#Trump is waging a war on democracy

[scottguy]

The proverbial "Freudian slip".

#Trump is waging a war on democracy #Republicans plan to end democracy #this is not a drill #Republicans want a Nazi state

[opencommunion]

since zionists want to act obtuse about why we're criticizing a superbowl ad, here's an explanation from before the ad even aired. it was openly designed to act as pro-genocide propaganda. fighting antisemitism is a worthy goal but that's not what's happening here:

"The New England Patriots’ 81-year-old owner, Robert Kraft, writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine AIPAC, but his personal, political, and financial ties to Israel run deeper than the occasional donation. The multibillionaire married his late wife, Myra, in Israel in 1963 when Kraft, then 22, was older than the nation itself. Together they set up numerous business, athletic, and charitable ties to Israel, a record of which is proudly proclaimed on the Kraft company website. In particular, the Kraft Group boasts of its 'Touchdown in Israel' program, where NFL players are given free, highly organized vacations to see 'the holy land' and come back to spread the word about 'the only democracy in the Middle East.' (Not every NFL player has chosen to take part.) Kraft also attends fundraisers for the Israel Defense Forces, currently—and in open view of the world—committing war crimes in Gaza."

Now, as Israel wages war against the civilians of Gaza—more than 25,000 Palestinian have been killed with at least 10,000 of them children—Kraft is again flexing his financial and political muscles in order to defend the indefensible. His Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) will be spending an estimated $7 million to buy a Super Bowl ad titled 'Stop Jewish Hate' that will be seen by well over 100 million people. Under Kraft’s direction, the ad’s goal is to create a propaganda campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people are consuming on social media. 

... The content of the Super Bowl ad is not yet known, but FCAS has afforded Kraft the opportunity to make the rounds on cable news saying things like, 'It’s horrible to me that a group like Hamas can be respected and people in the United States of America can be carrying flags or supporting them.'

This is Kraft enacting the mission of FCAS: fostering disinformation. He is far from subtle: A Palestinian flag becomes a 'Hamas flag,' and people like the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets of Washington, D.C., last month to call for a cease-fire and end the violence are expressions of the 'rise in antisemitism.' Without a sense of irony or the horrors happening on the ground in Gaza, Kraft says he is giving $100 million of his own money to FCAS, because 'hate leads to violence.'

Let’s be clear: What Kraft is doing politically and what he will be using the Super Bowl as a platform to do is dangerous. He appears to think any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling for a cease-fire and a Free Palestine that are part of the problem. Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC agenda is antisemitism.

... Right-wing Christian nationalists, with their belief in a Jewish state existing alongside their conviction that Jews are going to Hell, are welcome in Netanyahu’s Israel and Kraft’s coalition. Left-wing anti-Zionist Jews are not. The greatest foghorn of this evangelical right-wing 'love Israel, hate Jews' perspective is, of course, Donald Trump. Kraft, while speaking of being troubled by events like the Charlottesville Nazi march and the right-wing massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, counts Donald Trump as a close friend and even donated $1 million to his presidential inauguration.

No one who provides cover for the most powerful, public antisemite in the history of US politics should ever be taken seriously on how to best fight antisemitism. No one who funds AIPAC and the IDF and opposes a cease-fire amid the carnage should be allowed a commercial platform at the Super Bowl. But given that the big game is always an orgy of militarism, blind patriotism, and big budget commercials that lie through their teeth, perhaps that ad could not be more appropriate. We can do better than Kraft’s perspective on how to fight antisemitism. Morally, we don’t have a choice."

#zionism

[darantha]

biden is facilitating a genocide. that’s enough of a reason to not vote for him

100% is. But since you seem to be caring about the events in Gaza, you are aware that Trump's spiritual advisor who was literally holding bible study groups in the White House is one of the evangelical preachers who is very much pushing a zionist agenda, right? That plenty of GOP legislators subscribe to the same faith, that Jesus' second coming is right around the corner and that they'll be at his side when he wages war on the heathens.

It won't get better under a Trump administration.

I'm in Sweden. My family is from Finland. There's literally cups in our kitchen that have a 'Made in the USSR' stamp on the bottom.

Trump is openly threatening NATO. Ukraine will get sold out in a heartbeat if Trump gets re-elected. The GOP are openly trying to strip away everyone's rights, and disrupting governmental procedures because they're not interested in actually solving issues like the border and immigration, since that takes away their scare tactics to turn out voters.

So yeah, Biden sucks, and it's so shady that nobody's been allowed to challenge him, but you can't refuse to help plug a hole in a boat, then complain you're drowning when it sinks.

Staying home and not voting don't make you more righteous. But if you do vote, you'll keep the actual madman and his cronies out of the white house. Because only one political party in the US, unfortunately, is still interested in governing.

And you all deserve so much fucking better. Unfortunately you won't get that by refusing to participate in democracy.

#not art

[socialjusticeinamerica]

☝️

Highly recommend. A glimpse into the right-wing network of conservative think tanks and non-profits working to promote a pro-business culture, weaken all social programs, and undermine democracy.

Everything from weakening child labor laws to writing Trump’s Project 2025, although the authors refused to use the term “Project 2025” in their description of it.

Republican politicians never come up with legislation on their own. All Republican policy is crafted and written by right-wing political associations and then handed to Republicans stooges to sign and introduce into Congress. It is this behind the scenes network of oligarch dark money funded think tanks that are waging war against us.

You protest individual Republican politicians and their policies but neglect the oligarchs like Koch, Walton, Crow, and DeVos that actually write those policies. Then you support those same oppressive oligarchs by buying Koch products, shopping at Walmart, and sending your kids to charter schools operated by DeVos.

Thousands of us have been calling for a boycott of Walmart since the 90’s but the majority refuse because it would be inconvenient. I don’t want to drive an extra few miles to the store or I don’t want to spend and extra dollar at another store. Common refrains whenever a boycott is broached. Walmart is the most obvious target because they are not diversified like other oligarch families. A short boycott would change their tune real fast.

You know what’s really inconvenient; black people being executed in the streets by cops and denied the right to vote. You know what else, trans people being eliminated and lgbt being stripped of legal rights as citizens. How about bounties being placed on women who have abortions and women who have to travel across country to have those abortions and often having lost the right yo safely return to their home state at all. Migrants being held in camps and being separated permanently from their children is also inconvenient as is the human trafficking of them. How about the re-introduction of child labor without parental consent being required. Maybe unions being busted, pensions and health insurance being stripped, minimum wage being reduced and full-time jobs arbitrarily being turned into part-time jobs. I could go on and on here.

STOP USING YOUR DOLLARS TO SUPPORT THE OLIGARCHS AND CORPORATIONS THAT OPPRESS YOU.

#Searles pharmaceutical #project 2025 #vast right-wing conspiracy #Koch network #boycott Walmart #cato institute #federalist society #ALEC #Koch family oligarchs #Walton family oligarchs #Harlan Crow Neo-Nazi oligarch #Betsy DeVos oligarch #Leonard Leo #Mackinac Center #dark money #Conservative oligarchs creating a fascist America #RESIST #Citizens United #reproductive freedom #gun lobby #voter suppression #voter disenfranchisement #lgbt persecution #Black Lives Matter #republican assholes #Republican oligarchs #republican values #evangelical Taliban #Theocracy #Dominionism

[phoenixyfriend]

Okay! Today brought some some more varied and nuanced analyses of the recent big Schumer speech, which I have previously posted about, and touched on the Trump response.

There are two that stood out with me:

One was really critical in a "this is not enough, it's just pretty words that functionally mean nothing" sense. This came from Democracy Now. Caveat: they focused way more on the UN resolution.

The other was, in my opinion, much more nuanced, and came from NYT's "The Daily" podcast, which featured an interview with Schumer himself. Caveat: the NYT has come under fire for being too biased towards Israel, though the podcast team is separate from the papers' team, and were previously responsible for getting a major story to undergo heavy revisions due to anti-Palestinian biases.

Going into this, I want to be clear that I am going to be viewing these through a lens of how much they may or may not help Palestine, and how much I think a given argument or form of rhetoric may have impacted the actions that Schumer and those around him have taken.

Democracy Now (March 22, 2024 episode)

Available in video/audio form, and as a transcript here. This section of the episode is titled "U.S. Said It Was Calling for a Gaza Ceasefire, But Its U.N. Resolution Didn’t Say That: Phyllis Bennis."

One of the things I just want to point out in the last moments, this issue of Chuck Schumer coming out against Netanyahu, there’s a move to isolate Prime Minister Netanyahu right now. And it’s certainly appropriate. Part of the reason he’s still in power is to stay out of jail. It’s a very personal crusade on his part. But we have to be very clear that the people who are likely to replace him, if he were to either resign or be recalled in an election, they all support this war. So we should not have the illusion, that I’m afraid people like Chuck Schumer and others might have, that anybody who’s not Netanyahu should be and would be welcomed with open arms in Washington with more weapons, more hundreds of smaller weapons shipments that wouldn’t necessarily have to be approved by Congress. This is a very dangerous reality. We have to be very clear that this is a systemic decision by the Israeli leadership. This is not a one-man show in this horrific genocidal war that is being waged in Gaza. And we have to be careful not to fall into that trap of putting it all on one person and thinking that if one person is replaced, somehow that’s an answer.

The Daily, from The New York Times

You can listen to it on Spotify or Youtube. Transcripts are not yet available for this one; the site says they're usually available by the next day. That said, I went through the YouTube auto-generated transcript because I thought some of it was important enough for that effort.

However, I think it's worth it to listen through to the whole thing if you've got the time. Things it touches on includes:

The relationship that Schumer and other older Jews have with the idea of Israel, as it developed during his childhood in the fifties and sixties, due to the very recent memory of the Holocaust.

Schumer's statement that he believes that Israel is seeding more problems for itself with the current conflict, due to how it is destabilizing the region and provoking escalations with Iran and its proxies, most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The connection of Netanyahu's radicalization in general and his growing unpopularity with the American left with his friendship with Trump.

Schumer couches an incredible amount of his argument in what he believes will convince American Jews and people with conflicted feelings on Israel, and an insistence that he believes in what Israel stands for.

An implied threat of aid withdrawal from Israel if Netanyahu remains in power.

A recurring cynicism and criticism of Schumer by the podcast hosts. They explicitly ask "what is your red line" in regards to the number of dead civilians in Palestine.

This podcast included more of the actual speech, and the logic that underpins it, than any other coverage I've read or listened to yet.

Schumer is very careful to not threaten to withdraw aid, so it's only implied. He is very careful to not explicitly dictate who leads Israel.

What he does say is that, should Netanyahu remain in power...

The United States' bond with Israel is unbreakable, but if extremists continue to unduly influence Israeli policy, then the administration should use the tools at its disposal to make sure our support for Israel is aligned with our broader goal of achieving long-term peace and stability in the region.

and

BB, I agree with you, [that] the greatest short-term threat to Israel is the rockets Iran gives Hezbollah, and they put them in Lebanon, and shoot them at Israel, but the greatest middle and long-term danger is you lose America, particularly the half of America that's more Progressive and/or the half of America that's young, and by your embracing Trump, you are making that happen.

I agree with the hosts' interpretation that 'tools' refers to the US financial backing of Israel, particularly the military funding. Schumer denies a lot of the interpretations, but generally he denies it with 'that is not what I said,' rather than 'that is not what I meant.'

Italics indicate something was said during the interview; the podcast switches between the interview and commentary a few times.

Interviewer: You don't want a ceasefire, but, like, what is--there like 30,000 more Palestinians dead-- Schumer: Well I wouldn't, I-- I'd say look Isra-- Interviewer, commentary: I said, you know, what's your red line, what is the civilian death toll that would have to be reached for you to say 'we're pulling this funding.' Interviewer: You said in your speech, if something doesn't change then there's the threat of American rich-- Schumer: I didn't--I didn't say conditions and I didn't say, um, leverage, I just said 'America's going to look at it as a thing that's' and-- Interviewer: You didn't say exactly what-- Schumer: No because I didn't want to Interviewer: You didn't want to, but what would the scenario be where that would-- Schumer: Well, I--you'd have to see it, I don't, I couldn't speculate on the future. Interviewer, commentary: ...and he didn't want to say. Second host: Well then why even give the speech? If Schumer is not willing to talk about the real consequences for Israel if there are no elections, and if Israelis don't end up removing Netanyahu from office, if he can't explain that, why give this speech?

I think that overall, this podcast and the interview it contains is... encouraging. Much of what drove Schumer's rhetoric is something I spoke about a month ago, namely the ways that Israeli propaganda rests on real fears based in history, and the ways that convincing people who believe that propaganda is to stress how the current situation is increasing danger to Israel in the middle and long term.

It's a little gratifying, at least, to know that my own understanding of the political science of it all is relatively accurate, and that at least a few of the arguments I presented in my How To Call Your Reps post are things that have worked their way into higher levels of political discourse.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents' house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post.

#chuck schumer #benjamin netanyahu #israel #united states #gaza #call your reps #palestine #death mention #politics #death tw #senator schumer #current events #phoenix politics #the daily #new york times #democracy now

[mariacallous]

For years, as Moscow’s intent to challenge the West became clearer, a key question loomed: whether the country as a whole or its leader was at fault—in effect, whether the world had a Russia problem or a Putin problem.

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began two years ago, analysts have continued to debate the attitudes of ordinary Russians toward the war. Do a broad majority of Russians genuinely support the crimes and atrocities committed by their country’s armed forces? And if not, why do they give every appearance of doing so?

Two books by British historian Jade McGlynn published during 2023 provide uncomfortable answers. Russia’s War gives one of those answers in its title: In direct and conscious contrast to a rash of other current book titles that lay the blame squarely on Russian President Vladimir Putin, McGlynn concludes that the Russian state, with the conscious collusion of part or most of its population, has achieved significant and widespread support at home for its war of colonial reconquest in Ukraine.

The other book, Memory Makers, gives us more explanation of how this was made possible through Russia’s deliberate and long-term program of hijacking history and shaping the public’s memory by recreating the past in order to shape the present.

Together, they paint a portrait of the alternative reality inhabited by Russians, created and nurtured by the state, and explain how it provides a permissive environment for that state’s worst crimes against both its own people and its victims abroad.

Russia’s War will upset a lot of people. There’s a substantial group among Russians abroad—or at least, among those who do not wholeheartedly approve of the war—who make their point that not all Russians are to blame for it by attempting to attach that blame to Putin personally.

But McGlynn firmly rejects the idea that this is Putin’s war alone. “Russia’s war on Ukraine is popular with large numbers of Russians and acceptable to an even larger number,” she writes. “Putin banked on the population’s approval and he cashed it.”

McGlynn’s book is also a direct challenge to those Western journalists, academics, and Russophiles who cling to the belief that the country is a frustrated democracy, as well as the idea that left to their own devices, Russians would install a liberal government that was less inclined to repress its own subjects and wage wars of aggression abroad. That’s a belief that has often been formed in conversation with urban, liberal Russians—the kind who are now largely in exile or jail.

But there’s no reason to think that conversations in Moscow and St. Petersburg are any better a guide to Russia’s population as a whole than similar conversations in New York or London were at predicting former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory or the United Kingdom’s Brexit. When the idea of a country has been constructed on sampling that is as unrepresentative as this, it can be hard to come to terms with the fact that the behaviors that the world has witnessed in Ukraine are entirely within the mainstream of social norms in the further reaches of Russia.

McGlynn doesn’t rule out the possibility that there may be Russians who disapprove of the war. But in addition to describing an instinct for self-preservation that may constrain many individuals from speaking out, she also argues that silent acquiescence is also the easier path inside their own minds.

“Plenty of people believe the Kremlin propaganda because it is easier and preferable to admitting or accepting that you are the bad guys,” McGlynn writes. In the absence of any discernible public opposition, Russians’ attitudes range from complete apathy to the frenzied enthusiasm for the war encouraged by propagandist “Z-channels” on Telegram, urging the military on to commit ever greater savagery in Ukraine. These channels, broadcasting to hundreds of thousands of subscribers—where footage of atrocities receives a joyous reaction—would not be possible in a country where backing for the onslaught on Ukraine was not widespread.

Russia’s state-aligned propaganda, McGlynn argues, does not seek to make everyone a warmonger. Instead, it aims to nudge people along a spectrum: It tries to render those in opposition apathetic, to make the apathetic feel attacked and side with their country whether right or wrong, and to induce quiet patriots to lend full-throated support.

A further twist, McGlynn suggests, is that we should not assume that the ideal outcome for the Kremlin is widespread pro-war activism. The Kremlin distrusts any spontaneous political act even if it is in support of the regime, she reminds us. So it sets clear boundaries for what is and is not an acceptable way to show allegiance, and is content if the support shown is no more than lip service. But still, criticism of the war, where it does exist, primarily focuses on the competence with which it is being fought as opposed to whether it should be fought in the first place.

Many of the state narratives around the West and Ukraine are not Putinist inventions, but instead are excuses for Russian state crimes that date back to Soviet and tsarist times. By tapping into the familiar tropes of Russia’s artificial history, the Kremlin provides the basis for new and still-evolving fictions about the world outside, brought together in what McGlynn calls “a time-worn ritual whereby Russian media and politicians slowly dismantle the truth and then replace it with a forgery.”

That ritual is examined in detail in Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia. Appearing later than Russia’s War, Memory Makers nonetheless lays the groundwork for it, exploring how Russia rewrote its history to provide justification for its present.

History is explicitly defined as a battleground in Russia’s national security strategy and other doctrinal documents. But as ever in Russia’s perverse newspeak, goals such as the “defence of historical truth,” the “preservation of memory,” and “counteraction to the falsification of history” translate to the construction and defense of a fabricated version of Russian and Soviet history, accompanied by the denunciation of news and information from abroad as fake, all intended to protect and bolster Russia’s alternative reality.

As McGlynn explains, Russia’s reworking of history builds a narrative that “distracts from government failings, promotes government policies and reinforces the Kremlin’s view of current events.” The two books together offer an understanding of how Russia fostered the mentality that enables the war. Memory Makers explains how it was done; Russia’s War describes the effect.

Across the two books, McGlynn considers the role of state propaganda in forming the attitude that she describes and the cumulative impact of more than a decade of bombardment with relentless war propaganda that dehumanizes Ukrainians and sells the idea of a hostile West. Her conclusion is that the war propaganda fell on fertile ground. Russians were eager to be guided toward the state-approved attitude that tied in closely with many of their preconceptions about the world and Russia’s place in it.

And this has had practical and tragic results. McGlynn helps explain why Russia’s horrific casualty toll—with estimates varying widely but none smaller than the hundreds of thousands—has had less impact on popular support for the war than was widely and optimistically expected; and why Russia’s soldiers are still fighting, despite their leadership’s palpable indifference to the scale of the slaughter. Meanwhile, the dehumanization of Ukrainians that forms an integral part of the propaganda made atrocities in Ukraine not just likely, but also inevitable.

In contrast with multiple books on Russia that have been produced swiftly after February 2022, both Russia’s War and Memory Makers have long been in gestation. They draw on close to a decade of research, including data analysis of television, print and social media, extensive interviews, and—while it was still possible—firsthand investigation within Russia itself.

Perhaps inevitably, that means neither book offers simple answers. Optimists among academics, journalists, and even government officials cling to the belief that if only Russians could be reached with the truth about the outside world, including the horrors committed in their name in Ukraine, they would turn against their leadership. But McGlynn’s books and a mass of associated research show that far deeper and more radical societal change within Russia would be essential to reverse the effects of two decades of state propaganda.

Since the end of the Soviet Union, early hopes that new generations might embrace democracy and liberalism have faded to invisibility. Instead, Russian social development is accelerating in reverse. McGlynn’s research undercuts suggestions that this is being done to Russians against their will, and instead highlights attitudes ranging from complicity to enthusiasm. The result is that Russia looks almost exclusively to the past to define its vision for the future.

The tragic implication is that Russia’s war against Ukraine cannot be ended in or by Ukraine. Its roots lie in Russians’ political and societal imagination of what their own country is and what it must be. That imagination, McGlynn shows, has been encouraged and facilitated—but not created—by a propaganda campaign that has lasted a generation.

Jade McGlynn has assembled the evidence for a conclusion that will disturb optimists hoping for a better Russia: The campaign would not have succeeded without a willing and complicit population, and too many ordinary Russians are entirely content to back their country’s most horrific actions.

[female-malice]

We might describe certain policies as being Milei’s or Bolsonaro’s, or Truss’s or Johnson’s or Sunak’s, but they’re all variations on the same themes, hatched and honed by junktanks belonging to the same network. Those presidents and prime ministers are just the faces the programme wears.

And who, in turn, are the junktanks? Many refuse to divulge who funds them, but as information has trickled out we have discovered that the Atlas Network itself and many of its members have taken money from funding networks set up by the Koch brothers and other rightwing billionaires, and from oil, coal and tobacco companies and other life-defying interests. The junktanks are merely the intermediaries. They go into battle on behalf of their donors, in the class war waged by the rich against the poor. When a government responds to the demands of the network, it responds, in reality, to the money that funds it.

The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these policies and tactics around the world. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies.

(continue reading)

[robertreich]

The Secret to the GOP’s Assault on Your Rights

Democracy is not just under attack in America. In some states, it’s being lost.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once suggested that states could serve as laboratories of democracy, but these states are more like laboratories of autocracy.

Take Wisconsin. The GOP has so successfully rigged state elections through gerrymandering that even when Democrats get more votes, Republicans win more seats. In 2018, Republicans won just 45% of the vote statewide, but were awarded 64% of the seats.

******

Btw, if you’d like my daily analyses, commentary, and drawings, please subscribe to my free newsletter: robertreich.substack.com

******

Wisconsin is one of several states where an anti-democracy movement has taken hold.

But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, Wisconsin pioneered the progressive era of American politics at the start of the twentieth century — with policies that empowered workers, protected the environment, and took on corporate monopolies. State lawmakers established the nation’s first unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and strict child labor laws.

Teddy Roosevelt called the state a “laboratory for wise … legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole.”

But for the last decade, Wisconsin has become a laboratory for legislation that does the exact opposite.

After Republicans took control in 2010, one of the first bills they passed gutted workers' rights by dismantling public-sector unions — which then decimated labor’s ability to support pro-worker candidates.

This move aligned with the interests of their corporate donors, who benefited from weaker unions and lower wages.

This new Wisconsin formula has been replicated elsewhere.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina won a minority of votes in 2018, but still won majorities in their state assemblies thanks to gerrymandering.

In Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, Republicans have crafted gerrymanders that are strong enough to create supermajorities capable of overturning a governor’s veto.

Even more alarming, hundreds of these Republican state legislators, “used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” on behalf of Donald Trump.

How did this happen? Put simply: years of careful planning by corporate interest groups and their radical allies.

And the corporations enabling these takeovers aren't just influencing the law — their lobbyists are literally writing many of the bills that get passed.

This political alliance with corporate power has given these Republican legislatures free rein to pursue an extreme culture-war agenda — one that strips away rights that majorities of people support — while deflecting attention from their corporate patrons’ economic agendas.

Republicans are introducing bills that restrict or criminalize abortion. They’re banning teachers from discussing the history of racism in this country. They are making it harder to protest and easier to harm protestors. They are punishing trans people for receiving gender-affirming care and their doctors for providing it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are still laboratories of democracy where true public servants are finding creative ways to defend the rights of us all.

Elected officials in Colorado and Vermont are codifying the right to abortion. California lawmakers have proposed making the state a refuge for transgender youth and their families. And workers across the country are reclaiming their right to organize, which is helping to rebuild an important counterweight to corporate power.

But winning will ultimately require a fifty state strategy — with a Democratic Senate willing to reform or end the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, protect voting rights, and protect the right to organize nationwide.

America needs a national pro-democracy movement to stop the anti-democracy movement now underway — a pro-democracy movement committed to helping candidates everywhere, including in state-level races.

This is where you come in. Volunteer for pro-democracy candidates — and if you don't have time, contribute to their campaigns.

This is not a battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy.

#roe v wade #roe #Supreme Court #states #Wisconsin #democracy #videos #video

[itsmythang]

EVERY ACCUSATION IS A CONFESSION!!!!

Former President Donald Trump accidentally admitted what his critics have long accused him of at an Iowa rally on Saturday night, telling the crowd: “We’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy.”

But just as quickly as he made the shocking remark, he corrected himself to say his “opponents” are the ones guilty of attacks on democracy.

Trump, throughout the rally, argued that he was on a “righteous crusade” in support of democracy while his team handed out “BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY” signs to rally-goers.

Trump, of course, faces dozens of charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and seize another term despite having lost the election, and on the eve of the rally, a federal judge ruled that he cannot rely on presidential immunity to shield him from prosecution.

He appeared as unhinged as ever during his speech in Cedar Rapids: Mocking the late Senator and veteran John McCain, vowing for the eighth year in a row to repeal Obamacare, and warning that the left is coming to take away voters’ dishwashers.

“Obamacare is a disaster and I say we’re going to do something about it,” Trump said—a promise he has made since 2015 and has yet to carry out.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

THE KOBAYASHI MARU TEST

TCINLA FEB 1, 2024 “Kobayashi Maru” is a Star Trek term that people who are not Star Trek fans know the meaning of. The phrase "Kobayashi Maru" has entered the popular lexicon as a reference to a no-win scenario. The term is also sometimes used to invoke Kirk's decision to "change the conditions of the test."

In Star Trek stories, “Kobayashi Maru” is a test designed to test the character of Starfleet Academy cadets, by placing them in a no-win scenario. The Kobayashi Maru test was first depicted in the 1982 film “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

In the stories, the “goal” of the exercise is to rescue the civilian ship “Kobayashi Maru,” which has been damaged and is now stranded in disputed territory between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The cadet being evaluated must decide whether to attempt to rescue the Kobayashi Maru - which means putting their ship and crew in danger - or to leave the Kobayashi Maru to certain destruction. If the cadet chooses to attempt a rescue, an insurmountable enemy force attacks their ship, and they must deal with that.

Metaphorically, that test certainly applies to where we are today.

The term has been applied to real-world scenarios with no perceived positive outcome or that requires outside-the-box thinking, such as constitutional law, where the scenario is an event that may only be dealt with successfully by extra-constitutional, or unconstitutional, methods with the goal of protecting the constitution.

Commentators have used Kirk's unorthodox answer ("I don't believe in the no-win scenario”) to the test as an example of the need to redefine the premises upon which an organization operates - changing the rules rather than playing within them, that by stepping outside the rules of the game one can redefine the game.

While current indications show a shift in the national tide as we have hoped would happen, and with it the increasing likelihood that the enemies of out constitutional republic will fail in their assault, one possible outcome of the election of 2024 is that we may face the Kobayashi Maru Test.

Right now we face a “Crisis of Democracy” in the case of removing Donald Trump from the ballot under the rule in Article 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states that an individual who has taken part in an insurrection against the United States, or has given support to those who have, cannot occupy a political office under the United States and must not appear on the ballot.

“Democracy,” is on both sides of this case.

There are those who see excluding an immensely popular political figure from the ballot as being profoundly undemocratic.

Others see clearly that what is truly undemocratic is to empower a uniquely dangerous demagogue who has already disobeyed his solemn Oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic, and is thus a genuine threat who would end the constitutional republic that now exists, were he returned to office.

The tension between these two clashing visions can be resolved only by attending to the Constitution’s own specific implementation of “democracy,” which was the product of a great democratic process after a series of insurrectionary and democracy-imperiling events 160 years ago in the aftermath of the Civil War

Following President Andrew Johnson’s actions allowing the former Confederate traitors who had waged war against the United States to reorganize their states and rejoin the Union with a simple oath of allegiance easily taken with their fingers crossed behind their back while so doing, men who had played leading roles in the rebellion and war against the United States were elected by political means that involved suppressing the votes of those opposed to the former Confederate traitors retaking office - black and white.

Under President Johnson’s new rules, former Vice President of the Confederate States of America Alexander Stevens was elected a Senator from South Carolina, the state that had led the rebellion. When asked what he intended to do as a Senator, Stevens said openly he planned to prevent the government taking action to protect the freed slaves, and that he expected to act with the other Southern Senators and congressional representatives to rebuild the power the South had held in Congress before the war, in which they were able to prevent the enactment of any law or adoption of any policy to which they were opposed.

Had that happened, much more than the treatment of the former slaves would have been at stake. While the Southern reactionaries were out of the government during the war, many progressive acts, such as the Homestead Act opening the West to small farmers, or the Morrill Act, establishing publicly-funded institutions of higher learning in each state - both of which had been opposed by the Southern representatives before the war - would be in danger of repeal by the coming Southern majority. With the South effectively a one-party state, in which anyone elected to office could hold that office for so long as they wished, the South would retake control of the congressional committees, which were based on seniority.

It was decided that those who were proven by their actions to be dedicated to the destruction of the democratic constitutional republic, would be allowed no place, no power, in the government of that republic.

And thus Article 3 of the 14th Amendment was written and became law when the Amendment passed and became part of the Constitution.

Alexander Stevens and the other traitors were “immensely popular political figures” among their fellow insurrectionary traitors who were retaking political control of the newly reorganized states that were being returned to the Union under the policies of Andrew Johnson. Those who say today that excluding such “immensely popular political figures” from the ballot - regardless of their known political beliefs and actions - is “anti-democratic” would have been among the Copperheads (a term for northern Democrats who supported the South) who argued against the adoption not only of Article 3 but the entire 14th Amendment.

Today, Donald Trump and his supporters expressly state their intention to demolish the provisions of that amendment as regards the definition of who is a citizen, among their other planned attacks on the Constitutional rule of law, should they return to office. They are no different from the former Confederate traitors who also wished to continue waging war on the United States.

It has been “interesting” to watch the progression of authoritarianism in the United States over the past 60 years since the “Goldwater Revolution” failed.

We’ve always been told “it can’t happen here,” that there are rules and traditions preventing such a change, that authoritarianism was not even possible in the United States, without some wider cataclysm.

However, the past eight years have shown that if the would-be authoritarian takes on those traditions and guardrails one at a time, his partisans will say that this particular guardrail, this rule, this tradition, must be ignored, because it would be too inconvenient, too “divisive” to enforce it. But of course we need not worry, since the next guardrail can already be seen, and that will stop him.

Don’t worry about his nomination in the primary; he’ll lose the general election.

Don’t worry about his successful election; the party will keep him in check when he takes office.

Don’t worry about the party falling to his dominance; he can always be impeached.

Don’t worry about impeaching him; he can always be beaten in the next election.

Don’t worry about his coup attempt; he can be impeached again.

Don’t worry about the second impeachment; the criminal courts can bring him to justice.

Don’t worry about the criminal cases; there’s always the 14th Amendment.

Don’t worry about him winning; he’ll be blocked from staying in office past this term by the 22nd Amendment.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Trump’s genius was realizing this truth before the rest of us. His lifelong legal strategy of delay and bamboozle is perfect for gumming up the operation of all the defenses the system has built in to constrain him.

The Italians could say of Mussolini, “No one could have really known what he’d do, not for sure.” The Germans could say of Hitler, “No one could have really known what he’d do, not for sure.”

We in the United States cannot say that. Because we know what he’ll do. For sure.

We know what he has done in his first time in office. We have experienced it. When he tells us what he will do now, how he will destroy the Constitution, and the rule of law and destroy the democratic republic that is founded on that Constitution and the rule of law; we know he will do it because we know he has already tried to do it. His supporters promise they will do it.

Maya Angelou once said if someone tells you who they are, you should believe them.

What we are looking at in this year of 2024 here in the United States is the struggle between the idea of democracy and the rule of law, against authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

That struggle is also going on elsewhere. But if it is lost here, it will be lost everywhere.

We’re supposed to let him run on a platform of destroying what we have? We’re supposed to hand over power to him to do that, if he pulls off another Electoral College scam? We’re supposed to just give him the power he needs to do what he has told us he will do? What we know he will do?

We’re supposed to nod our heads and say “Here, you win, we lost, have a good day”?

We’re supposed to just let the fucking New Confederacy walk in and take over????!!

Democracy isn’t a suicide pact.

It’s been said many times, by conservative legal scholars, that “The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact.”

It’s a well-known rule of law that you cannot use the law to destroy the law.

Democracy matters. Freedom of expression matters. The rule of law matters. Values matter. That’s what’s at stake.

Our ancestors already made the decision for us. The rule is NOT that we surrender all because a “rule” says so. That rule has been superseded in this case. The rules of the game have already been changed. We can save the Kobayashi Maru, and damn any six traitors on a compromised, discredited, corrupt court who say otherwise.

For me, I can take Senator Angus King’s words, spoken on January 31, 2024 in debate over supporting the Ukrainian battle for survival, as a lodestar, a guide for action:

“I want to stand on the side of resisting authoritarianism, on the side of democracy, on the side of the values that the country has stood for and that people have been fighting for, for 250 years.”

WE are the ultimate defenders of the Republic.

Donald Trump cannot be allowed back into power, regardless. Ever.

TCinLA

#THE KOBAYASHI MARU #TCinLA #democracy #star trek #rule of law #the new confederacy

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Hamas is a tool of Iran and does not necessarily represent the majority of Palestinians in Gaza. When Iran issues an attack order to Hamas they carry it out and then use ordinary Palestinians as human shields. Naturally the Israelis counterattack and the Palestinians suffer due to the actions of Hamas terrorists.

Iran works closely with Putin and Russia. It’s now believed by many that Trump passed information about Israeli defenses to the Russians who in turn have it to Iran which passed it on to Hamas at joint planning sessions.

We know Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is not always fair and our own meddling over the years has not always been beneficial. But as usual Hamas, with the backing of Iran and Russia, and limited assistance from Hezbollah (Iran’s other client militia) launched this unprovoked massive attack.

Those of us on the left should be aware of the optics of denouncing Israel at this time as Hamas is beheading infants and toddlers ISIS style and taking hostages. Hamas is bringing this suffering on both the Palestinians and the Israelis. Hamas is acting as a proxy of Iran whose goal is to destabilize the region and distract from their benefactor Putin’s debacle in Ukraine. No state in the Middle East supports the Palestinians, they are used as pawns for corrupt, failing, theocracies and dictatorships.

Public sentiment in recent years among progressives has switched to supporting the Palestinians and they are in dire straits in need of assistance no doubt about it. But for those who read the state department briefings and dig deeper this switch was made possible by funding from Iran which has been waging a propaganda blitz, usually through public radio, in liberal communities and college towns. The Iranians and duplications Saudis have been spending millions to turn American public sentiment against Israel for their own geopolitical goals and it has been working. This can be described as asymmetrical warfare, turning the tide through disinformation and other non-combat means. We can’t go gung-ho against everything the right supports because sometimes we’ll just be shooting ourselves in the foot.

BLM should reconsider their dubious ties to the Palestinians because frankly it has nothing to do with their own goal or the goals of the rest of the left-leaning resistance against the Republikkkan fascists. Taking sides in Arab-Israeli conflicts is a lose/lose scenario for American progressive reformers. We are on the verge of losing our own democracy and sadly should focus on that until the Trumpian GQP threat has ended. The professionals at the state department will handle the Middle East. It may sound callous or insensitive but if we lose here it’s game over and we won’t even be able to help ourselves let alone others.

I’ve always seen what’s going on at home as a war for the future of this country. The Republikkkans have been waging it for decades against us and even today most of us still aren’t aware of it let alone its scope. I would never advocate abandoning anyone but we have to be cognizant of our end game. As stated we won’t be able to help,ourselves or anyone else if the GQP chaos caucus is calling the shots. The Middle East has been in turmoil for thousands of years and 99% of the public has only the faintest grasp of what’s going on. Don’t let the media or propagandists distract or divide you. We have to make winning on the home front our priority. Ordinarily I wouldn’t type this but we are living through an unprecedented attack on our way of life and the very survival of many of our brethren here at home is on the table.

#Israel #hamas #republican assholes #middle east conflict #Gaza #terrorism #war crimes

[tomorrowusa]

Having a president who isn’t exciting is underrated. The president is the chief executive of the United States; essentially that’s like a federal CEO. A dull Tim Cook has done far more for Apple than an exciting Elon Musk has done for Twitter.

Gerald Ford, though younger, was probably the closest GOP equivalent of Joe Biden. Like Biden, he spent decades on Capitol Hill before becoming VP and then president. Ford was the last truly moderate Republican president. Except for his pardon of Richard Nixon, his record doesn’t look terrible.

Ford appointed one of the best SCOTUS justices of the late 20th century – John Paul Stevens.

The inflation rate the year he took office (1974) was 11.03%. In 1976, Ford’s last full year in office, it was down to 5.75%.

Under Ford, the US negotiated and signed the Helsinki Accords which recognized the integrity of international boundaries in Europe. This treaty was the basis for peace between countries* in Europe for 47 years – until it was violated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Like Ford, Biden restored calm and decorum to the presidency after succeeding an impeached wacko president. 

Joe Biden may personally be even less flashy than Gerald Ford. But he has brought the country back into scientific normalcy on climate change and has put the federal government firmly on the side of LGBTQ rights and reproductive freedom. And even before Russia’s illegal invasion, he placed the United States on the side of supporting the independence and freedom of pro-democracy Ukraine.

Dull but competent trumps exciting but catastrophic.

This is from a piece by Dylan Matthews published at Vox in March prior to Biden’s announcement.

Joe Biden is pretty good at being president. He should run again.

Biden deserves a lot of credit for that state of affairs — more than the credit or blame that presidents usually deserve for the state of the economy.

Learning from the overly tepid fiscal stimulus enacted by the Obama administration in response to the 2007-2009 recession, at the start of his term Biden ushered through a massive $1.9 trillion package, the American Rescue Plan, that kept progress on jobs and wages from stalling out as Trump-era measures faded.

The package overshot significantly; he made the opposite mistake that Obama made in 2009. But his was the better direction in which to err: the inflation that resulted, while painful, was less painful than the many years of excess unemployment and depressed demand that resulted after 2009. In the meantime, the measure plunged child poverty to a record low by expanding the child tax credit.

Much has been made of the ways in which moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) frustrated Biden’s grander ambitions. It’s certainly true that Sinema blocked his plans to tax high earners more heavily, and Manchin kept the child tax credit improvements from being made permanent.

But looking at what actually did pass during Biden’s first two years, one gets a different picture. Biden signed the largest investment in R&D and deployment of clean energy in US history into law; the head of the International Energy Agency termed it the world’s most important climate action since the Paris accords.

Separately, Biden signed into law hundreds of billions in new science funding, passed on a bipartisan basis as part of an effort to strengthen semiconductor manufacturing. After the Trump administration’s famous failure to pass an infrastructure bill, Biden did it.

Looking abroad, the administration’s handling of the Ukraine war has been outstanding. Choosing to release intelligence showing Russia’s invasion plans in the weeks leading up to the attack was a masterstroke, denying Russian President Vladimir Putin any ability to claim that Ukraine provoked him. Biden has kept his G7 counterparts aligned in imposing sanctions on Russia, denying it oil revenue, and supplying weapons to Ukraine.

The result is a war that is already vastly more costly than Putin bargained for, without US or NATO troops being dragged into the conflict, and backdoor progress on something US presidents had been fruitlessly pursuing for years: increased European military spending.

[ ... ]

Taking the good with the bad, Biden looks like a fairly successful president, overseeing an unusually good economy without US troops in danger. That’s not normally someone you want stepping aside.

As for age, I don’t care if Biden is 80 or 180. His mind is working fine and he has successfully coped with a stutter since childhood. Having thrived despite a disability is a sign of strength rather than weakness.

There have been a number of leaders who have done just fine in old age.

Konrad Adenauer became chancellor of (then) West Germany at age 73 and remained in that position until age 87. Adenauer was one of the founders of the EU. Dr. Mahathir Mohamad stepped down as prime minister of Malaysia in 2003 at age 78; BUT he later came out of retirement and served again as prime minister from 2018 to 2020 when he left office at age 94. Queen Elizabeth II was carrying out her constitutional duties to the very end. Just two days before her death at age 96 she met with Liz Truss to formally appoint her as prime minister.

People in their 80s and 90s may be a bit slower, but that makes them less impulsive too. Does being a sprightly 45 years old automatically make Ron DeSantis somebody we’d trust with his finger on the nuclear button?

________________________________ * The Balkan Wars of the 1990s were primarily internal.

#joe biden #biden administration #re-elect biden #unexciting is a virtue #lgbtq rights #reproductive freedom #gerald ford #konrad adenauer #mahathir mohamad #elizabeth ii #ageism #election 2024 #steve greenberg

[klbmsw]

[samueldays]

You know that joke about the Jew who enjoys reading Nazi newspapers because they're talking up the power and influence of the Jews?

Well,

A shadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024.

Chunks of the article gives me a similar feeling of "Yeah, I hope/wish that were true". Trump better organised? Trump can find loyal personnel? Sounds good!

Because maga Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair. But despair is not a plan. It is past time to impose order on anxiety.

You'd have to be a complete idiot to think Trump would be unbound in a second term, and the Economist writers aren't complete idiots, so I must conclude this is hyperbole verging on outright lies, which I could get in almost any internet comment section.

The greatest threat Mr Trump poses is to his own country. Having won back power because of his election-denial in 2020, he would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation. In pursuing his enemies, Mr Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice is part of the executive branch and obliged to answer to the President. If it stands in his way, he is right to make war on it, and it should be punished for treason. The "norms" implied here appear to be norms in favor of the Deep State doing whatever it likes and disregarding the President.

Two nations in one country: the Harvard and the Amerikaner. Read Moldbug, etc.

Yet a Trump victory next year would also have a profound effect abroad. China and its friends would rejoice over the evidence that American democracy is dysfunctional.

No more dysfunctional than re-electing Figurehead Joe.

If Mr Trump trampled due process and civil rights in the United States, his diplomats could not proclaim them abroad.

Unfriendly reminder that Trump issued a "no racial scapegoating" executive order and Biden revoked it so he could engage in racial scapegoating, racial privilege and racial quotas.

US civil rights law as currently executed by Democrats is an evil system which tramples on other rights like freedom of speech, freedom of association, and presumption of innocence. Saying "civil rights" in contemporary law is a hefty motte-and-bailey term.

#all #journalism delenda est

[mightyflamethrower]

When faced with the possible return of President Donald Trump, the current agenda of the Democratic Party is summed up simply as “We had to destroy democracy to save it.”

The effort shares a common theme: any means necessary are justified to prevent the people from choosing their own president, given the fear that a majority might vote to elect Donald Trump.

Sometimes the anti-democratic paranoia has been outsourced to state and local officials and prosecutors to erase Trump from the primary and likely general election ballots as well.

One unelected official in Maine, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, is a Democrat, an official never elected by the people, and a non-lawyer rendering a legal edict. Yet she has judged Trump guilty of “insurrection.”

And presto, she erased his name from the state’s ballot.

Yet Trump was never charged, much less convicted, of “insurrection.”

The statute Bellows cites is a post-Civil War clause of the 14th Amendment. It was passed over a century and a half ago. It was never intended to be used in an election year by an opposition party to disbar a rival presidential candidate.

In the earlier case of Colorado, the all-Democrat Supreme Court, in a 4-3 vote, took Trump off the ballot.

In sum, just five officials in two states have taken away the rights of some 7 million Americans to vote for the president of their choice.

Note that Trump continues to lead incumbent Joe Biden in the polls.

Sometimes, indictments are preferred to prevent Americans from voting for or against Trump.

Currently, four leftist prosecutors—three state and one federal—have indicted Trump.

They are petitioning courts to accelerate the usually lethargic legal process to ensure Trump is tied up in Atlanta, Miami, New York, and Washington, D.C., courtrooms nonstop during the 2024 election cycle.

Their aim is to keep Trump from campaigning, as he faces four left-wing prosecutors, four liberal judges, and four or five overwhelmingly Democratic jury pools.

Yet all the indictments are increasingly clouded in controversy, if not outright scandal.

Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis campaigned on promises to get Trump. She now faces allegations that she outsourced the prosecution to an unqualified personal injury lawyer—her current stealth boyfriend who was paid handsomely by Willis’s office and traveled on pricey junkets with her.

New York partisan attorney general Letitia James likewise sought office on promises to destroy Trump.

She preposterously claims Trump overvalued his real estate collateral to a bank. Yet it eagerly made the loan, profited from it, and had no complaints given that Trump paid off the principle and interest as required.

Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg is even more desperate. He is now prosecuting Trump for campaign finance violations from nearly a decade ago, claiming a nondisclosure agreement with a purported sexual liaison somehow counts as a campaign violation.

Federal special prosecutor Jack Smith claims Trump should be convicted of improperly removing classified documents after leaving office. In the past, such disagreements over presidential papers were resolved bureaucratically.

Joe Biden, for example, improperly took out classified files after leaving the Senate and vice presidency and stored them in unsecure locations for over a decade.

All of these prosecutors are unapologetic anti-Trump progressives.

Some have communicated with the White House legal eagles, even though Joe Biden is likely to face Trump in the November election.

Some prosecutors are themselves facing controversies, if not scandals. Some wish to synchronize their drawn-out investigations and indictments to hinder the Trump reelection effort.

At other times, the effort to neuter Trump is waged by his rival Biden himself.

He has hammered Trump as an insurrectionist and guilty of a number of egregious crimes against democracy—even as Biden’s own Attorney General has appointed a special counsel to try Trump on just those federal charges concerning the January 6 demonstrations, a dead horse that Biden periodically still beats to death to scare voters.

Biden periodically smears half of America who supported or voted for Trump as “ultra-Maga” extremists and “semi-fascists” who would destroy democracy.

Yet the more Biden and the Left weaponize the judicial system to prevent Trump from running, and the more Biden screams and yells that Trump supporters are anti-American and anti-democratic, the more Trump soars in the polls while Biden sinks.

The left privately knows that its historically unprecedented strangulation of democracy is increasing Trump’s popularity. But like an addict, it cannot quit its Trump fix.

In sum, the Left is creating historic, anti-democratic precedents that will someday boomerang on Democrats should Republicans win the November election and follow the new Democrat model of extra-legal politics.

Democrats are tearing apart the country in a manner not seen since the Civil War era—apparently convinced democracy cannot be trusted and so itself must be sacrificed as the price of destroying Donald Trump.

#Trump #election 2024

[theculturedmarxist]

This original report was produced by Important Context and the OptOut Media Foundation.

Last Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported roughly 3,900 American deaths from COVID-19 in the week ending on Jan. 11—more than died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The number, which represented a 44% increase from the previous week and added to a national pandemic death toll already well above one million, hardly made the news. Such was the case in November when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report on long COVID revealing that as many as 23 million Americans were suffering post-viral symptoms.

The country’s media, and to a large extent, policymakers, have moved on from the ongoing crisis—a reality that is, at least in part, a testament to the work of one man: Jeffrey Tucker, the founder of the Brownstone Institute, a shadowy new nonprofit dedicated to waging war on public health measures.

With his receding white hair, comically small circular glasses, and signature bowtie, Tucker looks positively academic. He can almost sound the part too. Tucker once told an interviewer from libertarian think tank the John Locke Foundation that he’d arrived at the name for his institute by looking to history. Brownstone, he explained, was a common building block in the 1800s before the advent of steel. He’d felt it an apt metaphor for the group’s purpose.

“I think going back to that time at the birth of the modern is really important now,” Tucker said. “We need to rediscover the principles of the founding, the principles of the enlightenment, get optimistic about the use of science within the framework of integrity, and deal with crises like pandemics within the framework of freedom and human rights. Those are all things that we discovered in the 19th century that we’ve somehow forgotten in the 21st century.” 

Tucker has long had one foot in the distant past. In 2016, he advocated for the return of child labor. A report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) from 2000 noted that he had written for the white supremacist, neo-Confederate League of the South and was listed on the organization’s website as a founding member. Tucker denied his membership. In the 1980s, he was an assistant to Lew Rockwell, a fellow League of the South founding member and then editor of former Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s infamous racist and homophobic newsletter—Tucker himself is suspected of contributing writing but has declined to comment about it. He and Rockwell worked together for years at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which has “strong neo-Confederate principles,” according to the SPLC, and which Rockwell founded with financial backing from Paul. 

With his Brownstone Institute, a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Tucker has sought to turn the clock back on public health—and perhaps on child labor laws as well. The organization has become a prolific and prominent source of misinformation related to the COVID pandemic, including vaccine misinformation, with connections to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump.

Just last month, Mother Jones reported that a majority of the members of DeSantis’ new “Public Health Integrity Committee,” which he established to scrutinize federal public health recommendations, had ties to Brownstone. That same month, DeSantis’ surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, spoke at a conference the group hosted.

Despite Brownstone’s prevalence, however, funding for the institute remains shrouded in secrecy thanks to America’s lax disclosure rules. But, new federal tax filings obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and provided to Important Context and the OptOut Media Foundation reveal that the organization has little popular support. Instead, it is bankrolled mostly by large donations of up to $600,000.

‘An Elite Protected Class’

Tucker, who has called for “reparations for the business victims of lockdowns,” fancies himself a populist these days, standing up for the little guy against out-of-touch “elites” imposing unnecessary public health measures that help the powerful at their expense.

“I know of no exceptions: every person I've heard claim that lockdowns are completely normal and much needed is a member of an elite protected class,” Tucker tweeted in November 2020.

But the man behind the Brownstone Institute has made his career in the world of well-financed, big business-aligned libertarian nonprofits. Tucker is a veteran of groups in the political orbit of right-wing billionaire industrialist Charles Koch. As recently as 2017, he worked as a director for the Foundation for Economic Education, which has gotten Koch support for years, including $205,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2021. DonorsTrust, a money conduit that Koch network donors and other conservatives use, also gave the foundation $295,000 that year. The fund is the biggest known donor to white nationalist groups, the Center for Media and Democracy found.

From 2017-21, Tucker worked as the editorial director and vice president of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian think tank that has also received funding from the Charles Koch Foundation, including a nominal amount in 2021. The group also received $55,000 that year from DonorsTrust. 

Tucker is currently an adjunct scholar at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which received $500,000 in 2021 from Stand Together Fellowships (formerly the Charles Koch Institute), $150,000 from the Koch-funded State Policy Network (SPN), and another $150,000 from DonorsTrust. He is a research fellow at the free market think tank Acton Institute. An associate member of SPN, Acton received $250,000 from Stand Together in 2021 and over $1.4 million from DonorsTrust in 2021. Tucker is also listed as a policy adviser to the Heartland Institute, a free market, climate science-denying think tank and SPN affiliate that has received money from Koch in the past. In 2021, Heartland received $26,000 from DonorsTrust. 

Throughout the pandemic, business-aligned groups and the political right have been pushing back against public health measures. Koch-backed organizations have been in the fight since March 2020, messaging against business closures and later, school closures and masking in an effort to minimize economic disruption. The Brownstone Institute arose out of those efforts; specifically, an October 2020 conference Tucker helped organize while at AIER.

Held at AIER’s headquarters in Great Barrington, Mass., the conference spawned an influential open letter—the “Great Barrington Declaration”—calling on governments and scientists to reject broad public health measures in favor of pursuing herd immunity through mass infection and “focused protection” only of the vulnerable. Similar ideas had been proposed in a reopening plan from the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation months earlier.

The declaration and its authors, three scientists from prestigious universities—Drs. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and the Koch-funded Hoover Institution, Martin Kulldorff (then) of Harvard, and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford–were promoted by the political right, including the Trump White House, DeSantis, and Koch-tied groups, to undermine scientific consensus around public health measures.

The mainstream scientific community rejected the declaration. After the document was published, 14 major public health organizations, including the American Public Health Association, denounced it in an open letter, while World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it “unethical.” But the damage was done. The document had provided an academic veneer to a laissez-faire economic agenda: reopening businesses, without protections for workers, despite the circulating virus.

The declaration signaled that public health was the new front in the war over the size and scale of government. 

Tucker left his role at AIER to commit full-time to that war. Brownstone, which he founded in May 2021, would be his primary weapon. Initially billed as the “spiritual child of the Great Barrington Declaration,” the group brought on Bhattacharya and Kulldorff as senior scholars and Gupta as a contributor.

The Brownstone founder’s efforts were welcomed by Koch-tied organizations. For example, Tucker was interviewed in October 2021 about his new institute by the John Locke Foundation, which got $150,000 that year from SPN. A year later, Hillsdale College—which gave Bhattacharya and Kulldorff teaching fellowships—brought Tucker in as a lecturer on the economic consequences of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. In 2021, Hillsdale received $55,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation, $30,000 from DonorsTrust, and $17,000 from Donors Capital Fund, another funding conduit of the Koch network.

Tucker denies that Koch has played a significant role in supporting the policy agenda articulated in the Great Barrington Declaration and blasted out by Brownstone.

“That’s a hell of a conspiracy theory…Koch orgs have been tragically acquiescent toward lockdowns,” Tucker wrote in October 2020 in response to a tweet pointing out the link between Koch and AIER.

Misinformation Hub

Since its inception, Brownstone has been churning out articles downplaying the seriousness of COVID to portray government mitigation measures—“lockdowns,” masking, travel restrictions, and mandates—as overreach at the expense of the common people. The pieces are generally misleading, rife with misinformation and faulty analysis, and promote a narrative that the institute and its writers are underdog truth-tellers against a powerful establishment.

Experts Important Context spoke to were highly critical of Brownstone. Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves called the organization “a collection of conspiracy theorists, disgraced scientists, radical libertarians, [and] anti-vaxxers, all of whom think they’re half-Galileo, half-Spartacus when it comes to their views on COVID-19 and public health more generally.”

“Despite the fact that their work is incoherent, unmoored from any real scientific evidence, they maintain that it’s a vast conspiracy that has kept them from being heard, even as many leading figures were the darling of the Trump Administration and current politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,” he continued. “We’re in tin-foil hat territory.”

Epidemiologist Eleanor Murray, an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, said she hadn’t been paying attention to Brownstone. 

“The initial Great Barrington Declaration was clearly not a scientific document,” Murray said. “I teach and do research and advise students and consult with health departments; I don’t have time for them.”

Brownstone articles have suggested that school closures could be linked to school shootings like the May 2022 attack on Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas; that New York’s spring 2020 COVID wave, which saw New York City hospitals forced to rely on freezer trucks to store human remains, wasn’t actually serious; that ”the children” have been poisoned by exposure to masks, tests, disinfectants, and hand sanitizer.

Unsurprisingly, Brownstone has been a hub for vaccine-related misinformation as well, with multiple pieces questioning the safety and efficacy of the mRNA COVID vaccines. The institute has even featured writing from notorious anti-vaxxer Dr. Robert Malone, who falsely claims to have invented mRNA vaccines.

In September, a Brownstone article declared, “The vaccine narrative is as leaky as the vaccines” and claimed that “the ‘abundance of data’ demonstrates that vaccines do not prevent infection, transmission, hospitalization and deaths for the under-60s.” Earlier this month, the group published a piece titled, “Did National Security Imperatives Compromise COVID-19 Vaccine Safety?”

“We now know [the vaccines] do not prevent infection nor transmission and have not prevented a continuing high incidence of COVID-19,” it falsely stated. “Furthermore they are associated with an unprecedented incidence of serious adverse events and deaths compared to any other drugs in the history of the pharmaceutical industry.”

To substantiate the claim of “unprecedented incidence of serious adverse events and death,” the authors relied on VAERS data, which numerous fact-checkers have noted is unreliable. 

The COVID vaccines have saved millions of lives. While breakthrough infections are not rare, studies have found that vaccination reduces transmission. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend the jabs, including the bivalent dose, for everyone ages six months and older. Major medical groups like the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Academy of Pediatrics backed the recommendation.

As Mother Jones noted, Brownstone has promoted quack COVID cures like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and celebrated anti-vaccine demonstrations. The group has tacitly encouraged radicalism from its supporters. Tucker himself authored an article that ran with an image of a guillotine about holding public health officials and policymakers “accountable” for trying to save lives from a deadly, airborne pathogen. Tucker suggested that “consequences” would “set a fabulous precedent for the future.”

Brownstone fellow Paul Alexander, a former Trump administration HHS science adviser who famously advocated for mass infection, published an error-ridden, semi-coherent tirade on his blog calling for violent retribution against public health officials who sought to limit the spread of COVID. 

“You beasts, you Fauci and Birx and Walensky and Hotez and Francis Collins and Howard Njoo and Tam, all of you, you know you had zero science to back up your lockdown lunacy, but you were power-drunk and IMO malfeasant, you illogical, irrational, absurd, inept and incompetent malfeasant untermensche, you beelzebubs,” Alexander raved. 

“This must be Nuremberg 2.0, you must swing from gallows for what you did!” he concluded.

Nine Donations

Brownstone’s 2021 IRS Form 990 belies its populist appeals. Based on the group’s tax filings, a handful of large donations accounted for more than 83% of its total revenue. 

Brownstone brought in nearly $1.2 million in 2021 in contributions and grants, with $1 million, or 85%, coming from just nine donations ranging from $25,000 to $600,000. Donation amounts for the remaining $179,000 were not disclosed.

Details surrounding the large contributions remain a mystery. Important Context/OptOut Media Foundation was unable to identify any grants to the institute from other tax-exempt organizations. It is possible that more information will be revealed over the summer when the tax filings of donor-advised fund managers—charities that manage individual donation accounts for their clients—come due. It is also possible that individual donors or corporations gave directly, meaning their identities will likely remain secret, barring transparency from Brownstone.

The group notably pledges on its website, “We do not and will not share donor names.” Tucker did not respond to our request for basic details about Brownstone’s funding.

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