September 24, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, Sept. 24th 2024

42 days until we know if we can stop fascism

“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” Mark Twain

This Day in History

Sixty-seven years ago today, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock to enforce desegregation.

Elections 2024

• Spewing nazi rhetoric is not enough, Donald Trump wants to give immigrants “serial numbers.”

• Trump addresses women: "I am your protector. I want to be your protector ... you will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger ... you will no longer be thinking about abortion."

• According to MSNBC Jack Smith is not only filing a 180 page report on Trump’s election interference, but wants an unredacted copy of the report to be made public.

• Special counsel can present ‘substantial’ new evidence against Trump in January 6 case, judge rules.

• Kamala Harris is winning the Teamster endorsements that actually matter.

• Please make this make sense!!! 47% of registered voters "would feel 'afraid' if Trump won the election, and a similar 45% would feel that way should Harris win. 41% would be 'angry' if Trump won, slightly more than those who would feel that way if Harris did (37%)."

• Trump Is Spiraling, and Getting Creepier, About Women Voters.

• Apparently Trump was not aware of Russia winning against Hitler and Napoleon.

• Trump thinks (wrongly) that exporting countries pay our tariffs, rather than US consumers. He doesn't understand the oil market. He bankrupted casinos. Again: He bankrupted casinos. Americans still trust him on the economy.

• The Trump posts you haven’t been seeing.

• Here’s a site that includes every Trump’s Truth Social post.

• 4 times in recent weeks, Trump has said it is or should be illegal to criticize judges and justices -- despite his long history of doing just that.

• Mitt Romney concerned about Trump 'retribution': 'How am I going to protect 25 grandkids?' If a sitting U.S. senator has this kind of fear about a presidential candidate of his own party, that should tell Americans everything they need to know.

• A Haitian nonprofit in Springfield files criminal charges against Donald Trump, JD Vance.

• According to JD Vance a sex scandal in North Carolina is between Lieutenant Governor and the people of North Carolina. They are trying to frame it as a sex scandal, not a single word to criticize or condemn Nazism.

• Meanwhile, here’s an actual sex scandal involving Project 2025 author and founder of a far-right dating app.

• When you don’t think there is any way to make it worse, they find it. "Rise in hot" teachers committing sex crimes against students is part of "Agenda," Mark Robinson suggested news coverage was part of a plot to condition the public to accept sex crimes against children.

• Also, Mark Robinson and wife were cited by DHHS for falsifying criminal background checks.

• Apparently Republicans have issues not only with fascism and Nazism but being literal dog killers. Project 2025 leader and former Texas Public Policy Foundation CEO Kevin Roberts joins Governor Noem by allegedly killing a neighborhood dog with a shovel because it was barking and disturbing his family.

• Speaker Mike Johnson is the next Republican who cannot commit to recognizing the results of the elections.

• The amnesia about Trump’s record.

• Metro Atlanta counties have dismissed more than 45,000 voter eligibility challenges since July 1.

• Voter registration is spiking, particularly among young adults.

• Trump has been MIA on House GOP fundraising; hasn’t given a dime to NRCC this cycle or headlined a major fundraiser.

• Janet Jackson on Kamala Harris: “Her father’s white. That’s what I was told … I was told that they discovered her father is white.” [Kamala Harris’ father is Donald Harris who is black]
  

Women Rights

• How the Republican war on women extends to voting rights.

• Dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas.

• Amari Marsh suffered a middle of the night miscarriage that ended up seeing her nearly prosecuted because of South Carolina’s Trump abortion ban. Republicans have criminalized miscarriages and plan to bring it national.

• Republican Senate candidate for Ohio, Bernie Moreno says women over 50 don't have any reason to support reproductive rights and that women are single issue voters and other misogynistic crap.

Politics

• Trump, Robinson and the nightmare that won’t go away.

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• White House lawyers were so scared of Trump's attempts to weaponize DOJ/FBI against enemies that they smuggled off WH complex drafts of memo written trying to stop him from weaponizing DOJ/FBI.

• Jake Tapper has enough integrity to walk back his claims about Rashida Tlaib: “I should note that I misspoke yesterday when asking a follow up of Governor Whitmer who I asked about this. I was trying to characterize your views of Tlaib’s comments.”

• Rep. Barbara Lee stands with Tlaib.

• ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt continues to show his racism.

• Veterans who are fighting back against far-right extremism in their communities — and the history of that tradition that goes back to Smedley Butler in 1934, when Butler exposed a planned fascist coup.

• Trump. Tucker. Elon. Nick Fuentes. Kanye. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Candace Owens. I wrote about the antisemitic revolution that has been unfolding on the American right since 2015—and why it continues to gain ground by the day.

• Alabama has entrusted to just a few people the job of carrying out executions in the state. A new investigation reveals internal + court records that document a long trail of allegations of violence and misconduct against that team's members.

• The speech Keir Starmer should give.

• The AfD really do want to go back to the 1933-45 era, German businessman and far-right AfD MP, Jörg Dornau, recruited Belarusian political prisoners to work on his onion plantation near Lida in Belarus, according to an investigation by the independent outlet Reform. He paid them 5 euros per day and personally oversaw their labor.

• Lina Khan. In the Bronx. On 60 Minutes.

• According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, 99 percent of Jared Kushner’s investment firm's funds have come from foreign sources. Well, no non-corrupt American would ever invest in Jared…

• These two radical minorities can spiral,” Robert Pape said. “They can feed off of each other, and the numbers can grow.

Tech

• Meredith Whittaker on the harms of the race to AI scale—from climate costs, to concentrated power, to more surveillance, to the capture of AI research.

• Bellingcat just launched the new Online Investigations Toolkit.

Climate Change

• ‘Short corn’ could replace the towering cornfields steamrolled by a changing climate.

Russia/Ukraine

• Russian President Putin was joking when he said Moscow was supporting Kamala Harris in November's U.S. presidential election, Foreign Minister Lavrov said in an interview.

• JPMorgan Chase and HSBC unwittingly processed payments for companies in Africa controlled by the deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin.

• According to satellite photos, a Russian Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile probably detonated during a test earlier this month, raising questions about Russia’s military capabilities and putting a dent in the Kremlin’s nuclear saber rattling.

• The Danish prime minister to her allies: Stop talking about “red lines” and let Ukraine strike Russia.

• Russia has formed a mechanised battalion from the crew of its only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov.

• TikTok deleted accounts that belong to RT and Sputnik

  

Middle East

• Ta-Nehisi Coates’s writing on race fueled a reckoning in America. Now he wants to change the way we think about Israel and Palestine.

• The Israeli military is raiding downtown Ramallah, broke into Al-Jazeera offices and ordered its closure for 45 days by military order.

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• Israel had deliberately blocked humanitarian aid.

• The number of people killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon this week has risen to 558.

• Did Middle East device attack violate international law? Advocates want an investigation.

Gun Violence

• Four dead and dozens wounded in mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama.

• We've grown numb to urban mass shootings, but Saturday's burst of bullets in Birmingham really hit home. The 2024 campaign could use a little less gun-owning bravado, and more outrage about the slaughter.

Misc.

• Long COVID teachers join forces to sue ministers.

• How cities actually spent billions of COVID relief funds.

Humour