Ann's Mega Dub

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The foul stench of Mark Robinson

That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Miss Sassy Will Not Be Ignored" from last night.

Love the comic. And this is where I grab the Mark Robinson baton and start covering him for the community. I usually get the crooks -- Shady Menendez, Rudy G, Jizzy Pants Maxwell -- so I should have known I'd get around to Mark Robinson eventually. He wants to be governor of North Carolina and he's spent years spewing hate. Turns out, he was rather shady. CNN exposed his life of racism, hatred of Jewish people and written fantasies of sleeping with his sister-in-law. I don't remember who it was that said, of one part of the scandal, who leaves comments at porn sites? Mark Robinson does, thank you very much. Let me note this Daily Show video about his scandal.

Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck (CNN) report:

Republicans running for office in North Carolina and around the country are distancing themselves from Mark Robinson, deleting photos of themselves side by side with the embattled Republican nominee for governor and removing any reference to his endorsement from their campaign materials.

Robinson has become politically toxic since CNN reported on dozens of inflammatory comments he made on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, including referring to himself as a “black NAZI,” expressing support for slavery, and making other lewd and sexually explicit remarks.

At least 10 Republicans and conservative groups have either canceled events with Robinson or erased their digital footprints to distance themselves from the man they will share a ballot with this November.

US House candidate Laurie Buckhout, who is running in a competitive race in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, deleted at least nine photos of herself with Robinson on X, according to screenshots and a Google cache of her tweets. She also deleted a post calling Robinson “North Carolina’s next governor.” Buckhout appears to have deleted five tweets in total.

[. . .]

Outside of North Carolina, national Republicans and conservative activist and advocacy groups have distanced themselves from Robinson. In neighboring Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp withdrew his endorsement of Robinson on Monday. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, the chair of the Republican Governors Association, also pulled his endorsement and canceled a RGA fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina. The RGA confirmed to CNN it would not spend any more money in the governor’s race.

Other canceled events featuring Robinson include a since-removed fundraiser to support the Trump-Vance campaign in Wisconsin on September 29. An updated invitation online now reads, “Our earlier speaker cancelled, but we have secured a great Trump ally for this event! Stay tuned!”

Robinson was also scheduled to appear as the main speaker at a fundraiser for the conservative group Dakota First Action in October. Updated promotions for the event no longer feature Robinson, and the group has not responded to questions on whether he is still speaking.

An invite for a “get out the vote” rally with the Johnston County, North Carolina, GOP for October 3 was updated to remove Robinson.

Meanwhile, Robinson’s events page – which was once full of events – is currently blank.

Michael Luciano (Mediaite) offers:

On Tuesday’s installment of The Lead, Jake Tapper spoke about Robinson’s woes with Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. The host played a clip of Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) explaining why he will still vote for Robinson.

“I’ve had conversations with him,” Budd told a gaggle of reporters at the Capitol. “Again, they’re very disturbing. It’s up to him to prove to North Carolina voters over the next 40-some days.”

Tapper noted that off camera, Budd stated, “I’m going to always vote for Republicans because we have the best platform.”

“Shame is dead, Jake,” Milbank said of Budd’s decision to back a man who reportedly said he’d rather be led by Hitler than Barack Obama. “I mean, we’re seeing this over and over again.”

“Called himself a Black Nazi, I should remind people,” Tapper interjected.

Shame is dead? Sad and true. And Ewan Palmer (Newsweek) notes:

The editorial board for The News and Observer, the paper with the largest circulation in North Carolina, asked why Republicans were still giving Robinson, who has been backed by former President Donald Trump, the "benefit of the doubt" in the wake of the recent bombshell report by CNN despite him having done "absolutely nothing" to earn it.

Robinson is alleged to have described himself as a "Black Nazi" on a pornographic message board site several years ago, as well as expressing support for Adolf Hitler. Robinson, who is hoping to become North Carolina's first Black governor, also said he wished slavery would make a return, adding: "I would certainly buy a few."

One more thing. Thank you to Elaine who just e-mailed me this from Ja'han Jones's report for MSNBC about Senator Lindsey Graham, on Sunday, trying to provide cover for Trump:

Democrats are “trying to make people believe that Donald Trump somehow’s involved with Mar— with the Robinson guy,” Graham said, obscuring Robinson’s name.

Of course, it’s not all that hard to make people believe Trump is somehow involved with Robinson, considering that the former president has endorsed him and repeatedly praised him — and even held a fundraiser for him at Mar-a-Lago.

When one of us grabs a topic, the others usually pass on articles they see on the topic. Thank you, Elaine. Oh, and thank you to Ava and C.I. for "Media: Broadcast TV and Jill Stein -- two things that always fail to deliver" which is a great report.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Wednesday, September 25, 2024. Donald Trump flops in Georgia, Kamala Harris fights for women's health, the media -- as Dan Abrams points out -- is applying a double standard with regards to a recently exposed affair.

Later today, Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris will be in Pittsburg delivering an economic speech. Convicted Felon Donald Trump attempted to deliver an economic speech in Savannah, Georgia yesterday and flopped. Justin Glawe (GUARDIAN) reports:

t an event intended to tout economic policies that would usher in what his campaign calls a “new age of American industrialism”, Donald Trump spent as much time discussing personal grievances and blaming immigrants for everything from fentanyl overdoses to crime and taking Americans’ jobs as he did discussing the economy.

“This is a speech on economic development but this is a big part of economic development,” the former president said of immigration at a speech in Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday.

[. . .]

Trump then became sidetracked with immigration, questioning Kamala Harris’s intelligence and patriotism, and reliving an assassination attempt in July in Pennsylvania and another scare in Florida earlier this month.

Trump claimed it had been more than luck that saved his life the day he was grazed by an assassin’s bullet.

“People say: ‘It was God, and God came down and saved you because he wants you to bring America back,’” Trump said as the crowd began to chant “USA!”

The mind is gone. Completely gone. He's 78 years old and he's unfit to be president. An angry, confused old man who attacks in his confusion does not belong in the Oval Office with the nuclear codes.

As bad as Georgia was for him, Pennsylvania was worse.

He's an idiot who thinks anyone will believe him when he talks about abortion.

Last Friday, Kamala spoke in Georgia.

The Vice President: And we all know how we got here. When Donald Trump was president, he hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court — the court of Thurgood and RBG — with the intention that they would overturn the protections of Roe v. Wade. And as he intended, they did.

And now more than 20 states have Trump abortion bans — extremists that have passed laws that criminalize health care providers, doctors and nurses, and punish women. In two states of those states, they provide for prison for life — prison for life for health care providers for simply providing reproductive care, the care they so earnestly and rightly believe must be delivered. All Trump abortion bans.

And think about this: Many of these bans make no exception even for rape and incest.

Now, many of you know I started my career as a prosecutor specializing in crimes of violence against women and children. What many of you may not know is why.

So, when I was in high school, my best friend, I learned, was being molested by her stepfather. And I said to her, “Look, you’ve got to come and stay with us.” I called my mother. She said, “Of course she does.” And she came and she stayed with us.

And so, I made the decision early in my life that I wanted to do the work that was about protecting the most vulnerable among us and doing the work that was about giving them dignity in the process.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And so — well, thank everybody here for being here, standing in solidarity around the importance of that. (Applause.)

And so, I say to you, then, from that experience and from the work that I’ve done, the idea that someone who survives a crime of violence to their body — a violation of their body — would not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next, that’s immoral. That’s immoral.

And let us agree, and I know we do: One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do. (Applause.)

If she chooses — if she chooses, she will talk with her pastor, her priest, her rabbi, her imam. But it should not be the government or Donald Trump telling her what to do with her body. (Applause.)

And think about it — the stories that Dr. Reddick shares with us, the stories we heard last night, the stories we’ve been hearing for two years.

One in three women in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban. This includes Georgia and every state in the South except Virginia.

Think about that when you also combine that with what we know has been long-standing neglect around an issue like maternal mortality. Think about that when you compound that with what has been long-standing neglect of women in communities with a lack of the adequate resources they need for health care — prenatal, during their pregnancy, postpartum. Think about that.

And these hypocrites want to start talking about “this is in the best interest of women and children.” (Applause.) Well, where you been? Where you been — (applause) — when it comes to taking care of the women and children of America? Where you been?

How dare they? How dare they? Come on.

And — and we understand the impact of these bans and the horrific reality that women and families — their husbands, their partners, their parents, their children are facing as a consequence every single day.

Since Roe was overturned, I have met women who were refused care during a miscarriage — wanted to have a child, suffering a miscarriage. I met a woma- — a woman — I’ve actually met several who were turned away from the emergency room. One, at early stages after the Dobbs decision came down, told me with tears — she was with her husband — about how only when she developed ses- — sepsis did she receive emergency care. Only when she developed sepsis did she receive emergency care.

And now we know that at least two women — and those are only the stories we know — here in the state of Georgia died — died because of a Trump abortion ban.

One — and we heard about her story last night — a vibrant, 28-year-old young woman. She was ambitious. You know, we — I talked with her mother and her sisters about her, and they described such an extraordinary life of a person. She was excited. She was working hard. She was a medical assistant. She was going to nursing school, raising her six-year-old son.

She was really proud that she had finally worked so hard that she gained the independence. Her family was telling me that she was able to get an apartment in a gated community with a pool for her son to play in. She was so proud, and she was headed to nursing school.

And her name — and we will speak her name —

AUDIENCE: Yes.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Amber Nicole Thurman.

AUDIENCE: Amber Nicole Thurman.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Amber Nicole Thurman.

AUDIENCE: Amber Nicole Thurman.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That’s right.

And she had her future all planned out, and it was her plan. You know, let’s understand — just take pause on that for a moment. She had her plan, what she wanted to do for her son, for herself, for their future. And so, when she discovered that she was pregnant, she decided she wanted to have an abortion, but because of the Trump abortion ban here in Georgia, she was forced to travel out of state to receive the health care that she needed.

But when she returned to Georgia, she needed additional care, so she went to a hospital. But, you see, under the Trump abortion ban, her doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed.

Understand what a law like this means. Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.

You know, on the other side of my — you know, the — the other folks, th- — Trump and his running mate, and they’ll talk about, (deepens voice) “Oh, well, yeah, but I — you know, I — I do believe in the exception to save the mother’s life.” (Laughter.) Okay. All right. Let’s break that down. Shall we?

AUDIENCE: Yes!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Let’s break that down. (Applause.) Let’s break that down.

So, we’re saying that we’re going to create public policy that says that a doctor, a health care provider, will only kick in to give the care that somebody needs if they’re about to die? Think about what we are saying right now. You’re saying that good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy, is about saying that a health care provider will only start providing that care when you’re about to die?

And so, Amber waited 20 hours — 20 hours, excruciating hours — until finally she was in enough physical distress that her doctors thought they would be okay to treat her. But it was too late. She died of sepsis. And her last words to her mother — which her mother, as you know, tears up and cries every time she speaks it — last words to her mother, “Promise me you’ll take care of my son.”

So, I met last night and I spent time with Amber’s mother and her sisters, and they spoke about Amber — a daughter, a sister, a mother — with the deep love that you can imagine and how terribly they miss her. And their pain is heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking.

Amber’s mother, Shanette, told me that the word “preventable” is over and over again in her head when she learned about how her child died — the word “preventable.” She cannot — she can’t stop thinking about the word that they spoke to her. It was “preventable.”

Because, you see, medical experts have now determined that Amber’s death was preventable. And through the pain and the grief of her mother, who courageously told her story, I promised her, as she has asked, that we will make sure Amber is not just remembered as a statistic — (applause) — that she will not just be remembered as a statistic, so that people will know she was a mother and a daughter and a sister and that she was loved and that she should be alive today — (applause) — and that she should be alive today.

And many of us remember — there’s so many leaders here — from two years ago when the Dobbs decision came down, we knew this could happen. There is a word “preventable,” and there is another word: predictable.

AUDIENCE: Yes!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And the reality is for every story we hear of the suffering under Trump abortion bans, there are so many other stories we’re not hearing but where suffering is happening every day in our country, an untold number of people suffering.

Women who are also being made to feel as though they did something wrong. The judgment factor here is outrageous — being made as though to feel as though they are criminals, as though they are alone.

So, to those women, to those families, I say on behalf of what I believe we all say: We see you, and you are not alone, and we are all here standing with you. (Applause.) Standing with you. You are not alone. You are not alone. (Applause.)

So, Georgia —

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We will not be silent.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We — and we will not be silent.

AUDIENCE: We will not be silent.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And we will not be silent. But this is a health care crisis.

AUDIENCE: Yes!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: This is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis. He brags about overturning Roe v. Wade. In his own words, quote, “I did it, and I’m proud to have done it,” he says. He is proud.

Proud that women are dying? Proud that doctors and nurses could be thrown in prison for administering care? Proud that young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?

How dare he? How dare he?

Donald dismisses abortion as a non-issue. It remains an issue and his actions have endangered women throughout the country. Julia Conley (COMMON DREAMS) reports:

Reproductive justice experts have long warned that the erosion of abortion rights in the U.S. would harm people in a wide range of ways, and a report released Tuesday quantifies some of that harm—namely, the criminalization of pregnancy.

In the report, Pregnancy as a Crime: A Preliminary Report on the First Year After Dobbs, the rights group Pregnancy Justice found that from June 24, 2022—the day the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade—to June 23, 2022, the number of people who faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies rose to its highest level in U.S. history.

At least 210 people were charged with crimes related to pregnancy in the first year after Roe was overturned, with prosecutors accusing them of child endangerment, substance abuse, attempting to end a pregnancy—or even researching abortion—and abuse of a corpse, among other charges.

Along with clearing the way for right-wing lawmakers in 22 states to ban or severely restrict access to abortion, said Pregnancy Justice president Lourdes A. Rivera, "the Dobbs decision emboldened prosecutors to develop ever more aggressive strategies to prosecute pregnancy, leading to the most pregnancy-related criminal cases on record" in a single year.

The rise in pregnancy criminalization "is directly tied to the radical legal doctrine of 'fetal personhood,' which grants full legal rights to an embryo or fetus, turning them into victims of crimes perpetrated by pregnant women," added Rivera.

Roughly half of the cases detailed in Pregnancy as a Crime—104 of them—were reported in Alabama, one of several Republican-controlled states that have so-called "fetal personhood laws."

"Without fetal personhood, pregnancy criminalization could not exist," reads the report.

Prosecutors in Oklahoma filed 68 of the cases, and South Carolina had the third-most charges with 10 pregnant people criminalized.

All three states with the highest numbers of cases have near-total abortion bans and some of the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the U.S., according to Pregnancy Justice.

"To turn the tide on criminalization, we need to separate healthcare from the criminal legal system and to change policy and practices to ensure that pregnant people can safely access the healthcare they need, without fear of criminalization."

In nearly all of the cases brought against pregnant people, actual harm to a fetus or baby did not have to be proven—prosecutors focused only on the perceived risk that the defendants allegedly exposed their pregnancies to.

For example, all 68 defendants in Oklahoma were charged with child neglect, delinquency, or abuse for testing positive for a substance while pregnant or giving birth.

"Defendants can be found guilty even if the pregnancy results in a healthy child and even when the science does not support the
assumption that a positive drug test proves the fetus was harmed," reads the report.

Such "no harm" prosecutions can result in severe punishment for defendants, said Pregnancy Justice; the Oklahoma residents who were charged face sentences up to life in prison if found guilty, and 93 Alabama defendants who were charged with chemical endangerment of a minor could face up to 10 years in prison.

"These findings strongly suggest that, rather than focusing on fetal harm, these prosecutions seek to control and punish pregnant people," said Pregnancy Justice.

Substance abuse charges—for both legal and illegal substances—were involved in a majority of cases studied by the group, while five cases included allegations regarding abortion care, including an attempt to end a pregnancy or to research the possibility of an abortion.

Twenty-two people were criminalized for experiencing a pregnancy loss, said Pregnancy Justice.

Charging documents included 15 allegations of "lack of prenatal care" and 10 cases in which the defendant failed "to seek help during or after birth." Three people were accused of breastfeeding and placing their infant at risk of drug exposure.

"The allegations in these cases are particularly notable for the way that they criminalize precarious pregnancy and birth and meet healthcare needs with punishment rather than care," reads the report. "It is also noteworthy that several women who appear to have faced serious health conditions, devastating pregnancy losses, and enormous trauma, were met not with offers of care but threatened with punishment for finding themselves in allegedly dangerous situations or allegedly not seeking help quickly enough in traumatic moments. Striking, too, in the midst of a wide-ranging crisis in maternal healthcare, is the condemnation of pregnant people for not accessing prenatal care."

In one case, police charged a woman with abusing her "unborn child" just after they administered Narcan to save her from a drug overdose.

Criminalization of pregnancy, said Pregnancy Justice, "only worsens" the crisis of opioid-related deaths among pregnant people.

Rivera said that "to turn the tide on criminalization, we need to separate healthcare from the criminal legal system and to change policy and practices to ensure that pregnant people can safely access the healthcare they need, without fear of criminalization."

The report was released a day after KFF Health Newsreported on the story of Amari Marsh, a South Carolina resident who was charged in May of 2023 with "murder/homicide by child abuse," two months after she went into preterm labor and gave birth in her bathroom. Marsh spent 22 days in prison—and faced a potential sentence of 20 years to life—but her charges were ultimately dismissed by a grand jury.

Marsh's case, and other instances of pregnancy criminalization, represent Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's "plan for America," said Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) on Tuesday. Trump has boasted about his hand in ensuring Roe v. Wade was overturned and spread misinformation about abortion rights, including the demonstrably false claim that Democrats support "an execution of a baby after birth."

The Dobbs decision, made possible by Trump's appointment of right-wing Supreme Court justices, paved the way for "increased suspicion and surveillance of pregnant people," said Wendy Bach, principal investigator of the report and a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law. "With this report, we hope to see both more attention on pregnancy-related prosecutions and more advocacy to reverse course on the criminalization of pregnant people."

While Donald dismissed women's concerns -- justifiable and understandable concerns -- about reproductive freedom, Kamala talked about what can be done. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) reports:

The Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, on Tuesday endorsed eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, the federal abortion rights ruling that was overturned two years ago.

"It is well within our reach to hold onto the majority in the Senate and take back the House," Harris, a former U.S. senator, toldWisconsin Public Radio. "I would also emphasize that while the presidential election is extremely important and dispositive of where we go moving forward, it also is about what we need to do to hold onto the Senate and win seats in the House."

"I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe," she continued. "And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do."

Multiple current lawmakers joined a wide range of reproductive rights advocates in welcoming Harris' comments about ending the filibuster, which requires 60 of the Senate's 100 members to agree to hold a final vote on a bill.

"This is so important," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has shared her own abortion story. "Abortion access is under attack as extreme MAGA Republicans pass cruel laws to strip away our rights. Congress needs to step up and codify abortion rights—and we do that by ending the filibuster."

Unable to pass any defenses of reproductive healthcare in the divided Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has instead held recent votes on legislation regarding abortion, birth control, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) to call out Republicans.

"The filibuster is an undemocratic rule that prevents us from passing policies that a majority of Americans want. Look no further than last week's IVF vote," Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said Tuesday. "Could not agree more with Vice President Harris."

Meanwhile it's one sexual scandal after another for MAGA these days. We noted Corey DeAngelis aka Seth Rose yesterday but let's note him again. Daniel Villarreal (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

Anti-LGBTQ+ activist Corey DeAngelis has been placed on leave from the right-wing “school choice” organization American Federation for Children (AFC) amid online allegations that he previously performed in gay adult films. DeAngelis’ automated email reply states he’s “out on paternity leave.”

DeAngelis served as a senior fellow for AFC. But a week ago, AFC removed a webpage mentioning his role from its website. AFC said that he has been placed on leave while the organization investigates a claim that he once performed as “Seth Rose” on the gay adult video website GayHoopla.

On the GayHoopla website, Rose is described as a “hot otter,” and he performs in a solo scene, a video entitled “Jerk-Off Race,” and another entitled “Super Star Compilation! How Many Strokes Til You Cum?!” The videos appear to have been released at around 2014.

DeAngelis — who wrote The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools, a 2024 book endorsed by former President Donald Trump — has repeatedly advocated for redirecting taxpayer money to fund private for-profit schools, a major goal of anti-LGBTQ+ Christian conservatives. Such schools can reject students for any reason and operate largely without government oversight to ensure that they adhere to federal nondiscrimination laws.

In a recent Fox News appearance, DeAngelis claimed that public schools are “focusing more on the LGBTs than the ABCs,” a statement echoing a right-wing claim that accepting LGBTQ+ students and opposing anti-LGBTQ+ bullying in schools degrades the quality of public education.

“It’s just propaganda and a way for the left to control the minds of other people’s children,” he said.

So there's that. There's Matt Gaetz and Mark Robinson. Now there's John McEntee. Hafiz Rashid (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports:

A former aide in Donald Trump’s presidential administration and a senior adviser to Project 2025 is in trouble for sending creepy internet messages to teenagers.

John McEntee, who also co-founded the conservative dating app The Right Stuff, sent messages to multiple young women offering in some cases to give them free trips to Los Angeles and making sexual advances, Wired reports. The app’s sole investor is right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, and it has been criticized for its mostly male user base.

One of the women, Grace Carter, said McEntee reached out to her through Instagram in October last year when she was an 18-year-old freshman at North Carolina State University. McEntee used the business account of The Right Stuff to message Carter, asking if she wanted free merchandise.

Initially, Carter was interested in a free hoodie but didn’t know much about the app, and didn’t know she was corresponding with McEntee. He introduced himself as John and gave Carter a southern California phone number to message him at, which a Wired reporter recognized as one that McEntee has used in the past. Carter doesn’t know how or why McEntee decided to reach out.

“I actually have no idea how he found me,” Carter told Wired. “Based on the other accounts I follow and things I post, it’s very leftist. So I was surprised when he found me.”

Carter didn’t use McEntee’s number, although she accepted his offer of a free hoodie. Despite the fact that she rarely answered his messages, he offered to fly her and one of her friends to Los Angeles. She responded in a sort of “trolling” way to see if he’d actually follow through on the free trip, but the conversation fizzled out when Carter decided not to visit him.

Later, McEntee’s views on reproductive rights would provoke Carter’s ire. After the September 10 presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris, McEntee posted a video on TikTok asking, “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don’t hold your breath.”

Carter was incensed, and posted her own video to TikTok sharing her interactions with McEntee. Soon she began receiving messages from other women who said they had similar experiences with the conservative operative.

The publication spoke to one of those women, who asked to remain anonymous. Also aged 18, she said that McEntee reached out to her on The Right Stuff’s app before moving to text messages, using the same southern California phone number he sent to Carter. Over text, he sent her clearly identifiable selfies and began mentioning explicit sexual acts that made her uncomfortable, and encouraged her to come to California.

“It was very sexual from day one,” she said. “He kept making comments about my age and how hot it would be to sleep with someone who was my age.”

And then there's Junior. Robert Kennedy Junior, the disgrace of a political legacy, when not humping Donald Trump's leg, can be found entangle with women who are not his wife Cheryl Hines. Robin Abcarian (THE LOS ANGELES TIMES) notes:

There are just so many cringey things about the New York magazine journalist Olivia Nuzzi‘s inappropriate relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

First of all, he’s married. (The political scion’s wife is the actor Cheryl Hines.) Second, Nuzzi is 31, and Kennedy, straying into Hugh Hefner territory, is 70. Third, she was until recently engaged to the political journalist Ryan Lizza, who was “MeToo’d” in 2017, when the New Yorker dismissed him for what it described as improper sexual conduct.

Apart from prurient interest, why should any of us really care?

[. . .]

The relationship between Nuzzi and Kennedy was an open secret in certain media spheres, according to Business Insider. Kennedy, a one-time heroin addict whose second wife once found a diary in which he rated his various sexual conquests, boasted to friends that Nuzzi sent him intimate photos. Word got back to New York‘s editor in chief, David Haskell, who confronted his star reporter.

You know is an issue in terms of journalism. But, here's the thing, we covered that here in real time with Gina Chon when no one wanted to. She was fired by THE WALL STREET JOURNAL for this same type of behavior but no one wanted to address that so excuse me if I'm not jumping on the bus to attack Nuzzi. She was wrong. But just GOOGLE us and "Gina Chon" and it'll apply.

There's a different factor at play here and Dan Abrams rightly called it. Zachary Leeman (MEDIAITE) reports:

Dan Abrams argued the treatment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 70, versus reporter Olivia Nuzzi, 31, amid their relationship scandal shows real “sexism.”

[. . .]

Abrams, the founder of Mediaite, argued on The Dan Abrams Show, which can be heard on SiriusXM, that if Kennedy and Nuzzi’s roles were reversed, the treatment would be completely different. Nuzzi is currently waiting to see what her employer will “do to her,” Abrams explained, while Kennedy is still out giving speeches and campaigning in favor of former President Donald Trump.

Abrams said:

It’s not a good look for her — but it’s also not a good look for him. He is married, he is 70, she’s 31. And I do think there is some — I do think that some of the reaction to her versus him is sexism. The reports are that she sent him, quote, “demure” nudes of herself. And now he’s trying to claim that they were unwanted. There is no way she is sending nudes of herself without him making it clear that this was going both ways, meaning he wanted them or whatever.

But more importantly, she’s sitting on the sidelines now waiting to hear what New York Magazine is going to do to her for violating journalistic ethics. Yeah, I mean, this is a seeming violation of journalistic ethics. But what about him? He’s sitting back out there making speeches, no one’s really asking him much about it.

If it had been a 70-year-old woman politician caught up in a similar scandal with a young man, there’d be more questions for the politician, Abrams added, questions he does not seem to be facing today.

Exactly. And when we called out Gina Chon here, we also called out Brett McGurk.

New content at THIRD:

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Miss Sassy Will Not Be Ignored" and "MAGA Matt and Mark Pal Around" went up last night. The following sites updated:

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Shady Menendez continues to benefit from corruption

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Miss Sassy Will Not Be Ignored." I love that comic. Miss Sassy JD Vance is so much more interesting than the actual JD Vance.

Speaking of crooked politicians, Shady Mendez is a convicted felon. But being a former US senator, he gets special treatment. Ella Lee (The Hill) reports:

A judge on Monday delayed former Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-N.J.) sentencing in his federal corruption case by three months, pushing any criminal punishment into 2025.

In a brief order, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein rescheduled Menendez’s sentencing to Jan. 29. The disgraced New Jersey Democrat was set to be sentenced Oct. 29.

Menendez was convicted in July on all 16 counts he faced, from accepting luxurious bribes in exchange for his political clout to acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. Once chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he is now staring down decades in prison.

Must be nice to get the perks even after your corruption has been exposed.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, September 24, 2024. The media's doing a lousy job covering economic proposals, there are many issues at stake in this election and this Sunday Moms For Bigotry will be missing one 'leader' at their anti-gay event since he's just been exposed as an actor in gay porn.

Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) report:

Actor and activist Jane Fonda took aim at Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump and his climate-wrecking plans in comments published Monday from her wide-ranging conversation with CBS News, The Guardian, and Rolling Stone.

The interview with Fonda, which took place in California earlier this month, was coordinated by Covering Climate Now and is set to air on "CBS Saturday Morning" on September 28. It comes as she travels the country to support climate champions including Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats taking on Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election.

Trump "invited all the CEOs of the fossil fuel industry to Mar-a-Lago" and promised to roll back the Biden administration's progress on the climate crisis for just $1 billion in campaign cash, Fonda highlighted, warning that "the future of the planet is at stake."

"This is a collective crisis, and it requires a collective solution," she continued. "[Trump] wants to do away with all regulations and open up the floodgates for the fossil fuel industry and the nuclear industry. So the choice is very clear, do we vote for the future, or do we vote for burning up the planet?"

"We have the solution to the climate crisis, why don't we employ it, instead of allowing a bunch of rich people to destroy everything that's been created by humankind?"

The longtime activist, who is taking time off from acting to focus on this year's elections, acknowledged that some voters who lean toward Democrats, particularly younger people, are angry with Harris, especially over U.S. support for Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip. However, she argued, "to sit this out or to vote for a third-party candidate, is to allow fascism."

"That will elect somebody who will deny you any voice in the future of the United States," Fonda stressed. "Vote for a voice if you really care about Gaza, vote to have a voice so that you can do something about it, and then be ready to turn out into the streets by the millions and fight for it… If the young people stay home, we're going to lose."

"Every candidate has issues. Nobody's perfect, but the Harris-Walz ticket is the ticket that will allow us to fight, to get the solutions that climate scientists are saying we need," she said. "They give us a chance, at least, to fight. They give us a platform on which we can try to pressure."

41 days left in the US. Early voting has begun in Wisconsin. November 5th will be the last time to vote in the 2024 presidential election.

There is so much on the ballot this election. As Jane noted this especially includes our climate. Ryan Cooper (AMERICAN PROSPECT) notes:

Overall, the 2024 edition of Princeton’s REPEAT Project report estimates that these [Biden administration] laws got us about halfway to America’s stated climate goal of a 50 percent reduction in emissions (from the peak in 2005) by 2030 and thence to net zero by 2050.

Yet all those accomplishments are under threat. Should Donald Trump win another term, he would likely do serious damage to this climate policy framework, and potentially engender so much economic chaos that the entire planet’s climate efforts would be greatly set back. On the other hand, if Kamala Harris wins, she at least will have another four years to cement her predecessor’s legacy—and should the Democrats win control of Congress at some point during her presidency, she would get a chance to build on Biden’s foundation.

Trump has at various points promised to repeal the IRA; re-withdraw from the Paris climate accords that Biden rejoined; revoke Biden’s regulations on power plant pollution, vehicle emissions, and fuel efficiency; revoke his limitations on oil and gas drilling; and much else. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term, overwhelmingly written by former Trump staffers and associates, is much more specific and extreme, essentially arguing for a wholesale gutting of the government’s capacity to protect the environment in any way.

As usual with Trump, it’s anybody’s guess what he would actually do in office. In April, he openly attempted to shake down a group of oil executives for a $1 billion campaign contribution, promising just about everything on the Big Oil wish list in return. Trump has long nurtured a bizarre prejudice against renewable energy, especially windmills, which he has claimed produce “tremendous fumes” and kill whales, without evidence. (Apparently, this goes back to a wind farm built near Trump’s golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland; he thought it ruined the view.)

That's an important issue a reason to defeat Donald Trump all by itself. There are many others. Cindy Brown (WOMEN'S ENEWS) observes:

Volunteer-led groups of disability activists are rallying around the Harris-Walz campaign like none before: Disabled Voters for Harris. Disabled Folks for Kamala. DisCo4Harris (Disability Coalition for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz). Disabled leaders are personally stumping for the candidates, too, and the Democratic National Convention Disability Caucus and the Young Democrats of America Disability Caucus are working within the Democratic party. In sharp contrast, the Republican party has yet to announce any disability leaders or organizations campaigning for Trump-Vance.

Why this grassroots boost of energy behind the Democratic presidential candidate?

Over 70 Million Potential Voters

“In 2022, the CDC reported that one in four Americans has a disability. This translates to over 70 million people who will be impacted by the upcoming election,” says Cassidy Huff, a social media influencer and co-founder of Disabled Voters for Harris (along with Zibora Gilder). “Every vote in this election matters—your vote is crucial for protecting your individual rights and the rights of every disabled person in this country…In some areas of the country, it comes down to just a handful of votes.”

Leslie Templeton, one of the organizers of Disabled Folks for Kamala, agrees. Templeton, also the Chair of The Young Democrats Disability Caucus and The Massachusetts Young Democrats Disability Caucus says, “Across the nation we’re seeing that candidates who are engaging the disability vote are winning. When we feel like someone wants to speak with us, wants to hear us, wants to advocate for us, and wants to represent us in a dignified and just way, we’re going to come out. And we’re not going to come out in the dozens. We’re going to come out in droves.”

[ . .]

Kamala’s Commitment to the Community

The organizations are also eager to amplify Harris’ commitment to the disability community. “She is a strong advocate for lowering prescription drug costs, making housing affordable, ensuring safe and accessible healthcare, and protecting reproductive freedoms—all of which will significantly benefit disabled individuals across the nation,” Huff says.

Other leaders also touted Kamala’s record of protecting Social Security and Medicare; her advocacy behind the changes to regulations that create better access for people with disabilities to healthcare, transportation, and digital education; her willingness to meet with disabled leaders, and the steps her campaign has already taken to include the disability community.

“We feel like the campaign wants to interact with our community,” Templeton says, who also points to the campaign‘s appointment of a Disability Engagement Director, Anastasia Somoza. Though former campaigns have utilized disability policy advisers, the new director is the first one specially tasked with connecting with the community.

Janni Lehrer-Stein, disability rights advocate, Vice chair of the DNC Disability Caucus, and DisCo4Harris supporter, also applauds the campaign’s commitment to accessibility. “When Alex Hornbrook was named as CEO of the (Democratic National) Convention,” she says, “one of the first things he said (to the Finance Committee) was that they were determined to make this the most accessible convention ever.” Lehrer-Stein also participated on the accessibility task force for the Democratic convention—and was able to sit alongside her delegation for the first time ever.

Harold Meyerson (AMERICAN PROSPECT) offers another important issue:

MUCH OF THE DISCUSSION OF A SECOND TRUMP TERM has focused on economics and foreign policy: what across-the-board high tariffs would do to Americans’ cost of living, what the renewal of Trump’s expiring tax cuts would do to our already stratospheric levels of inequality, and what Trump’s affinity for foreign autocrats would mean for defenders, both foreign and domestic, of democracy. Despite the lip service that both Trump and J.D. Vance have given to the cause of American workers, their policy toward organized labor will surely be that of Trump’s designated “efficiency czar” Elon Musk, whose call for the immediate firing of striking workers who seek a voice on the job was echoed by Trump in their two-hour meandering discourse on X.

Despite Trump’s drumbeating for economic nationalism, the tariffs he slapped on Chinese and other imported products during his presidency did nothing to jump-start a return of American manufacturing. To the contrary, it was President Biden’s turn to industrial policy that prompted the first measurable increase in factory construction that the nation has seen in decades. The tax credits going to companies that mean to build electric vehicles or computer chips or other elements of a green economy increased domestic factory construction by more than 70 percent over previous years.

Likewise with infrastructure. Despite Trump’s annual proclamations of “infrastructure weeks,” the dollar amounts he asked Congress to provide for rebuilding roads, bridges, airports, and the digital infrastructure were so meager that Congress could never construct a plausible program with them. Biden, by contrast, won sizable bipartisan support for the massive repair job that the nation needs, and without which a renewed industrial sector (or any economic sector, for that matter) cannot flourish.

There are so many issues facing the country that need to be addressed but will not be if Donald Trump gets back into the White House. When we fight, we win. That was a rallying cry at the Democratic Party's National Convention last month. It's also true that when we vote, we win. And we all have a stake in the outcome of this election because Donald doesn't believe in democracy and he wants to destroy it.

And we're dealing with a media that seems lukewarm to the notions of truth and reality. American consumers are being gouged by corporations. Instead of dealing with that reality or reporting on it -- say how Birdseye frozen foods packages are that same price or higher while the packages have gotten smaller -- the media seems inclined to attack the messenger -- no big surprise since it's the corporate dollars that pays for advertising on media outlets. At FAIR, Paul Hedreen explains:

Debates over whether Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s economic proposals constitute Communist price controls or merely technocratic consumer protections are obscuring a more insidious thread within corporate media. In coverage of Harris’s anti-price-gouging proposal, it’s taken for granted that price inflation, especially in the grocery sector, is an organic and unavoidable result of market forces, and thus any sort of intervention is misguided at best, and economy-wrecking at worst.

In this rare instance where a presidential hopeful has a policy that is both economically sound and popular, corporate media have fixated on Harris’s proposal as supposedly misguided. To dismiss any deeper discussion of economic phenomena like elevated price levels, and legislation that may correct them, media rely on an appeal to “basic economics.” If the reader were only willing to crack open an Econ 101 textbook, it would apparently be plain to see that the inflation consumers experienced during the pandemic can be explained by abstract and divinely influenced factors, and thus a policy response is simply inappropriate.

For all the hubbub about Harris’s proposal, the actual implications of anti-price-gouging legislation are fairly unglamorous. Far from price controls, law professor Zephyr Teachout (Washington Monthly, 9/9/24) noted that anti-price-gouging laws

allow price increases, so long as it is due to increased costs, but forbid profit increases so that companies can’t take advantage of the fear, anxiety, confusion and panic that attends emergencies.

Teachout situated this legislation alongside rules against price-fixing, predatory pricing and fraud, laws which allow an effective market economy to proliferate. As such, states as politically divergent as Louisiana and New York have anti-price-gouging legislation on the books, not just for declared states of emergency, but for market “abnormalities.”

But none of that matters when the media can run with Donald Trump’s accusation of “SOVIET-style price controls.” Plenty of unscrupulous outlets have had no problem framing a consumer protection measure as the first step down the road to socialist economic ruin (Washington Times, 8/16/24; Washington Examiner, 8/20/24; New York Post, 8/25/24; Fox Business, 9/3/24). Even a Washington Post piece (8/19/24) by columnist (and former G.W. Bush speechwriter) Marc Thiessen described Harris’s so-called “price controls” as “doubling down on socialism.”

What’s perhaps more concerning is centrist or purportedly liberal opinion pages’ acceptance of Harris’s proposal as outright price controls. Catherine Rampell, writing in the Washington Post (8/15/24), claimed anti-price-gouging legislation is “a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food…. At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding.” Rampell didn’t go as far as to call Harris a Communist outright, but coyly concluded: “If your opponent claims you’re a ‘Communist,’ maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls.”

Donald Boudreaux and Richard McKenzie mounted a similar attack in the Wall Street Journal (8/22/24), ripping Harris for proposing “national price controls” and thus subscribing to a “fantasy economic theory.” Opinion writers in the Atlantic (8/16/24), the New York Times (8/19/24), LA Times (8/20/24), USA Today (8/21/24), the Hill (8/23/24) and Forbes (9/3/24) all uncritically regurgitated the idea that Harris’s proposal amounts to price controls. By accepting this simplistic and inaccurate framing, these political taste-makers are fueling the right-wing idea that Harris represents a vanguard of Communism.

To explicitly or implicitly accept that Harris’s proposal amounts to price controls, or even socialism, is inaccurate and dangerous. Additionally, many of the breathless crusades against Harris made use of various cliches to encourage the reader to not think deeper about how prices work, or what policy solutions might exist to benefit the consumer.

There are real issues at stake here, issues that effect our lives. And we're seeing a lot of clowning and a lot of nonsense.

No.

That's the answer. That's often the answer but that is the answer to Robert Kennedy Junior's latest nonsense.

You don't get to suspend your campaign and sue states for not taking your name off the ballot and then show up demanding the state of New York put you on the ballot.

No.

Zach Schonfeld (THE HILL) reported yesterday afternoon:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked the Supreme Court for an emergency intervention to restore his name on New York’s presidential ballot.

Lower courts excluded the former independent candidate from the ballot after finding he falsely claimed residency in the state because his Katonah, N.Y., address was not his fixed and permanent residency.

Kennedy indicated in court filings that he has rented a room in the home from a childhood friend and stayed overnight on one occasion. His attorneys noted lower courts “did not find that anyone was misled,” insisting that taking him off the ballot was irrevocably depriving Kennedy’s New York supporters of their right to vote for him.

“The address on Kennedy’s petition was and is entirely immaterial — both to voters and to New York,” his attorneys wrote in their request.

I'm just not in the damn mood.

Does it matter?

Yes, your address matters. It's asked for on the form and you lied.

You can't file paperwork without lying?

There's no reason for you to be on the ballot. You have tried to get your name removed from the ballot in some states. Now you want to argue that it should be on the ballot in New York.

Not no, but hell no.

This is why there are rules to ballot access. And Junior is making it that much harder for everyone to run outside the Democratic Party, the GOP and the Libertarian Party (the three parties with ballot access in enough states to win the presidency -- all 50 states for Dems and Republicans, 47 for the Libertarians).

Now if Junior had any sense of honor -- he doesn't, he's been caught cheating on his wife with the whole world watching and he elected to spend Saturday out of state instead of celebrating Cheryl's birthday with her (which is why her daughter is telling her it's time to end the marriage) -- he'd stop this nonsense. Instead, he wants to destroy the chances for future independent candidates.

Clearly, there are not enough barriers to ballot access. Junior has proven that. I guess states are going to have to enact stricter laws due to Junior and his tantrums.

And I'm not really for that. But Junior's made it clear that this is necessary.

You ended your campaign. You then broke the law by using your campaign resources to do an endorsement of another candidate in the race. Now you want to be on the ballot in some states and not in others and you're not running. It's not up to you. And we're forty-one days until the election. It's too late, it's too damn late.

You have disgraced your family, you have disgraced your late father. If you had any common sense, you would have sat down and shut up long ago.

What a disappointment you are. Is it the drugs that you're back on? Has your brain completely rotted out?

You should be at home trying to fix your marriage. But that would require actual work and, as we all know, you've never done actual work a day in your life.

His emergency appeal? He should be fined for wasting the court's time and resources. There are serious issues that courts have to address. Whether or not someone who has ended ("suspended") their campaign is on the ballot for an election a month and eleven days away is not an issue to bring before the courts. The ship has sailed and he needs to get on with his life and stop taxing the resources of a legal system that's already overburdened.

Sunday, Kamala spoke with the press upon landing at Joint Base Andrews:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hi, guys.

Well, you’ve probably heard I would like another debate. So, I’m hoping the former president will agree to that, but we have a lot more to discuss.

Q You — you raised $27 million from this fundraiser. That’s the largest since you raised — since you were at the top of the ticket. That’s a lot of money. How are you feeling about that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it — it’s showing that there’s a lot of support for our message and — and what we need to do in terms of, you know, moving forward and charting a new way forward and dispensing with all of the attempts to divide our country and — and to just, you know, really —

The — the problem, I think, on the other side is that there is a — a devaluation of who the American people are. They just don’t really understand that we’ve got a lot of good people in our country who want to work hard and do well and want a leader who believes that we are, you know, in this together — and I do.

Q Are you giving an economic speech this week, Madam Vice President?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Can you tell us anything about what that’s going to be about? Any preview?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: So, I’m going to be giving a speech this week that is really to outline my vision for the economy.

As you’ve heard me talk about, I believe in what we can create in terms of opportunity for the American people. I’ve named it an “opportunity economy,” which really, in short form, is about what we can do more to invest in the aspirations, the ambitions, and the dreams of the American people while addressing the challenges that they face, whether it’s the — the high price of groceries or the difficulty in being able to acquire homeownership because — for a number of reasons, including we don’t have enough housing supply.

Q Will the care economy be part of this?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I will touch on it for sure, yeah.

Q And your message to Donald Trump as you call for a second presidential debate? I know you told your donors that he’s looking excuse or a reason not to. So, what’s your message to him?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Join me on the debate stage. Let’s have another debate. There’s more to talk about, and the voters of America deserve to hear the conversations that I think we should be having on substance, on issues, on policies, what’s your plan, what’s my plan. And — and we should have another one before Election Day. So —

Thank you all.

So she'll be addressing the economy in more detail this week. And MAGA is focused on? Delaying the vote count after the election and covering for all their deceptive 'leaders.'

From yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

With just about 40 days until the presidential election, Georgia’s State Election Board voted 3 to 2 to approve a controversial new rule that will require counties to hand-count the ballots cast election night, which could delay the reporting of results in the key battleground state, and that means for the nation. The proposal was spearheaded by the board’s pro-Trump majority, will require the hand count in addition to the customary machine count in each of George’s precincts. Trump praised the electoral board members last month as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

For more, we’re joined by two guests. We;re going to start with Sara Tindall Ghazal, a member of the Georgia State Election Board who opposed the measure. She’s also an election law attorney.

Welcome to Democracy Now! I know you just have a minute. Can you explain how this vote took place and what it means?

SARA TINDALL GHAZAL: Certainly. We received a petition from a member of the public who is a well-known election denier a few months ago that would require the counties to hand-count the ballots. Now, this is not a tabulation. This is simply counting the number of ballots that were scanned on the day of the election. We have another one that would have applied to early voting. That one, fortunately, did not pass. Rather than using the normal rule-making procedures of working together, having a board draft the rules, this was one of dozens of petitions that came from election deniers, and they’re motivated by people who believe the 2020 election was stolen.

Now, mind you, there are multiple cross-checks on the number of ballots that get scanned through. There’s a counter on the tabulator. The tabulator tapes have the number of ballots cast. The number of voters who checked in are already going to be cross-checked with the number of ballots printed and the ballots scanned. But this adds, at really the 11th hour, another layer of confusion, because the counties have already hired all their poll workers, they’ve trained their poll workers, and they will have been working for 14 hours, and now they have to hand-count stacks of ballots that are — it’s not like they’re neatly stacked like a ream of paper. They’re all going to be — they have to pull them out of the scanners, and rather than seal them up with a numbered seal that is a security seal, now they have to stack them up, count them three times — not just once, not twice, three times. If there’s a single discrepancy, they have to start over again.

And one of the arguments that my fellow board members made was, “Well, why are you sacrificing accuracy for speed?” That is a policy choice that the Legislature made three years ago when they passed the laws, that had very strict reporting deadlines, which are now at risk of being violated.

The counties are being set up for failure, but to me the most — one of the most troubling aspects of this whole thing is we were told by our attorneys, the state attorney general, that we don’t have the legal authority to even do this, that this is untethered to statute, and yet my colleagues decided to go ahead and pass a rule that they don’t have the legal authority to pass, according to the Attorney General’s Office. That, to me, is the most troubling part of this.

AMY GOODMAN: I know you’re rushing to get to the Election Board meeting. What do you expect to come out of it? And what’s it like to be the only Democrat on this Election Board?

SARA TINDALL GHAZAL: Sometimes it can be pretty lonely. I have to be willing to be the unwelcome voice. It’s not just that I’m the only Democrat. I’m also the only attorney and, apparently, the only one, aside from the chairman, who feels constrained by the rule of law. Today we’re looking at more issues that we don’t have jurisdiction to be looking at. So, it’s not going to be a fun morning for me.

AMY GOODMAN: And can this count delay the national count for who is elected president of the United States?

SARA TINDALL GHAZAL: Unfortunately, there is every chance that because the counties will not — some counties will not be able to transport those memory cards with the vote totals back to their headquarters to be uploaded for the rest of the nation to see until this hand count has been completed.

AMY GOODMAN: Sara Tindall Ghazal, I want to thank you for being with us, a member of the Georgia State Election Board, the only election law attorney on that five-person board.

In 2020, Georgia was at the center of Trump’s false claims of election fraud as he attempted to overturn his election loss to Biden. Trump at the time told Georgia’s Raffensperger in a phone call, quote, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.” Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger refused, but many warn Trump is now laying the groundwork for another attempt at manipulating and undermining voting results in Georgia this November. Democratic Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock said Trump supporters are, quote, “trying to set up a scenario in which they could refuse to certify an election whose results they don’t like.”

This comes as Trump allies in Nebraska are ramping up efforts to change the state’s Electoral College process to grant all votes to the statewide winner. Nebraska and Maine are the only states that split their electoral votes by congressional district.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday nearly 98,000 people whose citizenship documents hadn’t been confirmed can vote in state and local races.

For all of this, we’re joined by Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent, Mother Jones magazine.

Talk about the significance of Georgia, and then just race through everything else, if you will, Ari.

ARI BERMAN: Well, what Republicans are trying to do, Amy, is to, at the 11th hour, rig the voting rules to benefit their side in a really unprecedented way. In Georgia, they’re laying the groundwork not to certify the election if Kamala Harris wins the state, through a series of rule changes that the Trump-aligned Election Board have made.

In Nebraska, they are trying to, quite literally, rig the Electoral College so that Trump wins or there’s a tie, and the election gets thrown to the House of Representatives, because the fact is that the Electoral College is already biased towards Trump, because it favors small states and whiter, more Republican battleground states. But they want to shift this one district in Omaha that could vote for Harris. They want to shift it back towards Trump, so that either Trump wins or, if Harris wins the blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, the election could be tied. There could be no majority in the Electoral College. The election would then be thrown to the House, where a majority of state House delegations, not state members overall, would choose the president. And that would be an incredibly undemocratic scenario in which a candidate who lost the popular vote, who did not win the Electoral College, could still be installed as president by House Republicans, who would have the power to do so through gerrymandering and other manipulations of the democratic process.

AMY GOODMAN: And Maine?

ARI BERMAN: It’s too late for Maine to fight back. That is the problem. Maine also is one of two states that splits up its Electoral College votes. But Maine has to pass these kind of changes 90 days before the election, or they need a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature to do it, which they don’t have. So, right now I think the problem is it feels like the Trump side is doing everything they can to manipulate the rules, and Democrats don’t have the same ability to fight back. And Trump’s side may have indeed waited in Nebraska for Maine to be unable to retaliate, in order to put this 11th-hour change to the Electoral College through.

AMY GOODMAN: And Arizona, Ari Berman?

ARI BERMAN: So, what happened in Arizona was the Supreme Court, very late in the day, said that people who don’t show proof of citizenship when they register to vote can only vote in federal races, not state races. There were 100,000 ballots that were at issue in terms of people who the state claimed did not have this proof of citizenship. But the Arizona Supreme Court said that they actually can cast both federal and state ballots. And the interesting thing is, these voters who supposedly lack proof of citizenship, they were disproportionately likely to be Republicans. So, it just goes to show you that when you try to suppress voting rights — and they’re trying to suppress the voting rights of Democrats and voters of color — there can also be collateral damage that hurts Republicans, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, go back to Georgia, where we began, and the overall significance of this for the federal election.

ARI BERMAN: What’s happening in Georgia is incredibly disturbing, because the MAGA-aligned Election Board, really at the 11th hour, is passing not one, not two, but three or more rule changes that could lead Republican county boards not to certify the election if a Democrat wins. That could plunge the state into chaos. Trump could then weaponize that disinformation. There’s a lot of unpredictable outcomes there. That could also delay the counting of votes, which could send the election to the House.

So, right now we’re just witnessing all of these really disturbing efforts very late in the game to try to manipulate the democratic process to Republicans’ benefits. And they’re basically using all the tools they have to essentially rerun the 2020 playbook to try to steal the election, but this time they’re running it before the election.

AMY GOODMAN: Ari Berman, I want to thank you for being with us, voting rights correpondent for Mother Jones magazine. We’ll link to your articles.

Happy belated birthday to Jackie Sam! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

Mark Robinson is the disgraced MAGA candidate -- and personal friend of Donald Trump -- who has been exposed for the fraud he is. When you see these people verbally attacking LGBTQ+ people, that's really all you need to see. Not just their hate but also their obsession. It's a tell. And we're reminded of that again with Corey DeAngelis. A rising star in conservative circles because hates gay people. Or . . . he hates them when his pants are on. Christopher Wiggins (THE ADVOCATE) explains the raging homophobe working to destroy our public schools has had another job he's kept . . . under wraps?

DeAngelis, a self-described “school choice evangelist,” is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and a frequent Fox News contributor, though the organization has scrubbed its website of DeAngelis. His career has primarily focused on promoting school choice and criticizing public education for allegedly indoctrinating children with “woke” ideologies, including support for LGBTQ+ rights. However, it has now emerged that as recently as 2014, DeAngelis performed in gay adult films under the pseudonym “Seth Rose,” including a scene in which he won a group masturbation contest.

[. . .]

DeAngelis is a senior fellow at multiple think tanks, including the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute, and is the executive director of the Educational Freedom Institute. DeAngelis has regularly appeared on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, where he has railed against public schools for what he claims is an overemphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, including those that support LGBTQ+ students.

DeAngelis also courted controversy recently when he promoted a post by Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, which criticized the Biden-Harris administration for allegedly pushing “woke ideologies” in schools. Johnson’s post included a graphic that claimed the “Radical Left’s 2024 Weekly Lesson Plan” for schools consisted of topics like Critical Race Theory, Drag Queen Story Hour, mandatory pronoun recognition, “boys participating in girls’ sports,” and pro-Hamas protests. DeAngelis quote-tweeted Johnson’s message: “It’s time to pass the Educational Choice for Children Act. School choice defeats the woke mind virus.”

DeAngelis is scheduled to speak at a right-wing conference in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, Sept. 29. The event, titled “Rescue The Republic,” will feature a lineup of anti-LGBTQ+ extremists, including Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice and other far-right figures such as Charlie Kirk, Jordan Peterson, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The following sites: