October 3, 2024

North Carolinians need help. Trump is feeding them lies.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/hurricane-helene-storm-trump-biden-harris-rcna173639

At least 202 people are dead across six states following Hurricane Helene, and no place was hit harder than North Carolina, where I’m from. Western North Carolina’s tumbling landscapes, remote communities, and already swollen rivers made the region especially primed for disaster, and now disaster has arrived. “This is one of the most catastrophic events that our state has ever seen,” the state’s transportation secretary said Tuesday.

And at least 40 people around Asheville, the area’s largest city, died in the storm. Residents in hard-to-reach places desperately need food and water and medical supplies. It’s a tragedy in real time.

Some lies should be left to wither and die. Others demand a response.

You would think the partisan hacks would give it a rest while people are dead, dying, or missing. But folks out here were only spared the election gimmicks for about 100 hours. On Monday, former President Donald Trump, who’s slipping behind his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris in swing states like North Carolina, began lying about the recovery efforts, at least the ones led by Democrats, falsely characterizing them as nonexistent.

“At a time like this, when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need … We are not talking about politics,” Trump said Monday, surveying the damage from Valdosta, Georgia.

Then he immediately made it about politics, claiming falsely that Biden was “sleeping” and couldn’t be reached by leaders in hard-hit areas, and that government officials were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” He claimed Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, couldn’t get Biden on the phone, but that was directly contradicted by Kemp just hours before. That didn’t stopTrump and his MAGA surrogates in the Republican Party and right-wing media from repeating and amplifying those falsehoods and others.

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October 2, 2024

Evangelicals Have a Plan to Flip 19 Key Counties

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/10/evangelicals-have-a-plan-to-flip-19-key-counties/


Last Saturday, vice presidential candidate JD Vance appeared at an event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, hosted by Lance Wallnau, a self-proclaimed “apostle,” which means he’s a leader in a rapidly growing religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. NAR is a loose network of evangelical Christians, who believe that they are called to take over all aspects of society, including the government. They also believe that God speaks directly to certain Christians, whom they call prophets, often in dreams.

Lance Wallnau, a former businessman who hails from Texas, has been an influential leader in NAR circles for some time. He popularized one of its most popular concepts, the idea that there are seven “mountains” that Christians must conquer: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. That last one has become a centerpiece of his mission. He has said he believes that the political left is possessed by demons, that there is “witchcraft” controlling the presidential election, and that Vice President Kamala Harris is a Jezebel—a reference to a prostitute in the Bible. As he put it in a recent broadcast, “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation, and domination—especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth—you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit.”

But for Wallnau, politics are more than just material for fire-and-brimstone sermons, because he has an ambitious plan for the 2024 presidential election. It’s called Project 19, a reference to the 19 counties in swing states that could determine the outcome.

Fred Clarkson, a researcher with the religious extremism watchdog group Political Research Associates, has reported that Wallnau sometimes says swing states aren’t fully red because people aren’t praying hard enough. Wallnau said earlier this year, “If we don’t have apostles and prophets in the territory, then demons control the territory and the minds of people are under the influence of devils.” As my colleague David Corn wrote this week, Wallnau has been promoting Project 19 on what he has called the Courage Tour—a multi-stop traveling road show through swing states to energize evangelical voters and encourage voter registration. The Pennsylvania event last weekend that featured JD Vance took place after visits to Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.

*snip*

September 30, 2024

Let's Break Down All the Lies in Elon Musk's False Tweet About Noncitizens Voting

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/elon-musk-noncitizen-voting-tweet-lies-disinformation/

On Sunday, Elon Musk posted a lengthy diatribe about Democrats being the real “threat to democracy.”

In his tweet, Musk claimed that Democrats are flying “asylum seekers” to swing states (this is not happening), fast-tracking them for citizenship (asylum seekers are not fast-tracked), and ensuring said noncitizens can vote (noncitizens cannot vote). (In the tweet, Musk also lists Ohio as an example of a swing state; it is not.)

In short: Almost every claim in Musk’s rant is factually incorrect.

As we previously stated, Republicans’ “Big Lie” this time has been that Democrats are stealing the election by pushing noncitizens to the ballot box. Trump backed the claim in the presidential debate earlier this month when asked about whether he acknowledges that he lost in 2020. “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” the former president said. “And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”

But, as my colleague Isabela Dias reported, this is not accurate. There are not masses of noncitizens registered to vote. In fact, as she wrote, “a study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that in the 2016 election, election officials in 42 jurisdictions overseeing the tabulation of 23.5 million votes only referred about 30 cases of ‘suspected noncitizen voting’ for investigation or prosecution—or 0.0001 percent of votes.”

Musk’s logic, though, goes beyond the idea of noncitizens voting. He claims 1 in 20 “illegals” will become citizens per year, resulting in two million new legal voters for Democrats in four years. “America then becomes a one-party state and Democracy is over,” the billionaire wrote. “The only ‘elections’ will be the Democratic Party primaries.”

*snip*

September 30, 2024

12 election lies Trump is using to set the stage to dispute a potential 2024 defeat

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/30/politics/fact-check-trump-election-lies-2024/index.html


Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump has escalated his long-running assault on the integrity of US elections as the 2024 presidential campaign enters its final stretch, using a new series of lies about ballots, vote-counting and the election process to lay the groundwork to challenge a potential defeat in November.

Nonpartisan democracy experts say they’re seeing many of the same warning signs that were blinking red before Election Day four years ago, when Trump flooded the zone with election lies and conspiracy theories that he amplified after losing to Joe Biden. His campaign of deception culminated in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“The threats have not abated; they have only increased,” said Lindsay Daniels, a senior director at the nonpartisan Democracy Fund, which works to strengthen US democracy. “We saw a lot of activity in 2020 around peddling false claims and frivolous lawsuits. We are already seeing signs now, stage-setting, that these things may be attempted again.”

Trump has made at least 12 distinct false claims over the last two months that raise baseless doubts about the validity of a potential victory by Vice President Kamala Harris. (Recent polls suggest the race is very close, and Trump could certainly still win.)

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September 26, 2024

Common myths about the new FBI crime statistics, debunked

https://popular.info/p/common-myths-about-the-new-fbi-crime

This week, the FBI released its report on crime in the United States during 2023. The report aggregates data from over 16,000 law enforcement agencies that collectively cover over 94% of U.S. residents. It found a large decline in murders compared to 2022 (-11.3%), and moderate but still significant declines in violent crime overall (-3.0%) and property crime (-2.4%).

Former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, however, insist that America is in the midst of an unprecedented "crime wave." They argue that the FBI data collected through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is incomplete or fraudulent. In a September 12 post on X, Trump cited the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey to claim that there has been a 40% increase in violent crime since he left office. "Kamala Crime is destroying America, and gangs are taking over!” Trump insisted.

To sort through the confusion, Popular Information spoke with Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, creator of the Real-Time Crime Index, and one of the nation's leading experts in crime statistics.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Popular Information: Can you explain what, in your view, are the most important takeaways from the recent FBI report on crime in the United States during 2023?

Jeff Asher: The murder trend—the decline—is the largest we've ever seen, based on the data we have, which goes back to 1960. While it’s not the full history of the nation, it’s the largest percentage change recorded over that period, in terms of fewer victims from one year to the next. That’s significant because murder is the most serious offense, with the highest societal cost, and it's the one we have the most confidence in. Everything else tends to be underreported to some degree, but we believe the murder count is fairly accurate.

*snip*

September 17, 2024

The Exotic Cat-Eaters of Springfield, Ohio

https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland/exotic-cat-eaters-springfield-ohio/

No paywall link
https://web.archive.org/web/20240916170902/https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland/exotic-cat-eaters-springfield-ohio/


SPRINGFIELD, Ohio—They come to Ohio from one of the most desperately poor places in the Western Hemisphere. They have few to no belongings. In many cases, they are uneducated, and most don’t speak English well. They do not understand the local culture where they have settled—and it shows: in their dress, in their speech, in their manners, in their housing arrangements, in the food they eat, and in the music they dance to.

Most profess to be Christians, but many maintain superstitious folk magic traditions from their homeland, and many quietly hold to a belief in witchcraft. They blithely violate social taboos. Locals complain that they are stealing their jobs, driving up costs, and consuming too much in the way of social services. And then there are the dietary norms: Though the rumors no doubt exceed the reality, some of them eat animals not generally considered food by the good people of Ohio. Ask the locals, and many of them will quietly say that they wish they would all go back to where they came from.

But that was a long time ago. And while J.D. Vance’s hillbilly ancestors may not have been the inbred, possum-eating, superstitious bushwhackers of legend and lore, as they descended on Ohio from the hills of Kentucky they had more than a little in common with the Haitian immigrants Sen. Vance now spends his days vilifying in terms that would have been familiar to Fritz Hippler, the filmmaker whose 1941 propaganda film Der ewige Jude comes to its climax with images of leering kosher butchers covered in the blood of animals slaughtered in the service of “the so-called Jewish religion.”

Lord Acton would have us believe that it takes absolute power to corrupt absolutely. But even the dream of the vice presidency—that “bucket of warm piss” in the immortal words of Vice President John Nance Garner—will do the trick, if you are the right kind of person.

*snip*

September 2, 2024

Trump Falsely Claims Schools Are Giving Surgeries To Kids To Change Their Gender

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trump-falsely-claims-schools-are

On Friday, former President Donald Trump appeared at a Moms for Liberty conference in Washington, D.C. where he expressed extremist views on trans people that are wildly divorced from reality. He made numerous remarks that highlight both his record as an anti-trans figurehead and the relationship he has to those orchestrating Project 2025. The conference, featuring discussions between Trump and Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice, included 20 minutes of discussion relating to transgender issues.

It was in this section that Trump made one of the most outlandish claims on transgender issues in recent history: “But uh, the transgender thing is an incredible thing… your kid goes to school & comes home a few days later with an operation the school decides what’s going to happen with your child & you many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say ‘what the hell happened, who did this to me?’”

This statement has no basis in reality—no school in the United States, or anywhere in the world, has authorized gender-affirming surgery on a child without the parent’s consent.

The discussion turned to transgender issues when Tiffany Justice suddenly brought up the topic, initially referencing Elon Musk’s recent interview with Jordan Peterson, in which Musk ranted about the “woke mind virus” supposedly affecting his trans daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson. Justice expressed agreement with Musk’s remarks. Wilson, however, provided detailed rebuttals on her Threads account, pointing out how Musk’s statements were inaccurate and often ignored the truth. No reference was made to her careful rebuttalsthe

*snip*

August 8, 2024

The definitive guide to Project 2025 (Media Matters)

https://www.mediamatters.org/project-2025/definitive-guide-project-2025

*snip*

New Media Matters research into Project 2025’s extremist goals
Proposals in the Mandate for Leadership would severely inhibit the federal government’s protections for reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, labor and civil rights, and immigrants, as well as its climate change efforts. They would allow Trump to weaponize the justice system as his own personal retribution machine, gut the American system of checks and balances and purge the federal bureaucracy of experienced civil servants who haven’t pledged fealty to Trump. On their own platforms, Project 2025 partners frequently speak in even more draconian terms.

Here’s a sampling of the agenda that the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 are pushing to implement on day one of a second Trump administration:

* Reimplementing “Schedule F,” a Trump-era executive order that removes civil service protection for career bureaucrats so they can be fired and replaced with far-right loyalists.
* Adopting an extreme anti-choice agenda that would restrict legal abortion drugs and emergency contraception, and that could also impact fertility-related health care like IVF and surrogacy services.
* Undermining checks and balances in the federal government and consolidating the president’s power to weaponize the Department of Justice and law enforcement against his political enemies.
* Institutionalizing the right-wing movement’s war on LGBTQ communities by promoting conversion therapy and stripping queer people of federal protections.
* Eviscerating labor rights, including union negotiating rights and protections for overtime pay.
Allowing high-income earners to more easily cheat the IRS.
* Rejecting climate science in favor of Big Oil’s preferred policies by gutting federal agencies that protect the environment and dismantling regulations allowing polluting industries to extract even more oil and gas from federal lands with less protections.
* Potentially conducting mass deportations of millions of immigrants or those suspected to be immigrants, in part by revoking all Temporary Protected Status designations, which would put more than 863,000 people at risk.
* Overhauling the American education system by eliminating the Department of Education and making student loans more expensive.
* Purging the federal government of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
* Expelling transgender service members from the military and eliminating DEI initiatives from the military to “restore standards of lethality and excellence.”

*snip*

August 8, 2024

After Immunity: The Path Forward for the January 6th Case (Just Security)

https://www.justsecurity.org/98457/immunity-january-6th-chutkan/

Introduction

In the coming weeks or months, a federal district court will have the opportunity to apply the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the scope of a former president’s immunity from criminal liability. The decision has been accurately described, by Akhil Amar and others, as one of the worst in the Court’s history because of the leeway it gives a president to commit crimes and its expansion of exclusive executive authority. However, the Court’s ruling shields only some official presidential conduct from criminal prosecution. Unofficial acts are not covered by immunity, and not all official acts are absolutely immune. A key question in the January 6 case becomes which of the specific acts alleged in the indictment are immune under the Court’s new test and which aren’t. The Court gave important “guidance” (its term), but largely left that question for the trial court to answer in the first instance. The trial court’s process for answering that question will involve an evidentiary inquiry, and perhaps hearings, to assess alleged facts relevant to the legal test.

On our view, the Court’s decision leaves the core of the case against Trump intact. A fair application of the Court’s new immunity test to the indictment’s allegations yields a narrowed but still plainly viable prosecution. As we write, the trial court and the parties are preparing to grapple with this issue. On Saturday, August 3, Judge Tanya Chutkan—the trial judge presiding over the case—issued an order requesting the parties to propose a schedule for the remaining pretrial proceedings. The order also scheduled a status conference for August 16, at which the court may decide the path forward. The application of the immunity test will likely be a central part of that process.

In this essay, we discuss how the trial court should approach applying the Supreme Court’s ruling. We believe that as soon as possible following the status conference, Judge Chutkan should schedule an evidentiary hearing—a “mini-trial,” in which documents and witnesses are presented—to determine the scope of the immunity in this case. Our examination of the new immunity rule and the specific allegations against Trump indicate that Smith’s case remains strong and should survive that inquiry with key elements remaining unscathed.

Our analysis is supplemented by an annotated version of Smith’s indictment, which color-codes the allegations according to the degree to which they are now potentially protected by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. Green are the least affected and red are the most affected, with the full coding approach outlined below in Section III of this essay.

*snip*

August 5, 2024

The MAGA Abuse of the English Language

https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/maga-corruptions-of-the-english-language

The Americans have done it again: they’ve ruined the language.1

Alright, alright, not all Americans are responsible this time.2 Instead, it’s the ways that modern Republicans have savaged political English, slapping words with exact, precise definitions onto a loose agglomeration of concepts wily-nily until they’re unrecognizable distortions, sometimes even inversions. This isn’t like calling a crow a raven. Instead, it’s more like if you were to point at an elephant and call it a chihuahua. These are not understandable near misses.

This is a problem because a shared political reality requires a shared political language to describe concepts. Thinkers from Aristotle to Hannah Arendt and George Orwell understood that words matter and that the lexicon we use to describe our social world directly influences our perceptions of it.

Orwell, who is quoted endlessly for 1984, wrote a somewhat less famous essay called “Politics and the English Language,” in which he decried how linguistic contortions could excuse even the most egregious abuses. “Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.”

In short, Orwell explains that “political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” More recently, the violent attack on January 6th has been described by one Republican as “a normal tourist visit.” Orwell’s warning is apt: corruptions of language can lead to corrupted minds, where doublethink becomes commonplace.

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