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GOP Watch Keeping an Eye on Republicans for You - Page 1

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.” ― Theodore Roosevelt Welcome to GOP Watch keeping an eye on Republicans for you. The Republican Party is using lies, hate, fear, alterative facts and whataboutism to stay in power and protect a comprised and corrupt Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party and Putin. The GOP is a danger to America and Americans.
Andrew Solender

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) resigned from Congress just before the House Ethics Committee was set to hold a potentially pivotal meeting on its investigation into the Florida congressman, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Gaetz's resignation, just hours after Trump announced his nomination for attorney general, puts a swift end to the panel's wide-ranging probe.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Gaetz's intention was to allow a swift process to fill his seat as Trump's selection of several House members for administration roles has the GOP anxious about its slim majority. Gaetz could have a difficult time getting confirmed in the Senate, as many Republicans reacted to his nomination with shock and horror.

What we're hearing: The Ethics Committee had been scheduled to meet later this week on its investigation of Gaetz, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

That meeting may have set the stage for the release of the panel's report into Gaetz as soon as Friday. The committee had been investigating allegations including sex trafficking, illicit drug use and accepting bribes, all of which Gaetz has categorically denied. Gaetz's abrupt resignation set off a flurry of speculation on Capitol Hill about whether that report will now see the light of day.
Story by Tatyana Tandanpolie

Raquell Barton was knee-deep in her doctorate program at the University of Memphis when her husband dropped a bomb on her: he wanted a divorce.

It caught her off guard. Somewhere between the research and projects for her instructional design program, he began to feel neglected, like he and their marriage were no longer a priority for her. She said he never mentioned how he was feeling until he asked to part ways, and by then, he'd mentally checked out of the marriage.

"When I went into that doctoral program, we were on the same page. We knew it was going to be hard. We knew it was going to be a struggle. We knew my focus was going to be on something else," she told Salon in a phone interview. "By the time I realized something was wrong, it was too late."

He wanted out. She didn't. Despite her protests, the pair legally separated in 2018. After six months of separation, Barton's husband still hadn't filed for divorce even though he'd started seeing someone new. Fed up, she felt she had to take the initiative. The divorce was finalized in 2019.

Her divorce was as no-fault as divorces come, she said, even if it wasn't what she wanted.

"I went into [marriage] hoping that I was gonna have that Happily Ever After fairy tale, but sometimes it just doesn't happen," said Barton, now a certified divorce coach helping other women who didn't want their marriages to end in Arkansas, Texas, Tennesee and Oklahoma. "It's not that I don't believe in the sanctity of marriage, but sometimes it just doesn't work out. You just have to let people go."
By Matt Naham

A pro- Trump lawyer who more than one year ago now pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit filing false documents, a felony, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against Georgia RICO case co-defendants, which includes the former president, has been “convicted of a serious crime” and, for that reason, should have his license to practice in New York “immediately” suspended, a court decided on Thursday.

Chesebro is an attorney who drafted a legal memo contemplating a scenario where then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6 could set aside legitimate electoral votes from “contested States” and replace those with “Trump-Pence electors.” That memo was featured prominently in the Jan. 6 Committee’s final report , which highlighted the lawyer’s communications to propel the fake elector scheme forward in Nevada, Arizona , Wisconsin , and elsewhere.
Story by John Bowden

The troubles for Tim Sheehy are only increasing ahead of Election Day in Montana, where the Republican Senate candidate is hoping to defeat incumbent Democrat Jon Tester and flip a crucial seat in the upper chamber of Congress.

Sheehy sat down for an interview with conservative journalist Megyn Kelly on Saturday, where he struggled to explain the shifting story behind an injury he claims was a bullet wound suffered in Afghanistan in a possible friendly fire incident — one he says he covered up to avoid getting Afghan allied forces in trouble.

Kelly pressed the former SEAL to explain where the injury actually occurred, and whether he was hurt in 2015 when he went to Glacier National Park with his family. Sheehy, in response to reporting on his explanation for the bullet wound byThe Washington Post, claimed in a statement that he injured himself in a fall at the park in 2015, then used that injury as cover for the bullet wound.

“It looks like you spoke to the Washington Post, and you said that you lied when you told the park ranger when you told them [you shot yourself in the park],” Kelly said.

Sheehy then offered a convoluted answer in which he claimed that medical officials, treating him for a wound he suffered at the park, had informed him that they were required to report the wound to law enforcement because of the bullet which Sheehy claimed had been dislodged by his fall and subsequent re-injury.

Senator Josh Hawley was challenged in his debate over his involvement in January 6th by challenger Lucas Kunce on the debate stage.
Story by Rob Wile and Lora Kolodny, CNBC

In the home stretch of the 2024 election, voters who’ve been weighing both campaigns’ proposals to tackle living costs are now hearing a new pitch from the Republican side: accept some short-term economic pain to rein in government spending.

That message has emerged from former President Donald Trump’s wealthiest backer, Elon Musk, who says that the GOP nominee’s plans to put the U.S. on firmer fiscal footing would likely entail “temporary hardship” for ordinary Americans.

At a virtual town hall event on October 25 held on Musk’s social media platform, X, the multibillionaire Tesla and SpaceX executive said he was “praying for a victory” for Trump, so he could begin working in a high-level cabinet role to axe federal spending.

“We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” Musk said. “And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity,” he said.

Many economists agree that Trump’s economic and fiscal proposals could spark an economic calamity, though it is not clear whether they have considered, or given credence, to Musk’s calls for austerity.

In a joint letter released last week, 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists warned Trump’s plans for tariffs, tax cuts and an immigration crackdown — including detaining and deporting millions of people — would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.” More than anything, they wrote, Trump would undermine the rule of law and political certainty, “the most important determinants of economic success.”
Story by Nicholas Liu

The Supreme Court's conservative majority, overriding the objections of the court's liberal members, allowed Virginia on Wednesday to continue its removal of over 1,600 voters from the rolls.

The state's Republican administration under Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said they are weeding out non-citizens who are not legally allowed to vote, but the U.S. Department of Justice and civil rights groups allege that the purge is also sweeping away actual U.S. citizens.

In a pair of lawsuits, the DOJ and civil rights groups accused Virginia of violating National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits states from "systematically" removing voters from the rolls 90 days or less before an election. A federal district judge ordered Virginia to restore the purged voters to the rolls last week, only for his directive to be reversed in turn by the Supreme Court, which did not explain its decision.

Not only does the decision appear to contradict federal law, but constitutes what former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance called a "disgraceful departure" from the federal courts' own jurisdictional principle to do no harm to the election process. The so-called Purcell principle, which takes its name from a Supreme Court election case in 2006, holds that courts should not change or approve of changes to election rules just prior to an election because it could confuse voters and disrupt election administration.
Republicans will protect you against immigrants but not against Americans with guns that will kill you or family.

Opinion by Daniel P. Mears and Bryan Holmes

Homicide is a serious problem that calls for effective policy responses built on accurate information. Unfortunately, prominent politicians are again propagating the inaccurate notion that immigrants disproportionately contribute to crime, especially murder.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement response to a request from a Texas congressman informed — or misinformed — many of the latest claims of a connection between immigration and violent crime. One statistic from the letter in particular has been in the headlines: ICE counted 13,099 cases of “non-detained” immigrants convicted of homicide.

The implication that some seized upon was that thousands of immigrant murderers are roaming America’s streets and that the Biden administration is to blame. Former President Trump tied the figure to Vice President Kamala Harris on social media, writing: “It was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during Kamala’s three and a half year period as Border Czar.”

None of which is true. “Non-detained” simply describes individuals who are not currently in ICE’s custody; it doesn’t mean that they are free and able to do as they wish.
Republicans complain about censorship, but have no problem censoring facts.

Story by Brian Fung, CNN

Three years ago, major internet platforms including Meta, Twitter and YouTube responded to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots with decisive action — suspending thousands of accounts that had spread election lies and removing posts glorifying the attack on US democracy.

Their efforts weren’t perfect, certainly; groups promoting baseless allegations of election fraud hid in plain sight even after some platforms announced a crackdown.

But since 2021, the social media industry has undergone a dramatic transformation and pivoted from many of the commitments, policies and tools it once embraced to help safeguard the peaceful transfer of democratic power.

The public got a taste of the new normal this summer, when social media was flooded with misinformation following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump and the platforms said nothing.

Though platforms still maintain pages describing what election safeguards they do support, such as specific bans on content suppressing the vote or promoting violence near polling places, many who have worked with those companies to contain misinformation in the past report an overall decline in their engagement with the issue.
Musk announced Saturday that every day until Election Day, he would give $1 million to a randomly selected voter who signs a petition circulated by his super PAC.
By Alexandra Marquez

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Sunday that tech mogul Elon Musk’s plan to give money to registered voters in Pennsylvania is “deeply concerning” and “it’s something that law enforcement could take a look at.”

Shapiro’s comments on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” come one day after Musk announced in Pennsylvania that every day until Election Day, he would give $1 million to a random registered voter who signs a petition circulated by his super PAC “in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms.”

The super PAC has made signing the petition a prerequisite for attending rallies headlined by Musk, and on Saturday he surprised one rally attendee by giving away the first $1 million check onstage.

Shapiro, a Democrat, made clear on Sunday that his political differences with Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump and pledged to use millions of dollars to turn out Pennsylvania voters for the former president via his super PAC, are not driving his skepticism of these cash prizes.
Story by Liam Reilly and Brian Stelter, CNN

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

That’s what a federal judge wrote Thursday as he sided with local TV stations in an extraordinary dispute over a pro-abortion rights television ad.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida granted a temporary restraining order against Florida’s surgeon general after the state health department threatened to bring criminal charges against broadcasters airing the ad.

The controversy stems from a campaign ad by the group Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is behind the “Yes on 4 Campaign,” promoting a ballot measure that seeks to overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban by enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution.

In the 30-second ad, a brain cancer survivor named Caroline says the state law would have prevented her from receiving a life-saving abortion.

“The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she says on camera. “Florida has now banned abortions, even in cases like mine.”
Story by bgriffiths@insider.com (Brent D. Griffiths)

WASHINGTON – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell privately described then-President Donald Trump as "stupid as well as being ill-tempered," "despicable" and a "narcissist," after the 2020 election, according to excerpts from a forthcoming biography of the longtime Senate power broker.

The remarks, recorded by McConnell and shared with Associated Press Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Michael Tackett, are McConnell's strongest condemnation yet of the former president, despite years of a famously frosty relationship between the two men. The biography written by Tackett and titled "The Price of Power," is set to be released on Oct. 29, just a week before Election Day.

In the weeks following Election Day in 2020, when Trump and his campaign were working to overturn the election results, McConnell said in his recordings that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, according to the AP. He also said that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”

McConnell said it's been "really hard to take" the results "for a narcissist like him."

"So his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all," he said.

McConnell also alleged Trump's efforts to overturn the election would hurt Republicans in Georgia runoff races for the Senate at the time, which would determine control of the chamber. Now-Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats, went on to win both races and take the chamber.

Trump is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie," he said.
Story by Griffin Eckstein

Former President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled an appearance at an NRA event in Savannah, Georgia, fueling public concerns about his mental state.

Trump was slated to headline the “Defend the 2nd” rally on Oct. 22. The Trump campaign cited a scheduling conflict in pulling out of that event, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The gun advocacy group later scrapped the entire event.

The cancellation follows an appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, in which interviewer John Micklethwait repeatedly pressed Trump on his rambling non-answers and topic changes. A day before that appearance, Trump similarly confused an audience at a Pennsylvania town hall when he paused questions for over half an hour to sway along to his playlist on stage.

Trump has been on a cancellation tear, pulling out of several planned interviews in recent days.

Per CNN’s Brian Stelter, Trump reportedly “suddenly scrapped” a planned interview with NBC News senior business correspondent Christine Romans penciled in for Monday morning in Philadelphia. He had previously cancelled a stop by CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” citing another purported scheduling conflict.

The cancellations follow a “60 Minutes” interview which Trump unexpectedly pulled out of two weeks ago. That move followed another appearance where Trump seemed somewhat lost.
Story by Ja'han Jones

A report by The New York Times on Elon Musk’s fervent support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign includes a bombshell detail that undermines right-wingers’ conspiratorial claims about Hunter Biden and anti-conservative bias on social media.

Conservatives have been kvetching for years about so-called collusion by the federal government with Big Tech, which they baselessly claim was a factor in Trump’s loss in 2020. In Republicans’ telling, the internal choices of some social media companies to moderate conspiratorial content about data — some of it pornographic — dubiously retrieved from an old Hunter Biden laptop amounts to a full-blown conspiracy.

Never mind that this purported government collusion would have occurred under the Trump administration — right-wingers have gone all in on the bogus claim, which has been promoted by Elon Musk.

But according to the Times, the Trump campaign and Musk’s social platform, X, recently engaged in conduct remarkably similar to what conservatives have been crying about for years. Per the report:
Opinion by Robert Reich

Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina and current lieutenant governor, is in trouble again.

Not just because Robinson has referred to himself as a “black NAZI” and a “perv,” expressed support for reinstating slavery, said he watched transgender pornography, called homosexuality “filth” and the Holocaust “hogwash,” and has asserted that “some folks need killing.”

emergency powers ahead of Hurricane Helene’s landfall. Robinson was the only member on the Council of State — a board of nine — who didn’t vote in favor of the declaration. Cooper got the power he needed, but Robinson is now criticizing him for not doing more in the wake of the storm.

Yet Robinson still commands the support of 63 percent of Republicans in North Carolina, according to an East Carolina University poll released Wednesday.

The trend started in the 1980s with Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, which attracted a wide audience with a toxic mixture of lies, conspiracy theories, fear-mongering, and thinly veiled racism.

It accelerated in 1996 when Rupert Murdoch hired Roger Ailes to emulate Limbaugh with a new TV channel, Fox News. Additional media imitators followed.

The growing supply of this poison offered the (predominantly) white working-class an easy explanation for why the wages and status of many blue-collar men had hit the skids: They could blame immigrants, Black people, Latinos, “coastal elites,” government bureaucrats, pedophiles, women, secularists, Muslims, liberals, Democrats, and Satan.

In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich saw an opportunity to build the Republican Party around similar lies and conspiracy theories. Gingrich’s efforts attracted the first group of modern crackpot candidates into the GOP.

Starting in 2016, Trump attracted another group, even wackier than the previous one.
Story by Carl Gibson

All across the country, Republican candidates who openly doubt the outcome of the 2020 election are running in statewide elections. This includes Republican nominees for both U.S. Senate races as well as gubernatorial elections, and even candidates seeking to oversee their respective state's elections.

CNN found that of the 51 Republican statewide hopefuls on the 2024 ballot, 23 of them — a full 45% of all Republican statewide candidates – are election deniers. And many election deniers are seeking office in some of the most hotly contested battleground states in presidential elections.

34 states are holding U.S. Senate elections in November. And 14 Republican Senate candidates have gone on the record supporting election-denying narratives. This includes incumbents like Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Rick Scott (R-Florida) as well as candidates seeking to oust Democrats like Sam Brown in Nevada, Kari Lake in Arizona, Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Royce White in Minnesota.
Story by Christopher Mathias

MONROEVILLE, Pa. — JD Vance spoke at a festival of election denialism in a Pittsburgh suburb Saturday, lending the imprimatur of his position as the Republican nominee for vice president to a gathering of people who still falsely believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump and who might be laying the groundwork to make the same bogus claim next month if Trump and Vance lose in Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state.

Vance participated in an hour-long town hall at one of the final stops of the “Courage” tour, a neo-Charismatic Christian revival roadshow organized by Lance Wallnau, a Texas-based evangelical pastor and self-described “apostle” who claims to be able to speak with God, who told him Trump is prophesied to be the 47th president of the U.S. If Wallnau’s name sounds familiar, it might be because he played a major role in fomenting disinformation about the last presidential election and was even set to speak at the Jan. 6, 2021, election denial rally in Washington that became the violent insurrection.

As Vance spoke from the stage at Wallnau’s event Saturday to a few hundred mostly middle-aged and octogenarian white people, a familiar cast of election-denying organizations operated booths on the other side of the convention hall, encouraging people to join their mailing list or offering them candy. Their presence here demonstrated the ways Wallnau’s brand of extreme Christian nationalism dovetails with election denial. After all, of what import are actually fair elections here on Earth if a candidate is predestined or prophesied from above to take office?
Story by Alex Henderson

Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has been calling for the impeachment of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, describing his wife Ginni Thomas' efforts to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election results and the gifts he has received from billionaire Harlan Crow (according to extensive reporting in Pro Publica) as especially egregious.

Most Democrats in Congress and the Biden Administration, although highly critical of the Thomases, haven't gone so far as to join AOC in calling for Justice Thomas' impeachment. But now, someone on the right — libertarian/conservative former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Virginia) — believes there is a solid case for impeaching him for "unethical" conduct.

In a September 24 post on X, formerly Twitter, Riggleman posted recent video of Trump saying that critics of the Roberts Court "should be put in jail" for "the way they talk about" the justices.
Story by Katie S. Phang and Allison Detzel

When people — and political parties — show you who they are, believe them … each and every time.

Last week, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on antisemitism and Islamophobia, Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana accused Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

After Berry, the only Muslim witness in the hearing, repeatedly denied Kennedy’s accusations — and pointed out how insulting they were — the senator went on a tirade that ended with him telling Berry to “hide [her] head in a bag.”

It was a disgusting scene and it was the latest example of something that has become part of the DNA of the GOP: what I now call Republican rage rhetoric.

We saw a similar display last week from the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who vowed to restore his anti-Muslim travel ban, during an event in Washington, D.C.:
Story by Noah Jampol

There's long been a thorn in the side of climate-conscious lawmakers and citizens.

At seemingly every turn, The Republican Attorneys General Association, a nationwide group of 28 officials, vigorously fights on behalf of fossil fuel companies against environmental regulation and compensation for damages.

In a disturbing revelation that explains the trend, the Guardian reported that RAGA is bankrolled to the tune of millions in dark money tied to Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, as well as donations from the oil and gas industry.

What's happening?
The Guardian uncovered that the dirty energy industry sent $5.8 million to RAGA over the last four years. Meanwhile, the "Leo-linked Concord Fund" pushed a staggering $18.8 million to RAGA since 2014.

RAGA uses that money to elect and reelect attorneys general who align with their policies. Once in power, these officials dutifully back their donors' causes, per the Guardian. When it comes to energy, that means shielding the fossil fuel industry from lawsuits and regulations.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a senator from Rhode Island, told the Guardian that it's a "corrupt scheme," where RAGA is "rushing in to provide taxpayer-funded legal services for their polluter funders."
By Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, CNN

CNN) — Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery, a CNN KFile investigation found.

Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a “perv.”

The comments, which Robinson denies making, predate his entry into politics and current stint as North Carolina’s lieutenant governor. They were made under a username that CNN was able to identify as Robinson by matching a litany of biographical details and a shared email address between the two.

Many of Robinson’s comments were gratuitously sexual and lewd in nature. They were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa,” a pornographic website that includes a message board. The comments were made under the username minisoldr, a moniker Robinson used frequently online.
Robinson denied the CNN report, which said he referred to himself as a "black NAZI" and expressed support for bringing back slavery more than 10 years ago.
By Adam Edelman and Alexandra Marquez

Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, vowed Thursday to remain in the race following a report that he made dozens of lewd and inflammatory comments more than 10 years ago on the message board of a pornography website.

The report, published by CNN, said Robinson, in posts to a pornographic website called Nude Africa, called himself a “black NAZI,” expressed support for bringing back slavery, said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and recounted sexually graphic stories, including one about his memory of “peeping” on women in gym showers when he was 14. The posts were made under the username “minisoldr” from 2008 to 2012, CNN reported, before Robinson, who was elected lieutenant governor in 2020, entered politics.

In a video posted to X ahead of the story’s publication, Robinson denied the report, calling it “tabloid trash.”

“Let me reassure you: The things that you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson. You know my words, you know my character, and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before,” Robinson said in the video.

“We are staying in this race, we are in it to win it, and we know that, with your help, we will,” he added.
Story by Nikki McCann Ramirez

The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a continuing resolution to keep the government funded and avoid a shutdown at the end of the month, just weeks before the November election. The vote will likely fail.

The bill ties the continued funding of the federal government to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), a piece of legislation that would make it harder for Americans to cast their ballots by requiring proof of citizenship when one registers to vote.

Packaging the two pieces of legislation together is a doomed endeavor. Still, Republicans in control of the lower chamber, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), are taking their marching orders from former President Donald Trump, who is demanding the government be shut down if the SAVE act doesn't pass.
"If Republicans don't get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form," Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social.

"Democrats are registering Illegal Voters by the TENS OF THOUSANDS, as we speak – They will be voting in the 2024 Presidential Election, and they shouldn't be allowed to," Trump claimed. "Only American Citizens should be voting in our Most Important Election in History, or any Election!"
A new report reveals how Chief Justice John Roberts tried to protect Samuel Alito as he faced backlash amid his flag scandal.
New Republic

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts knows that Justice Samuel Alito’s antics and ideology are getting out of hand—and that’s why he’s taking care to protect him from the public eye.

The New York Times reports that Roberts had initially assigned Alito to write the majority opinion in a case ruling that prosecutors overreached by charging some January 6 rioters with obstruction of justice in April. But in May, Roberts took over the opinion himself, only four days after revelations that an upside-down U.S. flag, a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement, was displayed outside Alito’s home soon after the January 6 attack.
Story by Ewan Palmer

Questions have been raised regarding U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's involvement in a ruling related to January 6 defendants in the wake of details around Chief Justice John Roberts' alleged strong-arming of cases linked to former President Donald Trump.

The New York Times reported on Sunday, based on apparent leaked memos from Roberts and other justices and interviews with unnamed court insiders, that Roberts had asked Alito in April to write the majority opinion on Fischer v. United States, before Roberts made the extremely rare move of deciding to write it himself.

In June, the nation's highest court voted 6-3 in the Fischer case that a federal charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that a defendant tried to tamper with or destroy documents. The decision meant that hundreds of Trump supporters who were charged with obstructing an official proceeding in relation to the 2021 Capitol riot are having their cases reexamined.
MSN

Chief Justice John Roberts strong-armed his fellow Supreme Court judges into allowing him the key role in cases involving Donald Trump, leaked memos reveal. The conservative judge took the lead in March’s case on whether states could remove the former president from their ballots over his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Roberts (pictured) demanded a unanimous decision from the bench according to memos leaked to the New York Times. He also took charge of the case concerning prosecution of the January 6 rioters himself from Justice Samuel Alito after his fellow conservative was embroiled in a row about his wife flying the Stars and Stripes upside down from their home. Roberts told his colleagues they should take the case after an appellate court ruled that Trump did not enjoy presidential immunity for his alleged role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

'As I read it, it says simply a former president can be prosecuted because he’s being prosecuted,' he said of the lower court's judgment. And he made no secret of the what he thought his colleagues should decide. 'I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,' he wrote in a February memo.
A memo obtained by The New York Times indicated the chief justice wanted to act quick—and decisively—on Donald Trump’s presidential immunity.
Corbin Bolies

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.
Story by Jon Passantino and Sean Lyngaas, CNN

Where did the money go?

The right-wing social media stars who were allegedly paid millions of dollars in a nefarious Russian influence operation to shape public opinion around the 2024 US presidential election are remaining mum.

Last week, the Justice Department alleged that Russian state media producers funneled nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee-based company, later determined by CNN to be Tenet Media, to create and amplify content that often featured narratives and themes supported by the Kremlin. Tenet Media boasts a slate of high-profile right-wing, pro-Trump commentators including Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and several others.

While the indictment doesn’t directly name or accuse the influencers of wrongdoing, or state that they knew at the time that the money was part of a Russian influence operation, it alleged two employees of RT, the Russian state media propaganda outlet, paid nearly $10 million to hire the “talent” and create social media videos promoting its agenda. All of the figures have said they did not know the funds originated with the Kremlin and had no idea they were being employed for the purpose of amplifying pro-Russia narratives. The influencers all say they are “victims,” and that the FBI has contacted them for voluntary interviews.
Story by Nicholas Liu

Leonard Leo, the influential right-wing activist behind an array of dark-money groups powering the conservative movement, is tired of policy seminars and self-indulgent, big-idea conferences. Now he wants to see some action by the groups he's helped bankroll to "weaponize our conservative vision" and graft it onto key national institutions — or he'll withhold the $1 billion he has stored across his money network.
Leonard Leo was architect of effort to secure conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court

The conservative activist who led the crusade to overhaul the US legal system is making a $1bn push to “crush liberal dominance” across corporate America and in the country’s news and entertainment sectors.

In a rare interview, Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightward shift on the Supreme Court under Donald Trump, said his non-profit advocacy group, the Marble Freedom Trust, was ready to confront the private sector in addition to the government.

“We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious, so we’ll direct resources to build talent and capital formation pipelines in the areas of news and entertainment, where leftwing extremism is most evident,” Leo told the Financial Times.

“Expect us to increase support for organisations that call out companies and financial institutions that bend to the woke mind virus spread by regulators and NGOs, so that they have to pay a price for putting extreme leftwing ideology ahead of consumers,” he said.

Story by Erin Mansfield, USA TODAY

The media company now alleged to have been part of a Russian election interference plot featured interviews with prominent Republicans such as a daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump, one of Trump's lawyers and a member of Congress, a USA TODAY review of its content reveals.

Tenet Media’s podcasts, broadcast on platforms such as YouTube, included appearances by Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump, who is married Donald Trump's son Eric; Rep. Brian Mast of Florida; longtime Trump lawyer Harmeet Dhillon; and former Trump national security aide Kash Patel.

Other notable Trump-supporting guests who have appeared on Tenet Media include Republican U.S. Senate nominee Kari Lake of Arizona, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who recently endorsed Trump.
Story by bmetzger@insider.com (Bryan Metzger)

Rep. Byron Donalds failed to properly disclose two years' worth of his and his wife's stock trades.
It was up to $1.6 million, including stock in companies he oversees on a House committee.
Donalds has previously spoken out in favor of banning lawmakers from trading stocks.

Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, the Florida congressman who was in the running to be former President Donald Trump's vice presidential pick, is in some hot water over his stock trades.

A spokesperson for Donalds did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the congressman's disclosures, the stocks were held in a retirement account associated with Donalds' former employer, Moran Wealth Management, a firm based in Naples, Florida. It's possible that the trades were made by someone other than Donalds, as is sometimes the case with other lawmakers, though he is still legally responsible for disclosing those trades.

Donalds also supports banning lawmakers from trading stocks, making his violation of the law all the more notable.

In March 2022, when asked about Business Insider's reporting that dozens of lawmakers and staffers had failed to disclose their stock trades in a timely fashion, Donalds said, "That's when you have to have sanctions, and the House has to get real."

Campaign Legal argued that because Donalds appeared to be aware of the STOCK Act's requirements — as many lawmakers often are not — there's reason to believe he intentionally did not disclose the trades.
Trump’s running mate rants against feminism, immigrants and Ilhan Omar in a newly unearthed podcast from 2021
Jason Wilson

Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.

The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”.

Vance also sideswiped the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a one-time Somali refugee, claiming she had shown “ingratitude” to America, and that she “would be living in a craphole” had she not moved to the US.
Story by Kia Fatahi & Emily Hodgkin

Before joining forces with Donald Trump, JD Vance made the bold proposition of booting "every civil servant in the administrative state" and filling their posts with MAGA devotees.

In a conversation with podcaster Jack Murphy in 2021, Vance - who publicly begged his mother to stop "spoiling" his children - argued: "I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice: fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people."

These remarks align with the desires harboured by the "Project 2025" crowd. Trump has kept his distance from the Project 2025 agenda, which has mooted drastic reductions to federal government size and broader executive powers; however, critics are worried this could pave the way for a more radical policy platform should Trump be re-elected.
Story by Gustaf Kilander

The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which stated that enslaved people weren’t citizens, to argue that Vice President Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for president according to the Constitution.

The group also challenged the right of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley to appear on Republican primary ballots.

The Republican group’s platform and policy document noted that “The Constitutional qualifications of Presidential eligibility” states that “No person except a natural born Citizen, shall be eligible, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
The same document included former President Donald Trump’s running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance on a list of preferred candidates for vice president.

The document and the citing of the Dred Scott decision were initially noted by lawyer Andrew Fleischman on X, formerly Twitter.

The group goes on to argue in the document that a natural-born citizen has to be born in the US to parents who are citizens when the child is born, pointing to the thinking of Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Story by Brad Reed

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) claimed on Monday that he had discovered more instances of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failing to disclose private flights that were paid for by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.

The New York Times reports that Wyden cited Customs and Border Protections records showing that "the justice and his wife, Virginia Thomas, took a round trip between Hawaii and New Zealand in November 2010 on Mr. Crow’s private jet, according to the letter. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, writing to Mr. Crow’s lawyer, demanded that he supply more information about the financial relationship between the two men."
Maya Boddie

Many Democrats, political and legal experts have warned that a second Donald Trump presidency would likely mean the end of American democracy, based on his proposed policies like mass deportation through force of the National Guard, and using the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.

In a Sunday, August 4 report published by Politico, reporter Gavin Bade highlights another aspect of a second presidency that would also be a danger to democracy — former top Trump trade official, Robert Lighthizer.

Foreign Policy columnist Edward Alden, in May, wrote an article about Lighthizer, titled, "The Man Who Would Help Trump Upend the Global Economy, asserting: "As President Donald Trump’s trade representative, he turned the United States away from six decades of support for a rules-based, multilateral trading system and toward a robustly nationalist approach."
Story by Peter Wade

Donald Trump boasted about MAGA supporters taking over Georgia's State Election Board, part of his team's efforts to corrupt future elections.

"I don't know if you've heard but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way… They're on fire, they're doing a great job," Trump said Saturday night at a rally in Atlanta.

The former president went on to name the three MAGA Republicans currently on the five-person board - Dr. Janis Johnson, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King - calling them "pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory."

According to the State Election Board's website, their charge is not fighting for "victory" for Trump. The board is "entrusted with a variety of responsibilities and authority to protect all Georgians' right to cast a ballot."
At the rally, Trump also pushed his big lie of election fraud, claiming, "I won this state twice in my opinion."

As Rolling Stone previously reported, Team Trump is behind efforts to undermine voter integrity in Georgia. His allies have been working in the state to purge voter roles and put into place policies that make it easier to challenge election results. A source close to Trump told Rolling Stone that "Georgia is our laboratory."
Opinion by Thom Hartmann

Republicans in Georgia have been champions at pioneering new ways to disenfranchise Democratic voters. Their latest scam is breathtaking.

First, the background.

When Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp was Secretary of State — the state’s top elections official — and running against Stacey Abrams for Governor in 2018, Abrams’ organization had registered 53,000 people (70% African American) to vote. Kemp put those registrations on hold so they couldn’t vote in the 2018 election, which he won by 54,723 votes.

But that was just the beginning for Kemp. By the year prior to the 2018 election he’d purged a total of 1.4 million voters from the rolls, claiming he was just removing people who’d died or moved. On a single night in July 2017 he removed half a million voters, about 8% of all registered Georgia voters, an act The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said “may represent the largest mass disenfranchisement in US history.”

Investigative reporter Greg Palast hired the company Amazon uses to verify addresses and ran the names and addresses of those 534,000 people Kemp purged that July day through their system: 334,000 of them, most Black, had neither died nor moved. But they’d sure lost their right to vote.

Then Kemp shut down 8 percent of all the polling places in Georgia just before the election, the majority — recommended as a “cost saving move” by a white consultant Kemp had hired — in Black neighborhoods. Did I mention that he “won” that election by only 54,723 votes?
Story by Carl Gibson

In the critical battleground state of Georgia, voting rights advocates are warning that a new website launched by the state's top elections official will be exploited by bad-faith groups seeking to disenfranchise voters.

USA TODAY recently reported that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger (R) is rolling out a web portal that will allow anyone to request a voter's registration be purged from the state's rolls. The Georgia Voter Registration Cancellation Portal was meant to be a tool for former residents of the Peach State to take themselves off of Georgia's list of registered voters in the event they move, or for family members to remove a deceased relative's name from the database.
Carl Gibson

On Friday, former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) gave a joint press conference at Mar-a-Lago to introduce an initiative aimed at preventing non-citizens from voting. But one Fox News host slammed that policy proposal as a red herring.

Johnson joined Trump for the press conference in the wake of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) threatening to bring a motion to vacate to the floor of the House of Representatives in protest of Johnson's bipartisan efforts to keep the federal government open. Trump made it clear that Johnson had his support, despite Greene saying on Friday that the speaker was "full of sh--" during an interview with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

During the press conference, with Trump scowling behind him, Johnson promised to introduce legislation "to require that every single person who registers to vote in a federal election must prove that they're an American citizen first."

Of course, as Punchbowl News' John Bresnahan tweeted, US residents who lack citizenship "can’t vote in federal elections [and] haven’t been able to do so for decades." During a Friday segment on Fox News' The Five, panelist Richard Fowler echoed that sentiment, casting doubt on the need for a new law on the books to ban non-citizens from voting.

"This press conference was billed as an 'election integrity' press conference," Fowler said. "In 1996 congress passed the illegal immigration reform and immigration responsibility act. That act makes it explicitly illegal for noncitizens to vote."
Story by Beth Moreton

Many precedents have been in place for years in court cases, based on the U.S. Constitution, to help give more protection to the defendant.

However, this could soon change if Chief Justice John Roberts gets his way. The Chief Justice wants to encourage the return of historical court cases so that decisions can be overturned based on constitutional protections. In short, you should be very worried.

Who Is Chief Justice John Roberts?
Chief Justice John Roberts graduated from Harvard College in 1976 with an A.B. and Harvard Law School in 1979 with a J.D. He has had a law career spanning almost 50 years.

During that time, he worked in law for various companies and areas before he was finally appointed as the Chief Justice of the United States by then-President George W. Bush in September 2005.

Precedent Is Important
When Justice Roberts was made Chief Justice in 2005, during his confirmation, he made the point that precedent is “important in promoting stability and evenhandedness.”

However, it appears that Justice Roberts’ opinion on precedent has changed in the two decades since that moment. Roberts has been crucial in overturning previous Supreme Court rulings, such as the Roe V. Wade overturn in 2022.
Story by Andrew Perez

Leonard Leo, best known as the architect of the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority, is not happy about President Joe Biden belatedly proposing reforms to rein in an increasingly lawless, right-wing policy factory.

"No conservative justice has made any decision in any big case that surprised anyone, so let's stop pretending this is about undue influence," Leo wrote in a statement blasted out to reporters. "It's about Democrats destroying a court they don't agree with."

Alex Aronson, executive director at the watchdog Court Accountability, says: "Leo's mindset goes a long way toward explaining why Americans have lost so much faith in our Supreme Court. Rather than fulfill their oaths to the Constitution and serve as neutral ‘umpires' as they pledged to do, Leo all but admits that the justices he and Trump installed have been reliable servants of the far-right agenda."
Throughout Biden's presidency, the nation's highest court has been on a rampage - ending Roe v. Wade so that states can ban abortion; rolling back climate rules; limiting protections for LGBTQ Americans; ending college affirmative action policies; invalidating common gun regulations; allowing companies to provide thank-you payments to corrupt politicians; and providing Donald Trump sweeping immunity from prosecution.

The Supreme Court has continued on this path amid an unprecedented ethics crisis, as reporters have exposed some of the justices for accepting and failing to disclose luxury gifts - private jet flights, superyacht trips, and more - from conservative donors.
Story by Gustaf Kilander

Former President Donald Trump is facing outrage after appearing to suggest that he would end elections in the US if he’s re-elected while speaking to a Christian audience.

Towards the end of his speech at the Believers Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida on Friday, Trump said, “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore … You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

Many Democrats interpreted the comments as Trump being prepared to put an end to American democracy.

California Representative Adam Schiff, a Senate candidate in the fall, shared a clip on X of Trump’s comments: “This year democracy is on the ballot, and if we are to save it, we must vote against authoritarianism. Here Trump helpfully reminds us that the alternative is never having the chance to vote again.”
“This. Is. Terrifying. We cannot let this be the case,” Washington Representative and the chair of the progressive caucus Pramila Jayapal said on the platform.

“The only way ‘you won’t have to vote anymore’ is if Donald Trump becomes a dictator,” New York Representative Dan Goldman said.
Donald J. Trump:
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