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'Let's Go': Harris Commits To ABC Debate As Trump Backs Out

'Let's Go': Harris Commits To ABC Debate As Trump Backs Out

Vice President Kamala Harris, the de-facto Democratic presidential nominee, has agreed to debate Republican Donald Trump on September 10 in an event host by ABC News. The ex-president and convicted felon had agreed to that debate when President Joe Biden was the presumptive nominee, but after he ended his re-election campaign Sunday, Trump announced he wanted Fox News to host the debate.

“I’m ready to debate Donald Trump,” Harris told reporters Wednesday from an airport tarmac, CNBC reported. “I have agreed to the previously agreed-upon September 10 debate. He agreed to that, previously. Now it appears he’s backpedaling. But I’m ready.”

“I think that voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage, and so I’m ready,” Harris added.

“Let’s go.”

On Tuesday Trump had told reporters, “I would be willing to do more than one debate, actually,” but added, “I don’t like the idea of ABC.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Tuesday evening suggested he believes Trump is afraid to debate Harris.

“I think the interesting thing about this is, what changed,” Buttigieg asked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “from when he said he was ready to do an ABC debate and when he now says he’s not? ABC didn’t change. Donald Trump didn’t change. But there’s a new candidate and clearly he hesitates to debate her on the exact same terms that he thought to be okay.”

Watch Harris below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kellyanne Conway

Kellyanne Conway Spews Racist Tropes In Attack On Harris

The attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, now the leading candidate to become the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee after President Joe Biden’s historic decision to exit his race for re-election, have begun, as one expert on authoritarianism and fascism points to former top Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway’s remarks Sunday as an example of the racism and propaganda voters can expect to see.

“Pay attention to propaganda narratives that will consolidate in next days. Propagandists know you should build on existing prejudices when introducing a new hate object or theme,” writes Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.

“Here Conway invokes racist stereotypes already familiar to many in MAGA,” she adds, pointing to remarks Conway made (video below) just hours after President Biden’s announcement Sunday afternoon.

“She had disastrous staff turnover as vice president,” Conway told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I check it on the daily. Her public schedule, gentlemen, rarely has anything on it or one or two things on it. She does not speak well. She does not work hard, and she should not be the standard bearer for the party.”

Conway was the first woman campaign manager to land a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, in the White House, and later served as Senior Counselor to the President. Her record includes coining the terms “alternative facts,” and the nonexistent “Bowling Green massacre.” Statista looked at presidential turnover from President Ronald Reagan to Trump and found Trump’s record is higher than any president in modern history, including at the cabinet level.

“Kellyanne Conway is parroting the racist stereotypes,” responded Adam Cohen, Vice Chair, Lawyers for Good Government, “[that] Black people are stupid and lazy.”

“Of course, she will vociferously deny it,” he added. “But too late-we already know exactly who Conway is.”

“After all, she spent years promoting Trump.”

Ben-Ghiat on Sunday night also responded to a New York Times headline, “Some Black Voters Say They Wonder if a Black Woman Can Win.” She warned: “It’s starting.”

George Conway (Kellyanne’s ex-husband) last week created an anti-Trump political action committee, the Anti-Psychopath PAC. He commented on her Fox News remarks late Sunday night: “Not everyone can express themselves as eloquently and with such exquisite turns of phrase as Donald J. Trump.”

Watch Conway’s remarks below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump Welcomes

Trump Welcomes 'Russian Puppet' Orban As Biden Hosts NATO Leaders

President Joe Biden this week has been hosting the leaders of the 32 nations that form the 75-year old alliance known as NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, On Thursday evening, ex-president Donald Trump, the convicted felon who remains out on bail and is still facing 54 criminal counts, hosted the authoritarian Christian nationalist prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s meeting with Orbán comes just one week after the far-right autocrat, branded a “neo-fascist dictator” back in 2014 by the late Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and just days after Orbán met with China’s President Xi Jinping, reportedly on a “peace mission” for the Russian war against Ukraine.

Thursday will be Trump’s second meeting this year with Orbán.

Critics have been sounding alarms.

“Fresh from visiting Xi in China and Putin in Moscow, Viktor Orban will apparently complete his pilgrimage by showing up at Mar-a-Lago today,” observed The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol.

“Trump meeting Orban opposite NATO Summit immediately following Orban mtg w Putin and Xi is the sort of betrayal of the US that would’ve led to Congressional investigations or worse in the past,” observed noted foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and author David Rothkopf.

“Russian propagandists have been claiming Orban is acting as an intermediary, delivering messages from Putin to Trump and vice versa,” wroteDaily Beast columnist Julia Davis, creator of the Russian Media Monitor.

“U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman lashed out at Orbán recently, saying that no other U.S. ally has so ‘overtly and tirelessly’ campaigned for the Republican candidate,” Politico reports. “This week, Orbán praised Trump in an interview with Axel Springer media outlets, which owns POLITICO, as ‘the man of peace,’ and he predicted there is a ‘very, very high chance’ Biden will not win the U.S. election.”

Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe expert Olga Lautman, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) also issued a warning:

“As NATO holds its summit Russian media reports that Russian puppet Orban may share info he collected from Russia & China of terrorist Russia’s nonstarter plan for Ukraine w Trump. Pay attention to Orban’s moves while he is in U.S. especially with Heritage Foundation and Trump’s people.”

The Heritage Foundation is the major entity behind the multi-million dollar Project 2025.

Lautman also pointed to a March post she wrote: “Newly emerged evidence shows how Hungary and Russia worked together during the 2020 Slovak elections to help the Slovak government stay in power, Orban acted as a middleman. Take note America,” she warned.

Also issuing warnings is former CIA analyst Gail Helt.

Responding to anotherPolitico report that “Donald Trump is considering a reduction in intelligence sharing with members of NATO, which depends on the U.S. for the type of information that has helped Ukraine fend off Russia,” Helt wrote: “Oh dear God.”

“I walk my students through some ‘what if’ exercises in my intro to Intel analysis class,” she wrote Wednesday night, “this will make a great case study: what if an American president wanted to ally with Russia without the American people knowing? What would that look like? What would we see? What could he do?”

“This,” she continued. “He could do this. Curtailing Intel sharing with NATO hands the continent to Russia. He’s not trying to make America great. He’s will make Russia great and erode US standing in the world. We have to ask why. Don’t let him do it.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump and Biden

New University Study Finds Debate Didn't Change Presidential Race

Despite hundreds of articles in The New York Times and countless others throughout the media, and eight House Democratic lawmakers declaring Joe Biden should end his re-election campaign, the president’s performance at the June 27 debate has had “almost no impact” on voters’ preferences, a new Northeastern University study finds.

“Led by David Lazer, university distinguished professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern, the report indicates that the debate had little if any impact on people’s voting preference. Lazer hopes the report helps illustrate the dangers of making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to the media interpreting data,” reports Northeastern Global News, which is published by the university.

“Even the New York Times, which is usually better about this, talked about a very tiny shift that was totally insignificant statistically like it was evidence that it was a shift toward Trump after the debate,” Lazer says. “My hope is that reporters look at this and say, ‘Maybe we need to be careful in overinterpreting noise as actual signal.’”

Professor Lazar said, “the net result is not a movement away from Biden.”

Ninety-four percent of those surveyed who had said before the debate they were Biden supporters said they would continue to support the President. But just 86 percent of those who indicated support for Trump before the debate said they would continue to do so.

“If anything, it seems that Biden is holding on to his people somewhat better than Trump,” Lazar added.

Examining some “very minor shifts between the candidates,” Northeastern Global News reports, “1% of people who said they would vote for Biden before the debate, switched to preferring Trump, while 3% switched from Trump to Biden.”

“Similarly, respondents who said they were unsure who they would vote for before the debate were slightly more likely to switch to preferring Biden after the debate.”

A small percentage who indicated support for Biden or Trump pre-debate shifted to a third party candidate, but that was nearly offset by third-party candidate supporters switching to Biden or Trump post-debate.

“Trump was convicted of a set of felonies,” Lazer told Northeastern Global News. “The impact it had on surveys was zero. Biden had a debate where most people said it proved he was too old. Survey respondents said, ‘Yeah, I saw that. He’s too old. I’m still voting for him.’ The numbers just aren’t moving.”

The report examined responses from 1262 “repeat responders” from all 50 states and was conducted from June 16 through July 5. The study is titled: “No Change−Evaluating the Short-Term Impact of the Presidential Debate on Voter Preferences.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kevin Roberts

Christian Nationalist Behind Project 2025 Ripped For 'Threatening Violence'

Kevin Roberts, the president of the far-right Heritage Foundation, which is behind the multi-million dollar Trump-aligned Project 2025, has a warning for Democrats: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts, according to a January New York Times interview, is “very open about being a Christian nationalist,” and “views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.'”

Project 2025 includes a 920-page plan devised to entirely remake the U.S. government and turn America into a Christian nationalist, authoritarian, and some say fascist nation run by an all-powerful president. Critics say it would obliterate separation of church and state, the rule of law, the social safety net, and civil rights advances including reproductive rights and rights for LGBTQ Americans secured over the past sixty years.

“The plan calls for a nationwide system of school vouchers, severe restrictions on reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights, and maintains that the federal government should ‘maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,’ which it refers to as ‘heterosexual, intact marriage,'” Church & State magazine reports.

“It is just a wrecking ball against everything that most of us hold dear about our country and our democracy,” U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) told The Guardianlast month, “and that’s the biggest challenge we face … How do you explain that this really is what they’re going to do without overwhelming people?”

On Tuesday, the Heritage president went all-in on celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court’s declaration that presidents have “absolute” immunity for “official” acts.

“In spite of all this nonsense from the left, we are going to win. We’re in the process of taking this country back. No one in the audience should be despairing,” Heritage president Roberts told the far-right website Real America’s Voice, vowing they would “prevail,” according to Media Matters for America.

“That Supreme Court ruling yesterday on immunity is vital, and it’s vital for a lot of reasons,” Roberts declared, before saying, “let me speak about the radical left.”

Claiming “the left has taken over our institutions,” Roberts said, the “reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason that so many anchors on MSNBC, for example, are losing their minds daily is because our side is winning.”

“And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, says Roberts is “saying the coup part out loud.”

Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said, “They are threatening violence.”

Denver Riggleman, the former Republican and former U.S. Congressman who worked with the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, blasted the Heritage president – and Democrats trying to replace President Biden:

“Kevin Roberts is threatening violence to anyone not following his dear leader,” Riggleman wrote. “Every network should cover this. All of this happening while Dems whinge and play new candidate lotto.”

Philadelphia Inquirer national opinion columnist Will Bunch remarked, “The author of Project 2025 is calling for revolution and suggesting bloodshed if liberals dare oppose them.”

Political consultant and media critic Jamison Foser observed, “America’s first revolution was to get away from a king. The GOP wants another revolution to install one.”

Ezra Levin is the co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, and in 2019 was one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

“This is terrifying,” Levin said of Robert’s remarks. “The architects of MAGA’s Project 2025 plan to dismantle the administrative state and concentrate power in the White House are describing the SCOTUS immunity decision as ‘the process of the second American Revolution.’ These are the stakes.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

AOC Says She Will Seek To Impeach Supreme Court Justices

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to Monday’s Supreme Court decision finding presidents have far greater immunity against criminal prosecution than even the Founders appear to have wanted, announced she will file articles of impeachment against the justices, although she did not name which ones.

In their 6-3 ruling along partisan lines, the justices claimed presidents cannot be criminally charged for “official” acts, but are not immune from charges for private ones. Legal scholars declared the six right-wing justices had effectively just made Donald Trump a “king.”

“The Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, known as “AOC,” wrote on Monday.

“Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture,” she added. “I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return.”

Congress is in recess this week ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.

Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-FL) responded, “I fully support this.”

NBC News’ senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur noted impeachment would “require a majority of the House to impeach plus two-thirds of the Senate to remove a member of SCOTUS.”

But former Obama administration official Brandon Friedman remarked, “Before everyone starts whining about how an impeachment of Supreme Court justices won’t pass a Republican-controlled House, that isn’t what this is about. It’s about the spectacle. It’s about the headlines. It’s about communicating to voters a grave threat to the Republic.”

Earlier on Monday Georgetown Law professor Josh Chafetz had said, “Democrats should go to war with the Court. The public is on their side on the issues—including abortion, immunity, environmental regulations, etc. They should make opposition to the Republican Court the organizing theme of the November election.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Jeff Landry

'Ten Commandments' Governor Gets Roughed Up By Fox News Anchor

Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry appeared surprised in a Friday Fox News interview when asked to defend his newly-signed law requiring the Bible’s Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom throughout the state, which critics say is unconstitutional.

Speaking about the First Amendment principle of separation of church and state, which the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed at least a half-dozen times, Landry declared: “I challenge anyone who says that to go find me those words in the First Amendment. They don’t exist.”

He went on to claim those who want to “extract” what he claims are America’s Judeo-Christian principles “out of the foundation of this country…really and truly want to create the chaos that ultimately is the demise of this nation.”

On Thursday in a signing ceremony Landry declared the Bible’s Moses is the “original lawgiver,” a claim some challenged as a cultural choice and not an accurate one, given there are others that date back earlier, to ancient Greece, Babylon, and India.

“You’ve heard the criticism, it seems to be pouring in. Was it still the right thing to do?” Governor Landry was asked Friday afternoon.

“I mean, I didn’t know that living the Ten Commandments is a bad way to live life,” Landry replied, not touching the obvious and likely unconstitutional nature of the legislation he proudly signed 24 hours earlier. “I didn’t know that it was so vile to obey the Ten Commandments. I think that that speaks volumes about how eroded this country has become. I mean, look, this country was, was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and every time we steer away from that we have problems in our nation. I mean, right now schools teach, basically treat kids like critters and get the Ten Commandments is something bad to put in schools? It just it’s amazing.”

The founders clearly intended to create a secular, not religious government and took great care, including in the First Amendment, to ensure no religion was favored and individuals had the right to observe any faith, multiple faiths, or none at all.

“For those listening right now, they’re wondering, what’s the goal?” Fox News host Sandra Smith continued. “Because it’s not as if this is going to be taught in every school and classroom. This is just being displayed on the walls. So my question to you is, how is this going to improve the school environment and the performance of kids in those schools? When Governor, I pull up the report cards of these public schools and Louisiana is struggling, I mean, it is at the bottom of the country. The education system is failing these kids. I mean, Louisiana is 43, 44th in math and reading. So is this gonna help what is a very big problem in Louisiana?”

“Look, I think it’s part and parcel for helping kids anywhere around the country, if other states followed our suits, but at the same time that we signed that bill into law, we signed a string of others assign 20 bills, including this one, to reform Louisiana schools.”

Experts note that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar law in 1980.

Sandra Smith’s remarks about Louisiana failing are accurate. According to U.S. News and World Report, Louisiana ranks 47th in education, 50th in crime, 49th in the economy, 46th in health care, and overall, it ranks last, at number 50.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg Mocks Trump Campaign's Detroit 'Black Church' Event

Whoopi Goldberg on The View mocked “crook” Donald Trump after claims by former top Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway the largely white crowd at a Black church attending Saturday’s rally was actually “8000 people at a Black church,” which appeared to be disproven by video footage.

“80% of Detroiters are Black. This crowd was bussed into a city they don’t know to cheer for a felon they don’t know how to live without,” observed former longtime journalist Ron Fournier, a Detroit native, in response to video showing an apparently mostly white crowd of several hundred inside Detroit’s 180 Church.

Conway on Sunday told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo Trump was “talking to 8000 people at a Black church,” and President Biden’s “not doing anything like that.”

The New York Times reported Trump “spoke to roughly 200 people” as he was “courting Black voters at a church on the west side of Detroit on Saturday.” The convicted felon ex-president “sought to harness animus toward migrants crossing the border, sanitized his track record on race and sold himself as the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln.”

“Trump largely ignored his history of racist statements and his decades of calls for tougher policing that have fueled his three presidential campaigns,” The Times added, noting he delivered “short remarks before a panel.”

Fox News praised Trump for “connect[ing] the Black and white communities” and declared the importance of “Christian values.”

On Monday, Whoopi Goldberg blasted Trump on ABC’s The View.

“So one of the biggest crooks in the country, and by that, 34 counts is what I’m talking about,” Goldberg began, to laughter and cheers. “Convicted felon is telling Black people that people coming for their jobs. This is the narrative that is being pushed to Black voters.”

“And they keep saying, you know, Black people are going to him,” she continued, before asking for video of the church to be shown.

“Can we look at the church? Can we get a visual of the church?”

“Now, I’m not sure that most of these people even knew where that church was before they knew he was coming there,” Goldberg mocked.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Mike Johnson

Servile Speaker Johnson 'Very Grateful' That Trump Praised Him

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, the most-powerful elected Republican in the nation, second in line to the presidency, is under fire after appearing to subordinate himself to the criminally-indicted and criminally-convicted one-term ex-president, as he glowingly delivered a report of his Thursday meeting with Donald Trump.

Trump “said very complementary things about all of us. We had sustained applause. He said I’m doing a very good job. We’re grateful for that,” Speaker Johnson told reporters (vide below) after he and members of his Republican conference met with the ex-president barely blocks from where the January 6, 2021 insurrection Trump incited took place. Thursday marks the first time since that fatal and violent day Trump has returned to Capitol Hill.

The Speaker of the House is the co-head of a co-equal branch of the federal government. Donald Trump is no longer president, so is no longer head of the executive branch.

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik told reporters it was a “very successful special political conference with our special guest, President Donald J. Trump.”

“Johnson has openly embraced Trump, who was crucial in supporting him when he faced the threat of being ousted … by conservative GOP House hard-liners, saying coordination with Trump is important heading into November’s election and a potential second Trump presidency,” ABC News reports.

“I think it’s important for the country, to have us, to have close coordination,” Johnson also said Wednesday. “I believe he’ll have, can be, the most consequential president of the modern era, because we have to fix effectively every area of public policy.”

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who has written nine books on the American presidency, slammed Johnson.

“Speaker of the House is incumbent elected officer of coequal branch of American government—shouldn’t feel need to publicly pronounce himself ‘grateful’ to an ex-President for saying he and party colleagues are doing a ‘good job.’ ”

“Half the US Congress is now weaponized, obstructing justice, and abusing power to help trump launder away his criminality, malfeasance, and failure—while also conflating government business with his campaign and insurrection with government,” observed Condé Nast legal affairs editor Luke Zaleski. “Trump owns the House. Is America next?”

Former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer noted, “Trump’s supporters almost murdered these folks less than four years ago.”

U.S. Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) added, “The guy who found ‘very fine people on both sides’ of a neo-Nazi rally thinks Mike Johnson is doing a good job. And Mike Johnson is proud of that. These people.”

Watch Speaker Johnson’s remarks below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Billionaire Pals Funded Still More Lavish Vacations For Justice Thomas

Billionaire Pals Funded Still More Lavish Vacations For Justice Thomas

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took even more billionaire-funded trips than he or investigative reporting have previously revealed, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Dick Durbin (D-IL), who says those trips were not disclosed via the Justice’s annual financial reporting forms.

Justice Thomas received an estimated $5.8 million in gifts over the past two decades, a large portion from billionaire Harlan Crow, the government watchdog Fix the Court revealed last week. It is not known if the additional trips Chairman Durbin’s investigation exposed are included in that calculation. The total of all gifts all justices accepted over 20 years, including “likely” gifts, Fix The Court reported, was $6,592,657.

“Thomas traveled on Crow’s private jet during trips in 2017, 2019 and 2021 between various US states, as well as on a previously known 2019 trip to Indonesia, during which Thomas also stayed on Crow’s mega-yacht,” CNN reports. “The newly revealed private plane trips add to the picture of luxury travel enjoyed by Thomas and bankrolled by friends of the justice who have ties to conservative politics.”

Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio adds the new information “was obtained via the [committee’s] subpoena authorization for Crow.”

“’Mr. Crow reached an agreement with the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide information responsive to its requests going back seven years,’ Crow spokesperson Michael Zona said of the information revealed Thursday,” CNN also reported.

Zona claimed Crow has “serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry,” but “Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow.”

Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Alito Reveals Christian Nationalist Bias In Secretly Taped Audio

Alito Reveals Christian Nationalist Bias In Secretly Taped Audio

Secret audio recording of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito casually and unreservedly telling a woman posing as a right-wing Catholic conservative that there are “fundamental” differences between the left and the right that “can’t be compromised,” and agreeing the nation needs to return to “godliness,” has sparked strong criticism by legal and political experts.

Justice Alito agreed with the woman, documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who told him, “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end.”

“I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning,” she added before Alito replied, “I think you’re probably right.”

Alito continued, saying, “There can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

Many expect judges, and especially Supreme Court justices, to maintain an impartiality, including when weighing in on issues of faith and morality. The Constitution itself states justices serve for life if they remain on “good behavior.”

“The key part of the Alito tape is his concession that compromise on fundamental issues is probably impossible. A horrific quality for a judge or human being,” declared constitutional law scholar and professor of law Eric Segall.

“Sam Alito is a Christian Nationalist,” said attorney and author Andrew L. Seidel, a vice president at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Anyone familiar with his opinions on religious freedom and church-state separation (or who has readAmerican Crusade) has known this for some time. Then there’s his admission with the flags. Now this confession.”

Professor of law, MSNBC legal analyst, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance shared several concerns.

“If Justice Alito is making comments like this to a random person at a get-together, what is he saying to his close confidants? How is this impartial justice, especially when his votes/rationale on cases are considered?” she asked.

“This is a Justice who believes the correct way to determine the law is via a strict appeal to ‘history & tradition’ even though both of those things assume a legal system where Black people & women have no rights,” Vance added.

Vance also remarked, “A statistic that stuck with me about Alito’s jurisprudence is that ‘An empirical analysis of the Court’s ‘standing’ decisions…found that Alito rules in favor of conservative litigants 100% of the time & against liberal litigants in every single case.’ ”

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and emeritus scholar, responded to remarks Justice Alito made, writing: “Utterly unethical, corrupt, a serial liar, and a radical lacking every element of judicial temperament. This monster does not belong in civil society, much less on any court, much much less on the Supreme Court.”

Some, including attorney George Conway, pointed out the difference between Justice Alito’s response to Windsor and Chief Justice John Roberts, who was asked similar questions by her.

“Pressed on whether the court has an obligation to put the country on a more ‘moral path,'” Rolling Stone reported, “Roberts turns the tables on his questioner: ‘Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?’ He argues instead: ‘That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.’ Presented with the claim that America is a ‘Christian nation’ and that the Supreme Court should be ‘guiding us in that path,’ Roberts again disagrees, citing the perspectives of ‘Jewish and Muslim friends,’ before asserting: ‘It’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases the best we can.’ ”

“The contrast between Alito’s responses and Roberts’s speaks volumes,” Conway said. “Oh my.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Mike Johnson

Johnson Threatens To 'Defund' Justice Department Over Trump Conviction

The embattled Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is vowing to use the arsenal of tools at his disposal, including defunding, to target the U.S. Dept. of Justice after ex-president Donald Trump was convicted in a New York State prosecution on 34 felony charges last week.

In a Tuesday meeting behind closed doors with his House Republican conference members, Johnson said “he will do everything he can to go after the Department of Justice,” CNN reported, “and said the verdict has ignited support for the former president, two sources familiar with the comments told CNN.”

The Speaker “presented a three-pronged approach of oversight, funding and legislation,” and “specifically walked through the funding cuts that House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan has proposed to the Appropriations Committee, the sources added.”

Just as Rep. Matt Gaetz did Tuesday morning in a House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland, Speaker Johnson conflated the State of New York’s prosecution with the federal cases against Donald Trump. Federal and state prosecutions are separate.

In remarks to the press Speaker Johnson echoed those he made earlier Tuesday, while adding some false claims about the state of the 2024 presidential race between President Joe Biden and ex-president and now convicted felon Donald Trump.

Johnson, under fire for what some experts see as a possible admission he has been talking to Supreme Court justices about the Trump prosecutions, “briefed former President Trump on the plan before announcing it Tuesday morning,” Fox News reported, citing an unnamed lawmaker.

He also called the prosecutions of the ex-president “a new low” and “dangerous.”

The Speaker claimed “people realize that we have reached a new low and when you have activist prosecutors and the Democratic Party who are so desperate because of the presidential campaign and the way it’s going, they understand that Donald Trump, all the polling shows is crushing Joe Biden.”

That’s false.

The right-leaningReal Clear Politics polling average currently has Donald Trump up over President Biden by just 0.7%. Out of the last ten polls RCP lists, Trump won five, Biden won three, and two were tied. Seven of the eight that were not tied showed either Biden or Trump up by just one or two points.

“They’re in, they’re in panic mode on the Democratic side,” Johnson continued, “and they are so desperate to stop Donald Trump. He’s winning in the swing states. He’s winning among the people. He’s winning among new demographics that have never voted Republican before. They see this happening. And they’re so desperate to stop him that they are willing to use the judicial system to do so.”

Donald Trump was indicted by grand juries on a total of 91 felonies in cases at the state and federal level. Three of the charges were later dropped.

Two months ago Johnson had also threatened to defund DOJ and other agencies.

“We also advanced cuts … to some of the agencies that we believe are really overreaching, and have been turned in some ways against the American people. We are going to cut 3% from DOJ, 7% from the ATF, 6% from the FBI, and 10% from the EPA,” he told reporters.

Watch Johnson’s remarks from Tuesday below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Former President Donald Trump

Trump Attorney Tried Threats To Kill Latest 'Payoff' Bombshell

An attorney for Donald Trump sent a “cease and desist” letter to ProPublica threatening legal action while trying to kill the award-wining nonprofit news outlet’s latest bombshell on the convicted ex-president.

“Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company,” ProPublica reported Monday. “If any benefits were intended to influence testimony, that could be a crime.”

ProPublica’s deeply-investigated report offers several stunning examples.

“One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee,” ProPublica’s Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski report. “These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.”

Trump attorney Jennifer Little, whose “testimony could prove crucial as the two sides try to make their case about Trump’s consciousness of guilt” in the Espionage Act/classified documents case, has made over a million dollars.

Little, a “former local prosecutor who started her own practice … had previously taken on far more modest cases. Highlights on her website include a biker who fell because of a pothole, a child investigated for insensitive social media comments and drunk drivers with ‘DUI’s as high as .19.'”

“Just after Little was forced to testify before the grand jury in March 2023,” ProPublica reported, “a Trump political action committee paid her $218,000, by far the largest payment she’d received while working for Trump. In the year after she became a witness, she has made at least $1.3 million from the Trump political committee, more than twice as much as she had during the year prior.”

ProPublica also reported that “Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, sent ProPublica a cease-and-desist letter demanding this article not be published. The letter warned that if the outlet and its reporters ‘continue their reckless campaign of defamation, President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.'”

After ProPublica published its report, some suggested it could be evidence of witness tampering.

“Significant changes,” the news outlet noted, “to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.”

MSNBC host and legal correspondent Katie Phang, responding to an excerpt from the ProPublica report, remarked, “If you’re not outraged, you should be.”

Also responding to an excerpt, The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein wrote: “Direct and overt witness tampering.”

Media critic and former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob commented, “Terrific story by ⁦@propublica⁩ about Team Trump paying big bucks to witnesses — which looks a whole lot like witness tampering.”

“Team Trump has a history of witness tampering,” Jacob added. “Campaign chief Paul Manafort did it, and Trump later pardoned him. Manafort still has ties with the Trump Republican Party. The best way to understand Trump is to realize that he operates like a mobster.”

ProPublica’s own report states: “Attempts to exert undue influence on witnesses have been a repeated theme of Trump-related investigations and criminal cases over the years.”

At the end of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack’s public hearings in 2022, Vice Chair Liz Cheney “suggested members of Trump’s inner circle were engaging in witness tampering via phone calls and messages to some witnesses,” MSNBC reported at the time.

Watch that video below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'Biggest Felony In American History': Praise For Trump Prosecutor's Closing Argument

'Biggest Felony In American History': Praise For Trump Prosecutor's Closing Argument

A prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s state prosecution of Donald Trump is being praised for his closing argument Tuesday by a top legal scholar who says the ex-president’s crime was “arguably the biggest felony in American history.”

Trump is on trial in lower Manhattan, facing 34 felony counts. Lawfare’s Anna Bower had summed up the case earlier on Tuesday: “Prosecutors allege that Trump falsified business records in order to commit or cover-up a conspiracy to promote his election to the Presidency by ‘unlawful means.'”

Calling his closing argument “devastating,” Harvard University Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, a professor of law and top constitutional scholar, quoted New York prosecutor Josh Steinglass.

“This scheme could very well be what got President Trump elected,” Steinglass told the jury.

Professor Tribe then remarked: “Think this was a minor crime? Think again! It was arguably the biggest felony in American history. Certainly the most harmful.”

MSNBC legal contributor Katie Phang offered some background.

Referring to AMI, then the parent company of the National Enquirer, she writes:

“STEINGLASS: Once AMI purchased stories on a candidate’s behalf and in coordination with the campaign, those purchases became unlawful campaign contributions. I suggest to you that the value of this corrupt bargain at the Trump Tower meeting cannot be overstated. It turned out to be one of the most valuable contributions ever made…. ‘This scheme, cooked up by these men…could very well be what got President Trump elected…'”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

More Classified Papers In Trump's Mar-a-Lago Bedroom (And Aide's Laptop)

More Classified Papers In Trump's Mar-a-Lago Bedroom (And Aide's Laptop)

An unnamed witness, reportedly an adviser to Donald Trump, scanned the contents of a box that had contained classified documents, and saved those digital files to her laptop, which belongs to a political action committee which pays Donald Trump’s legal expenses.

The stunning revelation was tucked away in the footnote of an 87-page court document unsealed by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Tuesday, in response to a separate filing in which Trump’s attorneys are claiming prosecutorial misconduct, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney who reported the details.

The filing revealed that at least four more classified documents had been found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, in his bedroom, even after FBI agents executed and completed a search warrant months earlier, in August of 2022.

Judge Howell, Politico reports, “noted that [a] Trump adviser connected to his Save America PAC had acknowledged scanning the contents of the box that contained the classified materials in 2021 and storing them on a personal laptop provided by the PAC.”

In the footnote Judge Howell writes, “on January 6, 2023, the former president’s counsel informed the government that, in 2021, WITNESS scanned the contents of the box—produced on January 5, 2023, and previously containing classified documents—onto a laptop in her possession owned by the Save America Political Action Committee (‘PAC’), a PAC formed by the former president in 2020. … The former president’s counsel saved those scans onto a thumb drive and provided the thumb drive to the government that day.”

Axios adds: “A witness scanned the contents of the box containing the classified materials and stored them on a laptop in her possession owned by Trump’s Save America PAC, according to a footnote in the opinion.”

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, pointing to the Politico report, adds: “This was the incident where Trump aide Chamberlain Harris — known as ROTUS, short for Receptionist of the United States — scanned and uploaded classified docs onto her laptop … Guardian reported this contemporaneously last year, as did CNN.”

Lowell also pointed to The Guardian’s report.

The Save America PAC according to Open Secrets, raised well over $108 million in the 2021-2022 cycle, and spent over $121 million. In the 2023-2024 cycle, the PAC has raised over $76 million, and spent well over $85 million.

“Since leaving office, former president Trump has been involved in an array of criminal and civil litigation — some that relates to his campaigns and presidency and some that does not. To cover the enormous legal bills, estimated at more than $100 million, he has turned to his political action committees (PACs), essentially having campaign donors pay costs for which he would otherwise be on the hook personally,” the Brennan Center for Justice reported earlier this month.

“Following his 2020 election loss, Trump received more than $250 million in donations from supporters to fuel an ‘election defense fund.’ He divided that money between two campaign entities: his 2020 presidential campaign committee, which he subsequently converted into a freestanding PAC called Make America Great Again (MAGA) PAC, and a second entity called Save America PAC, which is a so-called ‘leadership PAC‘ (a type of PAC that a federal candidate can establish for the ostensible purpose of supporting other candidates).”

National security attorney Brad Moss on Tuesday, commenting on Politico’s report of the additional classified documents at Mar-a-Lago wrote: “Reminder that the MAL docs case was and will always have been the cleanest, most straightforward criminal prosecution of the four against the former president. That the public won’t see it brought to fruition before they go to the voting booth is a stain on the judicial system.”

This article has been updated with the details from The Guardian’s Lowell.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kristi Noem

Befuddled Trump Defends 'Terrific' Dog Killer Kristi Noem

Donald Trump came to the aid of embattled Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, whose story about shooting to death her 14-month old German wirehaired pointer named Cricket has been denounced by Americans on the left and right for weeks.

Gov. Noem not only chose to put the story in her memoir, but has repeatedly defended her decision to drag the dog into a gravel pit and shoot her, killing her with one bullet without even warning her child, who asked when they returned home from school, “Where’s Cricket?”

Trump, speaking Tuesday on The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show, the successor to the late Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio program, did not appear to have a full grasp of the story or the massive outrage and upset Gov. Noem caused.

“I’m sure you’ve seen some of the Kristi Noem story. She might be the only person getting worse press than you on the left right now with the dog shooting story,” Clay Travis told Trump. “Is she still in the mix as a VP? Have you thought maybe she’d make more sense in a cabinet? How do you analyze stories like that as you go about making a choice?”


Noem, until the dog shooting story came out, was widely believed to be on Trump’s short list as a vice presidential running mate.

“Well, until this week, she was doing incredibly well and she got hit hard, and sometimes you do books and you have some guy writing a book and you maybe don’t read it as carefully,” Trump offered as a defense of the governor whose dog-shooting story came out weeks ago. “You know, you have ghost writers, do they help you? And they this case didn’t help too much.”

“Now, she’s terrific,” Trump continued, lavishing praise on Noem. “Look, she’s been a supporter of mine from day one. She did a great job of governor, as governor. And you know, you look at South Dakota numbers. She’s really done a great job.”

Trump did not say what numbers specifically, nor did he say on what Governor Noem did a great job. he also did not answer the question Travis posed about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, nor did he bring up any of the other controversies surrounding the book.

“And in some form, I mean, I think I think she’s terrific. A couple of rough stories. There’s no question about it. And when explained the dog story, you know, people, people hear that and people from different parts of the country probably feel a little bit differently, but that’s a tough story. And, but she’s a terrific person. She said she had a bad, she had a bad week.”

Watch below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.