politics

When questioned by CNN’s Dana Bash over the weekend about his baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, the Republican nominee for vice president melted down, calling her a “Democratic propagandist.” He insisted that it was “disgusting” to insinuate that his lies had led to threats against Springfield’s Haitian community, as well as city schools and hospitals.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently made headlines for calling perennial Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein “predatory” and “not serious.” AOC is right.

Giving voters more choices is a good thing for democracy. But third-party politics isn’t performance art. It’s hard work — which Stein is not doing. As AOC observed: “[When] all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you're just showing up once every four years to do that, you're not serious.”

To be clear: AOC was not critiquing third parties as a whole, or the idea that we need more choices in our democracy. In fact, AOC specifically cited the Working Families Party as an example of an effective third party. The organization I lead, MoveOn, supports their 365-day-a-year efforts to build power for a pro-voter, multi-party system. And I understand third parties’ power to activate voters hungry for alternatives: I myself volunteered for Ralph Nader in 2000, and that experience helped shape my lifelong commitment to people-first politics.

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Nearly half of Republicans say they won't accept the results of the presidential election if their candidate loses, and some of them say they would "take action to overturn" the results, according to data released Tuesday.

About a quarter of Democrats said they wouldn't accept the results if their candidate loses, and fewer Democrats than Republicans said they would "take action to overturn" the results.

The nonpartisan World Justice Project, which keeps an index of how strong the rule of law is in more than 100 countries, gathered the data as part of a larger study. The poll was conducted through online interviews with 1,046 American households between June 10 and June 18.

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The Supreme Court was hit by a flurry of damaging new leaks Sunday as a series of confidential memos written by the chief justice were revealed by The New York Times.

The court’s Chief Justice John Roberts was clear to his fellow justices in February: He wanted the court to take up a case weighing Donald Trump’s right to presidential immunity—and he seemed inclined to protect the former president.

“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,” Roberts wrote to his Supreme Court peers, according to a private memo obtained by the *Times. *He was referencing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to allow the case to move forward.

Roberts took an unusual level of involvement in this and other cases that ultimately benefited Trump, according to the Times— his handling of the cases surprised even some other justices on the high court, across ideological lines. As president, Trump appointed three of the members of its current conservative supermajority.

The Senate is set to vote Tuesday on legislation to protect access to IVF as Democrats look to draw attention to Republicans' positions on the issue following former President Donald Trump's statements supporting the fertility treatments.

The package, called the Right to IVF Act, centers on a right to receive and provide IVF services, while working to make the treatments more affordable. The legislation was blocked by Senate Republicans just three months ago.

Now, Democrats are daring the GOP to reconsider their votes, with fewer than 50 days until Election Day.

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The issue was thrust into the national spotlight early this year, when the Alabama Supreme Court deemed that embryos are children under state law, which prompted providers to temporarily halt fertility treatments in the state. Since then, amid concern about access to IVF in Alabama and beyond, many Republicans have expressed their support for the popular fertility treatments, including Trump in last week's presidential debate.

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RT, Rossiya Segodnya and others accused of using deceiving tactics on Meta’s apps to carry out influence operations

Facebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks, alleging the outlets used deceptive tactics to carry out influence operations while evading detection on the social media company’s platforms.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” the company said in a written statement.

Enforcement of the ban would roll out over the coming days, it said. In addition to Facebook, Meta’s apps include Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.

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Donald Trump made clear on the Philadelphia debate stage this week, as he has throughout his three presidential campaigns, the basis of his run for office. Trump is running on the platform that non-white immigration is an existential threat to the nation. This time around, Trump has made his primary message, the so-called Great Replacement Theory (GRT), more vivid than ever. It is therefore of existential importance in understanding the stakes of this election to have clearly in mind what has happened in the past when GRT has been the central driving narrative both of individuals and of states.

According to the Great Replacement Theory, the nation’s greatness, its traditions and its practitioners, are existentially imperiled by an influx of foreign races, ethnicities or religions. The foreign elements are sometimes described in the narrative of GRT, as vermin or diseases.

GRT was central to the official Nazi motivation for the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Hitler blamed the loss of World War I on Jewish betrayal of Germany. But this betrayal, for Hitler, was intimately connected to the Great Replacement Theory, via the introduction of Black soldiers in the French army subsequently occupying the Rhineland, the so-called “Black Horror on the Rhine.” In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes:

The richest man in the world, who also happens to be a U.S. defense contractor, is being criticized on social media on Sunday after questioning why people aren't trying to assassinate Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump over the weekend was tackled by his own Secret Service after an individual was reportedly spotted hiding on the former president's golf course behind a bush with an AK-47. Authorities say they fired at the man, who was later apprehended and is being questioned.

A graphic designer posted a question, "Why they want to kill Donald Trump?" Elon Musk, who owns the social media company that he renamed from Twitter to "X," posted a controversial statement in response.

"And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala," Musk wrote with a "thinking face" emoji.

The comment did not go over well.

On one of the most consequential nights in the 2024 presidential race, the fate of our entire planet received all of 120 seconds. In fact, Harris several times praised the expansion of oil and gas development under President Joe Biden’s administration and doubled down on her promise not to ban fracking. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump were each allotted one minute to discuss their plans for fighting the climate crisis during the September 10 presidential debate.

Elon Musk, the billionaire king of bad takes, came up with a new one to cement his reign on Sunday night.

Responding to a second potential assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, the X owner questioned why no one was trying to kill the Democratic president and vice president.

“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” he posted, adding a thinking-face emoji.

A near-instantaneous firestorm of criticism predictably followed, with several people telling him to “delete your account” and others tagging the U.S. Secret Service’s X account.

The Army has said it considers the matter closed.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19871857

> Meta is banning Russia state media organization from its social media company platforms, alleging that the outlets used deceptive tactics to amplify Moscow’s propaganda

We have definitely been transported to an alternate universe

>By delaying any investigation or prosecution of Trump until almost two years after he became attorney general, Garland hamstrung Jack Smith, the dogged and beleaguered special counsel, leaving little time for the predictable unpredictabilities of two high-stakes prosecutions. Both were as solid as federal cases get, and now neither has any chance of being completed before the election, leaving voters without clear legal conclusions about Trump’s responsibility for the Jan. 6 riot and the highly classified documents he took from the White House.

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/QGUMD

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240917112637/https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/07/15/supreme-court-death-penalty-jury-overturn-precedent

A hulking steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, is the city's economic heartbeat as well as a keystone origin story of JD Vance, the hometown senator now running to be Donald Trump's vice-president.

Its future, however, may hinge upon $500 million in funding from landmark climate legislation that Vance has called a "scam" and is a Trump target for demolition.

In March, Joe Biden's administration announced the US's largest ever grant to produce greener steel, enabling the Cleveland-Cliffs facility in Middletown to build one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world, cutting emissions by a million tons a year by ditching the coal that accelerates the climate crisis and befouls the air for nearby locals.

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When campaigning for the Senate in 2022, Vance said Biden’s sweeping climate bill is “dumb, does nothing for the environment and will make us all poorer,” and more recently as vice-presidential candidate called the IRA a “green energy scam that’s actually shipped a lot more manufacturing jobs to China.”

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A new Morning Consult poll shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump nationally, 51% to 45%.

Key takeaway: “Her 51% of support among likely voters, which is also at a record high, is driven largely by her best figures to date among Democrats, Biden 2020 voters, liberals, women, 18- to 34-year-olds and millennials.

Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspected gunman involved in an apparent assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida on Sunday, was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction over 20 years ago.

“I figured he was either dead or in prison by now,” Tracy Fulk, the charging officer in the case, tells WIRED. “I had no clue that he had moved on and was continuing his escapades.”

According to court records from the Guilford District Court in North Carolina obtained by WIRED, Routh was arrested by the Greensboro Police Department on December 16, 2002.

Local reporting from Greensboro News and Record in 2002 states that Routh was pulled over by police during a traffic stop. Routh then drove to the business United Roofing, where he proceeded to barricade himself for three hours, the police said at the time.

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Routh was charged with possession of a fully automatic machine gun, referred to in court filings as a weapon of mass destruction. He was also charged with carrying a concealed weapon, as well as driving without a valid license and resisting, delaying, and obstructing law enforcement, according to Greensboro News and Record.