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Oct. 2024 News (Pt. 5)

Saturday, October 26, 2024 10:12
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Editor’s Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative October 2024 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors’ words except for subheads and occasional “Editor’s notes” such as this. 

Oct. 26

Top Headlines

Trump Mental Health, Cases, Threats

djt project 2025

Other U.S. Presidential Campaign News

 America First Transition Project

More On Middle East Crises

 

More On U.S. Politics, Governance

Nicole Shanahan, above, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, right,denies she had an affair with Elon Musk (Photo via Getty Images ). On July 27, 2022, her lawyer released a statement in response to a Wall Street Journal report that cited unidentified sources as saying she had engaged in a brief affair with the Tesla CEO while separated from Brin, a claim Musk himself also recently denied.

Nicole Shanahan, above, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, right, denies she had an affair with Elon Musk (Photo via Getty Images ). On July 27, 2022, her lawyer released a statement in response to a Wall Street Journal report that cited unidentified sources as saying she had engaged in a brief affair with the Tesla CEO Musk, center, while separated from Brin, a claim Musk himself also recently denied. She is shown also below in a People Magazine photo after receiving divorce settlement from Brin reportedly in the vicinity of a billion dollars.

Nicole Shanahan is shown in a People Magazine photo after receiving divorce settlement from Google co-founder Sergey Brin reportedly in the vicinity of a billion dollars.

U.S. Courts, Justice System

Lyle Menendez, left, holding a file folder, confers with his brother, Erik Menendez, in a courtroom in 1991. Both are wearing sweaters.Lyle Menendez, left, and his brother, Erik Menendez, in court in April 1991 in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Associated Press photo by Kevork Djansezian).Lyle Menendez, left, holding a file folder, confers with his brother, Erik Menendez, in a courtroom in 1991. Both are wearing sweaters.Lyle Menendez, left, and his brother, Erik Menendez, in court in April 1991 in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Associated Press photo by Kevork Djansezian).

Global Affairs, Wars, Human Rights

Ukraine-Russia War, Human Rights Crimes

U.S. Hurricanes, Other Disasters

katie nickolaou maga

 Public Health, Climate, Environment, Energy, Transportation

U.S. Economy, Jobs

U.S. Immigration Politics

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Women’s Health, Trafficking, #MeToo, Culture Wars

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Top Stories

ny times logoNew York Times, 13 Ex-Trump Aides Back Kelly’s ‘Dictator’ Warning, Saying Trump Seeks ‘Absolute, Unchecked Power,’ Tim Balk, Oct. 26, 2024 (print ed.). In a letter, the former aides wrote, “For the good of our country, our democracy, and our Constitution, we are asking you to listen closely and carefully to General Kelly’s warning.”Thirteen former Trump administration officials released an open letter on Friday amplifying warnings from John F. Kelly, Donald J. Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, that the former president would rule like a dictator if he returned to office.

The former officials wrote that they were shocked but “not surprised” after Mr. Kelly, a former Marine general, told The New York Times that Mr. Trump had said more than once that “Hitler did some good things” and had complained that U.S. generals were not sufficiently loyal to him.

“This is who Donald Trump is,” wrote the 13, all “lifelong Republicans,” according to the letter. “Donald Trump’s disdain for the American military and admiration for dictators like Hitler is rooted in his desire for absolute, unchecked power.”

The letter did not describe any of the former officials hearing Mr. Trump speaking glowingly of Hitler, the Nazi dictator who presided over the systematic slaughter of six million Jews and millions of others.

But the letter said its signers had “witnessed, up close and personal, how Donald Trump operates and what he is capable of.”

“The American people deserve a leader who won’t threaten to turn armed troops against them, won’t put his quest for power above their needs, and doesn’t idealize the likes of Adolf Hitler,” the letter said.

In his comments to The Times, Mr. Kelly described Mr. Trump’s appreciation of history as limited, and he recalled attempting to explain to the president why it was problematic to praise Hitler. Still, Mr. Kelly said, Mr. Trump continued to make positive comments about Hitler.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, Steven Cheung, accused Mr. Kelly of fabricating his account in a statement on Friday that also claimed that Mr. Kelly and the former Trump administration officials who signed the open letter were suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

In this year’s election, Mr. Trump has described Democrats, some by name, as the “enemy from within” and has contemplated deploying the National Guard to address the threat he claims they could pose.

The letter, organized on Wednesday after Mr. Kelly’s comments were published in The Times on Tuesday, was signed by several outspoken Harris supporters, including two who gave speeches at the Democratic National Convention: Stephanie Grisham, a former Trump White House press secretary, and Olivia Troye, who was an adviser to Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence.

Other signers included Anthony Scaramucci, who had a memorable 10-day run as communications director in the Trump White House; Brooke Vosburgh Alexander, who was a top aide in the Commerce Department; Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as Mr. Pence’s press secretary; Mark Harvey and Peter Jennison, who worked on the National Security Council; Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary; and Robert Riley, who was the U.S. ambassador to Micronesia.

Three former Homeland Security Department officials also signed the letter: Kevin Carroll, Elizabeth Neumann and Sofia Kinzinger, who is married to former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the most vocal Republican opponents of Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

New York Times, Biden Apologizes for U.S. Abuse of Indian Children, Calling It ‘a Sin on Our Soul’

From the early 1800s to the late 1960s, the federal government forced Native American children into boarding schools where they faced abuse and neglect that led in some cases to death.Listen to this article · 5:17 min Learn more

Videotranscript0:00/0:34Biden Apologizes for U.S. Mistreatment of Native American ChildrenPresident Biden offered a formal apology on Friday on behalf of the U.S. government for the abuse of Native American children from the early 1800s to the late 1960s.

The Federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened until today. I formally apologize. It’s long, long, long overdue. Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make. I know no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy. But today, we’re finally moving forward into the light.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Donald Trump Is Making Big Promises to Big Business, Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Oct. 26, 2024. Crypto. Big Oil. Tobacco. Vaping. The former president has been making overt promises to industry leaders, a level of explicitness rarely seen in modern presidential politics.

On a Friday in late September, Donald J. Trump took time off the campaign trail for a closed-door meeting at Mar-a-Lago with officials representing the vaping industry.

The vaping emissaries talked about loosening regulations and told the former president he had “saved” the industry in the past. The group — including Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, and another 2016 campaign aide, Michael Rubino — showed him mock-ups of mailers they were sending out through Election Day. Mr. Trump asked for input on what he could say on social media about a complicated regulatory issue.

Within hours, Mr. Trump had posted about his allegiances to the embattled e-cigarette sector. “I saved Flavored Vaping in 2019,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “I’ll save Vaping again!”

The head of the Vapor Technology Association, Tony Abboud, who was also in the meeting, quickly declared he was “pleased” that Mr. Trump was “continuing to fight for vapers.” The vaping industry has not been a significant contributor in the presidential race, but the Vapor Technology Association has been quietly sending versions of those mailers to voters in battleground states warning that Democrats want “to steal vapes from freedom-loving Americans.”

As Mr. Trump seeks a return to the White House, he has come a long way from his 2016 campaign pitch that he was so rich he was incorruptible. Back then, he mocked the G.O.P.’s donor-lobbyist class and boasted in his announcement speech, “I don’t need anybody’s money.” Today, Mr. Trump is looking everywhere for cash: asking small donors online, pressing fellow billionaires over private meals in Trump Tower and lobbying for donations from industries regulated by the government.

As he does so, he is sometimes making overt promises about what he will do once he’s in office, a level of explicitness toward individual industries and a handful of billionaires that has rarely been seen in modern presidential politics.

In some cases, Mr. Trump has sought to shake loose cash from industries like oil and energy that have long aligned with his deregulation agenda. In others, Mr. Trump has flipped his positions, such as on crypto.

Not long ago, he was warning that cryptocurrencies seemed “like a scam” that could facilitate crimes, and he supported stiff regulation. Now, he is aggressively courting the industry, promising to make America “the crypto capital of the planet” and to fire its most hated regulator on Day 1.

Millions of dollars in crypto-industry contributions have followed.

“Former President Trump has a ‘For Sale’ sign around his neck and appears to be willing to sell basically any policy in exchange for campaign contributions,” said Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a nonprofit that seeks stronger regulations.

The Trump operation had feared being outspent when it was competing against President Biden. But the matter of raising money became especially urgent once he was running against Vice President Kamala Harris, who raised twice as much as him over the summer.

In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said the former president had proposed policies to help people “struggling from the weak and terrible policies” of the current administration.

“President Trump only takes his cues on policy from one group of people: the American people,” Ms. Leavitt said. She said he was supported by “people who share his vision of American energy dominance” as well as “crypto innovators and others in the technology sector” who are “under attack.”

In 2016, Mr. Trump vowed to “drain the swamp,” though he was not initially enamored with the phrase. “A little hokey,” he called it. But crowds roared, and he kept repeating it.

As president, he did no such thing. Far from it: He hired top executives from Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and from the fossil fuel and pharmaceutical industries. He ended the practice of making public White House visitor logs. His family operated a for-profit hotel blocks from the White House that became a den of lobbying activity and a must-stay place for those looking to curry favor. People who paid pricey membership dues to join his private club at Mar-a-Lago had easy access to Mr. Trump as he dined on the patio, often taking the opportunity to pitch their pet interests.

“Trump was the first transactional president,” said Scott Reed, a longtime Republican consultant and former top political strategist for the United States Chamber of Commerce. “He’s now taken it to a new level.”

ny times logoNew York Times, G.O.P. Lawmaker Voices Support for Giving North Carolina’s Electors to Trump, Tim Balk and Eduardo Medina, Oct. 26, 2024 (print ed.). Representative Andy Harris walked back his remarks, later saying his rationale that Hurricane Helene disenfranchised some voters was “theoretical.”

Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland, appeared to voice support for a plan for North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Legislature to award former President Donald J. Trump the swing state’s electoral votes, according to video of a conservative gathering on Thursday that was posted on social media.

Mr. Harris, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, later walked back his comments in a statement on Friday, saying that the “theoretical conversation has been taken out of context” and that “every legal vote should be counted.”

His comments, reported earlier on Friday by Politico, came in an exchange with Ivan Raiklin, a lawyer and a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted a plan in 2020 to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence not to certify electors from several disputed swing states.Get the best of The Times in your inbox

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Mr. Harris appeared to use the hurricane-damaged region of western North Carolina as a rationale for the plan, falsely saying that the voters there had been “disenfranchised.” The North Carolina State Board of Elections approved several emergency measures this month to ensure that voters in the region who were reeling from the effects of Hurricane Helene could still cast ballots.

Early in-person voting in the 13 most-affected counties has fared well so far, despite challenges presented by storm recovery efforts. Voters in those counties account for 8 percent of the state’s registered voters, and they have accounted for nearly the same percentage of accepted votes in the state so far. “It looks like things are improving,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C.

Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, told reporters on Friday that “it makes no sense whatsoever to prejudge the election outcome,” according to Politico.

“That is a misinformed view of what is happening on the ground in North Carolina,” Mr. McHenry said of Mr. Harris. “Bless his heart.”

ny times logoNew York Times, News analysis: In Deciding Whether to Retaliate, Iran Faces a Dilemma, Steven Erlanger, Oct. 26, 2024.  If Iran strikes back at Israel, it risks further escalation at a time when its economy is struggling and its military is vulnerable. If it doesn’t, it risks looking weak.

Iran faces a dilemma after the Israeli strikes on Saturday.

If it retaliates, it risks further escalation at a time when its economy is struggling, its allies are faltering, its military vulnerability is clear and its leadership succession is in play.

If it does not, it risks looking weak to those same allies, as well as to more aggressive and powerful voices at home.

Iran is already in the middle of a regional war. Since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has moved swiftly to damage the militant group in Gaza and other Iranian proxies, including Hezbollah, the Houthis and its allies in Syria and Iraq.

These groups represent Iran’s “forward defense” against Israel, the heart of the nation’s deterrence. They have been badly weakened by the Israeli military’s tough response since Oct. 7, which weakens Iran, too, and makes it more vulnerable.

Iranian officials have made it clear that they do not want a direct war with Israel. They want to preserve their allies, the so-called ring of fire around Israel.

After Israel struck Iran, Tehran on Saturday publicly played down the effect of the attack and showed ordinary programming on television. It did not immediately vow a major retaliation, but simply restated its right to do so.

Adding to its reticence, Iran faces enormous economic problems, making it wary of an extended and costly war with Israel. It has been heavily penalized by the United States and Europe over its nuclear program, forcing it to move ever closer to Russia and China.

Trump Mental Health, Cases, Threats

djt project 2025

kevin roberts djt plane

ny times logoNew York Times, Investigation: The Many Links Between Project 2025 and Trump’s World, Elena Shao and Ashley Wu, Oct. 23, 2024 (print ed.). Former President Trump has sought to distance himself from the conservative policy initiative. But well over half of its contributors have worked for him, and many of its policies overlap with his.

heritage logoFormer president Donald J. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he had nothing to do with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy initiative to reshape the federal government. Mr. Trump has said that he has not read its proposals and does not know who is behind it. But Project 2025 has numerous ties to Mr. Trump and his campaign, a New York Times analysis has found.

The people behind Project 2025 are no strangers to the former president. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin D. Roberts, and a co-founder, Edwin J. Feulner, have each personally met with Mr. Trump (as shown by the photo above of Roberts, left, and Trump on airplane trip together).

And the analysis of the Project 2025 playbook and its 307 authors and contributors revealed that well over half of them had been in Mr. Trump’s administration or on his campaign or transition teams.

djt maga hatLarge portions of the “Mandate for Leadership,” the driving document behind Project 2025, were written by longtime Trump loyalists who were advisers to Mr. Trump during his first term.

  • Eighteen of the 40 authors and editors who worked on the document served in the first Trump administration:
  • One worked on Mr. Trump’s first presidential transition team:
  • Twelve worked both in Mr. Trump’s first administration and on one of his transition or campaign teams:
  • Of the 267 additional contributors to the Project 2025 playbook, at least 144, highlighted in the list below, also worked in Mr. Trump’s administration or on his campaign or transition teams.

Letters From An American, Commentary: October 21, [Trump Plans for ""The Enemy From Within"], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Oct. 22, heather cox richardson cnn2024. On Saturday, September 7, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.”

He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and election officials. Retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “a fascist to the core…the most dangerous person to this country.”

On October 14, Trump told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that he thought enemies within the United States were more dangerous than foreign adversaries and that he thought the military should stop those “radical left lunatics” on Election Day. Since then, he has been talking a lot about “the enemy from within,” specifically naming Representative Adam Schiff and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats from California, as “bad people.” Schiff was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee that broke the 2019 story of Trump’s attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Trump’s references to the “enemy from within” have become so frequent that former White House press secretary turned political analyst Jen Psaki has called them his closing argument for the 2024 election, and she warned that his construction of those who oppose him as “enemies” might sweep in virtually anyone he feels is a threat.

In a searing article today, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer of The Cycle explored exactly what that means in a piece titled “What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?” Bitecofer outlined Adolf Hitler’s January 30, 1933, oath of office, in which he promised Germans he would uphold the constitution, and the three months he took to dismantle that constitution.

By March, she notes, the concentration camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s prominent political opponents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political parties were illegal. By May, labor unions were banned and students were burning banned books. Within the year, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was illegal, and denouncing violators paid well for those who did it.

Bitecofer writes that Trump has promised mass deportations “that he cannot deliver unless he violates both the Constitution and federal law.” To enable that policy, Trump will need to dismantle the merit-based civil service and put into office those loyal to him rather than the Constitution. And then he will purge his political opponents, for once those who would stand against him are purged, Trump can act as he wishes against immigrants, for example, and others.

Egberto Off The Record, Commentary: CNN’s Jake Tapper calls out Trump, Musk, and MTG as leading conspiracy theory-promoting liars, Egberto Willies, right, Oct. 24, 2024. Jake Tapper methodically deconstructs the conspiracy theories pushed by Donald Trump, MTG, and Musk and admonishes them for the unpatriotic liars that they are.

egberto willis instagramJake Tapper‘s CNN segment exposes the false conspiracy that claimed ABC News provided Kamala Harris with debate questions in advance. This baseless rumor, amplified by anonymous social media accounts, gained traction with the help of high-profile figures like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Tapper highlights the dangers of unchecked disinformation, especially when promoted by powerful individuals with large platforms. He connects these falsehoods to a broader effort to undermine trust in democratic institutions and the media.

  • Anonymous social media users spread a fabricated claim about Kamala Harris receiving debate questions.
  • Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Marjorie Taylor Greene amplified the conspiracy without evidence.
  • Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claimed the “whistleblower” had died in a car crash but later admitted it was untrue while still calling for an investigation.
  • The segment underscores how disinformation erodes trust in democracy, media, and science, with potential real-world consequences.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during an interview with Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago on Oct. 15, 2024. Micklethwait interrupted Trump during an answer (Associated Press photo by Evan Vucci).

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during an interview with Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago on Oct. 15, 2024. Micklethwait interrupted Trump during an answer (Associated Press photo by Evan Vucci). “You’re talking about slamming allies with 20 percent, 30 percent tariffs. Isn’t this time, you’re going to end up trying to rally the West and you’re dividing it instead,” Micklethwait said. “How does it help you take on China, turning all of your allies against you?”  The Republican presidential nominee said it helps him “tremendously” because “China thinks we’re a stupid country.” A spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent, said the lack of focus “showed exactly why Americans can’t afford a second Trump presidency.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: Trump Escalates Threats to Political Opponents He Deems the ‘Enemy,’ Lisa Lerer and Michael Gold, Updated Oct. 16, 2024. Never before has a nominee suggested turning the military on Americans who oppose him. With voting underway, Donald Trump has embraced dark vows of retribution.

With three weeks left before Election Day, former President Donald J. Trump is pushing to the forefront of his campaign a menacing political threat: that he would use the power of the presidency to crush those who disagree with him.

In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Mr. Trump framed Democrats as a pernicious “enemy from within” that would cause chaos on Election Day that he speculated the National Guard might need to handle.

A day later, he closed his remarks to a crowd at what was billed as a town hall in Pennsylvania with a stark message about his political opponents.

“They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”

And on Tuesday, he once again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power when pressed by an interviewer at an economic forum in Chicago.

With early voting underway in key battlegrounds, the race for the White House is moving toward Election Day in an extraordinary and sobering fashion. Mr. Trump has long flirted with, if not openly endorsed, anti-democratic tendencies with his continued refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, embrace of conspiracy theories of large-scale voter fraud and accusations that the justice system is being weaponized against him. He has praised leaders including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary for being authoritarian strongmen.

But never before has a presidential nominee — let alone a former president — openly suggested turning the military on American citizens simply because they oppose his candidacy. As he escalates his threats of political retribution, Mr. Trump is offering voters the choice of a very different, and far less democratic, form of American government.

“There is not a case in American history where a presidential candidate has run for office on a promise that they would exact retribution against anyone they perceive as not supporting them in the campaign,” said Ian Bassin, a former associate White House counsel under Barack Obama who leads the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “It’s so fundamentally, outrageously beyond the pale of how this country has worked that it’s hard to articulate how insane it is.”

The Bulwark, Commentary: George Conway Explains: Trump’s Endless Corruption, Giuliani’s Final Humiliation, Jonathan V. Last, Oct 24, 2024. Guardrails, Grifters, and Giuliani’s Fall from Grace.

JVL fills in for Sarah today as George explains latest legal challenges facing Donald Trump, including his views on the Department of Justice and the potential conflicts surrounding Judge Eileen Cannon. They also discuss Rudy Giuliani’s financial troubles, the state of the conservative legal movement, and the future of the Federalist Society.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: The most vile president or presidential candidate in American history, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 23, 2024. It wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smallbeggars belief that someone as vile as Donald Trump could be given even odds to again be elected president in less than two weeks time.

Even more disconcerting is that if one is to believe polling data, some 48 percent of American voters are prepared to vote for a human gargoyle who has raped women and, in the company of Jeffrey Epstein, underage girls — as young as 12 and 13; besmirched American wayne madesen report logowar dead and veterans by calling them “losers and suckers;” routinely called African-Americans “niggers” on the set of “The Apprentice” and a murdered U.S. Army soldier, Specialist Vanessa Guillén, a “fucking Mexican;” referred to January 6th insurrectionists as “patriots” and “hostages;” and olfactorily offends people with a scent of cheap cologne, hair chemicals, and greasy food, mixed with the whiff of feces and urine.

Trump has said that if he loses this year’s election, he will blame it on largely Democratic Party-supporting Jews.” Trump’s calling Covid-19 the “China virus” opened up a fuselage of racist attacks by Trump supporters on Asian-Americans and the insults of “chink” and “gook” became commonplace in those attacks. We should all know where this will end up.

djt indicted proof

ny times logoNew York Times, For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment, Peter Baker, Oct. 21, 2024 (print ed.). No major party presidential candidate, much less president, in American history has been accused of wrongdoing so many times.

When the history of the 2024 election is written, one of the iconic images illustrating it will surely be the mug shot taken of Donald J. Trump after one of his four indictments, staring into the camera with his signature glare. It is an image (right) not of shame but of defiance, the image of a man who would be a ICE logoconvicted felon before Election Day and yet possibly president of the United States again afterward.

Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is that simple if mind-bending fact. America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes. What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to “retribution.”

In all the different ways that Mr. Trump has upended the traditional rules of American politics, that may be one of the most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.

His persecution defense, the notion that he gets in so much trouble only because everyone is out to get him, resonates at his rallies where he says “they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in the way.” But that of course belies a record of scandal stretching across his 78 years starting long before politics. Whether in his personal life or his public life, he has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.ImagePeople sitting in rows, some holding signs supporting Donald J. Trump.

His businesses went bankrupt repeatedly and multiple others failed. He was taken to court for stiffing his vendors, stiffing his bankers and even stiffing his own family. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and avoided paying any income taxes for years. He was forced to shell out tens of millions of dollars to students who accused him of scamming them, found liable for wide-scale business fraud and had his real estate firm convicted in criminal court of tax crimes.

He has boasted of grabbing women by their private parts, been reported to have cheated on all three of his wives and been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, including one whose account was validated by a jury that found him liable for sexual abuse after a civil trial.

He is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact). He used the authority of his office to punish his adversaries and tried to hold onto power on the basis of a brazen lie.

Mr. Trump beat some of the investigations and lawsuits against him and some proved unfounded, but the sheer volume is remarkable. Any one of those scandals by itself would typically have been enough to derail another politician. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first bid for the presidency collapsed when he lifted some words from another politician’s speech. George W. Bush came close to losing after the last-minute revelation of a long-ago drunken-driving arrest. Hillary Rodham Clinton fell short at least in part because of an F.B.I. investigation into emails that led to no charges.

Not Mr. Trump. He has moved from one furor to the next without any of them sinking into the body politic enough to end his career. The unrelenting pace of scandals may in its own way help him by keeping any single one of them from dominating the national conversation and eroding his standing with his base of supporters.

He even turned that mug shot into a marketing tool, selling T-shirts, posters, bumper stickers, coffee mugs and even beverage coolers with the image and the slogan “NEVER SURRENDER.” And victory next month may yet help him escape the biggest threat of all — potentially prison.

Nonetheless, the full record stands out.

 steve schmidt logo horizontal

The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Behind the Scenes of The Apprentice: Donald Trump Was Racist and a Fraud, Oct. 22, 2024. (41:11 mins.)  Donald Trump became a household name after starring in NBC’s “The Apprentice” which was one of the main reasons why he’s been able to find success in politics. Steve Schmidt sits down with John Miller, former NBC Head of Marketing, to discuss what went down behind the scenes of “The Apprentice” and how it’s impacted the current political landscape in America.

On Saturday, September 7, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.” He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and election officials. Retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “a fascist to the core…the most dangerous person to this country.”

On October 14, Trump told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that he thought enemies within the United States were more dangerous than foreign adversaries and that he thought the military should stop those “radical left lunatics” on Election Day. Since then, he has been talking a lot about “the enemy from within,” specifically naming Representative Adam Schiff and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats from California, as “bad people.” Schiff was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee that broke the 2019 story of Trump’s attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Trump’s references to the “enemy from within” have become so frequent that former White House press secretary turned political analyst Jen Psaki has called them his closing argument for the 2024 election, and she warned that his construction of those who oppose him as “enemies” might sweep in virtually anyone he feels is a threat.

In a searing article today, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer of The Cycle explored exactly what that means in a piece titled “What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?” Bitecofer outlined Adolf Hitler’s January 30, 1933, oath of office, in which he promised Germans he would uphold the constitution, and the three months he took to dismantle that constitution.

By March, she notes, the concentration camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s prominent political opponents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political parties were illegal. By May, labor unions were banned and students were burning banned books. Within the year, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was illegal, and denouncing violators paid well for those who did it.

Bitecofer writes that Trump has promised mass deportations “that he cannot deliver unless he violates both the Constitution and federal law.” To enable that policy, Trump will need to dismantle the merit-based civil service and put into office those loyal to him rather than the Constitution. And then he will purge his political opponents, for once those who would stand against him are purged, Trump can act as he wishes against immigrants, for example, and others.

pennsylvania graphic map

ny times logoNew York Times, At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity, Michael Gold, Oct. 20, 2024 (print ed.).  Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday spewed crude and vulgar remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania that included an off-color remark about a famous golfer’s penis size and a coarse insult about Vice President Kamala Harris.

The performance, 17 days before the election in a critical battleground state, added to the impression of the Republican nominee as increasingly unfiltered and undisciplined. It comes as some of Mr. Trump’s allies and aides worry that Mr. Trump’s temperament and crass style are alienating undecided voters.

It was unclear if the outbursts and insults were an expression of his frustration as the campaign grinds on or of his reflexive desire to entertain his crowds. At her own events on Saturday, Ms. Harris called attention to Mr. Trump’s temperament and his tendency to “go off script and ramble.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump fixates on Arnold Palmer as ‘all man’ in showers during profane rally, Marianne LeVine and Isaac Arnsdorf, Oct. 20, 2024 (print ed.). Turning his attention to his rival after a meandering start, Donald Trump used profanity to insult Vice President Kamala Harris.

Seventeen days from the election, here in arguably the most decisive swing state, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spent the first 10 minutes of his speech without mentioning politics.Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Instead, he delivered a long tribute to Arnold Palmer, the late golfer who was born here and is the namesake of the airport where Trump was speaking. Trump’s soliloquy about Palmer included an account of how other athletes reacted to seeing him in the showers.

“Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women and I love women. But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable,’” Trump said.

“I had to say it,” Trump continued.

At about 10 minutes, the digression about Palmer lasted roughly as long as Vice President Kamala Harris’s entire speech at a get-out-the-vote event

A collage of headlines reports on the insurrection riot whereby supporters of the failed 2020 re-election campaign of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to hold presidential election certification on Jan. 6, 2021.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Tries to Rewrite History of Jan. 6 in Final Stretch, Maggie Haberman, Michael Gold and Ruth Igielnik, Oct. 20, 2024 (print ed.). Donald Trump amplified a conspiracy theory that the attack was staged and compared jailed rioters to Japanese Americans in internment camps in World War II.Donald J. Trump on Friday tried to revise the history of the deadly attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, as new details in the federal prosecution against him were made public by the judge in the case.

trump 2024His attempt to recast the events of Jan. 6, 2021, came on the same day that he compared his supporters who were arrested, convicted and imprisoned for their actions at the Capitol to the victims of the Japanese internment camps in the United States during World War II. And it followed a recent remark in which Mr. Trump declared Jan. 6 a day of “love.”

The former president made his comments about Jan. 6 and its aftermath at a time when, just weeks before Election Day, uncommitted voters in battleground states tell pollsters that among their top concerns is that they view him as a threat to democracy.

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rick wilson screengrabThe Lincoln Project, Opinion:  Donald Trump Is A Nazi, Rick Wilson, right, Oct. 19, 2024. I’m through dancing around this. I’m tired of the media saying it’s just his supporters. I don’t care that he dances around to the Village People. He’s making it clear every week now, and somehow, this race is still close.

lincoln project logoIt’s time that Americans knew: Donald Trump is a f**king Nazi.I mean seriously. If anyone else hosted an event where their guests were walking around wearing swastikas, they’d be canceled in two seconds.

Why? Because it’s NOT normal to hang around people who wear one of the few internationally-recognized symbols of hate out in public. It’s also notnormal to say that people who do this are “very fine people.” He said that YEARS ago, and people are still backing him?

Recent Relevant Headlines

A collage of headlines reports on the insurrection riot whereby supporters of the failed 2020 re-election campaign of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to hold presidential election certification on Jan. 6, 2021.

More On U.S.  Presidential Campaign

ny times logoNew York Times, Beyoncé Rallies for Harris in Houston With a Message for the Battlegrounds, Reid J. Epstein, J. David Goodman and Lisa Lerer, Oct. 26, 2024. Kamala Harris used Texas’ strict abortion ban as a cautionary tale as she sought to lay out the stakes of a deadlocked election.

Vice President Kamala Harris diverted from the presidential battlegrounds on Friday to receive the endorsement of the global superstar Beyoncé in Texas, in an event almost entirely focused on abortion rights.

With the presidential race deadlocked, the Harris campaign sought to use Beyoncé’s status — particularly in her hometown, Houston — to focus attention on the state’s near-total abortion ban as a cautionary tale for what could happen throughout the country should former President Donald J. Trump win another term in the White House.

The rally in Houston was not only her campaign’s largest but also its most emotionally charged event since she became the Democratic nominee. Beyoncé offered a speech focused on a more optimistic future, and the wrenching stories of Texas women who suffered life-threatening health complications as a result of being denied proper care for pregnancy complications were center stage.

Ms. Harris and many of the speakers laid the blame solely on Mr. Trump, who frequently boasts of appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.

While Mr. Trump has promised to leave abortion laws to individual states, and says he would veto a national ban, allies of the former president and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights that would go beyond the laws enacted in conservative states across the country.

Ms. Harris warned that, if elected to another term, Mr. Trump would move to ban abortion nationally — regardless of his campaign promises.

“Though we are in Texas tonight, for anyone watching from another state, if you think you are protected from Trump abortion bans because you live in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, California or any state where voters or legislators have protected reproductive freedom, please know: No one is protected,” she said. “Because a Donald Trump national ban will outlaw abortion in every single state.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Harris Campaign Uses John Kelly’s Words in Stark New Ads, Shane Goldmacher, Oct. 25, 2024 (print ed.). The ads are the latest attempt by Kamala Harris’s campaign to turn the 2024 race into a referendum on Donald Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is turning a recording of Donald J. Trump’s former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly, in which he describes the former president as meeting “the general definition of fascist,” into two stark new ads.

The ads are the latest attempt by Ms. Harris, in the final two weeks, to turn the 2024 race into a referendum on Mr. Trump and his fitness for office. Ms. Harris delivered a televised statement at her residence this week after Mr. Kelly’s comments were published, saying they were sounding an alarm to the nation.

The ads, titled “A Warning,” are scheduled to immediately go into the Harris campaign’s rotation of television and digital advertising, a campaign official said, adding that they would be targeted in particular at markets with larger populations of veterans.

And Ms. Harris underscored the message at a CNN town hall on Wednesday when she herself also called Mr. Trump a “fascist.”

Both the 30-second and the 60-second ads begin with a black screen and a pulsating, alarm-like sound as the words, “An unprecedented warning …” are typed onto the screen.

The text then identifies Mr. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff and a four-star Marine general, before cutting to a recording of Mr. Kelly’s recent interview with a reporter for The New York Times, Michael S. Schmidt.

“Do you think he’s a fascist?” Mr. Schmidt asks.

The 30-second version compresses Mr. Kelly’s response: “He certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist: using the military to go after American citizens.”

The 60-second version quotes Mr. Kelly at greater length: “He certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist. It’s a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader. The former president — he is certainly an authoritarian. Using the military to go after American citizens is a very bad thing.”

Both ads also include a clip of Mr. Kelly quoting Mr. Trump as saying, “Hitler did some good things, too.”

The pulsating alarm sound continues throughout both ads, with the same red text typing at the end: “Donald Trump is unhinged. Unstable. In pursuit of unchecked power.”

Mr. Trump has attacked Mr. Kelly since his public comments, such as in an interview on Fox News on Thursday in Arizona.

“I fired him,” Mr. Trump said, according to a transcript provided by Fox News. “He made a statement that I’m like Hitler. It’s — just

ny times logoNew York Times, Biden Apologizes for U.S. Mistreatment of Native American Children, Peter Baker and Aishvarya Kavi, Oct. 26, 2024 (print ed.). President Biden offered a formal apology on Friday on behalf of the U.S. government for the abuse of Native American children from the early 1800s to the late 1960s.

President Biden ventured into Native American territory on Friday to offer a formal apology on behalf of the U.S. government for the mistreatment of generations of children who were taken away from their families in an effort to strip them of their culture, history and language.

During a visit to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, Mr. Biden decried what he called “a sin on our soul” and promised to do more to make up for the federal government’s former policy of forcibly removing Native American children and putting them in boarding schools where they faced abuse and neglect that led in some cases to death.

“The federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened — until today,” the president told a cheering crowd that included families afflicted by the policy. “I formally apologize as president of the United States of America for what we did. I formally apologize. It’s long overdue.”

He added that “quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make” and acknowledged that it could only mean so much after so long. “I know no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy,” Mr. Biden said. “But today, we’re finally moving forward into the light.”

Mr. Biden’s visit culminated years of study and discussion by his administration led by Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Native American interior secretary, whose own family was affected by a practice that lasted from the early 1800s to the late 1960s. An investigative report by her department in July found that at least 19,000 Native children were sent to federal boarding schools, and nearly 1,000 died while attending them.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Harris’s Early Career: Prosecutor by Day, Boldface Name by Night, Tim Arango and Heather Knight, Oct. 23, 2024 (print ed.). As Kamala Harris (shown above in a file photo) toiled as a junior prosecutor in Alameda County, Calif., she developed important connections among San Francisco’s financial and social elite.

In August 1996, a jury in an Oakland, Calif., courtroom convicted a man of slicing off a portion of his girlfriend’s scalp. The prosecutor was Kamala Harris, and the gruesome case was one of the few that made news early in her career.Listen to this article with reporter commentary

“It was a vicious crime,” Ms. Harris told The Oakland Tribune. She was in her seventh year as a rank-and-file prosecutor in Alameda County, doing battle with suspected drug lords and murderers in Oakland, which was still contending with the crack epidemic.

harris walz logoWeeks later, Ms. Harris was back in the news, this time across the bay in San Francisco as a boldface name in the society pages, among the young and fashionable who had gathered for a martini party at a Polo Ralph Lauren store ahead of the Fall Antiques Show. It was hosted by a group of art lovers who called themselves the Young Collectors, raising money for underserved children while collecting “antiques, art, knowledge — and parties,” Pat Steger, The San Francisco Chronicle’s society editor and columnist, wrote.

During these formative years, when Ms. Harris was in her 20s and 30s, her life ran along two tracks that proved pivotal to her political ascendancy. By day, she developed the courtroom skills that have shaped her methodical approach as a candidate. By night, she moved through San Francisco high society, nurturing the financial and political connections that became instrumental in her national rise.

Ms. Harris, who grew up in a modest neighborhood in Berkeley, Calif., with a single mother, showed a talent for forging relationships with some of California’s most influential elites while she was still a young prosecutor.

She dated Willie Brown, one of the most powerful legislators in state history who became mayor of San Francisco. She cultivated relationships with Susie Tompkins Buell, the founder of two iconic clothing brands, and Laurene Powell Jobs, who was married to Steve Jobs, the entrepreneur who made Apple a tech powerhouse.

“The ability to have people want to open up to you is not that different in a courtroom than it is in a cocktail party,” said Teresa Drenick, who worked with Ms. Harris as a prosecutor in the 1990s.

A collage shows the table of contents of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership”, with the names circled of authors who have connections to former president Donald J. Trump, and photos of some of the authors with Mr. Trump, their faces circled.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Congressman Raskin Urges Donald Trump To Stop Obstructing Transition Process, Aaron Parnas, Oct. 23, 2024. The Trump campaign has blown through a number of critical deadlines, jeopardizing a peaceful and orderly transition of power.

mtn meidas touch networkToday, Congressman Jamie Raskin, the Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Donald Trump and JD Vance urging them to sign key documents and MOUs that are required to begin the transition process should their campaign win on November 5th. The documents are necessary to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition of power in the event the Trump campaign is successful.

The Presidential Transition Act requires all major party nominees and their campaigns to sign various documents with the federal government that gives them access to pre-election resources including office space, equipment, and staff assistance. The purpose of this is to ensure that a transition process is up and running in the event the candidate wins.

The Act also requires the candidate to sign and negotiate documents to address possible ethics concerns for presidential transition staff, including how staff would access critical national security information. The Act also limits private donations to no more than $5,000 per donor should the candidate accept the services.

Since 2010, no other Presidential candidate has blown past the deadlines. Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign previously signed MOUs with the federal government, but Trump’s has failed. In a new letter today, Raskin writes:

“Breaking the precedent set by every other presidential candidate since 2010, you have rejected these resources and refused to commit to a smooth transition. It appears your decision may be at least partially driven by your intent to circumvent fundraising rules that put limits on private contributions on the transition effort and require public reporting. You may also be acting out of a more general aversion to ethics rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest in the incoming administration. With fewer than two weeks left until an election in which the American people will select a new President of the United States, we urge you to put the public’s interest in maintaining a properly functioning government above any personal financial or political interests you may perceive in boycotting the official transition law and process.”

Politico, Gene Sperling’s argument underscores Democrats’ main pitch to voters and donors alike that Trump is an existential threat, Victoria Guida, Oct. 24, 2024. Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, offered a closing message to investors and banks on why they should be worried about a second term for Donald Trump: He could undermine faith in the U.S. economy.

politico Custom“If you don’t think that is a clear and present danger to the economy, you are not paying attention,” Sperling said at an event hosted by the Institute of International Finance, which represents the global finance industry. “People need to wake up and smell the economic chaos that could be coming.”

He pointed to comments by Trump that some Americans on the left are “the enemy within” as well as recent assertions by Trump’s onetime chief of staff, John Kelly, that the former president meets the definition of a “fascist.”

Sperling’s argument underscores Democrats’ main pitch to voters and donors alike that Trump is an existential threat.

“Let me make it very tangible,” he said in an onstage Q&A with POLITICO’s Zach Warmbrodt. “We’ve had $988 billion of increase in investment, including foreign investment, including, and listen to this, a doubling of factory investment — doubling. Not since the pandemic; since where it was in 2018, 2019.”

“What does that mean? That means people are making decisions to build their future in the United States. Companies are,” he added.

Sperling, who previously worked in President Joe Biden’s White House, touted that capital as partially a victory for Biden-era investments in infrastructure, semiconductors and green energy, but he also pointed to a litany of other factors, like the rule of law and an independent central bank. He told the audience that Trump’s hires this time around would be less responsible than in his first term.

“Do you think if people look at the United States and see a president of the United States weaponizing and privatizing his government, pulling out the best professionals from the Justice Department, the Defense Department, so he can have generals like Hitler … do you really think the United States is going to be the same magnet for investment?” he said to the audience.

“If you hear all this stuff and you think it’s just a political issue, you are wrong,” he said.

Kelly’s comments warning that Trump is an authoritarian have dominated the conversation on the campaign trail this week.

Trump on Wednesday hit back at those comments in a Truth Social post: “John Kelly is a LOWLIFE, and a bad General, whose advice in the White House I no longer sought, and told him to MOVE ON!”

Politico, Judge sounds inclined to halt Virginia voter purge, Josh Gerstein, Oct. 24, 2024. Systematically trimming voter rolls so close to Election Day violates federal law, DOJ says.

politico CustomA federal judge signaled that she will likely order Virginia to restore about 1,600 people to its voter rolls after the state removed them in the past three months.

Virginia says it has removed people who are not U.S. citizens. But the Justice Department and voting rights groups say that many of the removals may be erroneous — and that trimming the voter rolls so close to Election Day violates federal law.

Justice Department log circularDuring several hours of arguments in federal court Thursday, Judge Patricia Giles expressed skepticism about the defenses Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) and other state officials have offered for removing voters during a 90-day, preelection quiet period during which federal law prohibits “systematic” efforts to clean up the voting rolls.

Giles, an appointee of Joe Biden, seemed poised to order the state to stop the systematic removal and to reinstate those who have already been removed during the 90-day window. However, she did not immediately issue a ruling.

Both Youngkin and Donald Trump have complained that the Biden administration is trying to keep foreigners on the voting rolls, despite indications that evidence of actual voting by non-citizens is extraordinarily rare.

Most or all of the removals under the Virginia program involve individuals who indicated on Department of Motor Vehicles forms that they are not citizens. Sometimes people simply check the wrong box, and in some instances the DMV actually has records proving those same people are citizens.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Federal Judge Orders Rudy Giuliani’s Property Into Receivership, Aaron Parnas, Oct. 23, 2024. A devastating ruling for Giuliani.

mtn meidas touch networkThis afternoon, a federal judge ordered that Rudy Giuliani’s personal property be put into a receivership within seven days as the former Mayor of New York City faces mounting troubles from the pending civil judgments against him.

Today’s ruling comes as Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia poll workers who Giuliani defamed, sought to collect on their outstanding judgment against Giuliani. The judgment is in excess of $140 million.

rudy giulianiWhile Giuliani, right, does not have the assets to cover the massive judgment, he does have some assets that Freeman and Moss will be able to receive, including ownership in real property and jewelry.

A receivership is a legal mechanism in which a third-party takes control over property of a debtor, in this case Rudy Giuliani, to determine how the property will be used to satisfy the debtor’s outstanding judgments. As a result of this ruling, therefore, Giuliani will no longer be the decision making over this property.

The court outlined a number of pieces of property that will be subject to the receivership including Giulani’s ownership stake in a New York condo, a Mercedes Benz vehicle, personal jewelry, and any fees collected from Giuliani’s representation of Donald Trump and his campaign in 2020 and 2021.

It is unclear whether Giuliani will seek to stay the decision or appeal the decision, and it looks increasingly likely that a receivership will take effect in one week’s time. There will be further briefing over Giuliani’s World Series rings and his Palm Beach condo.

The Bulwark, Trump Goes All In on Anti-Trans, Marc Caputo, Oct. 24, 2024. It’s not clear if the ads will help Trump, hurt Harris—or just scapegoat trans people.

bulwark logo big shipIS IT THE ECONOMY STUPID? Not for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. These days, its closing message on TV may as well be “it’s the trans, you fools.”

In the past five weeks, Trump’s operation has spent more than $29 million on TV ads criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting transgender surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants in detention, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact. That makes the topic, by far, the biggest focal point when it comes to Trump’s ad spending—one of the best barometers of messaging priority there is. By contrast, the campaign has spent $5 million over that same time period on TV ads on the economy, making that topic their fifth-most emphasized.

The campaign’s elevation of transgender issues above the economy constitutes one of the biggest bets in presidential politics. The former rates as among the least important to voters according to public opinion polls; the latter their top concern. The trans-heavy focus also seems to conflict with months of insistence—from the Trump campaign to the pundit class—that the ex-president will win because of inflation and jobs.

Executing such a gambit at this late stage of the campaign represents a major roll of the dice: one that could either reset culture war politics for years to come in presidential races or, if Trump loses, go down as a major, even historic, tactical blunder.

But Trump pollster John McLaughlin said that viewing the campaign’s emphasis on trans issues as a tradeoff with its focus on the economy represents a shallow understanding of “asymmetrical political warfare.” Presidential races aren’t as much battles over policy plans, he said, as they are character contests.

“In that character contrast, these cultural issues become symbols of those characters,” McLaughlin said. “They don’t have to be the top issue, but they have to make a values-connection with a majority of voters, and this is symbolic of why her character doesn’t connect with a majority of voters.”

 Elon Musk appeared with former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday at a rally in Butler, Pa., the site of an assassination attempt on Mr. Trump earlier this year (New York Times Photo by Doug Mills).

Elon Musk, right, appeared with former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday at a rally in Butler, Pa., the site of an assassination attempt on Mr. Trump earlier this year (New York Times Photo by Doug Mills).

ny times logoNew York Times, Elon Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump, Theodore Schleifer, Maggie Haberman, Ryan Mac and Jonathan Swan, Oct. 12, 2024 (print ed.). In the last weeks of the presidential campaign, the world’s richest man has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history.

In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the richest man in the world has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history.

Elon Musk, seen over the weekend jumping for joy alongside former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa., is now talking to the Republican candidate multiple times a week.

He has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election.

He has relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44 billion and has used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and to insult its candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Above all, he is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used.

Taken together, a clear picture has emerged of Mr. Musk’s battle plan as he directs his efforts to elect Mr. Trump with the same frenetic energy and exacting demands that he has honed at his companies SpaceX, Tesla and X.

As early as February, Mr. Musk was speaking apocalyptically, in private, about what he considered the crucial need to defeat President Biden. But even as he was meeting with advisers in Austin, Texas, in April to plot his super PAC, Mr. Musk sounded as if he considered Mr. Trump merely the lesser of two evils. He told friends in the spring that he wasn’t sure he even wanted to explicitly endorse Mr. Trump.

ny times logoNew York Times, 6 Takeaways From Donald Trump’s 3-Hour Podcast With Joe Rogan, Michael Gold, Tim Balk and Simon J. Levien, Oct. 26, 2024. The former president repeated his debunked claims of election fraud and speculated that there could be life on Mars in an interview aimed at young male voters.

lFormer President Donald J. Trump taped a nearly three-hour episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Friday. He courted the show’s young male audience by floating the idea of eliminating the income tax, talking about mixed martial arts fighters, praising the military skills of Gen. Robert E. Lee and speculating that there was “no reason not to think” there could be life on Mars and other planets.

Much of the discussion centered on refrains familiar from Mr. Trump’s rambling speeches on the campaign trail, but the podcast offered Mr. Trump an opportunity to reach an audience his campaign covets. Mr. Rogan has 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 17.6 million on YouTube, many of them the young, male, low-propensity voters that the Trump campaign is hoping to draw to the polls.

At one point Mr. Rogan tried to lead Mr. Trump, who has described his meandering, digression-laden speaking style as “the weave,” back to the point. “Your weave is getting wide,” Mr. Rogan said. “You’re getting wide with this weave.”

Here are six takeaways from the podcast.Trump saw the podcast as well worth a detour.

That Mr. Trump opted to step off the campaign trail and spend hours in Mr. Rogan’s studio in Austin — a detour that delayed the start of his remarks at a rally on Friday evening in Michigan by several hours — was a mark of Mr. Rogan’s reach and the importance of the audience he draws.

Just two years ago, Mr. Rogan said he had declined to have Mr. Trump on his show, calling the former president “an existential threat to democracy.” But in their interview, Mr. Rogan was a receptive if occasionally challenging interlocutor.

Mr. Rogan acknowledged that he had rethought his position on interviewing Mr. Trump after he survived an assassination attempt in July at a rally in Pennsylvania.

“Once they shot you, I was like, ‘He’s got to come in here,’” Mr. Rogan said. “It’s all about timing.”

America First Transition Project

ny times logoNew York Times, The Little-Known Group at the Center of Trump’s Plan for a Second Term, Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahrenthold, Oct. 25, 2024 (print ed). The America First Policy Institute didn’t even exist four years ago. But it is poised to be more influential than Project 2025 if Donald Trump wins.

Late this summer, a prominent right-wing think tank invited conservatives from around the country to learn how to work in a second Donald J. Trump administration.

In a series of training sessions in Washington, former Trump officials shared strategies with attendees for combating leftist civil servants in the federal government and dealing with the mainstream media. Participants were sent home with a thick binder of materials for further study. One section’s title: “Tales From the Swamp: How Federal Bureaucrats Resisted President Trump.”

The classes could easily have been the work of Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint and personnel project that was created by loyalists to Mr. Trump and that has been turned into a political cudgel by Democrats seeking to link its most radical prescriptions to the former president.

But the meetings had nothing to do with that enterprise or its principal backer, the Heritage Foundation. Instead, they were the work of the America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank that has, with little fanfare or scrutiny, installed itself as the Trump campaign’s primary partner in making concrete plans to wield power again.

Founded by three wealthy Texans in late 2020, the group, known as A.F.P.I., has quickly inserted itself into nearly every corner of Mr. Trump’s political machine, and is closer than any other outside player in his planning for a second term.

Mr. Trump chose one of its leaders, Linda McMahon, a former member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and a longtime friend, as co-chair of his official transition team. Brooke Rollins, who also worked in the Trump administration and is currently the nonprofit’s chief executive, has been discussed as a candidate to be Mr. Trump’s chief of staff.

The institute’s ranks are stocked with other former Trump administration officials who have spent the past several years planning for a return, and in recent weeks several have quietly moved over to work full time for the campaign’s transition team.

Like Project 2025, the institute developed a plan for staffing and setting the policy agenda for every federal agency, one that prioritizes loyalty to Mr. Trump and aggressive flexing of executive power from Day 1. Ms. Rollins declined an interview but has said that A.F.P.I. has already drafted nearly 300 executive orders ready for Mr. Trump’s signature should he win the election.

It’s impossible to predict which policies Mr. Trump will prioritize, and a spokesman for the nonprofit, Marc Lotter, noted that the group “does not speak on behalf of any candidate, campaign or transition.”

But unlike the creators of Heritage’s Project 2025, the key architects of A.F.P.I.’s transition plan are now advising the Trump campaign, a testament to the strategy and discretion of the organization.

“It understood what Heritage didn’t: Transition work is always best kept very quiet,” said Heath Brown, a professor of public policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies presidential transitions.

The institute’s policy book, titled “The America First Agenda,” is slimmer than the much-debated plans espoused in Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership.” Absent are attention-grabbing proposals such as banning pornography, prohibiting the mailing of abortion pills or ending the Justice Department’s status as an independent agency.

But its vision is no less Trumpist: It calls for halting federal funding for Planned Parenthood and for mandatory ultrasounds before abortions, including those carried out with medication. It seeks to make concealed weapons permits reciprocal in all 50 states, increase petroleum production, remove the United States from the Paris Agreement, impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients and establish legally only two genders.

ny times logoNew York Times, Sweeping Raids and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s Immigration Plans, Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Featured Oct. 24, 2024, first published Nov. 11, 2023. If he regains power, Donald Trump wants not only to revive some of the immigration policies criticized as draconian during his presidency, but expand and toughen them.

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.

Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.

kamala harris campaign o

ny times logoNew York Times, Harris Calls Trump a Fascist: 6 Takeaways From Her CNN Town Hall, Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer, Oct. 25, 2024 (print ed). Kamala Harris called Donald J. Trump a fascist on Wednesday evening, elevating what until recently had been an argument made only in the lower ranks of a Democratic Party that has spent years attacking him as anti-democratic, unfit to serve and a criminal.

cnn logoEarly in a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania, she readily agreed with the host, Anderson Cooper, when he asked whether she believed Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist. “Yes, I do,” she quickly shot back. “Yes, I do.”

Later, when asked about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, she jumped into a loaded critique of her rival.

harris walz logo“For many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,” she said. “They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

Her comments — which went a step beyond her previous agreement that Mr. Trump was a fascist — were intended to amplify the news this week that John Kelly, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, said he thought the former president met the definition of the word and worried deeply about the threat a second Trump administration posed to democratic institutions.

Ms. Harris’s attacks on Wednesday evening went largely unanswered: Mr. Trump declined both a second debate and an invitation from CNN to participate in a similar forum.

djt putin gop american democracy Custom

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary: rump’s Putin plan for American democracy, Wayne Madsen, left, Oct. 21, 2024. It is clear from Donald wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped SmallTrump’s rhetoric that what he plans for America’s democracy is a carbon copy of what his mentor and chief influencer, VladimirPutin, has done to Russia’s once-fledgling democracy. During the first six months of this year, Putin’s regime has sentenced a record number of Russian citizens for espionage, treason, separatism, and “extremism.”

wayne madesen report logo
Based on what Trump has said about what he perceives as America’s “enemy within,” a second Trump presidency will sink the Russian FlagU.S. Constitution as he proceeds to imprison his political opponents.

Trump has already named those he intends toprosecute on spurious charges and jail: Former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and he husband, Paul Pelosi; Representative Adam Schiff, former Republican Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and many others.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: If We Don’t Break the Cycle, a ‘Trump’ Will Always Lurk in the Shadows, Thom Hartmann, Oct. 24, 2024. As long as dark thom hartmann newmoney, lies, and hate dominate politics, the next Trump is inevitable…

Suddenly, it seems, the American mainstream media has figured out, or thinks they’ve been given permission to discuss, the fact that Donald Trump is a fascist. That he literally wants to imprison and even execute his enemies including other politicians like Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris and former employees who have betrayed him, including General Mark Millie.

Multiple commentators (including me) have wondered out loud if the defeat of Trump this fall will chasten Republicans and cause the Party to revert to its old “merely corporate and billionaire friendly” form, or if Trump has done permanent damage to the GOP and our system of government and the GOP’s embrace of fascism and its lies will continue long after he’s gone.

Sadly, there’s more than enough evidence for the latter, although crediting (or blaming) Trump for it all is far too facile an argument.

It’s a virtual certainty that four years from now we’ll have multiple Republican candidates trying to “pull a Trump” again. There are at least four reasons, although we’re not without resources to fight back or even prevent such an event.

First, there’s always been an authoritarian strain in American politics, dating all the way back to President John Adams arresting journalists and shutting down newspapers because they dared criticize him. Fortunately, President Jefferson pulled us back from that brink, as historian Dan Sisson and I documented in The American Revolution of 1800.

So far, we’ve been able to handle authoritarian movements in America: Adams was defeated by Jefferson, in part because of revulsion against his heavy-handed use of the Alien and Sedition Acts; the Confederacy was defeated in a bloody Civil War; the Klan lost popular support during and after World War II’s battle against fascism; Joe McCarthy was done in by Joseph Welch and Edward R. Murrow.

Second, though, five Republicans on the US Supreme Court put a fascism-friendly time bomb into our body of constitutional law when Lewis Powell wrote the 1978 decision in First National Bank v Bellotti, saying that billionaires and corporate “persons” had a First Amendment right to pour money into politics because, Powell claimed, money in politics was the same thing as “free speech.” That crime was massively amplified when a different set of five Republicans on the Court doubled down on legalizing corruption and bribery with Citizens United in 2010.

As a result, today a large handful of American billionaires have been quite willing to fund Trump’s despotic message because they believe their businesses will prosper and their taxes will stay low under a fascist regime. This shouldn’t surprise us: the long history of fascist movements, dating all the way back to ancient Rome, shows there have always been morbidly rich individuals willing to put their own wealth above the interest of their nations.

Third, the six corrupt Republicans on today’s Supreme Court have clearly thrown in with Trump’s fascist agenda, granting him immunity from crimes committed in office and gutting Section 3 of the 14th Amendment which, unambiguously, says:

“No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who … shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Finally, we see evidence that the GOP could continue to embrace fascism in the simple examples provided every day on national television and in our newspapers. Greasy Republican politicians from Ted Cruz to Lindsay Graham to Mike Johnson happily go on television every week to peddle unctuous lies on Trump’s behalf, essentially endorsing and promoting his brand of 21st century American fascism.

ny times logoNew York Times, Short on Time, Kamala Harris’s Labor Allies Sprint to Reach Working-Class Voters, Jonathan Weisman, Oct. 25, 2024 (print ed). Unions and their affiliates think they can break through with the Democrats’ worst demographic, white working-class voters. But it has been a slog.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s allies in organized labor have begun a late drive to help her with white working-class voters, her weakest demographic, in the face of great skepticism over inflation, old grudges about free trade, new ones about student-loan forgiveness, and a profound blue-collar affinity for Donald J. Trump.

harris walz logoWorking America, a political affiliate of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. built to reach nonunion workers, has around 1,600 paid canvassers knocking on doors in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on any given day — just one part of a concerted effort by organized labor to eat into Mr. Trump’s advantage and deliver a Democratic victory through sheer hustle.

“We are the difference-makers in the election,” said Liz Shuler, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest federation of unions.

But beneath the bravado is realism.

For Ms. Harris, there is no sugarcoating her numbers with white working-class voters. Earlier this month, a poll of Pennsylvania by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found the vice president leading Mr. Trump overall, 50 percent to 47 percent. But Mr. Trump led by seven percentage points among likely voters without a college degree.

Among white voters without a college degree, that gap grew to a chasm: 58 percent favored Mr. Trump, 40 percent Ms. Harris. By a wide margin, 57 percent to 41 percent, college-educated voters said Ms. Harris would be better than Mr. Trump at helping the working class. But if educational attainment is a stand-in for class, the white working class trusts Mr. Trump; 56 percent say he would help them best, compared with 41 percent who say that about the vice president.

April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union, said Democratic hand-wringing over a slight slippage of support among Black men misses the real problem.

“It is white men and white women who vote for Donald Trump. We’re not going to sway the majority of them, but over time, we have to tackle that challenge,” she said.

The working class’s issues with Ms. Harris are complex and, with less than two weeks until Election Day, probably not remediable. As Zaeveona Rainey, 25, a canvasser and crew chief for Working America, made her way last Thursday through Coraopolis, Pa., a mostly white working-class suburb of Pittsburgh, she found very few voters who were not already dug in.

Older working-class voters still associate the party with the free-trade principles of Bill Clinton’s New Democrats, an association emphasized by Mr. Trump’s protectionist takeover of the Republican Party, said Michael Podhorzer, who recently retired as the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s longtime political chief. Many younger working-class voters, crushed economically by the coronavirus pandemic, then hit by inflation just as they emerged from isolation, appear to have given up.

ny times logoNew York Times, Elon Musk Plots His Final Moves for Donald Trump, Theodore Schleifer, Oct. 25, 2024 (print ed).. He dined with Rupert Murdoch and a handful of other billionaires, for Donald Trump.

  • He intends to appear at Madison Square Garden this weekend, for Donald Trump.
  • He is planning future speeches and possibly a campaign push in Wisconsin, for Donald Trump.
  • He is donating “substantial” amounts of money to a super PAC focused on Hispanic turnout, for Donald Trump.

With less than two weeks left before Election Day, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has grown only more frenzied in his efforts to help elect the former president. Mr. Musk has emerged as a central character of the campaign’s closing days, so much so that Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, referred to him this week as Mr. Trump’s true “running mate.”

Mr. Musk, the leader of Space X, Tesla and X, has already poured $75 million into a pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC. But his efforts in recent weeks have become more labor intensive — and more expensive.

Tony Gonzales, the Republican congressman from Texas whose allied super PAC he said he expected would receive the “substantial” gift, has grown close with Mr. Musk since bringing him to tour the southern border last year. He described Mr. Musk as especially hands-on.

“He’s going all in — and you see that with the amount of resources that he and his team and the group has provided,” said Mr. Gonzales, who said he didn’t know the size of Mr. Musk’s check to the super PAC. “But I would argue it’s, more importantly, time. There’s nothing more valuable than a person’s time. And Elon is literally campaigning every day in Pennsylvania.”

Mr. Musk, fresh off several town hall appearances in Pennsylvania in advance of Monday’s voter registration deadline in the state, is now plotting his next moves, according to a dozen Republicans with insight into his operations.

washington post logoWashington Post, Election 2024: GOP candidates embrace Trump’s call to abolish Education Dept., Laura Meckler, Oct. 25, 2024 (print ed). Those running in some of the tightest races are speaking out on the issue, an on-and-off goal for Republicans since the agency was created.

Closing the Education Department is a central plank in former president Donald Trump’s schools agenda. Inside the Republican Party, he’s not alone.

GOP candidates in some of the most competitive Senate and House races have proposed shuttering the agency, in some cases following Trump’s lead. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a future Republican administration, lays out a detailed plan for how to go about ending it. And former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos has said she would come back for a second term if the mission was closing her former department.Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Together, the pledges raise the question of whether Congress, if controlled by Republicans, and the White House, if controlled by Trump, would act on a promise that’s been floated off and on for decades.

On the campaign trail, a range of Republican candidates are voicing support, in sometimes dramatic terms.Trump says he’d ‘fire’ special counsel Jack Smith ‘within two seconds.’

washington post logoWashington Post, Harris goes after Trump on abortion rights at Georgia event, Brianna Tucker, Maegan Vazquez and Dylan Wells, Oct. 20, 2024 (print ed.). Vice President Kamala Harris used her time in Atlanta on Saturday to emphasize Trump’s role in appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.

ny times logoNew York Times, Which Republican Might Join a Harris Cabinet? We Asked Around, Reid J. Epstein, Oct. 22, 2024. In a text message, Mitt Romney sounded down on the idea. John Bolton said his chances were “substantially less than zero.” Liz Cheney remained silent on the matter.

The only real way Vice President Kamala Harris has said her administration would be different from President Biden’s is that she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet.

harris walz logoThis did not used to be unusual or controversial. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama each put members of the opposite party in their cabinets. Donald J. Trump let the tradition lapse, though he tried to recruit Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat (and have her be replaced by a Republican in the Senate). No Republicans were known to be in serious consideration for President Biden’s cabinet four years ago.

Yet Ms. Harris has promised to bring back the symbolic gesture, as she campaigns alongside former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming and makes a play for moderate G.O.P. voters.

Everyone’s Entitled To My Own Opinion, Commentary: We could all use a Good News Tuesday, Jeff Tiedrich, right, Oct. 22, 2024. A majority of voters (80%) say they jeff tiedrichmade up their minds about which candidate to support over a month ago, while 11% made up their minds in the last month, 6% made up their minds in the past week, and 3% still have not made up their mind.

“Voters who made their decision on who to support over a month ago break for Trump, 52% to 48%, while voters who made up their mind in the last month or week break for Harris, 60% to 36%,” Kimball said. “The three percent of voters who said they could still change their mind currently favor Harris, 48% to 43%.”

I know, right? who could be undecided in a race that’s basically everyone gets a puppy vs diarrhea forever?

Hopium Chronicles, Commentary: Hitting The Battleground With Liz Cheney, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 22, 2024. 14 more days of voting. Non-red wave simon rosenberg twitternational and state polling has been remarkably consistent and steady since the debate. The VP leads by 2-3-4 points nationally, and we are closer to 270 than Trump. Her favs/unfavs are far better than Trump’s, which can matter for late-breaking voters. She’s closed the gap on the economy with Trump – a huge achievement.

With our ground and financial advantage, we should be able to reach more voters and close stronger than the Rs in the final two weeks (why we have to keep working it). The organized opposition to Trump from prominent Republican leaders in the home stretch is also going to matter.

The early vote is very encouraging in MI, NE and WI, and competitive everywhere else. All seven (or eight) battleground states remain competitive and we just need to go fight it out and win it on the ground, together.

The Senate remains a brawl, and there is a great deal of optimism about what we are seeing in the House races. The VP is heading to Houston on Friday for a big speech on abortion rights and reproductive freedom, and to support Colin Allred who has made it a race in Texas.

Our candidate isn’t unraveling on camera every day, and ducking challenging interviews and debates. Our candidate isn’t a rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon, the oldest person to be the nominee of an American political party and the most dangerous political leader in all of our history. Our candidate, the Vice President of the United States of America, is strong, winning, optimistic, committed to opportunity and freedom, is for the people and is working unbelievably hard to win this election for all of us.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaking with Charlamagne Tha God on Tuesday in Detroit. His popular hip-hop morning radio show, “The Breakfast Club,” has many Black listeners (New York Times photo by Erin Schaff).

Vice President Kamala Harris speaking with Charlamagne Tha God on Tuesday in Detroit. His popular hip-hop morning radio show, “The Breakfast Club,” has many Black listeners (New York Times photo by Erin Schaff).  

ny times logoNew York Times, Read five takeaways from Kamala Harris’s interview with Charlamagne Tha God, Nicholas Nehamas and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Updated Oct. 16, 2024. During a free-flowing interview that was by turns friendly and pointed, the vice president went beyond her previous remarks in casting Donald Trump as an authoritarian.

ny times logoNew York Times, Judge Releases Redacted Trove of Evidence in Trump Election Case, Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage, Oct. 18, 2024. The former president’s legal team had objected to any release of material, saying it would amount to election interference.

A federal judge on Friday ordered the release of a heavily redacted trove of evidence supporting the contention by federal prosecutors that former President Donald J. Trump illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election.

In ordering the release, the judge was rejecting objections by Mr. Trump’s legal team that making even a largely blanked-out version of the material public now would constitute interference in the presidential election.

The materials — a four-part appendix to a lengthy brief recently filed by the special counsel, Jack Smith — consisted of 1,889 pages. But most of it was redacted and can only be seen by the parties involved in the case. The remainder appeared to consist almost entirely of previously released memos, social media postings, transcripts and other known materials.

Earlier this month, Mr. Smith had proposed releasing already public material like Mr. Trump’s social media posts from the post-election period, but blacking out nonpublic portions of sensitive files like transcripts of grand jury witness testimony. Mr. Trump’s legal team had asked the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, to delay releasing the materials until after the election, citing its potential impact on voters.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Hotel Accepted Hundreds of Inappropriate Payments, Democrats Say, Luke Broadwater, Oct. 18, 2024. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said Donald Trump overcharged the Secret Service and accepted money from officials and people seeking pardons.

House Democrats on Friday accused former President Donald J. Trump of accepting “hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments” through the Trump International Hotel in 2017 and 2018, moving weeks before the election to remind voters of the ethical issues raised by his refusal to divest from his businesses while in office.

The 58-page report from Democrats on the Oversight Committee includes their final findings in a yearslong investigation digging into the Trump Organization’s management of the hotel. It accuses Mr. Trump of ripping off the Secret Service by charging the agency exorbitant rates and of inappropriately accepting payments from clients who worked for state governments or were seeking appointments and pardons from him.

The Independent, NFL owner says Trump was like ‘having a drunk fraternity brother’ become president, Joe Sommerlad, Oct. 18, 2024. Robert Kraft reflected on earlier friendship with Republican presidential nominee – but told Charlamagne tha God he has not spoken to him since the Capitol riot.

The IndependentThis election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

The Hartmann Report, Investigative Commentary: America’s Descent into Darkness: Trump’s 2025 Takeover Strategy, Thom Hartmann, right, Oct. 17, 2024. From thom hartmann newinternment camps to abolishing free press—how Trump could make his worst threats real…

Given that we’re in the midst of a vote that will determine the fate and future of democracy in America, let’s review what Donald Trump has already said he will do if he gets back into the White House.

In theory many of these things would also require a compliant House and Senate, but with the recent Supreme Court rulings about presidential power he may be able to do many or even most of them by executive order or simply by fiat.

djt maga hatIf lower courts rule his actions as criminal, the Roberts Court has already given him immunity from prosecution, so nothing short of a military coup against him or, like four years ago, the refusal of his subordinates to act, could stop him. And he’s going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

ICE logoEverything mentioned here is based on statements Trump, Vance, or people close to them have already made. And it’s important to realize that most of these things will not directly impact the lives of average working class people so, like when these same things happened in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, etc., so the pushback will most likely not be strong or immediate.

ny times logoNew York Times, The Ground Game: Harris’s Turnout Machine vs. Trump’s Unproven Alliance, Lisa Lerer, Julie Bosman, Kellen Browning, Maya King and Jonathan Weisman, Oct. 14, 2024 (print ed). Both parties are frenetically chasing votes in the counties that could very well decide the election. In many places, inexperienced conservative groups are going up against a more tightly organized Democratic operation.

In the final weeks of the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump are staking their chances on two radically different theories of how to win: one tried-and-true, the other untested in modern presidential campaigns.

Ms. Harris’s team is running an expansive version of the type of field operation that has dominated politics for decades, deploying flotillas of paid staff members to organize and turn out every vote they can find. Mr. Trump’s campaign is going after a smaller universe of less frequent voters while relying on well-funded but inexperienced outside groups to reach a broader swath.

djt maga hatInterviews with more than four dozen voters, activists, campaign aides and officials in four pivotal counties — Erie County, Pa., Kenosha County, Wis., Maricopa County, Ariz., and Cobb County, Ga. — reveal a diffuse, at times unwieldy Republican effort that has raised questions from party operatives about effectiveness in the face of the more tightly structured Harris campaign operation. Democrats, in many places, are outpacing Republicans in terms of paid staff and doors knocked, and are counting on that local presence to break through a fractured media environment and to reach voters who want to tune out politics altogether.

“The national discourse kind of falls on deaf ears if it doesn’t feel real and localized,” said Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign’s battleground states director. “Ultimately you’re trying to have a cohesive conversation with a voter across many modes to connect the dots.”

All told, the number of voters deciding the 2024 election could most likely fit in, and perhaps not even fill, a college football stadium. Across the seven battleground states, where the contests are in a dead heat, every ballot counts.

With 2,500 staff members located in 353 offices, the Harris campaign is working to convert the strongest backers into volunteers and to ensure that sporadic but supportive voters cast a ballot, all while winning over independents and moderate Republicans. Last week, the campaign said, it knocked on over 600,000 doors and made over three million calls through 63,000 volunteer shifts.

Mr. Trump’s team is largely operating under the assumption that Republicans who voted for Trump in previous elections will once again back him in large numbers. His campaign is focusing on a smaller number of infrequent voters who his team believes will back Mr. Trump if energized to vote. The campaign says it has “hundreds of paid staff” and over 300 offices across the battleground states. A top Republican strategist who spoke to campaign leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the operations, said the campaign was training 40,000 volunteers, called “Trump Force 47 captains,” who were each charged with mobilizing 25 of these less likely voters — for a total reach of 1 million voters.

“What is very impactful is personal contacts with voters who don’t reliably vote in every election that are more disconnected from the political process,” said James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director.

Outside organizations and super PACs funded by conservative donors are picking up efforts to reach even more voters. Prominent among them are Turning Point Action, an organization of young conservatives led by Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally, and America PAC, a super PAC affiliated with Elon Musk — both of which have little experience running field programs — as well as the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a more veteran Christian organization that is focused on engaging conservative evangelical voters.

A door-to-door strategy that so heavily relies on third-party efforts has never been seen before in a presidential campaign. Mr. Trump’s team is taking advantage of a Federal Election Commission decision earlier this year that for the first time allows the campaigns and these types of organizations to coordinate on canvassing operations.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: How Fox “News” Became the “Greatest Cancer on Democracy, Thom Hartmann, Oct. 18, 2024. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, “With freedom comes responsibility.” That includes the responsibility of media outlets that use the word “news” to present factual information…

thom hartmann newWe all saw it on Wednesday night. Bret Baier, the multimillionaire supposed “real news” guy at Fox, angrily and rudely lied to the face of the Vice President of the United States and his millions of viewers, presenting an edited version of Trump’s most fascistic remarks that turned truth on its head.

This is just the most recent example of the deadly toxants Fox “News” has been spreading across the American media and political landscape for decades.

The soil in which a democracy grows and flourishes is truthful information held as common knowledge by the majority of the population. Lies, when presented as news or as truth-based information, become a poison that severely injures and can even kill a democracy.

Particularly when those lies are packaged and sold just to make a buck. Or, in the case of the Murdoch empire, billions of bucks.

American, British, and Australian democracy have suffered for decades under the assault of a daily diet of lies, half-truths, and misleading omissions from news operations run by the Murdoch family, and now imitated by the hundreds of others on radio, TV, and social media to which they’ve given example and license.

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Nicole Shanahan, above, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, right,denies she had an affair with Elon Musk (Photo via Getty Images ). On July 27, 2022, her lawyer released a statement in response to a Wall Street Journal report that cited unidentified sources as saying she had engaged in a brief affair with the Tesla CEO while separated from Brin, a claim Musk himself also recently denied.

Nicole Shanahan, above, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, right, denies she had an affair with Elon Musk (Photo via Getty Images ). On July 27, 2022, her lawyer released a statement in response to a Wall Street Journal report that cited unidentified sources as saying she had engaged in a brief affair with the Tesla CEO Musk, center, while separated from Brin, a claim Musk himself also recently denied. She is shown also below in a People Magazine photo after receiving divorce settlement from Brin reportedly in the vicinity of a billion dollars.

Nicole Shanahan is shown in a People Magazine photo after receiving divorce settlement from Google co-founder Sergey Brin reportedly in the vicinity of a billion dollars.

washington post logoWashington Post, Investigation: Her billionaire marriage broke up. Her VP campaign fizzled. Now she’s a Trump-world star, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Ashley Parker, Meryl Kornfield and Aaron Schaffer, Oct. 23, 2024. With a massive divorce settlement from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nicole Shanahan is remaking herself as a pro-Trump wellness guru — raising alarm in Silicon Valley.

During his recent live tour, Tucker Carlson welcomed a stable of MAGA warhorses to the stage: Activist Charlie Kirk in Wichita, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in Reading, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump Jr. in Jacksonville, Florida. But at a sold-out show on the outskirts of Houston, Carlson’s special guest was a new star in the right-wing firmament: Nicole Shanahan, running mate to former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Until this year, Shanahan was a Democrat who had once moved easily among the Silicon Valley elite, a lawyer, tech entrepreneur and wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the world’s richest men. Today, she is in the throes of a remarkable transformation, tapping a vast divorce settlement from 2023 to remake herself as an influencer and self-described “warrior mom” rallying independent women around fringe medical views — and former president Donald Trump.

Since Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump in August, Shanahan, 39, has rebranded herself as a wellness guru promising to “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA). She has disavowed members of her old circle in tech, saying they want to overcome human limitations, such as aging, with technology. She has suggested that vaccines might have caused her daughter’s autism, an idea she said she “was not allowed to consider” in progressive Silicon Valley. And she has hinted publicly about running for governor of California.

Though Shanahan has said her politics don’t “overlap perfectly” with Trump’s, she has become a potent advocate for the former president, encouraging independently-minded voters to back his bid for the White House on Fox News, an array of podcasts, and her increasingly popular social media feed. A prominent video ad she financed warns of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and recommends “independence” as the remedy to a host of ills purportedly fostered by Democrats, including “forever wars,” “Orwellian totalitarianism” and “communist fiscal policy.”

Shanahan described Trump as “a former enemy” turned “partner in a time of need,” who she thinks can bring her main concerns about technology, health and the environment to the White House.

Shanahan’s transformation has alarmed former associates in Silicon Valley, a number of whom are Democrats, startled by her newfound political prominence. Interviews with 34 people familiar with her rise, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters, along with court documents, photographs, text messages, and screenshots paint a portrait of a chameleon who rose from a violent, hardscrabble childhood to join one of the most elite circles of the tech industry — doggedly pursuing influence.

Her tumultuous marriage to Brin — the world’s 10th richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — is central to that rise. The marriage offered Shanahan entree to tech’s inner sanctum, but generated previously unreported personal drama that drove a wedge between Brin and Google co-founder Larry Page, as well as their friends and families, according to three people who know both men. When the divorce was finalized last year, Shanahan won what is likely one of the largest divorce settlements in U.S. history — as much as $1 billion, according to Forbes — and the means to pursue her political ambitions.

Within a year, she had bankrolled Kennedy’s quixotic presidential campaign. Now, those in the elite Silicon Valley circles she once ran in say they fear she will use her piece of the Google fortune to tip the razor-thin race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, or push unverified medical views to a broad audience.

washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. sanctions created an ‘extraordinary army’ of former officials making millions, Jeff Stein, Federica Cocco and Peter Whoriskey, Oct. 24, 2024. A sharp increase in U.S. sanctions has spawned a new lobbying industry in Washington, as businesses and governments around the world attempt to shape these economic penalties by hiring former U.S. officials to leverage their connections, a Washington Post investigation has found.

An avalanche of cash from abroad has flowed to former lawmakers and aides from both parties with experience at some of the highest levels of American government.

One firm founded by several former senior Treasury Department officials has reaped tens of millions of dollars from the United Arab Emirates, which several watchdog groups, including Transparency International, describe as a hub of money laundering. Regimes accused of human rights abuses have turned to former members of Congress for help with sanctions. And a raft of foreign business entities — Kremlin oligarchs, Chinese tech firms, a Serbian arms dealer — has hired lobbyists to try to roll back economic penalties, or have them imposed on rivals.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Georgia Supreme Court Denies MAGA Effort To Reinstate Controversial Election Rules, Aaron Parnas, Oct. 23, 2024. The rules will not be in effect come Election Day.

mtn meidas touch networkThis afternoon, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously denied an effort to quickly reinstate controversial rule changes approved by the Georgia State Board of Elections which would have created a chaotic procedure to certifying election results. One of the rules would have required poll workers across the state to perform a manual hand-count of the number of ballots cast int he election.

In addition, another rule permitted election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into the results of an election prior to officially certifying them. According to many experts in the field, this rule would have given local election officials cover to deny the certification of various elections, from local elections all the way up to the Presidential election.

Should these rules take effect, it would cause massive confusion and chaos across the state of Georgia, one of the most critical battleground states this cycle, and one that was one of the closest states in the 2020 election.

As a result of today’s ruling, however, the rules will not be in effect during this election cycle, but the Supreme Court did not foreclose the ability of Georgia Republicans to revive the challenge in future elections. Expect them to do so.

These rules were born out of the misinformation spread by Donald Trump and his allies following his loss in Georgia in 2020. As a result of the election misinformation campaign, MAGA members of the state board of elections tried to institute these rules to make it easier to overturn elections.

Read the full order from the Georgia Supreme Court below:

bill gates

Meidas Touch Network, For the first time, Bill Gates Weighs In a Presidential Election, Aaron Parnas, Oct. 23, 2024. Bill Gates, above, has donated a significant sum of money to a Super PAC supporting Vice President Harris. 

mtn meidas touch networkFor the first time in his lifetime, Bill Gates is weighing in significantly in a Presidential election, donating $50 million to Future Forward, a Super PAC that has backed Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz. In a new statement, Gates stated that he is getting involved in this election because “this election is different.”

The statement goes on to highlight the importance of supporting Vice President Kamala Harris at the polls noting:

“I support candidates who demonstrate a clear commitment to improving health care, reducing poverty and fighting climate change in the U.S. and around the world. I have a long history of working with leaders across the political spectrum, but this election is different, with unprecedented significance for Americans and the most vulnerable people around the world.”

Bill Gates is one of the wealthiest people in the entire world and his involvement in this election is critical and comes at a time where billionaire Elon Musk has heavily weighed in to this election in favor of Donald Trump. While Gates has pumped more than $50 million into Future Forward, Musk has created his own Super PAC and has handed away millions of dollars to registered voters, bringing up the possibility of campaign finance violations.

With election day now just two weeks away, the large influx of cash from Gates will add on to the already historic fundraising haul from the Harris/Walz ticket which has collectively raised more than $1 billion since Harris became the nominee in July.

ny times logoNew York Times, Fred Upton, Former G.O.P. Congressman Who Voted to Impeach Trump, Endorses Harris, Annie Karni, Oct. 24, 2024. The veteran Michigan Republican called the former president “unfit to serve,” and said Vice President Kamala Harris would work to bring people together.

fred uptonFormer Representative Fred Upton, right, the Michigan Republican who served three decades in the House and retired in 2022 after voting to impeach former President Donald J. Trump, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, becoming the latest G.O.P. figure to cross party lines and vouch for her.

Mr. Upton said in a statement that the former president was “unfit to serve as commander in chief again” and blamed him for the mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, “when he directly jeopardized the peaceful transition from one administration to the next.”

Mr. Upton, 71, said he had already cast his ballot for Ms. Harris — the first time in his life he had voted for a Democrat for president — and that he was confident she would work to “bring people together.”

He argued that it was long past time for Republicans to abandon Mr. Trump.

“Time and time again, respected senior national Republicans have urged our former president to focus on governing rather than personal attacks, mistruths and continued false 2020 election claims,” he said. “Instead of heeding that advice, we see unhinged behavior not acceptable in most forums almost daily.”

Ms. Harris is hoping that support from Mr. Upton, a moderate Republican in a critical battleground state, could help sway just the kind of Michigan voter she needs to peel away from Mr. Trump to win. She is working to appeal to G.O.P. voters who may have supported Nikki Haley in the primary and may still be reluctant to back Mr. Trump, but who are also on the fence about voting for a Democrat.

Ethel Kennedy with her husband Robert in 1966, left, and in 2014 (Photos via Getty Images).

  Ethel Kennedy with her husband Robert in 1966, left, and in 2014 (Photos via Getty Images).

washington post logoWashington Post,  Ethel Kennedy’s memorial attracts 3 presidents — and tales of an older era, Matt Viser, Oct. 17, 2024 (print ed.). President Joe Biden, who has long idolized Robert F. Kennedy and who served for decades in the Senate with Edward M. Kennedy, on Wednesday delivered an emotional eulogy for Ethel Kennedy.

He dabbed his eyes several times. He apologized for his emotions. His voice grew faint as he recounted the ways in which Ethel Kennedy, Robert’s widow, comforted him in times of grief, when he considered leaving public office and when his family was shattered.Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

“Like she did for the country, Ethel helped my family find a way forward with principle and purpose,” Biden said. “To the Kennedy family, the Biden family is here for you, as you’ve always been for us. You changed the life of my boys, you really did.”

Biden’s remarks were the culmination of nearly three hours in Washington’s Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle marking the life of Ethel Kennedy, who died last week at age 96. The memorial service brought together stars from decades of Democratic politics, with musical performances from Sting, Stevie Wonder and Kenny Chesney, as well as plenty of Washington intrigue.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ethel Kennedy’s son, whose independent run for president divided the family and whose endorsement of Donald Trump has infuriated many within it, was among those in attendance. But while many of Ethel Kennedy’s children spoke during the service, RFK Jr. did not play any role.

Few figures could have attracted the political royalty that attended Wednesday’s event, a reminder of the dominant, glamorous role played by the Kennedys in a Washington gone by. Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sat just a few seats away from Biden, but the two did not appear to interact. Pelosi has recently said they have not spoken in months, after she played a catalytic role in pressing Biden to end his bid for reelection.

From left, President Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton attend Wednesday's memorial service for Ethel Kennedy. (Ben Curtis/AP)

From left, President Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton attend Wednesday’s memorial service for Ethel Kennedy. (Associated Press photo by Ben Curtis).

Biden was seated beside two of his predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. “Mr. President. Mr. President. Mr. President,” Pelosi said from the stage, acknowledging the trio. “How perfect for Ethel to have three great presidents of the United States speak at her funeral.”

When Biden spoke later, he looked into the audience and recognized Obama and Clinton by name, before lumping Pelosi in with “other distinguished guests.”

The service focused on a matriarch who, speakers said, had a love of sailboats and a dining room table that could always fit one more, a lively spirit who poured her heart into both social causes and family charade games. Her children talked about “Mummy” leading them on ski trips, piling them into a convertible — and bringing them to Senate hearings or to the Department of Justice to visit their father at work.

jfk and kennedy brothersRobert F. Kennedy, younger brother of President John F. Kennedy (shown at left, with his brother Robert at center and brother Ted at right), served as attorney general in the Kennedy administration from 1961 through 1963, when JFK was assassinated. He was then elected to the Senate from New York, mounting his own presidential run in 1968 until he, too, was assassinated on June 5 of that year.

Kennedy and Biden are the only two Catholic presidents in American history, and that, as well as a shared history of tragedy, has bound their families together. Biden lost his first wife and infant daughter in a car crash in 1972 shortly after being elected to the Senate, and his son Beau died in 2015 of brain cancer.

Biden was the last speaker, and one of the more poignant. The president, now 81, is in the twilight of a long political career, and at times, recently, he has grown more reflective.

washington post logoWashington Post,  Harris clashes with host in contentious interview on Fox, Maeve Reston, Oct. 16, 2024. In the vice president’s interview with Bret Baier, she said more bluntly than before that her presidency would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s.

Vice President Kamala Harris, under pressure to broaden her appeal to Republicans and conservatives with Election Day fast approaching, sat for a contentious interview with Fox News where she said more bluntly than before that her presidency would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s.Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

The interview with Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier, which also featured a testy back-and-forth on immigration, represented a calculated gamble for Harris, given Fox’s role as a conservative-leaning network that is one of the top news sources for Republicans. It offered her a chance to refashion a recent comment on ABC’s “The View” that she could not think of anything she would do differently from Biden, a remark that even many Democrats strategists viewed as a misstep.

“Let me be very clear — my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like every new president that comes in to office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas,” Harris said. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Let’s Take the Republican Policy Challenge, David French, right, Oct. 17, 2024. If you live in Red America, as I do, you’re familiar david french croppedwith two conceptually incompatible arguments for Donald Trump. We’ll call them the MAGA argument and the Republican argument.

The MAGA argument can be summed up in three words: Burn it down. Trump’s core supporters are convinced that the American establishment is irretrievably corrupt, that America is in its last days and that only the most dramatic action can save the Republic. They think the Trump of Stop the Steal and Jan. 6 is the real Trump, and they can’t wait to see him unleashed.

The Republican argument is different. These are the voters who still think they belong to a party of limited government and individual liberty. They look back at the first two years of Trump’s term — when he nominated conventional Republican members to his cabinet, selected conventional conservative judges to the federal bench and passed a conventional Republican tax cut — and think that will happen again.

These Republicans look at Jan. 6 as an aberration. They’ll tell me that concerns about democracy are overblown and that what they really want is cheaper groceries at home and less chaos overseas.

“I’m voting for Trump’s policies,” they tell me, “not his tweets.”

In other words, one set of voters is voting for Trump with great joy and enthusiasm because they absolutely, positively take him seriously. Another set of voters is voting for him in part because they don’t take him seriously at all.

Both sets of voters can’t be right.

washington post logoWashington Post, Higher Education: Student loan servicer MOHELA faces new punishment from Biden administration, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Oct. 6, 2024. The Education Department wants the company to improve its management amid problems with billing and a backlog of repayment plan applications.

ny times logoNew York Times, Richard Secord, Middleman in Iran-Contra Scandal, Dies at 92, Robert D. McFadden, Oct. 16, 2024. A war hero and a former Air Force general, he denied wrongdoing for his role in the Reagan-era shipment of arms to Iran to support Nicaraguan rebels.

ny times logoNew York Times, Biden Announces $425 Million in Aid to Ukraine, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Oct. 16, 2024. President Biden spoke by telephone to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine about the security package, which includes munitions, armored vehicles and other weapons.

President Biden surged $425 million to Ukraine’s defense against Russia on Wednesday as he prepared to travel to Germany to celebrate the unified front of Western allies.

Mr. Biden spoke by telephone to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine about the security package, which includes munitions, armored vehicles and other weapons, the White House announced.

The package comes as Mr. Biden is set to travel to Germany on Thursday for a brief trip that is likely to be his last visit to Europe as commander in chief. He will use the opportunity to remind the world of the importance of alliances just three weeks before the U.S. presidential election. Former President Donald J. Trump has criticized U.S. aid for Kyiv as he campaigns for another term in office.

Mr. Biden will meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany before returning to the United States on Friday.

In Mr. Scholz, Mr. Biden has found a reliable partner in efforts to support Ukraine and impose sanctions on Russia. Mr. Scholz has broken from Germany’s post-World War II hesitation on global security matters to emerge as one of the largest financial contributors to Ukraine’s war effort. But the support has come at a cost; the war has hit the auto and manufacturing sectors in Germany and rattled Mr. Scholz’s approval ratings.

The White House has also credited Mr. Scholz for playing a key role in a complex prisoner swap that helped free three Americans from Russia.

 

More On Middle East Crises

washington post logoWashington Post, Israeli strike kills at least 73 people in northern Gaza, medics say, Louisa Loveluck, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Hazem Balousha and Hajar Harb, Oct. 20, 2024 (print ed.). Israel’s military intensified operations there just days after President Joe Biden suggested that the death of Hamas’s leader could usher in an end to the war. 

The bombing targeted the town of Beit Lahia, less than two miles from the border with Israel, late on Saturday. The entire block was “leveled to the ground,” said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense, adding that there were a large number of people still under the rubble.

The Israeli military said in a statement that the strike was against “a Hamas terror target.”

“We emphasize that the area in question is an active war zone,” the military said.

In an X post, the Israel Defense Forces disputed the numbers provided by Gazan officials as “exaggerated,” citing what the IDF called a “preliminary examination.”

ny times logoNew York Times, A Mideast Shift Is Underway, Without Israel, Maria Abi-Habib and Ismaeel Naar, Oct. 21, 2024 (print ed.). Before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, Saudi Arabia was open to forging stronger ties with the Israelis. Now, it is warming up to its traditional enemy, Iran.

A year ago, Saudi Arabia was preparing to recognize Israel in a normalization deal that would have fundamentally reshaped the Middle East and further isolated Iran and its allies while barely lifting a finger to advance Palestinian statehood.

Now, that deal is further away than ever, even after the killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, which has been widely seized upon as a potential opening for a peace deal. Instead, Saudi Arabia is warming relations with its traditional archenemy, Iran, while insisting that any diplomatic pact now hinges on Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state, a remarkable turnaround for the kingdom.

A diplomatic détente is underway in the Mideast, but not the one envisioned by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues to say that his administration can clinch a deal with Riyadh. This month, the foreign ministers of the Persian Gulf states met for the first time as a group with their Iranian counterpart. It is a shaky, early-stage rapprochement that will only chip away at centuries of sectarian antagonisms, but it represents a sharp shift in a region where the rivalry between Riyadh and Tehran has drenched the region in bloodshed for decades.

ny times logoNew York Times, Middle East Crisis Analysis: Despite Yahya Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive, Vivian Yee, Oct. 20, 2024 (print ed.). Most of the actors in the region are seeking an “offramp,” many analysts say. But Hezbollah and Hamas are talking tough, and Israel isn’t backing down.

The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose decision to attack Israel more than a year ago set off the ever-widening war tearing up the Middle East, could be the key to ending the bloodshed. Now that Israel has decapitated Hamas in Gaza, the thinking goes, it might be ready to declare victory and move on, while a demoralized Hamas might show greater flexibility in cease-fire talks.

yahya sinwar reuters

washington post logoWashington Post, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, architect of Oct. 7 attacks, is killed in Gaza, Israel says, Staff Reports, Oct. 18, 2024 (print ed.). Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, was killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Wednesday, the Israeli military said Thursday.

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More On U.S. Courts, Law

Lyle Menendez, left, holding a file folder, confers with his brother, Erik Menendez, in a courtroom in 1991. Both are wearing sweaters.Lyle Menendez, left, and his brother, Erik Menendez, in court in April 1991 in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Associated Press photo by Kevork Djansezian).

Lyle Menendez, left, holding a file folder, confers with his brother, Erik Menendez, in a courtroom in 1991. Both are wearing sweaters.Lyle Menendez, left, and his brother, Erik Menendez, in court in April 1991 in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Associated Press photo by Kevork Djansezian).

ny times logoNew York Times, Los Angeles District Attorney Will Ask Court to Resentence Menendez Brothers, Tim Arango and Matt Stevens, Oct. 24, 2024. The request could lead to the brothers’ release from prison, decades after they were convicted of murdering their parents.

The Los Angeles County district attorney said on Thursday that he would request the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who killed their parents in 1989, a step that could lead to their release from prison.

george gascon oThe district attorney, George Gascón, announced his decision at a news conference at the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles.

“I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” he said.

Mr. Gascón, who was surrounded by members of his office and members of the Menendez family, said he would ask the court on Friday to resentence the brothers to a murder charge that comes with the possibility of parole.

It is not clear when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge will decide on the resentencing request. If a judge agrees with Mr. Gascón, the brothers would have to appear before a parole board. But the reviews by the court and the parole board could take many more weeks, and the brothers’ release is far from guaranteed.

The district attorney noted that there was disagreement in his office about whether to move forward with the resentencing. He cited a recent documentary that he said “brought a tremendous amount of public attention” and requests for information.

During their first trial in the early 1990s, which was televised, the brothers said they had been sexually molested by their father and feared for their lives. At the time, their claims were met with widespread skepticism. But Mr. Gascón said that he was ultimately convinced by the prosecutors in his office reviewing the case to ask the court for reconsideration, and that he believed the molestation claims.

The brothers are currently serving sentences of life without parole in a state prison near San Diego.Lyle Menendez, left, and his brother, Erik Menendez, in court in April 1991 in Beverly Hills, Calif.Credit…Kevork Djansezian/Associated PressMr. Gascón said that he would ask for them to be sentenced to 50 years to life with the possibility of parole. That term would still be longer than what the brothers have already served, but they would be eligible for parole immediately under state law because they committed the crimes when they were younger than 26.

“Today is a day filled with hope for our family,” Anamaria Baralt, a niece of Jose Menendez, said at the news conference. “We stand united in our hope and gratitude. Together we can make sure that Erik and Lyle can receive the justice they deserve and finally come home.”

The case drew renewed attention this year after Netflix released a docudrama about it, and later a documentary in which the brothers discussed the case at length in prison interviews.

The rare request for resentencing comes at an urgent political moment for Mr. Gascón, a Democrat who is struggling to win re-election against a conservative challenger running as an independent in the left-leaning county. Mr. Gascón on Thursday deflected questions about whether his decision was politically driven, saying, “I am not going to talk about re-election.”

His opponent, Nathan Hochman, said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Gascón “has cast a cloud over the fairness and impartiality of his decision” by issuing it days before the Nov. 5 election.

Laurie L. Levenson, a professor of criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who frequently analyzed the Menendez case for media outlets in the 1990s, said that Mr. Gascón “took the safest route: Leave it to the parole commission.”

The murders grabbed the nation’s attention in 1989 for their lurid nature and the wealthy milieu in which they were committed. The brothers’ initial trial in the early 1990s was one of the first to be televised to a national audience, a forerunner of the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson, also in Los Angeles County.

The Menendez brothers had separate juries in their first trial, and a judge declared a mistrial after both juries had failed to reach unanimous verdicts, following weeks of deliberations. When the brothers were tried again — this time without TV cameras present — they were both convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Erik Menendez was 18 and his brother, Lyle, was 21 at the time of the murders.

At trial, prosecutors portrayed the brothers as unrepentant killers who murdered their parents with shotguns to get their hands on the family’s assets, valued at the time at $14 million (about $32 million in today’s dollars). A spending spree by the brothers in the months between the murders and their arrest, in which they bought a Porsche car, a Rolex watch and a restaurant in Princeton, N.J., was presented as evidence to support that theory.

The brothers’ defense team argued that they had been sexually abused by their father, Jose Menendez, and that their mother, Kitty Menendez, knew about it. The lawyers said the brothers killed their parents because they feared for their lives. The brothers had confronted their parents about the abuse, the lawyers said, and were worried that their parents would kill them to prevent the family’s secrets from becoming public.

ny times logoNew York Times, Mike Jeffries, Former Abercrombie C.E.O., Arrested in Sex-Trafficking Case, Danielle Kaye, Oct. 22, 2024. Mr. Jeffries and two others were arrested in connection with a federal sex-trafficking and interstate prostitution investigation.

 Michael S. Jeffries, the former longtime chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch, was arrested Tuesday in connection with a federal sex-trafficking and interstate prostitution case.

Mr. Jeffries, who ran the clothing retailer from 1992 to 2014, faces charges related to sex trafficking, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said. The charges come a year after a BBC investigation and a class-action lawsuit accused Mr. Jeffries of using the prospect of modeling jobs at Abercrombie to lure young men to events around the world where they were sexually exploited.

Mr. Jeffries and his partner, Matthew Smith, were arrested in Florida on Tuesday morning and are expected to appear in federal court in West Palm Beach later in the day, said John Marzulli, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. A third person, James Jacobson, was also arrested on Tuesday, in Wisconsin, in connection with the case and will appear in federal court in St. Paul, Minn., Mr. Marzulli said.The prosecutor’s office, the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department are expected to disclose more information about the case during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed last year also accused Abercrombie of being complicit in the sex-trafficking scheme. The company, according to the suit, ignored the allegations made against Mr. Jeffries. An Abercrombie spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Jeffries’s arrest or the lawsuit against the retailer.

Abercrombie said previously that the company was “appalled and disgusted” by the allegations against its former chief. The retailer hired an outside law firm last year to investigate the accusations.

Brian Bieber, a lawyer for Mr. Jeffries, declined to comment on the sex trafficking-related charges, but he said Mr. Jeffries’s legal team intended to “respond in detail to the allegations” in court “when appropriate.”

Brittany Henderson, a partner at the law firm representing plaintiffs in the class action suit against Abercrombie and Mr. Jeffries, said the arrests were “monumental for the aspiring male models who were victimized by these individuals.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Man Charged in Attempted Trump Assassination Seeks Judge’s Recusal, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 23, 2024.  Lawyers for Ryan Routh want Judge Aileen Cannon to remove herself from the case after a report that her name was among those who could be appointed to a top legal position if Donald Trump is elected.

Defense lawyers for the Hawaii man charged with trying to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump at his golf course in Florida renewed their efforts on Wednesday to get the Trump-appointed judge who is handling the case to step down, citing a recent news article saying she is under consideration for a top legal position if Mr. Trump wins the election.

Lawyers for the man, Ryan W. Routh, had initially asked the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, to step back from the case last week. They claimed then that there was “an appearance of partiality” on the part of Judge Cannon given that Mr. Trump has “repeatedly praised” her rulings in the separate criminal case in which he stands accused of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office.

ny times logoNew York Times,  L.A. Archdiocese Agrees to Pay $880 Million to Settle Sex Abuse Claims, Ruth Graham and Orlando Mayorquín, Oct. 17, 2024 (print ed.).  It was the highest single payout by an archdiocese, experts said, and brings Los Angeles’s cumulative payout in sex abuse lawsuits to more than $1.5 billion.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest, has agreed to pay $880 million to 1,353 people who say they were sexually abused as children by Catholic clergy. The settlement, which experts said was the highest single payout by a diocese, brings Los Angeles’s cumulative total in sex abuse lawsuits to more than $1.5 billion.

The settlement was announced on Wednesday in a joint statement by lawyers for the plaintiffs and the archdiocese.

“I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart,” Archbishop José H. Gomez said in a statement. “My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered.”

The settlement tops the previous high for a diocese, from 2007, when L.A. agreed to pay $660 million in lawsuits brought by 508 people, said Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, a watchdog group that has tracked clergy abuse reports for decades.

“There are a lot more dominoes in California to come down,” he said, referring to other dioceses that have not reached settlements or protected themselves by filing for bankruptcy.

The agreement represents the near conclusion to decades of litigation against the archdiocese, with only a few suits remaining. Over the years, the archdiocese has sold off real estate, liquidated investments and taken out loans to cover the staggering costs of litigation.

ap logoAssociated Press Via Politico, 3 killed and 8 injured by gunfire following a Mississippi school’s football game, Staff Report, Oct. 19, 2024. Three people were killed and eight others were injured in central Mississippi early Saturday when at least two people opened fire into a group of several hundred people who were celebrating a school’s homecoming football win at an outdoor trail several hours after the game had ended, authorities said.

The gunfire was proceeded by a fight between some of the men at the celebration, but deputies hadn’t yet learned what sparked the fight, said Holmes County Sheriff Willie March.

Anywhere from 200 to 300 people were on the trail celebrating, and the gunfire sent them fleeing, the sheriff said in a phone interview.

ny times logoNew York Times, Georgia Prosecutor Seeks to Reinstate Quashed Charges in Trump Elections Case, Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset, Oct. 16, 2024. An appeal filed on Tuesday disputes a judge’s ruling that six of the charges brought against Donald Trump and his allies in Georgia were not specific enough.

The prosecutor overseeing the election interference case against Donald J. Trump in Georgia has asked an appeals court to restore six charges that a judge had dismissed in the case, including one related to a call that Mr. Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state in January 2021.

A collage of headlines reports on the insurrection riot whereby supporters of the failed 2020 re-election campaign of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to hold presidential election certification on Jan. 6, 2021.

washington post logoWashington Post, The Trump CasesTrump can oppose releasing evidence in election interference case, judge rules, Spencer S. Hsu, Sept. 27, 2024 (print ed.). The former president’s lawyers have until Tuesday to argue against the release of a special counsel filing explaining why Trump can be prosecuted.3 minViolent protesters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A federal judge on Friday gave lawyers for Donald Trump four days to challenge the partial public release of a nearly 200-page special counsel filing on why the former president can be criminally prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what’s true, false or in-between in politics.

trump 2024In an order posted on the public docket of Trump’s criminal case in Washington, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan gave Trump until noon Tuesday to dispute the government proposals on what to disclose and keep secret in its massive filing, and until Oct. 10 to object to similar proposed redactions in four attached documentary exhibits. The filing is a key part of the criminal case alleging Trump illegally attempted to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and it was expected to reveal new details of the evidence investigators had gathered.

Prosecutors said the main filing could include roughly 90 pages of new and previously disclosed facts explaining why Trump should still face trial after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in July that gave presidents broad immunity from prosecution for their official actions.Skip to end of carouselSign up for The Trump Trials newsletterSubscribe to The Trump Trials newsletter to get the latest updates on Donald Trump’s four criminal cases in your inbox.

ny times logoNew York Times, 2 Men Charged in Killing of 7 People in Baltimore Gang Case, Alexandra E. Petri, Oct. 16, 2024 (print ed.).  Prosecutors said Cornell Moore and Keith Russell were involved in a murder-for-hire enterprise with a gang operating in Baltimore City and elsewhere in Maryland.

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Global Affairs, Human Rights

Sirajuddin Haqqani during an interview with The New York Times in Kabul, Afghanistan (New York Times photo by Jim Huylebroek).

Sirajuddin Haqqani during an interview with The New York Times in Kabul, Afghanistan (New York Times photo by Jim Huylebroek).

ny times logoNew York Times, Is Afghanistan’s Most-Wanted Militant Now Its Best Hope for Change? Christina Goldbaum, Oct. 24, 2024. Sirajuddin Haqqani has tried to remake himself from blood-soaked jihadist to pragmatic Taliban statesman. Western diplomats are shocked — and enticed.

ny times logoNew York Times, What We Learned From Talking to the Taliban’s Most Fearsome Leader, Christina Goldbaum, Oct. 24, 2024.Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has a $10 million American bounty on his head, is now positioning himself as a figure of relative moderation.

ny times logoNew York Times, On the Israel-Lebanon Border, a Town With a Past Worries for Its Future, Isabel Kershner, Photographs by Sergey Ponomarev, Oct. 24, 2024. Abandoned and off limits to civilians, Metula, a symbol of early pioneering Zionism, has been left half-ruined by Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles.

Once a picturesque Israeli mountain resort with panoramic views into Lebanon, Metula is now off limits to civilians. Under fire for months from Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles, every other house has by now been damaged or lies in ruins. Over the past year of fighting, it has been one of the hardest-hit places in Israel.

More than a century old and a storied symbol of early pioneering Zionism, Metula, a pastoral border community and Israel’s northernmost town, juts upward like a finger into Lebanon, which surrounds it on three sides. The roughly 2,500 residents of Metula were officially evacuated a year ago, for the first time since the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. Now, even as Israeli ground forces pursue Hezbollah’s fighters in southern Lebanon, Metula’s future is in question.

Thirty percent of the evacuees do not intend to return, whatever the outcome of the war, according to the town’s mayor, David Azulai. Those who have gone for good, he says, include many of the families with young children.

“We call it an enclave — encircled to the north, east and west by Lebanon,” he said, adding that up to 90 percent of the houses were exposed, within direct line of sight from the Lebanese villages across the border. One of them, Kafr Kila, is less than a half-mile away as the crow flies.

ny times logoNew York Times, U.S. and Qatar Say Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Will Resume, but Offer Few Details, Michael Crowley, Oct. 24, 2024. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that U.S. and Qatari negotiators would soon restart talks, but that it was unclear if Hamas was willing to engage.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Thursday that he expected negotiators to meet “in the coming days” to discuss a cease-fire in Gaza, but that it remained unclear whether Hamas was willing to re-engage in the long-stalled talks after Israel killed its leader.

Mr. Blinken spoke from Qatar, where he was meeting with senior officials from the Persian Gulf state, which has acted as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas. Qatar’s foreign minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said at a news conference alongside Mr. Blinken that Hamas’s political representatives in Doha have not so far signaled a softer position since the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, last week.

Fethullah Gulen at his home in Pennsylvania (Reuters photo by Charles Mostoller).

Fethullah Gulen at his home in Pennsylvania (Reuters photo by Charles Mostoller).

Semafor, Fethullah Gülen, accused of plotting a Turkish coup from the Poconos, dies, J.D. Capelouto and Mizy Clifton, Updated Oct. 21, 2024. A Turkish cleric accused of planning a failed coup to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan died aged 83 in the US.

Fethullah Gülen, the spiritual leader of the Hizmet movement, which promotes a moderate brand of Islam, was blamed for masterminding the putsch in 2016 that saw 250 people killed — an allegation Gülen consistently denied.

Thousands of state workers including officials, bureaucrats, and army leaders were arrested in a government crackdown after the coup.

Gülen, who had been living in the US since 1999, died after being admitted to a hospital in Pennsylvania, according to reports.

Gülen, who became an imam in Turkey in the late 1970s, established a movement that claimed to follow the teachings of Said Nursi, an Islamic cleric and Sufi. As Gülen gained followers, his beliefs spread to Turkish schools in more than 100 countries, and eventually transformed into a political movement. Members “actively recruited individuals and placed them into key state institutes such as the police, judiciary and military,” an Ankara-based reporter wrote. Gülen often sought to reconcile Islam with contemporary science, promoted charity, and met with interfaith leaders, according to a 2016 New Yorker profile: “For many in the West, it represented a hopeful trend in Islam.”

Gülen was once an ally of Turkey’s leader Erdoğan — The Wall Street Journal in 2014 called it a “crumbling political marriage of convenience” — but their relationship disintegrated after Gülen criticized Erdoğan over a corruption probe that began that year and suggested his movement could challenge Erdoğan’s incumbent party. It marked an “unraveling of the broad, Islamist-rooted coalition that has governed Turkey since 2002,” the Journal wrote. Gülen continued to lead his followers from an estate in the mountains of Pennsylvania, where Turkish authorities said he planned the 2016 coup attempt.Gülen’s death removes a thorn in US-Turkey relationshipSource iconSources: Daily Sabah, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş

The 2016 effort to overthrow Erdoğan was short-lived, and the Turkish leader immediately pointed the finger at Gülen, labeling him a terrorist, but Gülen denied the accusations. Following his death, Turkish news outlets seen as pro-government ran articles saying he left behind a “dark legacy” after running a shady, criminal network “that disguised itself as a religious movement.” Turkish authorities had accused the US of harboring Gülen and demanded his extradition, and his death “removes a top issue in Turkey-US ties,” Turkish journalist and Brookings fellow Aslı Aydıntaşbaş said. The movement, meanwhile, has “lost all its leverage in Turkey but continues abroad. It will likely be fragmented now, with some followers hoping to reconcile with Turkey,” Aydıntaşbaş said.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Indonesia’s Transformative Leader Tarnished His Legacy, Sui-Lee Wee, Oct. 20, 2024. Joko Widodo rose from a slum to the presidency. But with his tenure ending, he is being accused of undermining democracy by trying to install a political dynasty.

joko widodoThe words “emergency warning” galvanized protesters in Indonesia in August. It was a rallying cry to protect the world’s third-largest democracy, which broke free from dictatorship less than 30 years ago. Thousands of protesters took to the streets. Some stormed the gates of Parliament, tearing one down in fury.

The threat, as they saw it, was from their elected leader, President Joko Widodo.

In his two terms in office, Mr. Joko, right, who stepped down on Sunday, transformed Indonesia, virtually eradicating extreme poverty in the sprawling archipelago, where about 280 million people live. But many believe he also tried to bend the laws to install a political dynasty, undercutting the very democracy that let him become the country’s first president who was not from the military or the long-established political elite.

New York Times, Analysis: With Jets and Ships, China Is Honing Its Ability to Choke Taiwan, David Pierson and Amy Chang Chien, Oct. 17, 2024 (print ed.). China’s military exercises are encircling Taiwan and testing the island’s defenses. They also raise the risk of conflict, accidental or otherwise.

The Chinese warplanes, deployed in record numbers, crossed an informal boundary between China and Taiwan. Chinese Coast Guard boats joinednaval ships in encircling Taiwan. Fighter jets took off from an aircraft carrier parked off the island’s east coast.

China FlagThe large-scale military drills China held this week were aimed at demonstrating its potential to choke Taiwan’s access to food and fuel and block the skies and waters from which the United States and its allies would presumably approach in coming to the island’s defense.

The exercises showed how China was improving its coordination of complex operations involving a range of military, coast guard and rocket forces. They also raise the risk of a confrontation or accident that could draw in the United States and its Asian allies.

China’s tightening military squeeze on Taiwan is imposing a new normal — creating daily pressure that exhausts the island’s defense forces and increases the incentive for Taiwan to capitulate without a fight.

It was the second time in less than five months that China has conducted similar exercises in response to what it regarded as pro-separatist remarks by the island’s president, Lai Ching-te. By comparison, China held two such drills during the eight years Mr. Lai’s predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, was in office.

“Beijing is normalizing the use of these large scale military and coast guard activities under the Lai administration,” said Brian Hart, a fellow with the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They have made it clear that if they see things that they perceive as provocative from Taiwan that they will respond this way.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Canada Accuses India of Homicide and Extortion as Relations Crumble, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Oct. 15, 2024 (print ed.). Canadian officials expelled India’s top diplomat and five others in a dispute set off by the assassination of a Sikh separatist in British Columbia last year.

Canada accused the Indian government on Monday of homicide and extortion intended to silence critics of India living in Canada, escalating a bitter dispute that began last year with an assassination of a Sikh activist.

Canada expelled India’s top diplomat and five others, saying they were part of a vast criminal network. India reciprocated, expelling six Canadian diplomats.

canadian flagThe two countries have been in an intense dispute following the assassination in Canada of a prominent Sikh cleric, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the time that his killing had been orchestrated by the Indian government.

india flag mapCanada is home to the largest Sikh community outside India, where the religious minority lives mostly in the northwestern state of Punjab. The Indian government says that some Sikhs in Canada are actively involved in a secessionist movement that seeks to carve a Sikh homeland known as Khalistan out of India.

Canadian officials said their investigation had focused on the Indian government’s involvement in a campaign aimed at Canadian Sikh activists.

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Ukraine-Russia War, Reprisals, Sanctions

ny times logoNew York Times, Russia-Ukraine War Analysis: Putin Abandons Caution on North Korea in Pursuit of Victory in Ukraine, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Choe Sang-Hun, Oct. 24, 2024. The invasion of Ukraine has led Vladimir Putin to jettison cooperation with the West over North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

Thousands of North Korean men converged on Russia’s Pacific Coast six years ago. President Vladimir V. Putin had decided to punish North Korea for developing nuclear weapons, and the men — North Korean laborers used by Russian businesses — were being sent home.

The North Koreans are now being welcomed back to the same Russian region, this time as soldiers. American, Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence agencies have said thousands of them have arrived in recent weeks to aid the Russian war effort in Ukraine, deepening a military alliance resurrected by Mr. Putin and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, earlier this year.

The arrival of North Korean soldiers highlights the dramatic transformation of Russia’s relationship with its neighbors and the wider world following the invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

Russia’s complex economic and political interests on the global stage have been subsumed by the narrow calculus of the war, which the Kremlin has portrayed as an existential struggle for national survival.

Mr. Putin’s sudden embrace of North Korea, a pariah to much of the world, also shows how the war in Ukraine has erased the last areas of Russia’s cooperation with the West, throwing issues of global importance such as arms control and nuclear nonproliferation into dangerous, uncertain territory. The days when Russia cooperated with a broad coalition, including China and the United States, to try to rein in the North’s nuclear ambitions have vanished.

“This is a major about face for the Russian policy,” said Alexander Gabuev, an expert on Russia’s relations with Asia at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a Berlin-based research group.

“If Russia had previously positioned itself as a useful partner to the West in dealing with problematic nations, it has now turned into a giant problem itself,” he added.

Russia’s definitive break with the U.S.-led global order is likely to persist long after the fighting in Ukraine subsides, helping to shape geopolitical collisions like the United States’ standoff with China, Mr. Gabuev added.

ny times logoNew York Times, India Evacuates 1 Million as Tropical Cyclone Dana Nears, John Yoon and Pragati K.B., Oct. 24, 2024.  With the storm forecast to make landfall by early Friday, residents in parts of West Bengal and Odisha States took shelter in thousands of camps.

Ukraine-Russia War, Russian Hostages, Propaganda

 stephen hubbard ap

ny times logoNew York Times, Russia Sentences 72-Year-Old American on Charges of Fighting for Ukraine, Ivan Nechepurenko, Oct. 7, 2024. Stephen James Hubbard, a Michigan native whose family said was an English teacher, was sentenced to six years and 10 months in a penal colony.

A 72-year-old U.S. citizen, whose family says is an English teacher, was sentenced by a Moscow court Monday to six years and 10 months in a penal colony on charges of serving as a mercenary in Ukraine, becoming the latest in a list of Americans serving time in Russia.

In a statement, the Moscow City Court said that Stephen James Hubbard, a native of Big Rapids, Mich., enlisted with a territorial defense unit in the Ukrainian town of Izium during the first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The court said that Mr. Hubbard had been receiving a monthly salary of $1,000.

Russian state news agencies reported last week that Mr. Hubbard pleaded guilty to the charge. They also reported, citing Russian prosecutors, that he was detained after Izium was captured by Russian forces in April 2022 and that he had been provided with training and ammunition to fight for Ukraine. It was not clear why it took more than two years for his case to reach trial.

Mr. Hubbard’s sister, Trisha Hubbard Fox, denied the Russian allegations, saying that her brother was “never a mercenary” and had been teaching English abroad. In a post on Facebook, Ms. Hubbard Fox said that Russia “kidnapped” him.

“The Ukrainian military will NOT accept” volunteers older than 60, Ms. Hubbard Fox said in late September in a Facebook post. “Russia knows this but to save face for kidnapping, beating and holding my brother all this time, their courts are charging Stephen James Hubbard anyway.”

washington post logoWashington Post, U.S., allies finalize $50 billion Ukraine loan backed by Russian assets, Jeff Stein and Ellen Francis, Oct. 24, 2024 (print ed.). Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko held a signing ceremony Wednesday advancing plans to provide Ukraine with $50 billion in loans, breaking a months-long logjam and providing Kyiv with cash it urgently needs before the end of the year.

The plan relies on the interest accruing on roughly $280 billion in Russian central bank assets kept in Western accounts but frozen since the start of the war in 2022. That interest, estimated at several billion dollars each year, would go to repay the loans over time. The United States will lend $20 billion before the end of this year, and European and other Western allies are expected to provide more than $30 billion.

Yellen announced this week that allies have agreed to require Russia to pay the loan back if the war ends before the interest can cover the total — a move intended to keep it from becoming Western taxpayers’ responsibility. Finance ministers from around the world are in Washington now for meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

The breakthrough represents a victory for Yellen, who has worked with her international counterparts for much of this year to find a way to use Russian central bank assets to help Ukraine. It also reflects the lengths the Western allies have gone to maintain the flow of funding for Kyiv, adopting a strikingly aggressive measure that few diplomats thought possible until recently.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin is engaged in a contest of wills with our coalition, and he is counting on us to retreat,” Yellen said at a news conference Wednesday. “We will not retreat. … We will do everything we can to support Ukraine.”

President Joe Biden also said in a statement on Wednesday that the loan “is another reminder to Vladimir Putin that the world has rallied behind Ukraine.”

Russia has characterized the plan to use its bank assets as an attack on its sovereignty and the rule of law, while defenders of the plan have argued that the Kremlin deserves to face consequences for illegally invading Ukraine in 2022. Western officials have been eager to finish the loan before the U.S. election, given former president Donald Trump’s repeated skepticism of the Ukrainian cause.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this month that the plan amounted to “stealing our money.”

“They will definitely have legal consequences. This is nothing but illegal expropriation,” Peskov said. “It’s an illegal action.”

Ukraine faces a deficit as high as $45 billion next year, and the additional infusion from the West could help avoid painful cuts to government services or tax hikes that could slow its economy to a halt, said Oleg Ustenko, who has served as an economic adviser to the Ukrainian government. Many Ukrainians also worry that if Trump wins, he would cut off any additional U.S. support to Ukraine, including military assistance.

“It’s crucially important from two points of view: We have to make sure the country is about to continue its fight against Russia, so inside the country it’s a very powerful and symbolic action. But it’s also extremely important to mitigate the risk related to a possible cut in financial support if Trump is elected,” Ustenko said. “It’s a big, big question mark if the U.S. will continue to see this level of support, and it could be a significant problem.”

The United States and European allies imposed sanctions freezing Russia’s central bank assets after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. U.S. officials have since pushed for all of those assets to be confiscated and redirected to Ukraine, but some European countries strongly opposed the idea, raising concerns about the legality of the move and the potential to undermine investor confidence in Europe, where most o

The breakthrough represents a victory for Yellen, who has worked with her international counterparts for much of this year to find a way to use Russian central bank assets to help Ukraine. It also reflects the lengths the Western allies have gone to maintain the flow of funding for Kyiv, adopting a strikingly aggressive measure that few diplomats thought possible until recently.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin is engaged in a contest of wills with our coalition, and he is counting on us to retreat,” Yellen said at a news conference Wednesday. “We will not retreat. … We will do everything we can to support Ukraine.”

President Joe Biden also said in a statement on Wednesday that the loan “is another reminder to Vladimir Putin that the world has rallied behind Ukraine.”

Russia has characterized the plan to use its bank assets as an attack on its sovereignty and the rule of law, while defenders of the plan have argued that the Kremlin deserves to face consequences for illegally invading Ukraine in 2022. Western officials have been eager to finish the loan before the U.S. election, given former president Donald Trump’s repeated skepticism of the Ukrainian cause.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this month that the plan amounted to “stealing our money.”

“They will definitely have legal consequences. This is nothing but illegal expropriation,” Peskov said. “It’s an illegal action.”

Ukraine faces a deficit as high as $45 billion next year, and the additional infusion from the West could help avoid painful cuts to government services or tax hikes that could slow its economy to a halt, said Oleg Ustenko, who has served as an economic adviser to the Ukrainian government. Many Ukrainians also worry that if Trump wins, he would cut off any additional U.S. support to Ukraine, including military assistance.

“It’s crucially important from two points of view: We have to make sure the country is about to continue its fight against Russia, so inside the country it’s a very powerful and symbolic action. But it’s also extremely important to mitigate the risk related to a possible cut in financial support if Trump is elected,” Ustenko said. “It’s a big, big question mark if the U.S. will continue to see this level of support, and it could be a significant problem.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Russia-Ukraine War: For North Korea, War in Ukraine Is a Coveted Chance for Military Practice, Choe Sang-Hun, Oct. 16, 2024. Helping  Russia is an opportunity for North Korea to test its new weapons. Ukrainian officials say the North’s troops are also gaining direct battle experience.

The war in Ukraine is providing North Korea’s military with something it has long hoped for: opportunities to test its new weapons and its officers’ preparedness for modern warfare, analysts and officials in South Korea said on Wednesday.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have said that in addition to providing large shipments of artillery shells and ballistic missiles for Russia, North Korea has been sending military engineers and soldiers to fight alongside Russian troops. Last week, Kim Yong-hyun, South Korea’s defense minister, called it “highly likely” that several North Korean soldiers had already been killed in the fighting, and that North Korea would send more troops to help Russia.

Moscow helped North Korea fight the Korean War seven decades ago by supplying weapons and pilots. Now, the North’s aid to Russia in a distant war is turning history back on itself. It is also, analysts said, strengthening its military preparedness on the Korean Peninsula at a time of growing tensions with South Korea​.

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Women’s Health, Trafficking, #MeToo, Hypocrisy Issues

ny times logoNew York Times, Abortion Is at the Center of Ohio’s Senate Race as Brown Battles for Survival, Annie Karni, Oct. 24, 2024. Senator Sherrod Brown has established a track record as a populist champion on economic issues. But in his re-election race, abortion has become a key emphasis.

sherrod brown o 2009Senator Sherrod Brown, right, the raspy-voiced Democratic mainstay of Ohio, has spent decades building a political brand focused on opposing free-trade deals that harm local workers and working to raise wages and benefits at home.

Even his signature wrinkled suits are made at a unionized plant near his home.

But in the final days of his re-election race — a contest that is on track to cost half a billion dollars, the most expensive Senate race this year, and whose outcome could decide which party controls the chamber — a campaign built to highlight workers’ rights is instead laser-focused on another issue altogether: protecting access to abortion.

“Bernie Moreno has made it clear he thinks he knows better than Ohioans,” Mr. Brown said at a news conference in Powell, Ohio, last week in which he touted his support for abortion rights and called out his Republican opponent. “These decisions should not be made by politicians. These are intensely, intensely personal decisions, and should be made by women and their doctors.”

Mr. Brown is the last Democrat in a statewide office still standing in Ohio, a onetime bellwether that has become a reliably red state that twice voted for Donald J. Trump. Mr. Brown, who is seeking his fourth term, has managed to keep winning not because of any special charisma, but because of his populist bona fides.

He talks about how cities like his hometown, Mansfield, where he went to junior high school with children of tradespeople who worked in plants, have been hollowed out by globalization, its union workers ignored by what Mr. Brown refers to as “the coastal elites and corporate America.” He has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, though voters in Ohio will never catch him criticizing Mr. Trump.

HuffPost, Former Model Says Trump Groped Her During Encounter Facilitated By Epstein: Report, Lydia O’Connor, Oct 24, 2024. “He put his hands all over my breasts, my waist, my butt,” former model Stacey Williams said of the GOP nominee for president, according to the Guardian.

Less than two weeks before the presidential election, a former model has gone public with accusations that Donald Trump groped her in a 1993 encounter facilitated by the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Stacey Williams, now 56, shared the incident with the Guardian on Wednesday, saying she felt Trump’s actions were part of a “twisted game” he and Epstein were playing with her.

stacey williams 1998 evan agostini gettyAccording to her recollection to the Guardian, Epstein introduced Williams (shown in a 1998  photo by Evan Agostini via Getty Images) to Trump at a 1992 Christmas party, and it was clear to her that the two men “were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together.” She said she and Epstein began dating shortly after the party.

A few months later, Epstein asked her to accompany him on a visit to Trump Tower, where Trump sexually assaulted her, she said.

“He pulled me in to him and started groping me,” Williams said of Trump in a video published by The Guardian. “He put his hands all over my breasts, my waist, my butt, and I froze. And I froze because I was so deeply confused about what was happening, because the hands were moving all over me, yet these two men were like, smiling at one another and continuing on in their conversation.”

Williams felt as if the incident was planned by Trump and Epstein, who killed himself in prison in 2019 as he awaited trial on federal charges of alleged sex trafficking of minors.

Later, Williams said, Epstein “berated” her over the groping.

“I felt shame and disgust and as we went our separate ways, I felt this sensation of revisiting it, while the hands were all over me,” she said. “And I had this horrible pit in my stomach that it was somehow orchestrated. I felt like a piece of meat.”

Trump later sent her a postcard featuring an aerial view of Mar-a-Lago and a message reading, “Stacey – Your home away from home. Love Donald.” The Guardian published images of the postcard, which includes handwriting resembling Trump’s, apparently written in his usual heavy black marker.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign denied Williams’ accusations, calling her a “former activist for Barack Obama.”

“It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Williams also shared her experience with Trump on a call Monday organized by the group Survivors4Harris, which featured actor Ashley Judd and lawyer Anita Hill.

More than two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. 

ny times logoNew York Times, Mike Jeffries, Former Abercrombie C.E.O., Arrested in Sex-Trafficking Case, Danielle Kaye, Oct. 22, 2024. Mr. Jeffries and two others were arrested in connection with a federal sex-trafficking and interstate prostitution investigation.

 Michael S. Jeffries, the former longtime chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch, was arrested Tuesday in connection with a federal sex-trafficking and interstate prostitution case.

Mr. Jeffries, who ran the clothing retailer from 1992 to 2014, faces charges related to sex trafficking, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said. The charges come a year after a BBC investigation and a class-action lawsuit accused Mr. Jeffries of using the prospect of modeling jobs at Abercrombie to lure young men to events around the world where they were sexually exploited.

Mr. Jeffries and his partner, Matthew Smith, were arrested in Florida on Tuesday morning and are expected to appear in federal court in West Palm Beach later in the day, said John Marzulli, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. A third person, James Jacobson, was also arrested on Tuesday, in Wisconsin, in connection with the case and will appear in federal court in St. Paul, Minn., Mr. Marzulli said.The prosecutor’s office, the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department are expected to disclose more information about the case during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed last year also accused Abercrombie of being complicit in the sex-trafficking scheme. The company, according to the suit, ignored the allegations made against Mr. Jeffries. An Abercrombie spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Jeffries’s arrest or the lawsuit against the retailer.

Abercrombie said previously that the company was “appalled and disgusted” by the allegations against its former chief. The retailer hired an outside law firm last year to investigate the accusations.

Brian Bieber, a lawyer for Mr. Jeffries, declined to comment on the sex trafficking-related charges, but he said Mr. Jeffries’s legal team intended to “respond in detail to the allegations” in court “when appropriate.”

Brittany Henderson, a partner at the law firm representing plaintiffs in the class action suit against Abercrombie and Mr. Jeffries, said the arrests were “monumental for the aspiring male models who were victimized by these individuals.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Politics: Trump says he is the ‘father of IVF’ at all-women town hall event, Andrew Jeong and Patrick Svitek, Oct. 18, 2024 (print ed.).  The GOP nominee and his party have struggled with reproductive issues since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Vice President Kamala Harris called his remark “bizarre.”

Former president Donald Trump described himself as the “father of IVF” during an all-female town hall event in Georgia, telling attendees that he would support in vitro fertilization should he be elected to a second term.Cut through the 2024 election noise.

“I’m the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question,” he said at the Fox News town hall, which aired Wednesday but was taped the previous day. Trump also lauded “the courage of six Supreme Court justices” — three of whom he appointed — for overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, two years ago.

Vice President Kamala Harris (D), speaking to reporters Wednesday in Detroit, described Trump’s comments as “quite bizarre,” given his role in Roe’s overturning, which opened the door for conservative attempts to limit access to IVF.

Gwen Walz, wife of Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), said Trump was “more like the father of Georgia’s abortion bans,” an apparent reference to the state Supreme Court’s recent reinstatement of a six-week ban on the procedure in a long-running legal battle sparked by the end of Roe.

Trump and other Republicans have struggled to navigate reproductive issues since Roe was overturned, a landmark decision that cast uncertainty over other reproductive procedures. In September, Senate Republicans blocked a bill to expand access to IVF, prompting Democrats to warn voters that Republicans could seek to ban abortion nationwide and that even non-abortion procedures such as IVF could be at risk.

In February, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, meaning that people could be held liable for destroying them. The decision limited access to IVF treatments in the state and compelled the Republican-dominated state legislature to quickly pass a bill that protected those seeking the procedure.

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Rap singer R. Kelly is shown in a file photo as a judge denies bail on pending charges.

Rap singer R. Kelly is shown in a file photo as a judge denies bail on pending charges.

U.S. Hurricane Threats, Damage

katie nickolaou maga

Everyone is entitled to my own opinion, Commentary: MAGA morons are now threatening meteorologists, because of course they are, Jeff Tiedrich, right, Oct. 13, jeff tiedrich2024. Dear Leader has brainwashed his cult into believing that violence is the only way forward.

Katie Nickolaou, above, is a meteorologist. her job is to stand in front of a weather map and give you facts about what’s going in the sky.

djt maga hatYou might imagine that smiling into a camera and going now, here’s today’s weather would be just about the least-controversial job in the known universe.

Oh, you sweet, innocent babe in the woods. how wrong you are — because, for the unspeakable crime of accurately reporting on hurricanes, Katie Nickolaou now regularly gets death threats.

washington post logoWashington Post, Hurricane recovery officials in N.C. relocated amid report of ‘armed militia,’ email shows , Brianna Sacks, Oct. 14, 2024 (print ed.). Safety fears are growing as misinformation collides with a large-scale federal recovery effort.

Federal emergency response personnel on Saturday had employees operating in hard-hit Rutherford County, N.C., stop working and move to a different area because of concerns over “armed militia” threatening government workers in the region, according to an email sent to federal agencies helping with response in the state.Want to know how your actions can help make a difference for our planet? Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

ny times logoNew York Times, Bizarre falsehoods about Hurricanes Helene and Milton have disrupted recovery efforts, Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson, Oct. 11, 2024 (print ed.). Experts warn that weather-related disinformation can rapidly escalate into real-world risks and distract from aid.

Wildly improbable conspiracy theories about Hurricanes Helene and Milton have spread largely unchecked on social media. The storms were engineered to clear the way for lithium mining. They were sent to help the Democrats in next month’s election. They were formed by weather-controlling lasers.

The claims persist despite attempts by scientists and government officials to debunk them with evidence. They survive all calls to reason.

Damage from Hurricane Milton in Fort Pierce, Fla. (New York Times photo by Mauricio Lima)

 Damage from Hurricane Milton in Fort Pierce, Fla. (New York Times photo by Mauricio Lima)

ny times logoNew York Times, A Tale of Two Hurricanes Finds More That Differs Than Is the Same, Audra D. S. Burch, Eduardo Medina and Kate Selig, Oct. 13, 2024.  Helene in North Carolina and Milton in Florida show how storms can devastate regions with distinct topography and varying levels of hurricane experience.

washington post logoWashington Post, Extreme Weather: ‘It’s devastating’: Asheville braces for a peak season without visitors, Emily Heil, Andrea Sachs and Hannah Sampson, Oct. 13, 2024. Tourism brought nearly $3 billion to Buncombe County last year. Now, the North Carolina city’s hotels and restaurants face a key time with little to no revenue.

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President Biden visits Keaton Beach in Florida as part of his review of damage from Hurricane Helene (Associated Press photo).

President Biden visits Keaton Beach in Florida as part of his review of damage from Hurricane Helene (Associated Press photo).

Public Health, Climate, Environment,  Energy, Transportation

ny times logoNew York Times, The Powerful Companies Driving Local Drugstores Out of Business, Reed Abelson and Rebecca Robbins, Oct. 20, 2024 (print ed.). Companies known as pharmacy benefit managers are profiting by systematically underpaying independent drugstores, creating “pharmacy deserts” across the U.S.

The small-town drugstore closed for the last time on a clear and chilly afternoon in February. Jon Jacobs, who owned Yough Valley Pharmacy, hugged his employees goodbye. He cleared the shelves and packed pill bottles into plastic bins.

Mr. Jacobs, a 70-year-old pharmacist, had spent more than half his life building his drugstore into a bedrock of Confluence, Pa., a rural community of roughly 1,000 people. Now the town was losing its only health care provider.

washington post logoWashington Post, Lead paint upended this boy’s life. Now the EPA is trying to eliminate the threat, Amudalat Ajasa and Carolyn Van Houten, Oct. 19, 2024. The Environmental Protection Agency is about to issue strict limits on lead dust, which poses a risk to millions of children across the United States

ny times logoNew York Times, How Climate Disasters and a Housing Crisis Are Shattering Lives, Hilary Howard and Christopher Flavelle, Photographs by Caitlin Ochs, Oct. 15, 2024 (print ed.). Millions of Americans, many poor and vulnerable, live in mobile homes. When catastrophe strikes, they’re often on their own.

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U.S. Economy, Jobs

ny times logoNew York Times, Boeing Workers Resoundingly Reject Contract and Vote to Extend Strike, Niraj Chokshi, Oct. 24, 2024 (print ed.). The vote, hours after Boeing reported a $6.1 billion loss, will extend a monthlong strike at factories where the company makes its best-selling commercial plane.

Boeing’s largest union rejected a tentative labor contract on Wednesday by a wide margin, extending a damaging strike and adding to the mounting boeing logofinancial problems facing the company, which hours earlier had reported a $6.1 billion loss.

The contract, the second that workers have voted down, was opposed by 64 percent of those voting, according to the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The union represents about 33,000 workers, but it did not disclose how many voted on Wednesday.

“There’s much more work to do. We will push to get back to the table, we will push for the members’ demands as quickly as we can,” said Jon Holden, president of District 751 of the union, which represents the vast majority of the workers and has led in the talks. He delivered that message at the union’s Seattle headquarters to a room of members chanting, “Fight, fight.”

ny times logoNew York Times, The White House Bet Big on Intel. Will It Backfire? Ana Swanson and Tripp Mickle, Oct. 24, 2024. A plan to revive U.S. chip manufacturing rests partly on a company that is firing workers and delaying factories, even as the government pushes for the opposite.

At an annual gathering of tech executives and billionaires in Sun Valley, Idaho, this past July, Gina Raimondo commandeered a table near a duck pond and tried to exert her influence as the U.S. secretary of commerce to help rescue an ailing national champion.

As media moguls and business luminaries cut deals nearby, Ms. Raimondo met with chief executives from Microsoft, Google and other firms and encouraged them to order their semiconductors from the United States, including from Intel. It was important to make more chips in America, she told them, and Intel, the American chip giant, was critical to that effort.

Ms. Raimondo, who is overseeing the Biden administration’s investments in the chip industry, has made similar requests in meetings and phone calls over the past year. She has urged executives at Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Marvell Technology and other companies to consider ordering chips from Intel’s U.S. manufacturing plants, according to eight people familiar with those requests, most of whom asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations.

A majority of the firms have rejected her overtures because Intel’s chip-making techniques are not as sophisticated as those of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s leading chip maker and their primary supplier, these people said.

The doubts expressed by top tech executives show how far Intel has fallen at a moment when Ms. Raimondo is trying to rebuild American chip manufacturing. Her unofficial role as a chip salesperson underscores how much is riding on the success of Intel, a 56-year-old firm that is at the center of President Biden’s efforts to rev up domestic semiconductor production.

While the Biden administration’s endeavor involves many companies, a crucial part of its ambition is pegged to Intel, which lobbied — and helped secure votes — for the 2022 CHIPS Act.

Semafor, Trump tariff proposals ‘a complete disaster’ for US manufacturing, Marta Biino, Oct. 22, 2024. US manufacturing will “unequivocally” not benefit from tariffs imposed on foreign imports, the Democratic governor of Colorado told Jon Hilsenrath, aSemafor contributor and former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal, in an interview Monday.

“Unequivocally, tariffs are a complete disaster for the United States,” Gov. Jared Polis said at a Semafor event on the future of US manufacturing.

Both the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, and her rival former President Donald Trump have promised to enact tariffs on some foreign imports. While Polis acknowledged China as a “special case” when it came to imposing duties on Chinese goods coming into the US, he argued that Trump’s tariff plan is too broad.

Harris has vowed to keep duties on some Chinese goods, while Trump has promised to raise tariffs on almost every foreign import and raise duties on China.

If Trump wins the White House in November, Polis argued, his proposals will do “damage” to American manufacturing, in large part because of the potential for retaliatory tariffs — a possible consequence that the European Union and other countries have floated: “Nothing is in a vacuum. America just doesn’t say we’re putting a 20% tariff on everything… and the rest of the world says no problem.“

Polis made the case for skilled immigration to boost American manufacturing, but emphasized that border security is needed to ensure “that people we want here, that will make our economy and our country stronger, are able to deploy their talents legally.”

The White House’s domestic policy advisor Neera Tanden touted the administration’s legislative record in supporting US manufacturing through the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act told Semafor’s Gina Chon, but added that the legislation has resulted in a “workforce challenge.”

The key step to resolving the issue, she said, was for employers, schools, and colleges to work together to build up workers’ skills.

“It is absolutely the case that there’s a lot more that needs to be built, but I also think everybody needs to step up to this conversation, it can’t just be employers saying, ‘Hey, it’s frustrating not to be able to find people.’ They need to be part of the solution of engaging with community colleges and high schools and say exactly what skills they need,” she said.

Correction: A previous version of this post misstated Jon Hilsenrath’s previous role and employer. He was a senior writer for The Wall Street Journal.Title iconKnow More

Several experts at Semafor’s event Monday agreed that US manufacturing increasingly needs people to meet the growing demand for green tech and other nascent sectors, and that more work needs to be done to build a pipeline of skilled workers.

According to a new Morning Consult and GE Aerospace survey of 1,000 manufacturing workers, newer employees said they needed more training and development, viewing it as key to success and retention.

“Those issues are pretty consistent across the whole industry… I think frankly it’s incumbent on industry to a certain extent to think about how can we come together and build things at scale,” GE Aerospace’s head of HR Christian Meisner told Semafor’s Bennett Richardson.

GE Aerospace announced Monday it will invest $2.3 million into organizations that are working toward developing those skills with a goal of training more than 1,000 workers.

ny times logoNew York Times, Guest Essay: America Is Sleepwalking Into an Economic Storm, Daron Acemoglu (a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received the Nobel in economic science this year), Oct. 17, 2024.

Inflation seems under control. The job market remains healthy. Wages, including at the bottom end of the scale, are rising. But this is just a lull. There is a storm approaching, and Americans are not prepared.

Barreling toward us are three epochal changes poised to reshape the U.S. economy in coming years: an aging population, the rise of artificial intelligence and the rewiring of the global economy.

There should be little surprise in this, since all these are evolving slowly in plain sight. What has not been fully understood is how these changes in combination are likely to transform the lives of working people in ways not seen since the late 1970s, when wage inequality surged and wages at the low end stagnated or even fell.

Together, if handled correctly, these challenges could remake work and deliver much higher productivity, wages and opportunities — something the computer revolution promised and never fulfilled. If we mismanage the moment, they could make good, well-paying jobs scarcer and the economy less dynamic. Our decisions over the next five to 10 years will determine which path we take.

Our dysfunctional political system, which is increasingly short-termist in its vision for the country, is unlikely to prepare us for these changes. Neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor former President Donald Trump is focusing on them with any seriousness in their election campaigns. Nor do we see comprehensive plans from either party to make the investments necessary to equip the American work force to deal with the coming challenges.

The U.S. work force has never aged like this. In 2000, there were about 27 Americans above the age of 65 for every 100 Americans of prime working age (between the ages of 20 and 49). By 2020, this number had increased to 39. By 2040, it will have risen to 54. Because these changes are driven mostly by a decline in fertility, the U.S. work force will also soon begin to grow more slowly. If immigration into the United States is reduced, as seems likely no matter who wins the election, this will only contribute to the aging problem.

Recent Relevant Headlines

U.S. Immigration Politics

ICE logo

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: Trump’s Border Plans Are Light on Details but Strong on Fury, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Oct. 16, 2024 (print ed.). Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration proposals face daunting challenges, but voters still trust his positions more than his opponent’s.

One First, Supreme Court Analysis: Alien Enemies in the Supreme Court, Steve Vladeck, right, stephen vladeck resizedOct. 14, 2024. Setting the record straight on the 1798 statute former President Trump claims he’ll use to summarily arrest and deport undocumented immigrants—and the Supreme Court’s handful of interactions with it.

Recent Relevant Headlines

U.S. Media, Sports, Culture

NBC News, Vince McMahon and WWE accused of allowing ‘rampant’ sexual exploitation of young boys by announcer in new lawsuit“ Patrick Smith, Oct. 24, NBC News logo2024. Defendants were fully aware of the systemic and pervasive abuse and did nothing to prevent or stop it,” the law firm representing the claimants said.

Vince McMahon and the WWE have been accused of knowing about and failing to stop the sexual exploitation of young boys by a ringside announcer, in a lawsuit filed on behalf of five alleged victims Wednesday.

The suit, filed in Baltimore County, accuses McMahon and his wife, Linda McMahon, and World Wrestling Entertainment and its parent company, TKO Holdings, of allowing the “open, rampant abuse” of so-called “ring boys” as young as 12 who acted as assistants to ringside announcer Melvin Phillips Jr. in the 1980s and 1990s.

NBC News has contacted the McMahons, TKO and the WWE for comment; none have so far responded or commented on the case publicly. Phillips died in 2012.

Law firms DiCello Levitt and Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, which filed the lawsuit, said in a statement: “The underaged Ring Boys were groomed, exploited, and sexually abused by Phillips, who targeted children from broken homes.”

The alleged sexual assaults against the five unidentified claimants happened at wrestling events but also at hotels and other venues, the suit said. Phillips “lured and manipulated” 12- and 13-year-old boys with the promise of meeting wrestling stars.

The suit alleges that Phillips would abuse the claimants in his dressing room while filming it with a video camera. Two of the claimants are from Massachusetts, two are from Pennsylvania and one is from Florida — they are referred to as John Does.

The suit accuses the McMahons of long knowing of Phillips’ “peculiar and unnatural interest” in young boys.

Greg Gutzler, a partner at DiCello Levitt, who is leading the litigation, said that it was “simply unconscionable” that so many were allegedly aware of the abuse and doing nothing to stop it.

tom condon photo cropped

Tom Condon (Courtesy: Garret Condon)

Poynter Center, Obits for a paper’s long-time staffer underline new approaches to media competition and collaboration, Bill Mitchell, Oct. 24, 2024. Tom Condon wrote for the Hartford Courant for 45 years. Another news organization wrote his obit.

The Hartford Courant, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the U.S., published two obituaries last month for Tom Condon, perhaps the paper’s most accomplished journalist over the past half-century. Before retiring in 2015, he spent 45 years with the paper as, among other roles, an investigative reporter, a columnist of two decades and chief editorial writer.

He died Sept. 10, at age 78, after a recurrence of cancer.

Apart from publishing the obits, the Courant had nothing to do with either one.

One of the obits ran first in The Connecticut Mirror, written by managing editor Stephen Busemeyer. Like Condon, Busemeyer is a former Courant staffer. The Mirror is a nonprofit startup launched in 2010 to fill some of the gap left by the state’s dwindling news resources. The Courant published the obit by Busemeyer later the same day under a syndication agreement it has with the Mirror. Originally accessible, it is now behind a paywall.

The other obit was written by the Condon family. In addition to appearing on the Courant’s website, the family obit is also published on Legacy.com.

Historically, obits have often been described as one of the best-read sections of newspapers. And Poynter’s Kristen Hare has done extensive reporting on the value of obits to newspapers’ future.

Paid obits, often written by and paid for by family members, have been boosting the sagging revenues of newspapers for a couple of decades. (The Courant charges about $1,200 for an obit the length of the one submitted by the Condon family, with an extra charge for a photo.) In 2019, Axios reported that more than a million paid obits were producing $500 million annually for newspapers, a small but significant chunk of overall advertising and circulation revenues then totaling about $25 billion a year.

National Press Club, Press Club Statement On Safety of Al Jazeera Journalists in North Gaza, Bill McCarren, Oct 24, 2024. The following is a statement from Emily Wilkins, 117th President of the National Press Club regarding the safety of six Al Jazeera journalists working in Northern Gaza who have been accused by the Israeli Defense Forces of being terrorists.

“The Al Jazeera team working in North Gaza are journalists.

“Al Jazeera vehemently denies all claims to the contrary. We are very concerned that IDF are once again smearing Al Jazeera journalists as they have done in the past. We fear for the safety of these six Al Jazeera journalists. IDF has killed four Al Jazeera journalists since Oct. 7. Just last week they wounded two other Al Jazeera journalists who were wearing clearly marked press emblems and were working. One is paralyzed from the shooting and the other severely injured.

“We call for the U.S. government to speak out publicly and privately at the highest levels against the targeting of these journalists and to do everything in their power to ensure the safety of all reporting on the war.

“The timing on this is notable, as Al Jazeera has just come out with a program looking at atrocities committed during the campaign in Gaza. These journalists have operated in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict and now, after the program on atrocities airs, they are named with photos and called terrorists. We call on all in the journalism community to raise their voices now so that no harm comes to these Al Jazeera journalists who are doing their jobs under difficult circumstances.”

The Nation, Commentary: Media Elites Are the Last People to Ask About the Future of Journalism, Chris Lehmann, Oct. 23, 2024. And New York magazine’s latest cover package does just that.

nation logoIt’s an admittedly minor wrinkle in the mass derangement building up to the 2024 election, but future historians will be at a loss to explain why New York magazine chose this moment to roll out a cover package that ballyhoos the deep thoughts of media industry executives.

The quote-stravaganza, assembled by the magazine’s apparently indefatigable processor of PR copy, media columnist Charlotte Klein, is a long and numbing cri de coeur from the C-suites—the very bosses who have irredeemably fouled up the underlying business model for mainstream journalism are tasked here with divining the industry’s path forward. The whole exercise is a bit like canvassing the designer of the Hindenburg on the future of air travel.

Then there’s the question of timing: the lords of the press are holding forth on how their prestige outlets will survive at the precise moment they’re fucking up coverage of the 2024 election on an epic scale.

Any intelligible understanding of the press’s role has to start with the mandate the country’s founders formalized in the First Amendment—the pivotal need to cultivate and sustain an informed citizenry. Not surprisingly, neither Klein nor her battery of 57 pop-up news managers have word one to say about this function of the press. That’s likely because a significant number of them are deeply enmeshed in normalizing the demented, fascistic candidacy of Donald Trump, and generally treating a critical election cycle as a glorified reality TV spectacle.

Indeed, in an awkward karmic coincidence, New York unleashed its future-of-the-media package just as it officially severed ties with its star politics reporter, Olivia Nuzzi, for carrying out digital intimacies with Robert F. Kennedy, the antivax conspiracy impresario now shilling for Trump. (Nuzzi’s prior drinking bouts with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer or her fangirl worship of Ann Coulter weren’t dealbreakers for New York’s top brass, but that’s a sermon for another occasion.)

In lieu of any topic of civic interest, the moguls’ discussion is stalwartly platform-and-revenue addled—the same dipshit calculation that led this same professional caste to hand their basic business model over to Facebook circa 2008. That move ensnared them in a shameful race to the bottom when the monarchs of Silicon Valley told them to form a herd and pivot to video, with no empirical basis whatsoever. It turned out that no news readers wanted more video content; advertisers alone did—the whole farcical escapade even harmed Facebook’s own business model.

But who ever said the gatekeepers of information should learn anything from their own past? Klein and her squad of editorial assistants instead breezily canvas them on executive preoccupations ranging from the gnat-strainingly trivial (“Who will be the Walter Cronkite of YouTube?”) to the abjectly subliterate (“What’s the point of print?”). As a result, the level of discourse is less a considered view of how journalism can lift the country out of its present authoritarian nightmare than an afternoon spent watching a cat chasing a laser pointer.

jeff zucker cnnDoes inept Trump-enabling CEO Jeff Zucker, left, who famously aired acres of unfiltered Trump rally footage during his tour atop CNN, deliver meaningless platitudes? You bet! Here’s the maestro’s sage read on the news business’s future: It’s “going to look very different over the next five years than it did for the previous fifty.”

The executive chorus sings hosannas over the New York Times—which is now perpetrating some of the most disgraceful political coverage in recent memory while toeing Netanyahu’s line on the genocide in Gaza—for its market savvy in acquiring Wordle, and a host of regular return readers in the bargain. “As the rest of the industry scrambles for scraps,” Klein burbles in her summation of elite opinion, “the Times has become the Amazon of legacy media—an everything store for blue-state America’s information needs (and more).”

Of course, the unrivaled market dominance of a sole player is what’s known as a monopoly—an arrangement that’s toxic for a sanely ordered political economy, and disastrous for a formal democracy. But why be detained by such dull wonkery? Tee up another Jeff Zucker quote! “They figured it out first—how to make a killing off recipes and games that could sustain the rest of their journalism,” the brains behind The Apprentice enthuses.

The mood of unearned media self-love runs throughout the feature, leaving readers trapped in a cocktail party they wouldn’t dream of crashing. Matt Yglesias, the man who’s converted brain-dead centrism into a $1.4 million Substack payday, enthuses thusly of fellow media hustlers Ezra Klein and Bari Weiss: “The stars of 2024. This is their year.” Glenn Greenwald hymns the genius of Ben Shapiro’s MAGA outlet The Daily Wire, but I can’t bring myself to quote him.

The only real revelation of note in this gaseous colloquium is how comically clueless the press lords of the 21st century truly are.

washington post logoWashington Post, How Scott Jennings became CNN’s go-to GOP pundit — and pugilist, Jeremy Barr, Oct. 24, 2024. The political operator and Mitch McConnell acolyte once called Donald Trump an “authoritarian,” but now he’s the network’s resident Trump proponent.

The 10 p.m. show on CNN hosted by journalist Abby Phillip is meant as a platform for freewheeling debate, with commentators of all political stripes duking it out over heated topics. But even longtime viewers of the show had to be surprised when, on Oct. 7, Republican pundit Scott Jennings angrily pointed his finger at two fellow panelists and intoned, “I don’t answer to you!”

cnn logoOne of the panelists, the academic Michael Eric Dyson, had seemed to anger Jennings by asking him whether he was disturbed by “any lies that Donald Trump is telling” before another panelist, the writer Jay Michaelson, asked Jennings for a specific example.

Even Dyson, who has a history of doing battle with Jennings, seemed taken aback by his outburst. “We’re having a conversation, Scott,” he said. “I’m just asking a question.” (Another panelist, former senator Al Franken, said “I don’t point my finger at people.”)

A former Bush administration staffer and a longtime adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) with a smooth Kentucky drawl, Jennings, 46, has risen the ranks over the past seven years to become CNN’s go-to Republican commentator. But while he began his tenure playing ScottJjennings gage skidmorethe role of “Reasonable Republican” on a network accused by conservatives of liberal bias, Jennings has emerged as something of a MAGA champion, dropping his “happy warrior” persona and harshly lampooning Democrats, who he said recently appear to “care more about dudes who want to become women than dudes who just want to be dudes.”

When Jennings, shown at right in a Gage Skidmore photo, is not defending Trump — or explaining him, depending on your perspective — he regularly takes on Trump’s opponents, often accusing them of hypocrisy.

That’s what happened during the Oct. 7 segment. Rather than taking on Trump’s comments, Jennings instead pointed out that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have made their own share of misstatements.

Jennings, who did not agree to an interview for this story, previously used the same language on air when pushing back against CNN commentator Ana Navarro, who asked him whether comments made by Trump were racist. “I’m not going to sit here and answer for somebody,” he said. “… And I don’t answer to you, either.”

Although it can be hard to decipher between good television and real conflict on cable news, Jennings’s on-air clashes can get decidedly uncomfortable.

Recent Relevant Headlines

Rap singer R. Kelly is shown in a file photo as a judge denies bail on pending charges.

Rap singer R. Kelly is shown in a file photo as a judge denies bail on pending charges.


Source: http://www.justice-integrity.org/2090-oct-2024-news-pt-5


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