They planned to kneecap democracy and sell it to the wealthy! Here's the storyline...

Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo Planned Conservative Activism Ahead of 'Citizens United' Decision https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a45080137/ginni-thomas-leonard-leo-citizens-united/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsTheToolOfTheRich

"The latest revelations about Ginni Thomas, Leonard Leo, and Citizens United is just one example.

Over the weekend, Heidi Przybyla of Politico blew a very loud whistle on the cozy relationship between Federalist Society puppetmaster Leonard Leo, crackpot political activist Ginni Thomas, and the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States in the person of Ginni's husband, Justice Clarence Thomas. The initial revelation lies right there in the very first anecdote in the story. It all comes back to Citizens United v. FEC, the egregious 2010 decision that legalized political influence-peddling and protected the free speech rights of bagmen and their customers. Turns out that Leo and Thomas knew enough about what was coming down from the bench to get a well-financed operation up and running in advance of the eventual decision.

In the months before the ruling dropped in January of that year, a group of conservative activists came together to create just such an organization. Its mission would be to, at the time, block then-President Barack Obama’s pet initiatives. The activists included Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo and his ideological soulmate, a hard-edged activist named Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
“Ginni really wanted to build an organization and be a movement leader,” said a person familiar with her thinking at that time. “Leonard [Leo] was going to be the conduit of that.” She also had a rich backer: Harlan Crow, the manufacturing billionaire who had helped Thomas and her husband in many ways, from funding luxury vacations to picking up tuition payments for their great-nephew.
Oh, him again. What a marvelous mechanism for coincidence this is.

At the time, the Citizens United ruling was widely expected, as the court had already signaled its intentions. When it came, it upended nearly 100 years of campaign spending restrictions. The conservative legal movement seized the moment with greater success than any other group, and the consequences have shaped American jurisprudence and politics in dramatic ways.
Two of the more charming features of the decisions produced by the carefully manufactured conservative majority are the complete predictability of their outcomes, and the equally predictable consequences of those decisions going forward. People said Rucho would lead to bloody brawling over partisan gerrymandering in state legislatures, and it has. People said Bruen would lead to more guns and more bloody death in the streets, and it has. People said Dobbs would lead to gruesome health results for American women and a whole patchwork infrastructure of state laws aimed at not only restricting reproductive freedom, but also restricting any lawful attempt to find it elsewhere...Taken together, the work of the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court has deformed our politics in a number of ways and at every level. And Citizens United was the method by which they could make the chaos pay. And they knew it was coming.

Two months before the Citizens United decision, but after the justices had signaled their intentions by requesting new arguments, attorney Cleta Mitchell — later to play a role in Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections — filed papers for Ginni Thomas to create a nonprofit group of a type that ultimately benefited from the decision. Leo was one of two directors listed on a separate application to conduct business in the state of Virginia. Thomas was president. She signed it on New Year’s Eve of 2009, and Crow provided much of the initial cash.
...called Liberty Central.
Ginni forms her pressure group that is tacitly based on what she knew was coming down in Citizens United. (How could she have known? 'Ees a puzzlement.) The decision comes down exactly as anticipated, at least in some quarters, and the floodgates of political sewage did not open so much as they collapsed completely. Which, of course, meant that there was more money with which Thomas and Leo could hunt many snipes.
...
On the surface, it's just another cash-fattened conservative money machine. But it's one that can do, and has done, severe damage to our system of government. If the Supreme Court's decisions are so preordained that interested parties can plan their next moves in advance, then we are dealing with the rigged wheel and there is no pea under any of the shells. Good thing we have an "institutionalist" in the Chief Justice's chair."

Collectively, we have let Trump and too much of the GOP get away with destroying our democracy and country for too long. It is time for us together to marshall the will and resources to weather and minimize any coming blowback to reeling Trump and the rest of them in!

Experts warn that "accountability" for Donald Trump could come at a cost to democracy | Salon.com https://www.salon.com/2023/09/08/experts-warn-that-accountability-for-donald-could-come-at-a-cost-to-democracy/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TrumpOnlyLovesHimself

""Real and actual violence is only becoming increasingly more likely"

Donald Trump is a type of fascist political preacher and MAGA is his congregation. His sermons are of violence and destruction.

On Sunday, Trump made an explicit threat and promise on his Truth Social disinformation platform to treat President Joe Biden and his other "enemies" like they were in a "banana republic". Trump even went so far as to call Biden and the Democrats "Communists". In essence, Trump is threatening to kill President Biden and the Democratic Party's leaders (and supporters) when and if he takes back the White House in 2025.

Last Tuesday, Trump told Glenn Beck that he would put President Biden, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Hillary Clinton, and his other "enemies" in prison.

"You have no choice," Trump asserted, "because they're doing it to us."

As seen on Jan. 6, a recent assassination attempt on President Barack Obama by one of Trump's MAGA zealots, threats by Trump's followers against prosecutors and jurors and other law enforcement who are connected to his upcoming criminal trials, mass shootings and other violence by right-wing hate mongers and other extremists, Trump's followers have and will continue to obey his incitements and commands to violence.

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In a democracy, it is the responsibility of the Fourth Estate to speak truth to the powerful by informing the public so that they can make good decisions about their leaders and society. The Fourth Estate in America, what we can broadly describe as "the news media," has failed in many ways to follow through on those responsibilities during the Age of Trump and the ongoing democracy crisis."

Gym Jordan is such an incompetent, asinine tool! And far too much of the GOP wants to put their thumbs on the scales of justice and undermine real attempts to hold Trump and his minions accountable for blatant attempts to destroy our democracy. Party of law and order my ass! It's really the party of made-up titles that sound good, and may even get them votes but are entirely inaccurate and misleading. They don't want democracy or to share/compromise, they are only interested in winning, power and serving their looney donors and misinformed voters.

'This is how it's done': Legal experts applaud Fani Willis for sending Jim Jordan 'to the showers' - Raw Story https://www.rawstory.com/jim-jordan-fani-willis/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#MAGAIdiots

"Social media legal experts piled on Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis fired off a multi-page letter to the House Judiciary chairman, essentially telling him to butt out of her investigation into tampering in the 2020 presidential election.

On Thursday, the prosecutor who indicted Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators on racketeering charges (RICO) slapped down Jordan's attempts to "interfere" with her investigation, and curtly explained to him that he has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to the law – even accusing him of spreading "misinformation."

With regard to her filing under the RICO statute, Willis made a point of reminding the blustery Ohio Republican that he never passed the bar after attending law school, writing that he can still continue his education by purchasing legal expert John Floyd's RICO book "for the non-bar member price of $249."

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

Reacting to the dressing down of Jordan, attorney Victor Shi wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, "DAMN. DA Fani Willis just sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, saying Republicans are 'obstructing a Georgia criminal proceeding' & tells Jim Jordan directly he should buy a copy of the RICO book for the 'non-bar member price.' Bravo, DA Willis. THIS is how it’s done."

He later added, "She continued to tell Jim Jordan, 'Your letter makes clear that you lack a basic understanding of the law, its practice and the ethical obligations of attorneys generally and prosecutors specifically.'"

Former Justice Department official Harry Litman also piled on, writing, "Blistering response from Fani Willis to Jim Jordan's completely improper attempt to ferret out info about her investigation and prosecution," and then added, "Really extremely aggressive pushback from Fani Willis to Jim Jordan. Letter tells him he's transgressing state sovereignty, separation of powers, administration of criminal justice, & the deliberative process privilege; then provides 'voluntary' answers that shred his arguments."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Tamar Hellerman, who has been covering the case, labeled Willis' letter as "spicy."

MSNBC editor Steve Benen explained, "Fani Willis could've simply ignored Jim Jordan. Instead, the prosecutor explained to the Judiciary Committee chairman that he doesn't know what he's talking about."

Conservative attorney George Conway slyly contributed, "Fani Willis sends Gym Jordan to the showers."

The X account maintained by the House Judiciary Democrats also had its say, with a link to the story accompanied by: "DA Fani Willis to Chairman Jim Jordan: 'Your letter makes clear that you lack a basic understanding of the law.'"

Lawfare reporter Anna Bower also got in a jab, writing, "Fani Willis to Jim Jordan: 'Bless your heart.'""

All these presidential centers/libraries are making this call because of Trump, the GOP and right-wing media. Other political groups are not fomenting rebellion, civil war or hatred of the "other party." The right in this country have mostly given up on democracy and they have no desire to share in a multi-ethnic democracy. They just want their way and that especially includes their nutjob donors who probably never shared well as children!

Nearly every presidential center calls for political civility - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/07/presidential-libraries-letter-democracy-civil-discourse/

#GOPHatesDemocracy

"Foundations representing nearly every former president from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama released a joint letter on Thursday calling on Americans to engage in civil political discourse, and to remember that tolerance and respect are key to peaceful coexistence.

The effort, which was organized by the George W. Bush Presidential Center, marks the first time presidential foundations and centers have come together to deliver a statement to the American public.
...
In the letter, the signatories note that they “represent a wide range of views across a breadth of issues.”

“We recognize that these views can exist peaceably side by side when rooted in the principles of democracy,” they wrote. “Debate and disagreement are central features in a healthy democracy. Civility and respect in political discourse, whether in an election year or otherwise, are essential.”

While the letter does not call out any specific leader or politician, it issues a clear warning against an alarming level of divisive rhetoric plaguing political discourse in modern America — and specifically notes a rise in public distrust over governmental institutions.
...
In the past few years, several lawmakers across the country have openly tried to discredit governmental institutions and systems — from elections, to the justice system to federal agencies — sowing distrust among the American public. Among them is Trump, who has spent the better part of the past three years falsely claiming that the 2020 election was fraudulently stolen from him.

In the letter, the presidential institutions urged American lawmakers to actively fight distrust in government.

“Our elected officials must lead by example and govern effectively in ways that deliver for the American people,” the letter reads. “This, in turn, will help to restore trust in public service. The rest of us must engage in civil dialogue; respect democratic institutions and rights; uphold safe, secure, and accessible elections; and contribute to local, state, or national improvement.”

Kramer, in an interview with The Washington Post, emphasized that the letter is not intended to single out any individual or campaign — rather, it is meant to be reflect the progress the United States has made as a nation and the work “that still remains.” The presidential centers, he said, wanted to remind Americans of the importance of pluralism, tolerance, compassion and civility in U.S. politics.

While Kramer acknowledged that some Americans may not want to listen to this message, he said he remains hopeful that it will resonate with people across the political spectrum who “want to be reminded of our founding.”

“We’re not a perfect country, but we’re driving toward one,” he said.
...
Kramer noted that, despite its timing, the statement is not meant just to resonate with Americans ahead of next year’s presidential election.

“This is a statement that we think goes beyond any electoral cycle,” he said. “It’s long-lasting. But we’re also realistic [that] elections can be messy things, but we hope that the candidates might read this.”

Shannon B. O’Brien, a political science expert at the University of Texas at Austin who wrote a book on Trump’s divisive rhetoric, noted that, while well-intentioned, the presidential foundations may be “preaching to the choir” with their letter. The people it may resonate with, she said, are already “frustrated, or see these things themselves.”

“I don’t think anybody’s going to read this and go, ‘Oh, gosh, we really must return to civil dialogue,’” she said. “This is preaching to people who do believe in civil dialogue with democratic institutions.”

That being said, O’Brien noted that the country is not past the point of no return to civil discourse in politics.

“We have always had strife, we have always had complicated figures, we have always thought that the moment we’re in history is the worst ever or the best ever,” she said. “We are in a moment where things are problematic, but if we stay the course — and the people who believe in our values hold true to their values — things chill out, things move on, things will change.”"

Far too many GOP politicians care far more about having power than the welfare of our country. They are willing to vilify and lie outrageously to stupefy and isolate their base into having no choice but to support them. Their ideal of America is straight, white, fundamentalist, idolizes the rich and capitalism and is nothing like what our multi-ethnic/multi-cultural country is actually like. Is it that they will do anything to stay in power because they are power-hungry or that they fear they are losing the America they prize or that if they are not in power they can't serve their oligarchic masters as well and will be abandoned by them? Some combination of all of these and I'm even more suspect.

Nevertheless, too much of our press/media is failing us in their essential role as a pillar of our democracy. Some work for wealthy people who care more about owning media to control the narrative and the populace for their own advantage and oligarchic ideal of America. Others aren't taking their role as defenders and enablers of democracy seriously, aren't up for the task at hand or maybe are just conflict-averse.

Still, they have to do much better than bothsidesism and instead actually explain and contextualize the news so as to inform Americans about what is actually happening and how they are being consistently lied to and manipulated by the GOP and why. It's not easy, I'm sure, but working for the common good is much better than being part of the problem trying to undermine it.

Why Biden also pays a price for Republican extremism - The Washington Post No Paywall link
https://wapo.st/3qbOB6q

#GOPLies
#GOPIsOwnedByTheRich
#MediaMatters
#GOPIsPowerHungry
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"Republicans might be damaging their long-term prospects with extremist tactics, but Democrats must confront an unhappy reality: The GOP’s merciless personal and ideological warfare, particularly in the House, is making it much harder for President Biden to sell his achievements.

The poisonous nature of our politics nurtures a sense of exhaustion with public life that works against any incumbent, especially one trying to convince voters that the government is making their lives better. As members of the party that believes in public action, Democrats are especially hurt by a mood of frustration and cynicism.

The ferocity of the GOP’s attacks on Biden also fuels public doubts about the president and affects media coverage, even when journalists carefully fact-check Republicans’ claims. A two-minute report on a congressional hearing will inevitably air whatever charges some right-wing committee chair makes. They lodge in memories no matter what might be said during those 120 seconds to debunk them.

Then there’s Biden’s signature promise to bring the parties together and end the chaos of the Trump years. The president’s problem: Bipartisanship is inherently a two-way street. One party can destroy the other side’s ability to achieve it simply by saying no. “The party in power pays a higher price for the other side’s obstructionism,” said Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster, though she added that the GOP suffered from its extremism in the three elections since 2018 and would likely do so again next year.

One party can also sow chaos if it wishes. “Biden wants to be known as, and is, a force for stability,” said Geoff Garin, another Democratic pollster. “But when the news is dominated by nuttiness, it’s hard to see stability.”

Nothing would do more to throw Washington into turmoil than an impeachment fight against Biden. So it should surprise no one that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is floating the idea. Notice all the innuendo packed into two sentences he offered to reporters last week: “We continue to gather more information. We’re finding more and more.”

What information? McCarthy didn’t say. But he’ll be happy if voters imagine there must be something behind this assertion beyond pandering to his caucus’s most extreme members.

Biden has been struggling to boost his approval ratings ever since his polling numbers suffered a one-two punch from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 and the inflation spike of 2022. Some polls early this year found most Democrats preferring he not seek reelection.

The GOP’s efforts to insert often unsupported accusations into the news cycle muddle Biden’s comeback campaign. “If you’re Biden, you have a really good story to tell,” Garin told me, “but it’s almost impossible to communicate effectively in this media environment.”

These are typical, sleazy, disingenuous attacks by Republicans and people on the right who know they can't survive politically without lying early and often! This isn't about democracy or the health of our country, this is only about the power they and their donors want and their attempts to destroy our democracy and undermine it with lies to get their way! They have no integrity and they aren't interested in being public servants. They are addicted to money and power and are psychologically and emotionally sick and deranged! Yet the people they manipulate are oblivious to the ring they have put in their noses!

Jim Jordan spearheads 'cynical' and 'wildly partisan' GOP effort to chill anti-disinformation research - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/jim-jordan-2661568445/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPLies
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPTreason

"A combination of universities and think tanks have been sounding the alarm about disinformation, warning that outright lies could influence the outcome of elections in the United States. But some Republicans, according to the New York Times, are not happy about their work — including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (D-Ohio) and former Donald Trump aide Stephen Miller.

In an article published by the New York Times on June 19, journalists Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel report that Jordan and others GOP lawmakers are claiming that the anti-disinformation efforts are designed to suppress conservative speech online.

"The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public," Myers and Frenkel explain. "It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough…. Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online."

In Louisiana, Miller, who heads the MAGA group America First Legal, has filed a class-action lawsuit against anti-disinformation researchers — making, Myers and Frenkel report, similar claims to Jordan on the House Intelligence Committee. The Trump ally has described his lawsuit as "striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex," but Miller's critics believe he is the one trying to silence those he disagrees with.

Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, views the GOP attacks on anti-disinformation researchers as disingenuous and misleading.

Hanocck told The Times, "We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do…. We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research, but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules."

Jameel Jaffer, who serves was executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at New York City's Columbia University, is critical of the Republican lawmakers as well.

Jaffer told the Times, "I think it's quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research.""

These supporters have been grifted and lied to by Republicans and their media for decades. They were never the brightest bulbs in the first place! These are the types of voters the GOP has been cultivating with their anti-science and anti-education policies, messaging and their sabotaging of public education through underfunding and voucher programs. A dumb electorate is easier to lie to and snowjob and that's what the GOP and their obscenely wealthy donors want!

'He didn’t mean to': Trump fans tie themselves in knots to explain he didn’t break the law - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/trump-fans-didnt-break-law/

#GOPHatesEducation
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPIsThePartyOfGreed
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithTheRich

"Supporters that came out for Donald Trump as he was arraigned in Miami, Florida on Tuesday were interviewed by the comedy group "The Good Liars." They had a lot of questions about the basic facts of the case that many MAGA loyalists didn't know.

One of the videos shows a Trump supporter claiming that the former president declassified everything. When told that Trump was on audio saying he didn't, the supporter refused to believe it.

A loyal Trump supporter told the "Good Liars" that he doesn't believe for a second Trump meant to steal the documents and that he probably didn't know the laws. He didn't explain why Trump refused to give the documents back.

Another video with Davram Stiefler showed a Trump supporter asking about the "Lock her up" chants and a man said Hillary Clinton was never investigated. He was told that the FBI announced the investigation 11 days before the election, and they had no idea.

What became clear to Jason Selvig is that none of the people were getting their news from actual news sources, and they were parroting the messages that Donald Trump has given. Instead of excuses, Trump has deployed the "what about" questions about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

At one point, a woman told Stiefler that Fox News never had to pay any money for lying to their viewers. He kept trying to tell her that Fox admitted to lying to them, and they paid a ton of money because of it. She refused to believe it.

Another woman refused to believe that Donald Trump would keep boxes of documents in his bathroom. She claimed that the bathroom with two chandeliers looked "like Joe Biden's bathroom." She maintained that Trump would never be so "messy." Selvig explained to her that the photos were in the indictment. They were in the court documents.

The Good Liars are known for going to many events. "The Daily Show's" Jordan Klepper was also known for doing the same kind of interviews, but due to the writer's strike, the show has been off the air."

Sane, responsible, non-delusional voters won't support what these seditious lawmakers are selling, so they have to keep pandering to the chrisitan nationalists, white supremacists and government haters to ensure they get the votes they need to stay in office. They've done this to themselves. They can't quit the crazies now, or they won't have any support, so they keep enflaming them through lies, fake investigations, right-wing, nutjob media and assorted treasonous behaviors that undermine our government and democracy. The term public servant is incomprehensible to these greedy, power-hungry, selfish excuses for humans.

Republican leadership still 'flirting' with Jan. 6 extremists: report - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/republican-leadership-flirting-with-extremists/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPUnholyAlliance
#GOPSelfishSociopaths

"Republicans with an eye on the 2024 general election don't want to talk about the Jan 6th insurrection over fears that it will cripple their chances of retaking the White House and the Senate, but that doesn't mean that they are shunning far-right extremists who are still pushing conspiracy theories that it was instigated by the "deep state."

According to a report from Politico's Jordain Carney and Kyle Cheney, some GOP members of the House -- including some members of the leadership -- continue to pander to voters who believe the riot that sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives was a righteous cause.

According to the report, "At times, GOP lawmakers insist they’re uninterested in relitigating an attack that is political poison for the party outside of deep-red areas. But at other times, some Republicans have stoked narratives that falsely pin blame for the attack on police, Democrats or far-left agitators — or downplay the violence at the Capitol. The latter approach has seen a noticeable uptick of late."

The report notes that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) "encapsulates the half-hearted embrace. He angered some allies on the right this year by defending a Capitol Police officer’s decision to shoot a Jan. 6 rioter who was attempting to breach a room adjacent to the House chamber. But he’s also provided exclusive access to thousands of hours of security footage to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who’s used the film to demean and distort police officers’ actions."

Add to that, House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) has been focusing on Jan. 6 issues when he isn't holding hearings on the "weaponization" of the Department of Justice.

"Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) did recently release a wider report that accused the FBI of artificially conflating the number of Jan. 6-related investigations. The report and a subsequent hearing also included testimony from whistleblowers who lost their security clearances due to improper actions related to Jan. 6," Politico is reporting.

The report added, "Jordan also fired off new Jan. 6-related letters, one asking for more information on the FBI’s investigation into pipe bombs found near the Capitol the day of the attack and another expanding a probe into record-sharing with federal investigators. But those efforts make up a small slice of his collective, sweeping investigations."

The GOP leaders and elected representatives plot daily to undermine our democracy and turn the country into an authoritarian oligarchy/theocracy. They violate their oaths of office and are antisocial, greedy, power-hungry sociopaths! And, their supporters/base are all on board with this it seems. They are fine with voter suppression, insurrection, discrimination and violence against minorities, gaming the judiciary and installing a gun-worshipping theocracy as long as it maintains their privileges and prejudices. Sad and discouraging but at least they are a minority and we know what we are up against.

The GOP is an anti-America party - Republicans hate America and don’t care about national security -- Salon
https://read.letterhead.email/standing-room-only/letter/16388?

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPHatesTheConstitution

"Republicans hate America and don’t care about national security

In the least surprising results ever, a new poll from CBS shows only 12% of Republican voters think it’s a crime now to steal nuclear secrets and put them in a ballroom for Russian and Chinese spies to thumb through. Trump was right that they’d forgive him if he committed murder. After all, he sent a mob to murder Mike Pence, and they don’t have a problem with that.

This news is still causing centrist pundits to reel, because they believed the lie that Republicans are a “national security” party. If they ever were — a big if! — that time has long passed. This isn’t just about loyalty to Trump. The GOP has become an anti-American party, so of course they don’t really care if foreign adversaries gain knowledge they could use to undermine or even destroy us.

Harsh, I know, but consider this: Trump attempted a coup to overthrow our democracy. His reward has been that he’s fast-tracked to the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. His fellow Republican politicians talk about him like he’s their god. This isn’t because they’re unaware that he’s a fascist. It’s because they agree with him and think he’s still got the best shot at accomplishing the goal of ending the American experiment.

That’s why Republicans don’t care if truly evil actors like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping get some kind of leverage against the U.S. Tearing the U.S. down and replacing it with a fascist government is also the goal of GOP primary voters. In that sense, foreign adversaries are their allies. For the fans of Tucker “I Heart Putin” Carlson, having some outside help as they rip this country apart is a good thing. So of course they shrug at Trump violating the Espionage Act. "

'Zero courage': Ex-GOP strategist torches members who stand by Trump
https://www.rawstory.com/zero-courage-ex-gop-strategist-torches-the-sergeant-schultz-brigade-of-republicans-defending-trump-2661189855/?

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"An MSNBC panel on Sunday fiercely rebuked the defiantly nonchalant reactions by many Republicans to the historic federal felony charges filed against former President Donald Trump.

"I don't know. After reading those forty-nine pages, it was impossible for the special counsel to not indict Donald Trump," host Jonathan Capehart opined.

Capehart's guest, ex-Republican strategist Matthew Dowd, showed no mercy toward Trump's defenders.

"Well, you know, it, it's as if, if Mike Pence is saying, 'if Donald Trump breaks the law, nobody should ever hold him accountable.' That's actually what he's saying. And as I listen to Christina, who's absolutely right about this, about Mike Pence — but Mike Pence is just one of many — is that I'm reminded of what Maya Angelou said, which is courage is the most important of all the virtues because it's the only one that allows us to practice the other virtues consistently," Dowd said.

"There is a complete abject lack of courage of Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, every, uh McCarthy, Speaker McCarthy," Dowd continued. "All these others have zero cur courage, zero courage, and the other one — so you put that in one bucket — the other bucket that I think is most, is also upsetting is the sort of 'Sergeant Schultz Brigade' of the Republican Party, which is, I see nothing. I know nothing. I'll say nothing.

"And they just sit by apathetically understanding Donald Trump and the corruption that exists around Donald Trump and the danger of Donald Trump, but will absolutely act like their fingers are in their ears. They close their eyes and they want nothing to do with saying or doing anything about 'em. And I put Mitch McConnell in that bucket.""

Far too many Americans aren't aware of how far the GOP has gone down the road of authoritarianism while abandoning democracy and this is mostly the media's fault. Is the media blind and delusional in not seeing what is right in front of their eyes, too cowardly or profit-oriented to rock the boat or are they complicit in this lurch away from democracy? Either way, our democracy hangs in the balance and it is long past time to call the GOP what it is. The party that wants to kill democracy, serve only the obscenely wealthy and help them get their serfs back.

Goodbye, CNN's Chris Licht. But what's the lesson? https://robertreich.substack.com/p/goodbye-cnns-chris-licht-but-whats?

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#TheRichOwnTheMedia

"CNN sought to move to a "center" that no longer exists
ROBERT REICH

As I predicted yesterday, Chris Licht is out at CNN.

David Zaslav — CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN — delivered the news this morning to CNN staff, noting that Licht’s job "was never going to be easy" and that Licht had "poured his heart and soul into it."

What should CNN or any other media enterprise learn from this debacle?

The lesson is that Licht’s goal of shifting CNN from anti-Trump confrontation toward an imagined political center was doomed from the start, because there is no longer a political center.

For years now — since Newt Gingrich took over the House in 1995 — Americans have been moving toward either authoritarianism or democracy.

The old political center of “liberal” Republicans like Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller and “conservative” Democrats like Scoop Jackson and Joe Lieberman (and, some would say, Bill Clinton) has been disappearing.

Before Newt there had been stirrings of rightwing fascism — led by Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s, Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, and by George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew in the 1960s.

But Newt turned the growing anger of the non-college white working class into the beginnings of an authoritarian political movement that would undergird the Republican Party for the next thirty years.

By 2016, Donald Trump was helpful to anyone who still had trouble making the choice between authoritarianism and democracy. Trump required they take sides.

Chris Licht’s predecessor at CNN was Jeff Zucker, who understood that the only big pool of viewers available to CNN were those who still believed in democracy. Zucker competed mightily with MSNBC for them.

Trump was helpful to Zucker in the same way he was helpful to Americans who had trouble making the choice. Trump forced viewers to choose between Fox News and the alternative, thereby giving Zucker’s CNN a fitting nemesis.

CNN’s new management came along at a time of establishment confusion over whether the old political center would return after Trump. America’s business establishment — including Warner Bros Discovery billionaire John Malone — hoped it would. But that proved a pipe dream. The division between authoritarianism and democracy is now too deep. If anyone had any doubts, CNN’s Trump town hall should have erased them.

What especially confused Chris Licht and the rest of CNN’s management was the difference between being politically partisan, and standing up against authoritarian demagogues. They assumed that holding Trump accountable for what he did (and continues to do) was inconsistent with so-called “balanced journalism.”

Wrong. It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy. That’s where CNN’s audience wanted — and presumably still wants — CNN to be.

That’s where most Americans want the nation to be."

This is how you get your way when democracy doesn't give it to you. You do an end-run around democracy so you can have minority rule forever! Who needs democracy, congressmen, senators or presidents when you own the judiciary?

Court decision in clean water case is more legislating from the bench https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/26/supreme-court-clean-water-kavanaugh/?

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsTheRichsBitch
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"The Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Clean Water Act isn’t just a disaster for efforts to control pollution, although it is that, too. It is yet another illustration of the conservative supermajority’s aggressive willingness to rewrite statutes to its liking, abandon precedent and lunge to intercede in disputes that could be easily sidestepped.
...
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh (good for him!) joined the court’s three liberal justices in a far more reasoned interpretation of the Clean Water Act that would have respected text and precedent while still finding for the Sacketts.

Once again, the conservative justices reveal themselves to be textualists of convenience. The Clean Water Act requires a permit for dumping pollutants — and this includes the backfilling that the Sacketts were doing to prepare their lot — into the “waters of the United States.” Such waters are explicitly defined to include “wetlands” that are “adjacent” to streams, rivers and other navigable bodies of water covered by the law.

The majority agrees on all this but then waves its magic statutory wand to redefine, and narrow, the meaning of “adjacent.” It transforms the definition to apply solely to wetlands that are actually adjoining — that have a “continuous surface connection” — to the larger body.

This disrespects — actually, it ignores — the law’s text and traditional methods of statutory interpretation. As Kavanaugh noted, dictionary “definitions of ‘adjacent’ are notably explicit that two things need not touch each other in order to be adjacent.”
...
No longer, according to the majority, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Kavanaugh charitably labeled the majority’s approach “unorthodox” and “atextual.” Another word might be lawless. The majority’s approach blithely dismissed some 45 years of consistent interpretation through eight presidential administrations, Republican as well as Democrat. Even the Trump EPA thought adjacent meant adjacent.
...
Sackett reinforces what we already knew: This is a court that doesn’t like government regulation and it is going to do what it can — text and precedent be damned — to neuter it. Thus the majority, in last year’s West Virginia v. EPA, invented a “major purpose” test to limit the reach of another major environmental law, the Clean Air Act. In this case, it adopts another new test — when Congress exercises such power “over private property” it must use “exceedingly clear language” — to rewrite the Clean Water Act to its liking.

As Justice Elena Kagan explained in a concurrence joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, this is nothing short of another judicial power grab. “The vice in both instances is the same: the Court’s appointment of itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy,” Kagan wrote.

And why? Not because the law compels it, but because the majority doesn’t like the law. “Congress, the majority scolds, has unleashed the EPA to regulate ‘swimming pools and puddles,’ wreaking untold havoc on ‘a staggering array of land-owners,’” Kagan observed. “Surely something has to be done; and who else to do it but this Court? It must rescue property owners from Congress’s too-ambitious program of pollution control.”

More judicial power-grabbing to follow. The court next term will consider whether to ditch the four-decade old practice, known as Chevron deference, of having courts defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the laws they administer when the statutes are ambiguous. If Chevron falls, as seems all but inevitable, courts will be even more firmly in the driver’s seat to control policymaking.

This isn’t right, and it is also unnecessary. When the court reached out to take Sackett, the Biden administration was in the midst of rewriting the rules on how the Clean Water Act applied to wetlands. But the majority had its votes. Why wait? Why hold back? That could be the motto of this radical and impatient court."

I certainly don't agree with all the things that Biden has done, but by and large, he really has done a very good job and compared to the Republicans and neoliberals who preceded him, he has done a great job! He can do better, but given the failed, fascist, in-bed-with-the-rich and fear mongering of the GOP, he would be a very good president to have for 4 more years.

How Bidenomics Has Finally Defeated Reaganomics
Two years into his presidency, Joe Biden has revolutionized America’s economic policy—both home and abroad.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-bidenomics-has-finally-defeated-reaganomics

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithTheRich

"The last thing many of us expected when Joe Biden became president was that he would be a revolutionary. But just over two years into Biden’s presidency, there is no doubt that he has done more to dramatically transform U.S. policy and thinking in more areas than any of his predecessors since Franklin Roosevelt.

America had failed to adequately invest in its infrastructure for over six decades when Biden made it a priority once again. Biden’s prioritized investment in combating climate change to a degree that no past administration ever did. On foreign policy, he executed the pivot away from a Middle East and terrorism focus to a long-term commitment to placing the Indo-Pacific region and our rivalry with China atop our list of priorities.

Remarkably, he did this while simultaneously handling the threats associated with Europe’s largest land war since World War II and reinvigorating America’s most important alliance, NATO, in a way few thought possible just years ago.
...
From day one, Biden has profoundly transformed U.S. economic policy—and related social and international policies. Biden is the man who finally slew Reaganomics and the huckster’s brew of “trickle-down” and “the markets know best” policies at its core. He is the one who at last put an end to the “Washington consensus” that has served the rich worldwide and left the poor to struggle with too little support. He, at last, ended the slavish deference of Washington neoliberals to Wall Street, and the consequent grotesque growth in inequality and injustice it has fueled.
...
He has systematically taken steps to prioritize economic approaches that benefited America’s middle class and those who were left behind, approaches that sought fairness in our tax codes and their enforcement, approaches that strengthened the U.S. from within in an effort to better compete and succeed internationally.

Some of the steps he has taken were major but received too little attention, such as the effort (led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen) to create a minimum tax to be paid by corporations worldwide. Some of the bold changes were revealed in policy choices that made headlines—like his decision to place the concerns of the people working in the real economy ahead of the preferences of Wall Street in his American Rescue Plan, his initiative to invest in our infrastructure in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, and his steps to invest in our green economy and combat rising costs for average Americans in the Inflation Reduction Act.
...
In just one illustration of this, Carlos Roa wrote in The National Interest that the National Security Adviser’s “remarks mark a profound shift in American strategic and economic thinking; a confession that much of what the United States has been doing and saying for decades has been wrong, and a recognition that painful and urgent reform is necessary.”

Some old school economists who have been peddling the failed or damaging policies the administration has sought to undo decried the fact that the new approaches represented too much meddling with markets by government officials.

But of course, that is just the point. Biden, Sullivan, Yellen, and their team have finally acknowledged that growth for its own sake—or good performance by markets—are not the only metrics we should have as we make economic policy decisions.

Markets don’t have consciences, neither do they take into consideration the security interests of nations. Companies are by law required to place their bottom line interests ahead of the interests of the rest of society. Therefore, government has an obligation to step in and take steps to ensure that critical social goods are advanced.

Finally, after many decades of deferring to the financial and corporate interests who also happen to be big political donors, a president and his team have come along to say, “enough.” It is time to make economic decisions that serve all the people and address the damage done by the policies of the past."

The leaders of the right are becoming ever more aligned around autocracy and oligarchy as their preferred outcome. They have increasingly given up on democracy and no longer have any interest in sharing power or governing from the center. Part of this is attributable to their imbibing far too much of their own kool-aid and part is due to their power-hunger and greed.

They have been working toward their goal of single-party, oligarchic rule for decades--with a touch of Christian nationalism thrown in for "moral" cover. Their ongoing, and now relatively successful, capture of the judiciary as an end-run around democracy, is just one prong of their overarching plan. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, allowing unlimited money/bribery into our elections, eroding the security of the middle class, and propagandistic indoctrination of the susceptible, are all parts of this same plan.

They have been patiently moving toward dismantling our democracy and then fortunately for us, Trump came along and coopted many of the pieces of their plan, for his own, selfish, narcissistic purposes, before it was fully ready to be rolled out. They fought him initially, concerned that he would ruin their well-planned strategy, but then eventually went along with him in the hopes that their desired outcome could be achieved even more quickly than they had hoped. All the pieces were not in place, some of our democratic checks and balances and guardrails held, and that is what saved us.

Make no mistake about it, they wanted to put together an Orban-like, illiberal "democracy-in-name-only" but it wasn't fully successful. Recognizing that this was their plan all along and that they haven't abandoned it but instead doubled down, is what we need to wake up and work together to protect our democracy from this ongoing insurrection. The GOP is not a partner in our democracy any longer!!

American Autocratic Threats: Ted Cruz and John Roberts https://politicususa.substack.com/p/american-autocratic-threats-ted-cruz?

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#ImprisonSeditionists

"The U.S. is facing ongoing pressure from the right to become an autocracy, as proven by the secret Ted Cruz tapes and Justice John Roberts' refusal to testify regarding SCOTUS' ethics challenges.

It’s been a banger of a week so far, with sexual harassment scandals bringing down major TV news stars and a CEO and then on Tuesday more breaking news as we heard the secret Ted Cruz (R-TX) tapes in which he laid out the plot to steal America. At the same time, news broke that Republican Chief Justice John Roberts refused Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) request to testify regarding the massive ethics scandals infecting the Supreme Court.

Both sides of this coin are a symptom of an oppressive, out-of-control reactionary and right-wing patriarchy that feels so threatened by change that it is working to seize power and actively escalating democratic backsliding. This is not normal.

The Secret Authoritarian Plot Hatched at the Highest Levels of U.S. Government
The secret recordings of Cruz revealed his coup plot to overturn Biden’s 2020 win and kept Trump in the White House. Cruz is a U.S. Senator, who is supposed to be loyal to the United States and her government. Plotting a coup is the opposite of loyalty.

It was a deeply somber moment as Ari Melber, on whose MSNBC show the Ted Cruz tapes debuted, warned Americans not to dismiss the threat of rising autocracy evidenced by the Republican plan to steal an election.

Melber made the most important point from all of this news when he warned not to underestimate authoritarian plans. I’ve been warning about this since the Right started taking lessons from Hungary’s PM Viktor Orban — they are serious about turning the United States into a democracy in name only and the takeover isn’t going to be a violent Civil War, but rather what you see right now: using the courts to steal power, culture war propaganda and media dominance.

Melber said, "There are also those who would look at this tape with this plan and say, Ari, this sounds pretty farfetched. That sounds unlikely to get anywhere. They might want to dismiss it. They might say, hey, Ari, this wasn't going to really happen. And it didn't happen, we didn't see a fake commission popped up to do this. Let me tell you this tonight -- underestimating authoritarian plans hatched at the highest levels of your government would be a mistake. This was hidden for a reason they don't want to you know about it, don't want to you take it seriously."

All the GOP wants is power!! They really don't care at all about democracy! They lie, cheat and steal to have power and this woman has been behind this dogged determination to disenfranchise voters and entrench the GOP in power for decades. Why? Could be Christian nationalism, could be fear of liberalism and progress, could be racism, could be she hungers for power and the rewards the obscenely wealthy lavish on her to enact their agenda. She is a traitor to our democracy and she has lots of company there!

"EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Trump coup attorney Cleta Mitchell wants to "combat" voting on college campuses, citing North Carolina and Wisconsin, and says that when Republicans win the state Senate in Virginia, they can eliminate 45 days of early voting and same day voter registration."

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#ChristianNationalism
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithTheRich

Here's a link to the audio:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1649075730687352833

Great video by Robert Reich detailing how the Republican party is now antithetical to democracy and all about fascism! Please give it a watch.

How Republicans Are Stepping Closer to Fascism - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp2D-PMW47c

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPFascism #GOPLovesPower

"Today's GOP is devoted to three ideas:

1) Power is only legitimate if Republicans wield it
2) Power must be acquired by any means necessary
3) The party is accountable to no one once it has it
Folks, the Republican Party is rapidly becoming the American fascist party."

The mainstreaming of the Republican effort to suppress the vote. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/republican-effort-to-suppress-the-vote.html

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPFascism
#GOPTreason

"It’s bad enough when a trio of voter suppression groups led by charlatans gets together at an annual secret conference that is sponsored, in part, by a group created by the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo to talk about all the ways they might make it harder for people to register or vote in future elections. But it is much worse when the participants in that secret conference also include secretaries of state and other top election officials from 13 Republican-led states, plus Don Palmer, a member of the United States Election Assistance Commission, plus counsels to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the House Administration Committee’s Republican staff, and a sitting Texas state senator. The entire conference—whose existence was revealed in a blockbuster report by the Guardian and Documented last week—shows that there is a thriving network of interlocking organizations working with elected and election officials to use unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud to try to mess with fair elections for partisan advantage.
...
Dark money donors capture the courts and the levers of government to make actual vote tallies irrelevant to who holds power. This story didn’t start in Tennessee or the Amarillo district court. For nearly two decades, we have been chronicling the actions of members of the Fraudulent Fraud Squad who have been active in perpetuating claims of voter fraud to make it harder for people to vote.
...
former President Donald Trump’s aborted Voter Fraud Commission. Documents from that commission later revealed a purposeful effort to generate enough smoke around nonexistent election shenanigans to cajole Congress into allowing states to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. In other words, the commission was an elaborate search for a solution to a problem that never existed, but it made a play that has since been repeated elsewhere.
...
All of this voter suppression requires an infrastructure. To help support it, Heritage and PILF have teamed up with Leonard Leo’s Orwellian-named “Honest Elections Project” (HEP), headed by Jason Snead, to run a new conference for election officials and the representatives of Republican lawmakers. Leo, lest we forget, has been in charge of reshaping the federal courts, selecting Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, and figuring out how best to spend gobs of billionaire-donated money to reshape culture and democracy. The chillingly dishonest HEP not only supports these efforts to make voting harder but also the “independent state legislature theory,” ...
The election suppression noises are truly coming from inside the house.
...
this is no longer just a lobbying effort shored up with big, often untraceable money, coming from players outside the system. What’s no longer hidden is the involvement of lawmakers and their staffs, who say the quiet parts out loud. Their enthusiastic participation in these efforts shows that these groups are not offering false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud merely to raise funds or even to delegitimize Democratic electoral victories by convincing the Republican base that when Democrats win elections, it is inevitably by fraud. Instead, the conference is powerful evidence of coordination between the decades-old voter fraud–industrial complex and state and government officials who actually have the power to make rules over how elections are run. To put it in the simplest terms, the election suppression noises are truly coming from inside the house.
...
Finally, the very existence of this conference also highlights the coming together of the fringe elements of the Republican party with its allegedly saner mainstream."

Opinion | At the NRA convention in Indianapolis, nonsense floated on guns - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/16/nra-convention-republicans-guns-democracy/

#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GunsBeforeReason

"The nonsense floated in Indianapolis — based on the idea that our national addiction to high-powered weaponry has nothing to do with America’s unique mass shooting problem — speaks to a deep ailment in our democracy. It has both partisan and (perverse) philosophical roots.

The GOP’s conversion to gun absolutism is the heart of the problem. But politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It often follows from cultural and moral innovations.

For roughly four decades, American conservatism has identified firearms as a marker of a manly rejection of urban cosmopolitanism and gun ownership as a right more important than any other. As DeSantis said in his video, the right to bear arms is “the foundation on which all our other rights rest” and essential to Americans’ “ability to rule themselves.”

“Why do Joe Biden and the liberals want our guns?” asked Gov. Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota, another speaker. “Because it will make it easier for them to violate all our other rights.”

It comes down to a variant of the old Maoist slogan: All liberty grows out of the barrel of a gun. When Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told a White House rally before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, “Let’s have trial by combat,” he was speaking for a sentiment that runs deep in the gun rights movement.

A particularly dramatic example of how opposition to gun regulation is increasingly linked to efforts to undermine democracy itself: the Tennessee House Republicans’ recent vote to expel two duly elected legislators for protesting against the body’s inaction on guns after the Nashville school massacre.

It was no accident that the two since-reinstated representatives, Democrats Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, are not only both young and Black but also represent urban areas — Jones is from Nashville, Pearson from Memphis. Republican legislators, in Tennessee as elsewhere, regularly diminish the power of the big metro areas through gerrymandering and state overrides of local control.

Republican legislators may tout states’ rights, but with many cities in red states growing into significant islands of Democratic influence (and support for gun regulation), local control is not part of the GOP’s program.

Undercutting the ability of voters to cast ballots is another habit of those who privilege the Second Amendment over all the others. As Politico’s Kathy Gilsinan reported, Tennessee’s election laws allow gun permits as voter IDs but not college student identifications. There is no waiting time to buy a gun, but citizens have to register at least 30 days before an election. “It is absolutely easier to get a gun than to vote in Tennessee,” Democratic state Sen. Charlane Oliver told Gilsinan.

Our attitudes toward guns are often ascribed to our frontier past and a veneration of the Old West. But in truth, radical opposition to gun regulation is a relatively recent development, even in the NRA. Founded in 1871 by two Union Civil War veterans and a former New York Times reporter, the organization was initially devoted to improving urban marksmanship.

The group was long open to sensible rules around weapons, and the NRA helped Franklin D. Roosevelt draft the 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act. It was not until 1977 that the NRA was engulfed by extreme ideologues. Our country, including the Supreme Court, thus embarked on a dangerous new path.

The good news in this story is that radical opposition to sensible gun laws is not embedded in the American character. It’s the product of an ideology that overtook a less dogmatic form of conservatism and seized control of a political party.

With Americans increasingly angry over the violence wrought by weapons of war in our schools, our banks, our shopping centers — pretty much everywhere we gather — the era of gun absolutism could finally be over, if the popular will on guns is allowed to prevail. But this depends on defending the democracy that so many, at the Indianapolis gathering and in Tennessee, deeply mistrust."

The GOP is acting like the mob, trying to intimidate prosecutors and others from bringing Trump to justice. None of these actions have anything to do with valid congressional duties, this is purely weaponizing their offices and committees to protect Trump and the GOP, not the government or people of this country. The GOP is increasingly acting like a fascist party and there may be no turning back now for them. This must change how Democrats act and think about the GOP. They are no longer a partner in democracy or governing, they are now only a threat to democracy and our country and must be treated as such. Their legitimacy is gone!! They and their extremist supporters don't want democracy, they want power and control over all of the rest of us.

Manhattan DA Bragg sues GOP Rep. Jordan over Trump case https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2023/04/11/alvin-bragg-jim-jordan-lawsuit?

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPFascism
#GOPMobsters
#WakeUpDems
#DemocracyIsEndangered

"What You Need To Know
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed a lawsuit against House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio in an effort to block congressional Republicans from interfering in his office's ongoing criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump

Bragg, in the filing, asked a judge to invalidate subpoenas that Jordan has or plans to issue as part of an investigation of Bragg's handling of the case, the first criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president

Trump pleaded not guilty last week to 34 felony counts related to alleged hush money payments made during his 2016 presidential campaign

The lawsuit is the latest escalation in the war of words between Bragg and House Republicans related to the Trump case; it comes one day after Jordan announced a hearing in New York for next week titled "Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan" aimed at exploring Bragg's policies

According to the court filing, Bragg claims that House Republicans launched an "unprecedently brazen and unconstitutional attack" on his probe into Trump and accused them of a "transparent campaign to intimidate and attack" him.

Bragg, in the filing, asked a judge to invalidate subpoenas that Jordan has or plans to issue as part of an investigation of Bragg's handling of the case, the first criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president.

Trump pleaded not guilty last week to 34 felony counts related to alleged hush money payments made during his 2016 presidential campaign.

The lawsuit is the latest escalation in the war of words between Bragg and House Republicans related to the Trump case. Three House Republican committee chairs – Rep. Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wisc., the Chair of the House Administration Committee, and Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the Chair of the House Oversight Committee – sent a letter to Bragg last month seeking information about the case and slamming the probe as an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.”

Bragg's office pushed back on that letter, charging that complying with such a request would “interfere with law enforcement” and would represent an “unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty." The Republican chairmen responded days later with a threat to subpoena Bragg.

“We believe that we now must consider whether Congress should take legislative action to protect former and/or current Presidents from politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials, and if so, how those protections should be structured,” the chairs wrote in an eight-page letter. “Critically, due to your own actions, you are now in possession of information critical to this inquiry.”

“It is not appropriate for Congress to interfere with pending local investigations,” Bragg responded in a statement. “This unprecedented inquiry by federal elected officials into an ongoing matter serves only to hinder, disrupt and undermine the legitimate work of our dedicated prosecutors.”

In a Twitter post, Jordan accused Bragg of suing "to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it."

The lawsuit comes one day after Jordan announced a hearing in New York for next week titled "Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan" aimed at exploring Bragg's policies.

The hearing “will examine how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s pro-crime, anti-victim policies have led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents,” according to a statement put out by the committee on Monday.

“Don’t be fooled, the House GOP is coming to the safest big city in America for a political stunt,” a spokesperson for Bragg said in a statement on Monday. “The hearing won’t engage in actual efforts to increase public safety, such as supporting national gun legislation and shutting down the iron pipeline,” a term used to describe the flow of guns from states with less-restrictive gun laws into New York, where gun restrictions are among the toughest in the nation..."

America has Ignored GOP Crimes to Seize the White House Long Enough - It’s Time to Put this One in Prison https://hartmannreport.com/p/america-has-ignored-gop-crimes-to

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPStealsPresidency
#GOPTreason

"It’s dizzying: in this one week we learn that there’s a witness to Reagan’s 1980 treason to seize the presidency, and that Donald Trump, who gave the Russians a spy in his first week in office (among other treasons), will be indicted for the crime that helped him avoid losing to Hillary Clinton. This is on top of Nixon’s well-documented treason with Vietnam and Bush’s explicit lies about Iraq.

It's now a certainty that the last legitimately elected Republican president who wasn’t a traitor to the United States was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
...
Republican candidates for president committing treason to get into or stay in the White House has been the norm since 1968: it’s time to seriously discuss the five-decade-long problem we have with treasonous and illegitimate GOP presidents.
...
Johnson spent most of late 1967 and early 1968 working back-channels to North and South Vietnam, and by the summer of 1968 had a tentative agreement from both for what promised to be a lasting peace deal they’d both sign that fall.
...
Nixon knew that if he could block that peace deal, it would kill VP Hubert Humphrey’s chances of winning the 1968 election.
...
Nixon promised South Vietnam’s corrupt politicians that he’d give them a richer deal when he was President than LBJ could give them then (just like Reagan would later do with the Iranians).
...
Nixon was never held to account for that treason, and when the LBJ library released the tapes and documentation long after his and LBJ’s deaths it was barely noticed by the American press.
...
Next up was Ronald Reagan.
...
Carter had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr to release the fifty-two hostages held by students at the American Embassy in Tehran.
...
But behind Carter’s back, the Reagan campaign worked out a deal with the leader of Iran’s radical faction — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini — to keep the hostages in captivity until after the 1980 Presidential election. Khomeini needed spare parts for American weapons systems the Shah had purchased for Iran, and Reagan was happy to promise them.
...
President Bani-Sadr :..
“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

And Reagan’s treason — just like Nixon’s treason — worked perfectly.
...
Keeping his side of the deal, Reagan began selling the Iranians weapons and spare parts in 1981, and continued until he was busted for it in 1986, producing the so-called “Iran Contra” scandal.

But, like Nixon, Reagan was never held to account for the criminal and treasonous actions that brought him to office.
...
Bush’s attorney general, Bill Barr, suggested he pardon them all to kill the investigation, which Bush did.

The screaming headline across the New York Times front page on December 25, 1992, said it all:

“THE PARDONS; BUSH PARDONS 6 IN IRAN AFFAIR, ABORTING A WEINBERGER TRIAL; PROSECUTOR ASSAILS 'COVER-UP’”
...
Which brings us to George W. Bush, the man who was given the White House by five right-wing justices on the Supreme Court.
...
As the November 12th, 2001 article in The New York Times read:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won.”
...
So, for the third time in 4 decades, Republicans took the White House under illegitimate electoral circumstances. Even President Carter was shocked by the brazenness of that one. And Jeb Bush and the GOP were never held to account for that crime against democracy.*
...
In 2016, Trump ally Kris Kobach and Republican Secretaries of State across the nation used Interstate Crosscheck to purge millions of legitimate voters — most people of color — from the voting rolls just in time for the Clinton/Trump election.
...
America has ignored GOP crimes to seize and hold the White House long enough.
...
It’s time, at long last, to put this one in prison."