Politics

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Special counsel Jack Smith has built an airtight case against former President Donald Trump in his superseding indictment and in the new, massive filing released Wednesday, a retired Harvard Law professor argued.

Laurence Tribe told CNN's Erin Burnett on Wednesday that the case surmounts every obstacle the Supreme Court put in its way with the recent ruling that grants presidents a presumption of immunity for official acts.

"What stands out most clearly is that the Supreme Court, despite its effort to protect the former president and to erect a hurdle that was almost sky-high, made clear that it is possible to overcome that hurdle by specific proof that the former president, in his capacity as office-seeker, private capacity ... sought to overturn an election that he knew he had lost," said Tribe.

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"The evidence is overwhelming and to the extent that there is any overlap between public and private, it occurs in the very limited context of communications between the president and the vice president," said Tribe. Even in that narrow slice of evidence, most of the communications were with Pence in his capacity as president of the Senate, making presidential immunity irrelevant, he argued.

[...]

"I said, 'Wow' about 25 times in a quick reading of this document. I bet there are another 25 that I will encounter," said Tribe "There are lots of jaw-dropping things. You've named some of them. You know, 'So what' if the vice president is hung, it doesn't matter whether we won or lost. That's just a sampling. It's the tip of a horribly large and scary iceberg."

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Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks are billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think tanks, media organizations, political action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on.

Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that [Republican lobbyist] Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. “They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,” he says. “You kiss the ring or you’re out.”

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The duo’s ambitions extend beyond Texas. They’ve poured millions into “dark money” groups, which do not have to disclose contributors; conservative-media juggernauts (Wilks provided $4.7 million in seed capital to The Daily Wire, which hosts “The Ben Shapiro Show”); and federal races. Dunn’s $5 million gift to the Make America Great Again super PAC in December made him one of Donald Trump’s top supporters this election season, and he has quietly begun to invest in efforts to influence a possible second Trump administration, including several linked to Project 2025.

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Dunn and Wilks are often described as Christian nationalists, supporters of a political movement that seeks to erode, if not eliminate, the distinction between church and state. Dunn and Wilks, however, do not describe themselves as such. (Dunn, for his part, has rejected the term as a “made-up label that conflicts with biblical teaching.”) Instead, like most Christian nationalists, the two men speak about protecting Judeo-Christian values and promoting a biblical worldview. These vague expressions often serve as a shorthand for the movement’s central mythology: that America, founded as a Christian nation, has lost touch with its religious heritage, which must now be reclaimed.

A cache of internal emails obtained by 404 Media using a public records request show the chaos caused by the unfounded racist conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants are “eating the pets” of residents in Springfield, Ohio. The emails show city officials scrambling to deal with bomb threats, hateful and threatening emails and phone calls, a media bonanza, and confused residents in the immediate aftermath of the presidential debate, in which Donald Trump said “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

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[Springfield] Mayor Rob Rue received the majority (but not all) of these types of emails. Here is a sample of them:

• One email titled “Haitian invaders” suggested that residents should buy large dogs that would attack Haitian people: “Since it’s obvious that you and the rest of the cowards on the city council are too afraid to handle this invasion citizens will apparently need to do so themselves. Purchase of Belgian Malinois and Cane Corsos should skyrocket along with protection training. If the dog goes in its yard and invaders are there, well, I guess lunch time it is.”
• Another said that Haitians “will NOT like the bitter cold” of winter and that Springfield should “have them quietly transferred to blue states.” Another email called Rue an “inauthentic gaslighting moron” and said that city officials “aid the DNC (Treason Party) Propaganda Media in attempting to rig any further Presidential Debates. Americand [sic] in Springfield have my sympathies because it is obviously cursed with some bureaucratic fucktards.”
• One email repeatedly called Haitians the n-word Another email titled “Invasion of Illegal Haitian Immigrants” reads “why you are not doing anything to protect your citizens and remove these haitians immigrants? How much money did you receive from Biden /Harris?”
• “Your lack of action on what is happening in Springfield and Ohio's leaders in other cities is outrageous and disgusting. You have immigrants harassing your citizens, going into parks and taking and killing animals, taking people's pets, skinning and eating them in public places, flipping over cars, taking over citizens yards, etc. Why in the world have you not called in the National Guard?”
• “I’m a lifelong resident of Ohio And I just want to email you in regards to the illegals walking the parks and destroying property of residence who pay taxes, slaughtering livestock creating chaos!! Ultimately, this is your responsibility top down or not! You will be held accountable for what you allow to happen in your city!”

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Archived version

Three investigators for the Heritage Foundation have deluged federal agencies with thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests over the past year, requesting a wide range of information on government employees, including communications that could be seen as a political liability by conservatives. Among the documents they’ve sought are lists of agency personnel and messages sent by individual government workers that mention, among other things, “climate equity,” “voting” or “SOGIE,” an acronym for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

The Heritage team filed these requests even as the think tank’s Project 2025 was promoting a controversial plan to remove job protections for tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be identified and fired if Donald Trump wins the presidential election.

All three men who filed the requests — Mike Howell, Colin Aamot and Roman Jankowski — did so on behalf of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, an arm of the conservative group that uses FOIA, lawsuits and undercover videos to investigate government activities. In recent months, the group has used information gleaned from the requests to call attention to efforts by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency to teach staff about gender diversity, which Fox News characterized as the “Biden administration’s ‘woke’ policies within the Department of Defense.” Heritage also used material gathered from a FOIA search to claim that a listening session the Justice Department held with voting rights activists constituted an attempt to “rig” the presidential election because no Republicans were present.

Last week on MSNBC, the “Morning Joe” pundits were talking about Donald Trump’s latest scheme to con the rubes, his sale of Trump Watches.

Elisabeth Bumiller, the New York Times’ Washington bureau chief, told her fellow panelists: “He’s entertaining. Let’s not forget.”

But he’s not entertaining, Elisabeth. He’s frightening.

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Time after time, the New York Times sands off the sharp edges of Trumpism:

• The Times described JD Vance’s denunciation of “childless cat ladies” and his lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats as “combative conservatism” when it’s really sexism and racism.

• When Trump posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” the Times toned that down with a headline saying he “expressed disdain” for her.

• When top Republicans lied about Haitian immigrants, the Times’ headline said “Republicans Seize on False Theories” as if those theories came out of the ether instead of originating and being spread by the pro-Trump right wing.

• Early in the pet-eating hoax, the Times wrote this headline: “JD Vance Appears to Backtrack on False Claim About Haitian Migrants in Ohio.” But that was an embarrassing misreading of what Vance did. The correct headline would have been: “Vance Says Claim About Haitian Migrants May Be Hoax, but Urges People to Spread It Anyway.” That’s what he did. Three weeks later, Vance still hasn’t disavowed the lie and apologized.

• This past weekend, the Times wrote a ridiculously warm-and-fuzzy mentor-protege story about Trump and Vance, making them seem like Dumbledore and Harry Potter when they’re more like Dr. Evil and Mini-me. (Or not fictional characters at all, but real-life fascists.)

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Multi-level marketing at its prime.

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In what we can only assume is an effort to prove he’s not weird by standing next to people who may be even weirder than he is, JD Vance will be doing a town hall today with Christian extremist Lance Wallnau during a Monroeville stop on Wallnau’s “Courage Tour.”

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Wallnau is a leader in the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement and one of the authors of Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate — a deeply disturbing Christian movement centered on them taking over the “seven spheres” of society — family, religion, education, media/entertainment, business, government, and science/technology (the science and technology mountain was added after COVID; media and entertainment used to be separate mountains). Once they do that, not only will they be in control of all of us … Jesus will come back!

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Wallnau sees himself not just as a guy trying to practice his own religion in peace, but as engaging in “spiritual warfare” against the rest of us. Why? Because of how we are all demonic.

“The Left is loaded with demons,” Wallnau has said. “I don’t think it’s people anymore. I think you’re dealing with demons talking through people.”

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Project 2025 intends to use U.S. foreign assistance programs to push conservative culture wars worldwide, conditioning aid on restricting abortion and pulling all funding for climate change.

Jeremy Konyndyk, who worked in the U.S. Agency for International Development under President Biden & Obama, says the culture war obsessions in this chapter would ally the U.S. with authoritarian countries around the world.

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As Florida braced for Hurricane Helene, some weather and politics observers were mad about Project 2025.

“Reminder that Project 2025 would dismantle the National Weather Service and NOAA,” wrote the League of Conservation Voters on X.

NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, founded in 1970.

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“Project 2025 wants to get rid of NOAA, wants to get rid of the National Weather Service — the people that tell you the weather and help you prepare for hurricanes,” said Moskowitz, a past Florida emergency management director under Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla.

Moskowitz quipped about how hurricane forecasting would function under Project 2025 and a Trump administration.

“Maybe we will just do it with a Magic 8 ball or maybe with a Ouija board. Or maybe we will do hurricane cones like President Trump did, right where he just circled in another state that wasn’t in the cones,” Moskowitz said.

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Legislators are not allocated enough funds to properly pay their staffers, a well-documented problem that leads to constant turnover at the mid and senior levels as the private sector lures some of the best policy minds away. It’s a vicious cycle: Elected officials, aware of their association with a deeply unpopular legislative body, don’t want to be seen “wasting” taxpayer dollars increasing staff salaries, and while congressional capacity isn’t the only reason why people are dissatisfied with Congress, the lack of capacity certainly contributes to public disappointment.

[...]If you're a Legislative Correspondent making $70,000 a year, it's hard to pass up a private sector job that could pay double that. Legislative Directors make significantly more, but by that point, we’re talking about mid-career professionals with even more lucrative opportunities outside of Congress. And it’s just not reasonable to ask these staffers to stick around for the love of the game.

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Election misinformation about the U.S. presidential election is going viral on Facebook while Zuckerberg makes amends with the GOP - a false claim recently went viral “and there wasn’t anything happening to stop it," one official said.

Derek Bowens has never had such an important job. He’s the director of elections in Durham County, North Carolina, one of the most-populous areas of a state that’s increasingly viewed as crucial to the 2024 presidential contest.

So when a former precinct official emailed Bowens in July to warn him of a post containing voting misinformation that was spreading virally on Facebook, Bowens quickly recognized that he may be facing a crisis.

The post, written as if from an authority on the subject, said voters should request new ballots if a poll worker, or anyone else, writes anything on their form, because it would be invalidated. The same incorrect message was spread on Facebook during the 2020 election, but the platform flagged the content at the time as “false information” and linked to a story that debunked the rumor by Facebook’s fact-checking partner, USA Today.

Bowens said no such tag appeared on the post, which was widespread enough that the North Carolina State Board of Elections had to issue a press release on Aug. 2, informing voters that false “posts have been circulating for years and have resurfaced recently in many N.C. counties.”

“It was spreading and there wasn’t anything happening to stop it until our state put out a press release and we started engaging with our constituency on it,” Bowens told CNBC in an interview.

The elections board wrote a post on Facebook, telling voters to “steer clear of false and misleading information about elections,” with a link to its website. As of Wednesday, the post had eight comments and 50 shares. Meanwhile, multiple Facebook users in states like North Carolina, Mississippi and New Jersey continue to share the ballot misinformation without any notification that it’s false.

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Many Americans still don't know about Project 2025, the plans Republicans will implement if Trump becomes president. There's a hilarious but scary 'Schoolhouse Rock' video (4 min) about Trump's Project 2025 that's worth watching and sharing. Just like the original Schoolhouse Rock videos, the simple song explains the horrible details of Trump's plan in a way that gets the point across.

In another must-watch video on Trump's Project 2025, Mehdi Hassan summarizes all 30 chapters of Project 2025 in just two minutes. Watch this video and share it with people who haven't heard about Trump's plan to turn America into a theocracy.

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If you are a U.S. citizen living overseas, for more information about voting from abroad you may go to: https://www.fvap.gov

With his "absurd and baseless rant on 'Truth' Social, Americans abroad join a host of other groups of US citizens Donald Trump has threatened and feels shouldn’t be allowed to participate in our elections," the organization says in a statement.

"This represents yet another assault by Trump on the 'suckers and losers' he believes make up the US military; the Department of Defense is the agency entrusted with administering the entire overseas voter program."

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Democrats Abroad International Chair Martha McDevitt-Pugh had this to say in response to Trump's un-’Truth’:

“Trump’s Project 2025 campaign is premised on stripping away the rights and freedoms that Americans enjoy. Now this election denying, two-time popular vote loser is attempting to preemptive delegitimize the votes of deployed military and civilian voters abroad. That we’re in Trump's head, and he perceives us as a threat to his scraping a win, is yet more evidence of the critical importance of overseas voters and Democrats Abroad, which mobilizes them. We expect many Americans abroad to use votefromabroad.org and help finally turn the page on this MAGA-maniac. As Vice President Harris says ‘when we vote, we win!”

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Yesterday we learned that Kevin Roberts, the cosplaying Yall Qaeda coal roller truck driving, Lucchese cowboy boot-wearing president of the Heritage Foundation whose Project 2025 preaches the centrality of “the family” as the foundation of American society, a foundation to be achieved in part by forcing impregnated incest and rape victims to give birth, is so far astray from the teachings of Jesus that he reportedly once bragged about killing a neighbors’ dog with a shovel.

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Today [...] Opus Dei [a Catholic organization that exists today at the red-hot center of the judicial and right-wing donor world in Washington D.C.] has achieved influence at the highest echelon of American power. The organization has been increasingly active in Washington since at least the early 1990s when it set up shop at 15th and K — the heart of the capital lobbying industry. From there, one of its priests (wearing a spiked garter under his robes to restrict his bodily urges) converted at least a half dozen of the top right-wingers in Washington to the Opus Dei brand of regressive Catholicism. Among his converts — future Trump administration National Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow, and other men in the highest echelons of American law and government — future House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Senator Sam Brownback, failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, and many other leaders who found themselves in need to priestly guidance.

Some of the most powerful figures in American politics and political finance today have Opus Dei connections. One of the most effective Opus Dei-affiliated Catholics in DC today is Leonard Leo, bagman for rightist billionaires, who spent decades working to capture the federal judiciary for the anti-choice movement. Five of the six members of the right side of the Supreme Court are right-wing Catholic — Chief Justice Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh who replaced Opus Dei adjacent Antonin Scalia after Mitch McConnell refused to let Obama fill his vacancy for almost a year. These modern-day priest-kings have been working to force American law into line with a creed most Americans — including the vast majority of Catholics — reject — all under the guise of “religious freedom.”

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Democratic group launches legal fund to help secretaries of state in key U.S. states defend against an anticipated post-election deluge of lawsuits.

In plans shared first with NBC News, the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State plans to spend at $5 million to support top election officials in Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada. Officials with the group said they may expand their reach to other states as needed and could spend more if fundraising is strong.

The group began aggressively raising money and campaigning to elect Democratic secretaries of state, who oversee elections in many states, in the wake of former President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud in 2020. It first funneled money to deal with postelection litigation to then-Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in 2022 to deal with postelection litigation.

“This is us trying to help our people but also help democracy,” said Travis Brimm, the group’s executive director.