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US Monthly Headline News October 2022
By David Badash,The New Civil Rights Movement | AlterNet

66 million Americans get their income from Social Security. 64 million Americans use Medicare for their primary health insurance, and 76 million Americans use Medicaid for healthcare. Since last week Republicans have been talking about gutting these three critical programs, which they falsely call “entitlements,” despite them being funded through every employed person’s paycheck. Last week the four Republicans vying to become the next Chair of the House Budget Committee all said they would use a vote on the debt ceiling – which is simply voting to raise the country’s credit limit on everything we have already purchased (that’s a critical point, it’s to pay our bills, not to buy more) – basically as a sword to get Democrats to support massive reductions in critical programs that literally help keep millions of Americans alive.

This week, multiple Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, have admitted the plan is to use the debt ceiling as a threat to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. “With Republicans favored to take over the majority in the U.S. House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is preparing to become the House speaker,” MSNBC‘s Steve Benen reports. “And while the California congressman doesn’t have much of a governing blueprint in mind — the GOP remains a post-policy party — McCarthy told Punchbowl News about one step he’s prepared to take once he’s in a position of real power.”
Matthew Chapman

At the Utah Senate debate on Monday night, incumbent Republican Sen. Mike Lee denied having had a role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election for former President Donald Trump when challenged by conservative independent Evan McMullin. "There were rumors circulating suggesting that some states were considering switching out their slates of electors," said Lee. "I did research on that; I made phone calls to figure out whether the rumors were true. The rumors were false. On that basis, I voted to certify the results of the elections." But on Tuesday, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale dismantled Lee's characterization of how he handled the 2020 election — bringing up his past text messages to show Lee was in fact in on Republican efforts to challenge the result.

"One part of the story is true: Lee did vote on January 6 to certify Biden’s victory, saying Congress didn’t have a constitutional role in the process other than opening and counting the electoral votes," wrote Dale. "But before that – according to his texts to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, which were obtained by the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol – he wasn’t merely doing research to look into the truth of rumors. To the contrary, the texts show Lee telling Meadows that he was engaged in an intensive attempt, until at least two days prior to January 6, to somehow find a way that Donald Trump could be named the winner of the election."
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson wrong to claim Jan. 6 was not an armed insurrection
By D.L. Davis

The U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, has scheduled what could be its final public hearing for Oct. 13. It will be the committee’s first public session since the summer, when lawmakers presented the evidence they gathered in a series of televised hearings that attracted millions of viewers. A report is to be filed by the end of the year. The earlier hearings, and the criminal charges brought against more than 900 protesters by the U.S. Justice Department, have made clear that the events of that day were part of a coordinated effort to prevent the lawful transfer of power to newly elected President Joe Biden.

An insurrection. The hearings have included video footage and photos of the attack, showing participants erecting gallows, deploying pepper spray, hurling a fire extinguisher, using baseball bats to smash windows and throwing flags like spears at police officers. Within a week of the attack, a dozen guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found. In other words, the crowd was armed.

Both points seem clear. Not to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who is locked in a tight re-election race against Democrat Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor. Here was Johnson during an Oct. 4 appearance at the Rotary Club of Milwaukee as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Now some of the protesters did teach us all how you can use flagpoles and that kind of stuff as weapons. But to call what happened on January 6 an armed insurrection, I just think is not accurate." On that, he is plainly wrong.
Matt Fuller

For anyone who watched the House’s 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump over withholding military aid to Ukraine, it’s probably not a surprise that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) wasn’t quite an unbiased investigator. But a new book about Trump’s two impeachment trials details how Jordan worked to frame the Ukraine scandal as a nothingburger—even when he knew there was more damning information that had yet to come out—and defended Trump’s stonewalling tactics, even when he disagreed and tried to convince the president to cooperate. In “Unchecked,” Politico’s Rachael Bade and The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian lay out how Jordan made his way into Trump’s inner circle, became a key defender of the president, misled the media with strategic leaks, and defended Trump’s decisions to block key testimony. Jordan’s staff did not reply to a request for comment.
By Alex Henderson | AlterNet

When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia debated Marcus Flowers, her Democratic challenger in the 2022 midterms, on October 16, he lambasted her for encouraging the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Greene angrily responded that it was unfair to blame her for that attack in any way. But an article written by journalist/author Hunter Walker and published on SubStack following that debate demonstrates that Greene promoted the Big Lie after the 2020 election and encouraged MAGA efforts to overturn the election results.

Greene, during the debate, told Flowers, “You cannot accuse me of insurrection. I was a victim of the January 6 riot just as much as any other member of Congress. That was the third day I had on the job. I had nothing to do with what happened there that day, and I will not have you accuse me of that. That is wrong of you to do. You’re lying about me, and you will not defame my character in that manner.” But text messages that Greene sent to former White House Chief of Starr Mark Meadows before January 6, 2021, according to Walker, “indicate” that she “was involved in organizing the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election at the U.S.”
HBO's new "Black and Missing" docuseries revisits cold cases of missing Black people while analyzing the media's tendency to overlook them.
By Zahara Hill

A NEW HBO docuseries follows the Black and Missing Foundation’s efforts of more than a decade to locate missing Black people and draw attention to their disappearances. It also explores the media’s neglect of these cases ― what’s become known as “missing white woman syndrome.” The term was first coined by the late journalist Gwen Ifill at the 2004 Unity: Journalists of Color conference. During the conference’s “Media Coverage of National Security” panel, Ifill ― between laughs ― remarked “if there is a missing white woman, you’re going to cover that every day.”

The “Black and Missing” docuseries ― in addition to revisiting the disappearances of Pamela Butler, Tameka Huston and Keeshae Jacobs, among other scarcely covered cases ― examines just why that is. “This is a part of the disposability of Black lives in our country ― that two people can go missing at the same time and the entire nation focuses on the white person,” Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says in the second episode of the four-part series.
By Tom Boggioni | Raw Story

On a weekend day when Donald Trump didn't have a self-promoting rally in the guise of boosting the election chances of fellow Republicans scheduled, the former president managed to set off a furious firestorm with a social media posting about American Jews. Early Sunday the former president lashed out at U.S. Jews on Truth Social for not being enough like Evangelical Christians -- and immediately was attacked for what one Jewish group called "unabashed antisemitism."

According to Trump, "No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S. Those living in Israel, though, are a different story - Highest approval rating in the World, could easily be P.M.! U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel - Before it is too late!"

That led former Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council Alexander Vindman to call Trump -- and his fellow Republicans out --- with Vindman writing, "Trump is executing the fascist playbook to turn his mob on Jews. Too often, media lets statements like this be forgotten. Sometimes it doesn't even break through the news cycle. Most of the time, GOP isn't pinned down to tell people if they agree. It CANNOT happen this time."
By Matthew Chapman | Raw Story

On Friday, the Huffington Post reported that a district attorney in Massachusetts is ordering a review of all the cases handled by Woburn patrolman John Donnelly, who was just exposed as a neo-Nazi who provided security for the leaders of the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. "Middlesex County District Attorney Marina Ryan announced Friday that her office is now 'thoroughly reviewing any pending or closed cases' in which Donnelly, a patrolman in Woburn, Massachusetts, was involved," reported Christopher Mathias. "'We will be issuing a discovering notice disclosing this matter to defense counsel on those cases,' Ryan said in a statement. 'That notice has already been added to our publicly available list of officers subject to exculpatory evidence disclosure.'"

"On Thursday, HuffPost published a report detailing how Donnelly, 33, was among hundreds of white supremacists who descended on Charlottesville in August 2017 for a 'Unite the Right' rally, terrorizing the town while chanting slogans such as 'Jews will not replace us' and violently attacking counterprotesters. The bloody weekend culminated with a neo-Nazi driving his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer," said the report. "Donnelly attended the rally as a bodyguard for Richard Spencer, a prominent white supremacist. Leaked chat logs from a neo-Nazi Discord server show Donnelly played an integral part in planning the weekend’s events."
Queerty

Historians throughout time have erased LGBTQ people from the history books, including from stories of the Wild West. But one historian has revealed that this era of settlers, cowboys, outlaws, and Native Americans also contained “hundreds” of people who lived as the opposite gender. Peter Boag, author of Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past, said he discovered “hundreds of individuals living their lives as the opposite gender” from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. Boag said that many of these people were individuals who were assigned a female gender at birth, but dressed and lived as men in order to either escape criminal charges they had gotten as women or to have the same social rights as men.

At the time, women were treated like the property of their husbands or birth families. Women were forbidden from working and voting, they were subject to exploitation and sexual violence, and they weren’t allowed to own property or their own businesses. So, to avoid this mistreatment and abuse, some dressed and presented themselves as men. However, Boag recently told Q Voice News that not all of these people were transgender. While some personally identified as the gender they were assigned at birth, others identified as the gender they presented to the world. Some of these individuals’ gender identities were only discovered after their deaths, Atlas Obscura noted. Take Sammy Williams, for instance. He presented as a male lumberjack in his home state of Montana. After dying at age 80, people discovered his trans identity.
Opinion by Sam Gedge

Shortly after 5 a.m. on June 9, 2019, a National Rent To Own van went missing from a commercial lot in Granite City, Illinois. When police pulled the vehicle over a few minutes later, they found a woman and her boyfriend inside. They’d stolen it. Both were arrested and charged. It was an everyday crime in an everyday steel town, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. In the days to come, however, things turned from mundane to bizarre. The woman’s mother, Debi Brumit, happened to live in Granite City in a home she shared with her long-time partner, Andy Simpson, and two of her grandchildren, then a toddler and a baby. They’re good people. Their landlord liked them and wanted to keep them as tenants. But days after Debi’s daughter stole the van, Debi and her landlord received a letter from the Granite City Police Department. Regardless of the landlord’s preferences, the police said Debi and Andy had to be evicted because of their association with a lawbreaker. Debi hadn’t stolen the van. Neither had Andy. Nor the toddler. Nor the baby. Not a van thief among them. No matter. The police did not care that everyone in the house was innocent. Granite City had spoken: Everyone must go.
BY ZOE STROZEWSKI

The public hearing held on Thursday by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots provided "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" of Donald Trump's "treasonous crimes" in attempting to retain the presidency, legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said. Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, attended the hearing and later posted a video on his YouTube page breaking down the presentation, choosing to quote and paraphrase the words of committee members in laying out what he described as "devastating" evidence of Trump's guilt. He pointed to the opening statement from Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the committee's vice chair, in which she stated that the central cause of the events on January 6 was "one man, Donald Trump."

The public hearing held on Thursday by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots provided "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" of Donald Trump's "treasonous crimes" in attempting to retain the presidency, legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said. Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor, attended the hearing and later posted a video on his YouTube page breaking down the presentation, choosing to quote and paraphrase the words of committee members in laying out what he described as "devastating" evidence of Trump's guilt. He pointed to the opening statement from Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the committee's vice chair, in which she stated that the central cause of the events on January 6 was "one man, Donald Trump."
The GOP has been caught lying again. When some from the GOP speaks you can almost guaranty it is a lie.

BY KAITLIN LEWIS

Footage of Nancy Pelosi released by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot has been met with praise for the House speaker, who in reaction to the breach on the Capitol building urged Congress to continue verifying the 2020 presidential election. The footage was shown for the first time on Thursday amid the committee's final public hearing on the insurrection. Clips of Pelosi on the phone with law enforcement and other federal employees to usher in backup for Capitol police were included among a compilation of rioters demanding entrance into the Senate chambers. Early on in the video, shared to Twitter by The Recount, Pelosi is shown speaking to staffers in an undisclosed location after the Senate floor was put on lockdown. "There has to be some way we can maintain the sense that people have that there is some security or some confidence that government can function and that you can elect the president of the United States," Pelosi said.
Opinion by Zeeshan Aleem

The ninth hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee was a bit tedious as it covered a great deal of old ground to establish former President Donald Trump’s culpability for the 2021 insurrection. But there were about seven minutes that were absolutely riveting: never-before-seen video footage of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacting in real time to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The attack, which occurred as a joint session of Congress had gathered to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election, had caused security officials to escort members of Congress to undisclosed locations.

The video, which was captured by Nancy Pelosi's daughter Alexandra Pelosi, a documentary filmmaker, shows the speaker scrambling to figure out what’s unfolding at the Capitol as rioters are breaching it, and then huddling with and calling top government officials to try to help bring the chaos under control. The video footage is surreal. It is astonishing to get a firsthand and relatively raw look at how Pelosi and top lawmakers, including then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, conduct themselves while dealing with an unprecedented crisis in modern American politics. Like so much of the American public that day, the veteran lawmakers seem to alternate between incredulity, frustration and fear. And like we were then, they are, minute by minute, piecing together the serious and potentially dire consequences of what is happening.
How dumb is Candace Owens? She must be the dumbest person earth.
White men are not stopped by the police or killed by the police for being white. Black people are stopped for nothing sometimes beaten or killed for being Black.

Candice Ortiz

Candace Owens compared the plight of segregated Black Americans to that of “straight white males” in modern-day America. Owens spoke at an event organized by Turning Point USA at Michigan State University alongside fellow pro-Trump commentator Charlie Kirk. In a clip from the event circulating Twitter via Jason Campbell, Owens described just how hard it is to be a “straight white male” in today’s society. “We’ve now somehow gotten into this society where people are pretending what we’re doing is equality and it’s not,” Owens said.

“If we have ever achieved an equality in this country, then you wouldn’t blink if anybody says ‘Asian Lives Matter,’ no one blinks. ‘Black Lives Matter,’ no one blinks. But, ‘White Lives Matter.’ They fell apart. Right?” “The actually worst thing to be in this society — the one thing I would not want to be is a straight white male. For some reason, that’s considered problematic,” Owens said. Owens went on to say that such pressures are leading people to lie. “You have to be something. It’s like, people lie, they’re lying on college applications. They’re like, ‘Okay, I’m white, but I’m also trans.’ And you’re like, ‘What? Why are you pretending?’ Because, ‘I don’t want people to think I’m too normal,'” she added.
By Sarah K. Burris - Raw Story

The FBI and Director Christopher Wray are all coming under fire after the latest public hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and attempt to overthrow the election. It was revealed on Thursday that the FBI was warned several times ahead of the attack and failed to prepare. NBC News reported Friday that not only did the FBI fail to act ahead of Jan. 6, but a top FBI official was also warned after the fact that there were many agents who stood in solidarity with the Jan. 6 attackers.

As members of Congress referred to the attack as a "violent coup," the FBI proved that U.S. government employees were supportive of the murderous crowd that abused law enforcement and tried to assassinate former Vice President Mike Pence. “There’s no good way to say it, so I’ll just be direct: from my first-hand and second-hand information from conversations since January 6th there is, at best, a sizable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol," said the email, saying that the agents said it was nothing more than the same thing as the Black Lives Matter protesters.
HHV Editor

Police officer arrests man for rolling car window up
In Texas, a couple of police officers have gone viral for their actions, a year ago. There was a young man who was apparently driving his car. When the video begins, a cop can be heard questioning the young man. The cop asks the man why he rolled up the window to his vehicle. In addition, the cop tells the young man that he rode for miles with it down, only putting it up when he saw him.

While the officer maintains that this was a routine traffic stop, things quickly escalated. The man begins acting nervously, because of how out of hand police violence has gotten. When the cop asked him why he was acting funny, the man admitted to being nervous. After that, the cop placed him under arrest. As a result, the man’s father arrived, and tried to defend his son. Nevertheless, the cops told him to leave, or he would get arrested.
The Right wants to give teachers guns what happens when the teacher goes off on the students.

CBS News

A fifth-grade teacher in East Chicago, Indiana is accused of making a "kill list" that included at least one of her students, CBS Chicago's Jermont Terry reports. A student in the her class in the St. Stanislaus School is being credited with stepping up and telling school officials about it. Some parents aren't happy about how the private Catholic school informed them about the disturbing allegations. Fifth-grader Portia Jones is one of the children who reported her teacher. She spoke to Terry with permission from her father.
Heather Digby Parton

The Jan. 6 committee's final public hearing before the midterm election ended with a bang, not a whimper. At the conclusion of the hearing the committee's nine members voted unanimously to subpoena former President Donald Trump to testify. After their two-and-a-half hour presentation, it's hard to imagine how they ever could have contemplated doing otherwise. They presented a meticulously documented case which showed that Trump had a premeditated plan of many months to deny losing the election, plotted a coup to overturn the results if he did, incited a violent insurrection when that was thwarted, and then refused for hours to respond to the violence as he watched it unfold on television. Whether he will respond to the subpoena remains to be seen, but either way it's another black mark on his uniquely corrupt and dishonest political career.

For most of us who closely followed events in real time, both on Jan. 6 and through the subsequent investigations and revelations, much of this was not news. But it's been a while since we focused on some of these details, and to see it presented in narrative form, with so much video and documentary evidence, is still powerful. For instance, the fact that Trump had planned to contest the election if he lost was no secret. Indeed, he had signaled back in 2016 that he would never concede defeat, famously declaring in the days before that election, "I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win." For years after that victory he insisted that he'd actually won the popular vote but had been victimized by millions of immigrants illegally voting in California. He even convened something called the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to try to prove that case. Even his hand-picked hacks couldn't turn up any evidence, and the "commission" was quietly disbanded without even issuing a report.
By Marshall Cohen

CNN — Never-before-seen footage, obtained exclusively by CNN, shows in vivid new detail how congressional leaders fled the US Capitol on January 6 and transformed a nearby military base into a command center, where they frantically coordinated with Vice President Mike Pence and Trump Cabinet members to quell the insurrection and finish certifying the 2020 election. The January 6 select committee aired snippets of the footage at its public hearing on Thursday, but CNN has obtained roughly an hour of additional material that wasn’t presented by the panel.

Congressional leaders contemplated, far more seriously than previously known, whether to reconvene the Electoral College proceedings at Fort McNair, the footage obtained by CNN reveals. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with Pence about the “backup plan,” and officials tried to figure out how they’d transport hundreds of lawmakers to the Army base.  The extended raw footage shines a devastating light on then-President Donald Trump’s inaction during the riot. Lawmakers are seen working around Trump to secure any help they could get – from the National Guard, federal agencies and local police departments – to defeat the mob he incited. The footage was captured by Alexandra Pelosi, a documentary filmmaker and daughter of the Democratic speaker of the House. The filmmaker provided some of her behind-the-scenes footage to the January 6 select committee, which aired an edited compilation at Thursday’s hearing.
Brad Reed

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riots on Thursday showed how former President Donald Trump and his allies plotted for months to simply declare victory on election night regardless of the actual results. CNN political analyst John Avlon broke down the committee's timeline on Friday and said it made a "truly damning" case against the former president. "This was laying out a fact pattern truly damning to the extent the president and his allies were telegraphing an intent to declare victory well before the election," he said.

"We know that Brad Parscale was talking about plans that were in discussion to have the ex-president declare victory as early as July. We've seen Roger Stone saying we'll declare victory regardless of the results. Steve Bannon, we heard him in October saying that was Trump's plan. And then yesterday we saw an email from Tom Fitton to senior members of the White House, basically proposing talking points for the former president saying, 'We had an election today and I won.'" Avlon went on to explain that this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to Trump's plan to stay in power no matter what.
By Matthew Chapman | Raw Story

On Thursday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," during a discussion about the final January 6 Committee hearing, former Trump administration Homeland Security official Miles Taylor said he believes the former president wanted members of Congress to be killed on January 6. Taylor, a Trump-skeptic who wrote the infamous anonymous New York Times op-ed describing himself as part of a "resistance" within the executive branch, argued the former president would have used such deaths as a pretext to declare martial law and remain in office in perpetuity. "It made my heart race to watch today's hearing, really, because they brought up Trump's mindset, and the question was, what was his mindset?" Taylor told anchor Nicolle Wallace. "I'm going to demystify that for America right now. I've spent time with the guy in the Oval Office, the White House situation room, and Air Force One. I'll tell you what his mindset was on January 6th."
Tommy Christopher

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos described then-candidate Donald Trump‘s off-camera 2016 meltdown over being questioned about Vladimir Putin, saying the interaction should have been a red flag. New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman wrote about the incident in her book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. But on Tuesday night’s edition of CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, host Stephen Colbert asked Stephanopoulos to explain what happened after that July 2016 interview:
by Jared Gans

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that she would “punch [then-President Trump] out” if he came to the Capitol after his rally at the Ellipse. CNN aired footage taken by filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, the Speaker’s daughter, on “Anderson Cooper 360” on Thursday, showing how multiple congressional leaders reacted to the day’s events.

Footage showed Pelosi remarking to her staff as Trump spoke at the Ellipse rally, which preceded the Capitol riot, that Trump should not come to the Capitol as Congress prepared to certify President Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. “If he comes, I’m gonna punch him out,” Pelosi said. “I’ve been waiting for this, for trespassing on the Capitol grounds. I’m gonna punch him out, and I’m gonna go to jail and I’m gonna be happy.”
BBC News

The US congressional committee investigating last year's Capitol riot has issued a legal summons for former President Donald Trump to testify. "He is required to answer for his actions," said Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. If Mr Trump does not comply with the subpoena, he could face criminal charges and ultimately imprisonment. The select committee is looking into Trump supporters' storming of Congress on 6 January 2021. The panel's seven Democrats and two Republicans voted 9-0 in favour on Thursday of issuing the subpoena for the former Republican president to provide documents and testimony under oath in connection with the Capitol riot.
Nolan D. McCaskill

After the 2020 election, then-President Trump rushed to sign an immediate withdrawal order to pull troops out of Afghanistan in what a member of the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, described as evidence he knew his term was coming to an end. “Knowing that he had lost and that he had only weeks left in office, President Trump rushed to complete his unfinished business,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said. “One key example is this: President Trump issued an order for large-scale troop withdrawals.”

In swiftly signing the order on Nov. 11, 2020, to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan and Somalia before incoming President Biden’s inauguration, Kinzinger argued, Trump “disregarded concerns about the consequences for fragile governments on the front lines of the fight against ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists.” Military and national security leaders panned the order in recorded interviews with Jan. 6 investigators. “It is odd. It is non-standard,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the panel. “It is potentially dangerous. I personally thought it was militarily not feasible nor wise.”
A Trump employee initially denied moving the documents — then their testimony "changed dramatically"
By IGOR DERYSH

At least one Trump employee was caught on surveillance footage moving boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department issued a subpoena demanding the return of classified documents, according to multiple reports. A Trump employee told investigators about moving boxes of materials at former President Donald Trump's direction after the subpoena was issued, according to the Washington Post. Investigators reviewed surveillance footage showing people moving the boxes and ultimately secured and executed a search warrant in August to search Trump's residence.

The employee in their first interview with investigators denied handling any sensitive documents but when agents interviewed the employee a second time, "the witness' story changed dramatically," sources told the Post, and said that Trump directed staff to move the boxes. "The FBI uncovered evidence that the response to the grand jury subpoena was incomplete, that additional classified documents likely remained at Mar-a-Lago, and that efforts had likely been taken to obstruct the investigation," the DOJ said in a Supreme Court filing on Tuesday.
Michael Rainey

Republicans in the House are planning to use a potential showdown next year over raising the federal debt limit to make changes in Social Security and Medicare, Bloomberg’s Jack Fitzpatrick reports. The developing plan hinges on Republicans winning control of the House in the midterm elections, an outcome that is looking likely. Four GOP lawmakers who are vying for leadership of the House Budget Committee in the event of a Republican victory told Fitzpatrick that the need to raise the debt ceiling could give them the leverage they need to force Democrats to make concessions.

“The debt limit is clearly one of those tools that Republicans — that a Republican-controlled Congress — will use to make sure that we do everything we can to make this economy strong,” Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the senior Republican on the current Budget Committee, said. Republicans are still discussing exactly what changes they might try to enact. “What would we consider a win?” said Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), who is interested in the top spot on the Budget Committee. “What would we consider to be a fiscally responsible budget?”

Although the details are still up in the air, one theme is clear: House Republicans want to reduce federal spending, and the major entitlement programs are a target. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) Carter said that Republicans’ “main focus has got to be on nondiscretionary — it’s got to be on entitlements.”

“The debt limit is clearly one of those tools that Republicans — that a Republican-controlled Congress — will use to make sure that we do everything we can to make this economy strong,” Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the senior Republican on the current Budget Committee, said. Republicans are still discussing exactly what changes they might try to enact. “What would we consider a win?” said Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), who is interested in the top spot on the Budget Committee. “What would we consider to be a fiscally responsible budget?”

Shrinking the safety net: One option reportedly being discussed is raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, the two largest mandatory spending programs. Each faces financial squeezes in the coming years as the baby boomers age and continue to retire. Under current rules, the Social Security system would be forced to cut benefits starting in 2034, while Medicare could run short of funds by 2028.
Dan Mangan

The New York Attorney General’s Office on Thursday asked a judge to bar former President Donald Trump from moving his businesses to a new holding company he formed amid a pending civil lawsuit accusing him, three of his children, and the Trump Organization of widespread fraud. That request is spurred by concerns that the AG’s office would have difficulty getting Trump to pay a fine, if he loses the suit, as a result of his assets being held by a company that is not named as a defendant in the case.

On Sept. 21, the same day that Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump and the other defendants, her office saw that the Trump Organization had registered with New York’s secretary of state a new company, called “Trump Organization II LLC.” That new firm is incorporated in Delaware. James, who on Thursday accused Trump and the Trump Organization of engaging in an “ongoing fraudulent scheme,” wants Trump blocked from moving the Trump Organization of moving any materials assets to another entity without a judge’s approval.
They Gutted Roe V. Wade Social Security Is the Next Target of the Rabid Right

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

Social Security and Medicare defenders warned Tuesday that the popular government programs will be "in grave danger" if Republicans win control of Congress in the upcoming midterms, pointing to new reporting on GOP plans to use a looming fight over the nation's debt ceiling to pursue benefit cuts. "It's clear what their intentions are: reaching into the American people's pockets and stealing their hard-earned benefits."

Citing interviews with four House Republicans hoping to serve as chair of the chamber's budget committee, Bloomberg Government reported that "Social Security and Medicare eligibility changes, spending caps, and safety-net work requirements are among the top priorities" for the GOP if it retakes the House in next month's elections.

Reps. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), and Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) signaled that "next year's deadline to raise or suspend the debt ceiling is a point of leverage" to extract concessions from Democrats, including potentially raising the retirement age and reducing Social Security benefits, the outlet noted.
Opinion by Chauncey DeVega

American democracy is in peril, teetering between democracy and authoritarianism and under siege by Donald Trump, the Republican Party and the larger white right. To call them "conservative" is an insult to language. In a recent Salon essay, historian Robert McElvaine addressed this directly, calling out "the media's ingrained tendency to aid and abet the enemies of democracy through the careless use of language," and especially "the ubiquitous use of the word 'conservative' to describe extreme right-wing radicals and their beliefs, which only seek to conserve white supremacy — and more specifically the class or caste supremacy of a small minority of wealthy and nominally Christian white men."

Even President Biden, a career politician and a conflict-averse lifelong moderate who still yearns to "unite" America, has publicly warned that the "MAGA Republicans" — which at this point means nearly all Republicans — are the greatest internal threat to the country since the civil war. America's democracy crisis is a drama of raw political power, and a nationwide campaign by the Republican fascists to end America's multiracial democracy. If they prevail, Black and brown people, most women, LGBTQ people, those with disabilities, non-Christians (or liberal Christians), immigrants, poor people and anyone else targeted as the Other more generally (and thus deemed "un-American") will literally become second-class citizens both under the law and in daily life.
By Holmes Lybrand and Hannah Rabinowitz

CNN — A veteran and member of the Oath Keepers testified Wednesday that the far-right group amassed more weapons outside Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, than he had seen since his days in the military. Terry Cummings told the jury during the second week of the historic seditious conspiracy trial that he traveled to Washington with several members of a group from Florida, bringing his own AR-15 rifle and ammunition box to contribute to the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) allegedly established by the group in a hotel outside the city. “I have not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military,” Cummings, who showed his rifle and ammunition to the jury during his testimony, said.

Cummings, 66, testified he traveled to DC with one of the defendants, Kenneth Harrelson, and was instructed by another defendant, Kelly Meggs, to take weapons up to a hotel room in Virginia where the group was allegedly staging the QRF. When asked what his intention was in bringing the AR-15, Cummings testified that “it would potentially be used, not as an offensive situation, but more as a show of force,” adding that “there had been ongoing riots throughout the country, and it was to be used with the other Oath Keeper members just to have (a) presence.”
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

The Washington Post got a heads-up about what the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack will be revealing in what is expected to be the final public hearing. One of the reporters who penned the piece spoke to Nicolle Wallace and explained that all of the things that former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said under oath are going to be corroborated by the Secret Service on Thursday.

One of the key pieces of the Jan. 6 probe was the radio traffic that they were able to play during the last committee hearing. Secret Service agents reported several people with weapons outside of the security perimeter at the White House. Wallace replayed the clips of the audio. "Individuals in a tree, a white male, about 6 feet tall, brown cowboy boots," a voice on the radio reports. "Got blue jeans and a blue jean jacket and he has an AR-15. He's with a group of individuals, 5 feet from other individuals. Two of the individuals in that group beneath the tree are in green fatigues, about 5'8", 5'9", skinny white males, brown cowboy boots, Glock-style pistols in their waist."
Whitney Danhauer

Everyone loves a scandal, and the upcoming Hulu documentary, God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty, shines a very unfavorable light on the so-called Christian family, the Falwells. Here’s everything we know about the documentary, including the release date, what it entails, and the showrunners bringing it to the streaming platform.

Who is Jerry Falwell Jr.?
To understand the magnitude of the Falwell scandal featured in God Forbid, one has to know about Jerry Falwell Jr.’s father, Jerry Sr. A prominent Baptist pastor, Falwell Sr. founded Lynchburg, Virginia’s megachurch, Thomas Road Baptist Church in 1967. He later went on to found the United States’ most influential evangelical college, Liberty University. Falwell Sr. ran into legal troubles over the years, but the most well-known incident centered around Larry Flynt and his pornographic magazine, Hustler. The publication published a parody of an interview with Falwell Sr., and he sued Flynt. Flynt was ordered to pay $200,000 for emotional distress.
Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey

A Trump employee has told federal agents about moving boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago at the specific direction of the former president, according to people familiar with the investigation, who say the witness account — combined with security-camera footage — offers key evidence of Donald Trump’s behavior as investigators sought the return of classified material.

The witness description and footage described to The Washington Post offer the most direct account to date of Trump’s actions and instructions leading up to the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of the Florida residence and private club, in which agents were looking for evidence of potential crimes including obstruction, destruction of government records or mishandling classified information.
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — The FBI agent who questioned a think tank analyst charged with lying to the bureau about his role in the creation of a flawed dossier about former President Donald Trump has twice testified that he believes the analyst was truthful with him, jurors heard Wednesday. FBI analyst Brian Auten testified for a second straight day at U.S. District Court in Alexandria at the trial of Igor Danchenko. The Russian-born analyst, who now lives in Virginia, faces a five-count indictment alleging he made false statements to the FBI about his sources of information he provided about Trump to British spy Christopher Steele.

Prosecutors allege that Danchenko fabricated one of his sources and obscured another when he was interviewed by the FBI about his role in the “Steele dossier.” That dossier, commissioned by Democrats in 2016, raised allegations of connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. During Wednesday's cross-examination, though, Auten acknowledged that he has had positive things to say about Danchenko in past testimony to a Senate committee and to the Office of the Inspector General, both of which conducted their own investigations about the FBI probe into links between Trump and Russia. The jury heard a partial transcript of testimony Auten gave to a Senate committee in October 2020, in which Auten said Danchenko “was being truthful about who his sub-sources were. I don’t think he was fabricating sub-sources.”
Laurel Brubaker Calkins

(Bloomberg) -- Alex Jones must pay $965 million in damages to families and an FBI agent ravaged by the Infowars founder’s lie that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax, a Connecticut jury found on Wednesday. The families’ lawyers had suggested jurors use $550 million as a “baseline” for calculating damages -- roughly one dollar for every social media impression Jones’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts jointly racked up during the six years following the 2012 mass shooting.

“You have to stand up to a bully, because bullies won’t stop, especially when being a bully makes them very, very rich,” Chris Mattei, one of the families’ lawyers, told the jury in closing arguments on Oct. 6. He asked the panel to return a verdict “that makes Alex Jones realize just how devastating his conduct has been.” “This was not just the occasional lie -- this was the use of lies to fuel a business,” the lawyers told Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis during a jury break. “It was a business plan to hurt these families and to sell things by hurting them.”
By David Edwards | Raw Story

D.C. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell on Wednesday sentenced five members of a Texas family for their roles in the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol. Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence parents Dawn and Thomas Munn to one month in prison. A sentence of 21 days in jail was recommended for the couple's three adult children. In court on Wednesday, Howell stopped short of prison time for the children, according to CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane. Kristi Munn received 3 years probation with home detention. Josh Munn and Kayli Munn also received three years probation but avoided home detention. At one point, Howell called the Jan. 6 attacks a "catastrophic security breach of the US Capitol" despite the family's plea deal for unlawful parading.
Ron Dicker

Tucker Carlson got way too animated on Wednesday, according to a supercut that highlighted his “complete meltdown.” The clip includes the antics of the Fox News host reacting to media dismissal of his report that the United States was behind the damage to the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Europe, and not the Russians themselves as widely believed. Carlson laughed in wild bursts, did accents and looked a little unhinged in the video shared by Twitter user Kat Abu, who writes on her profile that she watches Carlson “so you don’t have to.” Abu wrote that her coverage “is just another chapter in my regularly-updated saga of Tucker Carlson’s descent into madness.” You be the judge:
Opinion by Amanda Tyler and Holly Hollman

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a striking number of decisions in favor of religious claimants over the past several terms, leading many commentators to refer to the Roberts court as “pro-religion.” In a country where most Americans identify as religious and some worry about rapid changes in culture, many have celebrated that perception of the nation's highest court. But that frame is overly simplistic. Worse, it confuses expectations about religion and religious liberty both at the Supreme Court and across America. A “religious” winner doesn’t necessarily mean a win for all religions or for religious liberty itself. The American public that prizes its religious freedom deserves a better understanding.

Myth: America is a 'Christian nation'
A worrisome consequence of recent Supreme Court decisions and the perception that the court is pro-religion is that it feeds a common myth that our country is, or should be, a “Christian nation.” Unfortunately, this myth gains traction when the separation of religion and government is denigrated, as well as when religious liberty is misunderstood as privilege for public policies that align with certain religious beliefs.
Sam Levine in Atlanta

About a year ago, Lee McWhorter joined a group of people in the Atlanta suburbs who were concerned about the integrity of elections in Georgia. They prayed over what they should do, and eventually started scrutinizing the voter rolls in Gwinnett county, one of the most populous and most diverse in the US. The group started checking addresses, comparing voter information in different states, and perusing property records. They brought in data experts to help them compare voter information and began to collect affidavits to back up claims that ineligible voters were on the rolls.

In early September, the group, which has since grown to 80 people and does not have a formal name, challenged the eligibility of tens of thousands of people. The challenges were filed with the backing of VoterGA, whose founder has questioned the raised questions about the 2020 election results. The group has received backing from The America Project, which was founded by Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, who have promoted serial misinformation about the 2020 election. A few weeks later, McWhorter, 68, showed up to speak at a routine election board meeting and urged officials to act. He was particularly disturbed about those who appeared to be registered at addresses that didn’t exist. “Who put these phantoms on the voter rolls?” he said.
AP

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The founder and CEO of a software company targeted by election deniers was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stealing data on hundreds of Los Angeles County poll workers. Konnech Corporation's Eugene Yu, 51, was arrested in Meridian Township in Michigan and held on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information, while computer hard drives and other “digital evidence" were seized by investigators from the county district attorney's office, according to the office.

Local prosecutors will seek his extradition to California. “We are continuing to ascertain the details of what we believe to be Mr. Yu’s wrongful detention by LA County authorities," Konnech said in a statement that ended: “Any LA County poll worker data that Konnech may have possessed was provided to it by LA County, and therefore could not have been ‘stolen' as suggested."
Andrew Feinberg

Attorneys working for former president Donald Trump’s failed 2020 re-election campaign mocked the ex-president’s lack of financial liquidity and his rampant violation of the US Constitution in emails released in a court filing by the House January 6 select committee. The panel has been engaged in a court battle to obtain emails from John Eastman, the ex-Chapman University law professor who formulated plans for Mr Trump to overturn the election with fake slates of electoral votes, and other attorneys working with the campaign.

Committee attorneys said in a filing that Mr Eastman has deliberately mischaracterised multiple emails as being covered by attorney-client privilege, and offered the example of an email exchange between him and Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Bruce Marks in which the latter two made fun of Mr Trump. In one email, Mr Chesebro wrote: “Am at Trump [International] NYC, so I’m [feeling] extra [inspired] to work on the [President’s] cases!!” Mr Marks replied that it was “a shame” Mr Chesebro was not in Washington at Mr Trump’s hotel so he could “contribute to violation of the emoluments clause” of the US Constitution.
SEC

Washington D.C., Oct. 3, 2022 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against Kim Kardashian for touting on social media a crypto asset security offered and sold by EthereumMax without disclosing the payment she received for the promotion. Kardashian agreed to settle the charges, pay $1.26 million in penalties, disgorgement, and interest, and cooperate with the Commission’s ongoing investigation. The SEC’s order finds that Kardashian failed to disclose that she was paid $250,000 to publish a post on her Instagram account about EMAX tokens, the crypto asset security being offered by EthereumMax. Kardashian’s post contained a link to the EthereumMax website, which provided instructions for potential investors to purchase EMAX tokens.

"This case is a reminder that, when celebrities or influencers endorse investment opportunities, including crypto asset securities, it doesn’t mean that those investment products are right for all investors," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. "We encourage investors to consider an investment’s potential risks and opportunities in light of their own financial goals." "Ms. Kardashian’s case also serves as a reminder to celebrities and others that the law requires them to disclose to the public when and how much they are paid to promote investing in securities," Chair Gensler added. "The federal securities laws are clear that any celebrity or other individual who promotes a crypto asset security must disclose the nature, source, and amount of compensation they received in exchange for the promotion," said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. "Investors are entitled to know whether the publicity of a security is unbiased, and Ms. Kardashian failed to disclose this information."
The National Archives sent a letter to Congress about the missing records.
By Benjamin Siegel

The National Archives has still not recovered all the presidential records that should have been turned over at the end of the Trump administration, according to a new letter to Congress from the acting archivist. "We do know that we do not have custody of everything we should," Debra Steidel Wall, acting archivist of the United States, said in her letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., suggesting that former officials had still not turned over electronic messages of official business done on personal accounts.

Wall's letter was a response to a Sept. 13 request from Maloney seeking an "urgent review" of "whether presidential records remain unaccounted for and potentially in the possession of the former president." Wall said the National Archives and Records Administration "would consult with the Department of Justice" on whether "to initiate an action for the recovery of records unlawfully removed."
By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The defense team in the Capitol riot trial of the Oath Keepers leader is relying on an unusual strategy with Donald Trump at the center. Lawyers for Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extremist group, are poised to argue that jurors cannot find him guilty of seditious conspiracy because all the actions he took before the siege on Jan. 6, 2021, were in preparation for orders he anticipated from the then-president — orders that never came.

Rhodes and four associates are accused of plotting for weeks to stop the transfer of presidential power from the Republican incumbent to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating with Oath Keepers in battle gear storming the Capitol alongside hundreds of other Trump supporters. Opening statements in the trial are set to begin Monday. Rhodes intends to take the stand to argue he believed Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act to call up a militia to support him, his lawyers have said. Trump didn't do that, but Rhodes' team says that what prosecutors allege was an illegal conspiracy was "actually lobbying and preparation for the President to utilize" the law.
Tom Boggioni

In a column for Slate, former federal prosecutor Robert Katzberg made the case that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's continued interference in the work being done by special master Raymond Dearie in the matter of government documents stolen by Donald Trump could lead to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepping in and taking the case from her.

Earlier in the week, the Trump-appointed Cannon gave Donald Trump's legal team an assist by ruling that they did not need to comply with an order from Dearie and reply in a filing whether they believe the FBI agents lied about documents recovered at the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort almost two months ago.

As Katzberg sees it, the Department of Justice could appeal, which they did late Friday, and that they may have a compelling case to ask for Cannon's removal -- although such moves rarely occur. In his Slate column wrote, "Given the extreme and one-sided rulings Cannon has already made, DOJ need not fear making her more hostile than she has already shown herself to be, so the door to aggressive countermoves is wide open."
Michael Sainato in Naples, Florida

For Connie Irvin, 82, and her partner, Cheryl Lange, the cost of Hurricane Ian’s devastating tear across Florida was clear. “Our entire community is wiped out,” said Irvin. The pair lost their mobile home on Sanibel Island off the state’s west coast and are now homeless, staying in a motel inland about 35 miles away near Naples, Florida, that currently has no electricity. “It’s been very difficult. I now know what it’s like to be homeless and not have simple things like bathroom availability. We are lucky in that we are alive. There are a lot of people on Sanibel and down in Fort Myers that have lost their lives, and where I’m staying there are a lot of homeless people now,” Irvin added.

The damage Ian has inflicted on Florida has been immense. The monster storm made landfall near the state in the Fort Myers/Naples area, then traversed up and across to the eastern part of the state, grazing the St Augustine and Jacksonville area before regaining hurricane strength and heading toward South Carolina. At least 21 deaths have now been confirmed in Florida, with that number expected to rise as emergency crews continue to respond to affected areas, and the extent of the damage is still being assessed, with an anticipated years-long recovery ahead. For Irvin and Lange that recovery looks hard – as it is for many low-income Floridians, who are often hit hardest by the terrible losses that natural disasters can wreak.
The Florida governor, having spent millions on migrant stunt, now passes the hat for disaster relief
Richard Luscombe in Miami

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has become a familiar, and to some a reassuring, face on numerous television channels through the traumatic aftermath of Hurricane Ian’s rampage through the state. But the near-constant presence of the Republican, who in less chaotic times limits his on-screen appearances largely to the Fox News faithful, is not sitting comfortably with others, nor are his appeals for public contributions for hurricane relief while he is using taxpayers’ money for “political stunts”. DeSantis announced at a press conference on Friday morning that public donations to the state’s disaster fund had surpassed $12m, coincidentally the same amount he was allocated from the state budget, funded by interest on federal Covid relief payments, for a controversial migrant-removal program.

The governor, a likely candidate for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination, has already spent a chunk of that money shifting two planeloads of Venezuelans from Texas to Massachusetts, raising questions over why he was shuttling immigrants between two states of which he is not governor on the Florida taxpayers’ dime. DeSantis says he expects to arrange more flights until the money is spent, but his actions have drawn a criminal investigation from a sheriff in Texas and two lawsuits. The first is a class-action suit filed on behalf of the migrants by the group Lawyers for Civil Rights, alleging breaches of federal immigration law.
Igor Derysh

Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday overruled the special master she appointed to review thousands of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, shielding former President Donald Trump from addressing his claims that documents may have been "planted" or "declassified" in court.

Cannon, a Trump appointee in southern Florida, issued an order extending the timeline of the review after Trump's lawyers objected to the expedited schedule laid out by special master Raymond Dearie, who was chosen from a list proposed by Trump's lawyers. Under the new order, the review and any surrounding issues around Dearie's rulings "will almost certainly" stretch into next year, according to Politico.

Cannon, who has served on the bench for less than two years, also overruled Dearie, a Reagan appointee who has served for 36 years, on his requirement that Trump assert whether the FBI's inventory of seized items is accurate, effectively challenging his public claim that agents may have "planted" evidence.
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