Trumps Indictment: Historical and Future Implications IV
Should Biden step aside, I'd be stoked to see Whitmer as the VP for Harris...
https://youtu.be/Ifi_Oi350Dk?si=2HEHfcHlWh9i4i_8
https://youtu.be/Ifi_Oi350Dk?si=2HEHfcHlWh9i4i_8
MidnightSonneteer said:Should Biden step aside, I'd be stoked to see Whitmer as the VP for Harris...
https://youtu.be/Ifi_Oi350Dk?si=2HEHfcHlWh9i4i_8
Hahahaha. I'd just be stoked to see her meet those who planned to kidnap her!
https://youtu.be/Ifi_Oi350Dk?si=2HEHfcHlWh9i4i_8
Hahahaha. I'd just be stoked to see her meet those who planned to kidnap her!
July 11, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUL 12, 2024
Yesterday, Raw Story reported that Ivan Raiklin, Trump’s self-declared “Secretary of Retribution” has compiled a “Deep State target list” of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists he considers to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story: “His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.” The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Raiklin said the list was just the beginning. “This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?”
Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has tried to distance himself from the radical extremist blueprint outlined in Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Today, videos surfaced of Trump cheering the project on from the start. At a Heritage Foundation dinner in 2022, Trump, slurring his words, said: “Our country is going to hell…. This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do...when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that’s coming.”
On a right-wing podcast yesterday, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said that Trump’s agenda and Project 2025 have “tremendous” overlap. “There are some quibbles and differences of opinion here and there, which not only is okay, but it's actually good,” Roberts said. “I mean, we're gonna be able to sort those out once the presidential administration declares what their priorities are.” He said that Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the project was “a political tactical decision.” Media Matters uncovered a video in which Project 2025 director Paul Dans said that Trump is “very bought in with this.”
The Heritage Foundation, the key author of Project 2025, is a sponsor of the Republican National Convention.
Today the Heritage Foundation preemptively accused the Biden administration of cheating in the 2024 election and warned that Biden might try to hold the White House “by force.” It said that Biden and his administration could “circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president.”
There is no indication that Biden, who has repeatedly said he will accept the election results, will try to launch a coup against the United States government. In contrast, Trump, who has refused to say he will accept the election result unless he agrees with it, has already done exactly what Heritage is trying to pin on Biden: Trump tried to stay in office against the will of the voters in 2021.
Trump is currently under criminal indictment for that attempt, although the Supreme Court’s eye-popping July 1 decision in Trump v. U.S. declaring that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties” means Trump can challenge those indictments. Indeed, in the wake of that decision, Trump’s lawyers have filed a motion to vacate the jury’s conviction of Trump on 24 felony counts related to the falsification of business records in his attempt to skew the 2016 election, and to dismiss the indictment.
While the U.S. and our allies celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Erin Banco of Politico reported yesterday that Trump advisors have told foreign officials that Trump plans to scale back U.S. cooperation and support for NATO, including reducing the sharing of intelligence with NATO countries.
This seems likely to be related to the news that the U.S. intelligence discovered a series of Russian plots to assassinate executives from European defense companies that are supplying arms to Ukraine. Americans took that intelligence to Germany and foiled a Russian plot to kill the chief executive officer of a German arms manufacturer.
Trump has stayed home playing golf for the past two weeks, but on Tuesday he held a rally at his Doral golf club outside of Miami, where he kept the audience waiting outside in 90-degree heat before he showed up an hour late. His 75-minute speech was, as The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reported, “full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US ‘most of their prisoners’; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.” He also claimed that Biden had quadrupled the price of bacon and said, “We don’t eat bacon any more.”
Trump did not mention his vice presidential pick. For the first time since 1988, it appears the Republicans will go into their convention without knowing who that pick will be.
Luscombe reported that the crowd “appeared mostly subdued,” yawning and playing on their phones.
Today, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Trump is “the only candidate in the race who is patently unfit for office—any office—and an imminent threat to democracy.” “If the [Republicans] had any decency left,” it wrote, they would dump him. Voters, the board said, must see the election as “a referendum on our 248-year democracy, and a choice between a trustworthy public servant who upholds American values and a serial liar who wants to push the country into authoritarianism.”
Almost two weeks after calling for Biden to step out of the 2024 race for the presidency, the editorial board of the New York Times also said that Trump is unfit to lead the United States of America, and urged voters “to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it.”
There was continued good news today about the American economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had collected more than $1 billion in overdue tax bills from millionaires. That crackdown was possible thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded an initiative to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have an income of more than $1 million and owe more than $250,000 to the IRS.
Republicans have repeatedly tried to cut the funding that made this enforcement possible.
Cont below
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUL 12, 2024
Yesterday, Raw Story reported that Ivan Raiklin, Trump’s self-declared “Secretary of Retribution” has compiled a “Deep State target list” of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists he considers to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story: “His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.” The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Raiklin said the list was just the beginning. “This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?”
Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has tried to distance himself from the radical extremist blueprint outlined in Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Today, videos surfaced of Trump cheering the project on from the start. At a Heritage Foundation dinner in 2022, Trump, slurring his words, said: “Our country is going to hell…. This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do...when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that’s coming.”
On a right-wing podcast yesterday, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said that Trump’s agenda and Project 2025 have “tremendous” overlap. “There are some quibbles and differences of opinion here and there, which not only is okay, but it's actually good,” Roberts said. “I mean, we're gonna be able to sort those out once the presidential administration declares what their priorities are.” He said that Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the project was “a political tactical decision.” Media Matters uncovered a video in which Project 2025 director Paul Dans said that Trump is “very bought in with this.”
The Heritage Foundation, the key author of Project 2025, is a sponsor of the Republican National Convention.
Today the Heritage Foundation preemptively accused the Biden administration of cheating in the 2024 election and warned that Biden might try to hold the White House “by force.” It said that Biden and his administration could “circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president.”
There is no indication that Biden, who has repeatedly said he will accept the election results, will try to launch a coup against the United States government. In contrast, Trump, who has refused to say he will accept the election result unless he agrees with it, has already done exactly what Heritage is trying to pin on Biden: Trump tried to stay in office against the will of the voters in 2021.
Trump is currently under criminal indictment for that attempt, although the Supreme Court’s eye-popping July 1 decision in Trump v. U.S. declaring that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties” means Trump can challenge those indictments. Indeed, in the wake of that decision, Trump’s lawyers have filed a motion to vacate the jury’s conviction of Trump on 24 felony counts related to the falsification of business records in his attempt to skew the 2016 election, and to dismiss the indictment.
While the U.S. and our allies celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Erin Banco of Politico reported yesterday that Trump advisors have told foreign officials that Trump plans to scale back U.S. cooperation and support for NATO, including reducing the sharing of intelligence with NATO countries.
This seems likely to be related to the news that the U.S. intelligence discovered a series of Russian plots to assassinate executives from European defense companies that are supplying arms to Ukraine. Americans took that intelligence to Germany and foiled a Russian plot to kill the chief executive officer of a German arms manufacturer.
Trump has stayed home playing golf for the past two weeks, but on Tuesday he held a rally at his Doral golf club outside of Miami, where he kept the audience waiting outside in 90-degree heat before he showed up an hour late. His 75-minute speech was, as The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reported, “full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US ‘most of their prisoners’; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.” He also claimed that Biden had quadrupled the price of bacon and said, “We don’t eat bacon any more.”
Trump did not mention his vice presidential pick. For the first time since 1988, it appears the Republicans will go into their convention without knowing who that pick will be.
Luscombe reported that the crowd “appeared mostly subdued,” yawning and playing on their phones.
Today, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Trump is “the only candidate in the race who is patently unfit for office—any office—and an imminent threat to democracy.” “If the [Republicans] had any decency left,” it wrote, they would dump him. Voters, the board said, must see the election as “a referendum on our 248-year democracy, and a choice between a trustworthy public servant who upholds American values and a serial liar who wants to push the country into authoritarianism.”
Almost two weeks after calling for Biden to step out of the 2024 race for the presidency, the editorial board of the New York Times also said that Trump is unfit to lead the United States of America, and urged voters “to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it.”
There was continued good news today about the American economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had collected more than $1 billion in overdue tax bills from millionaires. That crackdown was possible thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded an initiative to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have an income of more than $1 million and owe more than $250,000 to the IRS.
Republicans have repeatedly tried to cut the funding that made this enforcement possible.
Cont below
Cont from above
Today’s inflation report for June showed that inflation continues to cool, falling in June for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It declined in June by –0.1%, as gas and electricity prices dropped and as rent had its smallest monthly increase since August 2021. Statistics also show that workers’ wages continue to grow more quickly than prices.
Yesterday, the AFL-CIO executive council voted unanimously to reaffirm its support for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying: “Unions have never wavered in our support of them because they’ve never wavered in their commitment to working people.” The Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers Union quoted that statement and added: “BAC is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters across the labor movement in supporting the Biden-Harris re-election campaign.”
In a press conference this evening, Biden championed the economic boom his policies created for the middle class and reminded attending journalists that “none of you thought that would happen.”
In that press conference, held after he presided over the three-day NATO summit and thus focused on foreign affairs, Biden answered press questions directly and fully, not only on his health but also on foreign affairs. He reiterated the importance of NATO and reminded reporters that he was key to reinforcing the alliance after Trump weakened it, then went on to talk about foreign affairs more broadly. He also noted that “I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other president,” adding: “And by the way I handed in my notes.” This was a reference to the fact that in an unprecedented move, Trump infamously refused to disclose the notes from one of his conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
At the same time that Biden was holding a press conference that focused on NATO and foreign affairs, Trump was meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Putin ally Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. On social media this evening, Trump indicated that he is trying to conduct his own foreign policy, although the Logan Act prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, and reiterated his support for Putin’s call for “peace” in Ukraine. Their plan calls for giving Putin the western regions of Ukraine that were central to his 2016 support for Trump; Trump’s 2016 campaign manager promised Trump would look the other way as Putin absorbed them.
Orbán, who has openly called for Trump’s reelection, posted: “Peace mission 5.0[.] It was an honour to visit President [Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make [peace]. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-11-2024
Today’s inflation report for June showed that inflation continues to cool, falling in June for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It declined in June by –0.1%, as gas and electricity prices dropped and as rent had its smallest monthly increase since August 2021. Statistics also show that workers’ wages continue to grow more quickly than prices.
Yesterday, the AFL-CIO executive council voted unanimously to reaffirm its support for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying: “Unions have never wavered in our support of them because they’ve never wavered in their commitment to working people.” The Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers Union quoted that statement and added: “BAC is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters across the labor movement in supporting the Biden-Harris re-election campaign.”
In a press conference this evening, Biden championed the economic boom his policies created for the middle class and reminded attending journalists that “none of you thought that would happen.”
In that press conference, held after he presided over the three-day NATO summit and thus focused on foreign affairs, Biden answered press questions directly and fully, not only on his health but also on foreign affairs. He reiterated the importance of NATO and reminded reporters that he was key to reinforcing the alliance after Trump weakened it, then went on to talk about foreign affairs more broadly. He also noted that “I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other president,” adding: “And by the way I handed in my notes.” This was a reference to the fact that in an unprecedented move, Trump infamously refused to disclose the notes from one of his conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
At the same time that Biden was holding a press conference that focused on NATO and foreign affairs, Trump was meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Putin ally Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. On social media this evening, Trump indicated that he is trying to conduct his own foreign policy, although the Logan Act prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, and reiterated his support for Putin’s call for “peace” in Ukraine. Their plan calls for giving Putin the western regions of Ukraine that were central to his 2016 support for Trump; Trump’s 2016 campaign manager promised Trump would look the other way as Putin absorbed them.
Orbán, who has openly called for Trump’s reelection, posted: “Peace mission 5.0[.] It was an honour to visit President [Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make [peace]. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-11-2024
July 12, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUL 13, 2024
Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI) said yesterday that if Trump wins reelection, the U.S. should work its way back to 1960, before “the angry feminist movement…took the purpose out of the man’s life.” Grothman said that President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War on Poverty was actually a “war on marriage,” in a communist attempt to hand control of children over to the government.
Grothman was waxing nostalgic for a fantasy past when laws and society discriminated against women, who could not get credit cards in their own name until 1974—meaning that, among other things, they could not build credit scores to borrow money on their own—and who were forced into dependence on men. The 1960 date Grothman chose was notable in another way, too: it was before the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act with which Congress tried to make the racial equality promised in the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment and the voting rights promised in the 1870 Fifteenth Amendment become real.
At stake in Grothman’s erasure of the last sixty years is the equality of women and minorities to the white men who previously exercised virtually complete control of American society. That equality translates into a struggle over the nature of the American government. Since the 1870s, during the reconstruction of the American government after the Civil War, white reactionaries insisted that opening the vote to anyone but white men would result in socialism.
Their argument was that poor voters—by which they meant Black men—would elect leaders who would promise them roads and schools and hospitals, and so on. Those public benefits could be paid for only with tax levies, and since white men held most of the property in the country in those days, they insisted such benefits amounted to a redistribution of wealth from hardworking white men to undeserving Black Americans, even though poor white people would benefit from those public works as much as or more than Black people did.
This argument resurfaced after World War II as an argument against Black and Brown voting and, in the 1970s, against the electoral power of “women’s libbers,” that is, women who called for the federal government to protect the rights of women equally to those of men. Beginning in 1980, when Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan called for rolling back the government regulations and social safety net that underpinned society, a gap appeared in voting behavior. Women, especially Black women, tended to back the Democrats, while men moved toward Republican candidates. Increasingly, Republican leaders used racist and sexist tropes to undermine the active government whose business regulations they hated.
For the radical extremists who have taken over the Republican Party, getting rid of the modern government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights is now gospel as they try to replace it with Christian nationalism. But that active government remains popular.
That popularity was reflected today as Republicans continued to take credit for laws passed by Democrats to maintain or expand an active government. In Tennessee, Republican Governor Bill Lee boasted that the state had “secured historic funding to modernize Memphis infrastructure with the single-largest transportation investment in state history.” [/i]All the Republicans in the Tennessee delegation opposed the measure, leaving Democratic representative Steve Cohen to provide the state’s only yes vote. Indeed, Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn posted on social media that [i]“Americans do not want [Biden’s] ‘socialist Build Back Broke’ plan.”
In Alabama, Senator Tommy Tuberville boasted about a bridge project funded by a $550 million Department of Transportation grant, writing: “Since I took office, I have been working to secure funding for the Mobile bridge and get this project underway.” But as Representative Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, pointed out, Tuberville voted against the bill that provided the money.
Like Governor Lee and Senator Blackburn, Tuberville knows such government policies are enormously popular and so takes credit for them, even while voting against them.
Union workers also historically have supported a government that regulates business and provides a social safety net and infrastructure investment, but those workers turned to Reagan in 1980 and have tended to make their home in the Republican Party ever since. Now they appear to be shifting back.
Today the president of the 600,000-member International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers urged Biden to stay in the race, writing: “For the first time in decades, we have an Administration that has leveled the playing field for workers trying to organize. The IAM is one of the fastest growing unions in the labor movement because we have a President who goes toe to toe with corporations on behalf of working people.”
Union president Brian Bryant noted that Biden “saved hundreds of thousands of our members’ jobs” and thanked him for “strengthen[ing] the Buy American regulations that have helped to create millions of jobs, including nearly 800,000 in manufacturing.” Bryant also credited Biden with helping to save 83 pension plans that covered more than a million workers and retirees. Bryant noted that “[i]n the IAM, we value seniority.”
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain told Netroots Nation today that “humanity is at stake” in the 2024 election. “This has everything to do with our shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our wages. Having health care. Our retirement security, and our time…. Those are the four core issues that unite the entire working-class people in a fight against the billionaire class as we saw in our contract campaign last fall when 75% of Americans supported us in that fight, for those reasons.”
"The dream and the scheme of a man like Donald Trump is that the vast majority of working-class people, who literally make our country run, will remain divided. That's how they win. They want us to not unite in a common cause to take on the billionaire class…. They divide us by race. They divide us by gender, by who we love. They divide us by what language we speak or where we were born….”
Cont below
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUL 13, 2024
Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI) said yesterday that if Trump wins reelection, the U.S. should work its way back to 1960, before “the angry feminist movement…took the purpose out of the man’s life.” Grothman said that President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War on Poverty was actually a “war on marriage,” in a communist attempt to hand control of children over to the government.
Grothman was waxing nostalgic for a fantasy past when laws and society discriminated against women, who could not get credit cards in their own name until 1974—meaning that, among other things, they could not build credit scores to borrow money on their own—and who were forced into dependence on men. The 1960 date Grothman chose was notable in another way, too: it was before the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act with which Congress tried to make the racial equality promised in the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment and the voting rights promised in the 1870 Fifteenth Amendment become real.
At stake in Grothman’s erasure of the last sixty years is the equality of women and minorities to the white men who previously exercised virtually complete control of American society. That equality translates into a struggle over the nature of the American government. Since the 1870s, during the reconstruction of the American government after the Civil War, white reactionaries insisted that opening the vote to anyone but white men would result in socialism.
Their argument was that poor voters—by which they meant Black men—would elect leaders who would promise them roads and schools and hospitals, and so on. Those public benefits could be paid for only with tax levies, and since white men held most of the property in the country in those days, they insisted such benefits amounted to a redistribution of wealth from hardworking white men to undeserving Black Americans, even though poor white people would benefit from those public works as much as or more than Black people did.
This argument resurfaced after World War II as an argument against Black and Brown voting and, in the 1970s, against the electoral power of “women’s libbers,” that is, women who called for the federal government to protect the rights of women equally to those of men. Beginning in 1980, when Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan called for rolling back the government regulations and social safety net that underpinned society, a gap appeared in voting behavior. Women, especially Black women, tended to back the Democrats, while men moved toward Republican candidates. Increasingly, Republican leaders used racist and sexist tropes to undermine the active government whose business regulations they hated.
For the radical extremists who have taken over the Republican Party, getting rid of the modern government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights is now gospel as they try to replace it with Christian nationalism. But that active government remains popular.
That popularity was reflected today as Republicans continued to take credit for laws passed by Democrats to maintain or expand an active government. In Tennessee, Republican Governor Bill Lee boasted that the state had “secured historic funding to modernize Memphis infrastructure with the single-largest transportation investment in state history.” [/i]All the Republicans in the Tennessee delegation opposed the measure, leaving Democratic representative Steve Cohen to provide the state’s only yes vote. Indeed, Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn posted on social media that [i]“Americans do not want [Biden’s] ‘socialist Build Back Broke’ plan.”
In Alabama, Senator Tommy Tuberville boasted about a bridge project funded by a $550 million Department of Transportation grant, writing: “Since I took office, I have been working to secure funding for the Mobile bridge and get this project underway.” But as Representative Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, pointed out, Tuberville voted against the bill that provided the money.
Like Governor Lee and Senator Blackburn, Tuberville knows such government policies are enormously popular and so takes credit for them, even while voting against them.
Union workers also historically have supported a government that regulates business and provides a social safety net and infrastructure investment, but those workers turned to Reagan in 1980 and have tended to make their home in the Republican Party ever since. Now they appear to be shifting back.
Today the president of the 600,000-member International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers urged Biden to stay in the race, writing: “For the first time in decades, we have an Administration that has leveled the playing field for workers trying to organize. The IAM is one of the fastest growing unions in the labor movement because we have a President who goes toe to toe with corporations on behalf of working people.”
Union president Brian Bryant noted that Biden “saved hundreds of thousands of our members’ jobs” and thanked him for “strengthen[ing] the Buy American regulations that have helped to create millions of jobs, including nearly 800,000 in manufacturing.” Bryant also credited Biden with helping to save 83 pension plans that covered more than a million workers and retirees. Bryant noted that “[i]n the IAM, we value seniority.”
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain told Netroots Nation today that “humanity is at stake” in the 2024 election. “This has everything to do with our shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our wages. Having health care. Our retirement security, and our time…. Those are the four core issues that unite the entire working-class people in a fight against the billionaire class as we saw in our contract campaign last fall when 75% of Americans supported us in that fight, for those reasons.”
"The dream and the scheme of a man like Donald Trump is that the vast majority of working-class people, who literally make our country run, will remain divided. That's how they win. They want us to not unite in a common cause to take on the billionaire class…. They divide us by race. They divide us by gender, by who we love. They divide us by what language we speak or where we were born….”
Cont below
Cont from above
Today, in Detroit, in a barnburner of a speech, President Joe Biden pitched his plan for the first 100 days of a second term with a Democratic Congress. He promised to restore Roe v. Wade, eliminate medical debt, raise the minimum wage, protect workers’ right to organize, ban assault weapons, and to “keep leading the world” on clean energy and addressing climate change. He also vowed to sign into law the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would end voter suppression, and the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect voter rights and election systems, as well as end partisan gerrymandering.
Biden forcefully contrasted his own record with Trump’s. He reminded the audience that he was the first president to walk a picket line, because “when labor does well, everybody does well.” “When Trump comes here to tell you how great he is for the auto industry, remember this: when Trump was president we lost 86,000 jobs in unions. I created 275,000 auto jobs in America. In fact, what’s been true in the auto industry is true all over America: since I became president, we created nearly 16 million new jobs nationwide, 390,000 of those jobs right here in Michigan. We’ve created 800,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide, including 24,000 in Michigan.”
Biden hammered Trump, saying “no more free passes.” He reminded that audience that Trump is a convicted criminal and that a judge had found him liable for sexual abuse. Biden quoted the judge: “Mr. Trump raped her.” Biden reminded the audience that Trump lost his license to do business in New York state and is still facing criminal charges for retaining classified documents and trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, as well as charges in Georgia for election interference. Biden said: “It’s time for us to stop treating politics like entertainment and reality TV.”
Today the European Union charged Trump donor Elon Musk’s social media company X, formerly Twitter, for failing to curb disinformation and illegal hate speech.
Also today, a judge ruled that Trump ally Rudy Giuliani is not entitled to bankruptcy protection. The judge cited Giuliani’s “lack of financial transparency” and noted that Giuliani “has engaged in self-dealing.” This decision means that election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, as well as other creditors, are free to collect what they can of the $150 million he owes them. A lawyer for the two said: “We’re pleased the Court saw through Mr. Giuliani’s games and put a stop to his abuse of the bankruptcy proceeding. We will move forward as quickly as possible to begin enforcing our judgment against him.”
Meanwhile, Trump appeared to be trying to recapture attention by teasing an unveiling of his vice presidential nominee at next week’s Republican National Convention. He compared the selection process to “a highly sophisticated version of The Apprentice,” the reality TV show in which he appeared before he became president, and which centered around firing people.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-12-2024
Today, in Detroit, in a barnburner of a speech, President Joe Biden pitched his plan for the first 100 days of a second term with a Democratic Congress. He promised to restore Roe v. Wade, eliminate medical debt, raise the minimum wage, protect workers’ right to organize, ban assault weapons, and to “keep leading the world” on clean energy and addressing climate change. He also vowed to sign into law the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would end voter suppression, and the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect voter rights and election systems, as well as end partisan gerrymandering.
Biden forcefully contrasted his own record with Trump’s. He reminded the audience that he was the first president to walk a picket line, because “when labor does well, everybody does well.” “When Trump comes here to tell you how great he is for the auto industry, remember this: when Trump was president we lost 86,000 jobs in unions. I created 275,000 auto jobs in America. In fact, what’s been true in the auto industry is true all over America: since I became president, we created nearly 16 million new jobs nationwide, 390,000 of those jobs right here in Michigan. We’ve created 800,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide, including 24,000 in Michigan.”
Biden hammered Trump, saying “no more free passes.” He reminded that audience that Trump is a convicted criminal and that a judge had found him liable for sexual abuse. Biden quoted the judge: “Mr. Trump raped her.” Biden reminded the audience that Trump lost his license to do business in New York state and is still facing criminal charges for retaining classified documents and trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, as well as charges in Georgia for election interference. Biden said: “It’s time for us to stop treating politics like entertainment and reality TV.”
Today the European Union charged Trump donor Elon Musk’s social media company X, formerly Twitter, for failing to curb disinformation and illegal hate speech.
Also today, a judge ruled that Trump ally Rudy Giuliani is not entitled to bankruptcy protection. The judge cited Giuliani’s “lack of financial transparency” and noted that Giuliani “has engaged in self-dealing.” This decision means that election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, as well as other creditors, are free to collect what they can of the $150 million he owes them. A lawyer for the two said: “We’re pleased the Court saw through Mr. Giuliani’s games and put a stop to his abuse of the bankruptcy proceeding. We will move forward as quickly as possible to begin enforcing our judgment against him.”
Meanwhile, Trump appeared to be trying to recapture attention by teasing an unveiling of his vice presidential nominee at next week’s Republican National Convention. He compared the selection process to “a highly sophisticated version of The Apprentice,” the reality TV show in which he appeared before he became president, and which centered around firing people.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-12-2024
American Conversations: Secretary of State Antony Blinken
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUL 12, 2024
On February 4, 2021, in a speech at the State Department, President Joe Biden talked about the importance of diplomacy and the different actions he had taken in the two weeks since taking office. Then he said: “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy. Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic…economic renewal.”
The speech made me sit up and take notice. The popular division of foreign policy and domestic policy is relatively recent, and the president seemed to be at least nodding to a more traditional vision. At the same time, it was not clear to me exactly what the underlying theory behind his statement might be and how that theory might translate to policy.
I began to pay close attention to the State Department—especially its focus on the Indo-Pacific region and Africa—and to watch Vice President Kamala Harris’s many trips to those regions and to Latin America. As she and others met with their counterparts in other countries, it was possible to see a new kind of U.S. foreign policy taking shape based primarily on creating communities centered around a shared interest, but I still was not clear on what the administration meant by integrating foreign and domestic affairs.
Then, on September 13, 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered remarks to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In his speech, titled “The Power and Purpose of American Diplomacy in a New Era,” Blinken argued that the world is witnessing the end of the Cold War era and must find a new approach to foreign policy.
The end of the Cold War, he said, had promised greater peace and stability, international cooperation, economic trade, political liberalization and human rights. Some of that had happened, but the era had also, unexpectedly, seen the rise of authoritarianism.
The huge scale of modern problems like the climate crisis, mass human displacement and migration, and food insecurity had made international cooperation more complex, while people were losing faith in the post–World War II international order in which institutions like the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization provided a framework of rules through which countries could work out differences without resorting to war.
That order had systematic flaws that exacerbated wealth inequality, Blinken said, noting that in the forty years between 1980 and 2020 the richest .1 percent accumulated the same amount of wealth as the poorest fifty percent. That disparity fueled distrust of international systems and political polarization.
Those tensions, in turn, threaten the survival of democracies. They are “[c]hallenged from the inside by elected leaders who exploit resentments and stoke fears; erode independent judiciaries and the media; enrich cronies; crack down on civil society and political opposition. And,” Blinken said, they are “challenged from the outside, by autocrats who spread disinformation, who weaponize corruption, who meddle in elections.”
A few weeks ago, I got the chance to sit down with Secretary of State Blinken and ask him to explain both the theory and the details of what the administration means when they set out to protect democracy both at home and abroad through a new foreign policy.
I’ll be posting the video from that interview in two sections. Here is the first.
And, finally, just a note that this interview does not replace tonight’s letter.
https://youtu.be/4KyJ9YKoCkI
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUL 12, 2024
On February 4, 2021, in a speech at the State Department, President Joe Biden talked about the importance of diplomacy and the different actions he had taken in the two weeks since taking office. Then he said: “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy. Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic…economic renewal.”
The speech made me sit up and take notice. The popular division of foreign policy and domestic policy is relatively recent, and the president seemed to be at least nodding to a more traditional vision. At the same time, it was not clear to me exactly what the underlying theory behind his statement might be and how that theory might translate to policy.
I began to pay close attention to the State Department—especially its focus on the Indo-Pacific region and Africa—and to watch Vice President Kamala Harris’s many trips to those regions and to Latin America. As she and others met with their counterparts in other countries, it was possible to see a new kind of U.S. foreign policy taking shape based primarily on creating communities centered around a shared interest, but I still was not clear on what the administration meant by integrating foreign and domestic affairs.
Then, on September 13, 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered remarks to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In his speech, titled “The Power and Purpose of American Diplomacy in a New Era,” Blinken argued that the world is witnessing the end of the Cold War era and must find a new approach to foreign policy.
The end of the Cold War, he said, had promised greater peace and stability, international cooperation, economic trade, political liberalization and human rights. Some of that had happened, but the era had also, unexpectedly, seen the rise of authoritarianism.
The huge scale of modern problems like the climate crisis, mass human displacement and migration, and food insecurity had made international cooperation more complex, while people were losing faith in the post–World War II international order in which institutions like the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization provided a framework of rules through which countries could work out differences without resorting to war.
That order had systematic flaws that exacerbated wealth inequality, Blinken said, noting that in the forty years between 1980 and 2020 the richest .1 percent accumulated the same amount of wealth as the poorest fifty percent. That disparity fueled distrust of international systems and political polarization.
Those tensions, in turn, threaten the survival of democracies. They are “[c]hallenged from the inside by elected leaders who exploit resentments and stoke fears; erode independent judiciaries and the media; enrich cronies; crack down on civil society and political opposition. And,” Blinken said, they are “challenged from the outside, by autocrats who spread disinformation, who weaponize corruption, who meddle in elections.”
A few weeks ago, I got the chance to sit down with Secretary of State Blinken and ask him to explain both the theory and the details of what the administration means when they set out to protect democracy both at home and abroad through a new foreign policy.
I’ll be posting the video from that interview in two sections. Here is the first.
And, finally, just a note that this interview does not replace tonight’s letter.
https://youtu.be/4KyJ9YKoCkI
When I asked Heather Cox Richardson to do a BIG Zoom event with Red Wine & Blue on Project 2025 her immediate answer was "Of course." She knows the power of this community. And she was right. TENS OF THOUSANDS of you have signed up. You have your eye on the ball. You're focused. You will not be distracted.
If you haven't registered yet, we just expanded our Zoom account to the biggest ever, so you still can here: https://go.redwine.blue/715_HCRfb
70% of Americans have not heard of Project 2025. We are changing that, together. We’ll equip you with what you need to know and how to make sure everyone else knows about it, too.
This one’s a can't miss.
With love and resolve,
Katie, founder, Red Wine & Blue
Blinken is in a unique position to understand that American interests aren't too dissimilar to those we see worldwide, because people everywhere have the same needs and concerns. His sophisticated take on global reality is a natural development, realized or not, out of the history of science and the international social consequences of that history's social implementation.
Which has me seeing all sorts of parallels with the old Engels description of our reality. which makes it clear why isolationism is absurd...
https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2024/07/12/introduction-1883-by-frederick-engels-from-the-dialectics-of-nature-international-publishers-new-york-1940/
Which has me seeing all sorts of parallels with the old Engels description of our reality. which makes it clear why isolationism is absurd...
https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2024/07/12/introduction-1883-by-frederick-engels-from-the-dialectics-of-nature-international-publishers-new-york-1940/
I've seen this behavior in rehab boys...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/donald-trump-stochastic-terrori-milley-violence-muskst/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/donald-trump-stochastic-terrori-milley-violence-muskst/
Trump safe but bloodied and attacker dead after shots fired at rally
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cljy6yz1j6gt
MidnightSonneteer said:I've seen this behavior in rehab boys...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/donald-trump-stochastic-terrori-milley-violence-muskst/
Yep.
