Politics

Child poverty in the United States more than doubled and median household income declined last year when coronavirus pandemic-era government benefits expired and inflation kept rising, according to figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

At the same time, the official poverty rate for Black Americans dropped to its lowest level on record, and income inequality declined for the first time since 2007, when looking at pre-tax income, due to income declines in the middle and top income brackets.

However, income inequality increased when using after-tax income, another result of the end of pandemic-era tax credits, according to Census Bureau reports on income, poverty and health insurance.

The reports reflected the sometimes-conflicting factors last year buffeting U.S. households. Workers faced a robust jobs market, with the number of full-time employees increasing year over year, the share of women working full time year-round reaching an all-time high and an increase in income for households run by someone with no high school diploma. But they also faced rising inflation and the end of pandemic-era stimulus benefits.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in 2020, the federal government expanded the child tax credit and sent payments to people who had suffered from the pandemic, lowering poverty measures in 2021. The expansion of the child tax credit expired at the end of 2021, and other pandemic-related benefits have expired within the past year.

As a result, the supplemental poverty measure rate for children jumped 7.2 percentage points to 12.4% in 2022, according to the Census Bureau.

“This represents a return to child poverty levels prior to the pandemic,” Liana Fox, an assistant division chief at the Census Bureau, said during a news conference. “We did see the child tax credit had a substantial decrease in child poverty.”

In a statement, President Joe Biden blamed congressional Republicans for failing to extend the enhanced child tax credit and vowed to restore it.

“The rise reported today in child poverty is no accident,” said Biden, a Democrat.

Opponents objected to extending the credit out of concern that the money would discourage people from working and that any additional federal spending would fuel inflation, which climbed to a 40-year high.

Before the pandemic, the Rev. Mary Downey would received from 400 to 600 calls a month from people seeking assistance from the center that she operates for homeless people and those living in poverty in Osceola County, Florida. She is now receiving 1,800 calls a month.

The expiration of the child tax credit expansion has been “devastating” to the people she serves in metro Orlando, and addressing poverty should be a bipartisan issue, she said.

“There is no surprise here. The bigger question is, ‘What we are going to do?’” said Downey, CEO of Hope Partnership. “Hungry babies deserve to be fed and have roofs over their heads.”

The median household income in 2022 was $74,580, a decline of 2.3% from 2021, and about 4.7% lower than in 2019 before the pandemic’s start. Asian Americans had the highest median household income, at almost $109,000, while Black Americans had the lowest, at about $53,000. Regionally, it was highest in the West, at almost $83,000, followed by the Northeast at more than $80,000, the Midwest at more than $73,000 and the South at more than $68,000.

The official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5%, not statistically different from 2021, and for Black Americans it was 17.1%, the lowest on record. The supplemental poverty measure was 12.4%, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from 2021.

The U.S. Census Bureau releases two poverty measures. The official poverty measure is based on cash resources. The supplemental poverty measure includes both cash and noncash benefits and subtracts necessary expenses such as taxes and medical expenses.

The rate of people lacking health insurance dropped almost half a percentage point to 7.9%, driven by workers’ getting health insurance and growth in the rate of people receiving Medicare due to an increase in the number of people aged 65 or older in the U.S. It declined for people in all age groups except those who were age 18 or younger, though that gain for children wasn’t statistically significant, according to the Census Bureau.

The uninsured rate of children who were foreign born was more than 20%, and it was almost 25% for children who weren’t citizens.

Anti-poverty experts worry the poverty rate will only get worse without a long-term, systemic solution, as the pullback from the pandemic-era benefits has coincided with housing cost increases, jumps in homelessness and a rising cost of living.

“We know better, and we should do better. To see the increase in poverty, particularly for children, is very worrisome,” said Kim Janey, a former mayor of Boston who now heads an anti-poverty nonprofit. “If we want to be a country where the American dream is within reach, then we have to invest in our children and try to eradicate poverty in our nation.”

The discourse of the Trump era has been dominated by a conceit that the two major parties have swapped economic identities. The Democrats have supposedly abandoned their historical role as spokespeople for the working class to represent the neoliberal global elite, while the Republicans have been transmuted into scruffy populists. On the left, a mood of self-flagellating agony has prevailed, even as the party has won several elections in a row. On the right, the Republicans’ populist credibility has intensified their long-standing paranoia, “proving” that everything from the culture wars to Donald Trump’s endless crime spree is in fact a plot by the powerful to control them.

Yet, funnily enough, the two parties remain stubbornly attached to their traditional distributive goals. The Democrats still want to tax the rich and spend on the non-rich. Republicans still want very badly to do the opposite.

The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump’s campaign brain trust is working on a new economic plan to anchor his campaign. The leading idea is to pass another huge tax cut for the wealthy (a cut in corporate tax rates), paired with a tax increase on the middle class (a 10 percent tariff).

Trump’s brain trust believes current economic conditions indicate the U.S. economy is being harmed by excessively progressive taxes. To be sure, they have consistently believed this for more than 30 years through every conceivable combination of economic circumstances: high inflation, low inflation, recession, boom, war and peace,

Supply-side economics is a religion masquerading as an economic theory, and Trump’s brain trust, as it were, is a collection of the high priests of the supply-side cult: Arthur Laffer (who first began promoting supply-side economics nearly 50 years ago), Stephen Moore, Lawrence Kudlow, and Newt Gingrich.

The same crew wormed its way into Trump’s inner circle in 2016, probably because most legitimate Republican economists were too grossed out by Trump. Despite intermittently promising to make rich people pay higher taxes, Trump’s first-term accomplishment centered on passing a tax cut that disproportionately benefited the rich:

The putative goal of cutting taxes for business owners was to incentivize them to plow more money into domestic investment. That did not happen. However, the Trump tax cuts also didn’t have any obvious or immediate costs. At the time, interest rates were very low and the labor market had not yet fully recovered from the 2008 recession. A deficit-financed tax cut, combined with a general spending spree, injected more demand into the economy and helped produce full employment and rising incomes until the pandemic struck.

The economic situation Trump would inherit in 2025 would be very different. Higher deficits and interest rates mean that borrowing money to fund a regressive tax cut would have an immediate economic cost. That’s why his advisers are planning to pair the next Trump tax cut for the rich with a 10 percent tariff, the revenue from which would, presumably, offset the cost.

The political trouble with this plan is that it exposes rather than hides the trade-offs inherent in giving rich people a huge tax cut. (Consumers would pay higher prices for a lot of goods right away.) The long-standing Republican formula, one employed by Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump, is to pair huge tax cuts for the rich with small tax cuts for everybody else. Democrats complain the rich are getting a disproportionate share, Republicans lie about it and then make a lot of noise about some other, more easily digestible wedge issue (the war on terror, gay marriage, the caravan, etc.).

The supply-siders are not concerned about this cost because they really, really care about the issue. To them, cutting taxes for the rich is the main purpose of politics. They’re not doing it to get elected; they’re trying to get elected to do this, and they are willing to bear whatever cost comes along with pursuing their central objective. The sheer depth of their commitment is, in a way, admirable, if you overlook both the total objective failure of their economic model and their promiscuous dishonesty about it.

But where that leaves the rest of the party is another matter. The supply-side wing’s strangehold on the Republican policymaking apparatus is a historical marvel, one I studied in my first book two decades ago. The party’s voters don’t share this priority at all. Increasingly, Republican-aligned intellectuals also reject it. Trump has allowed the conservative intelligentsia to develop a deep fantasy in which they represent a barefoot movement of the soil. Many of them truly seem to believe their own pseudo-populist rhetoric; they are motivated by team loyalty more than any specific policy, to which they generally pay little attention.

But Trump is a crook, not an enemy of the rich. And the next Trump term, should there be one, will be even more oligarchic than the last.

In a conversation with Mike Solan, the head of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, Seattle Police Department officer and SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer minimized the killing of 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula by police officer Kevin Dave and joked that she had “limited value” as a “regular person” who was only 26 years old.

In the video, taken in the early morning after Dave hit Kandula in a crosswalk while speeding to respond to a call from a man who believed he had taken too much cocaine, Auderer says he has talked to Dave and he is “good,” adding that ” it does not seem like there’s a criminal investigation going on” because Dave was “going 50 [mph]—that’s not out of control” and because Kandula may not have even been in a crosswalk. Auderer added that Dave had “lights and sirens” on, which video confirmed was not true.

In fact, as we reported exclusively, Dave was driving 74 miles an hour in a 25 mile per hour zone and struck Kandula while she was attempting to cross the street in a marked and well-lighted crosswalk.

“I think she went up on the hood, hit the windshield, then when he hit the brakes, she flew off the car. But she is dead. No, it’s a regular person. Yeah, just write a check. Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway, she had limited value.”—Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer, joking with police union president Mike Solan about the death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula earlier that night.

“I don’t think she was thrown 40 feet either,” Auderer told Solan. “I think she went up on the hood, hit the windshield, then when he hit the brakes, she flew off the car. But she is dead.” Then Auderer laughed loudly at something Solan said. “No, it’s a regular person. Yeah.”

We have asked SPOG via email what Solan asked that made Auderer clarify that Kandula was a “regular” person, as opposed to another type of person Dave might have hit.

“Yeah, just write a check,” Auderer continued. Then he laughed again for several seconds. “Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway, she had limited value.” At this point, Auderer turned off his body camera and the recording stops.

Joel Merkel, the co-chair of Seattle’s Community Police Commission, called the video “shockingly insensitive.

“I was just really struck by the casual laughter and attitude—this was moments after she was killed,” Merkel said. “You have the vice president of SPOG on the telephone with the president of SPOG essentially laughing and joking about the pedestrian’s death and putting a dollar value on her head, and that alone is just disgusting and inhumane,” Merkel said.

Right-wing commentator Jason Rantz attempted to pre-spin the video as an empathetic response that included a bit of “gallows humor,” saying the comment was “being described as a ‘leak’ of the content to media members who are hypercritical of police.”

Rantz also claimed the two police union officials’ comments were meant to “mock city lawyers” who work on cases in which police officers kill or harm civilians, which, Merkel says, “doesn’t make it any better and possibly even makes it worse! Because [in that case] you have SPOG complaining or mocking or joking about police accountability, which is really at the heart of the consent decree.”

Last week, US District Judge James Robart lifted the majority of a federal consent degree over SPD that has been in place since 2012, finding the department in full compliance with the portions of the agreement that dealt with use of force and bias-free policing, while maintaining federal oversight of the departments crowd-control and accountability policies. The city is currently locked in contract negotiations with SPOG. The city’s most recent contract with SPOG erased or neutralized reforms the city council, which included now-Mayor Bruce Harrell, passed in 2017.

Although Robart has said he has no authority to get involved in SPOG negotiations, Merkel said he was encouraged that he also said he “felt he had the jurisdiction to impact the contract to the extent that it affects accountability” during last week’s court hearing in which the judge largely terminated the agreement.

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PubliCola requested videos and documents related to the collision through the ordinary public disclosure process several months ago and has been receiving installments through the regular public disclosure process.

SPD did not respond to a request for comment. Half an hour after this post went up, the department posted the video on its website, along with a statement. According to the post, an SPD employee “identified” the video “in the routine course of business” and alerted their supervisor; when the video made its way to Police Chief Adrian Diaz’s office, the post says, his office sent it to the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) for investigation.

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Donald Trump is conjuring his most foreboding vision yet of a possible second term, telling supporters in language resonant of the run-up to the January 6 mob attack on the US Capitol that they need to “fight like hell” or they will lose their country.

Former President Trump issued a scathing rebuke of Rupert Murdoch’s top American media properties in a string of social posts Sunday afternoon. “In a phony and probably rigged Wall Stre…

Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces a political standoff when the House resumes this week. McCarthy needs to steer the House to fund the government and avoid a government shutdown.

Donald Trump is a dictator in waiting. Like other dictators, he is threatening to put his "enemies" in prison – and to do even worse things to them. These are not idle threats or empty acts of ideation: Donald Trump is a violent man who is a proven enemy of democracy and freedom.

These threats of violence against his enemies are part of a much larger pattern of violent and dangerous behavior that is only growing worse as he faces criminal trials and the possibility of going to prison for hundreds of years.

In the most recent example, Donald Trump told Glenn Beck during an interview last week that he is going to put President Biden and other "enemies" in prison when he takes by the White House in 2025.

In a Sunday evening post on his Truth Social disinformation social media platform, Trump was even more explicit with his threats of violence and harm, threatening that he would treat Biden and the other "enemies" like they do in "banana republics":

The Crooked Joe Biden Campaign has thrown so many Indictments and lawsuits against me that Republicans are already thinking about what we are going to do to Biden and the Communists when it's our turn. They have started a whole new Banana Republic way of thinking about political campaigns. So cheap and dirty, but that's where America is right now. Be careful what you wish for!

In "banana republics" the enemies of the leader and the regime are usually imprisoned, tortured, executed, and face death squads and mass executions. Trump himself has publicly expressed his admiration for murderous dictators and autocrats such as Vladimir Putin and N. Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

The corporate news media — with MSNBC being a notable exception — as is their policy, mostly ignored Trump's most recent threats to kill and imprison President Joe Biden and the other "enemies" of the MAGA movement. Ignoring the danger will not make it disappear or otherwise go away; moreover, to ignore Trumpism and neofascism is to normalize them.

During an interview Saturday on MSNBC, Miles Taylor, who was a senior member of Trump's administration and author of the New York Times' "Anonymous" op-ed, warned that the ex-president's desires to imprison his "enemies" are not new:

A number of folks who worked in the Trump administration with me and have since spoken out against the ex-president, we joke darkly about the fact that in a second term, a number of us will be in orange jumpsuits in Guantanamo Bay. I say that the comment is half facetious because Donald Trump actually did have a vision while I was in the administration to go use the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay to house political prisoners. And in that case what he wanted to do is use it to move people from the southern border to send a message and put them in the same place where people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, sits behind bars, and send a message. The only reason Donald Trump didn't start sending people to Gitmo is because he was convinced it would be too expensive, and the facility couldn't house the number of people he wanted to send there. That was the mindset of the man when he was president of the United States. You have seen him since double down on his intention to again use the justice system for political purposes, and specifically admitting that he would do so to go after his enemies. I think that's very chilling.

In a recent conversation here at Salon, Taylor also issued this warning:

If I were to bet on who is going to be the next president of the United States, I would put my money on Donald Trump. Obviously, that is the last thing I want to see happen. But if I had to make a bet today, despite the impeachments and the indictments, and the widespread opposition to him, I think he's likely to be the next President of the United States. That should be a five-alarm fire for our democracy. Our democracy right now is at very grave risk of going through a period of destruction, and in many ways it already has. … As the saying goes, "Stalin was bad, but the little Stalins were a hell of a lot worse". And that is what we would be seeing in a second Trump term. As bad as Donald Trump will be if he wins a second term, his lieutenants will likely be people who are even more evil than he is. That is going to be true of Trump's successors too because they will be following his authoritarian playbook to win the MAGA base.

During a fake interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson two weeks ago, Trump engaged in obvious acts of mental projection and fantasy as he shared his fears of being assassinated by "the left', the Democrats, the "deep state" and other imagined enemies.

The most foolish and dangerous example of wish-casting is the argument that "Trump can't win anyway" or that he will be in prison or disqualified under the 14th Amendment.

These lies are part of a right-wing disinformation campaign in service to the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 presidential election and that it was stolen from him by Biden and the Democrats. No evidence exists to support such claims.

The reality: Law enforcement and other experts have repeatedly warned (and documented) that the greatest threat to the country's domestic safety is from right-wing extremism. One such right-wing terrorist, a neo-Nazi terrorist, murdered three black people at a Dollar General Store in Jacksonville, Florida two Saturdays ago.

The "enemies" that Trump and his next regime want to put in prison or worse, include not just President Biden, the Democratic Party's leadership, and the members of law enforcement who are prosecuting Trump for his crimes, but all people who he and the Republican fascists and MAGA movement deem to be "the enemy" and "un-American".

Here are some specific examples.

If you do not support Donald Trump and the Republican fascists and the MAGA movement (or are deemed insufficiently loyal) you will face prison or worse.

The American right-wing wing has been trained for decades by their news media and other political leaders and influentials to believe that Democrats, liberals, progressives, feminists, progressives and others who are not "real Americans" are to be eliminated and subjected to other genocidal violence.

If you are a black or brown person, a Muslim, Jewish, an atheist, not a White Christian, a members of the LGBTQI community, believe in women's reproductive rights and freedoms, are deemed to be "Woke" or tainted by the "Critical Race Theory Mind Virus" or otherwise deemed to be the Other you will also be targeted by Trump's next regime and movement.

Dictators and other authoritarians expand the category of "the enemy" in response to political necessity and the whims, grievances, and others mercurial needs and impulses of the leader(s). This dynamic is even more powerful in a political personality cult such as Trumpism.

Even more so in personality cult such as Trumpism. No American, not even Trump's MAGA supporters and other Republican voters, will be safe from being put in prison or targeted for violence by the next Trump regime.

Trump and his advisers are actively creating the infrastructure for him to follow through on his plans to be a dictator when/if he retakes the White House in 2025. Trump's Agenda 47 is a plan to radically remake the presidency and American government (and American society) in service to his neofascist vision that includes such goals as ending birthright citizenship, criminalizing migrants and refugees, putting homeless people in camps, instituting national stop and frisk laws, restricting freedom of the press, ending academic freedom at the country's universities and colleges and other institutions of higher education, replacing quality public education that teaches critical thinking and the country's real history with a form of fascist "patriotic" indoctrination, ending environmental regulations, more gangster capitalism and power for the richest Americans and corporations, reversing the progress of the civil rights movement and the Black Freedom Struggle, taking away the rights of gays and lesbians and other queer people, further restricting women's civil and human rights, and ending US support for Ukraine.

Project 2025 is a strategy that has been developed by right-wing think tanks and interest groups such as the Heritage Foundation. The main focus of Project 2025 is to launch a blitzkrieg assault on the American government by ending career civil service and replacing it with Trump loyalists with the goal of eliminating any internal opposition to the Trump dictatorship. In essence, these Trump loyalists will place his vision above the Constitution and the rule of law.

Salon's Areeba Shah explains more:

A network of conservative groups is gearing up for the potential reelection of Donald Trump, actively enlisting an "army" of Americans to come to Washington with a mission to disassemble the federal government and substitute it with a vision that aligns more closely with their own beliefs and ideas, according to The Associated Press.

Organized by the Heritage Foundation, the sweeping new initiative called Project 2025, offers a policy agenda, transition plan, a playbook for the first 180 days and a personnel database for the next GOP president to access from the very beginning to take control, reform, and eliminate what Republicans criticize as the "deep state" bureaucracy. Their plan includes the possibility of firing as many as 50,000 federal employees.

Democracy experts view Project 2025 as an authoritarian attempt to seize power by filling the federal government, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, with unwavering Trump supporters, which could potentially erode the country's system of checks and balances.

"The irony of course is that in the name of 'draining the swamp', it creates opportunities to make the federal government actually quite corrupt and turn the country into a more authoritarian kind of government," Matt Dallek, a professor at George Washington's Graduate School of Political Management, who studies the American right, told Salon.

Those who remain in denial about the realities of Trump's plans to become a dictator and the country's worsening democracy crisis, would likely object to these warnings with foolish deflections such as Trump is just making "empty threats" and that he is "disorganized and not disciplined" and "the law would stop him" because "of American Exceptionalism" and "the institutions and the guardrails of democracy…".

Such voices have learned little, which seven years later is a choice, from the Age of Trump, the horrors it unleashed, and the system's failures that vomited it out.

By definition, fascists and other authoritarians such as Donald Trump and his fake populist MAGA movement do not care about the law or "institutions". The cry "that's illegal!" is one of the final things that many people in societies around the world have said when an authoritarian and their forces take power.

In addition, the last seven years have also highlighted how vulnerable and weak America's governing social and political institutions are to neofascism and other forms of authoritarianism and illiberalism. A second Trump regime, and the Republican Party and "conservative movement" more generally, have gained great experience with exploiting these vulnerabilities and are now trying to fully explode them – from both inside and outside the country's governing institutions.

The most foolish and dangerous example of wish-casting is the argument that "Trump can't win anyway" or that he will be in prison or disqualified under the 14th Amendment. Trump is a symbol and leader of a movement. The decades-long neofascist campaign to end multiracial pluralistic democracy will continue without him and will likely become even more effective and dangerous if a committed and disciplined ideologue in the mold of Ron DeSantis were to become its leader.

Or perhaps those members of the news media, political class, and among the general public who want to ignore or downplay Trump's escalating dictatorial threats would heed the warnings of former Republicans, the same people who helped to create the circumstances for Trump and the MAGA movement's rise to power?

As a group those Never-Trumpers and other pro-democracy voices from the "conservative" movement are sounding the alarm, almost screaming, that Donald Trump means everything that he says about becoming a dictator for life and getting revenge on those people who dare(d) to oppose him. Those same people are also warning, repeatedly, that Trump's chances of winning the 2024 Election are much higher than the mainstream news media and pundit class want to admit.

If Donald Trump was a private citizen and he was threatening his neighbors with violence and other harm, he would likely be put in jail or otherwise removed from society. But Donald Trump is not a regular person. He is a former president who commands the loyalty of tens of millions of people. When a person tells you who they are believe them. That wisdom and warning most certainly applies to Trump and his MAGAites and the other neofascists and members of the white right. Denial will not save you no matter how much you wish it would.

There could be key updates in the Georgia, classified documents and January 6 investigations involving the former president.

House Freedom Caucus is also demanding an end to 'woke policies' at the defence department and more money to be spent on border enforcement

The Trump campaign has accused advocates of the legal theory of 'stretching the law beyond recognition'

A longshot legal bid to disqualify and remove Donald Trump from the 2024 US presidential ballot has been gaining traction.

Initially heralded by liberal activists, the theory has burst to the fore in recent weeks as prominent conservatives embrace the effort.

But critics warn that, if it moves forward, it risks robbing voters of the right to deliver their own verdict on whether the former president should return to the White House.

The untested legal gambit is a last-ditch bid of sorts against an ex-president who remains popular with his base. Its ultimate arbiter could be the conservative Supreme Court he helped shape - if it even gets that far.

On Wednesday, a Washington-based watchdog group sued to block Mr Trump from the Republican primary in the state of Colorado - likely the first of several lawsuits of its kind.

The Trump campaign quickly shot back that the legal challenge is "stretching the law beyond recognition" and has no basis "except in the minds of those who are pushing it".

"Joe Biden, Democrats, and Never Trumpers are scared to death because they see polls showing President Trump winning in the general election," spokesman Steven Cheung told the BBC's US partner CBS News.

Despite his mounting legal troubles, Mr Trump remains the dominant frontrunner for the Republican nomination and is polling neck-and-neck with President Joe Biden ahead of their expected rematch.

The strategy to bar him from the primary ballot invokes a rarely used provision of the US Constitution - Section Three of the 14th Amendment - that bars those who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the country from holding federal office.

The 14th Amendment was ratified after the Civil War, and Section 3 was deployed to bar secessionists from returning to previous government posts once southern states re-joined the Union.

It was used against people like Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his vice-president Alexander Stephens, both of whom had served in Congress, but it has seldom been invoked since.

Yet it has re-emerged as a political flashpoint in the wake of Mr Trump's sprawling effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, which culminated in the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021.

In the attack's aftermath, the US House of Representatives impeached the then-president on a charge of "incitement of insurrection".

Had the US Senate voted to convict him on that charge, it would have had the option to take a second, simple-majority vote to bar him from ever serving in office again, on the basis of the 14th Amendment.

But that never happened: the Senate failed to reach the two-thirds majority required to convict Mr Trump, so the second vote never happened.

Two and a half years later, with Mr Trump's third bid for the presidency remarkably buoyant, the 14th Amendment is once again the talk of Washington.

At the vanguard of the effort is Free Speech For People, a self-described non-partisan advocacy group that last year filed challenges against Trump-backing lawmakers it labelled "insurrectionists".

The 14th Amendment was not written solely to apply to the post-Civil War era, but also to future insurrections, argues Ron Fein, the organisation's legal director.

He told the BBC the US Capitol riot succeeded "in delaying the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation's history, which is further than the Confederates ever got".

"The particular candidates we challenged in 2022 had participated or assisted in the efforts that led up to the insurrection," Mr Fein said.

And, he added, their cases established important legal precedents that can be applied to show "Trump is the chief insurrectionist".

Free Speech For People intends to seek disqualification in multiple states. It is also separately petitioning the top election officials in at least nine states to unilaterally excise Mr Trump from the primary ballot.

Either move will inevitably draw an objection from the candidate himself, triggering a process that could ultimately place his fate in the hands of the US Supreme Court.

The legal strategy has picked up considerable steam since August, when Mr Trump was accused of election subversion in two separate criminal cases.

That same month, conservative legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen wrote in a law review paper that Section 3 is "self-executing, operating as an immediate disqualification from office, without the need for additional action by Congress".

Mr Trump could therefore be rendered ineligible for the ballot "by every official, state or federal, who judges qualifications", the pair concluded.

Mr Baude and Mr Paulsen are members of the Federalist Society, a highly influential, conservative advocacy group.

They adhere to the view that the Constitution must be interpreted as its authors intended at the time, and their stance has since been backed by other legal experts with conservative credentials.

Even the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority and trio of Trump-appointed judges, may be receptive to their argument, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a dean at the Yale School of Management who supports the Baude-Paulsen perspective.

"All that is needed is that one of 50 state election officials has to find him ineligible," he told the BBC.

"Just one will send it to a state court review, which will be appealed by either side and sent to the US Supreme Court for a speedy resolution."

With voters heading to the polls early next year, the case will be decided quickly, he predicted.

But the effort is not without its detractors, who question the theory's viability and whether it should even be implemented in a highly partisan America.

In an opinion piece for Bloomberg, liberal professor Noah Feldman wrote: "Donald Trump is manifestly unfit to be president. But it's up to voters to block him. Magic words from the past won't save us."

"To make a tortured legalistic logic to try to stop people from voting for who they want to vote for is a Soviet-style, banana republic argument," said New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Chris Ager.

"I'm not a Trump supporter. I'm neutral. But this whole attempt is bad for the country."

Even Brad Raffensperger, the top elections official in Georgia and a target of Mr Trump's ire, rejected the move as "merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box".

But at least two of his counterparts elsewhere have said the matter is under consideration.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, told MSNBC she was "taking it seriously" and would confer with colleagues in other key states like Pennsylvania and Georgia.

And in a joint statement last week, New Hampshire's attorney general and secretary of state - both Republicans - said they were "carefully reviewing the legal issues involved".

The latter is particularly notable, as their state holds the distinction of being the first in the nation to vote in the Republican primary.

The New Hampshire challenge is notably being touted by Bryant "Corky" Messner, a top Republican attorney who ran for the US Senate in 2020 with Mr Trump's endorsement.

Mr Messner, who intends to finance any 14th Amendment challenges to Mr Trump in his state, wants the courts to deliver their verdict before he can decide on whether to support Mr Trump.

"To me, it's purely about the Constitution," he said. "The US Constitution is more important than any one individual, be it Donald Trump or anyone else."

"If he ends up being the nominee of the Republican Party and he's not disqualified, I'll vote for him."

While some states are banning books left and right, California is set to enact a law that would penalise schools that ban any book reflecting the state’s diversity, including those that explore LGBTQ+ identities and race.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 1078 (AB 1078), would prevent school boards from “refusing to approve or prohibiting the use of any textbook, instructional material or other curriculum or any book or other resource in a school library” on the basis that it includes topics related to LGBTQ+, Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous people or other marginalised groups.

School districts failing to comply with the bill would face a “fiscal penalty” that would see a decrease in state funds through changes in California’s school funding formulas.

It extends California’s already existing education code, which requires schools to include the experiences of LGBTQ+ people and other groups in its curriculum.

AB 1078 passed its final major legislative hurdle on Thursday (7 September) when the state Senate passed it 30-9. It then moved to governor Gavin Newsom’s desk.

Newsom celebrated the bill’s passage in a statement on X, once known as Twitter, saying it proves California is the “true freedom state”.

“California is the true freedom state: a place where families – not political fanatics – have the freedom to decide what’s right for them,” Newsom wrote.

“With the passage of this legislation that bans book bans and ensures all students have textbooks, our state’s Family Agenda is now even stronger.

“All students deserve the freedom to read and learn about the truth, the world and themselves.”

Assembly member Corey Jackson, the bill’s author, also celebrated the state for taking a “stand against book banning” in schools and ensuring students have “access to educational materials that accurately represent the rich cultural and racial diversity of our society”.

The legislation came after a showdown over LGBTQ+ inclusive materials earlier this year in Temecula.

The Temecula Valley School Board rejected a social studies curriculum with supplemental materials that referenced the late LGBTQ+ civil rights leader Harvey Milk. Two board members made the baseless accusation that Milk was a “paedophile”.

In June, Newsom condemned the school board members’ “offensive statement”.

Just a short while later, Newsom threatened to send textbooks to the schools and fine the district if the board didn’t approve the curriculum. The school board eventually adopted it.

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Friday denied former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows' request to move his Georgia election-interference case from state court to federal court.

U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones issued the ruling after conducting a hearing on the matter in Atlanta federal court last week in which he considered five hours of testimony from Meadows.

Jones ruled that Meadows' alleged involvement in the former president's attempt to overturn the 2020 election was not part of his official duties as a federal government official.

"The court finds that the color of the Office of the White House Chief of Staff did not include working with or working for the Trump campaign, except for simply coordinating the president's schedule, traveling with the president to his campaign events, and redirecting communications to the campaign," Jones said in his ruling Friday.

It’s official: Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert (R) is scared. Recent polling has shown Democratic frontrunner Adam Frisch in the lead in Boebert’s district, and now the anti-LGBTQ+ Congresswoman is pleading with voters for help.

According to the Aspen Daily News, Boebert’s campaign sent three successive emails at the end of August that acknowledged the possibility of Boebert’s defeat.

“If we don’t turn things around quickly, we could lose this seat to the Democrats,” one email reportedly stated. “I can’t believe I’m saying those words, but I need you to understand how dire this situation is.” Another email written by Kellyanne Conway stated she was being “pummeled” and a third said, “If the Election were held today … Lauren would lose.”

The emails were reacting to the results of a Keating Research poll that showed Frish beating Boebert in the 2024 election to represent Colorado’s Third Congressional District.

The poll showed that 50% of likely voters in the district say they will vote for Frisch, who almost beat Boebert in 2022 in the purple district, and only 48% say they’re voting for Boebert. Frisch holds a bigger advantage – 17 points – when it comes to unaffiliated voters, the group that the Frisch campaign has said it’s trying to appeal to in this election cycle. He also has a 32-point advantage with Latin voters.

A majority – 53% – of likely voters in the survey had an unfavorable view of Boebert, and only 42% had a favorable view of her. 34% had a favorable view of Frisch, while 26% viewed him unfavorably.

In 2022, Frisch ran a campaign as a moderate Democrat against the far-right congressmember who has made a name for herself by, among other things, staunchly opposing LGBTQ+ equality and spreading hate speech about LGBTQ+ people. Frisch came close to beating her, losing by 551 votes, or fewer than 0.5% of the total votes.

Many believe that at this point the writing is on the wall and Boebert’s days in Congress are numbered. As LGBTQ Nation correspondent John Gallagher wrote, “The prospect of tossing Boebert out of Congress has energized not just rank-and-file Democrats but the party apparatus as well. The party has targeted Boebert’s seat as one that they intend to flip in 2024.”

Judge Scott McAfee presides over the hearing on Chesebro's and Powell's request to sever their trials from the rest of the GA RICO defendants (and from each other).

ATLANTA (AP) — Sixty-one people have been indicted in Georgia on racketeering charges following a long-running state investigation into protests against a planned police and firefighter training facility in the Atlanta area that critics call “Cop City.”

In the sweeping indictment released Tuesday, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr alleged the defendants are “militant anarchists” who supported a violent movement that prosecutors trace to the widespread 2020 racial justice protests.

The Aug. 29 indictment is the latest application of the state’s anti-racketeering law, also known as a RICO law, and comes just weeks after the Fulton County prosecutor used the statute to charge former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants.

The “Stop Cop City” effort has gone on for more than two years and at times veered into vandalism and violence. Opponents fear the training center will lead to greater militarization of the police, and that its construction in an urban forest will exacerbate environmental damage in a poor, majority-Black area.

Most of those indicted have already been charged over their alleged involvement in the movement. RICO charges carry a heavy potential sentence that can be added on top of the penalty for the underlying acts.

Among the defendants: more than three dozen people already facing domestic terrorism charges in connection to violent protests; three leaders of a bail fund previously accused of money laundering; and three activists previously charged with felony intimidation after authorities said they distributed flyers calling a state trooper a “murderer” for his involvement in the fatal shooting of a protester.

“The 61 defendants together have conspired to prevent the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center by conducting, coordinating and organizing acts of violence, intimidation and property destruction,” Carr said during a news conference Tuesday.

In linking the defendants to the alleged conspiracy, prosecutors have made a huge series of allegations. Those include everything from possessing fire accelerant and throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, to being reimbursed for glue and food for activists who spent months camping in the woods near the construction site.

Activists leading an ongoing referendum effort against the project immediately condemned the charges, calling them “anti-democratic.”

“Chris Carr may try to use his prosecutors and power to build his gubernatorial campaign and silence free speech, but his threats will not silence our commitment to standing up for our future, our community, and our city,” the Cop City Vote coalition said in a statement.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, meanwhile, praised the indictment, saying in a statement, “My top priority is and always will be keeping Georgians safe, especially against out-of-state radicals that threaten the safety of our citizens and law enforcement.”

Protests against the training center escalated after the fatal shooting in January of 26-year-old protester Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said state troopers fired in self-defense after Paez Terán shot at them while they cleared protesters from a wooded area near the proposed facility site. But the troopers involved weren’t wearing body cameras, and activists have questioned the official narrative.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and others say the 85-acre, $90 million facility would replace inadequate training facilities, and would help address difficulties in hiring and retaining police officers.

Prosecutors trace the roots of the “Stop Cop City” movement back to May 25, 2020, the date George Floyd was murdered by police officers in Minneapolis, even though the resulting protests occurred months before officials announced plans for the training center. Long after the racial justice protests died down, “violent anti-police sentiment” persisted among some Atlantans and it remains one of the demonstrators’ “core driving motives,” according to the indictment.

Since 2021, numerous instances of violence and vandalism have been linked to the movement. Days after the killing of Paez Terán, a police car was set alight at a January protest in downtown Atlanta. In March, more than 150 masked protesters chased off police at the construction site and torched construction equipment before fleeing and blending in with a crowd at a nearby music festival. Those two instances have led to dozens of people being charged with domestic terrorism, although prosecutors previously admitted they’ve had difficulty proving that many of those arrested were in fact those who took part in the violence.

Among those charged with domestic terrorism in March near the music festival and indicted last week is Thomas Jurgens, a Southern Poverty Law Center staff attorney. Jurgens’ lawyer has said his client wore a bright green hat — a well-known identifier used by legal observers — and his arrest alarmed many human rights organizations.

The law center called it an example of “heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters.” DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston, a Democrat, mentioned her concerns about Jurgens’ prosecution in announcing her June decision to withdraw from criminal cases connected to the movement, citing disagreements with Carr over how to handle the matters.

In addition to the 61 racketeering indictments, five of the defendants were also indicted on domestic terrorism and first-degree arson charges. Three previously charged leaders of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which has provided bail money and helped find attorneys for arrested protesters, were also each indicted on 15 counts of money laundering.

The case was initially assigned to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the racketeering case against Trump and 18 others. But McAfee recused himself, saying he’d worked with prosecutors on the case prior to his judicial appointment. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams now oversees the case.

The new effort will look to advance the argument that more immigration is bad for Black workers.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that those responsible for the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the ensuing violence at the U.S Capitol must be held accountable — even if that means Donald Trump.

“Let the evidence, the facts, take it where it may,” Harris said in an interview with The Associated Press in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she was attending a regional summit.

Federal prosecutors have indicted Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, for his efforts to cling to power in 2020, The former president also has been charged in Georgia in a scheme to subvert the will of voters who elected Democrat Joe Biden instead of giving Trump a second term.

“I spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor,” Harris, who served as California’s attorney general before moving to Washington as a U.S. senator. “I believe that people should be held accountable under the law. And when they break the law, there should be accountability.”

MADISON, Wis. (AP) —

A state judiciary disciplinary panel has rejected several complaints lodged against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz that alleged she violated the judicial code of ethics for comments she made during the campaign. It’s a setback to Republicans who argued those remarks could warrant impeachment.

Protasiewicz on Tuesday released a letter from the Wisconsin Judicial Commission informing her that “several complaints” regarding comments she had made during the campaign had been dismissed without action.

The commission’s actions are private unless released by one of the parties involved. Protasiewicz received permission from the commission to release its May 31 letter to her, which she then provided to The Associated Press.

A network of conservative groups is gearing up for the potential reelection of Donald Trump, actively enlisting an "army" of Americans to come to Washington with a mission to disassemble the federal government and substitute it with a vision that aligns more closely with their own beliefs and ideas, according to The Associated Press.

Organized by the Heritage Foundation, the sweeping new initiative called Project 2025, offers a policy agenda, transition plan, a playbook for the first 180 days and a personnel database for the next GOP president to access from the very beginning to take control, reform, and eliminate what Republicans criticize as the "deep state" bureaucracy. Their plan includes the possibility of firing as many as 50,000 federal employees.

Democracy experts view Project 2025 as an authoritarian attempt to seize power by filling the federal government, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, with unwavering Trump supporters, which could potentially erode the country's system of checks and balances.

"The irony of course is that in the name of 'draining the swamp', it creates opportunities to make the federal government actually quite corrupt and turn the country into a more authoritarian kind of government," Matt Dallek, a professor at George Washington's Graduate School of Political Management, who studies the American right, told Salon.

One of the most important bulwarks of democracy is the career of federal civil service, he added. Civil servants often have decades of experience inside their agencies and provide knowledge of policy and law in the federal government that enables them to serve the public.

"The country relies on these people to not only enact administration or presidential priorities, but also to enact the laws and fulfill their oath of office," Dallek said.

He pointed to one of the dangers of this project, which includes "the purging of federal employees," as he described it, or the project's plans to fire and replace federal workers en masse in an effort to dismantle the "deep state."

"In basically one fell swoop – if this plan were to be implemented – we would, as a society, lose many of the people who help [the federal government] function and also the people who are not subjected to the whims of the president," Dallek said.

This would make it difficult for agencies like the FBI, the DOJ or the CIA to carry out their nonpartisan missions and to fulfill their oath of office and oath to the Constitution, Dallek explained.

By replacing federal employees with like-minded officials, Trump-era conservatives are planning to remove federal employees whom they perceive as obstacles to the president's agenda early on. This would avoid "the pitfalls of Trump's first years in office," and eliminate the possibility of any resistance a Republican president would encounter, the AP reported.

"Project 2025 is extremists' newest plan to set fire to our democracy," Kyle Herrig, a senior adviser at the left-leaning government watchdog group Accountable.US, told Salon. "It would allow far-right groups like Heritage and the Conservative Partnership Institute to implement their dangerous wish lists with no regard for everyday Americans."

If Project 2025 is implemented, it would reinstate Schedule F — an executive order from the Trump era aimed at redefining the employment status of tens of thousands of federal employees, effectively making them at-will workers and removing protections for anyone in decision-making positions.

Upon taking office in 2021, Biden revoked the executive order. However, Trump, along with other potential presidential candidates, is pledging to reinstate it.

Anywhere from 50,000 to hundreds of thousands of federal employees can be impacted by it since Schedule F is "ambiguously written," allowing political appointees to extend its application from top civil servants to those in lower ranks, Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, told Salon.

"The problem with removing job protections from civil servants is that experienced executives are no longer protected should they need to speak truth to power and explain the downsides to what otherwise seems like a 'good' idea," Guy said. "They are at risk of being fired for offering alternative points of view or insisting that laws, such as the Administrative Procedures Act, be followed."

Project 2025's nearly 1,000-page policy blueprint, called "Mandate for Leadership," serves as a step-by-step guide for the incoming president, from proposing a comprehensive transformation of the Department of Justice to ending the FBI's efforts to combat the dissemination of misinformation. It even includes plans to intensify the prosecution of individuals involved in providing or distributing abortion pills by mail.

"The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors," the document says. "This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity ('SOGI'), diversity, equity, and inclusion Project ('DEI'), gender, gender equality, gender equity … and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists."

There are suggestions to reverse the Biden Administration's use of the federal government's resources to "further the woke agenda" and erase them from all policy manuals, guidance documents and agendas.

"From gutting critical climate protections to dismantling checks and balances to put maximum power in the hands of the president, Project 2025 takes extremism to a whole new level," Herrig said. "The project — and the dark network propping it up — must be held accountable for their efforts to undermine our democracy."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Although presidents usually depend on Congress to implement policies, the Heritage Project embraces a perspective known to legal scholars as a unitary view of executive power. This perspective asserts that the president possesses extensive authority to act alone, as the AP report highlights.

The dangers of subordinating the entire federal government to the "whims of one person," is like pointing "a dagger at the heart of democracy," Dallek said.

"It's a central threat to democracy because what we would lose is some of the important checks and balances that are within the executive branch, and that frankly, we saw playing out in the run-up to January 6," he added.

While these checks and balances were not perfect, he pointed out, senior officials in the federal government were able to push back on the Big Lie and the delaying of the certification of the election.

"It showed that even at the end of Trump's first term, there were some mechanisms in place to defeat Trump's efforts basically to steal the election," Dallek said. "The danger of this project is that it would weaken these already atrophied mechanisms."

In addition to this, the project would also "demonize" civil servants, who do the type of work that keeps democracy functioning, he added.

"So an attack on them is also an attack on democracy, and that's why I think it has advocates of democracy so concerned about the future of the country," Dallek said.

On Tuesday, it was reported that North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls could be ousted from her seat for judicial ethics violations. Did she fail to disclose gifts from a billionaire benefactor on whose cases she was ruling? No. Maybe she’d gone on luxury vacations across the globe paid for by some of the richest men in the country and neglected to mention them on disclosure forms? Nope. Perhaps one of these billionaires bought her mom a house? Not that either. Her true crime: Earls, the only Black woman on North Carolina’s high court, spoke out about racial bias in her courtroom. Her alleged misconduct was speaking to the media about how few clerks of color the court employed and how her colleagues treated certain attorneys, including a Black woman, who argued before them. For that, a Republican-stacked judicial “ethics” commission has gone after her. Its targeting of Earls could fulfill the wishes of the gerrymandered Republican Legislature by removing a tireless advocate of racial equality.

Earls, who was elected with 1.8 million votes in 2018 and is a frequent dissenter to the right-wing majority’s decisions, was responding to a study of advocates who argued at the high court. This study found that 90 percent of the lawyers were white and nearly 70 percent were male. Asked for her response, Earls noted the lack of racial diversity among the court’s clerks and her colleagues’ disparate treatment of certain advocates at oral argument. She went out of her way to say she didn’t think that this was the result of conscious bias, but “we all have implicit biases.” Earls also criticized decisions by Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican, to end implicit bias training and disband commissions looking into racial justice issues.

The Judicial Standards Commission, which has been reshaped by GOP judges in recent years, is now alleging that Earls’ concerns about bias in the courtroom may violate judicial ethics rules. The commission investigates complaints against judges, and its investigation could result in discipline for Earls or even her removal from office. If the commission finds a violation, the state Supreme Court would ultimately decide whether to accept its recommended sanction.

The ethics rule in question says that judges should conduct themselves “at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” In a letter to Earls, the commission argued that she can’t suggest that another judge is biased unless she “knows this to be the case.” The commission says that without “some quantum of definitive proof,” it’s a violation of the ethics rules. In other words, unless Earls has proof that the commission considers “definitive,” she can’t speak out about bias at the highest level of North Carolina’s justice system. Never mind that Earls was not singling out one judge or justice, but rather discussing systemic racism as demonstrated through a comprehensive study of diversity at the North Carolina Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, Earls responded by suing the commission in federal court, arguing that the investigation is chilling her First Amendment right to free speech. She described her comments as “core political speech concerning important public policy questions regarding the justice system and administration of the courts.”

The truth is that Earls was speaking out in defense of the principles that the ethics rules seek to protect. The conduct that Earls described in her interview, bias in the court’s arguments and in its hiring process, could have violated the mandate that judges do their jobs “impartially” and treat people respectfully. A lack of diversity could certainly give people good reason to doubt the fairness of the judiciary.

The trumped-up charge against Earls is politically motivated. If this complaint had been filed a few years ago, it would’ve been summarily dismissed. But the commission has become yet another weapon for the North Carolina GOP to wield against judges who won’t do the bidding of the party or its corporate campaign contributors.

After Newby defeated former Chief Justice Cheri Beasley by 401 votes in 2020, his administration fired the head of the Judicial Standards Commission, who had stood in the way of the GOP’s goal of bending the ethics rules to allow judges to be considered permanent candidates, able to raise campaign cash and endorse other candidates throughout their tenures.

Republican leaders in the state’s heavily gerrymandered Legislature have also tried to reshape the commission over the years. Senate President Phil Berger, whose son is a Republican justice serving alongside Earls, introduced a budget bill this year that radically overhauls the commission to give GOP legislators control. Under current law, the state bar chooses four commissioners, the chief justice picks six, and legislative leaders choose two each. So Republicans already have a majority. But Berger’s proposed budget would politicize the commission even further, giving lawmakers the state bar’s four appointments, and it would ban lawyers—who have expertise that’s very relevant to the commission—from serving.

Rumors have long swirled in Raleigh that Earls could become the victim of a politicized judicial ethics complaint. She has been in the GOP’s crosshairs since she announced her campaign in 2018. Lawmakers passed several bills intended to hinder her campaign, and Republicans threatened to impeach her after she took office. (Like recent impeachment threats in Wisconsin, this happened just before Earls ruled on whether to ban partisan gerrymandering.)

Earls isn’t the only judge to face blowback for acknowledging racism or sexism. In Wisconsin, Justice Jill Karofsky also faced bogus ethics charges for calling out one of Trump’s post–2020 election arguments as racist. Karofsky warned that she was the victim of a political witch hunt: “The Wisconsin Judicial Commission, and others like it around the country, simply cannot allow partisan actors to proceed in bad faith and hijack the disciplinary system.”

Judges must be able to speak out about the bias that plagues our justice system. Jurists at every level have an obligation to confront bias that they witness. It’s in the judiciary’s best interest to root out biases that cause people to doubt the fairness of the system.

Republicans disagree. Newby’s “race-blind” agenda forbids any acknowledgment of bias in the system. Though he’s been a prosecutor and judge for four decades in North Carolina, Newby claims that he’s never witnessed any racism.

Since Newby and his Republican colleagues won control of the court in last year’s election, they’ve backtracked on racial justice. The court is once again willfully ignoring racism in jury selection, as all-white juries sentence Black defendants. And it reversed course on whether a 2018 voter ID law violated the state constitution’s ban on discrimination.

Now Republicans want to silence a duly elected justice for speaking out about bias that she’s witnessed. By filing suit in federal court, Earls has stood up for her own free speech rights and the rights of citizens across the state to expect and receive equal justice under the law. She’s also shown she’s not going to let the radical politicization of the state’s courts go any further without a fight.

ATLANTA – Republicans have quietly been coming to grips with the likelihood that Donald Trump will keep winning the Republican nomination until he dies if he doesn’t retake the White House next year — and either outcome could cost the GOP down-ballot.

It’s a grim sort of arrested development for Republicans, with Trump positioned as a modern-day Adlai Stevenson, Democrats’ losing nominee in 1952 and 1956. The worry is that Trump’s baggage and bombast will disincentivize center-right and independent voters from participating in general elections, with repercussions down the ballot — reversing the old coattails rule of politics, which holds that a strong name at the top of the ticket lifts all boats in the party.

But in the inverted world operatives are bracing for, it’s Trump’s name forever sinking their boats in statewide battles by depressing voter turnout. “’24, ’28, ’32. Probably until he dies,” said one veteran Republican strategist, bearing a glum look.

Polls have repeatedly shown that a majority of voters don’t want either Trump or President Joe Biden to run in 2024. Sixty percent of respondents to a July Harris-Messenger poll said they didn’t want Trump to run, as did 70% of respondents (and 44% of Republicans) in an April poll by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago NORC.

Pollsters are still exploring this enthusiasm gap. But Mark McKinnon – a veteran of George W. Bush and John McCain’s White House bids – has identified what he called the new Trump “ghost voters” in Iowa. While Republicans in 2016 were afraid to announce their support for Trump because he was too untoward, they are now afraid to say they don’t support him for fear of being chastised in the new Trump-loyal GOP.

“There’s a lot unknown,” said one veteran conservative activist who is supporting Trump, but also has a keen sense of Trump’s weaknesses. “It’s all going to be a question of turnout.”

The veteran activist cited the ritzy suburb of Atlanta, Johns Creek, as one example where otherwise solid Republicans who soured on Trump after January 6th will probably just stay home this election. “They voted for Biden and (Georgia Gov. Brian) Kemp. They don’t like Biden, but he is less icky (than Trump). But if they don’t have Kemp (on the ballot) maybe they don’t turn out at all.”

Conversely, the veteran conservative strategist said, Biden could suffer from a lack of fervor from his own base of supporters. Where MAGA-diehards will always show up for Trump, Biden doesn’t have a similar “fan base” on the left at his disposal.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA – AUGUST 24: Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to depart at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport after being booked at the Fulton County jail on August 24, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Trump was booked on multiple charges related to an alleged plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. […]Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Looking for cash to fill the gap

Conservatives and veteran Republican strategists are trying to combat this expected dip in Republican turnout by quietly pushing mega-donors who have sat out the presidential race to engage in Senate and governor’s races across the country. Their hope is to create a buttress against what they expect to be another four years of President Joe Biden, according to more than a dozen Republican operatives who spoke with The Messenger over the past month. They include people who support Trump but worry about his effects on down-ballot races.

In a side meeting at a “cattle call” of Republican candidates in Atlanta last month, one conservative leader described gathering with other top activists discussing the 2024 playing field. At the outset, nobody mentioned the name of the former president, but once one person did, the worries poured forth: Trump will depress the suburban vote for Republicans. Women will stick with Democrats. Trump’s fired-up base of diehards and populists will keep carrying him over the line in Republican primaries and “normie” Republicans will keep staying home — they won’t vote for Democrats, but they won’t vote Trump either.

All of which could crush other Republicans running, these conservative operatives say.

“We’re worried about Cruz’s re-election chances,” the conservative leader told The Messenger. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will appear on the ballot the same as Trump (most likely) in Texas. The group that gathered in Georgia is concerned that swaths of moderate and center-right voters in the state’s expansive suburbs will take a powder, leaving Cruz and other Texas Republicans hanging.

It’s the same problem Republican veterans stared down seven years ago when it became clear Trump would be their nominee — movement conservatives and quieter Midwestern evangelicals, unlike their fiery Southern Baptist cousins, wouldn’t vote for Clinton, but they wouldn’t vote for Trump either. The falloff in support would have hurt GOP chances across the board, trying to win control of the House and Senate and governor’s races across the country.

To avert that pending disaster — which many pollsters at the time saw as imminent as a Hillary Clinton win — then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus pushed Mike Pence onto the ticket. The move helped drive turnout in 2016 and produce better than expected results.

But ever since then Republicans have underperformed expectations three elections in a row now.

A “blue wave” of support in 2018 carried Democrats to power in the House, leading to Trump’s first impeachment. Two years later, just a day before Trump’s supporters sacked the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results, a pair of Republican senators lost in Georgia, handing control of the chamber to Senate Democrats. And in 2022, support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis built fast after Trump’s handpicked candidates lost heavily in critical swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Republicans who held their breath while Trump was in office have become increasingly exasperated, but there doesn’t seem to be any way of stopping him from winning. Trump’s strong plurality of MAGA voters appears unbeatable, and Trump’s tight-knit campaign team has been quietly rewriting the party rules in the states to make it even harder to challenge him.

“It’s a perpetual Ponzi scheme using the GOP,” said one Republican strategist working on an opposing campaign.
Glass half-full?

But not every Republican is sold on the fatalism which seems to have gripped at least half the party.

“Anyone worrying about anything but the coming cycle should get their priorities in order,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary and a veteran campaign operative who helped run the RNC’s 2016 operations before joining the White House.

He pointed to hyperbole and hand-wringing ahead of the 2016 election and how Republicans did far better than expected. He also noted that Democrats have a commensurate problem with depressed support from Black voters, which could just as easily offset the voter depression on the right.

And even as Trump himself continues pushing baseless claims that he didn’t lose in 2020 and attacks on prosecutors, judges and possible witnesses, his well-disciplined juggernaut of a 2024 campaign is pushing a concurrent message claiming the economy was better when the former president was in office (LINK).

Yet the nonstop drama of the Trump era of politics seems to have whittled away at general interest in anything remotely political. Spotify podcast star Joe Rogan rebuffed Trump’s entreaties to appear on his top-rated show, even though they share many of the same views. The author behind the viral populist ballad, “Rich men north of Richmond”, hit back at Republicans after he was featured in the first Republican debate.

Donors and professional operatives have been eyeing a staid and safe alternative to Trump, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, with his aw-gosh delivery which sounds remarkably like Owen Wilson and his Silicon Valley zip-up vests, as a last-minute savior who can win back center-right voters in the suburbs.

But their white knight increasingly looks like someone who couldn’t win the nomination.

A recent poll found Youngkin trailing Trump handily in a hypothetical matchup in his own state. And Youngkin told Fox News recently that he would miss a number of filing deadlines to appear on the ballot in early voting states if he did jump in near the end of the year.
Follow the (small) money

The day after Trump was arrested in Georgia and the first criminal mugshot of a former president was posted online – which Trump’s team said they then used to raise $7.1 million from their supporters – Erick Erickson, a veteran conservative radio host and Trump critic on the right, said Trump detracts from the party’s chances writ large.

“Sure, there’s a political agenda against him with these prosecutions, but also to help him secure the Republican nomination,” Erickson wrote in his newsletter. “The Democrats know for him to win, Republicans must spend money that could otherwise be spent to secure the Senate and save the House. The return on investment to get Trump across the finish line could be so high that we can’t take the Senate or hold the House. That, then, would cost us more.”

The proxy for these concerns has been a drying up of small-dollar donations to candidates not named Trump.

The Republican National Committee has seen a downturn. Other campaigns have been unable to turn on the spigot of digital donations which used to flow like milk and honey but now has turned into a desperate trickle. And infighting in state Republican parties between Trump loyalists and veteran party members across the country has undercut efforts to win back offices in critical battleground states from Arizona to Michigan.

When the GOP suffered sweeping losses in Obama’s 2012 re-election, it commissioned an “autopsy” with recommendations for how the party could get back in the business of winning. Much attention was paid to the longterm need for the GOP to win over conservative Latino voters, but the party also built a voter-turnout juggernaut which overhauled the way Republicans got their supporters to show up at the polls.

A decade later, after Trump’s handpicked candidates lost big to Democrats in critical battleground states, the RNC commissioned another “autopsy” — but this time the report was never released publicly and didn’t mention the name of its most powerful player, Trump.

"As the party becomes Trump-ified, you see it almost like a sun when it goes nova,” Matthew Continetti, a historian of the American right, said on MTP Now Thursday. “It collapses in on itself.”

As Cherokee tribal members in North Carolina prepare to vote on legalizing adult-use cannabis, a congressman from the area is threatening to defund the tribe — whether the measure passes or not.

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Richard Sneed is calling the Republican congressman’s comments “a major political blunder.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards on Friday introduced what he calls his Stop Pot Act. The bill calls for withholding 10% of what a government or tribe normally receives in annual federal highway funding. The withholding applies to governments and tribes that permit recreational marijuana use and sales.

The legislation doesn’t apply to jurisdictions that authorize medical use of marijuana when prescribed by a licensed medical professional, Edwards said.

Edwards warned in an Aug. 17 opinion piece in the Cherokee One Feather newspaper that his legislation “will defund governments that ignore federal law” regarding cannabis sales and use.

“Here in our beloved mountains, we are already facing unprecedented crime, drug addiction and mental illness,” Edwards wrote. “I can’t stand by and condone even greater access to drugs to poison more folks in WNC, not to mention having even more impaired drivers on our roads.”

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is a sovereign self-governed nation and a federally-recognized tribe. The tribe and individuals are eligible for U.S. funding in a variety of ways, including recent COVID-19 American Rescue Plan allocations.

In a letter published Thursday in Cherokee One Feather, Sneed said Edwards “has overstepped his authority.” He points out that Edwards is “a federal representative; a non-Indian, elected official telling a sovereign tribal nation how they ought to handle their business.”

Only place to toke up a joint

Although many states have legalized medical and adult recreational use of cannabis, marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will vote Sept. 7 on whether to legalize adult use of marijuana on tribal lands in North Carolina.

If the Sept. 7 measure passes, the tribe’s 57,000-acre Qualla Boundary in the western part of the state would become the only place in North Carolina where you could legally toke up a joint.

The tribe already plans to open what tribal officials call the world’s largest medical cannabis dispensary superstore.

Having grown and cultivated medical marijuana for many months, the tribe originally planned to issue regulated medical cards to eligible adults to buy from the dispensary. The retail operation is poised to be the first and only place to legally purchase marijuana in North Carolina.

With broader legalization on tribal lands a possibility, it remains unclear whether dispensary sales would still require a medical card. But discussion in July by tribe leaders suggest some are expecting the referendum could lead to recreational marijuana sales.

The referendum going to voters says adult use would apply to anyone 21 and older. No language in the referendum limits adult use to tribal members.

Edwards warns of “drug tourism”

In his opinion piece, Edwards called the referendum “harmful.”

Congress can’t stop the vote, he said. “But I am appealing to tribal members to vote against it,” Edwards wrote.

“It is important that the tribe understands they will be voting on a measure that, if enacted, could soon be very costly,” in terms of loss of federal funding, he said.

If the Sept. 7 measure passes, Edwards added, “people from all over the state and the surrounding areas will be driving to Cherokee and likely the EBCI’s other non-contiguous tribal lands to buy it, light up and party.”

“It also means many would be leaving the reservation and hitting the road high,” he said.

“There is also the very real possibility of ‘drug tourism,’ where bad actors will capitalize on the influx of partying travelers to western North Carolina and offer other types of illicit, hard drugs for sale, and the criminal activity that would inevitably follow,” Edwards wrote.

“This could strain our resources to a breaking point, as local law enforcement would stop enforcing marijuana laws, which is what we’ve observed in several U.S. cities,” according to Edwards.

He also noted the tribe’s other Western North Carolina landholdings.

“Given the shoot-first-ask-questions-later wording of the tribe’s question in the ballot, what would prevent enacting legislation that would allow marijuana dispensaries to open on tribal lands in Graham, Swain, and other WNC counties?” he asked.

Christian Action League and Smart Approaches to Marijuana have endorsed his bill, Edwards said in a news release Friday.

“Today’s marijuana isn’t Woodstock Weed,” Dr. Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, said in Friday’s news release. “It is a highly engineered drug that’s often wrapped in kid-friendly packaging, with potencies of up to 99 percent.”
“Major political blunder,” chief says

Sneed was responding to a letter in the newspaper Wednesday from the Democratic Party chairs in Swain, Jackson, Cherokee and Transylvania counties.

”Rep. Edwards’ strategy reeks of the same paternalism we have seen throughout the history of federal dealings with tribal governments,” the party leaders wrote. “This is not the action of a friend with a disagreement, it is patronizing and coercive. Rep. Edwards offers false friendship.

“... A real friend would know that the United States of America owes a debt to the Cherokee, and making good on that debt is not dependent on disagreements over marijuana policy,” the party leaders said.

Sneed thanked them for their comments.
“Delusion of grandeur,” opponent says

Chris Suttle, a Chapel Hill-based cannabis consultant, fired back at Edwards in an Aug 28 commentary in Cherokee One Feather. He called Edwards’ comments “problematic and uninformed.”

“Let him and his compatriots march to Washington to create the Stop the Pot Act,” Suttle wrote. “I would rather support those on a state level willing to bring light to those who have been dying in the dark by giving them access to an all-natural proven solution to numerous medical conditions.”

On Thursday, Suttle told the Observer that Edwards “is experiencing a momentary delusion of grandeur.”

A Florida redistricting plan pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis violates the state constitution and is prohibited from being used for any future U.S. congressional elections since it diminishes the ability of Black voters in north Florida to pick a representative of their choice, a state judge ruled Saturday.

Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh sent the plan back to the Florida Legislature with instructions that lawmakers should draw a new congressional map that complies with the Florida Constitution.

The voting rights groups that challenged the plan in court “have shown that the enacted plan results in the diminishment of Black voters’ ability to elect their candidate of choice in violation of the Florida Constitution,” Marsh wrote.

The decision was the latest to strike down new congressional maps in Southern states over concerns that they diluted Black voting power.

It was big news when Rudy Giuliani, once hailed as America’s Mayor, was indicted last month by a district attorney in Atlanta for allegedly being part of a criminal enterprise led by Donald Trump that sought to overturn the 2020 election results. Giuliani was back in headlines this week when he lost a defamation suit filed against him by two Georgia election workers whom he had falsely accused of ballot stuffing. Giuliani’s apparent impoverishment, caused by his massive legal bills, and even his alleged drinking have been fodder for reporters. But another major Giuliani development has drawn less attention: An FBI whistleblower filed a statement asserting that Giuliani “may have been compromised” by Russian intelligence while working as a lawyer and adviser to Trump during the 2020 campaign.

That contention is among a host of explosive assertions from Johnathan Buma, an FBI agent who also says that an investigation involving Giuliani’s activities was stymied within the bureau.

In July, Buma sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a 22-page statement full of eye-popping allegations, and the document leaked and was first reported last month by Insider (after a conservative blogger had posted it online). According to Buma’s account, Giuliani was used as an asset by a Ukrainian oligarch tied to Russian intelligence and other Russian operatives for a disinformation operation that aimed to discredit Joe Biden and boost Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Moreover, Buma says he was the target of retaliation within the bureau for digging into this.

The FBI declined to comment on Buma’s claims.

Buma’s revelations may only be the start. A source familiar with his work tells Mother Jones that other potential FBI whistleblowers who participated in the investigation involving Giuliani have consulted the same lawyer as Buma and might meet with congressional investigators in coming weeks. That attorney, Scott Horton, declined to comment.

Giuliani faces a heap of legal and financial problems, including those felony charges in Georgia. He is also an uncharged co-conspirator in the federal case in which Trump was indicted for his efforts to retain power after losing the 2020 election. He has been sued by a former assistant for rape. And apparently Trump has not helped the supposedly broke Giuliani cover his legal bills, though the former president did agree to headline a fundraiser for Giuliani.

Still, Buma’s statement suggests that Giuliani has been lucky to avoid deeper trouble over his attempt during the 2020 race to deploy made-in-Ukraine disinformation to sully Joe Biden.

It is widely known that Giuliani tried mightily to unearth and disseminate dirt on Biden in Ukraine—particularly regarding the unfounded allegation that as vice president Biden squashed an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company for which his son Hunter was a director. This smear campaign led to Trump’s first impeachment and resulted in a federal investigation into whether Giuliani violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Prosecutors ended that probe last year.

But Buma’s allegations that FBI and Justice Department officials blocked his efforts to investigate these Giuliani activities and the work of suspected Russian agents who may have influenced the former New York City mayor could spark a new dust-up on Capitol Hill. As Republicans keep trying to gin up a controversy over the Bidens, Burisma, and other matters, Buma’s statement reinforces the case that this supposed Biden-Ukraine scandal was egged on or orchestrated by Russian intelligence. And it contradicts the narrative pushed by Trump and his defenders that the FBI and Justice Department have been in cahoots with Democrats.

Giuliani’s role in Trump’s coup attempt and his string of public humiliations may overshadow the Ukrainian chapter in Giuliani’s downfall. But, according to Buma and various US intelligence findings, Giuliani apparently was a dupe—a useful idiot—for suspected Russian operatives and propagandists. And the bureau, Buma says, investigated this—until it didn’t.

Buma’s statement highlights Giuliani’s relationship with Pavel Fuks, a wealthy Ukrainian developer, who in 2017 hired Giuliani and paid him $300,000. Fuks once told the New York Times that he had retained Giuliani to lobby in the United States for the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, where Fuks then lived. Giuliani has denied that he was paid to lobby for Kharkiv, insisting he only provided advice regarding security to the city. And Fuks has changed his tune. Through a spokesperson, he told Mother Jones that Giuliani’s work was limited to advising the city.

In his statement, Buma says that the FBI assessed Fuks to be a “co-opted asset” of Russian intelligence services, meaning a person who Russian intelligence used to advance its goals. Buma’s complaint does not name a specific Russian intelligence agency, but a person who spoke to agents involved in this investigation says that the FBI believes Fuks worked for the FSB, the successor to KGB. All this raises the possibility that Giuliani, a former Republican presidential candidate who became a close adviser to Trump, received a large payment directly from a Russian asset.

Buma alleges that Fuks has carried out various tasks for Russian spies, including laundering money for them. Fuks also reportedly paid locals to spray-paint swastikas around Kharkiv in the weeks before Russia’s invasion. Buma says Fuks did so to bolster Vladmir Putin’s claim that the invasion aimed to achieve the “de-Nazification of Ukraine.”

Fuks denies these claims. “Mr. Fuks has never cooperated with Russian intelligence,” his spokesperson says.

Buma maintains that his investigative work led to Customs and Border Patrol in 2017 revoking Fuks visa for travel to the United States and that the FBI assessed that Fuks constituted “a national security threat,” a finding that caused Fuks to be placed on an organized crime watch list. Buma also says that he sent the Treasury Department a recommendation that the United States sanction Fuks. To date, the US government has not done so.

Ukraine has sanctioned Fuks, and it is reportedly investigating him for fraud and tax evasion. Fuks now lives in London, according to recent media reports.

In his statement, Buma says that he developed suspicions that Giuliani, through his relationship with Fuks, was “compromised by the RIS,” meaning the Russian Intelligence Services. That is a striking claim—an allegation that Russian spies may have obtained influence over a top adviser to the US president.

It’s a new piece of information to add to a pile of public indications that Giuliani left himself wide open to manipulation by Russian agents, while he was dredging Ukraine in search of derogatory information about Hunter and Joe Biden.

Giuliani has previously asserted that his work for Fuks ended before he joined Trump’s legal team in April 2018. And Fuks’ spokesperson also says that Fuks’ dealings with Giuliani finished in 2018. But Buma suggests that Fuks may have maintained an indirect connection to Giuliani by hiring in 2019 Andriy Telizhenko, a former low-level Ukrainian diplomatic official, to mount a public relations effort for him in the United States. Buma says that a source told him that Fuks retained Telizhenko to help him “establish contacts with US politicians.” Telizhenko went on to work with Giuliani, feeding him information on the Bidens.

Telizhenko, in a recent interview with Mother Jones, maintained that his work for Fuks and his contacts with Giuliani were unrelated.

But Telizhenko’s interactions with Giuliani raise serious questions about whether this Trump adviser, wittingly or not, played. a part in a covert Russian operation to discredit Biden. In 2021, the Treasury Department sanctioned Telizhenko for promoting Russian “disinformation narratives that U.S. government officials have engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine.” Telizhenko denies advancing disinformation or aiding Russia. He says the sanctions resulted from an FBI informant making false claims about him.

Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine placed him in contact with several Ukrainians since sanctioned for allegedly assisting Russian disinformation efforts. The most prominent was Andriy Derkach, the son of a former KGB officer and then a Ukrainian legislator, who supplied Giuliani with unsubstantiated information about the Bidens’ supposed activities in Ukraine. After making a trip to Ukraine in the summer of 2020, Giuliani told the Washington Post that he kept in touch with Derkach and called him “very helpful.”

Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach in 2020, calling him an “active Russian agent for over a decade.” In March 2021, a declassified report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that Putin in 2020 signed off on a Russian intelligence effort to use proxies to feed prominent US individuals “influence narratives” aimed at hurting Biden’s campaign and helping Trump. The report cited Derkach, asserting that Putin “had purview” over his activities. Though the report did not name him, Giuliani was obviously one of the Americans the ODNI believed had been manipulated by the Russians. Last year, federal prosecutors hit Derkach with criminal charges for his alleged attempts to evade sanctions.

In his statement, Buma says he investigated Giuliani’s use of “funds he collected from political influencers to travel and conduct a series of interviews with former Ukrainian officials”—a reference to Giuliani’s campaign to gather opposition research on the Bidens. But he adds that “Giuliani was himself never considered a subject” of that part of his probe, which focused on “foreign organized crime figures and intelligence service assets or agents who chose to deal with him.”

Giuliani has admitted to meeting Ukrainians subsequently cited by the US government as Russian operatives. But he has defended his actions by arguing he had to deal with questionable people to seek information on what he has referred to as alleged Biden crimes. (No evidence has surfaced to prove Biden acted improperly in Ukraine to help his son.)

Buma reveals in his statement that he also probed whether Russian operatives or assets were involved in a 2020 Giuliani effort to make a film about Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere. As Mother Jones reported, the GOP activists behind this venture noted in legal documents that they were considering seeking foreign financing for the film. The anti-Biden film was to include commentary from Konstantin Kulyk, a former Ukrainian prosecutor who Treasury sanctioned in 2021 for working with Derkach to spread “fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations” about Biden. That is, this project was to feature information from sources who the US government later deemed were connected to a disinformation campaign linked to Russian intelligence.

Giuliani played a key role in trying to line up investors for the movie. His lawyer, Robert Costello, denied that Giuliani solicited money from foreign investors. The investors Giuliani did help find were two brothers, David and Kable Munger, who own a large blueberry producing company in California and have donated generously to GOP candidates. The movie never came close to being made, and people involved in the endeavor told Mother Jones the project was disorganized and incompetently managed.

The Mungers recently sued two GOP activists involved in producing the film, Tim Yale and George Dickson, along with a company they formed. Giuliani was not named as a defendant in the suit. The Mungers say that Giuliani helped persuade them to invest $1 million by saying that they would receive a share of the film’s profits. The brothers also claim that Yale and Dickson told them the movie would be “more profitable than Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.” Giuliani, Dickson, and Yale also said, according to the Mungers’ lawsuit, that they possessed “smoking guns” revealing Joe Biden was corrupt.

Giuliani and his colleagues possessed no such material. The Mungers allege that Dickson and Yale stole their investment. In a text message to Mother Jones, Yale insisted that the lawsuit is “total hogwash.” He declined to comment further. Dickson did not respond to requests for comment.

Giuliani, according to the lawsuit, was paid $300,000 for his participation in the film project. A lawyer and a spokesperson for Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment.

Buma’s disclosures spell new trouble for Giuliani. They further implicate him in a covert Russian operation to tilt the 2020 election toward Trump. They also raise the possibility that Giuliani was protected by FBI officials. (After the 2016 election, the Justice Department investigated whether Giuliani had improper contacts with FBI agents during that race regarding the bureau’s investigation of Hillary Clinton, and it found no evidence Giuliani had been leaked information.) Buma’s statement offers an investigative roadmap for inquiries that could soil Giuliani’s already tarnished reputation. But the down-and-out Giuliani may get lucky: With all the controversy and scandal swirling about him, there just may not be much room in the Giuliani coverage for the allegation that he was a puppet for Putin.