Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel): 9/15/24

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

The argument for term limits on the Court

The Brennan Center for Justice is an organization attempting to bring accountability to the corrupt Supreme Court. They have a very important post by Michael Waldman:

Last spring, Justice Samuel Alito had drafted an opinion dropping federal charges against many of the January 6 insurrectionists who violently stormed the Capitol. The ruling in Fischer v. United States had not yet been released. Then the New York Times published a startling story: Alito himself had flown the flag of insurrection at his home. (He briefly blamed it on his wife: “She is fond of flying flags.”) Days later, it was reported that he had flown such flags at his vacation home as well.

Awkward! Grounds for recusal? Time to rethink the ruling? Nah. Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts quietly took Alito’s embarrassing name off the opinion and slipped his own name onto it instead.

That is just one of the gobsmacking revelations from a story by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak that appeared in the New York Times last weekend. The lurid news of the day quickly overwhelmed it — the gunman arrested outside Donald Trump’s golf course, the continued smear campaign by former President Trump and Sen. JD Vance against the Haitian immigrant community in a small city in Ohio, and more.

But we must not let these revelations fade from view. They paint a damning and indelible picture of how John Roberts, for all his vaunted “institutionalism” and piety about calling “balls and strikes,” steered the Court to shield Trump from accountability for his misdeeds.

Call me naïve. At the beginning of this year, I thought I had few illusions about the Court. I had just published a harshly critical book, The Supermajority. But I felt confident in asserting that the Court was a conservative Court, a Federalist Society Court, even a Republican Court — but not a MAGA Court. It had not yet shown an appetite for excusing Trump from the reach of the law.

So I, along with most legal observers, assumed that the justices would let Trump’s trial proceed. I thought there was a good chance it would be unanimous, that Roberts would work behind the scenes to ensure that the Court spoke with one voice on major issues of presidential power and constitutional law. That’s what other chief justices did, most notably Warren Burger in United States v. Nixon, the Watergate tapes case and the closest analogue to the Trump trial ruling.

After all, we all thought, Trump v. United States was legally easy. Indeed, the possibility of criminal charges was the stated reason why Republican senators did not vote to convict him of the January 6 charges in Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Many of us, too, sensed there was a deal afoot — a unanimous ruling that Trump could not be thrown off the ballot by one state under the 14th Amendment and a principled ruling on the criminal trial.

Behind the velvet curtain of the Court, though, there was no deal. Roberts wrote a memo in February — before the Court had even announced that it would hear Trump’s appeal — declaring that the Court would give the former president a huge win. “I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he wrote. As Kantor and Liptak summarized, “In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.”

They detailed myriad other ways that Roberts steered rulings Trump’s way. He froze out Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The ruling was sloppy and immunized vast areas of potential presidential wrongdoing. The Times noted that NYU Law professor Trevor Morrison had discovered that Roberts selectively edited a quote from a key earlier ruling to help Trump.

The resulting ruling tells future presidents that they can break the law, plainly and flagrantly. As long as they conspire with other government officials, it will be effectively immunized. (Order your White House counsel to pay hush money, as Richard Nixon did, not your campaign manager, and you’ll be off the hook.)

The opinion has widely and correctly been scorned as one of the worst in American history — a rip in the constitutional fabric. The Times’s tick-tock makes clear that this was not a baffling anomaly. Rather, it is the biggest, most visible, and perhaps most consequential in a series of actions taken by a corrupted Court. It follows Citizens United, Shelby County, and other rulings that systematically undid key democratic protections.

Throughout American history, overreach by the Supreme Court has provoked a response. Dred Scott did in the 1850s — it helped lead to a civil war. Reactionary rulings such as Lochner did in the early 20th century. Trump v. United States should join with the Dobbs abortion rights ruling to spur a similar backlash today.

We’ve argued for an 18-year term limit for Supreme Court justices, because nobody should have too much public power for too long. And we’ve urged a binding code of ethics, which would have forced Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas to step out of these key cases. These reforms are widely popular. Most recently, a Fox News poll this summer found that 78 percent support term limits.

The Court is a broken institution. It’s time to fix it. The latest revelations remind us that otherwise, the fix is in.

The Court has to be fixed. When Kamala Harris becomes president, this is one of the first issues she's going to have to address.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Wednesday, September 18, 2024. Gaslighting, lies, it's all that Donald Trump and JD Vance have to offer.

Let's start with an endorsement. Myriam Page (INDEPENDENT) reports:

A top science magazine has waded into the political sphere after making a presidential endorsement, only the second in its 179-year history.

“Vote for Kamala Harris to Support Science, Health and the Environment,” read the headline in Scientific American on Monday, announcing the publication’s official support for the Democratic presidential candidate.

Harris is Scientific American’s second presidential endorsement in its history, after the magazine backed President Joe Biden during the 2020 election.

“The US faces two futures,” the editors wrote, pushing one candidate who “offers the country better prospects, relying on science, solid evidence and the willingness to learn from experience.”

They continued: “In the other future, the new president endangers public health and safety and rejects evidence, preferring instead nonsensical conspiracy fantasies.”

Scientific American, which has a global readership of six million, cited Harris’s record as vice president, senator and presidential candidate as reasons for endorsing her.

They acknowledged that Trump, “also has a record - a disastrous one,” during his time in the White House.

It's about the future of the country and the future of the planet. You can not have a plan to dismantle the checks and balances and also address climate change. It kills the MAGA crowd that it's not the pre-Civil Rights Movement era. They want the country to join them in embracing racism and sexism and homphobia and ignorance because that's what you have to be -- ignorant -- in order to buy into the death-pact that Donald Trump and JD Vance are offering.

They pretend it's a future but it's just a death pact. They want to take us all down with them. Fortunately, the country has an alternative in Kamala Harris.

Yesterday, Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris spoke with the National Association of Black Journalists.

Adria R Walker (GUARDIAN) reports:

Harris was also asked about the false and racist tropes that Donald Trump and JD Vance have espoused about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, which has resulted in bomb threats and lockdowns in the city.

“It’s a crying shame. I mean, my heart breaks for this community,” Harris said. “There were children, elementary school children, [for whom] it was school photo day. Do you remember what that’s like, going to school on picture day? Dressed up in their best, got all ready, knew what they were going to wear the night before. And had to be evacuated. Children. Children.”

Harris described “a whole community put in fear”, and harkened back to her career as a prosecutor, during which she said she learned the importance of power.

“When you have these positions, when you have that kind of microphone in front of you, you really ought to learn how much your words have meaning,” she said. “I learned at a very young stage in my career that the meaning of my words could impact whether someone was free or in prison … When you are bestowed with a microphone that is that big, there is a profound responsibility that comes with that.”

Harris said elected officials, particularly the president, have been bestowed with public trust.

“I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it’s gotta stop,” she said. “We’ve gotta say that you cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America engaging in that hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country.”

At THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, Jenice Armstrong writes:

Harris’ meeting with Black journalists at the Center City offices of WHYY was a sharp contrast to the craziness that happened when Donald Trump met with the group in Chicago six weeks earlier.

During Harris’ interview, no one’s racial identity was questioned. There was no huge headline-making moment, and I didn’t see anyone in attendance nudge the person next to them as if to say, “Did you hear that?” It was just another interview. And I found that totally refreshing. I’m ready for a return to normalcy.

I’m tired of Donald Trump and his antics, including his ridiculous claim last week that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are kidnapping and eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. It’s always something with him. It never seems to stop.

[. . .]

There’s a quiet dignity about Harris that’s reassuring, not to mention comforting. I can picture her answering a 3 a.m. call to the White House about trouble brewing somewhere in the world and calmly knowing the right thing to do. Harris is a decent human being. She’s steady, not erratic.

During her interview Tuesday in Philadelphia, she didn’t mock anyone the way that Trump did when he met with NABJ and accused Harris, who is both Black and of Indian heritage, of changing her racial identity.

She didn’t sit in a room full of African Americans, the way that Trump did, and chest-thump about being the best thing for Black people since Abraham Lincoln.

Nor did she insult working journalists, the way that Trump did when he accused ABC’s Rachel Scott, one of the moderators at the event in July, of working for a “fake news network.” In contrast, Harris treated the journalists who interviewed her with respect and referred to them as “esteemed journalists.”

We don't need Donald's drama and we don't need to go backwards. But backwards is all Donald and MAGA have to offer. Corruption and more corruption. Read Betty's "John Roberts is just as crooked as Clarence and Alito" and Ann's "Thanks to the Crooked Supreme Court, a woman is dead" and Rebecca's "a crooked court sold us out to a global cabal" and grasp just how dangerous the Supreme Court has become. Americans were right to lose faith in that institution. Donald helped corrupt it, he was not alone on that. And he will further destroy it. He's destroyed healthcare for women and continues to work destroy it. It's not just abortion, it's also birth control, it's also IVF. Of Kamala's conversation with journalists yesterday, Theo Burman (NEWSWEEK) notes:

Abortion has been the Democrats' strongest motivator for their core vote since the abolition of Roe vs. Wade, and it has been central to the Harris campaign's political ads this cycle.

At the NABJ talk, Harris tripled down on her commitment to restoring the protections of Roe vs. Wade, drawing yet another line between her and the Trump-JD Vance ticket.

When asked about what her administration would do to restore abortion rights across the U.S., Harris said: "We need to put back in place the protections of Roe vs. Wade and let an individual in consultation with her doctor make the decision based on what she can determine, 'cause she's smart enough to know what's in her best interest, instead of having her government tell her what to do."

On women's health, let's note that JD and others voted against IVF yesterday. Here's Senator Patty Murray on the floor of the Senate.

Senator Patty Murray has long fought on behalf of healthcare including IVF. We attended Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing after hearing where Patty -- as member or chair of the Committee -- repeatedly addressed the need for IVF.

At random, I'm picking February of 2020 for this:

Senator Patty Murray: It is really critical that after these veterans have sacrificed so much in their service they are fully supported. Fertility challenges are difficult enough without having to fight a bureaucracy to access care that they have earned and that they are entitled to, and as we all know delays in this means sometimes they can't access care and have kids. So I don't want to hear about this anymore, and I want to know what VA is doing to address those barriers to make sure veterans get the care when they need it.

Yesterday, the senator's office issued the following:

**VIDEO of Murray’s floor speech HERE***

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), objected on the Senate floor to Senator Cruz’s attempt to pass through unanimous consent a Republican bill that would “require, as a condition of receiving federal Medicaid funding, that states not prohibit in vitro fertilization (IVF) services.” Senator Murray outlined how this woefully inadequate legislation explicitly allows states to restrict IVF by enacting burdensome and unnecessary requirements that could create the kind of legal uncertainty and risk we saw in Alabama that forced clinics to close their doors.

Murray also pointed out how the bill defines IVF in an intentionally incomplete way to sidestep the matter of what happens to frozen embryos and appease Republicans’ extreme anti-abortion allies who vehemently oppose IVF. Senator Murray made clear that Republicans cannot have it both ways, claiming to support IVF while at the same time supporting fetal personhood—an extremist ideology that says an embryo should have the exact same rights as a living, breathing human being and is fundamentally incompatible with IVF.

“I have been perfectly clear about the glaring issue with this Republican bill,” said Senator Murray on the Senate floor. “The cold hard reality is that this Republican bill does nothing to meaningfully protect IVF from the biggest threats from lawmakers and anti-abortion extremists all over this country. It would still allow states to regulate IVF out of existence!”

“And this bill is silent on fetal personhood, which is the biggest threat to IVF,” emphasized Senator Murray on the floor of the Senate. “It is silent on whether states can demand that an embryo be treated the same as a living breathing person, or whether parents should be allowed to have clinics dispose of unused embryos—something that is a common, necessary part of the IVF process. Talk to the experts who provide this care—talk to the families who are seeking it—and that question looms large in their minds. ‘What are we supposed to do if our state says these embryos are living breathing people? Do we have to do this process in another state? What is our legal risk here?’”

“The last time Republicans offered this hollow gesture of a bill, I asked the junior Senator from Texas point blank: do you support letting parents have unused embryos disposed of?” noted Senator Murray in reference to the last effort by Senator Cruz to pass the same bill back in June. “And a funny thing actually happened—he said on the floor he would answer that question, but he never did. He spoke about what the laws in some of our states are—but he never actually said what he supported, he never said what he believes should be federal law, he never mentioned that he once pledged to support a constitutional amendment to establish fetal personhood as the law of the land.”

“And so, I ask all my Republican colleagues once again—as a matter of national policy, should parents be allowed to dispose of unused embryos?” asked Senator Murray in closing. “If so—why is that key provision missing from your bill? Well, we all know why. And if not—how can you look the American people in the eye, and say you support IVF? It doesn’t compute.”

In a statement following Senator Cruz’s speech, Senator Murray said, “Unfortunately, once again, Senator Ted Cruz, refused to answer my very basic question.”

ICYMI, here’s what Barbara Collura, President and CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association said back in May about the Republican IVF Bill: “The bill allows for states to push for regulations that could severely reduce the standard of care for IVF treatment, such as restrictions on how many embryos are created and what individuals can do with these embryos — decisions that should only be made between patients and their doctors, based on science and clinical guidelines. The solution is federal legislation that enshrines access to IVF for all.”

Senator Murray leads the Right to IVF Act with Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), which would establish a nationwide right to IVF and other assisted reproductive technology, expand insurance coverage of IVF services to lower the cost of IVF treatment for families, and expand access to IVF and other fertility services for our nation’s veterans and servicemembers.

In June, Senators Murray and Duckworth released a new FACT SHEET on how Republican attacks on IVF are serious, real, and on the rise across America. The fact sheet explains how fetal personhood is a full-frontal attack on reproductive freedom and could put an end to IVF care and other assisted reproductive technology, and outlines personhood measures and other state proposals that would negatively impact access to IVF that Republicans are actively pushing in state legislatures and at the federal level.

IVF is overwhelmingly popular with Americans—recent polling found that 85 percent of Americans support increasing access to fertility-related procedures and services. A survey from Pew Research Center last September found that 42 percent of adults say they have used fertility treatments or personally know someone who had—up from 33 percent five years ago.

###

They don't just attack women's rights, Donald and JD lie about attacking women's rights while they attack our rights.

They will dismantle everyone's rights. Their dream is an America that doesn't include the majority of Americans and that doesn't include the right to self-determination. They embrace lies and they traffic in deceit. Alice Herman (GUARDIAN) reports:

JD Vance defended his comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets during a Tuesday rally, saying that “the media has a responsibility to fact-check” stories – not him.

The rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, came two days after the Ohio senator told CNN host Dana Bash it was OK “to create stories” to draw attention to issues his constituents care about, regarding inflammatory and unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten residents’ pets.

The comments, in which he appeared to say that politicians can brazenly lie, drew immediate rebuke.

They lie and then they lie again and then they lie about lying (see Elaine's "Marjorie Taylor Greene lies even when admitting she lies"). Miss Sassy doesn't believe "the media has a responsibility to fact-check stories." No, he calls it an assault, an attack when he or his running mate are held accountable and fact checked.

Gaslighting is all those two men have to offer. That's it, nothing more.

Lots of topics but let's stay with The Little Weirdo himself, Miss Sassy JD Vance. Paul Rudnick notes:

Kyle addresses the topic in the video below.

In her racist attack on Kamala Harris, Laura Loomer made comments that should have brought a response from JD Vance. He hates his mother-in-law -- remember, he feels that instead of helping with the newborn, she should have sent money -- but people wrongly think he cares about his wife and their children. He doesn't.

That's why he didn't defend them from Laura Loomer's racist attacks and why he refuses to call out Loomer or even say that she was wrong.

His children do not matter to him and his wife does not matter to him.

If you were paying attention, Trina covered all of this at the start of the month. Ava and I had planned to build around it with a piece right before Miss Sassy took the debate stage with Tim Walz but since JD's making it clear right now, let's point out how right Trina was when she wrote "JD Vance is living in sin with bastard children (plus Vegan Tacos)."

JD Vance does not care about his family. He postures and preens but he doesn't care.

You don't convert to another faith without your wife and your children.

The marriage itself is not recognized in JD's religion because it did not take place in a Catholic Church. That's reality. Trina's not trying to damn any child with the post she wrote. Like myself, she doesn't believe that children are illegitimate. But JD became a Catholic in August of 2019 with no regard or concern for his family. In the eyes of the religion he chose to convert to five years ago, his marriage is not recognized which makes, in the eyes of the Church, his children illegitimate. What kind of a creep does that? What kind of weirdo?

You have to wonder what exactly -- if anything -- JD understands about Catholicism? He had an uncle who was Catholic, for example. An uncle "by marriage." Sounds a lot like the uncle was in the same spot JD is in.

So what JD tells the world is that women need to do what they're told. But he can't tell Usha, "You're converting?" He's the supposed head of his household but doesn't love his kids enough to see that they have an afterlife?

Being Catholic is not being Presbyterian. There are codes and edicts and all this other stuff that is not in most other Christian faiths. JD, as a married adult, as a father, elected to become Catholic (again, five years ago) but he didn't care enough about his supposed loved ones to bring them on the spiritual journey?

Again, he presents as this tough guy who is so manly -- and what doesn't say manly like a 50-something conservative man who cakes on eyeliner? -- and whose example must be followed, must be imposed. But the reality, he's not running s**t in his own household. He's a fake in every way.

Probably even in his faith. I can't image a parent deciding to take up a faith or to change faiths and not taking their own young children into the faith with them.

People are aware, right, of the huge gulf between what Catholicism believes regarding an afterlife and what the Hindu religion believes, right?

And to be clear, this is not to say that one is better or one is right. This is to say that an adult male, already a father and husband, elected to switch religions and chose one in conflict with that of his wife and children and it doesn't appear to have bothered him in the least that the salvation his new religion preaches does not recognize what his children are being raised in.

It goes to how fake and false he is. Let's quote Trina:

He's not a Catholic. I get that he says he is one. And I know many Catholics who would argue that you're a cradle Catholic or you're not a Catholic. (Meaning you were christened as an infant.) That's not my point. My point is that he converted to a religion he does not understand. Does not understand? He is arguing that childless women are destroying our society and that they should not be allowed to vote or this or that. Most nuns? They are childless. You do have a few who leave the order to have a secular life and come back later and while they were gone they became a mother. And you have those who join an order late in life. But the norm is a nun who does not give birth to a child. So if he were truly Catholic, he would understand that.

In addition, his statements make clear that the Pope is not the head of his church. That's fine. However, the Pope is the head of the Catholic Church and, as a Catholic, I don't understand why you convert to Catholicism and refuse to follow the Pope? Seems to me, it's not the religion for you.

You could call him a lapsed Catholic, I suppose. But I'd still argue that's something he didn't earn. I would prefer it if Miss Sassy would stop trying to pretend he's part of my Church when he so clearly is not.

AP does call out his weird ideas and the fringe movement he belongs to; however, to be clear, Miss Sassy is not a Catholic. He was not born into the religion and he's never truly accepted it as evidenced by his refusal to see the Pope as the head of the Church. He can go back to southern Baptism or whatever he was raised in before he became an atheist but, no, he's not Catholic.

Need more proof? He's living in sin and he has bastard children. In fact, that's going to be the title of this post. A marriage between two Catholics is only recognized if it takes place in the Church. Usha's not Catholic. She's Hindu. So they didn't get married in the Catholic Church. In 2014, they had an interfaith marriage and Vance wasn't even Catholic then. He starts pretending he's Catholic in 2019. And the first two children were born before that. So by Church teachings, JD's failure to marry Usha in a Catholic Church and her failure to convert means they're living in sin and, again, Church teachings, their children aren't Catholic and they are the bastard children of their parents. Did he get a dispensation from the Church? No, he did not.

But he stands on stage pretending to be something he's not -- and never will be -- and selling a lie to those who come to hear him.

So he didn't care enough about his wife and children to get them the salvation he wants for himself and we're now supposed to be surprised that he won't defend them from racist attacks?

He's a weirdo. And so is the US media. How many people have interviewed him and everyone wants to play THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES ON. No one, apparently, is ever going to ask him about the eyeliner.

This is man who attacks the LGBTQ+ community and attacks drag queens but he can't show up in public without having put on his eyeliner.

The following sites updated:

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

John Roberts is just as crooked as Clarence and Alito

Please check out Rebecca's site tonight, she's covering an aspect of the Supreme Court. The Crooked Court is so much more corrupt than we ever realized. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern (SLATE) report:

On Sunday, New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak published a blockbuster article about the conservative justices’ efforts to shield Donald Trump from any consequences for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. This is what Supreme Court reporting needs to become: less credulous academic translating of a handful of judicial opinions and more cultivation of inside sources, procuring of confidential memos, and production of massive scoops. More to the point, their piece—about how the three Jan. 6 cases decided last year in favor of Donald J. Trump came together—contains several remarkable news bombshells, including the fact that Justice Samuel Alito had the opinion in the Capitol assault case, Fischer v. United States, taken away from him by Chief Justice John Roberts; that the liberal justices were working to try to get the majorities to moderate maximalist positions in all three cases; and that Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch would have pushed the immunity case to be decided after the 2024 election. But the biggest revelation here is that the character John Roberts plays as an affable centrist steward of the court’s reputational interests—created largely in the press and played to the hilt by him—is a total fiction. It was Roberts who decided that Trump and Trumpism would prevail in all three insurrection cases and he did not, in this instance, follow in the wake of the court’s aggressive conservative maximalists. He was the aggressive conservative maximalist. And he created majority opinions in his own image.

A singular revelation in the Times’ reporting is a memo Roberts produced in February of 2024, after a cross-ideological panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit handed down a decision rejecting Trump’s claims that he was almost wholly immune from criminal liability for actions taken during his time as president. In his confidential memo, the chief justice “offered a scathing critique” of that opinion, complaining that the lower court judges “failed to grapple with the most difficult questions altogether.” He inveighed that the Supreme Court should take the case—which would hold up Trump’s criminal trial slated for the summer—but also previewed how the justices would reverse the lower-level ruling. “I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he warned. From that point onward, it appears he was committed to a sweeping decision for the former president—and never seemed to wonder if a massive victory for Trump might imperil American democracy.

There are many more damning details about Roberts’ race to award Trump the biggest possible victory in the pair of cases with his name on them. In Trump v. Anderson, which challenged Colorado’s removal of the former president from the ballot, Roberts had an opportunity for a narrow decision. All four women justices were prepared to unequivocally join a modest opinion that kept Trump on the Colorado ballot without gutting the constitutional bar on insurrectionists returning to office. The chief justice spurned them, siding instead with the four other conservative men who wished to write this clause out of the Constitution. In the immunity case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor tried to work with Roberts to find areas of compromise. In response, he ghosted her.

The little scooplets are earthquakes, as is the fact that someone at the high court is not just talking to the press, but also leaking memos that reveal highly sensitive details of its decision making process. But the real story that emerges between the lines is that anyone who believed that John Roberts was a principled movement conservative but also a Never Trumper was wrong. Roberts moved mountains to allow Trump to evade accountability for attempting to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 election. And we should be very clear that everything he has done behind the scenes and in his opinions suggests he will be willing to do so again. The interference in the 2024 elections? It’s already happened.

John Roberts needs to be impeached. He is every bit as corrupt as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

We have a dysfunctional Supreme Court that is corrupt beyond belief. They lied and they betrayed us. And grifters like Jonathan Turley lie to the people and/or ignore these developments. I don't trust him. He's not just a liar, he's someone who's part of a machine of liars, someone who works from talking points each day to deceive the American people.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Tuesday, September 17, 2024. Truth is not a bullet, fact checks are not assaults.

Racist Megan Kelly is in the news for racism again. The personality fired by all networks remains on her own self-produced show, her misshapen face getting uglier with each year as who she is at the core comes out more and more. And who she is a racist.

Ryan Adamczeski (THE ADVOCATE) reports:

The editor inchief of the conservative magazine National Review, Rich Lowry, appears to have used a racial slur during a conversation on The Megyn Kelly Show, in which the two pundits were discussing the rampant falsehoods about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Lowry dropped the slur in place of the word "migrants," quickly correcting himself after.

"Police have gone through 11 months of recordings of calls and they've only found two Springfield residents calling to complain about Haitian [n word]s," he said, seemingly correcting afterward by adding, "migrants."

Kelly did not react to Lowry's apparent slip-up, nor did she address it when he finished speaking. Instead, the two defended Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, who spread the claims despite admitting they are false, praising his "alternative facts."

Vance doubled down on debunked claims about Haitian immigrants abducting pets to eat them and falsely linked the migrant community to rising rates of HIV and tuberculosis in an interview last week with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. He later admitted the rumors were false but defended spreading them in a Sunday interview with Dana Bash on CNN.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, Dana, then that’s what I’m going to do because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast," Vance said.

The conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were stealing and eating pets went viral after former President Donald Trump spread the false claims during last Tuesday's presidential debate. Trump insisted that immigrants were “eating the dogs and cats” of residents, despite local officials consistently debunking the rumors and noting that no evidence supported the claims.

After backlash, Lowry claimed on Twitter/X that he misspoke, insisting that he "began to mispronounce the word 'migrants' and caught myself halfway through."

Remember when you're racist you go on the Megyn Kelly-Glenn Greenwald-Max Blumenthal et al circuit because you'll be welcomed there.

Let's move away from the grifter circuit to note CBS' 60 MINUTES.

Those who need and/or prefer text can click here:

More than 1,000 Americans have been convicted in the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol. About 350 trials are still pending and the FBI continues its dragnet for suspects. The attack that stopped the count of the presidential vote triggered the largest prosecution in U.S. history. But now, history is being challenged. Former President Donald Trump calls the convicted, "patriots" worthy of pardons. What is the evidence? We begin with the prosecutor in charge. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves told us what drives the prosecution of January 6th.

Matthew Graves: The crime was severe. It was an attack on our democracy. Once you replace votes and deliberation with violence and intimidation, you've lost the democratic process. You've lost the rule of law. But it's also about the victims, the officer victims who were injured that day, and making sure we hold people accountable for the harm that they inflicted on the 140 officers who reported physical injury.

Matthew Graves has worked in the Bush and Biden Justice Departments. Now, as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, he's won more than 1,000 January 6th convictions and lost only two of the cases at trial.

Scott Pelley: What is the best evidence that you've had?

Matthew Graves: The crimes that occurred that day are probably the most recorded crimes in all of our history. You also have the words of the defendants explaining what they were going to do or what they had done.

Evidence from the trials show many in the mob were determined to stop the count of the electoral vote that would certify Joe Biden's victory. They were enraged by President Trump's false claims of a stolen election.

Treason. That's what it was. Everyone sentenced could have been publicly executed for their actions. And maybe that's why whiny babies are upset over the report?

Emasculated overgrown Daddy's boy Don Jr whined about CBS airing this report Sunday.

It's so unfair!!!!! Wah! Wah! It was as though he was nine-years-old and had wet his pants at school again.

It's really funny how they have to lie and cry and whine like babies to try to distract from the truth. How hard they work to shut down the truth.

I hope we defeat Donald at the ballot box. I hope he lives a long, long life so he can face ridicule and scorn and know how truly hated he is. He's already Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil in that he can't go out in public unless he wants to be booed. That's the kind of scorn he should be faced to live with. For all eternity. Thus far the two attempts on Donald's life has come from his own supporters. That's another reality that JD Vance and Donald refuse to deal with.

There was no national trauma on Sunday that required CBS NEWS to alter when a segment was aired.

It's cute, by the way, how it's a threat -- according to Donald and JD -- when a report airs or when they get fact checked. Accountability, to them, is an assault.

This as Donald traffics in conspiracy theories that leaves people vulnerable to attacks. This as Donald appeals to the racists like Megyn Kelly and Glenn Greenwald with the lie that a Black woman can't think and doesn't have a mind.

That is what Donald's saying when he lies that Kamala Harris got the debate questions ahead of time. And he feeds that racism to his racist pals in MAGA who eat it up because certainly no Black person could ever be smarter -- in MAGA's minds -- than a White person. If you don't realize how racist MAGA is you need to visit Elon Musk's Twitter.

Kamala was not fed the questions ahead of time. What happened is that Donald faced his intellectual superior and he lost.

That's the reality.

In addition, Donna Brazile was no where near the questions and ABC has never been accused of revealing debate questions ahead of time. Only CNN and that's why they had to let go of Donna Brazile. They fired her. And, uh-oh, she works for who now? FOX "NEWS."

Because every other news outlet has standards. They can't hire someone who fed the Clinton campaign debate questions. That's unethical and wrong. Again, CNN fired her. (Forced her resignation, advised her that it could get messy or she could tender her resignation -- that is how it went down.) But FOX "NEWS" saw someone who gave a candidate debate questions ahead of the debate and said, "That's someone we want to be in bed with! That's someone who shares our values!"

Speaking of FOX "NEWS," their wet and soiled panties are in a wad over NBC's Lester Holt rightly noting the climate Donald's created with his rhetoric and lies (Lester called the lies "baseless claims"). His exact words? "Today's apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance, continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. This weekend, there were new bomb threats in that town."

I believe the Beatles said it best.

"In the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make." And if all you offer is hate . . .

Lester Holt did his job as a journalist. 60 MINUTES did their job as journalists. Kamala Harris did her job as a debater. But whenever anyone does their job, Donald gets upset -- probably because he's never done his job.

Aaron Parnas (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) reports:

The National Association of Letter Carriers has called out Donald Trump for a recent Truth Social post where Trump attacked the United States Postal Service ahead of the November election. In a recent Truth Social post, Trump wrote that the USPS had "admitted" that it was being poorly run and that the public should not trust the USPS to properly function throughout the upcoming election.

When writing this post, Trump conveniently excludes the fact that Louis DeJoy, his own appointee, remains the individual responsible for overseeing the USPS' operations. In response to Trump's post, which was meant to sow division in America around the mailing system[.]

Give him time and Donald will get around to attacking every grouping of Americans because he hates the whole country.

Are you getting that Donald's "a real piece of work"? Way too much drama?

And when Donald Jr fears that Daddy might be targeted with violence, he gets concerned yet as his father pours hatred on other people and lights a match, Don Jr just grins like the idiot he is. Robert Reich (HARTFORD COURANT) observes:

After JD Vance first began spreading baseless rumors about Haitians in Springfield, members of the neo-Nazi group “Blood Tribe” marched into the city carrying guns, wearing body armor, and carrying Neo-Nazi flags. At an Aug. 27 town hall meeting, one claimed that the city had been taken over by “degenerate third worlders,” blamed Jews for the influx, and warned that “crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you allow in.”

Springfield’s Haitian immigrants say they are afraid. Some have kept their children home from school, fearing violence. Others have reported harassment on the street, in their cars, and at stores. A Springfield family whose son died last year when the bus in which he was riding accidentally collided with a car driven by a Haitian immigrant has pleaded for Trump and Vance to stop using their deceased son for political purposes.

Yet Trump and JD Vance are doubling down. Yesterday, before the attempt on Trump’s life, Vance said on CNN that the claims about Haitians eating the pets of Springfield residents came from “firsthand accounts from my constituents.” When interviewer Dana Bash suggested that the claims had caused bomb threats, Vance called her a “Democratic propagandist.” But the connection is indisputable.

Rather than offhand comments, Trump’s and Vance’s claims are calculated. Trump’s last two posts on Truth Social before the debate were AI images of cats and ducks — one depicting cats in military fatigues carrying assault rifles and wearing MAGA hats, the other showing the candidate himself sitting on a plane amid a crowd of ducks and cats.

Trump is now talking about holding a rally in Springfield. “We’re going to get these people out,” Trump said in a Friday news conference. Although Springfield’s Haitian immigrants are in the United States legally, he promised to stage “the largest deportation in the history of our country” if reelected.

Trump’s and Vance’s claims are completely bogus. Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, told CBS News on Wednesday that “these Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs, and they filled a lot of jobs. And if you talk to employers, they’ve done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard.”

Another of Trump’s bogus claims is now threatening legal immigrants in Aurora, Colorado, a Denver suburb that Trump has repeatedly asserted is being “taken over” by Venezuelan criminals. “Simply not true,” Aurora’s Republican mayor and city council member wrote in a joint statement.

As in Springfield, Trump’s baseless claims are harming innocent people in Aurora. Immigrants there say they have been told their nationality makes them ineligible for jobs or housing. Trump’s claims have led to threats and drawn armed groups to the city, claiming to offer vigilante-style protection.

Let's take a moment to thank everyone in the Abandon Harris Movement for making it clear that the lives of Haitian Americans and Haitian immigrants do not matter to them. Hmm? They want their own protected but others in the crosshairs just aren't important. I hope the whole country registers this and remembers that the next time those in the Abandon Harris crowd are targeted or in need. They've decided to vote for Jill Stein (again, they'll announce it this week) with the goal of defeating Kamala and sending Donald back to the White House.

Thanks for demonstrating that is has always be all about you. You're selfish and you don't deserve sympathy when you get targeted. You're as trashy as Donald Trump Jr.

I'm serious. You truly do not deserve sympathy if you can't stand up for others when they're targeted.

I'm not LGBTQ+. I'm too old to get pregnant. But I defend people in those groups and in so many others because that's what we are supposed to do -- stand together.

But apparently the Abandon Harris Movement has elected to make Donald Trump Jr their mascot because they don't believe in helping anyone else. Got it. Noted.

From yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We begin today’s show looking at the escalating threats of violence against Haitian immigrants as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance continue to double down on their racist lies, falsely accusing Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, of eating people’s pets and other animals in the outdoors. On Saturday, two Springfield hospitals were forced to go on lockdown after receiving bomb threats. This was at least the fourth such case, after a bomb threat on Thursday prompted authorities to order the evacuation of Springfield City Hall and several municipal buildings. Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said the threat came in an email from someone angry over the city’s resettlement of Haitian immigrants. Two colleges in Springfield, Wittenberg University and Clark State College, also received shooting and bombing threats over the weekend, prompting officials to cancel events and move classes online.

On Sunday, Vance defended the far-right racist lies during an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

DANA BASH: The Clark County sheriff and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reviewed 11 months of 911 calls. They only identified two instances of people alleging Haitians were taking geese out of parks. They found zero evidence to substantiate those claims. Also, other evidence that you have talked about, even you’ve retweeted, alleged evidence, are unsourced social media videos from a different city, apparently no connection to Haitians, and this is from a conservative activist who offered a $5,000 reward for such things.

And then, going just back to the schools and the hospitals and so forth being overwhelmed, nobody is disputing that the town of Springfield, Ohio, needs help. But you’re not just a bystander; you’re the senator from Ohio. So, instead of saying things that are wrong and actually causing the hospitals, the schools, the government buildings to be evacuated because of bomb threats because of the cats and dogs thing, why not actually be constructive in helping to better integrate them into the community, because there are a lot of employers there who say that the Haitian workers are helping fill jobs that they need desperately filled?

SEN. JD VANCE: Dana, first of all, let me just respond to a couple things that you said, but I want to start with something you said which I think is, frankly, disgusting and is more appropriate for a Democratic propagandist than it is for an American journalist. There is nothing that I have said that has led to threats against these hospitals. These hospitals, the bomb threats and so forth, it’s disgusting. The violence is disgusting. We condemn it. We condemn all violence —

DANA BASH: Senator —

SEN. JD VANCE: — and threats of violence.

DANA BASH: This happened after you and President Trump were on the —

SEN. JD VANCE: But to say — no, no, Dana.

DANA BASH: — on the debate stage —

SEN. JD VANCE: No, Dana. To say —

DANA BASH: — said that cats

SEN. JD VANCE: Dana, no. You asked — you asked a —

DANA BASH: — and dogs were being eaten.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine told ABC News Sunday Trump and Vance’s remarks about Haitians were “garbage” and “simply not true.”

MARTHA RADDATZ: And here’s a question I never thought I would have to ask, but do you see any evidence, as governor of the state, that Haitian immigrants are eating pets?

GOV. MIKE DEWINE: No, absolutely not. That’s what the mayor has said. That’s what the chief of police has said. I think it’s unfortunate that this — this came up. Let me tell you what we do know, though. What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence, with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies. What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And, frankly, that’s helped the economy.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine.

Meanwhile, during a campaign event in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Trump repeated his threats of carrying out mass deportations, beginning in Springfield, if he’s reelected in November.

DONALD TRUMP: We’re going have the largest deportation in the history of our country, and we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump was referring to Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado.

For more, we’re joined here in our New York studio by Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, which is an immigrant advocacy organization that provides humanitarian assistance to Haitians and other Black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you for the first time in our New York studio, Guerline. If you can talk, first of all, about what’s going on in Springfield, Ohio? But when you receive, when the community receives threats like this in one city, from the hospital lockdown, elementary schools closed, colleges going online, threats of bombings, threats of school shootings, this affects more than the community of Springfield.

GUERLINE JOZEF: Thank you so much, Amy, for having me.

And that is the reality, and that’s what we continue to say. Those type of narratives, when they think they’re only attacking one person, one community, it has ripple effects. The reality now in Springfield, the entire community’s lives are at risk. And what we are saying is currently this has been a tactic that’s been used: fear, division. And this is a time for all people in cities like Springfield to come together and fight against those hateful speech, that literally are creating the security issues in Springfield and also in other places across the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about the tens of thousands of Haitians who have come to Springfield, the Republican governor himself saying these are legal immigrants who have come to work, the corporations here love them. We’re talking about a dying Rust Belt town.

GUERLINE JOZEF: Absolutely. And we have a cohort. The Haitian Bridge Alliance has a cohort of people that we have been working with to really train them to have them to fill those extremely needed positions. And what we’ve seen, what we know and understand, is that as the city of Springfield was in a decline, those Haitian people came there, they revitalized the economy, they pay their taxes, and they are really supporting to create a vibrant community in Springfield. And that is the reality.

And that is the story that needs to be done, just like the elected officials in Springfield — you heard from the governor, you heard from the mayor, you heard from the Sheriff’s Office — that these people are there, and they are supporting, revitalizing the economy, revitalizing the culture. And we need to make sure that is the reality, because this false narrative that continues to create this atmosphere of fear, not only for the Haitian community, but for every single person living in Springfield, is dangerous and cannot continue.

AMY GOODMAN: The mayor of Springfield was pleading for the federal authorities. Now, let’s remember, JD Vance is not only the vice-presidential nominee, he’s the Ohio senator. In fact, he represents all of Springfield. Talk about why tens of thousands of Haitians were essentially invited to Springfield.

GUERLINE JOZEF: They needed help, basically. And I remember in one of the earlier articles from The New York Times, it literally said, “We prayed for a miracle, and the Haitians came.” That’s what someone from Springfield said when they really were trying to say what are the contributions of the Haitians. “We prayed for a miracle, and the Haitians came.” And that’s the reality. And as we are looking into people who are supposed to be leading our country, people who are supposed to be creating opportunities, they are the same ones creating the division. And we really understand this is really rooted in anti-Black racism and in white supremacists.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, who said they feared for their safety after JD Vance made false and derogatory claims about their community members eating pets. This is Rose-Thamar Joseph, secretary of the Haitian Community Help & Support Center in Springfield.

ROSE-THAMAR JOSEPH: Since Monday, after the tweet of the Senator Vance, the Haitian community in Springfield are a little bit — are shocked and frustrated. And a lot of them are maybe talking about leaving Springfield. A lot of them ask — there is so much fears in the community. … Haitian people are hard workers. And this is the first reason that Haitian people are here in Springfield. It’s because they heard about the job opportunities in Springfield and around Springfield.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is a Haitian who has been living in Springfield for a year and has two young children. Marc did not want to reveal his last name, did not want to be seen on camera. He told reporters his children have been bullied by other kids, also threatened by teachers. He said he also had to quit his job because he was being harassed at work.

MARC: Since last year, they are facing a lot of problems at school, like they were bullied by other kids. And I had to send email, address the situation several times to the principal. And I had to move to another neighborhood because I was, like, scared for them, and they were, like, very traumatized, especially after all these things they’re saying in the social media, that we’re eating dogs. In our culture, we don’t eat dogs. That’s ridiculous. And even we have local officers say that there’s no evidence. And we see people out there are very aggressive against us in Springfield. I quit my job last week because I was harassed, retaliated. Even, like, they tried to demote me, because other guy employees would call me “[bleep] Haitian,” call me “[bleep]” at work, and the company didn’t do nothing. And I think it is not good. But I don’t really feel like actually I am welcome in Springfield.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s a Haitian resident of Springfield, Ohio. Also this weekend, far-right groups started to come into town, like the Proud Boys, who marched Saturday in some parts of Springfield. Guerline Jozef, if you can talk about the program under which Haitians legally come to the United States, Temporary Protected Status? While Trump wanted to end it, he didn’t. He couldn’t. And the Biden administration didn’t start it, but has continued TPS.

GUERLINE JOZEF: Yes. Thank you so much, Amy. And there are two programs. There’s the CHNV program that is for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans. A lot of people have come legally, regularly through the program. They have people who sponsor them when they come. And then, TPS, Temporary Protected Status, is, as you mentioned, a protected status that former president 45 tried to eliminate, and, you know, the community and organization advocates took him to court, and we were able to fight it. And right now we have a new designation and extension of TPS for Haitians who are already in the U.S. So, therefore, those people, they have their work permits, and they are able to really provide for themselves. And not only that, they pay their taxes. And they are able to really continue to be a part, an integral part, of the American society.

And I also want to highlight that the Haitians have always been an integral part of the very fabric of the United States. That has been historically the fact. And we have people — I personally know people who have been in Ohio, in Springfield, since the 1950s, Amy. So, these people have not only been there continuously to provide and support. And now we have a new flow of Haitians who are coming and also fulfilling not only their dreams, but also the dreams of cities that they are in.

But that is not the first time that we hear those narratives, from the United States, you know, really blaming Haitians for bringing HIV/AIDS into the United States, from 45 saying that he doesn’t want people from S—hole countries, such as Haiti and Nigeria, but he does want people from Eastern Europe who are blue eyes, blonde hair. So we really, really understand those realities also, that when we talk about immigration and we talk about the people we don’t want here, we are talking about Black and Brown. And we want to highlight that.

And to go back to the TPS, we continue to ask for TPS for majority-Black countries and for South American countries, for Honduras and Mauritania, and those haven’t happened. But when it came to other countries — and what we tell the United States and what we tell the Biden administration, as well, is, the way we received the Ukrainians should not be an exception, it should be the rule.

And we really cannot allow people like Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump and Elon Musk and all those people to continue those narratives that are literally taking every ounce of dignity, every ounce of humanity out of my community. I and my community, the Haitian community, have given their lives for the United States. We have the people such as Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who is the founder of Chicago. We have Karine Jean-Pierre, who is the — literally, you know, the press secretary. So, these are the people —

AMY GOODMAN: For the White House. For the —

GUERLINE JOZEF: For the White House. These are the caliber of people. And it is insulting for Mr. Vance and for 45 Jr. to come to the media and say Haitians have low IQs. Because we are coming from a Third World country, therefore we have low IQs. The disrespect that they continue to bring is just unacceptable.

AMY GOODMAN: In 2016, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke on the campaign trail when he visited Little Italy — rather, Little Haiti in Miami, Florida. He vowed to be a champion for the Haitian American community.

DONALD TRUMP: Whether you vote for me or you don’t vote for me, I really want to be your greatest champion. And I will be your champion, whether you vote for me or not.

AMY GOODMAN: Yet you have, of course, Trump reportedly calling African nations, El Salvador and Haiti — I won’t say the word — “S—hole countries,” sparking an international firestorm, when he reportedly said during a meeting with lawmakers at the White House, “Why do we want all these people from Africa here? These are S—hole countries. We should have more people from Norway.” If you could talk about — I mean, in the last two months, there have been two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, which, of course, should make him even more sensitive to violence against people, targeting people, the kind of fears that the Haitian community feels around the United States right now. During the debate, because President Trump made all these kinds of comments, that have led to thousands of memes of ridicule of President Trump talking about eating pets, did you feel that Kamala Harris spoke out enough against the stereotyping, the caricaturing, the vilification of immigrants in that debate?

GUERLINE JOZEF: It is unfortunate, Amy. The reality is we have not seen the support that is needed. At this point, we are in a state where we have one party that is dragging us into the mud, and that is literally creating hate speech that could turns into violence, and we have not received the support that we need from a vice president in the Democratic Party. So we do hope that they do bring more support into pushing back against those false narratives, because at the end of the day, it is part of what we are trying to create, a better world for all people. So, we really would like to see more of support coming from that side, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re going to the White House next?

GUERLINE JOZEF: Yes. So, we continue to push, and we are having different meetings. We are looking into how to make sure that — because the reality, Amy, history will judge all of us harshly if we don’t handle this properly, if we don’t support those who are in need, if we don’t make sure that we remove those anti-Black, racist and white supremacist ideologies.

AMY GOODMAN: In terms of electoral politics, the race that might be most affected by this is the very closely contested Ohio Senate race of longtime Senator Sherrod Brown, up against Trump-backed Republican candidate Bernie Moreno, who went to Springfield on Saturday morning and said he supports deporting the Haitians of Springfield.

GUERLINE JOZEF: I don’t — you know, Amy, I think most of people are so confused, they don’t even understand what they are talking about. Deporting the Haitians of Springfield to where? They don’t understand that those people are an integral part of the community, integral part of the economy. They pay their taxes. Even when they talk about the strain that’s being put into, you know, the school, and they have to hire more translators and more interpreters — that’s what happens, and those people are paying into the taxes to be able to get those services. They are not free services, right?

And we really want people to understand, it’s not just, “Hey, these are happening,” but we have to have the context behind the realities. The realities are, we have a city that was in decline, and they made a plea, and people came, and those people happen to be Black and they happen to be Haitian, and they happen to be doing the work that is needed. They are at work on time. They are providing for their families. They are putting into in the economy by paying their taxes. And that is the reality we need to highlight as we continue this unfortunate debate.

AMY GOODMAN: What has horrified many Republican candidates around the country and supporters of Trump is the woman that he’s traveling with, seems to be everywhere. I’m not talking about Melania Trump — she hasn’t been seen since the campaign — but Laura Loomer. I think she’s a 31-year-old far-right influencer. She is seen everywhere with him. Looking at a BBC report right now, “Trump said he was repeating claims he had heard on television, but the theory was aired by Ms Loomer just a day before the debate. On Monday, the fringe pundit and social media influencer repeated the claims to her 1.2m followers … An anonymous source close to the Trump campaign told US news outlet Semafor that they were '100%' concerned about Ms Loomer’s proximity to Trump.” Your final comments?

GUERLINE JOZEF: Anti-Black racism, white supremacist. And that, we just have the proof. And at this point, we feel like — as you mentioned earlier, in 2016, he came and said, “We are going to be your champion.” Now he completely is saying, “I don’t care.” Right? And the reality is, we have to understand that this is about race. It is about the future of America. It is about pushing back against the narrative of the browning of America. It is about keeping America white. It is about making sure that Black and Brown immigrants are vilified. It is about creating division.

But we are calling on the American people, from Ohio to California, from New York to Chicago, to stand against this false narrative, to say, “No, not in our names.” We will not continue to allow people to be dehumanized, to be demonized, to be vilified for the purpose and personal gains of certain people, who absolutely right now cannot and should not be in power.

AMY GOODMAN: Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigrant advocacy group that provides humanitarian assistance to Haitians and other Black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa.

Let's wind down with this from Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT):

Major defense contractor Elon Musk suggested in a now-deleted post on social media that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris should be targeted for assassinations after the Secret Service foiled what the FBI said was an apparent plot on Donald Trump’s life on Sunday.

In a post on X, Musk quoted a post from a user who asked, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?” Musk, adding his own commentary, said, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” with a thinking emoji.

Musk doubled down in a reply to someone telling him to “reconsider” the post, saying, “No one has even tried to do so is the point I’m making and no one will.” This post, unlike the original one, is still up as of Monday morning.

After deleting the post musing about assassinating the president on Sunday, Musk suggested that he was joking. He claimed that there was “context” that users were missing, though left it unclear as to what context would make it a joke, rather than a seeming threat. On Sunday night, he also said in replies to the post that he was making a serious point.

Whether or not he was joking, the post is alarming coming from a man with enormous power who supports the Republican Party, which has been working to radicalize its followers and foment political violence for many years — and who Trump has said he would tap for a cabinet position if he were elected.

It is especially alarming coming from a man with insider knowledge of U.S. defense and security operations. Musk’s SpaceX is a major defense and intelligence contractor, having gotten billions of dollars in federal contracts to support military missions and build a covert network of spy satellites that allow federal officials the ability to monitor nearly the entire globe.

In one post, Musk suggested that he was trying to point out that only Biden and Harris supporters would resort to violence, which is why there have been multiple seeming attempts on Trump’s life. This is patently untrue; research has found that right-wingers are responsible for the vast majority of extremist violence in the U.S., and experts have noted that far right violence is a growing concern as politicians have leaned further right in recent years.

The following sites updated: