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Dan Rather: Trump Is Lying About Project 2025

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2024 //
78

When Project 2025, the definitive guide to Trump’s second term, began to generate negative reactions, Trump claimed he was taken by surprise. All of a sudden, he played dumb about Project 2025: He said he didn’t know who was behind it and had barely heard about it.

As Dan Rather and his team at “Steady” determined, he was lying again. Nothing new there, but he wanted to discourage the public from learning more about Project 2025.

Dan wrote:

Donald Trump and his campaign may have disavowed it, but don’t think for a moment that Project 2025 is going anywhere. A newly released hidden camera interview with one of the project’s authors, who also served in Trump’s Cabinet, reveals that the Republican nominee has “blessed it.” 

First, a little background.

Project 2025, the MAGA blueprint to completely overhaul the federal government, is being spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, the daddy of conservative think tanks, with input from more than 100 other right-wing organizations. “The Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” the official title, consists of four pillars:

  • A 900-page policy guide for a second Trump term
  • A playbook for the first 180 days, consisting of 350 executive orders and regulations that have already been written
  • A LinkedIn-style database of potential MAGA personnel 
  • A “Presidential Administration Academy,” a training guide for political appointees to be ready on day one

On July 24, Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Project 2025 author and Republican National Convention policy director, met with two people he thought were potential donors to his conservative group, Center for Renewing America. They were actually working for a British nonprofit trying to expose information about Project 2025. The two secretly recorded the two-hour conversation.

In the video posted on CNN, Vought described the project as the “tip of the America First spear.” He said that after meeting with Trump in recent months, the former president “is very supportive of what we do.” The project would create “shadow agencies” that wouldn’t be subject to the same scrutiny as actual agencies of the federal government. Vought also told members of the British nonprofit that he was in charge of writing the second phase of Project 2025, consisting of the hundreds of executive orders ready to go on day one of a new administration. 

When asked how the information would be disseminated, his deputy said it would be distributed old-school, on paper. “You don’t actually, like, send them to their work emails,” he said, to avoid discovery under the Freedom of Information Act.

Last week, ProPublica, an investigative journalism nonprofit, obtained more than 14 hours of training videos, which are part of Project 2025’s effort to recruit and train tens of thousands of right-wing appointees to replace a wide and deep swath of current federal civil servants. 

“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, who was in charge of Project 2025 until he was fired because it’s become such a headache for Trump. “This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” Dans said in 2023. 

Project 2025 is not a new plan; it has been in the works for decades. The first version was published just after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. In 2015 the Heritage Foundation gave the incoming Trump administration the seventh iteration. Should you think that Trump and his cronies know nothing about any of this, the Heritage Foundation boasted that Trump instituted 64% of the policy recommendations in that document, including leaving the Paris Climate Accords.

Trump has tried and largely failed to distance himself from Project 2025. Perhaps because two high-ranking members of his administration were directors of the project. On Truth Social, Trump posted, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it….” As for those training videos, most of the speakers in them are former Trump administration officials.

Many of Project 2025’s recommendations are deeply unpopular with Americans. A survey conducted by YouGov found that almost 60% of respondents opposed several big tenets, including: eliminating the Department of Education, giving tax cuts to corporations, ending the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and changing the law to allow the president to fire civil servants.

It is difficult to convince voters that the project’s policy recommendations are real because they are so radical. Anat Shenker-Osorio, a political strategist, spoke about the challenges of discussing Project 2025 with focus groups on the podcast “The Wilderness.”

“When we actually cut and paste verbatim from the Heritage document, people are like, that’s a bunch of bull****. Like, why did you make that up? And what is wrong with you? And why are you lying to us?” she said. 

To that end, here are just a few of the most democracy-threatening suggestions, verbatim:

On child labor: “With parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations.”

On education: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the Federal Department of Education should be eliminated.“

On climate change: “Climate-change research should be disbanded … The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be broken up and downsized.”

On LGBTQ+ rights: “The next secretary should also reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage, replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”

On families: “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society … The male-female dyad is essential to human nature and … every child has a right to a mother and father.”

Not to mention several highly publicized recommendations on abortion and women’s rights that are an effort to return to America of the 1950s.

The architects of and adherents to Project 2025 want a white, heterosexual Christian nation. The ideals of our 250-year-old form of government, in which majority rules, are anathema to them. They want to inflict their beliefs on everyone, representative democracy be damned. 

I cannot state it strongly enough: Project 2025, with Donald Trump at the helm, is the greatest existential threat to American democracy in recent history. And make no mistake, should Trump win in November, he will usher in many if not most of the project’s recommendations. 

Perhaps Project 2025 should be referred to as Project 1925. In Trump’s mind, that was the time that America was “great,” and they want to go back to that era of low taxes, no abortions, white Christian male domination, no civil rights laws, low taxes, and a very limited federal government.

No thanks. We are not going back!

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Extremism, Freedom, Gender, Health, School Choice, Science, Trump, Vouchers

John Thompson: Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters Is in Hot Water!

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2024 //
15

John Thompson, historian and teacher, writes about the controversies swirling in Oklahoma, mostly around the MAGA State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters, who has mandated Bible lessons in every grade, among other things.

Thompson writes:

The Oklahoma press has been reporting on a seemingly endless number of battles between traditional Republican, conservative legislators, and rightwing extremists exemplified by State Superintendent Ryan Walters and Gov. Kevin Stitt. But this week this political civil war exploded. It culminated in Walters demanding that the Republican Speaker of the House, who almost certainly plans to run for governor against Walters, start impeachment hearings against him!

As KFOR News noted, that raises the question as to why Walters would call for an impeachment hearing against himself. It then quoted the former Attorney General Mike Turpen, who has a half-century of political experience, “Ryan Walters appears to be embracing what I call victim-hood,” Turpen said. “Ryan, what you’re doing right now, saying ‘come get me,’ is political suicide.” Turpen then concluded, “I have no idea who’s advising him, but it breaks my heart for his family,” he said. “This is a Republican Party like a firing squad of circle, and they’re all aimed at one person, Ryan Walters.” 

As Nondoc explains, this came at:

The end of a long week for Walters, which has included news about a legislative investigation into how his agency has and has not allocated appropriated funds, questions about his compliance with state transparency laws, and a new defamation lawsuit filed against him by Bixby’s superintendent (Rob Miller.)

This also was pivotal because Miller was the first superintendent to publicly call out Walters on his mismanagement of funds, even though the World spoke to “at least a dozen other superintendents [who] confirmed that Miller was accurate.” Walters then responded to Miller, a highly respected Gulf War veteran, by calling him a “clown” and a “liar,” and claiming that ‘the Department of Education was ‘dealing with all kinds of financial problems’ at Bixby schools.”

And Walters repeatedly continued to use his aggressive language, “I will not continue to stand here and listen to Speaker McCall and (Republican) Mark McBride lie about my office and lie about the work we are doing.”

As the Oklahoman reported:

On Monday, state Rep. Mark McBride sent a letter to McCall requesting a special investigation of Walters and the state Education Department. Initially, McCall told McBride “no” and said there would be no investigation until 51 Republican members of the House signed the letter.

By Thursday, however, “McBride had the support of 24 other Republican House members and the 20-member Democratic Caucus.” And as the Tulsa World reported, “McBride said he’s heard from other representatives who want to sign on or say they want Walters and the OSDE investigated but are afraid to go public.”

And, as the Oklahoman further explained, its stories this week looked “at Walters’ agency’s failure to turn over funds for life-saving asthma inhalers and why it took more than a year for “off the formula” school districts to be reimbursed for a state-mandated teacher pay raises.” 

Moreover, “other lawmakers criticized Walters for his recent online name-calling about Bixby Public Schools Superintendent Rob Miller.” Vocal critics included “House Speaker Pro Tempore Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) [who] did not sign McBride’s letter, but on Tuesday he did call for an end to Walters’ “rhetoric toward educators.” 

Hilbert also said, “The same is to be said about allowing legislators access to meetings in which they are clearly authorized by statute to observe.” (He thus came out in support of Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s legal challenge to Walters’ refusal to obey that law. By the way, Drummond will likely be another opponent to Walters in the governor’s race.)

Even Gov. Stitt backed off from Walters’ “name-calling,” saying that, “‘hey, let’s focus on the policies.’ It’s a hateful game sometimes in politics, as people are taking shots at you.” For what It’s worth, Stitt is now calling for “discussions across party lines.”

Then, Rep. Kevin Wallace (R-Wellston), the chair of “the House Appropriations and Budget Committee became the “spearhead” of the call for the investigation of Walters and the Education Department by the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT). And then, McCall “softened his stance and approved an investigation by LOFT.” It “will focus on issues raised by both legislators and private citizens regarding alleged state Education Department funding disbursement issues.”

And by Friday, Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat said, “Numerous Senators and I have been raising questions about spending and money not being allocated to specific programs the legislature has authorized at the Department of Education.” The Senate’s leader further explained that he originally said, “investigations like the state Education Department/Walters investigation weren’t part of LOFT’s original mission or purpose, but he supported the review because the concerns were serious.” He now says, “the Senate will stand ready to respond to any of the (LOFT) findings.”

And that brings us back to the second series of internal conflicts between MAGA’s and “adult Republicans.” As the Oklahoma Voice had reported, months ago, Senator Treat had “warned Gov. Kevin Stitt against targeting Republican senators who are up for reelection.” Treat cited “strong rumors” that Stitt “is seeking to take out good members of the Republican caucus.” He said that Republicans had supported Stitt on school choice and outlawing abortion, but “some Republican senators have been at odds over tax cuts, gaming compacts and other issues.” Treat tactfully said, “I know he (Stitt) is fairly new to it, but all of us talk and so it is even a smaller group of people who fund these ventures.” And, “senators have heard from people who have been “hit up” by Stitt’s operation to go after some Republican senators.”

Who knows if the pushback against Walters and Stitt is a prelude to the inner conflict that the Washington Post reports is growing in the Trump campaign? It reports:

Some of the internet’s most influential far-right figures are turning against former president Donald Trump’s campaign, threatening a digital “war” against the Republican candidate’s aides and allies that could complicate the party’s calls for unity in the final weeks of the presidential race.

For instance, the rightwing extremist Nick Fuentes “said on X that Trump’s campaign was ‘blowing it’ by not positioning itself more to the right and was ‘headed for a catastrophic loss,’ in a post that by Wednesday had been viewed 2.6 million times.” And, “Candace Owens, a far-right influencer … described the conservative infighting in a podcast Tuesday as a ‘MAGA Civil War.’”

Whether we’re talking about Oklahoma’s or national MAGA-ism, they have grown, in large part, because it is easier to tear down a barn, than build one.  Now, that truth may be wrecking Trumpism.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Curriculum, Disruption, Extremism, Oklahoma, Religion

Trump Judge Rules that Machine Guns Are Legal

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2024 //
35

To anyone who wonders if there is a difference between the two parties, here’s a big one: gun control. A Trump-appointed federal judge in Kansas struck down a ban on machine guns. He was following the advice of Justice Thomas, who made the wacky argument that if something was okay when the Constitution was written, then it’s okay now. The Founding Fathers did not ban machine guns: why should we?

Politico wrote:

Up next in the arms of school shooters: fully automatic machine guns. Trump appointee U.S. District Judge John Broomes (Kansas) ruled that the ban on owning fully-automatic machine guns that’s been part of American law since the 1930s is unconstitutional. Citing Clarence Thomas’ argument that if something wasn’t illegal at the time the Constitution was written it shouldn’t be illegal now, Broomes has set up a new case that’ll almost certainly end up before the six rightwing cranks on the US Supreme Court.

Categories Evil, Extremism, Guns, History, Stupid, Trump

Elie Honig: What Will Happen to Jack Smith’s Case Against Trump Now?

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2024 //
2

Elie Honig is a former federal prosecutor who writes at a site called Cafe, where he and other legal experts follow and explain Trump’s legal entanglements. In this post, he speculates on how Jack Smith’s effort to hold Trump accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election might fare in the months ahead.. Note that he points out that the investigation was hampered by the very late start of the U.S. Justice Department.

He writes:

Dear Reader,

I remember vividly the first time I lost a key piece of evidence. The NYPD had caught our defendant in Washington Heights with a fake police badge around his neck and a loaded gun in his waistband, and we charged him with federal firearms and armed robbery conspiracy crimes. Better yet (for us on the prosecution side), we flipped a cooperating witness who would testify that he and the defendant had committed two prior armed robberies together by posing as cops and ripping off drug dealers.

A week or so before trial began, the judge held a conference to handle routine pre-trial housekeeping. I confidently laid out the cooperator’s expected testimony. “That’s out,” the judge ruled, nonchalantly. “Too prejudicial.” For those who think that every judicial decision is rendered in scholarly prose, replete with probing analysis and citations to applicable precedent: welcome to the real world.

It was a kick in the gut. “That’s such bullshit. He can’t do that,” I whined afterwards. “Sure he can,” my supervisor responded. “He’s the judge.”

My experience is a tiny-potatoes version of what the U.S. Supreme Court has done to Special Counsel Jack Smith and his 2020 election subversion case against Donald Trump. The Court declared, for the first time in our history, that a president is entitled to criminal immunity for official acts. That part was no surprise; the law has long recognized civil immunity, and the justices during oral argument seemed in no mood to affirm the lower courts’ outright rejection of Trump’s claim.

But the breadth of the Supreme Court’s decision was astonishing. The majority held, for example, that “in dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.” (It remains unclear exactly how a judge is supposed to draw that vital distinction.) And the Court ruled that if conduct is immune, prosecutors can’t base a criminal charge on it – nor can they mention it at all during trial, even as necessary context or background.

Now the case has landed back in trial court, before Judge Tanya Chutkan. She originally wanted the parties back before her today, but Smith asked for a few more weeks to gather his thoughts; he clearly has accepted that there won’t be a pre-election trial, despite his prior dogged efforts. Trump’s counsel, ever intent on slowing things down, happily consented to the prosecution’s request for delay. When Court reconvenes on September 5, it’ll be up to the Judge to pick through the wreckage and figure out what can be salvaged.

On that question, the Supreme Court has offered pointed guidance, and it bodes poorly for the core of Smith’s indictment. Trump’s effort to coerce the Justice Department to gin up proof of non-existent election fraud? Almost certainly an “official act,” and therefore immune and out of the case altogether. Trump’s pressure campaign aimed at his vice president, Mike Pence? Probably out. And Trump’s public statements, including his tweets and January 6 Ellipse speech? Likely toast, too.

The Supreme Court conspicuously reminded Judge Chutkan that it’s unimpressed with her work so far and will be watching her closely. The justices in the majority blasted the lower courts for “the expedition of this case, the lack of factual analysis… and the absence of pertinent briefing by the parties.” Indeed, as we’ve noted here before, Smith, Chutkan, and the intermediate appeals court judges tried to shortcut ordinary process to get Trump tried before the election; the Supreme Court noticed and disapproved. Most importantly on the vital timing issue, the Court has specified that Trump can appeal Judge Chutkan’s decisions about what conduct is (and is not) immune, before trial starts. That means, as a practical matter, there’s a zero-point-zero percent chance this trial happens before the November 2024 election.

If you’ve been hoping that Trump faces accountability for trying to steal the 2020 election before voters head to the polls for the next one, don’t despair – not fully, anyway. (For the record, I’m with you. The real problem is that DOJ took over two-and-a-half years to charge the case.) Judge Chutkan still can – and I believe will – order an evidentiary hearing to enable Smith to air some of his most explosive evidence, before voters head to the polls.

The Judge now must sift through the prosecution’s evidence and determine how much of Trump’s alleged conduct was an official act (and therefore immune), and which conduct can remain in the case. She has some leeway here. The Judge could opt to take “proffers” from both sides – detailed statements by the lawyers about what they expect their evidence to show. That’s a little flat, but it’s also perfectly permissible and efficient. And then there’s the more sensational alternative: the Judge can permit Smith to call live witnesses to expound from the stand on what their trial testimony would be.

I expect Smith to push for door number two, and Judge Chutkan to agree. If that happens, brace for a series of dramatic in-court encounters. We could see Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, take the stand to give his first-ever public accounting of what his boss did (and didn’t do) before and on January 6. And Mike Pence could testify about how Trump begged and eventually threatened him in an effort to get him to throw the election – and how, on January 6, he had to run for his life to avoid the frothing mob.

No, an evidentiary hearing won’t hit nearly as hard as a jury trial and verdict. And we won’t actually see or hear any of it, because federal courts don’t permit cameras or live audio streaming. (Fair enough, given that it’s apparently the year 1892 right now.) We likely already know the most damaging information, as revealed in 2022 during the unforgettable January 6 Select Committee hearings in Congress, and the ensuing 800-plus page report. But, really, imagine: Trump’s own former chief of staff and VP taking the stand in, say, September of an election year, to describe firsthand how their former boss trampled on the Constitution to try to steal an election. Even if we all mostly know the story by now, that simply can’t be good for Trump at the polls, just weeks before voters cast their ballots.

It’s unclear how much of Smith’s case will ultimately survive the Supreme Court’s strafing. He might eventually go to trial on a tattered indictment focused on Trump’s effort to pressure state and local officials, without any of the damning evidence relating to DOJ and the VP and incitement of the rally crowd. Or the wounds inflicted by the Supreme Court might ultimately prove fatal.

But if Smith’s goal is to expose Trump’s conduct to the American public before the election – and let’s face it, that’s plainly been a driving force for the special counsel all along, despite his refusal to acknowledge it – he’ll still have a backdoor path to partial success.

Stay Informed,

Elie

Elie Honig served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8.5 years and as the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice at the Office of Attorney General for the State of New Jersey for 5.5 years. He is currently a legal Analyst for CNN and Executive Director at Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Scandals, Trump

Republican Judge J. Michael Luttig Endorses Kamala Harris

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2024 //
10

Judge J. Michael Luttig was appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush. He served from 1991-2006 on the Court of Appeals of the Fourth Circuit.

He issued the following statement to explain his decision:

Almost four years ago now, on January 6, 2021, a stake was driven through the heart of America’s Democracy, and on that day American Democracy was left teetering on a knife’s edge. On that day, the prescribed day for choosing the American president, there was not a peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America — for the first time in the almost 250 years since the Founding of the Nation. As a consequence of the former president’s continued denial of that appalling day, and his defiance of America’s Democracy to this day almost four years later, millions of Americans still believe that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from the former president, despite the fact that he lost that election fair and square in what has been proven over and over to have been the freest, fairest, and most accurate election in American history. Because of the former president’s continued, knowingly false claims that he won the 2020 election, millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in our national elections, and many never will again. Because of the former president’s knowingly false claims, many Americans — especially young Americans, tragically — have even begun to question whether constitutional democracy is the best form of self-government for America. The 2020 presidential election of course was not “stolen” from the former president and he knows that. It was the former president who attempted to steal the 2020 presidential election from the American People, not they from him. To attempt to steal an election in the United States of America is to attempt to steal America’s Democracy. For the former president to continue to persist in the knowingly false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him is a profound affront to American Democracy and to the Constitution of the United States — an affront without any precedent in all of American history.

In his utterly inexplicable obsession to this very day to deny, attempt to justify, even to glorify January 6, and to bludgeon Americans into believing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him when he knows it was not, the former president has corrupted America’s Democracy. Yet, to this day — to this day still — not only does the former president, and now the Republican Party of which he is again the standard bearer, continue to falsely claim that the former president won the 2020 election. He and his Party defiantly refuse even to pledge that they will honor and respect the vote and the will of the American People in the upcoming presidential election. In this defiant refusal, the Republican candidate for the presidency and the Republican Party have literally taken America political hostage, threatening the Nation with the specter of another January 6, 2021 on January 6, 2025, if the former president again loses his campaign for the presidency by a vote of the American People. Until January 6, 2021, there was a peaceful transfer of power from one President of the United States to his successor for almost 250 years. The peaceful transfer of power from one President of the United States to the next and the commitment of presidential candidates and their respective political parties to the peaceful transfer of power in the next election are fundamental tenets of our constitutional Republic. Adherence to these tenets is essential to American Democracy, American governance and government, and to the Rule of Law in the United States of America. Without the peaceful transfer of power, America would have no democracy. The politicians tell us that America’s Democracy and the Rule of Law are too “abstract” to “resonate” with American voters. If that was ever true in the past, which I do not accept, it is emphatically not true today. For reasons we all know too well, there could not possibly be any more concrete and consequential issues for the Nation and the American voter today than America’s Democracy and Rule of Law. America’s Democracy, and along with it the Rule of Law, were almost stolen from us on January 6, 2021, by the former President of the United States, who is, today, asking us to return him to the Highest Office of trust in the land.

America’s Democracy and Rule of Law are the defining features of our Nation. It is America’s Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law that have made America the envy of the world and the beacon of democracy and freedom for the world for almost 250 years. This presidential election is a test of Americans’ commitment to America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law. It is so because the former president and the Republican Party have shamefully made it so. The often lofty, at times even noble, policy differences that have been the hallmark of American Politics and partisan debate for almost a quarter of a millennium pale in comparison to the foundational national policy issues of America’s Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law. American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law are the stakes — the only real stakes — in the upcoming election.. Having made them so, these foundational issues of our times cannot now be wished away by the former president and his Republican Party, as they would have it. And they must not be wished away by the American People. The fact remains to this day that even the loftiest and noblest of policies and policy differences will be comparatively inconsequential unless and until we Americans bring to an end the war on America’s Democracy that was instigated by the former president and his allies on January 6, 2021. For their part, the former president and the Republican Party have determined to prosecute their war against America’s Democracy to its catastrophic end. As a consequence, for our part, “We the People” must bring this unholy war to an end – now. The Founders of our Nation and the Framers of our Constitution feared most of all this very moment in American history, when the American People would be tempted by the seductive demagoguery of a modern-day populist demagogue. In a letter to George Washington in 1792, over 230 years ago, Alexander Hamilton warned of this day and this demagogue, who would “mount the hobby horse of popularity” and whose “objects” “may justly be suspected to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

Thomas Jefferson agreed with Alexander Hamilton about very little, except about the existential danger to the Republic of a populist demagogue. “If once elected, and at a second or third election outvoted by one or two votes, he will pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government, be supported by the States voting for him,” Jefferson presciently wrote to James Madison in 1787. The time for America’s choosing has come. It is time for all Americans to stand and affirm whether they believe in American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, and want for America the same — or whether they do not. The former president and the Republican Party have cynically framed this choice as a Hobson’s choice and they have cynically forced their supposed Hobson’s choice upon the Nation. But they have chosen as their standard bearer the one man who is singularly unfit to embody and represent not only to the Nation, but to the world, America’s sacred Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law. In a word, for America and Americans, this is no Hobson’s choice at all. America’s two political parties are the political guardians of American Democracy. Regrettably, in the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law. As a result, I will unhesitatingly vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris. In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.

In the 2024 election for President of the United States, there are no more important issues for America. It is our Democracy, our Constitution, and our Rule of Law that bind us together as Americans. We Americans must never allow ourselves to be put asunder from this that binds us by the siren calls of the politicians and the political sophists, the mercenaries and the opportunists, who entreat us that the only thing that matters in this presidential election is the candidates’ different positions on the sundry policies of the day. All, as if nothing had come before. We Americans know all too well what has come before. We understand what the political class does not want us to understand. That in the presidential election of 2024, the candidates’ policy differences are the least that matters to the United States of America.

J. Michael Luttig

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Harris, Kamala, History, Trump

RFK Jr. Considering Dropping Out of Race and Endorsing Trump

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2024 //
41

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to amaze. He is a lawyer; he worked for years for environmental protection. Then he became involved in opposing vaccines and spread the claim that vaccines cause autism. Most members of his illustrious family have publicly opposed him as a candidate.

He found a very wealthy running mate, Nicole Shanahan, the ex-wife of Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google. She poured millions into the campaign.

The Kennedy-Shanahan ticket has had trouble getting onto the ballot in every state. So far, they have succeeded in 19 states. Their ticket has declined in the polls, and it’s running short of money.

Kennedy has approached both of the major candidates about joining forces with them. Trump was enthusiastic and even hinted that there might be an important post for him, something like a major Cabinet post (Health and Human Services, perhaps?). Imagine RFK Jr. with the power to recall or ban vaccines.

He also tried to meet with Democratic leaders, but they rebuffed him. After Biden’s disastrous June debate performance, he offered to take Biden’s place at the top of the ticket. When Kamala became the consensus candidate, he tried to meet with her, but she was not interested.

It turns out that RFK Jr. draws more votes away from Trump than from Harris. The anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and other conspiracy theorists like him.

The New York Times reported that Shanahan, RFK Jr.’s running mate, was interviewed in a podcast, where she mentioned that they were thinking of joining forces with Trump. She expressed bitterness towards the Democrats and blames them for undermining the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket. She said that one of the options for the future is forming a third party.

Hmmm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. working on behalf of Donald Trump? Trump is a guy who doesn’t believe in climate change. He says it’s a hoax. Will RFK Jr. abandon his many years as an environmentalist to get a shot at political power? Shameful.

Categories Democrats, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Health, Science, Trump

Dan Rather: Elon Musk Pushes Lies and Fake News

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2024 //
7

Dan Rather warns about the danger of one-man control of a major social media company. He had Elon Musk in mind. Musk is supporting Trump, and he is using Twitter, his personal megaphone, to help Trump and smear Harris.

I have been locked out of Twitter since mid-July, because Twitter says I am underage. Really! So I am no longer influenced by Musk propaganda. But millions of other people are.

Rather writes on his blog “Steady”:

Imagine having the ability to instantly lob information, true or not, to millions of people across the globe. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), has that ability. One would hope that with that power would come responsibility. In a perfect world, the owners of social media companies would be fair-minded and objective. Alas.

For all the talk of social media reform after 2016 and the Facebook fiasco when misinformation ran rampant across that platform, it now appears that Musk has decided not only to support the Republican candidate for president but to personally help spread misinformation about voting and the election.

Plus, in 2024, Musk has more powerful tools than Facebook ever imagined eight years ago. Artificial intelligence is coming into its own, and the dangers it presents to our democracy are profound.

Musk has recently released an AI chatbot, which, if you don’t know, is basically a computer that can simulate a human conversation. Musk named his Grok, and within hours of President Biden bowing out of the race, it created a post that read: “The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election,” naming nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. The message suggested that Kamala Harris had missed the filing deadline to get on the ballot in those states.

This is 100% false and was shared with millions of users on X.

Secretaries of state in five of the nine states have written a letter to Musk urging him to “immediately implement changes” to Grok. I’m not holding my breath.

When Grok was launched late last year, Musk called it the anti-“woke” chatbot — his characterization. He said he wanted the AI search assistant to “answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.” Those other AI systems, powered by OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, are specifically designed to avoid controversial topics.

But it’s not just Grok that is pushing out lies. Musk himself reposted a manipulated version of Harris’s first campaign video. It featured an altered voice track that sounds just like Harris. In it “she” says she didn’t “know the first thing about running the country” and that she is the “ultimate diversity hire.” Musk tagged the video as “amazing” and didn’t include a disclaimer. His post has garnered 135 million views, so far. It has not been taken down.

Talk about strange bedfellows. Over the years, there has been no love lost between Musk and Donald Trump. As recently as May, Trump was a vociferous and vocal proponent of the oil and gas industry. Remember the Mar-a-Lago get-together where he promised to end Biden’s green energy initiatives, including his electric vehicle policies, in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions?

Apparently Musk and Trump have mended some pretty tall fences. For his part, Musk has promised lots of cash to the pro-Trump America PAC. Maybe Trump didn’t get what he asked for from his oil and gas friends.

The Musk-backed America PAC is already helping Trump in swing states. The PAC’s website is tricking people into sharing personal data. The site promises to help people register to vote, but when a user enters a zip code in a battleground state, after also giving their name and phone number, they are directed to a page that says “thank you.” They are then asked to “complete the form below.” But there is no form. And there is no redirection to a voter registration site.

In exchange, Trump now thinks electric vehicles are “incredible.” What a shocker. At a rally in Georgia on Sunday, Trump told his supporters, “I’m for electric cars. I have to be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly. So, I have no choice.”

The Michigan secretary of state is investigating Musk and the PAC. “Every citizen should know exactly how their personal information is being used by PACs, especially if an entity is claiming it will help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state,” a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office said.

In 2022, President Barack Obama gave a speech at Stanford University about the dangers of artificial intelligence, foreseeing that “regulation has to be part of the answer” to combating online disinformation. His closing thought is a reminder that AI can be a help as well as a hindrance — but that it can’t exist in a vacuum.

“The internet is a tool. Social media is a tool. At the end of the day, tools don’t control us. We control them. And we can remake them. It’s up to each of us to decide what we value and then use the tools we’ve been given to advance those values,” Obama said.

For all intents and purposes, social media has become our town square — but unlike most communities, it has no sheriff, and it very much needs one. In his or her absence it is up to us, social media’s users, to be wary consumers.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Media, Propaganda

The New Republic: Tim Walz Is the Best Antidote to the Poison and Lies of FOX News

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2024 //
45

I don’t know how any self-respecting journalist could work for FOX News. It offers a good job in a competitive industry, but why sell your soul to the devil? I have recently seen tweets by Megyn Kelly, viciously attacking Kamala Harris, and every time I do, I remember Trump saying of her in 2016, after the first GOP debate, that she had blood coming out of her orifices. Yet still she is his sycophant.

In The New Republic, Thom Hartmann writes that Tim Walz may be the perfect antidote to FOX’s vitriol. If you want to reprogram family members, introduce them to Tim Walz. He is a good man, a decent man, not a FOX liar.

Hartmann writes:

All across America families are in mourning: Their parents and grandparents, particularly the men in their lives, have been stolen from them by the right-wing hate and rage machine.

Jen Senko produced a movie—The Brainwashing of My Dad—about losing her own father to Fox “News”; it was also made into a book of the same title. She’s been a guest on my radio show a few times, and her story is one replicated across America millions of times. Her father—a totally normal Midwestern guy—began watching Fox “News” when he retired, and within a year had become withdrawn, bitter, angry, and filled with hate.

Jen and her family staged an intervention and locked Fox out of Dad’s TV with the child lock option built into her cable system; within a few months, back to watching normal TV news like CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC, Dad made a full recovery from the temporary mental illness Murdoch’s infamous hate machine had thrown him into.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick, is America’s intervention against the mind poison that Trump, Fox “News,” and right-wing hate radio have infected our nation with.

He’s a normal guy, who joined the Army National Guard right out of high school at 17, rising to the rank of Commander Sergeant Major and becoming a top advocate for America’s veterans during his decade in Congress.

He used the G.I. bill to go to college, getting his master’s degree and going on to teach high school social studies. He coached his school’s football team, taking it to the state championships for the first time ever.

He smiles. His students love him, as does his family. He’s a normal guy. He’s the father everybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family wishes they had. He’s the grandpa everybody who’s lost one to Fox “News” wishes could sit down with their own and set him straight.

He carved butter at the state fair. He helped start his school’s first gay-straight alliance back in the 1990s when homophobic hate was still widely accepted; he said the coach doing so would be a powerful statement of support. He loves his country, his community, his family, and his nation.

No purchased bone-spur X-rays for Tim Walz; he embodies the very definition of patriotism that I grew up with in the Midwest. He reminds me of my own dad, who joined the Army at 17 to go fight Nazis in World War II, an echo of the past that most Americans recognize.

His contrast with Trump’s infidelities, con jobs, and constant angry bitterness is a sunlight-like disinfectant for our body politic. He shows up J.D. Vance—with his creepy obsessions with women’s genitals and birth rates and fealty to his billionaire patrons—for the weird guy that he is. He even highlights jokes about Vance, saying: “I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

Trump and Vance are riding a wave of hate, fear, and bigotry made acceptable and even viral by a multibillion-dollar media machine that emerged from the Reagan years.

To steal the minds of America’s grandparents, President Reagan fast-tracked citizenship for Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch in 1985 so Murdoch could legally purchase U.S. media properties; Reagan ordered the Federal Communications Commission to stop enforcing the Fairness Doctrine, and Republicans in Congress later gutted the Equal Time Rule.

In this, Reagan knew what he and the GOP were getting: Murdoch had by that time already flipped both Australian and British politics toward the hard right using frequent and lurid stories featuring crime by minorities.

Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald (the Australian equivalent of The New York Times), former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Rupert Murdoch and his right-wing news operations “the greatest cancer on the Australian democracy.”

Fox and Murdoch’s power in Australia came, Rudd says, from their ruthlessness.

It’s the same here. When Fox and Tucker Carlson set out to rewrite the history of the treasonous January 6 coup attempt at our nation’s Capitol with a three-part special alleging it could have been an inside job by the FBI, two of their top conservative stars, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, resigned in protest.

Text messages released by Congresswoman Liz Cheney and the committee that investigated the January 6 attempt to overthrow our government show that the network’s top prime-time hosts were begging Trump to call off his openly racist and murderous mob while at the same time minimizing what happened on the air.

Even worse, revelations from the Dominion lawsuit show that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham all intentionally lied to their viewers for over two years with the encouragement of Rupert Murdoch himself. While they were privately ridiculing Trump and acknowledging he was a “sore loser,” they said the exact opposite to their audience.

Along with its relentless attacks on America’s first Black president, Fox’s support of Trump’s Big Lie helped tear America apart and set up the violence and deaths on January 6—while also making billions for Murdoch and his family.

Steve Schmidt, a man who’s definitely no liberal (he was a White House adviser to George W. Bush and ran Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign as well as John McCain’s 2008 campaign), has been blunt about the impact of Fox “News”:

Rupert Murdoch’s lie machine is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the poisoning of our democracy and the stoking of a cold civil war. There has never been anything like it and it is beyond terrible for the country. Bar none, Rupert Murdoch is the worst and most dangerous immigrant to ever arrive on American soil. There are no words for the awfulness of his cancerous network.

While Biden press secretaries Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre have been humorous in their dealing with Fox’s Peter Doocy’s attempts at gotcha questions in the White House press room, there’s nothing funny about inciting attacks on our country and then openly lying on the air about “antifa” to cover it up, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented that Fox “News” did.

Tim Walz is the antidote to the Fox “News” poison that is now so widely imitated across the right-wing media ecosystem, stealing the hearts and minds of millions. He’s America’s everyman, a welcome dose of sanity, and a wake-up call about how badly our country has been damaged by billionaire-funded right-wing hate.

So let the dad jokes begin!

As Liz Gumbinner points out, Seth Meyers’s head writer, Sal Gentile, summarized it brilliantly on X: “Tim Walz will expand free school lunches, raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, fix your carburetor, replace the old wiring in your basement, spray that wasp’s nest under the deck, install a new spring for your garage door, and put a new chain on your lawnmower.”

And God willing and we all show up to vote, he’ll soon be vice president of the United States.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Goodness, Lies, Walz, Tim

North Carolina: Republican Candidate for State Superintendent is an Extremist and Crackpot

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2024 //
2

CNN reported that Michele Morrow, the GOP candidate for State Superintendent of Schools in North Carolina, filmed a video on January 6 urging Trump to “put the Coonstitution to the side” and use the military to stay in power. Morrow was in DC for the January 6 rally but she says she never entered the Capitol.

In a deleted Facebook livestream she filmed from her hotel room, Morrow called for mass arrests of anyone who helped certify the 2020 election. “And if the police won’t do it and the Department of Justice won’t do it, then he will have to enact the Insurrection Act,” said Morrow. “In which case the Insurrection Act completely puts the Constitution to the side and says, now the military rules all.”

Morrow was at the Capitol as the attack occurred, according to public videos reviewed by CNN that show her in a restricted area on the northwest side of the Capitol. CNN has seen no evidence that Morrow entered the Capitol building that day or that she engaged in violence, and she was not charged with any crimes.

In March’s Republican primary, Morrow defeated the incumbent North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, a job that manages the state’s $11 billion budget for K-12 public schools and helps set education priorities and implement curriculum standards.

That same month, CNN’s KFile reported Morrow had previously called for the public execution of Barack Obama and the death of Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats in comments on a since-deleted X account.

“I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” Morrow wrote in a since-deleted post from May 2020 about Obama. “I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.”

Morrow home-schooled her children. She previously lost a local school board election. She is running now to take control of the education of all the children in North Carolina.

A terrifying prospect.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, North Carolina, Privatization, Trump

Trump Sues the U.S. Justice Department for $115 Million for Documents Search of His Home

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2024 //
5

Trump has the same reaction to every adverse circumstance in his life: Sue. Sue. Sue. He has been involved in literally thousands of law suits in his life. That’s his style. Sometimes the threat of a lawsuit is enough to frighten away an adversary. Sometimes a lawsuit forces a settlement, which works to his advantage.

Now he is suing the Justice Department for searching Mar-a-Lago for top-secret documents which he falsely claimed were his personal property. He no doubt expects the lawsuit to go before a friendly pro-Trump judge or the U.S. Supreme Court, which usually rules in his favor. If he is lucky, it will land in Judge Aileen Cannon’s court.

The New York Daily News reported:

Former President Trump is reportedly planning to sue the federal government for $115 million over the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, accusing the Department of Justice of unconstitutional “political persecution.”

Even though the search turned up hundreds of classified documents and led to his indictment on federal charges, Trump says prosecutors improperly targeted him in hopes of damaging his campaign to win back the White House.

“What President Trump is doing here is not just standing up for himself — he is standing up for all Americans who believe in the rule of law,” Daniel Epstein, a lawyer for Trump, told Fox Business News.

Trump is demanding $15 million in compensation for his legal costs, plus $100 million in punitive damages.

Trump accuses Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray of failing to implement normal procedures for getting back the documents in order to carry out the search and humiliate the Republican ex-president….

The filing sets the clock ticking on a 180-day period during which Trump and the government can seek to work out a settlement. If no deal is reached, a federal judge will hear the case in south Florida.

This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
APThis image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. (AP)

Trump admits taking the documents with him to his Florida estate after leaving the White House in January 2021, but claims he had the legal right to do so.

He returned some of the documents when hit with a subpoena to give them back.

Suspecting Trump was hiding more documents, the feds asked a judge to approve a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, which was carried out on Aug. 22, 2022.

Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate the case after Trump announced he would run for president again in 2024.

Trump was indicted on a string of charges accusing him of improperly retaining the documents and obstructing justice. Two Mar-a-Lago workers were also charged with moving boxes of sensitive documents to hide them from investigators and even Trump’s own defense attorney.

Judge Aileen Cannon recently dismissed the case on the grounds that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. The prosecution is appealing that decision to a higher court but it will likely wind up being decided by the Supreme Court.

Categories Corruption, Elections, Extremism, Justice, Trump
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