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Joe Biden Endorses Kamala Harris: Could She Beat Donald Trump? - Revista Merca2.0 | | In a separate post on his personal social media accounts, Biden voiced his full support for Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee
President Joe Biden officially endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for the 2024 presidential election. This decision comes amidst weeks of speculation regarding Biden's ability to continue serving due to concerns over his age and mental acuity.
Biden's Decision to Step Down
In a heartfelt letter posted on his social media, Biden expressed his decision not to seek re-election. "Although my intention has been to run for re-election, I believe that the best course of action for my party and the country is to step aside and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term," Biden stated. He promised to provide more details about his decision later this week.
Biden's announcement included a message of deep gratitude towards his campaign team, highlighting the pivotal role of Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he described as an "extraordinary partner in this work."
In a separate post on his personal social media accounts, Biden voiced his full support for Harris as the Democratic nominee. He wrote:
"My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it's been the best decision I've made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats -- it's time to come together and beat Trump. Let's do this."
With Biden's endorsement, Harris now stands as a prominent figure to potentially face Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, in the upcoming election. Recent surveys shed light on the Democratic base's view of Harris. According to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, approximately 6 out of 10 Democrats believe Harris would perform well in the nation's highest office. However, 2 out of 10 Democrats are skeptical, and another 2 out of 10 feel they lack enough information to form an opinion.
A recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS indicated that three-quarters of U.S. voters think the Democratic Party would have a better chance of holding the presidency in 2024 with someone other than Biden as the candidate. The same poll revealed a tight race between Trump and Harris, with 47% of registered voters supporting Trump and 45% backing Harris, a difference within the margin of error.
Harris' performance in the hypothetical matchups against Trump shows promise, particularly among women and independent voters. CNN's polling data highlighted that 50% of female voters preferred Harris over Trump, compared to 44% for Biden against Trump. Among independents, 43% favored Harris, while only 34% supported Biden.
However, Harris faces significant competition within her party. Other potential Democratic candidates like California Governor Gavin Newsom, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer also trail Trump in voter support, reflecting the steep challenge ahead.
As the election season progresses, the Democratic Party will need to unify behind Harris and leverage her strengths to overcome the formidable opposition posed by Trump. The coming months will be crucial in determining whether Harris can galvanize the Democratic base and appeal to undecided voters, potentially leading to a historic victory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Senior Democrats, including Nadler, Call for Biden To Drop Out | Rep. Jerry Nadler is one of four senior House Democrats who are now calling for President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 election.
Politico reports that Nadler, Mark Takano, Joe Morelle and Adam Smith are now calling for Biden to withdraw.
The four senior politicians made their position clear during a phone call with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
At present, nine House Democrats have voiced their opposition to Biden running for re-election in November. In addition to Nadler, Takano, Morelle and Smith, Lloyd Doggett, Raul Grijalva, Seth Moulton, Mike Quigley and Angie Craig have also spoken out. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Huffpost Calls For Biden Campaign to Fool Public With AI Videos That Make Sleepy Joe Look Younger & Healthy | "How many times have we heard voters and pundits alike gripe that 'Biden would be the perfect candidate if he were just 10 years younger?' With modern technology, this exact deliverable is possible."
An op-ed published by Huffpost calls on the Biden campaign to launch a disinformation effort by disseminating AI-enhanced videos that make Joe Biden look younger and healthier.
In the article titled, "It's Time For The Biden Campaign To Embrace AI", Kaivan Shroff argues that a potential Trump victory is so great that the Biden campaign should push fake content to dupe the public into supporting Biden, claiming refusing to do so "is akin to entering the boxing ring with one hand tied behind your back."
"The stakes of the 2024 presidential election cannot be overstated. With Donald Trump promising to act as a dictator 'on day one,' it is not hyperbolic to say the future of American democracy hangs in the balance," Shroff wrote Wednesday.
"Against this backdrop, the Biden campaign faces a critical challenge: conveying a strong and effective image of President Joe Biden to a population and media ecosystem increasingly focused on optics over substance. Given the president's concerning performance last week, it's time for the Biden campaign to consider leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to effectively reach the voting public."
"Modern technology offers a clear solution. AI can be used to polish how the president comes across, allowing voters to focus on his substance. How many times have we heard voters and pundits alike gripe that 'Biden would be the perfect candidate if he were just 10 years younger?' With modern technology, this exact deliverable is possible."
Shroff went on to justify the "dishonest and deceptive" practice of AI manipulation for political purposes, arguing the current media environment is no better, citing the recent videos of Biden wandering around and freezing up that the media falsely dubbed as "cheapfakes."
"Reasonably, some may challenge the use of AI as dishonest and deceptive, but the current information ecosystem is arguably no better. It may even be worse," he wrote. "Media outlets like the New York Post have engaged in sharing deceptively cropped viral clips of the president, dubbed 'cheapfakes,' to make him appear confused or weak."
Shroff went on to complain about the unfettered information landscape facilitated by Elon Musk's X amid the constellation of social media platforms that have rigorous censorship policies.
"Social media outlets like Instagram and TikTok have cracked down on political content, while rightwing billionaire Elon Musk has used Twitter to amplify false information about the election and boost Republicans. Even once great institutions like The Washington Post have transitioned into Murdoch-style tabloids," he wrote.
"We must ask the question, are augmented AI videos that present Biden in his best form -- while sharing honest and accurate information -- really more socially damaging than our information ecosystem's current realities? I think not."
Shroff concluded by saying Trump's probability of retaking the White House is enough justification to leverage the use of AI to improve Biden's image by any means necessary.
Until now, it has been almost taken as a given that using AI renderings of the president would violate some ethical baseline of campaigning. In an ideal world that may be so. Yet, what last week's debate made clear is just how far from any such ideal our current reality is. The greatest moral and ethical imperative for those who care about American democracy should be keeping the man who tried to overthrow it as far away from the White House as possible.
Equivocating over the use of AI will do nothing to stop its abuse and misuse should Republicans regain power this November. It is incumbent upon the Biden campaign to use every tool available to make sure the president's reelection bid is successful. Instead of a new candidate, AI allows Democrats to address the main vulnerabilities of our current standard bearer while embracing an inevitability of modern politics.
The Democrats have become so desperate to prop up Joe Biden that they're openly scheming how to gaslight the American people even harder going into the presidential election.
After all, the Democrats already tried every other ridiculous lie in the book to excuse Biden's disastrous debate performance, such as that he had jet lag, and that he had a cold. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Celebrity News | Entertainment News | TMZ.com - Page 2 | Common has a common view on the 2024 presidential election -- he's not happy with the choices.
We got the rapper in New York City on Thursday and our photog asked about celebs like George Clooney voicing concerns about President Biden's chances of beating Donald Trump.
Common -- who campaigned for fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama back in the day and Biden in 2020 -- admits he's disheartened about the nominees for president but says that's not an excuse to sit out this election cycle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Election 2024 live updates: Harris and Trump both on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania | Nancy Pelosi's phone lit up the night of President Joe Biden's debate performance with a question that has yet to be fully resolved: Now what?
The uproar that has shaken the 2024 election, and siphoned attention away from Trump and his MAGA agenda, leaves Democrats at a painful standstill, at odds over whether to stick with Biden as their presumptive nominee or press on with the once-unthinkable option of trying to persuade the president to end his reelection campaign.
Pelosi as the former House speaker, along with Rep. Jim Clyburn, a veteran leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, are playing oversized roles as generational allies of the 81-year-old president but also trusted voices from Capitol Hill who can bring frank concerns to Biden. Their work, in public and private, is giving space to the current congressional leadership headed by House Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to navigate the Biden question and the party's political future. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
The Gunman and the Would-be Dictator | Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others.
When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump's sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.
After authorities apprehended a right-wing extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted "lock her up." Trump laughed and replied, "Lock them all up."
Fascism feasts on violence. In the months since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election -- many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence -- Trump has championed the invaders and would-be kidnappers and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.
Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well. The attempted murder of Trump -- and the killing of a person nearby -- is a horror and outrage. More will be learned about the man who committed this appalling act, and who was killed by the Secret Service. Whatever his mania or motive, the only important thing about him is the law-enforcement mistake that allowed him to bring a deadly weapon so close to a campaign event and gain a sight line of the presidential candidate. His name should otherwise be erased and forgotten.
It is sadly incorrect to say, as so many have, that political violence "has no place" in American society. Assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have stained every page of American political history. That has remained true to the present day. In 2016, and even more in 2020, Trump supporters brought weapons to intimidate opponents and vote-counters. Trump and his supporters envision a new place for violence, as their defining political message in the election of 2024.
Fascist movements are secular religions. Like all religions, they offer martyrs as their proof of truth. The Mussolini movement in Italy built imposing monuments to its fallen comrades. The Trump movement now improves on that: the leader himself will be the martyr-in-chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance.
Christopher R. Browning: A new kind of fascism
The 2024 election was already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution. To date, Trump has led only a minority of U.S. voters, but that minority's passion and audacity have offset what it lacks in numbers. After the shooting, Trump and his backers hope to use the iconography of a bloody ear and face, raised fist, and call to "Fight!" to summon waverers to their cause of installing Trump as an anticonstitutional ruler, exempted from ordinary law by his allies on the Supreme Court.
Other societies have backslid to authoritarianism because of some extraordinary crisis: economic depression, hyper-inflation, military defeat, civil strife. In 2024, U.S. troops are nowhere at war. The American economy is booming, providing spectacular and widely shared prosperity. A brief spasm of mild post-pandemic inflation has been overcome. Indicators of social health have abruptly turned positive since Trump left office after years of deterioration during Trump's term. Crime and fatal drug overdoses are declining in 2024; marriages and births are rising. Even the country's problems indirectly confirm the country's success: Migrants are crossing the border in the hundreds of thousands because they know, even if Americans don't, that the U.S. job market is among the hottest on earth.
Yet, despite all of this success, Americans are considering a form of self-harm that in other countries has typically followed the darkest national failures: letting the author of a failed coup d'état return to office to try again.
One reason this self-harm is nearing consummation is that American society is poorly prepared to understand and respond to radical challenges, once those challenges gain a certain mass. For nearly a century, "radical" in U.S. politics has usually meant "fringe": Communists, Ku Kluxers, Black Panthers, Branch Davidians, Islamist jihadists. Radicals could be marginalized by the weight of the great American consensus that stretches from social democrats to business conservatives. Sometimes, a Joe McCarthy or a George Wallace would throw a scare into that mighty consensus, but in the past such challengers rarely formed stable coalitions with accepted stakeholders in society. Never gaining an enduring grip on the institutions of state, they flared up and burned out.
Trump is different. His abuses have been ratified by powerful constituencies. He has conquered and colonized one of the two major parties. He has defeated -- or is on the way to defeating -- every impeachment and prosecution to hold him to account for his frauds and crimes. He has assembled a mass following that is larger, more permanent, and more national in reach than any previous American demagogue. He has dominated the scene for nine years already, and he and his supporters hope they can use yesterday's appalling event to extend the Trump era to the end of his life and beyond.
The American political and social system cannot treat such a person as an alien. It inevitably accommodates and naturalizes him. His counselors, even the thugs and felons, join the point-counterpoint dialogue at the summit of the American elite. President Joe Biden nearly wrecked his campaign because he felt obliged to meet Trump in debate. How could Biden have done otherwise? Trump is the three-time nominee of the Republican Party; it's awkward and strange to treat him as an insurrectionist against the American state -- though that's what Trump was and is.
David Frum: Biden's heartbreaking press conference
The despicable shooting at Trump, which also caused death and injury to others, now secures his undeserved position as a partner in the protective rituals of the democracy he despises. The appropriate expressions of dismay and condemnation from every leading voice in American life have the additional effect of habituating Americans to Trump's legitimacy. In the face of such an outrage, the familiar and proper practice is to stress unity, to proclaim that Americans have more in common than divides them. Those soothing words, true in the past, are less true now.
Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.
The Republican National Convention that opens this week will welcome to its stage apologists for Vladimir Putin's Russia and its aggression against U.S. allies. Trump's own infatuation with Russia and other dictatorships has not dimmed even slightly with age or experience. Yet all of these urgent and necessary truths must now be subdued to the ritual invocation of "thoughts and prayers" for someone who never gave a thought or uttered a prayer for any of the victims of his own many incitements to bloodshed. The president who used his office to champion the rights of dangerous people to own military-type weapons was grazed by a bullet from one such assault rifle.
Conventional phrases and polite hypocrisy fill a useful function in social life. We say, "Thank you for your service" both to the decorated hero and to the veteran who barely escaped dishonorable discharge. It's easier than deciphering which was which. We wish "Happy New Year!" even when we dread the months ahead.
Adrienne LaFrance: Thoughts, prayers, and Facebook rants aren't enough
But conventional phrases don't go unheard. They carry meanings, meanings no less powerful for being rote and reflexive. In rightly denouncing violence, we are extending an implicit pardon to the most violent person in contemporary U.S. politics. In asserting unity, we are absolving a man who seeks power through the humiliation and subordination of disdained others.
Those conventional phrases are inscribing Trump into a place in American life he should have forfeited beyond redemption on January 6, 2021. All decent people welcome the sparing of his life. Trump's reckoning should be with the orderly process of law, not with the bloodshed he rejoiced in when it befell others. He and his allies will exploit a gunman's vicious criminality as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable -- and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet's trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Biden to push for constitutional amendment next week to reverse Trump immunity decision: report | GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley reacts to former President Trump's sentencing being delayed until September 18 following the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity on 'The Story.'
President Biden is set to propose several changes to the U.S. Constitution on Monday to make good on his promise to reform the Supreme Court, according to a report.
In a reversal from the president's longstanding resistance to changes to the high court, Biden said on Wednesday that Supreme Court reform would be among his top priorities for the remainder of his term in office. Biden announced Sunday that he would not seek re-election after mounting pressure from Democratic Party officials who asked him to step aside after his widely panned debate performance in June.
The president is expected to propose setting term limits for justices on the Supreme Court, which would require a constitutional amendment, and establishing an enforceable code of ethics, which could be enacted by Congress, Politico reported.
BIDEN TO ANNOUNCE SUPPORT FOR MAJOR CHANGES TO SUPREME COURT AMID OUTRAGE OVER RECENT DECISIONS: REPORT
Biden is also likely to voice support for a constitutional amendment that would limit immunity for presidents and certain other officeholders after the court ruled in July that presidents cannot be prosecuted for "official acts" during their time in office. The court's ruling stemmed from a case concerning former President Trump.
The framers of the Constitution intentionally made it difficult to amend. A two-thirds majority of both the House and the Senate needs to pass any proposed amendment, which is then sent to the states for ratification. It must be approved by three-fourths -- 38 -- of the 50 states to become the supreme law of the land.
"This decision today has continued the court's attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman's right to choose, to today's decision that undermines the rule of law of this nation," Biden said in public remarks after the court handed down its opinion.
TRUMP IMMUNITY CASE: SUPREME COURT RULES EX-PRESIDENTS HAVE SUBSTANTIAL PROTECTION FROM PROSECUTION
Politico reported the specifics of the proposal have not been finalized and could still change. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden said Supreme Court reform is "critical to our democracy" in an Oval Office address Wednesday explaining his decision to drop out of the 2024 election.
HARRIS VS. TRUMP: 100 DAYS FROM ELECTION, IT'S A DRAMATICALLY ALTERED PRESIDENTIAL RACE
"Over the next six months, I'll be focused on doing my job as president. That means I'll continue to lower costs for hard-working families, grow our economy. I'll keep defending our personal freedoms and our civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose. I'll keep calling out hate and extremism, make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period. I'm going to keep speaking out to protect our kids from gun violence, our planet from climate crisis, is the existential threat," Biden said.
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"And I will keep fighting for my for my cancer moonshot, so we can end cancer as we know it because we can do it. And I'm going to call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy, Supreme Court reform. You know, I will keep working to ensure America remains strong and secure and the leader of the free world."
Fox News Digital's Louis Casiano contributed to this report. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
How an Elon Musk PAC is using voter data to help Trump beat Harris in 2024 election | The ad shows a young man lying in bed late at night when someone else texts him, "Hey you need to vote," and then sends the man a video of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The man can hear the gunshots and people screaming in the background.
As Trump is rushed off stage with blood pouring down his face, the man watching the video types in response, "This is out of control. How do I start?"
The ad then displays a website for a group called America PAC.
The website says it will help the viewer register to vote. But once a user clicks "Register to Vote," the experience he or she will have can be very different, depending on where they live.
If a user lives in a state that is not considered competitive in the presidential election, like California or Wyoming for example, they'll be prompted to enter their email addresses and zip code and then directed quickly to a voter registration page for their state, or back to the original sign up section.
But for users who enter a zip code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.
Rather than be directed to their state's voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cell phone number, and age.
If they agree to submit all that, the system still does not steer them to a voter registration page. Instead, it shows them a "thank you" page.
So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.
Specifically, a political action committee created by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one aimed at giving the Republican presidential nominee Trump an advantage in his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, the de facto Democratic nominee.
"I have created a PAC, or a super PAC ... the America PAC," Musk said in a recent interview.
Musk also owns the social media platform X, and has a net worth of over $235 billion, according to Forbes.
The combination of owning a social media company that gives him an enormous platform to push his political views, and creating a PAC with effectively unlimited resources, has made Musk, for the first time, a major force in an American presidential election. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Netflix's Reed Hastings Backs Kamala Harris With $7M Donation | Reed Hastings has come out big for Kamala Harris, cutting the vice president's 2024 election campaign a check for $7 million.
The Netflix co-founder and executive chairman revealed the massive donation to the tech-focused site The Information on Tuesday. "After the depressing debate, we are in the game again," Hastings told The Information. He added that it was the largest donation he had ever given to a single candidate.
Earlier this month, in the aftermath of Joe Biden's disastrous first presidential debate performance, Hastings went public with his frustrations with the president running for re-election. "Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous," Hastings told the New York Times.
Hastings' comments at the time were part of a growing chorus from big Democrat donors, particularly those from Hollywood, who called on Biden to step aside. Per NYT, Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, have donated more than $20 million to the Democratic Party in recent years.
On Tuesday, Hastings tweeted, "Congrats to Kamala Harris -- now it is time to win."
The Information reported that Hastings donated to a Harris-linked super PAC on the recommendation of billionaire venture capitalist and fellow Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman.
Since Biden revealed his shock decision to end his re-election campaign, Democrat power brokers, donors and supporters have coalesced around Harris, who secured the majority of delegates on Monday to officially become the party's nominee for president.
After an outpouring of enthusiasm, in less than a week, the Washington Post reported that Harris had raised over a record $250 million for her campaign in just over two days. The Hollywood Reporter revealed earlier this week that the news of Biden stepping aside in favor of Harris had energized Hollywood donors, who were lining up to shower millions on the former California senator. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Vice President Kamala Harris on Being 'Momala' | Vice President Kamala Harris was sworn into office in 2020 beside her running mate, Joe Biden. Now, as the 2024 election approaches, she could be the potential Democratic nominee following Biden's announcement he is stepping down from his campaign. In 2019, she delved into another important role in a piece for ELLE.com, writing about being a stepmom to her husband Doug Emhoff's children, Cole and Ella. In honor of Mother's Day, Vice President Harris writes about what it's like to be a stepmom -- or, as her kids call her "Momala."
When I met Doug, the man who would become my husband, I also met a man who was a divorced father of two children, Cole and Ella, named after John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald. As a child of divorce, I knew how hard it could be when your parents start to date other people. And I was determined not to insert myself in their lives until Doug and I had established we were in this for the long haul. Children need consistency; I didn't want to insert myself into their lives as a temporary fixture because I didn't want to disappoint them. There's nothing worse than disappointing a child.
So, we took it slow, and Doug and I put a lot of thought into when and how I would first meet the kids. And that meant waiting. As we waited, anticipation grew. When the day finally came, I had butterflies in my stomach. The plan was to go to a seafood hut off the Pacific Coast Highway called the Reel Inn, a favorite of the kids.
On my way to meet Doug, I picked up a tin of cookies and tied a ribbon in a bow around them. I took a few deep breaths. I was excited, and I was nervous. I rehearsed what I would say. Would the kids think the cookies were really nice or really weird? Was the ribbon too much? (The ribbon was probably a little extra, but over the years Cole and Ella have spared me by not telling me that.)
Cole and Ella could not have been more welcoming. They are brilliant, talented, funny kids who have grown to be remarkable adults. I was already hooked on Doug, but I believe it was Cole and Ella who reeled me in.
To know Cole and Ella is to know that their mother Kerstin is an incredible mother. Kerstin and I hit it off ourselves and are dear friends. She and I became a duo of cheerleaders in the bleachers at Ella's swim meets and basketball games, often to Ella's embarrassment. We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.
A few years later when Doug and I got married, Cole, Ella, and I agreed that we didn't like the term "stepmom." Instead they came up with the name "Momala."
Our time as a family is Sunday dinner. We come together, all of us around the table, and over time we've fallen into our roles. Cole sets the table and picks the music, Ella makes beautiful desserts, Doug acts as my sous-chef, and I cook.
Flash forward two years -- and it truly felt like a flash -- I was being sworn into the United States Senate. Cole had already graduated and was off at college, but Ella was just entering her senior year of high school in Los Angeles. This new job meant that I would be splitting time between California and Washington, D.C., and the hardest part was going to be being away from my Ella. I knew I was inevitably going to miss more than a few swim meets.
And as you might guess, it ended up being more than swim meets.
On June 8, 2017, FBI Director James Comey was asked to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee about his firing and the Russia investigation. It was the same day as Ella's high school graduation, a scheduling conflict that I was acutely aware of, but that the Senate Intelligence Committee -- and for that matter the rest of the country -- was not.
I agonized over the scheduling conflict and ultimately took a deep breath and called Ella from D.C. She could not have been more understanding when I told her I wouldn't be able to make it back in time, but I still felt awful about it.
I sought the advice of my female colleagues in the Senate. And it was Maggie Hassan, the senator from New Hampshire, who offered me some sage wisdom. "Our kids love us for who we are and the sacrifices we make," she said. "They get it."
I believe you don't have to be a U.S. Senator or a candidate for President of the United States for that to ring true. Time is precious, and so many of us understand the struggle to seek balance.
I ended up missing the graduation ceremony during the day but made it home in time for our time: Family dinner that night.
And Maggie was right. Fortunately for me, both Ella and Cole do get it. They are my endless source of love and pure joy. I am so thankful to Doug, to Kerstin, and most of all, to Ella and Cole. And as our family embarks together on this new journey -- one that has taken me to South Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Nevada, and Michigan in the last few weeks alone -- I can say one thing with certainty, my heart wouldn't be whole, nor my life full, without them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Trump Tells Christians 'You Won't Have to Vote Anymore' If He's Elected | Donald Trump, after lamenting that conservative Christians are not "big voters," urged the religious right to turn out for him "just this time."
In the closing minutes of his speech to a gathering of religious conservatives on Friday night, former President Donald J. Trump told Christians that if they voted him into office in November, they would never need to vote again.
"Christians, get out and vote. Just this time," he said at The Believers' Summit, an event hosted by the conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action, in West Palm Beach, Fla. "You won't have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it'll be fixed, it'll be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians."
Mr. Trump, who never made a particular display of religious observance before entering politics, continued: "I love you, Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, 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."
Mr. Trump's comments came at the end of a nearly hourlong speech in which he appealed to religious conservatives by promising to defend them from perceived threats from the left. Earlier in his remarks, he lamented that conservative Christians do not vote in large numbers, a complaint he had made repeatedly on the trail.
"They don't vote like they should," Mr. Trump said of Christians. "They're not big voters."
Mr. Trump's suggestion that Christians would not have to vote again if he is elected quickly spread across social media. Some argued that it was a threat that the 2024 election could be the nation's last if he were to win and claimed it was further evidence of an authoritarian, anti-democratic bent he has displayed throughout his political candidacy.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify Mr. Trump's intent. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Trump tells Christians 'you won't have to vote anymore' if he's elected | In the closing minutes of his speech to a gathering of religious conservatives Friday night, former President Donald Trump told Christians that if they voted him into office in November, they would never need to vote again.
"Christians, get out and vote. Just this time," he said at The Believers' Summit, an event hosted by conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action, in West Palm Beach, Florida. "You won't have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it'll be fixed, it'll be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians."
Trump, who never made a particular display of religious observance before entering politics, continued: "I love you, Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, 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."
Trump's comments came at the end of a nearly hourlong speech in which he appealed to religious conservatives by promising to defend them from perceived threats from the left. Earlier in his remarks, he lamented that conservative Christians do not vote in large numbers, a complaint he had made repeatedly on the trail.
"They don't vote like they should," Trump said of Christians. "They're not big voters."
Trump's suggestion that Christians would not have to vote again if he is elected quickly spread across social media. Some argued that it was a threat that the 2024 election could be the nation's last if he were to win and claimed it was further evidence of an authoritarian, anti-democratic bent he has displayed throughout his political candidacy.
Asked to clarify Trump's intent, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for his campaign, said in a statement: "President Trump was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt."
The former president -- who continues to falsely insist the 2020 election was rigged, a claim that inspired some of his supporters to storm the Capitol in a bid to keep him in power in 2021 -- has raised alarm from Democrats and some Republicans. He has compared his political opponents to "vermin"; said he would have a prosecutor investigate President Joe Biden and his family; and framed his campaign as one of retribution.
James Singer, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, criticized Trump in a statement, pointing to the Capitol attack and accusing him of an "assault" on democracy.
"After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results," Singer said. "This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins, and the termination of the Constitution to empower him to be a dictator to enact his dangerous Project 2025 agenda on America."
Since his 2020 loss, Trump, who often praises strongmen leaders on the trail, has further embraced a brand of conservatism that experts on autocracy have said veers toward totalitarian.
Trump provoked further outcry when, in an interview with Sean Hannity, he said he would not categorically dismiss concerns that he might abuse presidential power but instead said he would not be a dictator "other than Day One."
Trump added: "We're closing the border. And we're drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I'm not a dictator."
Trump and his allies have long dismissed the criticism as alarmist political attacks from liberals. They argue that Democrats have been anti-democratic, labeling the criminal cases brought against Trump as an effort to weaponize the justice system.
The Harris campaign -- and the Biden campaign before that -- have consistently attacked Trump as a threat to democracy. More recently, Democrats and their allies have highlighted Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals developed by a group that includes former Trump advisers and that would bring about a radical shift to the federal government.
Trump himself was not behind Project 2025, and he has repeatedly tried to distance himself from it. But The New York Times has reported on his plans for a second term, which would include casting aside the norm that gives the Justice Department independence from the White House; appointing ideologically aligned lawyers who would be less resistant to Trump's policies; and a vastly expanded crackdown on immigration that would involve scouring the country for immigrants living in the U.S. without legal permission and deporting millions of people annually. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Google feature omits search results for failed Trump assassination, big tech accused of election manipulation | Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., provides insight on growing fears over the technology on 'The Evening Edit.'
Google users searching for the attempted assassination of former President Trump were miffed when the desired results failed to populate on the search engine.
Instead, the website autocomplete feature omitted the results of the July 13 shooting, drawing criticism from social media users who accused the big tech giant of trying to influence the presidential election.
Screenshots from Google instead showed reccommended search results of the failed assassination of Ronald Reagan and the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, whose death sparked World War I, the shooting of Bob Marley and the failed attempt on former President Gerald Ford.
META ADDING AI DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENT FOR 2024 ELECTION ADS
Even the keywords "Trump assassination attempt" yielded no additional terms from Google, according to users.
"Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris," Donald Trump Jr., wrote on X. "We all know this is intentional election interference from Google. Truly despicable."
A Google spokesperson told FOX Business that there was no "manual action taken on these predictions."
"Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring," the spokesperson said. "We're working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date."
GOOGLE TO REQUIRE POLITICAL ADS TO DISCLOSE USE OF AI DURING 2024 ELECTION CYCLE
The company spokesperson said the autocomplete feature is "just a tool to help people save time" and they can still search for anything they want.
"Following this terrible act, people turned to Google to find high quality information - we connected them with helpful results, and will continue to do so," the company said.
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Big tech companies have been accused by conservatives in the past of silencing conservative voices and omitting search results harmful to Democratic figures. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
What did White House reporters know and when did they know it? | What did reporters who cover the White House know, and when did they know it?
As President Biden lurches toward a withdrawal from the 2024 election that seems likelier by the hour, the question of the media's role in hiding his mental decline is taking center stage.
The greatest loser from Biden's catastrophic meltdown during his debate last week with Donald Trump is not Biden himself.
GREG GUTFELD: MEDIA'S SHOCK OVER BIDEN'S DEBATE PERFORMANCE SEEMS LIKE ANOTHER COVER-UP
Somewhere deep inside, Biden may actually be relieved that he may soon be free of the obligation to perform (or pretend to perform) the world's most important job.
No, the greatest loser is the media, specifically elite news organizations like the New York Times that have teams of reporters covering the White House. These teams either entirely missed Biden's sharp cognitive decline - or, worse, actively covered it up.
Either way, a reckoning for the way media outlets have turned into spear-carriers for the Democratic Party may be coming. I hope it will be. It is long overdue.
On Thursday afternoon, New York magazine published a long article about Biden's decline by Olivia Nuzzi, a Washington correspondent who is its top reporter. Nuzzi wrote in the piece, headlined "The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden," that top Democrats had talked about Biden's worsening memory and cognitive problems at least since January.
"Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day?" But the worriers did not want to talk publicly, Nuzzi said. "They were scared and horrified."
Okay. Those folks want Biden to be president. Their allegiance is to him, not the truth. Thus, the conspiracy. And Nuzzi wrote she could not get these high-ranking Democrats on the record - though it is not clear how hard she tried.
Then, late in the piece, Nuzzi made an extraordinary admission - one whose importance she seems not to have recognized.
She, too, had seen Biden's decline up close. So had much of the Washington press corps.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE ANSWERS POINT-BLANK IF BIDEN SUFFERS FROM DEMENTIA AFTER DISASTROUS DEBATE
As hard as Biden's courtiers try to protect Biden, they cannot keep him from every public interaction. The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is Washington's premier annual social event, its so-called "nerd prom."
Nuzzi met Biden, whom she had covered closely and extensively during the 2020 campaign, at a photo session and reception before the dinner. Here is how she describes the encounter:
My heart stopped as I extended my hand to greet the president. I tried to make eye contact, but it was like his eyes, though open, were not on... I said "hello." His sweet smile stayed frozen. He spoke very slowly and in a very soft voice. "And what's your name?" he asked.
Exiting the room after the photo, the group of reporters -- not instigated by me, I should note -- made guesses about how dead he appeared to be, percentage wise. "Forty percent?" one of them asked.
Try to wrap your head around what happened that night - April 27, 2024, exactly two months before Joe Biden's infirmities exploded for the world to see.
The reporters who cover the president, who are the eyes and ears of the world on a man who controls a nuclear arsenal capable of killing billions of people, saw his cognitive decline face-to-face.
They didn't write about what they had seen. They didn't investigate it.
They joked about it. With each other. Privately. Nuzzi and the rest were part of the "conspiracy of silence" as much as any Democratic donor.
And in June, when even the most tightly controlled public events could not hide Biden's infirmities, they wrote of "cheap fakes" (meaning, accurate and real videos) and "misinformation." Only now that the world knows have they turned on Biden - viciously, as I wrote Wednesday.
Every last one of them should be ashamed. And wondering how they allowed their Democratic partisanship and hatred for Donald Trump and in-group thinking to overcome their most basic instincts to chase the truth and give it to the readers and viewers who pay their bills.
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I almost died working as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times in Iraq 20 years ago. That's not an exaggeration. I cannot believe what the Times and the rest of the elite media have become. I am heartbroken today.
This is the last and greatest in a series of media catastrophes over the last several years. They all have in common an unwillingness to admit, much less investigate, hard truths that Democrats find unpleasant.
If it does not provoke a reckoning, nothing will. And places like the Times will lose whatever shreds of credibility they have left. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
55 Things to Know About J.D. Vance, Trump's VP Pick | That is the question that has dogged the 39-year-old senator from Ohio along his peculiar path to power, which began in 2016 with the publication of his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy and
culminated this week when Donald Trump selected him as a running mate for the 2024 election.
During those eight years, Vance has undergone a dramatic -- and, in the eyes of his critics, highly dubious -- political transformation: from blue-collar bard and self-described "Never Trump" conservative to hard-edged MAGA loyalist and dogged defender of the former president. Vance says he's had a genuine change of heart about Trump; his critics say he's cynically molded himself to the times.
Now, Vance is stepping into a role that has at times seemed un-fillable: the political partner to a man who considers himself to be politically peerless. In the Senate, Vance has cultivated a dual identity as key Trump ally and leader of the GOP's populist-national wing. But who will he be as a vice-presidential candidate?
Here -- culled from his memoir, his writing and public remarks, his voluminous tweets and an extensive series of interviews he conducted with POLITICO Magazine earlier this year -- are some clues.
1.
"I'll be the first to admit that I've accomplished nothing great in my life," Vance wrote in the introduction to Hillbilly Elegy, his best-selling 2016 memoir about his life growing up in a working-class family in post-industrial Ohio. "I am not a senator, a governor, or a former cabinet secretary. I haven't started a billion-dollar company or a world-changing non-profit."
2.
In 2015, two years after graduating from Yale Law School, Vance joined Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm run by the silicon-valley scion Peter Thiel.
3.
In 2016, he announced his plans to move back to Ohio from California to start Our Ohio Renewal, a nonprofit dedicated to "mak[ing] it easier for disadvantaged children to achieve their dreams."
4.
In November 2022, he was elected to the United States Senate from Ohio with the help of over $10 million in donations from Thiel. It was his first public office.
Reflecting on his first encounter with Thiel in 2011, Vance wrote: "[Thiel] articulated a feeling ... that I was obsessed with achievement in [itself] not as an end to something meaningful, but to win a social competition. My worry that I had prioritized striving over character took on a heightened significance: striving for what?"
7.
He was born James Donald Bowman on Aug. 2, 1984, in Middletown, Ohio, an industrial city 30 miles north of Cincinnati and 20 miles south of Dayton.
8.
His maternal grandparents, Jim and Bonnie Vance -- known as "Papaw "and "Mamaw" -- moved to Middletown in the late 1940s from Jackson, Kentucky, a holler in the heart of southeastern Kentucky's coal region. Jim was 16; Bonnie was 13 -- and pregnant with Jim's child. They were unmarried at the time.
9.
Vance is descended from "hillbilly royalty" on his father's side: His grandfather's distant cousin -- also named Jim Vance -- married into the Hatfield family and is rumored to have committed the murder that instigated the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud.
10.
Vance's biological parents, Donald Bowman and Bev Vance, divorced when he was a toddler. He was later adopted by his mother's new husband, Bob Hamel, and changed his name to James David Hamel. The name change preserved his nickname, J.D.
11.
Bev and Bob later divorced, and Bev struggled with drug addiction. Vance was raised primarily by his grandparents -- who were, he wrote in Hillbilly Elegy, "without question or qualification, the best things that ever happened to me."
12.
Mamaw and Papaw were union Democrats (except in 1984, when Papaw voted for Ronald Reagan). In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance described their political outlook as: "All politicians might be crooks, but if there were any exceptions, they were undoubtedly members of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal coalition."
13.
Growing up, Vance spent his summer vacations visiting his great-grandmother and extended family in Jackson. "I always distinguished 'my address' from 'my home,'" he wrote in Hillbilly Elegy. "My address was where I spent most of my time with my mother and sister, wherever that might be. But my home never changed: my great-grandmother's house, in the holler, in Jackson, Kentucky."
14.
"To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart," he wrote in Hillbilly Elegy. This Scots-Irish legacy entailed "many good traits ... but also many bad ones. We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether the difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most importantly, how they talk."
15.
After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in Iraq as a corporal with the Public Affairs section of the 2 Marine Aircraft Wing. "I served my country honorably, and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to -- that the promises of the foreign policy establishment were a complete joke," he has said.
16.
He graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in political science and philosophy, before enrolling at Yale Law School in 2010.
17.
While at Yale, he attended a talk by Thiel about technological stagnation and the decline of American elites: "He saw these two trends ... as connected," Vance later recalled of his first encounter with Thiel. "If technological innovation were actually driving real prosperity, our elites wouldn't feel increasingly competitive with one another over a dwindling number of prestigious outcomes." Vance has called Thiel's talk "the most significant moment" of his time at Yale.
Another significant moment of his time at Yale: meeting Usha Chilukuri, his future wife and the mother of his three children. The couple married in 2014 and held a separate ceremony where they were blessed by a Hindu pundit.
20.
Chilukuri went on to clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and then-D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh. She is now a litigator at the white-shoe firm Munger, Tolles & Olson. "I joked with a buddy that if she had possessed a terrible personality, she would have made an excellent heroine in an Ayn Rand novel, but she had a great sense of humor," Vance wrote in his memoir. Despite her conservative clerkships, colleagues described her as "liberal or moderate."
21.
Vance's memoir, Hillbilly Elegy was published on June 28, 2016. The book argued that the decline of post-industrial America was due in large part to the social pathologies of the white working class, rather than the decline of the industrial economy in the U.S. "There is a lack of agency here [in Middletown] -- a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself," Vance wrote.
22.
In a review, the New York Times called the book "a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump."
The New Republic trashed it as "little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class."
"I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," he wrote to a friend in February 2016. He ended up voting for independent Evan McMullin.
During the Trump years, Vance says, he came to support Trump's policies -- and was radicalized by liberals' angry reaction to Trump. "If you even acknowledged that there were reasonable things that Donald Trump was saying, there was this complete overreaction," he has said.
31.
He was baptized into the Catholic church in August 2019. At the time, he credited his conversion to his exposure -- via Thiel -- to the writings of the French philosopher René Girard, whom Thiel studied under at Stanford University. Girard is most famous for his theory of "mimetic desire": that human beings imitate the desires of their peers, ultimately giving rise to rivalries and violent conflicts that are resolved by "scapegoating" a common enemy.
"He is thoroughgoingly illiberal in his instincts," a friend of Vance's from Yale has said. "I don't mean it as a slur. I mean it in a technical sense. He is skeptical of the political project of enlightenment liberalism, like, We're all just autonomous individuals trying to self-actualize and maximize our own interests."
In November 2020, one week after the presidential election, Netflix released a film adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard and starring Gabriel Basso as Vance, Glenn Close as Mamaw and Amy Adams as Bev Vance. The movie was widely panned, with the New Yorker calling it "a libertarian's fantasy." Friends of Vance have said that the negative reaction to the film was the "last straw" of Vance's estrangement from elite liberal society.
"I regret being wrong about the guy," Vance said about Trump several days later on the campaign trail. "I think he was a good president, I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak." He later added: "He's the best president of my lifetime.
In his victory speech, he thanked his Mamaw: "You're not always going to agree with every vote that I take, and you're not going to agree with every single amendment that I offer in the United States Senate, but I will never forget the woman who raised me," he told the audience.
43.
In the Senate, he has emerged as a dogged defender of Trump and the standard-bearer of the "New Right," a loose movement of young conservatives trying to push the Republican Party in a more populist, nationalist and culturally conservative direction.
44.
His most ambitious legislative initiatives have arisen from partnerships with progressive Democrats: a sweeping railway safety reform bill co-authored by Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and an executive pay claw-back provision drafted with Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Neither bill has received a vote on the Senate floor.
45.
He is a leading critic of U.S. support for Ukraine. "I got to be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another," Vance told Steve Bannon in an interview in 2022.
46.
He has suggested that the Biden administration is allowing fentanyl to cross the Southern border as part of a deliberate strategy to kill Republican voters: "If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl. . . . It does look intentional. It's like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn't vote for him."
47.
In June 2023, he put a hold on all Biden administration appointments to the Justice Department to protest the indictments of Donald Trump. He has called Trump's hush-money trial in New York a "threat to American democracy."
48.
He believes that "the culture war is class war" -- that pushing back against the cultural values of progressive elites is necessary to advance the economic and political interests of the working class. In the Senate, his culture war initiatives include a bill criminalizing gender-affirming care for transgender kids, a ban on federal mask mandates, and crack-down on affirmative action policies at colleges and universities. He public supports a 15-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest and threats to the life of the mother.
He has compared the current moment in American history to the end of the Roman Republic. "We are in a late republican period" in America he said on a podcast appearance in 2022. "If we're going to push back against it, we're going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with."
51.
He has said that if he had been in Mike Pence's shoes in 2021, he would not have certified the results of the 2020 election: "If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there," he said in February.
52.
He has encouraged Trump to defy the Supreme Court if the justices prevent him from firing executive branch officials.
"Trump will, at most, serve four years in the White House," Vance has said. "There is a big question about what comes after him." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Republicans say Schumer must act on voter proof of citizenship bill if Democrat 'really cares about democracy' | Reps. Claudia Tenney and Anthony D'Esposito, both from New York, and Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen spoke to Fox News Digital at the Republican National Convention about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
Republicans have been urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to pick up a key legislative proposal that would require states to verify proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
They argue the bill is critical to ensuring election integrity in November, but it has so far stalled in the upper chamber.
Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., co-chair of the House Election Integrity Caucus, spoke to Fox News Digital about this on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis.
She described election integrity as the "premiere issue" of the 2024 election cycle, noting that only five Democrats voted in favor of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which was introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. The bill aims to require states to obtain proof of citizenship - in person - when registering an individual to vote and require states to remove non-citizens from existing voter rolls.
"Everyone should be talking about the SAVE Act and the fact that 198 Democrats voted for non-citizen voting in our elections," Tenney said. "Nothing interferes more with our elections and our democratic process than to allow people who have not created and given up the responsibilities of citizenship, but are receiving the benefits of citizenship. And I think that's really important. One citizen, one vote."
5 KEY TAKEAWAYS OF BIDEN'S ADDRESS TO THE NATION FROM THE OVAL OFFICE
"Make sure that no one's vote is diluted, that that's sacred, the right to vote. The most profound expression of our self-governance is that sacred right to vote," she said.
Rep. Anthony D'Esposito, R-N.Y., also criticized Schumer for not calling the bill for a vote in the Senate given there have been more than 10 million known encounters of people illegally crossing American borders during the Biden administration and another estimated 2 million known "got-a-ways" who evaded Border Patrol and escaped into the U.S. interior.
"We've been urging Chuck Schumer to take a lot of Republican legislation up over the 118th Congress. I mean, you rewind back to last April when we passed H.R.2, the Secure the Border Act. It would have given us the ability to secure our border. It was a border security bill. And it would have, probably avoided the over 10 million people that have come into this country illegally, the over 2 million known got-a-ways that are now in this country and millions more," said D'Esposito, who sits on the House Administration Committee, which oversees the Federal Elections Commission and got the SAVE Act to the floor to pass.
"That is sitting on Chuck Schumer's desk collecting dust," D'Esposito said. "The SAVE Act says it all. And, you know, if there's people that are wondering and they lay in bed at night as so often I do and think to yourself, 'Well, why do the Democrats keep allowing all these people to come into this country illegally?' Well, the fact that nearly 200 people voted against the SAVE Act, the fact that Chuck Schumer still has yet to take it up in the Senate and probably won't, is an indicator as to exactly why that border's wide open."
Democrats have been scrambling after President Biden made the bombshell announcement Sunday that he was discontinuing his bid for a second term and endorsing Vice President Harris.
As Harris heads out on the campaign trail for the first time since entering the race, and with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Congress last week, the election integrity bill has fallen to the back burner.
"My senator, one of my senators, Sen. Chuck Schumer, should be taking this bill up immediately," Tenney told Fox News Digital. "If he really cares about democracy, and he really cares about the rule of law, and he really cares about the citizens that we represent in the state of New York and across this nation. He should tell every Democrat to vote for the SAVE Act in the Senate."
Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer's office seeking comment, but they did not respond.
Schumer, who initially held off on doing so when the charges were first brought, called on Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., to resign after being convicted in a federal corruption case, and Menendez complied on Tuesday, revealing he would resign from the upper chamber after Aug. 20. Tenney suggested that the change in balance of power could result in the SAVE Act coming to a vote after all.
"That could tip the balance of power in the Senate and could maybe make Chuck Schumer recognize that a couple of vulnerable Democrats are not going to want to vote against the SAVE Act," Tenney said.
Biden had promised to veto the legislation if it passes. Doing so, Tenney argued, would be the "death knell" for the election of Democrats. "If you're going to undermine citizens of this great country by saying that their vote is not important in a democracy, which the Democrats decry all the time, then you are going to undermine our system of government," she said.
DEMOCRATS TO CONFIRM NOMINEES BY VIRTUAL ROLL CALL WEEKS BEFORE DNC IN CHICAGO TO AVOID LEGAL CHALLENGES
President Biden in 2021 signed Executive Order 14019, which was billed by the White House as "promoting access to voting." But Republicans argue the order's broad interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 essentially mobilizes the federal government apparatus to become voter registration agencies.
"That executive order tasked federal agencies to become vote collection sites," Tenney said. "I think it's a violation of the Hatch Act, which is undermining an election as well."
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, has been sounding the alarm about how state agencies receiving federal funding are required under Biden's executive order to send out voter registration information to anyone who comes into contact with those agencies without any verification of citizenship.
Essentially, Allen told Fox News Digital at the convention, the order "really weaponizes and federalizes the entire federal government apparatus to be voter registration agencies."
"I just don't believe the federal government has any role in voter registration that should be left to the states," he said. "Voter file maintenance is the foundation of election integrity."
"We have reached out to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and asked them, please send us a list of your legal non-citizens that you have on file so we can run them against our voter file to make sure no one slipped through the crack," he said. "But unfortunately, they have denied access to that data. But we're going to keep pushing. I think there's a crack in the door, hopefully, for us to get our hands on that data. That's data that is funded by you as a taxpayer, me as a taxpayer. Everyone funds those lists. And it just makes common sense that only American citizens should be voting in our American elections."
Allen said he had a chance to visit with House Speaker Mike Johnson while at the convention to discuss the SAVE Act.
"That 198 Democrat members of Congress would vote against giving us, as secretaries of state around the country, the tools to verify citizenship is just beyond me. I don't understand it. But I told Speaker Johnson, keep pushing. That's why we need to get Trump back in the White House. That's why we need to have a Senate GOP majority and a House GOP majority," Allen said.
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As for Schumer, Allen urged the Senate majority leader to reconsider calling the bill up for a vote.
"Only American citizens should be voting in our elections," Allen said. "Give us the tools, the secretaries of state around the country, to verify citizenship. Allow us to do that, and to make sure we have clean voter files." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Trump did something he's never done before with RNC speech. Now, the election may already be over | By entering your email and pushing continue, you are agreeing to Fox News' Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive.
Donald Trump may well have sealed the outcome of the 2024 election with a performance on Thursday night in Milwaukee that has largely been unmatched in recent American political history.
The former president eschewed the polarization and division that has marked much of his rhetoric in the past. In his speech officially accepting the Republican Party's nomination there were only a couple of references to the 2020 election. Trump was able to hit on key messages when speaking about topics like inflation, and especially immigration, in ways that were compelling and arguably responsive to the fundamental concerns of Americans.
I say this not to engage in hyperbole, as I have never been -- and am not now -- a Trump supporter. But as a political analyst, you have to acknowledge reality. And the reality of this speech was simple: Trump spoke of the American Dream, he spoke of bringing people together, he spoke of helping African-Americans, Hispanics and those who have been left behind.
In short, Trump did something he has virtually never done before: speak to all the American people. As he said, he wanted to speak not to 50 percent but to 100 percent of the American people.
TRUMP PREACHES UNITY AS HE ACCEPTS GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION DAYS AFTER SURVIVING ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
Trump also understood that this was not a time to attack President Joe Biden personally or even by name. His one reference to Biden was an aside to let the crowd in Milwaukee, and indeed around the country, know what he was thinking at a time when the incumbent president is still reeling from his poor debate performance and from COVID, not to make him appear like a victim. Rather, Trump was able to compellingly crystallize the challenges the American people have with the current administration and offer a degree of reassurance that things would be different under his leadership.
To be sure, Trump did not offer specific policy recommendations in his speech beyond closing the border and cutting taxes. But rather there was a degree of optimism and confidence in his remarks that has been noticeably absent from the darker and more pessimistic speeches the 45th president of the United States has delivered over the years.
DONALD TRUMP OFFICIALLY ACCEPTS GOP NOMINATION FOR POTUS, RECOUNTS ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
He also, in a way that was tasteful and empathetic, spoke about what happened to him last Saturday in Butler Township, Pa. He discussed his experience of the assassination attempt in a way that had me on the edge of my chair, even though I knew the story quite well and had seen the video many times.
Put another way, the entire speech and its production made Trump much more likable and much more sympathetic than he's ever been before.
To be sure, circumstances, however difficult and challenging they may have been to get to this point, worked to help the former president. But, by any measure, he rose to the occasion and offered the American people something profound that has been missing under the current administration: hope, strength and a sense that the best was yet to come for our nation.
EMOTIONAL TRIBUTE TO COREY COMPERATORE DURING RNC SPEECH: 'SPIRIT THAT FORGED AMERICA'
I fully expect Trump to increase his standing in the polls as a result of this week. I say that not only because of his Thursday night address, but also because of the entire convention. It was among the best, if not the best, choreographed and produced shows I have seen in 50 years of watching American political conventions.
The effort to reach working people and those who enjoy sports like pro-wrestling and the UFC spoke to the Republicans' desire to broaden their constituency and solidify their position as the party of working Americans.
I also believe that, if I am right, and Trump does go up in the polls after the GOP convention, the support that has been steadily eroding for Joe Biden since his terrible debate performance just three weeks ago, will only increase and the pressure on him to quit the race will be inexorable. Indeed, it already appears now to be inevitable.
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It's hard to see how Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or whoever the Democratic nominee is will compete with this speech and the events of this week. And I fully expect that the division inside the Democratic Party will only increase as a result of the success of the Republican convention.
As an American, I'm pleased, indeed proud, that the Republicans explicitly and I think, for the first time, are seeking to unify the entire country and put aside the bitterness and resentment that has so frequently been evident.
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As a Democrat, I'm not sure I know how my party will respond in a month or so to the Trump candidacy. For now, it's enough to say that the challenges it is facing have only grown larger and more substantial after this week after a speech and convention that could only be called an unqualified success. The events and address in Milwaukee will stand up well to whatever attempts the mainstream media make to discredit Trump and his speech. (And they have already begun.)
Some may say that Trump's speech went on too long on Thursday night. And that may be true. But the American people, unlike political commentators, simply turn the television off, they don't give the candidate demerits for being long-winded. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Netflix Co-Founder Hastings Gives $7 Million to Pro-Harris PAC, Source Says | LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has donated $7 million to a super PAC that supports Vice President Kamala Harris' run for U.S. president, a source close to Hastings said on Tuesday.
The source was confirming a report published by The Information earlier in the day.
It is the largest political donation by Hastings to a single candidate, the publication said.
Hastings congratulated Harris on Monday after she received the support of a majority of Democratic delegates to become the party nominee against Republican Donald Trump in November.
"Congrats to Kamala Harris -- now it is time to win," he wrote in a post on social media platform X.
President Joe Biden stepped aside as the Democratic candidate for the 2024 election and endorsed Harris on Sunday following pressure from Democrats in Congress and donors including Hastings.
Harris' campaign raised $81 million in the 24 hours following Biden's exit, the most for a single day in the 2024 campaign for either party.
Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997 and stepped down as CEO in 2023. He now serves as executive chairman of the Netflix board.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles and Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Iran trying to sabotage Trump's presidential campaign: US intelligence | The FBI on Monday shared new details regarding their investigation into an assassination attempt against former President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
U.S. intelligence officials believe that Iran is trying to sabotage former President Trump's presidential campaign through online influence operations, according to a press briefing on Monday.
Speaking to reporters, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said that U.S. spy agencies "observed Tehran working to influence the presidential election," likely because Iranian leaders want to avoid increased tensions with the U.S.
The official didn't directly say that Iran was trying to undermine Trump, but that American spies "haven't observed a shift in Iran's preferences" since 2020, meaning that Iran was still targeting Trump.
During the briefing, an intelligence official also said that Iran is utilizing "vast webs of online personas and propaganda mills to spread disinformation," in addition to different online campaigns.
TRUMP TELLS JESSE WATTERS THAT HE WAS NOT WARNED ABOUT GUNMAN, DESPITE REPORTS
Earlier in July, Tehran was accused of plotting to kill Trump after a gunman shot the former president at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Iran's Permanent Mission to the United Nations told Fox News Digital that the claims were "unsubstantiated and malicious."
"From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani," the permanent mission said in a statement. "Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice."
Iran is not the only foreign adversary accused of meddling with the 2024 presidential election. On July 10, ODNI officials called Russia the "preeminent threat" to the election.
Russia is "undertaking a whole-of-government approach to influence the election, including the presidential race, Congress and public opinion," an intelligence official said during the July 10 briefing, adding that Russia has grown "more sophisticated" in election interference. The country generally targets the Democratic Party in U.S. elections.
WATCH: THOUSANDS DESCEND ON MICHIGAN TOWN FOR FIRST TRUMP RALLY SINCE FAILED ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
According to the Director of National Intelligence's latest report on Russia, the Kremlin targets the Democratic Party to diminish U.S. support for Ukraine, among other reasons.
"We assess that the Russian government and its proxies sought to denigrate the Democratic Party before the midterms and undermine confidence in the election, most likely to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine, and to erode trust in U.S. democratic institutions," the report reads.
Per the July 10 ODNI briefing, Russia is reportedly also using artificial intelligence to mimic American Southern and Midwestern accents on social media.
"Foreign adversaries continue to experiment with and have adopted at least some generative AI tools to more quickly and cheaply generate authentic looking content tailored primarily for social media platforms that can target specific audiences including in the U.S.," an ODNI official said.
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Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
Fox News Digital's Michael Dorgan, Louis Casiano and David Spunt contributed to this report. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Trump urges Christians to vote, says they won't have to again if he wins 2024 election | WASHINGTON - Former President Donald Trump implored Christians attending a summit hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action to vote in November, saying they wouldn't have to cast a ballot again if he wins the presidency because "it'll be fixed."
"I don't care how, but you have to get out and vote," Trump told the crowd at Turning Point Action's Believer's Summit. "Christians get out and vote. Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore."
"In four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians," Trump added during his 70-minute long speech. "We'll have it fixed so good. You're not going to have to vote."
He delivered the comments during a keynote speech at Turning Point Action's Believers' Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla. The event was aimed at "empowering attendees with practical knowledge and strategies to live out their faith boldly and counteract the prevailing 'woke' narratives with grace, truth, and conviction, rooted in the Gospel," according to the group's website.
Politically conservative Christian voters are a key segment of Trump's base that he must turnout in order to prevail in November's election.
Recent polls published since President Joe Biden exited the 2024 race show Trump's lead in the race slipping. He is now neck-and-neck with likely Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt against him, Trump has also emerged as an unlikely spiritual figurehead. During a speech at the Republican National Convention in mid-July, Trump said he felt like he had God on his side as bullets whizzed by, coming within inches of killing him.
If he wins the 2024 election, Trump won't be able to run for the presidency again. The 22 Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents presidents from serving more than twice.
But the GOP presidential nominee also has a history of using authoritarian rhetoric on the campaign trail. In December, he suggested that he would be a dictator for "one day" if elected again.
At a rally in Michigan last weekend, Trump hailed Xi Jinping of China as a "brilliant man" for ruling "with an iron fist" over the countries 1.4 billion people. He also praised Hungary's Viktor Orbán and Russia's Vladimir Putin as "tough" and "smart" leaders.
Trump is facing multiple felony charges for allegedly conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The ex-president has spread false claims that widespread voter fraud led him to lose the race to President Joe Biden. There is no evidence to back the claims. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Biden announces cap on rent prices | President Joe Biden has announced a new plan to halt rent increases in the US, as Americans battle soaring housing prices.
Mr Biden's proposal - which requires congressional approval - would cut off tax credits for landlords who try to raise rent by more than 5%.
The policy would apply to landlords who own more than 50 units, comprising about 20 million rental units across the country, according to the Biden administration.
Mr Biden said he hoped this plan would send a "clear message to corporate landlords".
"Rent is too high and buying a home is out of reach for too many working families and young Americans, after decades of failure to build enough homes," the president said in a statement. "I'm determined to turn that around."
The proposal does include an exception for new construction and buildings undergoing substantive renovations. As the US faces low housing stock, this carve out is aimed at encouraging new rental property construction to increase the number of apartments and homes available.
The announcement comes as Mr Biden is set to make a campaign stop in Las Vegas, Nevada, while Republicans gather in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the party's national convention.
His proposal faces an uphill battle for approval in Congress, with administration officials reportedly acknowledging the president would have to focus on fighting for the housing plan during a second term.
The plan is aimed at stopping corporate landlords who are seeking to take advantage of the US housing shortage by raising rents at a higher rate than their own costs have increased, Mr Biden said.
Nationwide, rent prices have risen by 21% since January 2021, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis.
Home prices are on the rise, too.
In early 2024, home prices hit an all-time record, rising 6.4% from February 2023 to 2024, according to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Mr Biden's plan to lower housing costs come as recent polls show he is trailing his rival, former President Donald Trump, in the 2024 presidential race.
Surveys show the economy is top of mind for voters in the 2024 election, with rising housing costs and ongoing inflation pressures among the top concerns.
As a part of his housing announcement, Mr Biden said he would also direct federal agencies to assess whether public land could be repurposed to build affordable housing options.
In Nevada, where Mr Biden is set to speak on Tuesday, the federal government is looking at 562 acres of public land in the Las Vegas Valley that could be used for affordable housing, according to a White House fact sheet. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Rishi Sunak: A quick guide to the UK's former prime minister | Rishi Sunak resigned as prime minister on Friday 5 July after losing the 2024 election. Here's what you need to know about him.
Rishi Sunak was appointed as leader of the Conservative Party on 25 October 2022. In the 2024 election, Labour won the most seats in Parliament, meaning they will form the next government.
Mr Sunak won in his constituency of Richmond in North Yorkshire, where he told supporters: "The British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight, there is much to learn... and I take responsibility for the loss."
He then resigned as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party but will remain an MP.
Mr Sunak lost to Liz Truss in a Conservative Party leadership race in September 2022, after Boris Johnson resigned as prime minister. But Truss also resigned, just six weeks after becoming PM, following her decisions which damaged the economy.
Mr Sunak quickly secured the support of his fellow Conservative MPs to secure his place at No 10.
Shortly after becoming PM, Sunak promised to halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce government debt, cut NHS waiting lists, and stop illegal immigrants coming to the UK in small boats across the Channel.
He succeeded in the first two promises, but the other three all got worse during his time in charge.
His parents came to the UK from east Africa and are both of Indian origin. Mr Sunak was born in Southampton in 1980, where his father was a GP and his mother ran a pharmacy. He went to the boarding school Winchester College, then studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, and business at Stanford in America. He is now the first British Asian prime minister.
Mr Sunak was first elected as an MP in 2015. But he rose quickly through the Conservative Party and was made finance minister - or chancellor - in February 2020 under Boris Johnson.
As Mr Johnson's chancellor, Mr Sunak was behind the financial aid during lockdowns - including furlough payments and the "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme for restaurants.
His wife is Akshata Murty, the daughter of Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy. Mr Sunak himself worked for investment bank Goldman Sachs and at two hedge funds before becoming an MP.
The Sunday Times Rich List estimated the couple's fortune to be worth about £651m in 2024, making them richer than the king. They have two daughters.
In 2022, it emerged Akshata Murthy paid no UK tax on big earnings abroad, which is legal as an Indian citizen. Mr Sunak defended his wife saying: "to smear my wife to get at me is awful".
Eventually she agreed to start paying the taxes. We also found out he temporarily had a US green card, allowing him to live permanently in America while he was the UK's chancellor.
In 2016, he told a group of schoolchildren that he originally wanted to be a Jedi Knight when he grew up. His favourite Star Wars film is The Empire Strikes Back. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
MAGA makes racist attacks against JD Vance's Wife | Extremist figures and members of the Make America Great Again movement have criticized the wife of Ohio Senator JD Vance after former President Donald Trump named him as his running mate in the 2024 election.
Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was raised in San Diego before meeting her husband at Yale Law School. They were married in 2014 and later blessed by a Hindu pundit in a separate ceremony, The New York Times reported.
In the wake of Trump's vice presidential announcement on Monday, numerous conservative and far-right figures have taken to social media to launch racist attacks against Usha Vance because of her Indian heritage and the assumption that her influence on her husband's political career means the Republican Party will be softer on immigration.
"I'm sure this guy is going to be great on immigration," Jaden McNeil, a far-right activist and the founder of America First Students, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, while sharing a picture of the Vances with their newborn baby.
Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home along with rapper Kanye West in November 2022, suggested that Vance would not be a "defender of white identity" because of his wife's Indian heritage.
"Who is this guy, really?" Fuentes said on his podcast. "Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?"
Vincent James Foxx, who was present at the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, wrote on X: "JD Vance gets tapped as VP and immediately there's a Hindu prayer at the RNC. Next we'll see Sen. Mike Lee and JD Vance team up to convince Trump to let in 10 million Indian immigrants. Green cards on diplomas!"
Conservative commentator Stew Peters wrote, "There is an obvious Indian coup taking place in the US right before our eyes," while sharing a screenshot of an article about the Vances' three children.
Saira Rao, a progressive activist and former Democratic congressional hopeful, also attacked Usha Vance on X.
"Usha Vance, the latest Indian American woman delighted to do the bidding of white supremacy. Who needs white women when brown ones are ready to serve," Rao wrote.
Newsweek contacted JD Vance's office for comment via email.
After graduating from Yale in 2013, Usha Vance worked as a clerk for Brett Kavanaugh, now an associate justice on the Supreme Court, when he served as an appeals court judge in Washington, D.C. She also worked as a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.
Usha Vance went on to work as an attorney at Munger, Tolles and Olson, a prestigious law firm. She left the firm following Trump's announcement that her husband would be his new running mate.
"Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm," Munger, Tolles and Olson told the Associated Press. "Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career."
Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna was among the MAGA figures who praised Usha Vance as "extremely impressive."
"Mom of 3, met JD at Yale Law School, degrees from Yale and Cambridge, corporate litigator, clerked for Supreme Court justices," Luna wrote on X.
JD Vance's confirmation as the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee on Monday caps off a major rise that has seen the Hillbilly Elegy author move, in two years, from political novice to potentially in line for the presidency.
In his bestselling memoir, JD Vance praised his wife. "Even at my best, I'm a delayed explosion -- I can be defused, but only with skill and precision," he wrote. "It's not just that I've learned to control myself but that Usha has learned how to manage me." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Trump's 'secretary of retribution' has a 'target list' of 350 people he wants arrested | Ivan Raiklin takes the stage to speak at a New Hampshire Election Security Seminar presented by the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S., November 19, 2021. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Retribution is at the center of Donald Trump's third presidential election campaign.
"I am your warrior," Trump proclaimed earlier this year. "I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."
Trump's loyal surrogates have duly embraced the project -- perhaps no one more zealously than Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who bills himself as the former and would-be president's "future secretary of retribution."
Raiklin is seeking to enlist so-called "constitutional" sheriffs in rural, conservative counties across the country to detain Trump's political enemies. Or, as he says, carry out "live-streamed swatting raids" against individuals on his "Deep State target list."
"This is a deadly serious report," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story. "A retired U.S. military officer has drawn up a 'Deep State target list' of public officials he considers traitors, along with our family members and staff. His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.
READ: Trump's far-right army is threatening bloodshed -- believe them
Raskin called on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to "denounce this dangerous plot and to repudiate threats of, and planning for, political violence from any quarter. Bipartisan opposition to vigilante violence and assassination plots is essential for American government to continue."
The list Raiklin has been circulating since January is extensive.
It includes numerous Democratic and Republican elected officials; FBI and intelligence officials; members of the House Select January 6 Committee; U.S. Capitol Police officers and civilian employees; witnesses in Trump's two impeachment trials and the Jan. 6 committee hearings; and journalists from publications ranging from CNN and the Washington Post to Reuters and Raw Story -- all considered political enemies of Trump.
Julie Farnam, a former U.S. Capitol Police employee named on the list who as assistant director of intelligence and interagency coordination warned about the potential for violence in advance of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, said she would not be intimidated by the list.
"Any hit list is designed to impart the silence and fear of those named on it," Farnam told Raw Story. "But silence is victory for those who write such lists. Conversely, speaking the truth without fear will always be the undoing of those who seek to intimidate and spread hate in our world. I can never be silenced."
In addition to Farnam, the list includes nine current or former U.S. Capitol Police employees. The agency declined to comment for this story.
Raw Story is not publishing the full list given the potential risk posed to people unaware that they're on it.
One individual named on the list who spoke on condition of anonymity noted that Raiklin is associated with retired Lt. General Michael Flynn.
"And Trump himself has repeated on dozens of occasions calls for revenge, retribution and retaliation," the person told Raw Story. "This is another example of that broader phenomenon of revenge against political enemies that animates the former president and his entire movement, and for that reason should concern us all."
The Trump campaign did not respond to emails requesting comment for this story.
'Attack on our democracy'
The accusations of "treason" and other imagined offenses leveled by Raiklin against these individuals are typically based on fanciful legal theories and outlandish factual claims, if anything at all.
For example: Raiklin, in a podcast, suggested without evidence that the unidentified person responsible for setting pipe bombs outside the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee on Jan. 6, 2021, was "a subordinate-surrogate of the Capitol Police Board," which oversees the Capitol Police.
But Raiklin is nothing if not self-assured that the "evidence" he's gathering on anti-Trump "deep state" plotters is real. So real, it seems, that Raiklin claims the material -- fully revealed -- would establish probable cause for county sheriffs across the nation to issue arrest warrants for various high-ranking officials who have, in one way or another, run afoul of Trump.
Under Raiklin's objectively bizarre plan, the sympathetic sheriffs would deputize some 75,000 military veterans -- veterans he claims have been pushed out of service because they refused to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates -- to carry out the arrests.
Raiklin has gone so far as to pitch his plan to a group of far-right sheriffs who met in Las Vegas in April.
Public records requests filed by Raw Story with dozens of county sheriff offices reveal that word of Raiklin's efforts has reached the email inboxes of sheriffs from Wisconsin to Oklahoma.
But Raiklin's effort to enlist these sheriffs appears to be foundering: Not one has openly signed on, and even some who are sympathetic to his cause publicly warn that his plan violates due process.
Undaunted, Raiklin has attempted to build relationships with conservative members of Congress, and aides to two Republican lawmakers who chair influential House committees confirmed to Raw Story that they are familiar with him.
An overriding reason for why Raiklin hasn't been entirely marginalized or relegated by fellow conservatives to the realm of kooks and gadflies?
Raiklin uses the kind of hyperbolic language that Trump himself uses -- and that Trump's base eats up.
He gives federal agencies and media outlets Trump-like nicknames such as "FB-Lie," "Faux-litico" and "National Poison Radio."
"My nickname is the Deep State marauder, aka the mauler," Raiklin told a group of election deniers in New Jersey earlier this year. "And I like using ice picks instead of poking the bear."
In a video posted in May to X, which now accrued more than 10 million views, Raiklin said, "Expect to see live-streamed swatting raids of every single individual on that Deep State target list, because the precedence has already been set."
Notwithstanding Raiklin's claim that his plan would be "legal, moral and ethical," swatting -- the false reporting of an emergency to garner a response from law enforcement for the purpose of harassing a target -- is illegal.
Raiklin has nevertheless promoted the idea in podcast interviews, multiple posts on X, a press conference and conversations with prominent far-right extremists.
In recent days, Raiklin's rhetoric has escalated beyond setting out future hypothetical scenarios for retribution.
He mocked one former federal employee blocking him on X while suggesting that the targeted individual "wants me to speak to him in person" and asking him for his "preferred punishment for committing treason."
And during a podcast, he claimed to be surveilling a U.S. Capitol Police employee, whom he mentioned by name, "both physically and digitally."
Experts worry that provocative rhetoric from figures such as Raiklin could impose a climate of fear on civil servants simply trying to do their jobs. Even worse, Raiklin's rhetoric could inspire violence against them.
"The idea that you would target anyone that was there on the basis of allegiance to the rule of law and the Constitution is really scary," Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told Raw Story.
Stier's organization promotes professional, merit-based civil service as a pillar of good governance -- a notion that he said is being increasingly challenged.
"This represents, in my view, an attack on our democracy," Stier said. "We have a rule of law. If any civil servants are violating the law, there are mechanisms in place to hold them accountable. Vigilantism is not the way to have a society function."
Raiklin responded to a phone call requesting comment by posting a recording of the voicemail on his X account on Tuesday, while commenting: "Looks like Elements of the Deep State Target List have asked @jordangreennc of Raw Sewage to try to find out more about my list...."
Later, he acknowledged a set of written questions submitted by Raw Story but didn't answer them, while accusing Raw Story and "domestic terrorist leftists" of hounding him.
"Look at my entire Deep State target list," Raiklin said. "That is the beginning. This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?"
One prominent media organization named on Raiklin's "target" list expressed concern for its journalists, five of whom also appear on the list by name.
"The conspiracy theories underpinning this list are baseless, and the calls for targeted harassment are dangerous," Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the New York Times, told Raw Story. "The Times reporters on the list are simply professional journalists doing their jobs. Swatting is a criminal offense, and in the event of any instances directed at our employees, the Times will work with law enforcement to prosecute those responsible."
Said Raw Story Publisher Roxanne Cooper: "Purposefully threatening and endangering the safety of working journalists is both reprehensible and illegal, and the American public should reject and denounce anyone who engages in such behavior."
CNN, Reuters, the Atlantic and American Oversight declined to comment on Raiklin. Emails to the Washington Post, Politico, ABC News, NBC News and MSNBC, whose journalists are also named on the list, went unreturned.
Who is Ivan Raiklin?
As the 2020 election approached, conspiracy minded Trump supporters with active Twitter accounts were in abundance. Most never broke through the incessant MAGA noise, or merely added another note to its election denialism dissonance.
Raiklin was different.
He was a seasoned veteran with a background in military intelligence who wound up playing a small but significant role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election in Trump's name.
Following a distinguished career in the U.S. Armed Forces in which he served as a military attaché to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and foreign affairs specialist assigned to the Ukraine Crisis Team, Raiklin left the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2017 to run for U.S. Senate in Virginia, according to the Washington Post.
At the time, Raiklin's candidacy in 2018 provided little indication of the MAGA loyalist relishing the destruction of Trump's enemies that he would become.
If anything, Raiklin fashioned himself as a force of apolitical positivity.
"The reason I'm running is that we've had such a negative political atmosphere the past couple years," Raiklin told the Courier in Iowa. "I want to inject a 'positive disruption' in the political conversation. Being a veteran of 20 years, I'm pretty much a political agnostic."
But Raiklin didn't get far: He failed to garner a sufficient number of signatures to make it onto the Republican primary ballot. And when he sued the Virginia GOP and the state Department of Elections, claiming that he was unfairly excluded, a federal judge tossed out the suit.
Following his disappointing foray into electoral politics, Raiklin began his turn toward Trump's MAGA movement.
In 2019, he appeared at a QAnon-themed fundraiser for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, whom Raiklin met in 2010. (Flynn and Raiklin have become close in recent years, with Raiklin urging Trump to select Flynn as his vice presidential running mate and Flynn featuring Raiklin in his current speaking tour.)
Roughly a week after the 2020 election, when major media outlets had called the election for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, Raiklin went on Alex Jones' conspiracy theory show InfoWars and confidently predicted that Trump would ultimately obtain the necessary number of electoral votes to secure reelection.
"I absolutely guarantee it," he said. "One hundred percent. Unequivocally. Full stop. There is no possibility that he does not reach 270."
It's a classic example of how Trump's followers often act on Trump's wishes or anticipate his desires without receiving specific directives.
For months, Trump had been saying that the only way he'd lose the election is if Democrats stole it through fraud. Now, Trump had lost, and Raiklin was arguing that Trump was winning, against all evidence.
Raiklin, in essence, operates as an agent of Trumpism independent of Trump.
And as the 2024 election nears, the same dynamic is apparent: Trump articulates the broad themes, and his supporters scramble to put them into practice.
"Stand back and stand by" set the stage for the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021, and now, "I am your retribution" serves as a solicitation to supporters such as Raiklin to put together specific plans for retribution against Trump's political enemies.
'Operation Pence Card'
Raiklin's primary contribution to the effort to overturn the 2020 election is a memo he drafted for the benefit of Trump's presidential campaign.
Entitled "Operation Pence Card," it proffered a novel legal argument that Vice President Mike Pence held the authority to set aside electoral votes from states narrowly carried by Biden.
The plan is widely associated with attorney John Eastman, who now faces charges of racketeering and conspiracy in Georgia, and with conspiracy, fraud and forgery in Arizona.
But Raiklin actually tweeted out his plan one day before Eastman drafted his now-infamous stop-the-steal memo. And Raiklin wielded enough influence that Trump himself, on Dec. 23, 2020, retweeted Raiklin's "Operation Pence Card" tweet to his tens of millions of followers.
Around the same time, Raiklin dined with then-Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who attended a meeting at the White House along with other House Republicans to discuss plans to object on Jan. 6 to the congressional certification of the presidential election -- the final, generally ceremonial step before a presidential inauguration.
On Jan. 4, 2021, Raiklin had told Jerome Corsi, a longtime conspiracy theorist, that with regard to Trump supporters descending on Washington, D.C. en masse: "I am not calling for any violence, but at the same time, I can't stop people from committing it."
Raiklin was present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 when a pro-Trump mob breached Congress' defenses and temporarily stopped lawmakers' electoral vote certification. Raiklin has not been charged with any crime related to the attack.
Following the Jan. 6 attack, the Army Reserve opened an investigation into whether Raiklin violated its rules against partisan political activity, but by early 2022, the service had cleared him of wrongdoing.
Raiklin has said the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Homeland Security have also investigated him, but those investigations likewise concluded without formal accusations of wrongdoing against Raiklin.
"So what does that trigger me to do?" Raiklin said during a presentation to a group of election deniers in New Jersey in February. "It weaponizes me against them. And so, since they haven't found anything, and you're investigating me, sir, I have the capability and capacity to start digging into you, your family, your friends, your associates -- every single thing that you do in your life."
Whitewashing the crimes of violent J6 rioters
While avoiding prosecution himself, Raiklin has eagerly taken up the cause of defendants who claim they were wrongfully prosecuted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack.
In June, Raiklin held a press conference in Detroit to promote his "live-streamed swatting raids" scheme. He did so alongside Treniss Jewell Evans III, who served a 20-day prison sentence for illegally entering the Capitol. Also speaking at the press conference: Sarah McAbee, the wife of a former sheriff's deputy who is currently serving a 70-month sentence for assaulting a Washington, D.C., metropolitan police officer.
Ronald Colton McAbee, Sarah McAbee's husband, wore patches with the word "SHERIFF" and the emblem of the anti-government Three Percenter movement on his clothing while taking part in an hours-long battle at the mouth of the Lower West Terrace Tunnel on Jan. 6.
A GiveSendGo campaign to support his wife applauds McAbee for answering "the call to stand up for our nation," but following his conviction the Department of Justice described him as witnessing rioters knock an officer defending the U.S. Capitol to the ground. McAbee's response was the opposite of rendering aid, according to the government.
After the officer was kicked and stripped of his baton by rioters, the government contends that "McAbee stepped into the archway, grabbed the officer's leg, and pulled him further toward the crowd. When a second MPD officer stepped off the police line to assist the downed officer, McAbee stood up, yelled at the officer who had stepped out to assist, and then swung his arms and hands towards the officer's head and torso. McAbee made contact with the officer and was wearing the reinforced gloves at the time of the assault."
In the run-up to Jan. 6, Raiklin had baselessly ascribed the legitimate election of Joe Biden to "domestic fraud" committed by people "potentially under foreign actors' payroll." Now, at the press conference in Detroit in June 2024, Raiklin was inverting the violent crimes committed by Trump supporters to portray them, not the officers defending the Capitol, as the victims.
"You need to know who is coming after us," Raiklin said, naming two people who are part of the U.S. Capitol security apparatus. Without presenting any evidence, Raiklin accused one of the men of "weaponizing and working with the DOJ... to criminalize against Sarah's husband."
Cultivating relationships with House Republicans
All the while, Raiklin is forging ties with Republican lawmakers who are sympathetic to the Jan. 6 rioters.
While leveling outlandish charges of criminal misconduct at federal civil servants, Raiklin has become a familiar presence at congressional committee hearings controlled by Republican lawmakers eager to downplay the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, or, alternately, shift blame to Democrats for the violence.
Raiklin has sat in the gallery behind the witnesses in at least five House committee hearings over the past year.
Among them: the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), the House Oversight and Accountability Committee chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
"I don't just sit back behind the witnesses when I'm in the House," Raiklin said on a podcast in May. "For 15 months, I've been grinding day in and day out talking to dozens of members of Congress giving ideas on what needs to be done."
On another podcast, Raiklin said: "The only person that understands this is a guy by the name of Barry Loudermilk.... Why? Well, because he's doing the right thing. And I get an opportunity to explain this to him and his staff regularly."
Nick Petromelis, an aide to Loudermilk, told Raw Story he, Petromelis, is "familiar" with Raiklin.
Loudermilk ignored a request from the now-defunct House Select January 6 Committee to explain a tour he gave to constituents on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. His committee deposed Farnam, the former U.S. Capitol Police intelligence leader who is on Raiklin's target list, last month.
Austin Hacker, an aide to Comer, likewise said he, Hacker, was aware that Raiklin had attended House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearings.
Despite promising in late May that he would find out whether Comer had personally spoken to Raiklin, Hacker stopped responding to follow-up messages from Raw Story.
Raiklin said on a podcast in May that he has sent his "Deep State target list" to Comer, Jordan and the Administration Oversight Subcommittee chaired by Loudermilk.
Hacker told Raw Story that Comer, his boss, does not have the "target list" document. Aides to Jordan and the House Administration Oversight Committee did not respond to emails from Raw Story seeking confirmation that they received copies of the list.
None of the three House members responded to requests for comment about whether they support Raiklin's antics.
Raiklin has singled out other members of Congress for praise. Of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who filed legislation to hold U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland in "inherent contempt," Raiklin said she "has exhibited the maximum courage that her position allows."
Luna's legislation would hold the attorney general in "inherent contempt" for refusing demands to turn over audio of Special Counsel Robert Hur's interview with Biden, related to Biden's retention of classified documents in the garage of his Delaware home. "Inherent contempt" is a tool that would allow the House sergeant-at-arms to take Garland into custody and compel him to sit for a congressional proceeding. Raiklin told one podcaster that he "saw" Luna at a congressional hearing in May.
Luna's office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
'Go to the maximum level'
While cultivating ties with members of Congress, Raiklin has been lobbying sheriffs -- with mixed results -- to join his effort.
To reach potentially sympathetic sheriffs, Raiklin has focused on an organization called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
Under the leadership of Richard Mack, a former sheriff from Arizona, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has promoted the controversial view that county sheriffs are the highest law in the land and are within their rights to ignore any federal and state laws that they deem to be unconstitutional.
But Mack told Raw Story he has severed ties with Raiklin since talking with him in early June, and that he disapproves of Raiklin's rhetoric.
During the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association's annual convention during April in Las Vegas, Raiklin asked a panel of sheriffs if they would "be willing to go to the maximum level to create consequences for these federal actors" whom he claimed had committed "seditious conspiracy."
The response was less than promising.
Still, the potential for violence should not be discounted, according to Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights and someone who has been monitoring the far right for more than three decades.
"It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility to see them using the office of the sheriff and posses they wish to create to start rounding up political opponents," Burgart told Raw Story. "Right now, in the far right, the promotion of post-election violence and bloody political retribution has become disturbingly commonplace. In that context, the results of the election are almost an afterthought -- only important in determining whether their murderous rage will have state sanction."
While the far-right's willingness to escalate may increase as the election approaches, at the time of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association convention in April, the two elected sheriffs on the panel were taking a cautious approach.
Sheriff Bob Songer from Klickitat County in Washington state told Raiklin that much as he might want to help, he doubted many prosecutors would be willing to press charges.
Sheriff Dar Leaf from Barry County in Michigan, put it more forcefully.
"We're not going to be able to just go out and arrest," he said. "We've got to do a grand jury indictment, just like the Constitution says."
Leaf's far-right credentials would seem to make him a prime candidate for Raiklin's project. He gained national notoriety in 2020 when he suggested that members of an anti-government militia accused of attempting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer might have been trying to carry out a citizen's arrest.
Leaf has falsely claimed that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and a lawyer representing Leaf reportedly sought evidence from an ad hoc group organized by lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn in December 2020 that could be used to justify "issuing probable cause warrants to sequester Dominion voting machines."
But if Raiklin and his allies were discouraged by Leaf's response at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association convention, they haven't given any indication of it.
During a podcast appearance with Mark Finchem, a former Arizona state representative who took part in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, Raiklin said he was certain that the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association could help "identify which county sheriffs would be clamoring, clamoring to prosecute these scum."
"I know one," Finchem replied. "Dar Leaf in Barry County, Michigan."
Reached by Raw Story earlier this month, Leaf said that despite fielding a question from him at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association convention, he doesn't know who Raiklin is.
Leaf reiterated his rejection of Raiklin's plan by expressing an aversion to politically motivated prosecutions.
Furthermore, Leaf warned that if indictments were obtained through grand juries "stacked" with Trump supporters, any criminal activity uncovered through depositions would be thrown out "because we started out breaking the law."
Among dozens of other sheriff's offices across the country contacted for this story, two in Wisconsin -- Burnett County and Polk County -- confirmed receiving an email with the subject heading: "Ivan Raiklin Requests Deputization of 80K Veterans" that linked to Raiklin's video and encouraged them to get in contact.
"Please Watch this viral video that has garnered 9.8M views in 5 days," it reads. "Important you understand. Remember your Oath."
Raiklin's name landed in one other sheriff's inbox through a subscription to the "General Flynn Newsletter," which is promoting the documentary about the former national security adviser.
The email, received by Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado in Oklahoma, describes Raiklin as a member of a team "hand-selected" by Flynn to provide event attendees "with an informative and unforgettable experience."
The email describes the "General Flynn was Framed Evidence Wall," a visual prop that Raiklin uses prior to each film screening that presents "an exhaustive timeline and link analysis of all the major political and government officials at the most senior levels that weaponized against General Flynn to prevent him from exposing their corruption."
During his months-long campaign, Raiklin has continuously referenced Mack and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in an effort to build credibility for his plan.
During his press conference with Treniss Evans in Detroit, Raiklin mentioned that the previous evening he'd "had a very long conversation with a guy by the name of Sheriff Mack" on the topic of "vetting and communicating with sheriffs."
On a livestream of the press conference, Raiklin displayed a photo of the two men huddling over a laptop, suggesting a collaborative effort.
In a recent interview, Mack told Raw Story at the time that he had been "getting all sorts of calls" about Raiklin.
But since that meeting, Mack said he has soured on Raiklin's plan.
"I'm afraid I don't approve of some of his language, the hyperbole, the rhetoric," Mack said.
For the same reason, Mack said, he resigned from the Oath Keepers. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right group that recruited from the ranks of retired law enforcement and military veterans, is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy at a federal prison in Cumberland, Md.
"It's not where CSPOA can go," Mack said, adding that he and Raiklin "are not working together at all."
Since early June, Mack said that the two men have not spoken or exchanged any emails.
"Quite frankly, he talks about that list of 350 people -- I'm sure they can afford lawyers," Mack said. "It reeks of lawsuits, and it doesn't follow due process."
During his press conference with Evans, Raiklin said the two men are planning to attend the Sheriffs Association of Texas' annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas, this month and pitch their plan.
"I would say that my inbox has been interesting lately with the amount of sheriffs that have an interest in seeing Texas uphold the United States Constitution, and preserve the way of life that we've come to expect as constitutionally guaranteed," Evans said during the press conference.
But Mack said Raiklin's score is currently 0.
"I know a lot of sheriffs, especially in Texas," Mack told Raw Story. "I do not believe he has a single sheriff aligned with him. He's never been able to give me a name."
'It's so easy to learn where they live'
While cultivating relationships with members of Congress, lobbying sheriffs and recruiting volunteers to join posses tasked with detaining political enemies, Raiklin has also forged relationships with other extremists, seeming to cast about for a legal rationale in support of his scheme.
Over the past six months, Raiklin has appeared on at least three podcasts with Dr. Pete Chambers, who helped organize a "Take Our Border Back" convoy earlier this year to support Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's defiance of the federal government.
Like Raiklin, Chambers is a retired lieutenant colonel who formerly served in the Army Special Forces. Following his retirement from the military and later, in 2022, from the National Guard, Chambers joined the "sovereign citizen" group Republic of Texas, whose members shot a man and took him hostage in 1997.
Chambers said when he watched Raiklin's viral video outlining his plan to carry out "live-streamed swatting raids" against his "Deep State target list," he recalled that he said to himself: "Ivan, you've just kicked open the door, and we're going to have to back your play. And we can. And we've got the receipts to do it."
During the conversation between the two men, Chambers referenced something called "the doctrine of lesser magistrates." Although the term is rooted in the 16th century Protestant Reformation in Europe, it was more recently popularized by Matthew Trewhella, a Wisconsin pastor who has advocated killing abortion doctors.
Michael Flynn has recommended Trewhella's 2013 book, The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates: A Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government, as "a masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully resist tyranny."
Trewhella's book also received a plug at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association convention where Raiklin attempted to sell the sheriffs on his "live-streamed swatting raids" plan.
Chambers seemed to acknowledge the improvisational nature of applying a 16th century religious doctrine to an ideological battle with Trump's political adversaries in the United States of America in 2024.
"We're building a plane and flying it here, I would say," he said. "However, it is legal, moral and ethical.... If we can get together and develop the alliances of these sheriffs, then we decrease the space that these people can then maneuver."
'Gonna face those guns'
Next week, barring something cataclysmic, Trump will officially become the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nominee.
Trump will become the nominee despite being convicted of 34 felonies in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case in Manhattan, and he still faces dozens of additional federal and state charges despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that granted Trump -- and any future president -- immunity from criminal prosecution for "official acts" they took as president.
Trump is as defiant as ever.
"I did nothing wrong. We'd have a system that was rigged and disgusting. I did nothing wrong," Trump said June 27 in his debate against Biden.
On a parallel track, Raiklin's embrace of lawlessness appears to be growing stronger.
In June, Raiklin published a 76-minute video of himself speaking with Cliven Bundy, a 78-year-old Nevada rancher who is perhaps the ultimate icon of the far-right anti-government movement. In 2014, Bundy's refusal to pay grazing fees to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management led to an armed standoff between the FBI and militia members, along with other supporters, including Richard Mack from the CSPOA.
Raiklin flattered Bundy during the exchange as "quite the legend," while describing the federal government as "the most corrupt institution on the planet." The two men agreed that "the militia" -- a term used to describe armed citizens -- "puts a check on the federal government."
The rhetoric used by the two men became increasingly confrontational, with Bundy accusing the federal government of plotting to kill Americans. Cliven Bundy noted that his son, Ryan Bundy, was wounded, and a friend, LaVoy Finicum, was killed during a traffic stop during the Malheur National Forest occupation in Oregon in 2016.
"They don't have those bullets to fight our enemy across the border," Bundy charged. "They've got those bullets to kill us in America."
Raiklin then quoted the Bible to suggest the proper response was "an eye for an eye."
Bundy lamented that sheriffs across the country did not heed his call in 2014 for them to disarm federal agents in their jurisdictions.
"I said, 'If you don't disarm them, one of these days you're going to face those guns,'" Bundy recounted.
"Now, we're getting closer," he quickly added. "Gonna face those guns."
Raiklin, in response, appeared to advocate for doxing federal agents.
"Oh yeah, we're not only going to do that," he said. "Again, they're going to experience the most peaceful, legal and moral, ethical and patriotic endeavor they've ever experienced in their life. Every one of them. Because we have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people that will facilitate them experiencing that.
"Because it's so easy to learn where they live," Raiklin continued. "Each one. Where their homes are. Who they're related to. Where they frequent. What kinds of vehicles they own. What kinds of devices they own and that they emit GPS geo-tracking data. Which social media apps they use. We monitor all their communications." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
This is a misogyny emergency. A huge outpouring is coming in the runup to the US election | This time Kamala Harris will be the target for the social media platforms that promote prejudice
In 2016, a historically unprecedented incident took place. And yet, barely anyone even noticed. Even years later, we've failed to acknowledge it or to have begun the process of understanding it. Because we still can't even see it.
And that's because this incident involved a woman. And she was asking for it.
The woman was Hillary Clinton. What she was asking for was votes. And what she got was the single biggest outpouring of misogyny in human history.
We can now say that. Although no one ever does. But this was an unprecedented previously unimaginable event. Because 2016 was when the world's first global instant mass communication technology - social media - crashed up against the most ancient of prejudices - misogyny.
And the result was an earthquake: Donald Trump.
In 2016, we weren't prepared for it. We didn't see it coming. We didn't understand how these same social media platforms that have enabled us to share our thoughts instantly at a global scale also facilitate the worst kinds of human communication. How they are engineered to cater to our basest instincts and reward the clickiest, most hateful content.
But eight years on, we haven't even begun to understand that lesson. We didn't listen to Hillary. We haven't yet realised that misogyny is one of the most dangerous weapons on Earth. The best friend of authoritarians and oligarchs. The handmaiden of tyrants.
Worst of all, we haven't yet realised that misogyny represents the most urgent and pressing threat to global security.
Because it's misogyny - networked misogyny across multiple global platforms that will earn their tech bro owners billions upon billions of dollars - that is going to decide the 2024 election.
And it's misogyny that's going to dictate the future of Nato, the outcome of the war in Ukraine, whether we have peace in Europe or more war. And because this is going to be a firehose that will be directed at a single woman - Kamala Harris - it will be misogyny multiplied: misogyny plus racism, the most toxic combination of all.
This week comments resurfaced that Trump's newly appointed running mate had made about the woman who looks certain to be the next Democrat candidate. Comments from 2021, in which JD Vance dismissed Kamala Harris as a "childless cat lady". If that sounds vaguely familiar, you may recognise those exact words from the attacks that Brexiteers directed at me. In my case, it was an assault that went on for years and created the permission for the same man who seeded the narrative to sue me in court.
I was gagged, the necessities of the court case silenced me. Sticks and stones will break my bones etc. But this was never about me. I was just the access point, a way to shut the story down, a viable target. And this was an attack that achieved its goal. Overnight, all reporting on the subject stopped dead.
But there are things that only veterans of the childless cat lady wars can know. They used to call us witches because we knew shit. We still do. That's what makes us so powerful. And dangerous. That's what JD Vance understands: our cat lady energy. We've lived through culture wars before they even had that name, before they invented memes and when they just burned us at the stake.
So, here's what I need you to do now: to shut up and sit down and listen. You are at risk. We are all at risk. Because this is what I know: bad things are coming. We are in a code red emergency.
Because misogyny isn't bad people saying bad things that may hurt your feelings. (Though it might.) And misogyny isn't about silencing women. (Though it does.)
Misogyny is now one of the deadliest weapons on Earth. Misogyny is a dirty bomb in the heart of our information system. Misogyny is electoral interference. Misogyny is a national security threat so lethal we can't even see it.
Because misogyny is invisible. It's never about all women, it's always just about one particular, disagreeable woman who just happens to not be very likeable. Or competent. Who is loud or "shrill" or annoying or who got the job because she slept with a man. Or because she was a diversity hire. A woman who can't even run her own house let alone a country. A woman who is "nasty". A woman who isn't and cannot be the strong leader a nation needs.
Enjoy the sunshine of the Kamala moment. Breathe in the clean fresh air of facts, of evidence, of information. Of hope. Before the toxic social media chimneys crank up the content. Because shortly, the particulates will arrive, will silently and stealthily and invisibly start clogging our bronchial pathways even as the billionaire bros who own the platforms rake in record profits. It's not so much surveillance capitalism as disaster capitalism.
It took years for us to learn some of the basic facts of what happened in 2016 and it's still just a partial view. But we now know: Russia attacked Clinton in exactly the same way that Trumpworld attacked Clinton, in exactly the same way that they are attacking Kamala.
We now know how the Kremlin actually paid in roubles for Facebook to pump those messages out across US social media. We now know that Cambridge Analytica, on behalf of the Trump campaign, created an anonymous Crooked Hillary campaign that it fed into the "bloodstream of the internet".
But neither invented misogyny. They just used it. These were narratives the bros of the broverse were already spreading, which the invisible hand of the social media algorithms were pumping into people's feeds. The same zombie narratives that have risen again for Kamala and are already being stoked not just by YouTube edgelords and JD Vance fanboys but Russia and China too.
Soon, we won't even notice. It'll just be part of the air that we breathe. A choking toxic misogynistic stew that will silently pour over the culture war trenches like mustard gas. Darkness is coming. This is the world social media created. And we're much further out than we thought. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Facebook admits 'mistake' in censoring iconic Trump assassination attempt photo: 'This was an error' | Vaynermedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk reacts to Metas political ad rules on The Claman Countdown.
Facebook wrongly called the popular image of Donald Trump pumping his fist in the air after an assassination attempt against him an "altered photo," a spokesperson admitted Monday.
Users across X shared reports that their Facebook accounts were labeling the image as "altered", explaining "Independent fact-checkers reviewed a similar photo and said it was altered in a way that could mislead people."
Meta Public Affairs Director Dani Lever later explained on X it was done in error as the systems were meant to detect a separate version of the image.
"This was an error. This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed, and we apologize for the mistake," Lever wrote.
META ADDING AI DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENT FOR 2024 ELECTION ADS
Lever confirmed the mistake when Fox News Digital reached out for a comment.
The altered image Lever referenced featured the Secret Service members surrounding Trump smiling. USA Today and AFP United States previously fact-checked the images as "altered," though it confirmed the accuracy of the original image.
"None of the agents in the original image are smiling as they surround Trump, who has blood on his face and his right arm in the air. The image - which was captured by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci and distributed by the AP - appeared with coverage of the shooting by CNN, The Atlantic, Business Insider and many other legitimate news outlets," USA Today explained.
USA Today's fact-check on the altered photo was used as a "third-party fact-checker" when Facebook corrected the photo.
Backlash against Meta and Facebook come as concerns over Big Tech companies taking part in election manipulation to help Democrats. On Monday, Google users were surprised to find the website's autocomplete feature omitting references to the July 13 assassination attempt.
Instead, it recommended other search results, such as the failed assassination of Ronald Reagan. The keywords "Trump assassination attempt" also did not offer any additional results.
ZUCKERBERG SAYS TRUMP FIST PUMP REACTION TO SHOOTING WAS 'BADA--'
A Google spokesperson later told FOX Business that there was no "manual action taken on these predictions."
"Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring," the spokesperson wrote. "We're working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date."
The company spokesperson added the autocomplete feature is "just a tool to help people save time" and they can still search for anything they want.
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Fox Business' Louis Casiano and Christina Wurm contributed to this report. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Trump allies at Heritage declare 2024 election illegitimate in advance | "To put it simply, the federal government should have a very limited role in our election systems. They should be left to the states to decide," he said.
Get live updates from President Biden's press conference as four more House Democrats joined the list of 17 lawmakers who have called on him to drop out of his reelection race.
The latest on President Biden: A defiant Biden doubled down on staying in the race, rejecting calls to withdraw after his debate performance.
Presidential election polls: Check out The Post's presidential polling averages of the seven battleground states most likely to determine the outcome of the election.
The first debate: Biden and Donald Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of 2024. Here are takeaways and fact checks from the debate.
Key dates and events: Voters in all states and U.S. territories have been choosing their party's nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar.
Abortion and the election: Voters in about a dozen states could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. Biden supports legal access to abortion, and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states. Here's how Biden's and Trump's abortion stances have shifted over the years. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
JD Vance's hometown state senator says civil war may be needed to 'save our country' | JD Vance's hometown state senator says civil war may be needed to 'save our country'
Victoria Moorwood and Sharon Coolidge, Cincinnati Enquirer
July 22, 2024 at 8:10 PM
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance's hometown state senator said at his rally Monday that if Republicans don't win the 2024 election it could lead to a civil war to "save the country."
The comments came from Ohio state Sen. George Lang, R-West Chester, right after he took the stage at Vance's first rally in Middletown, Ohio, since becoming former President Donald Trump's running mate and chanted, "Fight! Fight! Fight!"
Live updates: JD Vance returns to his hometown for first time after being nominated for VP
"If it comes down to a civil war... we are the last stand to save it," Lang said at a Middletown High School auditorium, less than an hour before Vance was set to take the stage. The crowd cheered in response. Vance graduated from the high school in 2003.
Lang quickly segued into touting other Ohio-born politicians from Butler County, name-checking former Speaker of the House John Boehner and Ohio Supreme Court Justice Sharon Kennedy, and even noting former 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who grew up in Cincinnati.
Who is George Lang?
Lang represents Ohio's 4th state senate district, which includes Butler County.
He was elected senator in 2020. He served as a West Chester Township trustee and served two terms in the Ohio House of Representatives before he was elected to the Ohio Senate.
He is running for reelection in November after winning a three-way primary in March.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: George Lang references civil war to 'save' country at JD Vance rally | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Exclusive--GOP Rep. Cloud: Homeland Security Agency Is Interfering in House's Assassination Investigation | The agency run by impeached migration czar Alejandro Mayorkas is interfering with the House's investigation into the attempted murder of President Donald Trump, Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas), told Breitbart News.
The shooting was "an epic failure," Cloud told Breitbart News during an interview at the GOP's national convention, adding, "It is very concerning that right off the bat, we see DHS [Mayorkas' Department of Homeland Security] obfuscating as opposed to being transparent. This should be something that, regardless of party, we don't allow this kind of thing in our country."
The Secret Service agency is part of Mayorkas's DHS. It is run by sociology graduate Kimberly Cheatle.
Cloud is a member of the House's oversight committee, which is chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-KY).
"We were scheduled for a first briefing today, just on the facts of the case, what's going on, what they know now, and DHS has stepped in between the communications now of the Secret Service and the Oversight Committee, and are now trying to control the communication between the two committees," Cloud told Breitbart News during an interview at the GOP's national convention.
Mayorkas is now rushing to pick people within "days" for a supposedly independent review of the agency's failure.
Since 2021, Mayorkas has used his independent power within President Joe Biden's administration to promote the interests of migrants and to aid the migration of roughly 10 million migrants into Americans' communities, homes, and workplaces throughout the United States. That elite-backed agenda led to his impeachment by the House in February 2024 and has crashed Biden's polls in the 2024 election.
Cloud continued: "So Chairman Comer is issuing subpoenas to make sure that the Secret Service director does appear [at a hearing]. Right now, we have a committee scheduled for the day we go back next week, on Monday, to make sure that she does appear and that we are being able to begin this investigation."
"Already they're obfuscating it, it would seem," Cloud said, adding, "We should be able to get that preliminary information out, realizing that, okay, this is going to take more than one briefing ... But you know, this is coming from the same administration who was labeling Catholics as terrorists, people who go to school board meetings as terrorists, yet they fail to protect a former president of the United States and a political opponent. We've seen this administration target political opponents before, and then now fail epically in protecting a former president -- and we will say, future -- President of the United States. And so this is extremely concerning."
Congressman Cloud continued.
"I'll say this right off the bat: [With] any failure like this of the Secret Service ... the honorable thing [for the director] to do is to resign at this point. She'll talk about, 'Well, we need to make sure this never happens again.' That's not the job description. The job description is to make sure that this never happens, period.We got to take the 'again' out of that. You should not get two assassination attempts under your belt as director of the Secret Service."
"So we're going to have to continue to look into this as the information becomes available," Cloud added.
On Tuesday, Mayorkas again reaffirmed his support for Cheatle, even after her Monday admission that Secret Service agents were deliberately not posted on the roof from which the sniper almost killed Trump.
"That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point," Cheatle told ABC News on Monday. "And so, you know, there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof ... [so] the decision was made to secure the building from inside," she said in a segment released on Tuesday.
Early on Tuesday morning, NPR asked Mayorkas, "Do you anticipate people losing jobs over last weekend?"
"I have 100% confidence in the director of the United States Secret Service, a dedicated, career-long law enforcement officer," Mayorkas told NPR.
Cheatle is a sociology graduate who worked for more than 24 years in the U.S. Secret Service. She was hired for the job in August 2024 by President Joe Biden, who stated: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
House Republicans say Biden must resign after ending reelection campaign | House Republicans are calling on President Biden to resign from office after he announced that he would no longer seek reelection, arguing that he should not continue to serve in the White House if he is unable to run for another term.
The comments -- several of which were from House GOP leadership -- came shortly after Biden said he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race, a seismic announcement that rocked the political world and left the path forward for Democrats uncertain.
"If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately," Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote on the social platform X. "November 5 cannot arrive soon enough."
"If the Democrat party has deemed Joe Biden unfit to run for re-election, he's certainly unfit to control our nuclear codes. Biden must step down from office immediately," House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.), the No. 3 Republican in the chamber, wrote on X.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the chair of the House GOP conference, echoed that sentiment, arguing that he is "unable and unfit" to complete his term.
"If Joe Biden can't run for re-election, he is unable and unfit to serve as President of the United States," Stefanik said in a statement. "He must immediately resign."
Biden announced he was stepping aside from the Democratic presidential ticket in a letter to the country Sunday afternoon, reversing his decision regarding the 2024 election amid mounting pressure from Democrats calling on him to withdraw from the race. Several Democrats had urged him to drop out of the race after last month's disastrous debate performance, where he at times stumbled over his words and appeared to lose his train of thought.
He endorsed Vice President Harris for president.
"It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term," Biden wrote.
But while he said he plans to serve out the remainder of his term, which officially ends in the middle of January, pressure is already mounting on the president to step aside in the interim.
Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, echoed that sentiment, challenging Democrats to consider if Biden can continue to serve the remainder of his term.
"If the president is mentally unfit to campaign, he is mentally unfit to have the nuclear codes," Hudson wrote in a statement. "Every House Democrat must now answer: is the president fit to serve the rest of his term?"
If Biden refuses to resign early, Republicans could turn to a resolution introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) late last month that urges Harris to convene the Cabinet and declare Biden unable to carry out the duties of the Oval Office. Harris, however, would be unlikely to do so.
The Hill reached out to Roy for more information.
Some senators also called on Biden to resign in the wake of his reelection news.
"If Joe Biden is no longer capable of running for re-election, he is no longer capable of serving as President," Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote in a statement. "Being President is the hardest job in the world, and I no longer have confidence that Joe Biden can effectively execute his duties as Commander-in-Chief." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
What is Project 2025, the conservative plan to remake federal government? | A: Project 2025 is an initiative developed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, to make signficant changes to the backbone of the U.S. federal government. It is designed to be implemented if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election. The project is built around a conservative policy agenda and aims to ensure that Republican loyalists are in place at all levels of the federal bureaucracy to carry out policies, effectively from the first days of a new administration. If enacted, it would bring significant changes across various aspects of American life, encompassing government operations, environmental regulations, social policies and civil service structures.
A: The project is structured around four main pillars:
A: The proposals cover a wide range of areas, including economic policies, social programs and government operations. Some notable plans include:
Government and Civil Service: The core tenet of Project 2025 is the overhaul of the federal bureaucracy. The plan includes the reclassification of tens of thousands of federal employees under a proposed "Schedule F" to facilitate easier firing and hiring of personnel aligned with conservative values. The goal is to ensure that federal agencies are staffed by individuals who will implement the president's agenda without resistance from career civil servants.
Environmental Regulations: Project 2025 seeks to roll back many of the Biden administration's climate policies. It proposes the dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency's renewable energy programs, reducing funding for environmental justice initiatives and halting the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy. The project envisions a regulatory environment that favors the fossil fuel industry, potentially slowing the transition to renewable energy sources.
Social Policies: The project outlines a significant shift in social policies, particularly around reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ issues. It advocates for the reversal of federal protections for abortion and contraception and suggests the reinstatement of the Comstock Act to limit mail-order abortion pills while proposing the removal of federal funding from providers who offer reproductive health services. Additionally, it includes measures to restrict LGBTQ+ rights and remove diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives from federal programs.
Education and Public Services: Project 2025 calls for budget savings that would eliminate the Department of Education, delivering more control of education standards to state and local authorities. It would also eliminate the Head Start early education program.
Healthcare and Social Services: The initiative suggests privatizing various public services and reducing the scope of federal social programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. These changes would shift to a greater reliance on state and local governments, as well as private entities, for the provision of these types of services.
Executive Power: A significant aspect of Project 2025 is the expansion of executive power. It proposes consolidating authority within the presidency, reducing the independence of federal agencies and increasing presidential control over policy implementation. This shift aims to streamline decision-making processes but raises concerns about the potential for executive overreach.
A: Critics argue that Project 2025 poses an affront to democracy and social welfare. The Democracy Forward Foundation describes it as a plan to undermine the quality of life for millions of Americans by prioritizing special interests and ideological extremism over the American public. They highlight concerns such as cutting wages, creating unsafe workplaces, destabilizing the economy and undermining civil rights protections.
A: Supporters believe that Project 2025 is necessary to streamline the federal government, reduce spending, and reverse any perceived damage caused by liberal policies. They argue that the initiative will restore conservative principles to governance, ensuring a more limited, efficient and effective federal government.
A: Project 2025 has become a focal point in the election. Among politicians who have spoken out in favor or against the framework:
Neil Chatterjee, Former Chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, via Politico: "Even if we lose the election and don't get the opportunity to govern, I still think this defined strategy is important because we know what we're for and what we can showcase to the American people even if we're out of power."
Paul Dans, Director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, via Salon: "We need to flood the zone with conservatives. This is a clarion call to come to Washington. People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, 'This is my lifetime moment to serve.'"
Russell Vought, Former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, via Politico: "We have to be thinking mechanically about how to take these institutions over. and highlight the need for executive orders, playbooks, and memoranda to seize control of the administrative state."
David Dewhirst, Senior Advisor to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, via Project 2025: "For the next conservative president to succeed, the executive branch must be staffed at every level with proven, conservative leaders from across the country who will courageously and efficiently implement the president's agenda."
Alex Floyd, DNC Rapid Response Director, via : "Donald Trump is running on the extreme and unpopular Project 2025 agenda, plain and simple - and there is nothing Trump or his allies can say to distance themselves from it."
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), via press release: "Project 2025 is more than an idea, it's a dystopian plot that's already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will."
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), via press release: "Project 25 is a radical, extreme, pro-authoritarianism plan pushed by conservatives who are desperate to take our country backwards. It is a movement led by far-right extremists that attacks our nation's founding principles, such as our system of checks and balances, freedom of speech and of the press, and separation of church and state. Project 25 presents a bleak and dangerous vision for America."
Rep Diana DeGette (D-CO), via press release: "We must counteract the radical roadmap laid out by Project 2025 to ensure that our country does not go backwards at the hands of their extremist agenda." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Video: 14% of non-citizens spoken to are registered to vote in crucial swing state: Report | A new video shared by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project reveals that a shocking number of illegal immigrants and non-citizens in Georgia are allegedly registered to vote ahead of the 2024 election.
On Wednesday, The Oversight Project shared a video obtained by Muckraker.com, tweeting, "Footage obtained by @realmuckraker shows numerous non-citizens admitting to being registered voters."
The video begins by showing multiple people being asked whether they are registered to vote and whether they are U.S. citizens. Numerous individuals can be seen confirming that they are registered to vote despite not being citizens of the United States.
Roughly 30 seconds into the video, a reporter can be heard explaining how research was conducted for the video. "The apartment complex Elliot Norcross in Norcross, Georgia, is occupied primarily by non-citizens," the reporter stated. "We visited the complex to ask residents two questions: 'Are you a citizen?' and 'Are you registered to vote?' Shockingly, 14% of respondents admitted to being noncitizens registered to vote."
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, The Oversight Project noted that approximately 339,000 non-citizens are believed to be currently living in Georgia. "If the 14% proportion holds true state wide, this would equate to over 47,000 registered non-citizens," The Oversight Project warned. "For context, Joe Biden 'won' the state of Georgia by less than 12,000 votes in 2020."
READ MORE: Biden admin's secret voter turnout 'scheme' questioned by House GOP
The Oversight Project explained that it tried to locate the individuals questioned in the video on Georgia's voter rolls but were unable to find them. The Oversight Project noted that non-citizens often have poor address history records and use fake names and documents. As a result, The Oversight Project said it was not clear what information the individuals in the video gave when completing their voter registration.
The Oversight Project stated, "One thing is for certain: Systems are being taken advantage of, and the outcome of the 2024 election will be difficult to determine given the near impossibility of auditing in a short period of time."
Following the release of the video, The Oversight Project announced that it would be referring the non-citizen voter registration issue over to Georgia officials and would be willing to cooperate with law enforcement in a potential investigation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
DOJ reveals it has Biden transcripts at issue in classified docs case after initial denial | Fox News contributor Joe Concha joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss the media's reaction to Robert Hur's testimony before Congress on Biden's handling of classified documents.
The Justice Department revealed late Monday in a court filing that it does in fact have transcripts of President Biden's interviews with a biographer after initially having denied possessing the documents.
While juggling Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to former special counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents following his departure as vice president in the Obama administration, DOJ attorneys said it would be time-consuming to process audio files into transcripts related to the president's conversations with biographer Mark Zwonitzer.
"We don't have some transcript that's been created by the special counsel that we can attest to its accuracy," DOJ lawyer Cameron Silverberg told U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich last month.
That changed Monday evening, when Silverberg told Friedrich in a new court filing that Hur's office did in fact have transcripts of some of Biden's conversations with Zwonitzer. The biographer worked with Biden in 2007 and 2017 to compile memoirs, Politico reported.
BIDEN ASSERTS EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE OVER RECORDINGS FROM CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS PROBE
"In the past few days, in the course of processing the portions of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings that the parties agreed to (see June 25, 2024 Joint Status Report at 2-3, ECF No. 20), the Department located six electronic files, consisting of a total of 117 pages, that appeared to be verbatim transcripts of a small subset of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings created for the SCO by a court-reporting service," a court filing late Monday evening reviewed by Fox News Digital states.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REBUKED FOR DELAY TACTICS IN BIDEN-HUR TAPES
The specific FOIA request related to the Biden-Zwonitzer transcripts was filed by the Heritage Foundation.
The court filing Monday evening also revealed that while fielding the various FOIA requests related to the bombshell Hur report, DOJ officials contacted an unnamed person with knowledge of the transcripts, but the individual was unable to weigh in. After resisting reaching out to Hur directly for information pertaining to what documents he relied upon for his final report, the DOJ did in fact reach out to Hur.
Hur confirmed the Biden-Zwonitzer transcripts and said he relied on the documents, as well as a note handwritten by Biden related to Afghanistan, for his final report.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS SUBPOENA DOJ MATERIALS RELATED TO SPECIAL COUNSEL HUR INTERVIEW WITH BIDEN
Hur's report on Biden's handling of classified materials after his eight years as vice president was released in February, and stated Hur would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, calling Biden "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
"Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him - by then a former president well into his eighties - of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness," Hur wrote in his report.
BIDEN, NOT SPECIAL COUNSEL HUR, BROUGHT UP SON'S DEATH IN QUESTIONING
The findings sparked widespread outrage that Biden was effectively deemed too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime yet could still serve as president.
In May, the White House asserted executive privilege over audio and video recordings related to Hur's investigation, including the interviews between Biden and Zwonitzer.
"The audio recordings of your interview and Mr. Zwonitzer's interview fall within the scope of executive privilege. Production of these recordings to the Committees would raise an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department's ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations--in particular, investigations where the voluntary cooperation of White House officials is exceedingly important," Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote to Biden in a letter obtained by Fox News at the time.
FOREIGN OUTLETS PULL NO PUNCHES OVER BIDEN 'CONFUSION' AND 'RAGE' AFTER SURPRISE PRESS CONFERENCE
Silverberg said in his Monday court filing that he will confer with the relevant parties regarding processing the documents for potential release.
The court filing comes one day after Biden dropped out of the presidential race following mounting pressure from Democrats to bow out and let another candidate take the mantle to run against former President Trump. The pressure was amplified following Biden's botched debate performance, which opened the floodgates to criticism and concern surrounding the president's mental fitness and age.
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Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 election following Biden's departure from the race. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Opinion | Biden Made a Courageous Choice. Democrats Must Seize the Opportunity. | The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
President Biden's decision to exit the 2024 presidential election is a fitting coda for a man whose life has been devoted to public service. Mr. Biden has served the nation well as its president. By agreeing to step down when his term ends in January, he is greatly increasing the chance that his party is able to protect the nation from the dangers of returning Donald Trump to the presidency.
Majorities of Americans have consistently said they did not believe Mr. Biden could lead the nation for another term, citing longstanding fears about his age and fitness that have only grown in recent months. Had he remained at the top of the ticket, he would have greatly increased the likelihood of Mr. Trump retaking the presidency and potentially both houses of Congress as well. Mr. Biden himself has consistently warned that specter presents a profound threat to the nation and its democratic traditions.
Mr. Biden has now done what Mr. Trump never will: He has placed the national interest above his own pride and ambition.
Mr. Biden's departure gives Democrats an opportunity to refocus public attention from questions about the president's fitness to the manifest moral and temperamental unfitness of Mr. Trump -- and to the dangers of rearming him with the considerable powers of the presidency.
Mr. Trump is a felon who flouts the law and the Constitution, an inveterate liar beholden to no higher cause than his self-interest and a reckless policymaker indifferent to the well-being of the American people. His term in office did lasting damage to the people and the project of America and to its reputation around the world. In a second term he would operate with fewer restraints and more willing enablers, and he and his emboldened advisers have made clear they intend to exercise power ruthlessly.
Yet it's not enough to describe all the harm Mr. Trump would do to this country: The Democratic Party needs to offer the American people a road map to a better future. The new presidential and vice-presidential nominees will offer a fresh chance to remind voters of longstanding differences between the two parties. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Biden to call for major Supreme Court reforms, including term limits, at Civil Rights Act event Monday | President Joe Biden is set to call for major Supreme Court reforms Monday, according to a White House official, a move that would make him the first sitting president in generations to back seismic changes to the way the nation's highest court operates.
Biden's election-year push comes amid deep unpopularity for the high court but stands little chance of going anywhere. He will call for a constitutional amendment stripping the president of immunity for crimes committed while in office, term limits for Supreme Court justices, and a binding code of conduct for the high court, the White House official said.
Biden's announcement, which he is set to make at an event in Austin, Texas, commemorating the Civil Rights Act, follows this month's monumental decision by the Supreme Court granting presidents full immunity for some actions taken while in office and after a tide of revelations about justices accepting vacations and gifts from wealthy conservative donors. Democrats on the campaign trail frequently point to the Supreme Court's conservative majority - solidified by former President Donald Trump - to underscore what they see as the high stakes of the 2024 election.
The White House official said Biden will call for an amendment dubbed the "No One Is Above the Law Amendment," which will state the Constitution "does not confer any immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing by virtue of previously serving as President."
In what would be another change to the Constitution, Biden will also call for term limits for Supreme Court justices, who serve lifetime appointments.
The reforms Biden is proposing would require congressional approval, which would be difficult to achieve before his term ends, as Republicans control the House and Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate. The constitutional amendment, meanwhile, would require a more complicated process involving the states that seems nearly impossible to succeed.
The reforms, which will face heavy resistance, are meant to "restore trust and accountability when it comes to the presidency and the United States Supreme Court," the White House official said.
CNN reported this month that Biden was seriously considering endorsing major Supreme Court reforms, actions that liberal lawmakers and groups have been pushing in recent years.
The Monday announcement will come more than three years after Biden created a commission to study structural changes at the Supreme Court, including term limits and proposals to increase the number of justices. The group submitted its report to the White House in late 2021, but the administration did not pursue any of the ideas discussed in the document.
The debate over proposed structural changes at the Supreme Court has become deeply partisan, with Republicans widely opposed. But the issue has drawn renewed attention after it was reported in May that controversial flags were previously hoisted on properties owned by conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Both of the flags were flown by rioters during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, though Alito has denied any connection to that incident and has said his wife hoisted them for different reasons - including a spat with neighbors.
Meanwhile, the court handed down several controversial decisions this summer that drew sharp criticism on the left, including the stunning 6-3 ruling that granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Last year, the high court adopted its own code of conduct. But the measure was heavily criticized by ethics experts because it included no way to enforce its requirements. Liberal Justice Elena Kagan defended the code of conduct in remarks last week but also conceded it would be more effective if it included an enforcement mechanism.
Biden's proposal comes as polling indicates support for the court is hovering near historic lows. A Marquette Law School poll in May found that 61% of Americans disapprove of the job the court is doing. Just four years ago, the same poll found the court had a 66% approval rating.
Democrats have sought to use public disapproval of the court - particularly its 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade - to drive voters. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, have made that decision a central part of their campaign arguments, hoping the issue of abortion rights will galvanize voters heading into November.
Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has resisted calls from his party to expand the court, has become increasingly critical of its makeup. He has described the Supreme Court as "out of kilter" and has warned of the impact a second Trump presidency could have on the nation's highest court.
Biden, who is making his first trip since bowing out of the 2024 race, will call for the changes at the presidential library honoring President Lyndon B. Johnson, who ended his own reelection bid in 1968. Biden will also use his remarks to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the landmark legislation that cemented Johnson's legacy.
CNN's MJ Lee and Devan Cole contributed to this report. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Jimmy Carter Told Son Why He Wants to Live Past 100: 'I'm Only Trying to Make It to Vote for Kamala Harris' | Kyler Alvord is a news editor at PEOPLE, leading the brand's political coverage. He joined the publication in 2021 on the crime beat.
Jimmy Carter is less than two months out from his 100th birthday on Oct. 1, but loved ones say his sights are set on reaching a different milestone: voting Kamala Harris for president.
Jimmy has been in hospice care for a year and a half, and though his condition has not dramatically changed since February 2023, his grandson Jason Carter told Southern Living in June that the family's 99-year-old patriarch was "no longer awake every day."
Two months later, however, Jason is sharing a more optimistic health update about the 39th U.S. president.
While promoting an upcoming tribute concert for his grandfather's birthday, Jason told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Jimmy has been "more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza" in recent days.
Jason previously said that his grandfather has good days and bad days, and that it is often hard to predict what state he will be in when family stops in for visits.
When Jimmy's son Chip Carter asked him this week whether he wants to live to see his 100th birthday, the former president responded, "I'm only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris," according to Jason.
Though the 2024 presidential election is still three months away, the former president wouldn't have to wait until Nov. 5 to cast his ballot. Early voting in Georgia begins on Oct. 15, and absentee ballots are sent out up to 29 days before the election.
Georgia does not have any laws barring a ballot from being counted if someone dies between the early voting period and Election Day.
Jimmy, a Democrat who served in the White House from 1977 to 1981, has earned bipartisan praise for his post-presidency humanitarian work. For a while, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient stayed quieter than other former presidents about politics, but he grew more vocal under the presidency of Donald Trump.
"I think it's well-known that the incumbent [President Trump] is very careless with the truth," Jimmy told CBS News in a 2018 interview, adding: "I think I went through my campaign and my presidency without ever lying to the people or making a deliberately false statement, and I think that would be a very worthwhile thing to reinsert into politics these days."
"I think he's a disaster ... In human rights and in treating people equal," the former president said before his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter jumped in. "The worst is that he is not telling the truth, and that just hurts everything," she said.
When Trump was voted out of office in the 2020 election, Jimmy expressed optimism for the Biden-Harris administration.
"Rosalynn joins me in congratulating our friends President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris," he said in a statement. "We are proud of their well-run campaign and look forward to seeing the positive change they bring to our nation."
Georgia will play a significant role in the 2024 presidential election between Harris and Trump, as a swing state with 16 Electoral College votes. In 2020, Biden and Harris won Georgia by just 11,779 votes, or 0.23%.
Jimmy is deeply embedded in the state's politics as its former governor. He built his political career around seeking equality for all Americans at a time when segregationist and sexist attitudes dominated his rural Georgia community.
In his 1971 gubernatorial inauguration speech, he said that "the time for racial discrimination is over" and asserted that Black people should never "have to bear the additional burden" of being deprived equal opportunities. He has also routinely stood up for gender equality, supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and walking away from the Southern Baptist Church in 2000 when they declared that women cannot serve as pastors.
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As president, Jimmy nominated the first Black woman to the U.S. Cabinet, and he has lived to see the first Black woman elected to Senate, the first Black female Supreme Court justice and the first Black female vice president.
His unforeseen longevity in hospice care allowed him to see the first Black woman nominated for president by a major party on Friday, Aug. 2. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Entrepreneur warns a Kamala Harris presidency would hurt lower to middle-class the most | Entrepreneur Shawn Meaike discusses what the business climate would be like under Kamala Harris on 'The Big Money Show.'
As the 2024 election race heats up, and as Kamala Harris steps into the ring, small businesses are starting to examine what things could like under her presidency -- with one entrepreneur warning her administration's fiscal policies will hurt lower to middle-class Americans the most.
Entrepreneur Shawn Meaike sounded off during an interview on "The Big Money Show," Wednesday, explaining what the situation could look like with the current Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate at the helm.
"What people are not understanding is what... significant and actually ridiculous tax hike proposals mean for all of us, right?" He said. "When you start looking at these businesses now... it sounds great to say, I'm going to tax the 1% or get this, or I'm going to get only these individuals."
POSSIBLE KAMALA HARRIS PRESIDENCY SHOULD CONCERN SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS, ENTREPRENEUR SAYS
The entrepreneur, who founded and runs the life insurance agency, Family First Life (FFL), explained how the possible Harris economy and tax proposals would affect small businesses and threaten the American dream.
"At the end of the day, all these restaurants, all these business owners, myself, profit-sharing, what we're doing... we can't do." He continued, "at the end of the day, the American dream... I don't want to say the American dream is dead -- that's probably a little bit over the top -- but what I can tell you is it's going to make it really difficult to navigate what you want to do with employees, for employees."
Meaike recounted a recent conversation he had during which he discussed what the potential ramifications could be.
"I was with a gentleman yesterday. He owns multiple restaurants. I said, 'what are you doing to stay alive?' What do they do? Cut staff. Cut resources. The valets up the street are laid off. The servers are laid off. The guys and girls who deliver the food are laid off."
"So it's a trickle-down theory that's pretty significantly scary for me," he added.
The entrepreneur subsequently discussed the impact of wages and inflation, sending a warning to Americans should Trump not see a second term as president.
"If we don't have a Trump presidency, I think we continue to go the wrong way," he warned.
Meaike pointed to how his own family faced a difficult financial situation -- noting his mother's struggles with inflation and job losses -- remarking that "the most vulnerable people" are at risk of getting hurt.
"At the end of the day, when you start talking about [how] McDonald's is trying to find a way to get people to come in, McDonald's is saying, 'it's hard for you to come in and afford a meal'... what do people do when they're in a bad spot? They do things they wouldn't necessarily do."
The entrepreneur continued, expressing his concern for lower and middle-class income families if the current trajectory does not change.
"I think that financially, on top of the fact that it's an unsafe place right now, and you take that into consideration for insurance and everything else and small business owners are trying to do." He continued, "if we don't adjust this, the lower-class and middle-class income families are the ones going to be hurt by far the worst by this, and they're allegedly the ones [that are] going to be protected by a Harris presidency."
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He also weighed in on Donald Trump choosing JD Vance as his running mate, remarking that he loved the pick, Vance's story and "the fact that he's a businessman."
Additionally, he told "The Big Money Show" he's excited about Trump and Vance's approach to money.
"I don't know why I want the government to have more of my money. I want me and my family to have more of my money. I trust me and what I do with my money more than I trust the federal government."
Meaike added that he was a small business owner during Trump's presidency, imploring other small business owners -- as well as employees -- to recall their financial situation during his administration.
"What we should be focused on is how much better was the employee's life," he concluded. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
Fake electors get tapped as GOP convention delegates | CNN Politics | CNN --
Seven battleground states are sending fake electors and others who worked to upend the 2020 election results to represent their state parties at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where they will officially anoint Donald Trump as their presidential nominee.
The fake electors and other election deniers identified by CNN include several who are currently facing criminal charges for their efforts in helping Trump try to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 victory. They hail from the states that were central to that plot last presidential cycle: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Wisconsin, according to lists published by state parties and other documents obtained by CNN.
They've been selected to serve as national committee members, delegates or alternates with one clear task: Make Trump's nomination official.
Their role underscores how Trump has effectively woven election denialism into the GOP's platform. It also marks an about face for a party that, at least in the immediate aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, sought to distance itself from Trump and his efforts to stay in power.
"Election denialism is like the price of entry now," according to former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a CNN contributor who served on the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6 US Capitol riot and has endorsed Biden for president in 2024.
"These people that were in the fake elector scheme, or got a mug shot, they're now the heroes of the movement, and they've taken over the party," Kinzinger added.
Anna Kelly, a spokesman for the RNC, noted that Republican activists are responsible for electing their convention representatives. "State delegations are made up of delegates elected by their peers at the state party level," Kelly said.
From fringe elements to key players
The Arizona delegation includes three fake electors who have been charged in that state for their alleged roles in the plot, including state Sen. Jake Hoffman who was recently elected to be a Republican National Committee member. Hoffman has pleaded not guilty.
In Georgia, Amy Kremer - who helped organize the January 6 rally on the Ellipse ahead of the Capitol attack but has not been accused of any criminal activity - was chosen to serve on the Republican National Committee.
Jake Hoffman and Amy Kremer
AP
Michigan's delegation counts four individuals facing criminal charges brought by prosecutors in that state. The group includes former Michigan GOP co-chair and fake elector Meshawn Maddock who has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Matthew DePerno, a failed candidate for Michigan attorney general who recently announced a run for the state Supreme Court, is also headed to the convention. He too faces criminal charges for allegedly plotting to access and seize voting machines. He's denied any wrongdoing.
"They've gone from fringe elements of the party to, now, officially party members in good standing with perceived power," Kinzinger said, referring to those delegates who participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The Democratic National Committee also panned the roster headed to Milwaukee.
"This kind of far-right MAGA extremism on full display in today's GOP is exactly why voters will reject Trump this November," said Alex Floyd, a DNC spokesperson.
High honor
Nearly 5,000 delegates and alternates are set to convene in Wisconsin for the Republican Party's four-day confab beginning July 15 in Milwaukee. They'll descend from all 50 states and six territories. And they'll gather on the convention floor, sporting flamboyant hats and pledging their support to Trump.
The convention comes just months after Trump effectively remade the Republican National Committee in his image. Committee members selected Trump ally Michael Whatley to take over as party chair and Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law, now serves as co-chair. Other senior Trump campaign advisers have taken on roles with the RNC, alongside their campaign duties.
Republican National Committee co-chairs Michael Whatley and Lara Trump address the media at the Oakland County GOP Headquarters, Friday, June 14, 2024 in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Carlos Osorio/AP
For the newly elected members of the RNC, the convention is a chance to gladhand and make their new role known. Their four-year term officially begins at the end of the convention. From there, they will take on responsibilities that could shape the GOP's future spending, fundraising, primary debates and next nominating convention.
"For a lot of people, it is a high honor. You are delegate to a presidential nominating committee and taking an important step in our country's democracy and history," said Douglas Heye, a GOP political strategist who once served as communications director for the Republican National Committee.
This year, those positions will be held by some Republicans who nearly undermined the democratic process in 2020.
"The first conventions I was going to, character matters was a big part of Republican messaging," Heye said. "We don't really talk about that anymore. And this is a manifest of that."
State cases against fake electors
Prosecutors in five of the seven hotly contested states last presidential cycle brought charges against dozens of Republicans who served as alternate electors or Trump allies who allegedly orchestrated the plot to overturn the election results.
But the cases have mostly plodded along. In Nevada, a judge recently dismissed the criminal charges against the GOP electors because of an issue about where the case was brought. At this stage, none of the four remaining state-level criminal cases is likely to be resolved before the 2024 election.
The slow progress of the criminal cases has left those who worked to overturn the last presidential election free to continue openly participating in the political process, cheered along by GOP activists, many of whom share in their baseless claims that the 2020 election was somehow rigged against Trump.
In Nevada, well before the charges were dismissed, the Republican Party selected five of the six fake electors from 2020 to attend the Republican National Convention.
New Mexico included just one of the alternate GOP electors - who has not been accused of criminal activity - in its convention delegation.
Pennsylvania is sending three fake electors to represent the state party in Milwaukee. While the GOP electors from Pennsylvania have not faced criminal prosecution, several played an active role in trying to upend the last presidential election.
That includes Thomas Carroll, a Pennsylvania attorney who represented two local county commissioners as part of a legal dispute about voting machine breaches. During the civil litigation, Carroll and the county were both sanctioned by the state's Supreme Court for defying a court order blocking their access to the machines, but they face no criminal charges.
Remorse and defiance
To be sure, some state level Republicans who participated in the fake elector scheme after the 2020 election have since expressed remorse for their actions.
In December, the 10 fake electors from Wisconsin disavowed their attempt to overturn Trump's defeat in 2020 and recognized the legitimacy of Biden's victory as part of a civil lawsuit settlement. In a rare moment of accountability, they even issued a statement acknowledging that the phony certificates they signed in December 2020 were "used as part of an attempt to improperly overturn" the lawful election results.
The Wisconsin Republicans pledged not to serve as real electors in 2024 or any election when Trump is on the ballot, or to act as sham electors in any future election, as part of the civil settlement.
But it didn't place any restrictions on other roles they could play. One of Wisconsin's fake electors, Pam Travis, is headed to the convention as a delegate. Another, Robert Spindell, is set to serve as an alternate. Neither have been charged with any crimes.
Ahead of November, many of the 2020 fake electors have remained defiant.
"The American people are awake to the perverse weaponization of government at the hands of power-hungry Democrats, which is why people are flocking to the Republican Party, President Trump, and the principles of liberty like never before, and my election as RNC National Committeeman for Arizona is proof positive that Republicans are the Party of everyday, hard working Americans," Hoffman, one of the Arizona fake electors, said in a statement to CNN.
Hoffman has pleaded not guilty and slammed the charges against him, telling CNN in a statement: "Let me be unequivocal, I am innocent of any crime, I will vigorously defend myself, and I look forward to the day when I am vindicated of this naked political persecution by the judicial process."
Maddock, one of the Michigan fake electors who has pleaded not guilty, has also called the prosecution against her "politically motivated" and continues to claim that Trump won the 2020 election. She responded to CNN's request for comment but did not address questions about her role as a fake elector and the significance of being chosen as a delegate.
Meshawn Maddock and Matthew DePerno
USA Today Network/AP
DePerno, also facing state charges in Michigan, shared a statement with CNN that said, in part: "You should actually do some research. So now is a good time to point out that not only are so-called 'election deniers' (what a dumb term) staying involved, we are planning on winning."
In Georgia, Kremer has also parroted the lie that Trump won a state he lost by some 12,000 votes.
"We didn't tell people to go to the Capitol. But the thing was, the people wanted to do something. So people marched to the Capitol," Kremer said in April, according to the Associated Press. "And we all know what's happened since then. The federal government has been weaponized against us."
Kremer told CNN in a statement that she is "honored and excited to be part of a new generation of leadership recently elected to the RNC and am blessed to represent Georgia on the committee."
"I look forward to working with my fellow colleagues at the RNC to secure our elections and make sure Donald J Trump is elected President in November," she added. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election |
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