Remember how Trump ridiculed Hillary Clinton for using a private email server to conduct State Department business? His crowds chanted “Lock her up!” at his rallies. The FBI reopened an investigation 10 days before the election, based on allegations about her emails, closed the investigation a few days later, and she lost the election. No classified information was found on her private server.
Hillary Clinton was baffled by reports of top U.S. officials unwittingly sharing war plans with a reporterduring an unsecure group chat that allegedly took place on the Signal messaging app.
“You have got to be kidding me,” the former Secretary of State wrote next to a wide-eyed emoticon on X.
Clinton’s post included a link to a bombshell Atlantic magazine story about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security director Tulsi Gabbard sharing what appeared to be highly sensitive information about military strikes in Yemen with Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
Goldberg wrote Monday he withheld information that could’ve put U.S. troops in danger due to the “shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation.”
But he shared portions of the conversation that included Vance claiming “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.”
Goldberg said the plan being discussed “included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.”
Throughout her failed 2016 presidential campaign, Clinton was dogged by criticism for using a private server located in her Chappaqua home to conduct official business white serving in President Obama’s cabinet. She lost to Trump, whose crowds regularly chanted “Lock her up” at his rallies.
Hegseth — a Fox News personality prior to being tapped by President Trump to manage national defense — called Goldberg a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again” during a brief interview on a Hawaiian airport tarmac.
National Security Council Spokesman Brian Hughes confirmed the messages inadvertently shared with The Atlantic “appeared to be an authentic message chain” that’s inclusion of a journalist merited further review.
He also argued the success of the strikes that occurred over the weekend proved the alleged leak was no threat to U.S. troops.
President Trump claimed at a Monday afternoon press conference that he knew nothing about the security breach, adding “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic.”
Veteran journalist James Fallows put up a post today on his blog comparing the front page of the New York Times on October 29, 2016 to the front page of the same newspaper on October 3, 2024.
I recommend that you open the link and see what he was comparing.
There’s an old saying that you should never wish misfortune on others, because it might happen to you. It happened to Trump! Thom Hartmann has an interesting insight about the historic conviction of a former and perhaps future President.
First Prez convicted of a Felony in history… At a Reno, Nevada campaign rally in 2016, Donald Trump said of Hillary Clinton, “We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt.” He elaborated at a campaign rally in Concord, North Carolina, saying: “If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government. She is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up — in my opinion — in a criminal trial. I mean, you take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way.” He added that, because of the possibility she could become a felon, “She has no right to be running, you know that. No right!” Now Trump has been twice found by juries of his peers to have raped a woman, was convicted of fraud with his phony university, busted for running a fake charity and stealing money intended for kids with cancer, and his company was convicted of tax and insurance fraud. With more to come, should the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court and Florida’s Aileen Cannon ever let his cases proceed. Karma, as the old saying goes, can be a bitch…
I thought it was a joke when I read a comment on the blog saying that Trump denied saying “Lock her up” during the 2016 campaign. That’s good one, I thought. Like saying that Trump denied saying that Mexico would pay for a border wall. No, he wouldn’t do that.
Our occasional commenter, who uses the sobriquet “Democracy” posted the following analysis of Putin’s involvement in the 2016 election. Russia and Wikileaks crippled Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and at least eight Republican Senators knew it. They endorsed a report which reached that conclusion. Yet they continued to defend Trump.
Democracy posted:
Volume V of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigative report on the 2016 election:
“the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s highlevel access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat…”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process…While the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”
Today, we honor Dr. King by paying attention to the well-being of children and the protection of working people. He strongly believed in unions. When he was murdered in Memphis, he was there to support the Black men who were sanitation workers in their fight for a living wage and their demand for a union.
Since his death, powerful politicians have rolled back collective bargaining in many industries and have sought to eviscerate unions altogether. Now these same red states that ban unions are abandoning their child labor laws. These laws were passed over the last century to protect children, to limit the age at which they are allowed to work, to keep them in school so that they could be educated, to prevent them from working in hazardous industries.
Republicans in many red states are looking at children as a source of low-wage workers. Many industries need workers—especially since some states don’t want migrant workers—and they care whether they are 14 or 15.
Our regular readers Christine Langhoff wrote Cc this comment about Indiana, where employers are eager to hire child labor.
On Monday, the opening day of Indiana’s legislative session, Republican Rep. Joanna King filed a bill that would allow kids as young as 14 to effectively drop out of school following 8th grade and go to work full-time on a farm. If the teenager “has been excused from compulsory school attendance after completing grade 8” and obtains their parents’ permission, they can work up to 40 hours a week all year round, including during school hours.
One of the big under-covered stories of 2023 was the rolling back of child labor laws.
The major restrictions on child labor were part of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and from there the states passed their own versions of protections for children. Many of these laws distinguish between agricultural labor and other sorts, in part so that junior could work on the family farm without getting Ma and Pa fined or arrested. But the idea was that maybe putting children in harm’s way or depriving them of the chance to get an education was a Bad Thing and maybe as a nation we should knock it off.
We didn’t get those laws easily. Lots of folks thought that child labor was double plus good. Opponents of the laws denied the existence of a problem, argued that work was good for the young ‘uns. “I am really tired of seeing so many big children ten years old playing in the streets,” was a real thing that a real “prominent lady citizen” said in opposition to child labor laws. And of course the ever-popular complaint– “How can we stay in business and remain profitable if you pass these rules?”
Camella Teoli went to work in a Lawrence, MA mill at the age of 11. Early on in her career, a machine used to twist cotton into thread caught her hair and ripped off part of her scalp. At the age of 14, she was standing in front of Congress in March 1912. The conditions in the mill were famously horrific; low wages and a life expectancy of 39.6 years, with one third of workers dying before age 25. If your workforce is going to die off in their twenties, of course you need to start them young.
Teoli was in front of Congress in March because in January, a new law had reduced the legal hours for women and children from 56 to 54 per week. The pissed off mill owners responded by speeding up the machines; so harder work, less pay. That kicked off the Great Lawrence Textile Strike, in which adults and children walked off the job.
The strike got ugly. Workers sent their children out of town, both for safety and as a publicity move, and the city officials decided to counter the bad publicity by deploying police and soldiers at the railroad station to keep children from getting in trains out of town, ultimately physically attacking the group of children. And Congress called a hearing, and Camella Teori, a 14 year old Italian immigrant testifying before First Lady Helen Taft, who invited Camella and other child laborers to lunch at the White House and contributed to the strike fund. Teoli became a national sensation, the face of our labor problem.
Massachusetts passed some child labor laws that were aimed not so much at the inhumane conditions of the work, but at the fact that child workers were being deprived of any chance for education. But the states (particularly the southern ones) dragged their feet hard, because for a huge part of US history, lots of people have been okay–even more than okay–with child labor, as long as it’s Those People’s Children.
Teoli went back to work in the mill. She was never promoted. She never told her own children about her role in labor history, even as her daughter had learned to help her arrange her hair to cover a large bald spot.
So here we are again
My point? The desire to use young bodies as part of the industrial machinery of our country is not particularly new, nor has it always been obvious that children should not be required to work in dangerous conditions or to the detriment of their own education.
In 2023, around a dozen states rolled their child labor protections back.
Some, like Arkansas, teamed up the gutting of child labor protections with laws set to kneecap public schools. Iowa removed protections that kept young workers out of more physically dangerous jobs while expanding the hours they could be asked to work. Missouri similarly shotfor increasing working hours for teens. Minnesota said yes to teens working in heavy construction.
Many off these rollbacks have especially troubling features. Arkansas removed the requirement for age verification. Many of the states have eliminated the requirement for a work permit. The work permit is dismissed as a piece of troublesome paperwork, but it is also the checkpoint at which the school or some other responsible adult can say, “I’m not sure this is such a great idea for this particular teen.”
In some cases like Arkansas, the permits had a requirement for parents to sign off, but now Arkansas doesn’t care to give parents a voice in this particular decision. Ohio’s Senator Bill Reineke expressed a similar concern over child labor, arguing that kids who really want to work shouldn’t be hampered because “they can’t get their parents to cooperate with them.” Parents–they only matter sometimes.
Please open the link and finish the rest of this excellent article.
Federal law bars anyone under 18 from roofing because it’s so dangerous. But across the U.S., migrant children do this work anyway.
They call themselves “ruferitos” on social media. In videos like these, they talk about being underage and pose on rooftops and ladders, often without the required safety gear.
One slip could be fatal.
The New York Times spoke with more than 100 child roofers in nearly two dozen states, including some who began at elementary-school age. They wake before dawn to be driven to distant job sites, sometimes crossing state lines. They carry heavy bundles of shingles that leave their arms shaking. They work through heat waves on black-tar rooftops that scorch their hands.
The rise of child roofers comes as young people are crossing the southern border alone in record numbers. Nearly 400,000 children have come to the United States since 2021 without their parents, and a majority have ended up working, The New York Times has reported in a series of articles this year.
The most common job for these children is under-the-table work in roofing and construction, according to teachers, social workers, labor organizers and federal investigators. Roofing is plentiful and pays better than many of the other jobs these children can get.
In New Orleans, Juan Nasario said he had been replacing roofs during 12-hour shifts nearly every day since he arrived from Guatemala four years ago, when he was 10. He would like to go to school or at least join a soccer team, but he needs to pay rent to his older cousin.
In Dallas, Diego Osbaldo Hernández started roofing at 15, after coming to the United States from Mexico last year to live with an older friend…
Children working on construction sites are six times as likely to be killed as minors doing other work, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Roofing is particularly risky; it is the most dangerous job for minors other than agricultural work, studies show.
Labor organizers and social workers say they are seeing more migrant children suffer serious injuries on roofing crews in recent years.
A 16-year-old fell off a roof in Arkansas and shattered his back. A 15-year-old in Florida was burned all over after he slipped from a roof and onto a vat of hot tar. A child in Illinois stepped through a skylight and fractured his spine….
Juan Ortiz, 15, was installing metal roofing at a plant in Alabama in 2019 when this patch of insulation gave way and he fell onto a concrete floor.
After his death, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that the employer had “nine laborers on the crew, but only six harnesses.”
Researchers at the esteemed Columbia Journalism Review conducted a study of the election coverage on the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post and concluded, despite the protests of editors, that the pre-election coverage in recent years was not objective. Their biggest complaint was that the newspapers reported the Presidential campaign as a horse race instead of informing readers about real policy differences between the candidates. But there was another kind of bias at work: TheNew York Times published ten front-page articles about Hillary Clinton’s emails in the months before the election, which turned out to be a phony issue.
The article begins:
Seven years ago, in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, media analysts rushed to explain Donald Trump’s victory. Misinformation was to blame, the theory went, fueled by Russian agents and carried on social networks. But as researchers, we wondered if fascination and fear over “fake news” had led people to underestimate the influence of traditional journalism outlets. After all, mainstream news organizations remain an important part of the media ecosystem—they’re widely read and watched; they help set the agenda, including on social networks. We decided to look at what had been featured on the printed front page of the New York Times in the three months leading up to Election Day. Of a hundred and fifty articles that discussed the campaign, only a handful mentioned policy; the vast majority covered horse race politics or personal scandals. Most strikingly, the Times ran ten front-page stories about Hillary Clinton’s email server. “If voters had wanted to educate themselves on issues,” we concluded, “they would not have learned much from reading the Times.”
We didn’t suggest that the election coverage in the Times was any worse than what appeared in other major outlets, “so much as it was typical of a broader failure of mainstream journalism.” But we did expect, or at least hope, that in the years that followed, the Times would conduct a critical review of its editorial policies. Was an overwhelming focus on the election as a sporting contest the best way to serve readers? Was obsessive attention to Clinton’s email server really justified in light of the innumerable personal, ethical, and ultimately criminal failings of Trump? It seemed that editors had a responsibility to rethink both the volume of attention paid to certain subjects as well as their framing.
After the 2022 midterms, we checked back in, this time examining the printed front page of the Times and the Washington Post from September 1, 2022, through Election Day that November. As before, we figured the front page mattered disproportionately, in part because articles placed there represent selections that publishers believe are most important to readers—and also because, according to Nielsen data we analyzed, 32 percent of Web-browsing sessions around that period starting at the Times homepage did not lead to other sections or articles; people often stick to what they’re shown first. We added the Post this time around for comparison, to get a sense of whether the Times really was anomalous.
It wasn’t. We found that the Times and the Post shared significant overlap in their domestic politics coverage, offering little insight into policy. Both emphasized the horse race and campaign palace intrigue, stories that functioned more to entertain readers than to educate them on essential differences between political parties. The main point of contrast we found between the two papers was that, while the Postdelved more into topics Democrats generally want to discuss—affirmative action, police reform, LGBTQ rights—the Times tended to focus on subjects important to Republicans—China, immigration, and crime.
By the numbers, of four hundred and eight articles on the front page of the Timesduring the period we analyzed, about half—two hundred nineteen—were about domestic politics. A generous interpretation found that just ten of those stories explained domestic public policy in any detail; only one front-page article in the lead-up to the midterms really leaned into discussion about a policy matter in Congress: Republican efforts to shrink Social Security. Of three hundred and ninety-three front-page articles in the Post, two hundred fifteen were about domestic politics; our research found only four stories that discussed any form of policy. The Post had no front-page stories in the months ahead of the midterms on policies that candidates aimed to bring to the fore or legislation they intended to pursue. Instead, articles speculated about candidates and discussed where voter bases were leaning. (All of the data and analysis supporting this piece can be found here.)
Exit polls indicated that Democrats cared most about abortion and gun policy; crime, inflation, and immigration were top of mind for Republicans. In the Times, Republican-favored topics accounted for thirty-seven articles, while Democratic topics accounted for just seven. In the Post, Republican topics were the focus of twenty articles and Democratic topics accounted for fifteen—a much more balanced showing. In the final days before the election, we noticed that the Times, in particular, hit a drumbeat of fear about the economy—the worries of voters, exploitation by companies, and anxieties related to the Federal Reserve—as well as crime. Data buried within articles occasionally refuted the fear-based premise of a piece. Still, by discussing how much people were concerned about inflation and crime—and reporting in those stories that Republicans benefited from a sense of alarm—the Times suggested that inflation and crime were historically bad (they were not) and that Republicans had solutions to offer (they did not).
I urge you to open the link and read the article. It confirms what many of us suspected: the major media are all too easily sucked into the GOP narrative and parrot it. Expect to see a focus in the lead-up to the 2024 election that emphasizes inflation, crime, fears about Biden’s age, and every verbal slip up he makes, and every other reason either to abstain from voting or to vote for Trump. We will see, as we do already, a drumbeat of articles about why this group or that one will not vote for Biden (so far, I have seen such articles about the youth vote, the Black vote, the Hispanic vote, and the Muslim vote). It would be ironic if Muslims didn’t vote for Biden because of his support for Israel, since Trump tried to ban immigration from Muslim-majority nations and is openly nativist.
Will the major media allow Trump and his enablers again to set their agenda?
I am going to take this opportunity to make a direct plea to journalists, producers, and editors in the news media who read this newsletter. I know you are out there because I hear from you when you feel that I unfairly bash the news media. I occasionally receive mistaken “reply-to-all” or forwarded emails to your colleagues that inadvertently include me. (Don’t worry; I delete them immediately.) (Hint: Do a Google search for “How to remove a name from autofill in an email address field.”)
Let me start with an olive branch. There are exceptional journalists doing great work every day. I cite them every day. They can’t please everyone all the time. They deserve our support and thanks—and forbearance for the occasional mistake. So here it is: Thank you to every journalist who is doing a tough job well in a news environment that is the equivalent of a war zone of disinformation.
Ignore my whining and carping; dismiss me as a crank if you want. But please ask yourselves whether the news reporting and editorial stances at your outlet are rising to this perilous moment in American history. Everyone—including you—knows in their bones that Trump is a unique threat to democracy. He is consciously emulating the worst dictators of the last century. His aides are leaking their plans to undermine democracy. That existential threat must be in every story you write. If you must, report on polls or horse races or political infighting but do so while acknowledging that one candidate seeks to destroy democracy while the other candidate seeks to operate within its confines.
I believe that Americans will prevail against the threat of MAGA extremism with or without the support of a free press rising to the challenge of this moment. But it would be easier—and victory would be more assured—if major media outlets did not treat Trump as just another candidate after his failed coup and incitement to insurrection.
Imagine if Hitler had survived WWII and then ran for re-election as Chancellor of Germany from a prison cell. Would any story be written that merely reported on polls discussing the level of voter support for Hitler versus his opponent? Or would every story include discussion of his fascist takeover of Germany, his war on Europe, and his attempt to exterminate the Jewish people? Why does Trump get a free pass in hundreds of articles a day that treat him as the legitimate political opponent of Joe Biden? How can any story be written that asks, “Is Biden too old,” without asking the more urgent question, “Will Trump end democracy in America.”
I have slipped back into offense when I meant to invite you to reflect on the balance and editorial position of your news organization. Tens of millions of Americans are hoping that you will get it right. You don’t have to defend Democrats or Joe Biden. But defending the Constitution and democracy is not partisan. The future of our democracy is partly in your hands. It should be a part of every story you write.
Hillary Clinton wrote in The Atlantic about why Hamas must go. It is a barrier to any future peace, she writes. It is a terrorist organization that has consistently blocked a two-state solution. It shamelessly uses the Palestinians as human shields. As the Washington Post recently documented, the massacre of October 7 was intended by Hamas to provoke an overwhelming Israeli military attack, which was sure to turn public opinion to the Gazans and eclipse any memory of the savage murders, rapes, and brutality of October 7. And for maximum impact, the Hamas terrorists wore body cams to document their atrocities.
She wrote:
One morning in November 2012, I knocked on the door of President Barack Obama’s suite in the Raffles Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, so early that he was barely out of bed. I had an urgent question that could not wait for the president to finish his morning coffee: Should we try to broker a cease-fire in Gaza? Then, like now, the extreme Islamist terror group Hamas had sparked a crisis by indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians. Israel had responded with air strikes, and a ground invasion of Gaza appeared imminent.
The president and I debated whether I should leave Asia, fly to the Middle East, and try to negotiate a halt to the fighting before the situation escalated further. The reason to go was clear: Stopping the violence would save lives and prevent the conflict from spiraling into a wider regional war.
The reasons not to go were more nuanced but also compelling. President Obama and I were both wary of suggesting that Israel did not have a right and a responsibility to defend itself against terrorists. If Hamas did not face consequences for its attacks, it would be emboldened to carry out more. We also knew Hamas had a history of breaking agreements and could not be trusted. For that matter, neither side seemed ready to pull back from the brink. Diplomacy is all about leverage and timing. If I tried and failed to negotiate a cease-fire, it would reduce America’s credibility in the region and lower the likelihood that we could reengage successfully later.
In the end, we decided the risks were worth it. I headed to the region and began intense shuttle diplomacy among Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Late into the night in Cairo, I went line by line through a proposal I’d worked out with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The Egyptians were on the phone with Hamas leaders in Gaza. Finally, I was able to announce that all parties had agreed to a truce.
On the long plane ride home, I asked my aide Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, if Hamas was abiding by the agreement we’d just struck. So far, he told me, the answer was yes. I was relieved that we’d prevented further bloodshed, but I worried that all we’d really managed to do was put a lid on a simmering cauldron that would likely boil over again in the future.
Unfortunately, that fear proved correct. In 2014, Hamas violated the cease-fire and started another war by abducting Israeli hostages and launching rocket attacks against civilians. Israel responded forcefully, but Hamas remained in control of Gaza. The terrorists re-armed, and the pattern repeated itself in 2021, with more civilians killed. This all culminated in the horrific massacre of Israeli civilians last month, the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
This history suggests three insights for the current crisis and the future of this complex and volatile region. First, October 7 made clear that this bloody cycle must end and that Hamas cannot be allowed to once again retrench, re-arm, and launch new attacks—while continuing to use people in Gaza as expendable human shields. Second, a full cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power would be a mistake. For now, pursuing more limited humanitarian pauses that allow aid to get in and civilians and hostages to get out is a wiser course. Third, Israel’s long policy of containment has failed—it needs a new strategy and new leadership.
For me, Israel and Gaza are not just names on a map. I have grieved with Israeli families whose loved ones were abducted or killed in terrorist attacks. I have held the hands of the wounded in their hospital beds. In Jerusalem, I visited a bombed-out pizzeria and will never forget it.
I have also been to Gaza. I have talked with Palestinians who have suffered greatly from the conflicts of the past decades and dream of peace and a state of their own.Before Hamas seized power, I met women using microloans from the United States to start new businesses and become breadwinners for their families, including a dressmaker who—because she was finally able to buy a sewing machine—could send her two daughters to school. My decades of experience in the region taught me that Palestinian and Israeli parents may say different prayers at worship but they share the same hopes for their kids—just like Americans, just like parents everywhere.
That is why I am convinced Hamas must go. On October 7, these terrorists killed babies, raped women, and kidnapped innocent civilians. They continue to hold more than 200 hostages. They have proved again and again that they will not abide by cease-fires, will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace, and will never stop attacking Israel.
Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people. Hamas deliberately places military installations in and below hospitals and refugee camps because it is trying to maximize, not minimize, the impact on Palestinian civilians for its own propaganda purposes. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is heartbreaking—and every death means more blood on Hamas’s hands.
So the Biden administration is correct not to seek a full cease-fire at this moment, which would give Hamas a chance to re-arm and perpetuate the cycle of violence. Hamas would claim that it had won and it would remain a key part of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance.
Cease-fires freeze conflicts rather than resolve them. In 1999, the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević called for a cease-fire in Kosovo, where NATO air strikes were trying to stop his brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It was a cynical attempt to preserve Serbia’s control of Kosovo, and the Clinton administration continued bombing until Milošević’s forces withdrew. Today, global allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin call for a cease-fire in Ukraine because they know freezing the conflict will leave Russia in control of large swaths of Ukrainian territory that it seized illegally. Putin could reinforce his troops and then resume the conflict at a time of his choosing.
In 2012, freezing the conflict in Gaza was an outcome we and the Israelis were willing to accept. But Israel’s policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed. A cease-fire now that restored the pre–October 7 status quo ante would leave the people of Gaza living in a besieged enclave under the domination of terrorists and leave Israelis vulnerable to continued attacks. It would also consign hundreds of hostages to continued captivity.
Cease-fires can make it possible to pursue negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting peace, but only when the timing and balance of forces are right. Bosnia in the 1990s saw 34 failed cease-fires before the Clinton administration’s military intervention prompted all sides to stop fighting and finally negotiate a peace agreement. It is possible that if Israel dismantles Hamas’s infrastructure and military capacity and demonstrates that terrorism is a dead end, a new peace process could begin in the Middle East. But a cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power and eager to strike Israel will make this harder, if not impossible. For decades, Hamas has undermined every serious attempt at peace by launching new attacks, including the October 7 massacre that seems to have been designed, at least in part, to disrupt progress toward normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. (Those negotiations also aimed to bring important benefits for Palestinians.)
By contrast, the humanitarian pauses advocated by the Biden administration and tentatively accepted by the Israelis can save lives without rewarding Hamas. There is precedent: During previous wars in Gaza, Israel and Hamas agreed to a number of pauses so that relief could get into the area. Recent conflicts in Yemen and Sudan have also undergone brief humanitarian pauses. Whether for hours or days, breaks in the fighting can provide safety to aid workers and refugees. They could also help facilitate hostage negotiations, which is an urgent priority right now.
Rejecting a premature cease-fire does not mean defending all of Israel’s tactics, nor does it lessen Israel’s responsibility to comply with the laws of war. Minimizing civilian casualties is legally and morally necessary. It is also a strategic imperative. Israel’s long-term security depends on its achieving peaceful coexistence with neighbors who are prepared to accept its existence and its need for security. The disaster of October 7 has discredited the theory that Israel can contain Hamas, ignore the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, and freeze Israeli control over Palestinians forever.
Going forward, Israel needs a new strategy and new leadership. Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead. At home, it will have to reaffirm Israeli democracy after a tumultuous period. In Gaza, it should resist the urge to reoccupy the territory after the war, accept an internationally mandated interim administration for governing the Strip, and support regional efforts to reform and revive the Palestinian Authority so it has the credibility and the means to reassume control of Gaza. In the West Bank, it must clamp down on the violence perpetrated by extremist Israeli settlers and stop building new settlements that make it harder to imagine a future Palestinian state. Ultimately, the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a secure, democratic, Jewish state is by achieving two states for two peoples. And in the region, Israel should resume serious negotiations with Saudi Arabia and others to normalize relations and build a broad coalition to counter Iran.
For now, Israel should focus on freeing the hostages, increasing humanitarian aid, protecting civilians, and ensuring that Hamas terrorists can no longer murder families, abduct children, exploit civilians as human shields, or start new wars. But when the guns fall silent, the hard work of peace building must begin. There is no other choice.
Donald Trump may be the most litigious person in the United States. On March 24, 2022, Trump filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and various Democratic Party leaders for engaging in a conspiracy against him in 2016. The federal judge tossed the case out yesterday.
Believe me, this is a fun read. The judge is frankly mystified by the legal reasoning and the lack of evidence.
Here is the beginning:
I. BACKGROUND Plaintiff initiated this lawsuit on March 24, 2022, alleging that “the Defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.” (DE 177, Am. Compl. ¶ 9). On this general premise, Plaintiff brings a claim for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), predicated on the theft of trade secrets,
Case 2:22-cv-14102-DMM Document 267 Entered on FLSD Docket 09/08/2022 Page 2 of 65 obstruction of justice, and wire fraud (Count I). He additionally brings claims for: injurious falsehood (Count III); malicious prosecution (Count V); violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) (Count VII); theft of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”) (Count VIII); and violations of the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) (Count IX). The Amended Complaint also contains counts for various conspiracy charges and theories of agency and vicarious liability. (Counts II, IV, VI, and X–XVI). Plaintiff’s theory of this case, set forth over 527 paragraphs in the first 118 pages of the Amended Complaint, is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner. It was certainly not presented that way. Nevertheless, I will attempt to distill it here. The short version: Plaintiff alleges that the Defendants “[a]cting in concert . . . maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.” (Am. Compl. ¶ 1). The Defendants effectuated this alleged conspiracy through two core efforts. “[O]n one front, Perkins Coie partner Mark Elias led an effort to produce spurious ‘opposition research’ claiming to reveal illicit ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.” (Id. ¶ 3). To that end, Defendant Hillary Clinton and her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and lawyers for the Campaign and the Committee allegedly hired Defendant Fusion GPS to fabricate the Steele Dossier. (Id. ¶ 4). “[O]n a separate front, Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussman headed a campaign to develop misleading evidence of a bogus ‘back channel’ connection between e-mail servers at Trump Tower and a Russian- owned bank.” (Id.). Clinton and her operatives allegedly hired Defendant Rodney Joffe to exploit his access to Domain Name Systems (“DNS”) data, via Defendant Neustar, to investigate and ultimately manufacture a suspicious pattern of activity between Trump-related servers and a Russian bank with ties to Vladimir Putin, Alfa Bank. (Id. ¶ 3). As a result of this “fraudulent 2
Case 2:22-cv-14102-DMM Document 267 Entered on FLSD Docket 09/08/2022 Page 3 of 65 evidence,” the Federal Bureau of Investigations (“FBI”) commenced “several large-scale investigations,” which were “prolonged and exacerbated by the presence of a small faction of Clinton loyalists who were well-positioned within the Department of Justice”—Defendants James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and Bruce Ohr. (Id. ¶ 7). And while this was ongoing, the Defendants allegedly “seized on the opportunity to publicly malign Donald J. Trump by instigating a full-blown media frenzy.” (Id. ¶ 6). As a result of this “multi-pronged attack,” Plaintiff claims to have amassed $24 million in damages.1 (Id. ¶ 527). Defendants now move to dismiss the Amended Complaint as “a series of disconnected political disputes that Plaintiff has alchemized into a sweeping conspiracy among the many individuals Plaintiff believes to have aggrieved him.” (DE 226 at 1). They argue that dismissal is warranted because Plaintiff’s claims are both “hopelessly stale”—that is, foreclosed by the applicable statutes of limitations—and because they fail on the merits “in multiple independent respects.” (Id. at 2). As they view it, “[w]hatever the utilities of [the Amended Complaint] as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit.” (Id.). I agree. In the discussion that follows, I first address the Amended Complaint’s structural deficiencies. I then turn to subject matter jurisdiction and the personal jurisdiction arguments raised by certain Defendants. Finally, I assess the sufficiency of the allegations as to each of the substantive counts.
Jake Jacobs, an art teacher in New York City, a leader of New York BadAss Teachers, and a writer for The Progressive, read and reviewed Hillary Clinton’s policy briefing book in 2017 and reviewed the education section for Alternet. I missed his article, but it’s worth reading now to understand how advocates of privatization have inserted themselves into both political parties and use their vast wealth to control public policy and undermine public schools.
Jacobs points out that Laurene Powell Jobs “has been close with the Clintons since the late ’90s, also sat with Betsy DeVos on the board of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. She set up billionaire “roundtables” with Clinton’s campaign advisors through 2015 while donating millions to Priorities USA, Clinton’s main PAC.”
Jacobs notes:
Notes taken by Clinton aide Ann O’Leary were made in interviews with Powell Jobs and Bruce Reed, President of The Broad Foundation (and former chief of staff to Joe Biden). According to the notes, the “experts” were calling for new federal controls, more for-profit companies and more technology in public schools — but first on the menu was a bold remake of the teaching “profession…”
Powell Jobs suggests letting principals “pick their teams,” making teachers individually negotiate salary (every teacher—really?), expanding online education offerings like Khan Academy and making teaching universities “truly selective like TFA and Finland.” This comment is perplexing because while Finland has demanding teacher vetting and training, Teach for America places inexperienced teachers in classrooms after a seven-week summer crash course...
Tying campaign donations to a singular issue like expanding charter schools might in days past been seen as a prohibited quid-pro-quo. But in this cycle, Podesta, O’Leary and [Neera] Tanden [director of the Center for American Progress and President Biden’s nominee to lead the crucial Office of Management and Budget, which sets priorities for federal funding] all busily raised campaign money from the same billionaire education reformers with whom they were also talking policy specifics.
But they did more than talk. On June 20, 2015, O’Leary sent Podesta an email revealing the campaign adopted two of Powell Jobs’ suggestions, including “infusing best ideas from charter schools into our traditional public schools.” When Clinton announced this policy in a speech to teachers, however, it was the one line that drew boos.
“Donors want to hear where she stands” John Petry, a founder of both Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and Success Academy, New York’s largest network of charter schools, told the New York Times. Petry was explicit, declaring that he and his billionaire associates would instead put money into congressional, state and local races, behind candidates who favored a “more businesslike approach” to education, and tying teacher tenure to standardized test scores...
Not mentioning education would become important in the general election. This policy book shows a snapshot in time when wealthy donors were pushing Clinton’s and Jeb’s positions together, seeking more of the federal privatization begun under George W. Bush and continued by Obama...
This was predicted by John Podesta, who bragged just after the 2012 election about nullifying education policy differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney. Sitting next to Jeb Bush, Podesta proclaimed “ed reform” a bipartisan affair, telling donors “the Obama administration has made its key priorities clear. The Republicans are pretty much in the same place…this area is ripe for cooperation between the center-right and center-left”...
The 2014 policy book reveals some essential lessons about how education policy is crafted: in secret, with the input and influence of billionaire donors seeking more school privatization and testing—regardless of what party is in power. Even as the backlash against testing and the Common Core grew, Clinton’s advisors pushed her to embrace them. Clinton vacillated, then fell silent on K-12 policy, and as a result, education issues were largely left out of the election debate. Today, under Trump, privatization marches on worse than ever.
Diane Ravitch's blog 