Justice Integrity Project Endorses Harris

Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris speaks at the White House Ellipse at the last major speech of her campaign on Oct. 29, 2024 (Reuters photo by Evelyn Hockstein)

Backing Kamala Harris for President, the Justice Integrity Project today announced its first presidential endorsement in its history.

The reasons? Regarding our core focus on law, national security and civil rights, the former prosecutor, California District Attorney and still-serving Vice President Harris is clearly a better choice than the twice-impeached convicted felon Donald Trump, who is facing trial in other serious cases following a scandal-filled career helping dictators around the world like Vladimir  Putin who oppose U.S. interests.

That’s the essence. Yet there’s more to be said because this year’s elections raise wider issues about U.S. law, elections, history and civil rights, as well as the ability if not civic obligation for each of us and any entities we might influence to take a stand.

This is by far the most important election of my lifetime and there’s good reason to believe it has the potential to be one of the last meaningful elections for the foreseeable future, as Trump himself has hinted in his rambling “weave” commentaries about how supporters won’t need to worry about elections in the future if they elect him.

For such reasons, a larger historical analysis is provided below, enhanced by the commentary and reporting of analysts who have examined this election, the candidates and relevant context in an especially perceptive manner.

But before sharing their insights, which have enhanced my own understanding in vital ways, it’s most relevant here to describe why the Justice Integrity Project is making an endorsement, when it was founded in early 2010 with the goal of providing non-partisan news, pro-democracy news and commentary on complicated developments involving law, justice (including social justice) and politics.

The explanation is that “non-partisan” is an aspiration for any news entity and pro-democracy is, for us at least, a core goal.

As part of that aspiration, the closest parallel to today’s presidential endorsement is when our Project opposed the confirmation of Justice Department Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court , when she was fellow-Democrat Barack Obama’s first nominee to the Court. That’s the only time before this that we have used our editorial voice to demand specific action, which in that instance was prompted by Kagan’s documented participation in the frame-up and cover-up of Alabama defendants we had confirmed as victims of a Justice Department political prosecution.

Today we face a different and much more important challenge on whether to speak up, in part because Trump has repeatedly made clear by words and deeds that he holds the U.S. Constitution, judges, courts and the entire legal apparatus in contempt unless these laws and personnel advance his goals and those of his cronies.

Therefore, this is not an election so much about alternative candidates and parties but instead one that determines the basic structure and functioning of a government created more than 200 years ago. Excerpts below amplify those points with hope that they support the conclusions above as well as readers’ own choices.

Contact the author Andrew Kreig

Related News Coverage   Believe Him: The High Stakes Today

New York Times, Trump Is Telling Us What He Would Do. Believe Him, The Editorial Board, Featured Nov. 1, 2024 (interactive). Donald Trump has described at length the dangerous and disturbing actions he says he will take if he wins the presidency.

His rallies offer a steady stream of such promises and threats — things like prosecuting political opponents and using the military against U.S. citizens. These statements are so outrageous and outlandish, so openly in conflict with the norms and values of American democracy that many find them hard to regard as anything but empty bluster.

We have two words for American voters: Believe him.

The record shows that Mr. Trump often pursues his stated goals, regardless of how plainly they lack legal or moral grounding. The record further shows that many of his most reckless efforts in his first administration were stymied only because of others in his administration who blocked, delayed or watered down his aims to ensure that he could not put himself above the law or the country. Mr. Trump has learned from that experience to surround himself with supplicants who would instead obey his wishes and bring his words and ideas to life even if they contradict facts, the public interest or the Constitution.

For this reason, Americans would be wise to see this language as a genuine threat, not simply Mr. Trump on a tangent. We should take the painful step of imagining America were his plans and promises to come to pass, to imagine the impacts to our culture, to our economy, to our security, to our shared commitment to the rule of law.

The promises Mr. Trump made during his first presidential campaign, in 2016, turned out to be a pretty good road map of the policies and priorities he pursued as president. Today he says he is ready to deploy the military against his political opponents. He says that he will instruct the Justice Department to prosecute critics. He says that he will mobilize the National Guard to deport immigrants, that he is ready to blow Iranian cities to smithereens, that he will allow vigilante violence as a solution to crime in America.

Americans should believe him.

Former Top Trump Appointees Call Him Unfit, Liar, Dangerous

New York Times, Once Top Advisers to Trump, They Now Call Him ‘Liar,’ ‘Fascist’ and ‘Unfit,’ Michael D. Shear and June Kim, Oct. 30, 2024.  In books, interviews and elsewhere, some of the strongest criticisms of former President Trump have come from those who knew him as commander in chief.

Former President Donald J. Trump often brags about hiring “the best people.” But the breadth of the criticism aimed at Mr. Trump, especially from his own former military and national security officials, sets him apart from any modern president.

John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who served as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, recently called his former boss “an authoritarian,” saying he “admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Mark Milley, the country’s top military official during the last two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency, privately told the journalist Bob Woodward that Mr. Trump is a “fascist to the core” and said his pursuit of another four years in office makes him “the most dangerous person to this country,” Mr. Woodward revealed in a recent book.

Mr. Trump and those around him rejected the criticism as little more than sour grapes. The former president has called General Milley a “loser” and worse, and has suggested that the decorated military officer should be executed for treason because of efforts to ease concerns among foreign leaders after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters.

But the comments from Mr. Kelly and General Milley denigrating Mr. Trump’s capacity to serve as commander in chief are particularly striking, even as they echo the sentiments from others across his government and many Republicans outside of his administration.

Former generals, admirals, diplomats, intelligence officers and security strategists have publicly or privately accused Mr. Trump of being a liar who lacks basic knowledge about the world and represents a danger to democracy. Members of his cabinet have questioned his loyalty to the country and testified to his chaotic behavior. His press aides have talked about his lack of integrity and his tendency to attack others.

And Mike Pence, his own vice president, has accused him of being reckless and putting himself over the Constitution. And Mr. Pence said he walked away from the agenda backed by conservatives. Mr. Pence ran against Mr. Trump and refused to endorse him.

Only a few of the former president’s advisers have played an active role in trying to defeat Mr. Trump’s bid for another four years in power, often citing their belief that military and national security officials should not meddle in partisan politics. Most have not appeared in ads or sat for recent TV interviews. Just a handful have endorsed Mr. Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

But they have not disowned their comments about the former president and the danger he poses if he returns to the Oval Office. In recent weeks, Ms. Harris has begun running campaign ads citing the comments from some of the former Trump officials as evidence that he is unfit to serve again.

New 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.

Trumpt Threats To Political Opponents, Critics, Journalists

Washington Post, Election 2024: Trump embraces violent rhetoric, suggests Liz Cheney should have guns ‘trained on her face,’ Hannah Knowles and Marianne LeVine, Nov. 2, 2024 (print ed.). The GOP nominee has long vilified the former congresswoman over her criticism of his role in fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Former president Donald Trump appeared to suggest Thursday that former congresswoman and longtime Trump critic Liz Cheney should be subjected to gunfire as he called her a “war hawk,” saying during a live event with Tucker Carlson, “Let’s see how she feels about it,” with guns “trained on her face” as a target.Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Trump went on a tangent about his pardon of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, and then talked about Liz Cheney — the former vice president’s daughter, who broke with the GOP to denounce Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“His daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb,” Trump said. “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

“They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, ‘Oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right in the mouth of the enemy,’” he added.

Trump’s campaign on Friday sought to cast his statement about Cheney as making a point about politicians who send the military to war without having seen combat themselves.

New York Times, Harris Calls Trump’s Violent Language About Liz Cheney ‘Disqualifying,’ Adam Nagourney and Michael Gold, Nov. 2, 2024 (print ed.). Former President Donald J. Trump had suggested that Ms. Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should be put on a battlefield “with nine barrels shooting at her.”

Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that Donald J. Trump had disqualified himself from serving as the nation’s chief executive by suggesting thatLiz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should be put on a battlefield “with nine barrels shooting at her.”

Mr. Trump, the Republican candidate for president, made his remarks Thursday night in an end-of-campaign burst of vitriol that intensified his dispute with one of the most prominent political families in the nation and drew criticism from leaders of both parties. The attacks on Ms. Cheney became a dominant theme of this final Friday of the general election campaign, when early voting was already well underway.

Ms. Harris, speaking to reporters Friday as she stood on the tarmac in front of Air Force Two after landing in Madison, Wis., said that Mr. Trump had “increased his violent rhetoric” when he “in great detail suggested rifles should be trained on former Representative Liz Cheney.”

“This must be disqualifying,” said Ms. Harris, the Democratic candidate for president. “Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified, and unqualified, to be president.”

Mr. Trump made his remarks imagining violence directed at Ms. Cheney — a former congresswoman and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney — on Thursday night during an onstage interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host.

“She’s a radical war hawk,” Mr. Trump said during the event, which was held at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Mr. Trump expressed disdain for those in Washington who wanted to see the United States involved in foreign conflicts. “You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, let’s send, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’”

Ms. Cheney, one of the first and highest-profile Republicans in the nation to break with her party and endorse Ms. Harris, responded on Friday morning in a post on social media that “this is how dictators destroy free nations.”

“They threaten those who speak against them with death,” she said in the post. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

Ms. Harris called Ms. Cheney “a true patriot who has shown extraordinary courage in putting country above party” and described Mr. Trump as “someone who considers his political opponents the enemy, is permanently out for revenge, and is increasingly unstable and unhinged.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign said in a statement earlier on Friday that Mr. Trump had been assailing Ms. Cheney’s hawkish foreign policy stance and that his remarks were being misrepresented in media outlets. Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the campaign, called it a “fake media outrage.”

Washington Post, Trump says he doesn’t mind someone shooting at journalists at rally, Hannah Knowles and Meryl Kornfield, Nov. 4, 2024 (print ed.). Donald Trump told a crowd on Sunday that he wouldn’t mind if someone shot at the news media present at his rally here, escalating his violent rhetoric at one of his closing campaign events where he repeatedly veered off-message.

Trump made the remark while complaining about the bulletproof glass surrounding him onstage — a fixture at his outdoor events since an attempt to assassinate him at a rally in July.

“I have this piece of glass here,” Trump said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news, right? And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news.

“And I don’t mind that so much,” Trump said. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind.” The audience roared with laughter.

Trump also said he regretted leaving office after losing the 2020 election and trying to overturn the result. He at one point said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House, while complaining about Democrats’ handling of the border and returning to his false claims that he won the 2020 election.

“We did so well,” he said.

Trump’s latest comments about the media underscored his embrace of violent language, days after he received blowback for suggesting former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney would not be such a “war hawk” if she went into combat and had guns “trained on her face.”

It capped a week when Trump and his allies repeatedly made incendiary or offensive comments that could alienate moderate voters in the final stretch of the presidential race.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung issued a statement contradicting Trump’s Sunday comments. He said the sentiment had “nothing to do with the Media being harmed,” adding that Trump actually meant that the media members were “protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves.”

Trump’s rally in Lititz, being held at the airport in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, veered off-script more than usual.

The former president dwelled particularly long on personal grievances, insults and baseless claims that the election may be rigged against him. His campaign believes other issues — immigration and the economy — will resonate with voters and deliver victory. But Trump is often distracted.

“They are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing,” Trump said, referring to unspecified “crooked people.”

He repeated his assertion that the entire country should use paper ballots and criticized how long it takes to count votes. He also alluded to his various criminal indictments, saying, “The ones that should be locked up are the ones that cheat on these horrible elections that we go through in our country.”

He kept returning to the issue.

“We got a bunch of cheaters that all they do is think about how they can cheat,” he said later on.

Trump also vilified his opponents in striking terms, calling the Democratic Party “very demonic.”

“The people, regular Democrats aren’t,” he added, but “we do need people to say it.” Trump has also called his political opponents “the enemy within.”

  Threats To U.S. Constitution, Laws,  Governance

Proof, New Investigative Book: Proof of Cruelty: Donald Trump’s Decades of Violence, Seth Abramson, left, author, atttorney, professor, Oct. 25,  2024. This fifth book in the New York Times-bestselling Proof series is a carefully sourced exposé on the secret crimes of Donald Trump—with a focus on his criminal violence. Reader discretion is advised.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the two men whose entirely unlettered conversations about criminal justice—neither man has any learning on the subject of U.S. criminal statutes except to the extent that both have regularly been accused of violating them—are perfect exemplars of that class of people who see the justice system as cudgel against their enemies and a shield for them and their friends, who opine loudly and at length on the subjects of crime and justice without studying either or even sharing the first principles of any successful justice system, and who are in fact far more likely than most of those they lecture at to be the ones actually committing serious crimes.

I have both worked within and studied the American criminal justice system since I first trained as a federal criminal investigator in our nation’s capital 28 years ago, and can say without reservation now that I am a New York Times-bestselling presidential historian and Donald Trump biographer that no man has more frequently run afoul of our justice system than Trump, even as he has been treated better by it and implicitly and explicitly afforded endless license by it to a degree unprecedented in our history.

In the studied opinion of this author, Donald Trump is, in October of 2024, the most dangerous career criminal in America who has never yet seen the inside of a jail cell.

New York Times, Amid Talk of Fascism, Donald Trump’s Threats and Language Evoke a Grim Past, Peter Baker, Oct. 28, 2024 (print ed.). Plenty of presidents have been called dictators by their opponents, but neither until now has been publicly accused of being a “fascist” by his own handpicked advisers.

New 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.

Washington Post, Some billionaires, CEOs hedge bets as Trump vows retribution, Jeff Stein, Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey, Oct. 28, 2024. With the race tight, some business elites are toning down past criticism of the former president.

With the White House appearing increasingly up for grabs, and especially as polls have tightened, numerous billionaires and other leading executives have taken steps in recent months to stay out of the race — even if they had criticized Trump after the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, calling his encouragement of the riot a threat to American democracy. Others who previously backed Democrats have stayed silent this election, which some critics and Trump supporters alike have interpreted as a peace offering to the GOP presidential nominee

During his first term as president, Trump exploited the power of the federal government to try to punish a wide range of perceived enemies in the business community who he thought were defying him in various ways. He has also told some corporate figures that he would help them if he returns to the Oval Office — while urging them to donate to his campaign, as he did with oil executives during a private April meeting at Mar-a-Lago. And he has frequently talked about retribution during the campaign, telling TV host Dr. Phil in June that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”

“Trump has had no issue calling out political enemies by name and threatening to use the force of government for retribution, and apparently that is intimidating a lot of wealthy targets,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. “It is a very scary sign that government intimidation works.”

Two Trump campaign advisers, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations, said numerous executives have been trying to reach out to the former president’s team late in the race.

Letters From An American, Commentary: October 26, [U.S. Military Warns Against Fascism in WW II], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Oct. 27, 2024. Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

  Threats To Election, Transition

New York Times, With Criminal Cases Looming, Trump Has a Personal Stake in the Election, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 27, 2024.  Former President Donald J. Trump has a uniquely personal interest in the outcome of the election: If he wins the White House, he could disrupt or even dispose of the various criminal cases he is facing. But if he loses, he could become the first former president to lose his liberty, too.

New York Times, On Telegram, a Violent Preview of What May Unfold on Election Day and After, Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano, Aaron Krolik and Steven Lee Myers, Nov. 4, 2024. Right-wing groups, which use the social media platform to organize, are urging followers to watch the polls in a harbinger of potential chaos.

Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.

“The day is fast approaching when fence sitting will no longer be possible,” read one post from an Ohio chapter of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that was instrumental in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “You will either stand with the resistance or take a knee and willingly accept the yoke of tyranny and oppression.”

The messages were all posted on Telegram, the lightly moderated social media platform with nearly one billion users, which has become a harbinger of the potential actions and chaos that could unfold on Election Day and after. More so than other social apps, Telegram is a prime organizing tool for extremists, who have a tendency to turn digital coordination into real-world action.

A New York Times analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome. Nearly every channel reviewed by The Times was created after the 2020 election, highlighting the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement.

The Times reviewed messages from “election integrity” groups across a dozen states, including battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan. Their posts overwhelmingly spewed disinformation and conspiracy theories and featured violent imagery.

More than 4,000 of their posts went further by encouraging members to act by attending local election meetings, joining protest rallies and making financial donations, the analysis found. Posts from other right-wing groups reviewed by The Times urged followers to be prepared for violence. These calls to action extended the right-wing language typically found on other major social media sites into the physical world.

In New Hampshire, one Telegram channel instructed people to question local officials in person about absentee ballot tallies. In Georgia, followers of a local Telegram channel were urged to attend election board meetings to argue for limits to absentee voting. In New Mexico, people were told to monitor voting stations with cameras, file police reports if necessary and be ready to “fight like hell.”

“If you have ever said, ‘What can I do?,’ this is your opportunity,” said one post from a Telegram group focused on Pennslyvania.

Katherine Keneally, a former intelligence analyst with the New York Police Department, said views shared on Telegram should not be dismissed as the musings of a fringe minority but rather seen as a warning about what could happen on Election Day and beyond.

New York Times, Trump, Preparing to Challenge the Results, Puts His 2020 Playbook Into Action, Jim Rutenberg and Alan Feuer, Nov. 3, 2024 (print ed.). Step by step, Donald Trump and his allies are following the strategies that caused chaos four years ago. Election officials say they are ready this time.

Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are rolling out a late-stage campaign strategy that borrows heavily from the subversive playbook he used to challenge his loss four years ago.

This time, however, he is counting on reinforcements from outside groups built on the false notion of a stolen election.

With Election Day only three days away, Mr. Trump is already claiming the Democrats are “a bunch of cheats,” as his allies in battleground states spread distorted reports of mishaps at the polls to push a narrative of widespread fraud.

Mr. Trump and his most prominent supporters have pointed to partisan polling and betting markets to claim that he is heading for a “crushing victory,” as his top surrogate Elon Musk recently put it. The expectation helps set the stage for disbelief and outrage among his supporters should he lose.

And in a direct echo of his failed — and, prosecutors say, illegal — bid to remain in power after the 2020 election, some of his most influential advisers are suggesting he will yet again seek to claim victory before all the votes are counted.

Such a move ushered in his efforts to deny his defeat four years ago and helped set the stage for the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In many respects, though, the effort that led to Jan. 6 never ended.

“It’s been four years of spreading lies about elections and recruiting volunteers to challenge the system, filing litigation,’’ said Joanna Lydgate, the chief executive of States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit group that works with state officials to bolster confidence in their elections. “What we’re seeing today is all of that coming to fruition.”

Washington Post, A chaotic presidential transition could embolden U.S. adversaries, Missy Ryan, Ellen Nakashima and Dan Lamothe, Nov. 3, 2024 (print ed.). U.S. officials say they are hyper-focused on any attempts by Russia, China or Iran to exploit the months between Election Day the next president’s inauguration.

The Biden administration is on heightened alert for foreign attempts to threaten or destabilize the United States during the presidential transition period, as officials seek to ensure that efforts to exploit a vulnerable interval — made more perilous by America’s hyperpolarized politics — are unable to succeed.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what’s true, false or in-between in politics.

Officials said preparations at the Pentagon are focused on potential post-election threats from nations including Iran, North Korea, Russia and China, along with extremist groups. Intelligence and law enforcement officials meanwhile are girding for continued efforts by the Kremlin — already blamed for significant influence and misinformation operations in the lead-up to Tuesday’s vote — and other adversaries to stoke discord and undermine confidence in the outcome.

A senior defense official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the government’s plans, said the Pentagon is preparing for “a range of scenarios” that could occur between Election Day and the next president’s inauguration Jan. 20.

“We’re thinking about who might try to take advantage of this period of time, checking signals with allies and partners in the different regions, checking where we have playbooks or break-glass books for different contingencies,” the official said.Follow Election 2024

Leaders in Russia, China and Iran have all denied interfering in America’s electoral process.

The Biden administration has warned for months that foreign actors see an opportunity in the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. The neck-and-neck contest is unfolding amid heightened partisan tensions and significant voter mistrust fueled by Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud and his refusal to accept the outcome should he lose again.

According to a U.S. military official, the upcoming transition period is viewed as especially risky because it occurs against an unstable global backdrop, as the United States supports Israel and Ukraine in major wars, seeks to confront China’s military buildup and attempts to manage destabilizing actions by rogue states such as North Korea and Iran.

As the race has intensified, intelligence officials have taken unusual steps to highlight foreign influence efforts, briefing reporters and declassifying information about ongoing threats.

Much of the focus has been on disinformation attempts, such as faked videos that intelligence officials say Russia manufactured to boost a narrative about illicit voting activity championed by Trump and his allies. Chinese government hackers, meanwhile, are blamed for attempting to hack the Harris and Trump campaigns’ phones.Supporters cheer former president Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Uniondale, New York, in September. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

But intelligence officials are increasingly stressing that foreign efforts to undermine America’s democracy won’t end on Election Day.

A senior official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, speaking to reporters earlier this month, said America’s adversaries were likely anticipating a contested presidential vote in addition to razor-thin margins in races to control the Senate and House of Representatives.

“In such a contested post-election atmosphere, foreign actors probably will use tactics similar to those that they are using today to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and election processes, as well as to further exacerbate divisions among Americans now turning to foreign efforts to target congressional and other races,” the official said.

That could include the amplification of domestic disinformation about election integrity or the manufacturing by foreign adversaries of their own allegations. They might also try “perception hacking,” officials said, claiming they’ve sabotaged the vote to undermine public confidence.

Trump Threats To U.S. Economy, Jobs

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Trump Ally Elon Musk Warns of ‘Necessary’ Economic Collapse if Trump Elected, Brett Meiselas, Oct. 29, 2024. Musk says everyday Americans must embrace the pain if Trump gets back in the Oval Office.

Elon Musk has offered a sobering preview of Donald Trump’s economic plan for America if he is re-elected, revealing that a period of intentional “temporary hardship” is on the horizon for American households. Rather than cautioning against it, Musk described this hardship as necessary and inevitable, supporting Trump’s blueprint for restructuring the economy by slashing government programs. Musk’s remarks, shared in a Telephone Town Hall organized by his America PAC, indicate that he and Trump see economic pain to average Americans as a necessary cost of their policy goals.

“We have to reduce spending to live within our means. And that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity,” Musk stated in the call, fully endorsing the strain Trump’s policies would place on Americans. Musk’s words make it clear that the disruption is not an unintended side effect but an accepted—if not desired—outcome. The billionaire went further by responding to an X (formerly Twitter) user who anticipated a market downturn if Trump’s aggressive policies, including mass deportations and extreme deficit cuts, were enacted. The user predicted that with Trump and Musk in charge, the U.S. economy—dependent on debt and vulnerable to asset bubbles—would face a severe reaction before stabilizing under the intended austerity. Musk’s response was a simple acknowledgment: “Sounds about right.”musk-3

Trump has said he would appoint Musk to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” an agency that Musk would use to “trim the fat” from government operations and, presumably, enact sweeping cuts to public programs. The department, referred to by the acronym DOGE is a nod to Musk’s favored meme cryptocurrency.

While previous leaders have avoided openly endorsing policies that might hurt working Americans, Musk’s comments reveal a different approach, where short-term pain is not only acknowledged but welcomed. Critics argue that this plan—prioritizing austerity over growth—could destabilize the economy and deepen inequality, impacting essential services for millions of families who rely on public support. But Musk and Trump’s perspective appears to frame these hardships as collateral damage in a broader strategy for “long-term prosperity.”

Meanwhile, under the Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. economy has seen record growth. This month, The Economist called the U.S. economy “the envy of the world” amid historic growth, low unemployment, and the lowest inflation of any nation in the G7. The major stock market continue to hit record highs on a near daily basis. Yet Trump and Musk want to replace this prosperity with pain.

Washington Post, GOP leaders in some states move to block Justice Dept. election monitors, David Nakamura, Oct. 30, 2024. Federal authorities have deployed monitors for decades. But Republican leaders in some states have begun denying them entry to polling sites.

The Justice Department’s ability to monitor local jurisdictions for voting rights irregularities on Election Day, already curtailed by the Supreme Court, is facing a new hurdle: opposition from Republicans who are seeking to block federal authorities from polling sites.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what’s true, false or in-between in politics.

The U.S. government has regularly dispatched hundreds of monitors to voting locations in blue, red and swing states, aiming to protect ballot access, discourage improper partisan influence and act as a moderating force on political campaigns.

While the Justice Department has the legal right to request access to polling sites, inflamed partisanship and ideological extremism has contributed to greater resistance to such activities in some GOP-controlled states, legal experts said. Those states have attempted to politicize the process and cast federal monitors as partisans from the Biden administration who cannot be trusted.

Republican leaders in Missouri and Florida, which flatly banned federal monitors in the 2022 midterm elections, said in recent interviews that their positions have not changed and that Justice officials likely would be rebuffed again if they request access to voting locations for Tuesday’s presidential election.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) accused the Justice Department of using monitors to punish conservative states that have tightened voter identification laws and adopted policies the Biden administration opposes. Drawing from a state law that does not specifically list federal monitors as permitted to enter polling sites, he accused the Justice Department of overstepping its authority.

“This certainly has become politicized,” said Ashcroft, whose father John Ashcroft led the Justice Department as attorney general during the administration of President George W. Bush. “The Department of Justice lied when they came in and used pretenses to try to bully their way in when they knew what they were doing was not legal.”

In 2022, federal authorities sought access to polling sites in Cole County, Missouri, home of the state capital of Jefferson City, citing complaints that the county lacked adequate voting machines for disabled people. Ashcroft, who rejected those complaints as untrue, said federal monitors who showed up on Election Day were forced to remain outside in public spaces.

In Florida, Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) said Justice officials in 2022 failed to provide a valid reason for trying to enter polling sites in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, prompting him and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to rebuff their requests. A spokesman for Byrd’s office said this month that state law does not explicitly permit federal monitors to enter voting locations.

Justice Department officials declined to comment on specific disputes. The agency typically discloses the full list of jurisdictions that will be subject to federal monitors a day or two before the election.

The department “has long monitored elections in jurisdictions around the country to protect the rights of voters,” spokeswoman Aryele Bradford said in a statement. “We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to enforce the federal voting rights laws and ensure that all eligible voters are able to vote and have their vote counted, including by deploying monitors wherever we deem appropriate.”

Former Justice Department officials said Republicans are attempting to cast doubt on what has for decades been considered a nonpartisan approach for safeguarding poll access. Monitors aim to be as unobtrusive as possible, the former officials said, raising any concerns about potential election law violations with local officials and reporting broader observations about election operations to U.S. attorney’s offices and the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Bradley Heard, a voting rights lawyer at the Justice Department from 2012 to 2022, said attempts to discredit or ban federal monitors are part of a “troubling trend.”

  Threats To U.S.  Public Health, Agriculture, Food & Drugs

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Trump Says RFK Jr. Will Be Put in Charge of Women’s Health, Troy Matthews, Nov. 1, 2024. RFK Jr. is an anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist who once backed a national abortion ban.

Donald Trump told a crowd in Henderson, NV Thursday that he would put his surrogate, noted anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of women’s health in his second administration.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. we have. And he’s going to work on health, and women’s health and all of the different, because we’re not really a wealthy or a healthy country…That’s why I told Bobby, Bobby, I want you to take care of health.”

RFK Jr. said in August of last year while still a candidate that he would support a national abortion ban after the first trimester of pregnancy.

RFK Jr. has made his career attacking public health in the United States and spreading dangerous misinformation about vaccines. Earlier this week, Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick said RFK Jr. had been seeking data from the Department of Health and Human Services to prove that various vaccines should be pulled from the market in the U.S.

“He wants the data, so he can say, ‘These things are unsafe.’” Lutnick said. “He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe. And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off, off of the market.’”

Trump has repeatedly said that RFK Jr. will have responsibility over various health-related agencies and policy in a potential second Trump term.

Politico, RFK Jr. claims Trump pledged to give him ‘control’ of HHS, USDA, Ben Leonard, Chelsea Cirruzzo and Sophie Gardner, Oct. 30, 2024. A Senate-confirmable position could be difficult, given his vaccine skepticism and other controversial positions.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that former President Donald Trump has promised him “control” of HHS and the Department of Agriculture, according to a video obtained by POLITICO.

Speaking at a virtual event, the former presidential candidate said “the key that President Trump has promised me is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others … and then also the USDA.”

Kennedy,  right, did not specify whether he was referring to the HHS secretary post. An appointment of Kennedy to a cabinet position like HHS secretary would require Senate confirmation, which could be a significant hurdle given his vaccine skepticism and other controversial positions.

Kennedy, who mounted a Democratic primary, then a long-shot independent presidential bid before endorsing Trump this summer, might be more able to accomplish his goals in a White House job that does not require Senate confirmation.Trump says he would let RFK Jr. ‘go wild on medicines’

Steven Cheung, Trump campaign communications director, said that “formal discussions of who will serve” in a Trump administration are “premature.” Cheung didn’t deny Trump promised Kennedy control.

Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said Trump will work with “passionate voices” like Kennedy to “Make America Healthy Again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children.” Leavitt also said Trump will establish a presidential commission of “independent minds” who aren’t “bought and paid for by Big Pharma” to investigate a rise in chronic illnesses.

Trump has expressed interest in tackling addiction, childhood chronic disease and obesity, all of which align with Kennedy’s priorities. Former Trump CDC Director Robert Redfield has endorsed some of his ideas and said a Kennedy Commission on Childhood Chronic Disease can end “needless suffering and death.”

Jerome Adams, the surgeon general during the Trump administration, told POLITICO it is unlikely Kennedy could be appointed to lead a major health agency, given his rhetoric on vaccines, but added that he could still have an outsize influence on an administration’s health policy in an advisory role.

Kennedy has made false claims about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, from which he has taken leave.

  

Threats To the U.S. Civil Service Created In 1883

New 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.

Washington Post, Conservative group’s ‘watch list’ targets federal employees for firing, Jonathan O’Connell, Leigh Ann Caldwell and Lisa Rein, Nov. 3, 2024 (print ed.). Donald Trump has pledged, if reelected, to purge the government of bureaucrats suspected of being insufficiently loyal to him and his agenda.

An organization funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation has compiled an online “watch list” of federal employees it claims cannot be trusted to secure the U.S. border and should be fired, a sign that supporters of Donald Trump’s immigration policies are preparing to help him neutralize the administrative state they believe tried to thwart his first presidency.

The “DHS Bureaucrat Watch List” — a website unveiled in the final weeks of a presidential campaign in which immigration is a key issue — names 51 federal policy experts and high-ranking leaders, the majority of whom are career civil servants at the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. The group identified them largely using public social media comments, prior work experience and campaign finance records.

Among the employees’ actions cited by the group are posts celebrating the legalization of same-sex marriage or lauding the contributions and successes of undocumented immigrants, as well as donations as little as $10 to Democratic candidates. One employee union likened the effort to unearth the private views of public employees to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s-era campaign to purge federal workers he accused of being communists.

The site’s founder, a former Republican congressional staffer named Tom Jones, told The Washington Post that he and his staff are seeking to add more names to the list and have sent emails to more than 500 federal employees asking for their help identifying colleagues who they believe are not committed to keeping undocumented immigrants out of the country.

Jones said his goal was to expose people whom he deemed had “long-standing and deep bias” on immigration policy. In addition to tracking social media posts and political donations, Jones said he is probing for indications of past advocacy on immigration issues as well as other clues about employees’ views, such as sharing of gender pronouns and support for diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“There are a large number of people in the administration who have dedicated their life work to helping migrants settle in the United States,” Jones said. He said it was “Pollyanna-ish” to expect that those people would turn around and enforce Trump’s plan to deport tens of millions of people and close the borders, as he has vowed.

“These people are not going to do it. They are actually going to undermine it,” Jones said. He said he would endorse similar efforts to target employees in other agencies, including the Defense Department, Education Department and Department of Health and Human Services.

Jones said he hasn’t coordinated with Trump’s campaign or transition teams, but hopes any incoming administration would take notice of his work and use it to identify employees to terminate.

The list has already caught the attention of Trump allies in Congress, with four Republican House members writing to the head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services demanding that the employee accused of praising undocumented immigrants be fired.

While many top-level government officials are politically aligned and appointed by presidents, the bulk of the federal workforce consists of about 2.2 million career employees who work in agencies based in Washington and around the country, carrying out policies and tending to the day-to-day operations of the country regardless of the party in charge.

In 2020, Trump issued an executive order aimed at eliminating protections for tens of thousands of civil servants by reclassifying them under a new employment category called “Schedule F.” The order did not go into effect before Biden took office and canceled it. Trump has vowed to reissue the order on the first day of his second term if he is reelected and has promised to “fire rogue bureaucrats and career politicians.”

  U.S. History: Republican Party’s Birth, Mission

Letters from an American, Commentary: November 3, 2024 [Republican Party's Birth, Mission and Role Reveral With Democrats], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Nov. 4, 2024. I’m home tonight to stay for a bit, after being on the road for thirteen months and traveling through 32 states. I am beyond tired but profoundly grateful for the chance to meet so many wonderful people and for the welcome you have given me to your towns and your homes.

I know people are on edge, and there is maybe one last thing I can offer before this election. Every place I stopped, worried people asked me how I have maintained a sense of hope through the past fraught years. The answer—inevitably for me, I suppose—is in our history.

If you had been alive in 1853, you would have thought the elite enslavers had become America’s rulers. They were only a small minority of the U.S. population, but by controlling the Democratic Party, they had managed to take control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They used that power to stop the northerners who wanted the government to clear the rivers and harbors of snags, for example, or to fund public colleges for ordinary people, from getting any such legislation through Congress. But at least they could not use the government to spread their system of human enslavement across the country, because the much larger population in the North held control of the House of Representatives.

Then in 1854, with the help of Democratic president Franklin Pierce, elite enslavers pushed the Kansas-Nebraska Act through the House. That law overturned the Missouri Compromise that had kept Black enslavement out of the American West since 1820. Because the Constitution guarantees the protection of property—and enslaved Americans were considered property—the expansion of slavery into those territories would mean the new states there would become slave states. Their representatives would work together with those of the southern slave states to outvote the northern free labor advocates in Congress. Together, they would make enslavement national.

America would become a slaveholding nation.

Enslavers were quite clear that this was their goal.

South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond explicitly rejected “as ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal.’” He explained to his Senate colleagues that the world was made up of two classes of people. The “Mudsills” were dull drudges whose work produced the food and products that made society function. On them rested the superior class of people, who took the capital the mudsills produced and used it to move the economy, and even civilization itself, forward. The world could not survive without the inferior mudsills, but the superior class had the right—and even the duty—to rule over them.

But that’s not how it played out.

As soon as it became clear that Congress would pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Representative Israel Washburn of Maine called a meeting of thirty congressmen in Washington, D.C., to figure out how they could fight back against the Slave Power that had commandeered the government to spread the South’s system of human enslavement. The men met in the rooms of Representative Edward Dickinson of Massachusetts—whose talented daughter Emily was already writing poems—and while they came to the meeting from all different political parties, often bitterly divided over specific policies, they left with one sole purpose: to stop the overthrow of American democracy.

The men scattered back to their homes across the North for the summer, sharing their conviction that a new party must rise to stand against the Slave Power. They found “anti-Nebraska” sentiment sweeping their towns; a young lawyer from Illinois later recalled how ordinary people came together: “[W]e rose each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach—a scythe—a pitchfork—a chopping axe, or a butcher’s cleaver.” In the next set of midterm elections, those calling themselves “anti-Nebraska” candidates swept into both national and state office across the North, and by 1856, opponents of the Slave Power had become a new political party: the Republicans.

But the game wasn’t over. In 1857, the Supreme Court tried to take away Republicans’ power to stop the spread of slavery to the West by declaring in the infamous Dred Scott decision that Congress had no power to legislate in the territories. This made the Missouri Compromise that had kept enslavement out of the land above Missouri unconstitutional. The next day, Republican editor of the New York Tribune Horace Greeley wrote that the decision was “entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room.”

By 1858 the party had a new rising star, the young lawyer from Illinois who had talked about everyone reaching for tools to combat the Kansas-Nebraska Act: Abraham Lincoln (shown at left in an 1860 photo by Matthew Brady). Pro-slavery Democrats called the Republicans radicals for their determination to stop the expansion of slavery, but Lincoln countered that the Republicans were the country’s true conservatives, for they were the ones standing firm on the Declaration of Independence. The enslavers rejecting the Founders’ principles were the radicals.

The next year, Lincoln articulated an ideology for the party, defining it as the party of ordinary Americans defending the democratic idea that all men are created equal against those determined to overthrow democracy with their own oligarchy.

In 1860, at a time when voting was almost entirely limited to white men, voters put Abraham Lincoln into the White House. Furious, southern leaders took their states out of the Union and launched the Civil War.

By January 1863, Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending the American system of human enslavement in lands still controlled by the Confederacy. By November 1863 he had delivered the Gettysburg Address, firmly rooting the United States of America in the Declaration of Independence.

In that speech, Lincoln charged Americans to rededicate themselves to the unfinished work for which so many had given their lives. He urged them to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

In less than ten years the country went from a government dominated by a few fabulously wealthy men who rejected the idea that human beings are created equal and who believed they had the right to rule over the masses, to a defense of government of the people, by the people, for the people, and to leaders who called for a new birth of freedom. But Lincoln did not do any of this alone: always, he depended on the votes of ordinary people determined to have a say in the government under which they lived.

In the 1860s the work of those people established freedom and democracy as the bedrock of the United States of America, but the structure itself remained unfinished. In the 1890s and then again in the 1930s, Americans had to fight to preserve democracy against those who would destroy it for their own greed and power. Each time, thanks to ordinary Americans, democracy won.

Now it is our turn.

In our era the same struggle has resurfaced. A small group of leaders has rejected the idea that all people are created equal and seeks to destroy our democracy in order to install themselves into permanent power.

And just as our forebears did, Americans have reached for whatever tools we have at hand to build new coalitions across the nation to push back. After decades in which ordinary people had come to believe they had little political power, they have mobilized to defend American democracy and—with an electorate that now includes women and Black Americans and Brown Americans—have discovered they are strong.

On November 5 we will find out just how strong we are. We will each choose on which side of the historical ledger to record our names. On the one hand, we can stand with those throughout our history who maintained that some people were better than others and had the right to rule; on the other, we can list our names on the side of those from our past who defended democracy and, by doing so, guarantee that American democracy reaches into the future.

I have had hope in these dark days because I look around at the extraordinary movement that has built in this country over the past several years, and it looks to me like the revolution of the 1850s that gave America a new birth of freedom.

As always, the outcome is in our hands.

“Fellow-citizens,” Lincoln reminded his colleagues, “we cannot escape history. We…will be remembered in spite of ourselves.”

  Trump Age, Health, Mental Acuity

Lance’s Substack, From Our Archive: What Sounds Crazy Is Crazy, Because Trump Now Speaks From His Own Rabbit Hole, Lance F. Rosen, right, Sept. 14, 2022, featured Oct. 27, 2024. Trump’s mental decline is only partly dementia related. He believes in his own lies because he is leading a cult.

  Media Missing In Action

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Democracy Dies in Their Wallets: When Oligarchs Buy the News, Thom Hartmann, right, Oct. 28, 2024. From Bezos to Musk, America’s richest are using media control to shape politics and grow profits…

The big mistake John D. Rockefeller made back in the day — that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk appear committed to not repeating — was not buying a media outlet like a newspaper. Had John D. had that sort of a vehicle to mold public opinion, American history may be very different.

By 1880, Rockefeller’s Ohio-based company controlled over 90 percent of the nation’s oil, owned 4,000 miles of pipelines, and employed over 100,000 people. As Rockefeller’s oil empire got larger and larger, eating alive hundreds of smaller operations, ruthlessly driving up prices, destroying his competitors, and throwing workers out of a job, public outrage grew.In 1887, Ohio sued him, arguing that he was operating in ways that were detrimental to the state and its citizens and businesses; in 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court ordered his company dissolved.

As I lay out in detail in Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People,” this led Rockefeller to move Standard Oil to New Jersey after that state changed its corporation laws to allow for his monopolistic behavior. Which brought in the federal government; in 1890, Ohio Senator John Sherman introduced and saw passed into law the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which provided not just fines but jail sentences against people like Rockefeller who were committed to destroying competition and owning entire markets.

The law was flawed with a few loopholes and ambiguities, so it was amended in 1914 with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.Nonetheless, in 1906 progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt’s administration filed an antitrust action against Rockefeller that went to the Supreme Court in 1911 during the administration of progressive Republican President William Howard Taft. The behemoth was broken up into 34 separate companies, an action that, like the breakup of AT&T by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, led to an explosion of competition in the marketplace and a dramatic increase in shareholder value.

But back to Jeff Bezos and his 2013 purchase of The Washington Post. It was reporters and editors for the hundreds of independent newspapers during the First Gilded Age (1880-1900) era that led the crusades against Rockefeller and his fellow monopolists. Investigative journalism was all the rage then, and it fed public demand for a return to competition and the de-throning of that age’s oligarchs.The vast majority of workers were struggling and they worked for a very small 10 percent of the population who controlled most of the nation’s wealth (a situation we’re at again).

The result was constant strife, strikes, and the murder of labor leaders; entire towns were in arms (and sometimes ablaze) with labor conflict. The “problem of labor”was the number one issue of the day.

As President Grover Cleveland — the only Democrat elected during that period — proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address: “As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

There was a broad consensus across American society that those “Robber Barons” were feathering their own nests at the expense of the American public, hurting both working class people and small businesses. The Supreme Court endorsed breaking up Standard Oil in 1911, and even broke up the Associated Press in 1944.

The law was so rigorously enforced — so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the “big boys” — that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because the new combined company would control a mere 5 percent of the shoe market.

Back in the ’60s every mall and downtown in America was filled with small, locally-owned businesses; there might be a Sears to anchor the shopping center or a retail part of town, but most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.

But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market.

It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and on and on. In virtually every industry, a handful of massive companies control 80 percent or more of the market.

The Biden administration is the first to seriously try enforcement of the nation’s anti-trust laws since Carter broke up AT&T, going after Google and blocking mergers in multiple industries. It’s led a bunch of American billionaires to demand that the Federal Trade Commission’s head, Lina Kahn, be fired.

Kahn and her FTC went after Bezos last year, suing Amazon for running a monopoly that price-gouges customers and blocks out competition. The trial is scheduled for 2026 if Kahn keeps her job; a Trump administration would fire her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is building on Harris to do the same.Bezos also must remember well when he got on the wrong side of then-President Trump because of the Post’s coverage of the orange oligarch’s lies and crimes; Trump, in a fit of pique, awarded a $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud computing to Microsoft, shocking analysts across the industry.

Bezos is also working for his Blue Origin spaceship company to get more billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts. He and his companies also own billions in Google and AirBNB stock as well as owning outright almost a hundred other companies. Might be a good time to own one of the two most influential newspapers in America, eh?

Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, in addition to apparently taking orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, is fighting numerous government efforts to regulate his companies (which exist in large part because Obama bailed out Tesla in 2010 with $465 million, and NASA is now pouring hundreds of millions into SpaceX):

— Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over union-related issues, with Musk taking a lawsuit to the Supreme Court alleging government protections of unions are unconstitutional.

— SpaceX is battling the NLRB over employee firings.

— The SEC is investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private.— The FTC is investigating X’s compliance with a $150 million privacy settlement.

— The Federal Communications Commission recently denied SpaceX’s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.

— The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.

— The FAA is in conflict with SpaceX over launch licensing and environmental reviews.

— The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.

— The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple investigations into Tesla’s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.

— SpaceX faces scrutiny over its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.

To avoid the Rockefeller mistake, Musk — with the apparent help of two Russian oligarchs and the leader of Saudi Arabia — purchased Twitter, the online digital equivalent of our nation’s largest newspaper.

And he’s now using it to try to get Trump and Republicans into office, presumably so they can gut the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and any other regulator that might take him on to protect workers, the public, and the national interest.We took on the superrich with success during the First Gilded Age, and our enforcement of antitrust laws lasted all the way to 1983, when Reagan blocked them, leading to the “merger mania” of the 1980s and bringing us today’s oligarchic business empires across multiple industries.

Now that we’re in America’s Second Gilded Age — with today’s billionaires vastly richer than Rockefeller’s wildest dreams — we confront a similar crossroads to that of previous generations.

Is it okay, for example, for billionaires to own media properties they can use to manipulate politics and government agencies to amplify their other business interests? Or that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that our morbidly rich plutocrats can own judges and politicians?

Most Americans would probably say “No” to both.At some point, America is going to have to confront its oligarch problem. And the sooner the better, if we don’t want darkness to entirely subsume our democracy.

The Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support its daily work to rescue America from fascists and the morbidly rich, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Bulwark, Journalism in an Autocratic Age, Jonathan V. Last, right, Oct. 28, 2024. How to build and protect media institutions robust enough to stand against fascism.

If you want to cancel your subscription to the Washington Post, that’s between you and your God. I’ll just tell you that I didn’t cancel my subscription. And I’d like to explain why.

The problem isn’t the Washington Post. It’s the owner of the Post. And realistically, there is no way to send Jeff Bezos a message about your disagreement with his choices for the simple fact that the WaPo is not a revenue stream for him. The Post’s operating losses/profits exist on a small scale: In 2023 the paper lost $77m. That same year Amazon’s net profits were $30b. With a “b.” Bezos himself is worth $205b.

If the Post simply stopped charging anyone for subscriptions, Bezos might not even notice it on his balance sheets.

What’s more: I suspect Bezos doesn’t want to own the Post anymore. It has proved to be more trouble for him than he expected. I suspect that if he could unload it tomorrow, he would.

The problem is that there’s no one to sell it to.Bezos bought the Post in 2013 for $250m. He didn’t pay that money because the Post was a thriving business. It was a rescue mission and $250m was a token payment—a sign of respect for the Graham family. The real purchase price was that Bezos committed to take on the Post’s liabilities and absorb its future losses.

Who in their right mind would take on such responsibilities today in the era of Trumpism? Anyone with enough money to float the Post will be either (1) a Trump crony or (2) vulnerable to pressure from Trump. As Timothy Snyder said over the weekend, “A problem with the very wealthy is that, alas, the least vulnerable have a tendency to think of themselves as the most vulnerable.”

2. The Business of MediaIn an autocratic age, journalism takes on heightened importance. But journalistic institutions cannot rely on billionaire benefactors, because, as Snyder says, those benefactors view themselves as vulnerable.

Which means that the only way to protect journalistic institutions is for them to be profitable. The catch is that it also matters how they achieve profitability. If revenues are dependent on advertising, then publications are driven not by ideas but an existential need for popularity. No, the only way to build a media institution robust enough to stand against authoritarianism is for it to be a profitable business supported primarily by its readers. That’s it. That’s the ball game

.A publication which is solvent and supported by a distributed network of readers—each contributing a relatively small amount of money—is the only way for a media institution to stand against the onslaught. ¹You may have noticed that this is how we built The Bulwark. It wasn’t an accident.

I have a number of thoughts about the intersection of journalism, business, and liberal democracy. One of them is that any institution which is not explicitly anti-authoritarian will eventually be coopted or conquered by authoritarians.

Another is that scale matters. The larger the scale of a media organization, the harder it is to maintain an anti-authoritarian ethos. But those are for another time.

Suffice it to say that if you look closely at the business of the The Bulwark you will notice that we are designed—from tip to tail—to resist authoritarian pressure. Again: This did not happen by chance. We built this place in the shadow of the first Trump administration and we knew what we were doing.

What I want to hammer home for you is something I believe in my bones: Community is the only way to resist fascism .This maxim means different things in different contexts. In the context of media it means:In an autocratic age, it is not enough to be a consumer of media. You must be a stakeholder in it. You must support the institutions you want to exist in the world. You must help build those institutions. And then you must participate in their defense. All of which is why we started The Bulwark. It’s also why I subscribe to a few dozen publications—from the Atlantic, to the New Yorker, to Plough. From Heather Cox Richardson, to Judd Legum, to the UnPopulist.

And it’s why I still subscribe to the Washington Post. I want the Post to be as financially strong as possible so that some day—hopefully soon—it won’t have to rely on Jeff Bezos. Your mileage may vary. But to my mind, making the Post more reliant on its billionaire underwriter only deepens the problem.

Obviously, not everyone has the time or money to support dozens of publications. I work in this space, which is how I justify it to myself. We all have to prioritize as best we can. So if you decided to cancel your WaPo subscription so that you could support, say, Arc Digital, I understand that. But my larger point remains: We no longer have the luxury to be passive consumers of media. We have to support the media institutions that we want to exist in the world. In an autocratic age, everyday acts of civic responsibility—like reading the newspaper or voting—take on out-sized importance and require commitment, intentionality, and courage.A nd the best way to foster those virtues is in community with others who remain committed to the liberal project.

Nieman Lab at Harvard University, The Washington Post isn’t alone: Roughly 3/4 of major American newspapers aren’t endorsing anyone for president this year, Joshua Benton, Nov. 4, 2024. Led by risk-averse corporate owners, dozens of the biggest U.S. newspapers have decided their editorials should express opinions on everything except who should be president..

I can’t remember the last time I was as shocked by a news-industry number as I was by 200,000. Specifically, the 200,000 Washington Post subscribers who NPR’s David Folkenflik reported cancelled their subscriptions in the days after the paper announced it wouldn’t be endorsing in the 2024 presidential race. (Not long after, the number grew to “more than 250,000” — a number the Post’s own reporters later confirmed.)

I have all the respect in the world for Folkenflik, but my brain refused to believe it at first. 2,000? Sure. 8,000? Okay. Even 20,000? Those seemed within the realm of possibility. But 200,000 was consumer action on a scale unseen in the modern news business — and without any organized force pulling the strings. All this at an outlet that had, only weeks earlier, been chuffed about an increase of 4,000 subs so far in 2024. Post owner Jeff Bezos, the man behind the non-endorsement call, didn’t help things with a tone-deaf op-ed packed with C-minus arguments.1

Perhaps Bezos thought he would avoid customer outrage because declining to endorse for president is a growth industry in America — and has been since Donald Trump first came down that escalator. I first wrote about this two years ago when it became clear that the country’s largest newspaper chains — all either private equity-owned or -adjacent — were growing allergic to making the call. Using a database of newspaper endorsements from The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara, I tracked how many of the 100 highest-circulation newspapers had declined to endorse for president. The trend line is rather clear:

In five election cycles, endorsing for president went from a “nearly everybody” thing to a “barely half” thing. You can find all the details in that story, but the tl;dr is that, in 2016, newspapers overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump and faced enormous blowback from Trump supporters — in the form of cancellations and, in some cases, threats that led to papers hiring extra security for their employees. That, combined with the continued decline in the U.S. newspaper business — which led some publishers to question the value of annoying any sliver of their remaining customers — led to a widespread abandonment of endorsements in 2020. Papers that had endorsed Clinton in states that Trump won were the most likely to bail.

And not long after 2020, even more publishers began to announce their intention to exit the arena — citing a mixture of tight budgets and a sudden belief that editorial pages should have an opinion on every issue under the sun except for who should be in charge of the country.

So, one day before the nth-consecutive “most important election of our lifetimes,” how much more retrenchment has there been? A lot.

We’re looking at a universe of 95 newspapers.2 Of those papers, here’s how their endorsements broke down in 2016:61 endorsed Hillary Clinton1 endorsed Donald Trump3 endorsed Gary Johnson2 endorsed “anyone but Trump”21 endorsed no one7 are unknown3

Move ahead to 2020 and the shift is clear:44 endorsed Joe Biden7 endorsed Donald Trump44 endorsed no one

And what about 2024? According to my hunting through dozens of newspaper opinion sections, here’s where we stand just before election day:22 endorsed Kamala Harris2 endorsed Donald Trump71 endorsed no one

That’s right: Three-quarters of the nation’s largest newspapers have declined to endorse anyone for president this cycle. That’s despite one candidate who — completely in character — volunteered yesterday that he wouldn’t mind if a gunman would “shoot through the fake news” at his rallies. Or who has called for all three major broadcast networks to lose their “licenses”4 because he doesn’t like things they’ve said about him. Or this, or this, or the ten thousand other links I could put here.

Who are the biggest culprits in this trend? The nation’s four largest newspaper chains: Alden Global Capital (through its control of MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing), Gannett, Lee Newspapers, and McClatchy.

There are 15 Alden-controlled newspapers in this dataset (in New York, Chicago, Boston, Denver, San Diego, San Jose, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Hartford, Orange County, St. Paul, Hampton Roads, Allentown, Reading, and Newport News). In 2020, seven of those endorsed Joe Biden; one, the Boston Herald, endorsed Donald Trump. This year, none of them endorsed for president, after corporate determined that “picking a candidate may alienate more readers than it persuades.”

Of the 19 Gannett newspapers in the dataset, seven endorsed Biden in 2020 (none endorsed Trump). But the chain decided it wanted less opinion in its opinion sections and that it would “returned to our roots as a facts-forward, down-the-center survey of our nation.” No endorsements for president this time around.

McClatchy has eight newspapers in the dataset, and none of them endorsed for president in 2020, with its new hedge-fund owners saying only papers that conducted individual editorial-board interviews with the candidates could make an endorsements.5 But while six of the eight newspapers continued their non-endorsement this cycle (Miami, Fort Worth, Sacramento, Fresno, Lexington, and Kansas City), its two North Carolina newspapers — the Raleigh News & Observer and Charlotte Observer — broke ranks and endorsed Harris.6

The last major chain, Lee, had a more mixed showing. Of its eight newspapers in the dataset, seven had endorsed Biden in 2020 (with one abstention). This year, four endorsed, all picking Harris: St. Louis, Buffalo, Madison, and Tucson.7 Others kept their silence. (Here’s Omaha: “After debate, research and consideration, our editorial board has concluded we serve our readers best by not endorsing candidates for office or weighing in on ballot initiatives directly. You don’t need our opinion on whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris would make a better president.” Quad Cities: “After thoughtful discussion, the board has decided informing voters is better than picking a side. The process, a long-standing tradition of newspapers, does not appear our best method of serving readers in 2024.”)

Outside the big chains, other papers declining to endorse include the Tampa Bay Times, the Minnesota Star-Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun — along with the two that caught national attention, the L.A. Times and Washington Post.

Interestingly, while most of the new non-endorsers went for Biden in 2020, several of that year’s Trump endorsers have also zipped their lips. The Spokane Spokesman-Review stopped all endorsements after its owner backed Trump to some controversy four years ago. The Toledo Blade, which has spent 2024 in a family battle for corporate control, “opted to stay neutral” this year. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette doesn’t seem to have endorsed this year (though it’s also said it didn’t really endorse Trump last time, either). Only two major papers — the Las Vegas Review-Journal (owned by Miriam Adelson, who has given $100 million to a pro-Trump super PAC) and the New York Post (Rupert Murdoch) — appear to have come out for Trump this time.

So, big picture: Roughly 3 out of 4 major American newspapers have stopped endorsing for president — something that nearly all of them did just twenty years ago. A trend that began in 2012 has accelerated in every cycle since and now overtaken most of the industry.

In fact, it’s been happening long enough that we can ask bigger questions. Have the papers who have stopped reaped any sort of trust dividend — the sort that Jeff Bezos would have you believe was one non-endorsement away? Have Trump supporters rallied to support any of the papers who have preemptively kept their mouths shut? Has anyone sensibly explained why newspapers should have a dedicated section devoted to expressing opinions on everything except who should be leader of the free world? I think the only honest answers here are no all around — and I suspect there are at least 250,000 people who might agree.

Bigotry, Corrupt Morals, Ethics

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: MLK’s Daughter Blasts Trump’s “Meme Team” Deepfake Video, J.D. Wolf, Nov. 4, 2024. MAGA is spreading a fake video depicting the civil right leader pushing MAGA talking points and endorsing Trump

The account “MAGA Resource” embedded the video from it’s original source, “Ramble Rants” which posted the video during Black History Month and claimed: “If Martin Luther King, Jr. was alive today, he’d support President Trump #DilleyMemeTeme #BlackHistoryMonth”

“Ramble Rants” is part of the Dilley Meme Team, also known as “Trump’s Online War Machine.” The account has asked its followers to complain to Twitter about the “deepfake” community note warning on the post by “MAGA Resource.”Ramble Rants

The Dilley Meme Team is a controversial group that has been used by Trump to promote his MAGA agenda. In August, Trump posted a video meme from the Dilley Meme Team using a parody of Alanis Morissette’s song Ironic that had a verse suggesting Kamala Harris performed oral sex in exchange for political power.

The New York Times has described the Dilley Meme Team as group as “a team of meme-makers” that are “flooding social media with pro-Trump posts riddled with sexist and racist tropes.” The newspaper also reported that Trump has played video from the pro-Trump “troll army” at his own rallies.

The New York Times said the group has “effectively served as a shadow online ad agency” for Trump’s campaign. The group doesn’t have any problem pushing misinformation and deepfakes, like the Martin Luther King, Jr. Trump “endorsement” video.Trump with Reanna and Brenden Dilley.

In August, the group’s leader, Brenden Dilley, a former Republican House candidate, was a guest in Trump’s box suite at the Poinsetta Bowl, according to a Twitter post by Dilley. Trump also sent Dilley an autographed news article thanking him for his help in defeating GOP rival Ron DeSantis.

The Dilley Meme Team’s fake Martin Luther King video is disgusting and doesn’t honor the legacy of the civil rights leader. This is exactly the type of content that Trump has encouraged.

 

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2094-justice-integrity-project-endorses-harris