The #sleeperagents have been activated and Comrade Trump needs 32.5 Billion Roubles ($354.8 USD) NOW to buy some more time for the comrades in the SCOTUS
The US #SupremeCourt said it will rule on Trump’s bid for immunity from criminal prosecution, taking up a historic case that will determine whether Trump will stand #trial for 2020 #ElectionInterference.
Pardon sounds of my old inherited-from-my-grandmother kitchenaid mixer. I’m baking scones for my very decent neighbors who electively used their snow blower to clear my driveway - I do not know their political affiliation, IRL I hope we can relate to one another w/o the polar political hatred.
@TucsonSentinel Sen Blumenthal's statement on MSNBC abt McConnell's toxic legacy was spot on. Mitch was #DarkMoney mentor to #kyrstensinema whose bond to him in 2021-22 is her own malignant legacy.
#MitchMcConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history who maintained his #power in the face of dramatic convulsions in the #RepublicanParty for ~2 decades, will step down from that position in Nov.
McConnell, who turned 82 last week, was set to announce his decision Wed in the well of the Senate….
Lately the Canadian media has been rehashing the incident last year in Parliament when Zelensky was here, but I see absolutely no mention of this...
Three Conservative MPs who met with far-right German politician will stay in caucus
Anderson , a member of European Parliament ..... which has been under surveillance as a suspected extremist group in Germany and is accused of downplaying Nazi crimes, opposing immigration and pushing anti-Muslim ideology.
IDK about #CAN, but the #DarkMoney trails to #US politicians and the #NRA are there. I think there is even a book by an investigative journalist.
TBH, if I were #Putler, I'd have done the same! Subverting the enemy is smart. #SunTzu spelled it out millennia ago; all strategies have been implemented for decades; #HybridWarfare is ON:
Videos show closed-door sessions of leading conservative activists:
‘Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor’
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is a little-known group that has served for decades as a hub for a nationwide network of conservative activists and the donors who support them.
Members include Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Leonard Leo, an outside adviser to President Trump who has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars from undisclosed donors to support conservative causes and the nominations of conservative federal judges. Videos provided to The Post — covering dozens of hours of CNP meetings over three days in February 2020 and three in August 2020 — offer an inside view of participants’ obsessions and fears at a pivotal moment in the conservative movement.
The videos, recorded by CNP to share with its members, show influential activists discussing election tactics, amplifying conspiracy theories and describing much of America in dark and apocalyptic terms
How Leonard Leo Weaponized the Courts Against Democracy | The Nation
The Federalist Society, formed in 1982, was the perfect vehicle for forging a right-wing legal cadre and funneling it into the legal system.
Leonard Leo joined the Federalist Society in 1986, forming a chapter of the group at Cornell where he was studying law.
As he rose in the ranks, Leo was an important player in the political campaigns to win Senate approval for Supreme Court justices such as Clarence #Thomas, John #Roberts, and Samuel #Alito.
During the Bush administration, when the Department of Justice wanted to “launder and distribute” a white paper in support of a contentious nominee, they turned to Leo.
Viet Dinh, a Department of Justice official who was also a prominent member of the Federalist Society, e-mailed, ”Tell len leo [sic] I need this distributed asap.”
The Federalist Society was thus organically tied to the Republican Party:
When nominees ran into headwinds, Leo would lead the charge with media campaigns to rally support.
By 2016, the role of the Federalist Society as the essential gatekeeper of Republican judicial nominees was recognized by presidential candidate #Trump, who promised the right-wing base, “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society.”
The network Leo brought together comprises three cords:
♦️the GOP (which needed conservative judges),
♦️the legal profession (where young lawyers were hungry for a pathway to judges),
♦️and plutocratic donors (eager for judges that supported plutocracy and right-wing politics).
💰Money was a crucial component of this network.
George Conway, a former Republican who had been active in the Federalist Society, told ProPublica,
“There was always a concern that Scalia or Thomas would say, ‘Fuck it,’ and quit the job and go make way more money at Jones Day [a big law firm] or somewhere else.
Part of what Leonard does is he tries to keep them happy so they stay on the job.”
This explains the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by right-wing judges as they vacation and cavort with robber barons such as Harlan #Crow and Paul #Singer.
The judges get to enjoy the lifestyle of the 1 percent despite earning a government salary.
While the Supreme Court is the big prize, the conservative legal movement that Leo forged worked to reshape lower courts as well as state courts, helping to promote not just right-wing judges but also district attorneys.
Sometimes the lobbying was demagogic. Politico reports,
Leo became interested in Wisconsin in 2008.
An incumbent state Supreme Court justice, Louis #Butler, had angered the state’s largest business group with his ruling in a lead paint case.
The ensuing ad campaign was contentious and expensive, featuring commercials showing Butler, who is Black, next to the picture of a sex offender who was also Black.
The #racist demagoguery of that judicial race is of a piece with the way Republican jurists have so often worked to curtail voting rights.
The whole claim that #originalism was meant to enhance democracy has been revealed as a fraud.
The same #antidemocratic tendency can be seen in the way the court is working to limit president Biden’s agenda, as in the recent decision in
👉Biden v. Nebraska overturning student debt relief—a measure that was in the Democratic Party platform when Biden won the election.
The goal was to create an ideologically committed faction that could dominate the courts and advance its agenda without democratic check.
A nonprofit that employs numerous Trump administration officials and is laying the groundwork for the former president’s potential second term raised more than 💰 $23 million 💰 last year
– nearly a third of which came from 🔸a single anonymous donor, 🔸previously unreported tax documents show.
The documents show that 🔸America First Policy Institute 🔸– a think tank that’s been described as a “White House-in-waiting” and has released a spate of conservative policy proposals
– burned through most of the funds it raised, spending $22 million over the course of the year.
That included the rental of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for a fundraising gala that featured a keynote speech by Trump himself. #afpi#darkmoney#trump @darkmoney
The FEC is the primary agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing federal campaign finance law.
It is also one of the few federal agencies with evenly divided leadership:
no more than three of the FEC’s six commissioners can be from the same political party, and under current law, it takes four votes for the commission to act on any significant matter, including deciding to investigate alleged legal violations.
Over the last decade and a half, sharp partisan divisions among commissioners frequently left the agency paralyzed and unable to issue new regulations, provide advisory opinions to political actors seeking to understand their legal obligations, or meaningfully enforce the law.
Recently, the commission has bucked this trend to make some bipartisan progress on a few emerging issues.
Unfortunately, there almost certainly aren’t sufficient votes on the FEC to tackle bigger issues that are part of the ongoing legacy of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which has been the subject of previous rulemaking proposals.
And the commission now faces a new test in responding to the emergence of artificial intelligence, which has the potential to revolutionize political campaigns.
It already has a new rulemaking petition on this subject before it.
Of greatest immediate concern, however, is that even the imperfect rules the FEC does have on the books are seldom enforced.
Take the example of coordination between candidates and super PACs.
Due to Citizens United, outside groups like super PACs may raise and spend unlimited money on elections so long as they act independently from candidates or political parties.
But in the years since that decision, groups have sprung up that work hand-in-glove with political candidates to the point where they are essentially shadow campaigns, resulting in a steady stream of complaints filed with the FEC.
The agency almost never pursues these allegations. In the almost 14 years since Citizens United, it has only initiated a handful of investigations into potential violations of the coordination ban, none of which resulted in any fines.
The same goes for dark money from undisclosed sources, which totaled more than $1 billion in the 2020 election cycle and $615 million in the 2022 midterms.
The proliferation of dark money is partly a function of gaps in the law — including regulatory gaps the commission could address.
But it also results from the fact that many groups that should be required to register as PACs (which have to disclose their donors) simply do not do so.
This, too, has resulted in a stream of complaints on which the commission seldom acts.
The FEC’s efforts to prevent foreign spending in U.S. elections are lacking as well.
While political contributions by foreign actors are banned, the FEC relies on campaigns and PACs to self-certify that they confirmed the U.S. citizenship of donors with foreign addresses.
As the commission’s Office of Inspector General has pointed out, this approach “poses a national security risk and provides insufficient oversight of possible illegal foreign donations.”
In total, the agency has only initiated about a dozen investigations into allegations of foreign spending in the past decade, and when it does occasionally pursue violations, the slow pace and low penalties tend to minimize any deterrence value.
For instance, the FEC recently fined a pro-Trump super PAC $25,000 for soliciting a $2 million donation from a fictitious Chinese businessman in late 2016 — almost six years after the fact, for misconduct during a campaign cycle in which the PAC reported spending more than $23 million.
Overall, the FEC levied about the same dollar amount in penalties last year as it did in 2004, despite overall spending on federal elections having more than tripled.