michigan.”

    “That’s absolutely legal and it’s absolutely what they might do,” she continued. “But what you’re really signing is one of a long line of attempts by Betsy DeVos and her GOP mega-donors to flout the Michigan Constitution.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Don’t Say Gay” Bills Aren’t New. Some States Have Had Them for Decades.

    Earlier this month, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law House Bill 322, colloquially dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, restricting public school teachers from discussing LGBTQ+ history or people in public elementary schools.

    It stood out for two reasons: Alabama was just the second state to pass such a law in 21 years, after Florida passed a similar measure in March. But more significantly, Ivey had just signed a repeal of a similar law the previous year.

    At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year, which have made waves around the country. But in a handful of states, versions of the legislation have existed for decades.

    Since 1992, Alabama’s education code stipulated that teachers emphasize “in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state.”

    Ivey did not issue public statements when she signed the repeal, which was first passed by the legislature, but her signature seemed in step with the times. A year ago, “Don’t Say Gay” laws that had passed in the 1980s were considered archaic, LGBTQ+ advocates said, with many of them repealed over the years. After marriage equality became the law of the land in 2015, seven states passed laws mandating that curriculums include LGBTQ+ history and life.

    Republican lawmakers say the new spate of curriculum bills allow parents to decide what their children learn about sexuality at a young age; Florida’s new law bars discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity until after third grade, at which point parents must be notified if their kids might learn about LGBTQ+ issues. But this year, as 15 states now have anti-trans sports bans on the books, LGBTQ+ advocates say Republican lawmakers are aiming to one-up each other for political gain.

    “Republicans have to put a conservative point on the board, notch their anti-LGBT credentials, and say, ‘Look, I really campaigned on this.’ Or, ‘I really went to the mat for this anti-LGBT policy,’” said Adam Polaski, communications director for the Campaign for Southern Equality. “Unfortunately, opponents of LGBT equality have often taken their fight to the schools.”

    Texas lawmakers have expressed interest in pursuing a “Don’t Say Gay” bill like Florida’s and Alabama’s, even though the state has had a similar regulation on the books since 1991. In Texas, the state code still stipulates that educational materials for people under the age of 18 “state that homosexual conduct is not an acceptable lifestyle and is a criminal offense.”

    According to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), which tracks LGBTQ+ policy throughout the country, 19 percent of the country lives in a state with an LGBTQ+ curriculum ban. Most are in states with laws that predate Florida’s and Alabama’s. Still, most Americans are largely unaware of the fact that Florida is not the first state to pass such a law, advocates said.

    Oklahoma passed the nation’s first bill banning teachers from talking about homosexuality in an AIDS sex ed measure in April 1987, and Louisiana followed suit that July. South Carolina passed a “Don’t Say Gay” bill in 1988. Texas and Arizona passed their own in 1991. In total, nine states passed laws banning schools from teaching about “homosexuality” from 1987 to 2001, when Utah adopted its version.

    Many of those were written into sex ed codes. For example, Louisiana still has a law on the books that states, “No sex education course offered in the public schools of the state shall utilize any sexually explicit materials depicting male or female homosexual activity.”

    However, that is not the case in every state, said Logan Casey, senior policy researcher and adviser for the MAP.

    “Many of these laws are written intentionally vaguely so that they can be applied even more broadly than the explicit letter of the law might suggest,” Casey said of the laws written up until 2001.

    Mississippi sex ed law requires that teachers simply teach current state law related to sexual conduct and lists “homosexuality” alongside sensitive topics such as “forcible rape, statutory rape, paternity establishment” and “child support.” Mississippi state law does not protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination.

    Casey said the bills are relics of the AIDS crisis, when panic about homosexuality dictated school curriculum. It also dates back to the infamous “Save Our Children” campaign led by activist Anita Bryant in the 1970s to overturn anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people in Miami, Florida.

    “Once the HIV epidemic came into the picture, then a bunch of states started considering and enacting laws that banned instruction on sexuality and homosexuality in public education, channeling this ‘Save Our Children’ campaign energy and the fear and prejudice during the HIV epidemic,” Casey said.

    Five states repealed their “Don’t Say Gay” bills between 2006 and 2021, when Alabama rescinded its law.

    Those familiar with the old curriculum laws expressed surprise that Florida’s latest bill has sent shockwaves across the nation. Advocates say part of that surprise is that “Don’t Say Gay” statutes have been revived after two decades. They also add that local groups have gotten smarter about fighting the measures.

    Vivian Topping, director of advocacy and civic engagement of the Equality Federation, a coalition of state LGBTQ+ organizations, said local Florida organizers worked overtime to sound the alarms about their “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

    “They created TV ads and really brought together national partners to make a big splash out of what was happening in Florida,” she said in a statement.

    Advocates say that the current push for “Don’t Say Gay” bills is political. Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, has claimed that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to push the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida is less about kids and more about the Republican’s presidential ambitions.

    “DeSantis has damaged our state’s reputation as a welcoming and inclusive place for all families, he has made us a laughing stock and target of national derision,” Smith said in a statement. “Worse, he has made schools less safe for children.”

    DeSantis has argued that his bill allows parents to decide what their kids learn.

    “Parents’ rights have been increasingly under assault around the nation, but in Florida we stand up for the rights of parents and the fundamental role they play in the education of their children,” said DeSantis in a statement.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Poll Finds 81 Percent of Voters Say Supreme Court Needs Stronger Code of Ethics

    Amid controversy surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s personal ties to the January 6 attack on the Capitol, new polling finds that the vast majority of likely voters support implementing a stronger code of ethics for the High Court.

    When asked whether or not they agreed that Supreme Court justices should be subject to a code of ethics requiring them to recuse themselves from any case relating to personal financial or family matters, 81 percent of 1,177 respondents agreed, new polling by Data for Progress finds. Only 10 percent of respondents were opposed to the proposal, giving the supporters a 71-point margin.

    Support held strong across political affiliations. Democrats were the most supportive of the code of ethics, with 84 percent in favor. An overwhelming majority of independents and Republicans also agreed with the idea, with 82 percent and 77 percent of respondents saying as such, respectively.

    The polling comes as Democratic and progressive lawmakers and government watchdog groups are calling for Thomas to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election and Donald Trump’s coup attempt on January 6th, 2021. Last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) called for Thomas to recuse himself from such cases and to disclose his family’s income gathered from far right organizations — or, better yet, to resign, she said.

    These calls were sparked by recent revelations that Thomas’s wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, was deeply involved in efforts to keep Trump in the White House after the former president’s loss to Joe Biden. In leaked texts between Ginni Thomas and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, she appeared to be using her close ties with federal officials in order to push them to overturn the election results.

    Thomas’s financial ties to the right wing have also come into question. In 2011, government watchdog group Common Cause discovered that Clarence Thomas had failed to report that, over the course of 2003 to 2007, Ginni Thomas had received $680,000 from the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation. Clarence Thomas later amended his financial statements to reflect that information.

    The existing code of conduct for members of the Supreme Court requires justices to recuse themselves from cases that may relate to their personal finances, but doesn’t specifically bar them from cases that they have personal ties to, outside of financial issues.

    Legal ethics experts say that Thomas’s personal ties make enough of a case for him to recuse himself from all 2020 election-related cases. Voters agree with this; polling from earlier this month found that 53 percent of voters think that Thomas shouldn’t participate in cases involving his wife. The same poll, by Politico/Morning Consult, found that only 28 percent of Americans approve of Thomas.

    The issue with Thomas’s participation in 2020 election-related cases is not only the rulings themselves, experts say, but also that it may shake the public’s trust in the Court overall.

    The public view of the Supreme Court in general has been eroding as conservatives have manipulated the Court in their favor. A poll last year found that less than 50 percent of Americans approve of the Supreme Court’s performance, the lowest approval rating in five years.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Dem Lawmaker Calls Out GOP Fundraising Email That Includes Derogatory Attacks

    A Michigan state lawmaker’s speech is going viral for condemning bigoted remarks from her Republican colleague and for defending those who are trying to protect LGBTQ students’ rights and preserve lessons on racism in public school classrooms.

    Speaking in the Michigan legislature on Tuesday, State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) said she was not expecting to see a fundraising email earlier this week from fellow state Sen. Lana Theis (R) accusing her of “grooming” and “sexualizing” children. Those terms have become more and more common among far right politicians and pundits, who are using them to legitimize, at least among their base, the elimination of protections for LGBTQ children throughout the country.

    McMorrow also noted that the fundraising email accused her of supporting lessons that supposedly make children feel bad for being white — another common talking point among those pushing for bans on critical race theory and other lessons on racism in public school classrooms.

    The fundraising email from Theis, which included extremely derogatory language against LGBTQ people, accused Democrats, including McMorrow, of walking out of an invocation prayer she had given earlier this month. Theis claimed that the prayer, conducted on the state Senate floor, was to ask God to “protect” children who were “under attack.” Given her staunch opposition to protections for LGBTQ students and her statements opposing educators who teach about racism in classrooms, it was clear that her prayer was a politically-loaded attack rather than a true call for unity.

    The accusations from Theis against McMorrow and others were not only wrong but deeply offensive, the Democratic lawmaker said.

    “I sat on it for a while wondering, ‘Why me?’ And then I realized — I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme,” McMorrow said in her speech, directing her comments toward Theis. “You can’t claim that you are targeting marginalized kids in the name of ‘parental rights’ if another parent is standing up to say ‘no.’”

    Instead, McMorrow pointed out, Republicans who issue such lines of attack “dehumanize and marginalize” those who are trying to protect LGBTQ students.

    McMorrow also addressed Theis’s accusations that she had supposedly pushed for lessons that make white kids feel bad. In her fundraising email, Theis accused McMorrow of embracing lessons that tell “8-year-olds [they] are responsible for slavery.”

    “I am a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom, who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that ‘children are being taught to feel bad and hate themselves because they are white’ is absolute nonsense,” McMorrow said, quoting a part of Theis’s email. She added:

    No child alive today is responsible for slavery. No one in this room is responsible for slavery. But each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history … We are not responsible for the past. We also cannot change the past. We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen, or deny people their very right to exist.

    McMorrow denounced Theis for her “performative” attacks against her and others, and accused the lawmaker of using her Christian faith as “a shield to target and marginalize already marginalized people.”

    “I want every child in this state to feel seen, heard and supported, not marginalized and not targeted because they are not straight, white and Christian,” McMorrow said. “We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives.”

    “I hope [the fundraising email] brought in a few dollars,” McMorrow added sarcastically, directing her comments at Theis. “I hope it made you sleep good last night.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Don’t Forget Trump Got 74 Million Votes in 2020. The Reelection Threat Is Real.

    When it comes to electoral predictions, there is no there there, in this wild moment. Once-reliable polling outfits are looking at their suddenly inaccurate data the way NASA scientists watched Atlas rockets go corkscrewing off the launch pad in the early days of the Mercury program.

    All I know for certain is this: Any time period that can produce an accurate news sentence like this — “Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who pressured former President Donald Trump to pay a settlement to a stripper, was sentenced to 30 months in prison yesterday for trying to extort millions of dollars from sportswear company Nike Inc.” — is not a time frame I’m comfortable guessing about. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something — probably a subscription to a polling page. For the present, my election-year yard sign reads, “Meteor 2024: Because That Rhymes.”

    Yet there is a cold sense of dread blowing softly through the chambers of my soul, and the chill is something that cannot be safely ignored. I am hard-pressed to recall a time when so many divergent yet implacably dangerous forces have coalesced in such menacing fashion, and it seems that few are prepared to acknowledge it, much less move to thwart it. Some of the perils we face are open-ended, with no clear demarcation between “Hurry up!” and “Too late.” This is not one of those: I can tell you the exact day the deal I fear will go down, if it does go down at all.

    So, for emphasis: This is not what I think will happen. This is what I’m terrified could happen, one possibility in an infinite universe. To no small degree, it is already happening.

    A political snapshot of the present moment shows a president with approval ratings lower than snake snot. A grumpy, unsettled electorate looking to lay blame for their lost two years has in Joe Biden a convenient target. Inflation, gas prices, supply shortages and the still-muddied economic waters of the COVID era have constantly disrupted the administration’s best legislative efforts, with the help of a coal baron senator whose party designation is as meaningful as a diamond made of glue. Thanks in no small part to this White House’s bizarre disinterest in promoting its positive and popular policy achievements, it is entirely probable these conditions will continue to linger until November.

    Meanwhile, war crimes committed in Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russian military forces are the daily fare of the news networks. While most agree that the U.S. cannot directly challenge another nuclear power on the battlefield, the anguish unfolding before us has left many urging more “action,” whatever that means in this devastating context.

    As with the Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden’s stance is one of grim necessity that has no satisfying answer; there will be suffering no matter what, and that suffering will wear on voters the longer the war drags on. Like as not, Ukraine will be a major issue come November.

    The Democratic House and Senate majorities dangle by a thread. Senators Jon Tester in Montana, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Debbie Stabenow in Michigan and Jackie Rosen in Nevada among others face razor-close races.

    In the House, prospects for the Democrats to salvage their own majority are equally grim. Republicans in both chambers, meanwhile, have all but abandoned the idea of an agenda, and instead are “flooding the zone” with incendiary and harmful nonsense about pedophiles, immigration, “CRT,” the “rigged” 2020 election and whatever else they can fling in order to “win” the news day.

    Example: Instead of debating the reinstatement of the enormously helpful child tax credit, which lapsed recently because of Republicans, the most pointed current discussions center on whether godless socialist teachers are instructing students to use litter boxes in the restroom in the event they identify as cats. How did that patently false rumor get going? Republicans. Once again, they are massaging bizarre conspiracy fears to motivate an already-motivated voter base, and to roil the discussion for everyone else. This train is never late.

    All of the above, at present, is fact, and it doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Circumstances could change overnight, of course, but it is also those very intangibles I fear most.

    A Florida judge just blew up the mask mandate for airlines and most public transportation, just as the COVID subvariant of omicron, the “stealth variant” BA.2, becomes the dominant strain in the U.S. Almost 42,000 people were newly infected yesterday, a two-week uptick of 42 percent. That upward trend has been on the move for weeks now, and is growing. While there is no certainty that BA.2 could cause another sharp infection spike, we have seen this particular moment a couple of times already, and furthermore seen the horrors that came after.

    If BA.2 decides to spread its wings like its cousins have before, the outbreak could last for months — and who knows what the COVID outlook will be on Election Day. A population once again asked to wear masks and avoid public gatherings after more than two years of pain and sacrifice, a population forced to endure skyrocketing prices and the shame of a war they can’t stop, might be a loose cannon at the polls. While there will be no predicting that outcome, Democrats could stand to lose both chambers if such challenging circumstances prevail.

    At which point, we enter a realm of question marks. Will Biden, stymied for two years after losing the House and Senate, actually run again in 2024? If he does, can he win? If he doesn’t, can the Democrats make a switch-horses-in-midstream argument the electorate can accept? Will the economy or COVID be any better, or will our current elongated crises have taken on the stink of the inevitable and the eternal?

    Final question: Will Donald Trump run again in 2024? He has not yet come straight out and said so, but all available signs point to “yes.” If he does announce his candidacy, his still-towering popularity with the GOP base could clear the field of contenders. He received more than 74 million votes in 2020, an astonishing haul for the guy who lost, and he sits today upon a campaign war chest of astonishing size.

    The possibility of Trump not running doesn’t mean we can breathe easy, either. Whoever takes the Republican nomination in 2024 is likely to be a creature of Trumpist fascism, perhaps without all the hideous personal flaws of Trump himself. If you thought nobody could be more dangerous than Trump, think again.

    None of this is certain by any stretch, but all of it is why I don’t sleep much anymore. If you have some ideas on how to head this potential cataclysm off its path, I invite you to get started immediately. It’s never too late, until it is.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.