#Michael Whatley

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chloe Simon at MMFA:

After President Joe Biden announced he was ending his reelection campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, right-wing media began to resurface the lie that Harris was the Biden’s administration “border czar,” trying to pin the “failures” of the border on Harris as part of their push to make immigration a central theme of the 2024 presidential election. But that was not her title nor how her role functioned in the border policy. 

In 2021, Biden tapped Harris to lead the White House’s efforts to address migration along the U.S.-Mexico border. In this role, Harris was charged with addressing the supposed “root causes” of migration by improving economic and social conditions in several Central American countries and encouraging stronger enforcement along those countries' own borders. [The Associated Press, 3/24/21; The White House, 5/27/21]

CBS: “Harris was not asked to be the administration's ‘border czar’ or to oversee immigration policy and enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border.” CBS explained, “That has mainly been the responsibility of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and his department, which oversees the country's main three immigration agencies, including Customs and Border Protection.” [CBS News, 7/22/24]

Despite the right-wing media claims otherwise, Vice President Kamala Harris was never the “Border Czar.”

[tomorrowusa]

"Only the best!" (the best nepotism, that is)

As a nepo baby himself, Donald Trump understands the value of being related to the right people. That's why he's supporting Eric Trump's wife Lara to be co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.

Former President Donald Trump will support North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley to succeed Ronna McDaniel as the leader of the Republican National Committee, according to a Republican operative familiar with Trump’s decision. [ ... ] In addition to the Whatley nod, Trump will also support Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, to serve as the RNC’s co-chairwoman. Lara Trump has long been an on-air surrogate for the ex-president, and during the 2022 campaign was briefly mentioned as a possible North Carolina Senate candidate.

[nodynasty4us]

Trump wants to swap out the leadership of the Republican National Committee, replacing Mitt Romney's neice with an election denyer as the director, and putting his own daughter-in-law in the number 2 position.

[thegeneticopera]

after seeing many misconceptions on the ages of the characters and also the general lack of knowledge on relevant key events, I thought I'd create a timeline!

A comprehensive breakdown of important dates in Repo! The Genetic Opera:

1993: Rotti Largo was born (July 14th)

2006: On April 5th, the first ever death for NOS (Neuro-Overstimulation Syndrome) was recorded. GeneCo was then founded later that month in Milan, Italy by Giuseppe Largo and Dr. Michael Whatley who eventually discovered a treatment using an experimental drug called Zydrate and genetic manipulation.

2011: Marni was born (No date)

2016: Nathan was born (No date)

2017: Blind Mag was born (July 5th)

2019: Luigi Largo was born (November 20th)

2024: Pavi Largo was born (September 29th)

2025: By this point, The Genetic Opera, an interactive TV show, was sponsored by GeneCo to promote designer organs and keep the public "status-conscious" in order to continue boosting profits.

2032: Carmela Largo/Amber Sweet was born (August 23rd)

2035: Graverobber was born (No date)

2036: Marni brings Mag to meet Rotti Largo

2039: Shilo Wallace was born (August 27th), Marni Wallace dies, Nathan becomes a repo man

2040: Mag's eye transplants (March 21st)

2048: Blind Mag's Corpus Crusade tour

2053: Tao of Mag, a charity concert event held for blindness

2056: Rotti signs his last will and testament, declaring Shilo as the sole heir of his estate (August 7th). The events of the film take place on November 7th - Nathan, Rotti, and Mag die. Shilo presumably goes missing. Amber takes over GeneCo at a later unspecified date.

Some common misconceptions cleared up by the timeline:

Mag did not receive her eyes at 19, the date listed on her repossession chart says otherwise

Marni and Mag have a relatively large age gap. At the time in which Marni brought Mag to meet Rotti, she was already 25, and Mag was only 19. I personally like to think that Marni was a singing mentor of some sort (since in Chase the Morning we see that Mag has a memory of Marni singing), and perhaps worked with disabled people and this is how they met!

The age difference between Shilo and Graves is only 4 years!

Mag and Luigi only have a two year age difference. Her being under GeneCo's thumb since she was 19 and Luigi was 17 is probably why they have a relationship.

On that topic, Nathan is only 3 years older than Luigi, there's no way him or Mag could have "baby sat" the Largos as children if they're all approximately the same age (excluding Amber, but considering Nathan had his own daughter to raise and was a repoman and Mag was a world class opera singer I still doubt that would be the case)

This one doesn't have a specific date, but I felt it should be added regardless: Pavi's face disfigurement seemingly happened very recent to events of Repo! We see several times within the film that there are posters and billboards of him with his original face, even in the pictures Rotti has he didn't have the scarring yet. The posters say that GeneCo offering face replacements will be happening in 2057. Pavi was the one in charge of that, and he was stealing faces prior to his scarring (as seen in the pictures). We also know from several sources, including Luigi himself, that Pavi's face happened because of a botched surgery. It's safe to assume this was because of the new face replacement campaign that was being offered, and it was within the last year or two before the events in the film.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 2, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 03, 2024

In an interview with right-wing host Mark Levin on the Fox News Channel last night, Trump complained about the new grand jury indictment of him for trying to steal the 2020 presidential election. “Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it,” he asked. 

In fact, no one has a right to interfere with a presidential election. Several federal laws prohibit such interference. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance added: “This is the banality of evil right here—Trump asserting he can override the will of the voters to claim victory in an election he lost. And, he will do it again. We must vote against him in overwhelming numbers.”

Former president Trump is approaching the election of 2024 the way southern white supremacists approached elections from 1876 to 1964. He has made it very clear he is not trying to win the votes of a majority of Americans. He and his loyalists are trying to intimidate his opponents to keep them from voting while egging on his supporters to commit violence. They are bringing the tactics of the reactionary southern Democrats after the Civil War forward to the present day in an attempt to impose the same sort of minority rule on the nation as a whole. 

Trump has made it clear he is not trying to win the popular vote. When his primary challenger Nikki Haley dropped out of the race in March, Trump’s team made no effort to win over her voters; it was President Joe Biden’s reelection team that reached out to them.

A few days later, when Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and his loyalist Michael Whatley took over the Republican National Committee, they killed the plans of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to open 40 satellite campaign offices across ten battleground states. As The Dispatch noted, that meant very little ground game: doors knocked on, phone calls made, or volunteers organized. The new leadership of the RNC also fired 40 out of 60 employees whose job was field organizing.

Trump was clear what he was doing: rather than worrying about attracting voters, he intended to play out the game of the Big Lie that he had won the 2020 presidential election. 

Since the 2020 election, at least 28 states have passed laws making it harder to vote in 2024. Whatley was a chief proponent of the Big Lie that justified those laws, and Trump put him in place, saying he wanted the RNC to prioritize “election integrity” efforts. The campaign has focused on lawsuits to make it harder to vote and to put their own loyalists into positions where they might be able to affect the certification of the 2024 vote. As Peter Nicholas reported at NBC News yesterday, Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits that seemed designed not only to game the system, but also to convince supporters that the election is rigged against Trump. 

That lie was the argument Florida governor Ron DeSantis made to justify creating an election police unit in 2022 to stop what he claimed was illegal voting, although voter fraud is vanishingly rare. The unit conducted raids—mostly in the early morning—primarily against Black Americans shortly before the 2022 election. Most of the cases were later dropped, or those charged agreed to a plea deal without jail time. 

The raids did, though, depress voting. In its 2023 annual report, the Office of Election Crime and Security wrote: “Enforcing Florida election law has the primary effect of punishing violators, but enforcement also and equally as important acts as a deterrent for those who may consider voting illegally or committing other election related crimes.” 

Now MAGA Republicans have joined Trump in arguing that Democrats are trying to get noncitizen immigrants to vote for their candidates, although a federal law in place since 1996 makes it clear that it is illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress. It does not appear to matter to Republicans that there is no evidence that noncitizens try to vote. As House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in May: “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable.” 

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton also created an “Election Integrity Unit” in the wake of the 2020 election, and on August 21, 2024, after Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo repeated a baseless rumor about noncitizens registering to vote, Paxton launched what he called an undercover investigation that, just days later, launched raids against Latino activists. “It is evident through his pattern of lawsuits, raids, searches, and seizures that he is trying to keep Latinos from voting,” Latino leaders say. 

This pattern echoes the Reconstruction Era intimidation of Black voters and their white Republican allies, and it does so with the same justification: the idea that business regulation, social welfare, infrastructure, and civil rights policies are “socialism.” Those policies had nothing to do with the actual principles of socialism, which call for the government to control the means of production. This “socialism” echoed the argument of southern white supremacists who used it to attack Black voting in 1871 after the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified the year before, made it unconstitutional to stop someone from voting on the basis of race. 

As newly enfranchised formerly enslaved men who owned little property—because enslavers took what they produced—and white Republicans voted for lawmakers who would rebuild the South, white supremacist Democrats maintained that the roads, schools, and hospitals a healthy society needed could be paid for only with tax dollars. Since white men owned most of the property, such improvements were, they said, a redistribution of wealth. 

In the nineteenth century, that argument led first to voter suppression and then to the argument that anyone who did not vote to keep the white supremacists in power was a danger to society. Good Americans must keep such dangerous people out of any proximity to power. In that light, outright violence to maintain the rule of the minority was a demonstration of civic virtue. 

True to form, Trump and his supporters have made it clear they consider their ascendancy imperative to recover America from the carnage into which they allege President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have led it. And, if their opponents are truly as dangerous as they insist, those opponents must be capable of any of the actions MAGA Republicans falsely attribute to them. 

Trump and his campaign advisor Corey Lewandowski have recently asserted the lie that Democrats kill newborn babies, for example, and Trump told the right-wing Moms for Liberty organization on Friday that schools are operating on children to transition them to a different sex. In a direct link to the ideas of the late nineteenth century that white supremacists used to justify taking power, Trump routinely calls Vice President Harris a communist. 

Trump’s lies have become cartoonish as his attachment to reality has slipped, but behind them is a demonizing of his opponents that echoes the past argument that certain people must be kept from power and, possibly, purged from society.  

Many of those arrested for attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, told the court they believed they were defending American democracy from those who were destroying the country and had stolen the election. Trump has championed those arrested for trying to install him into the presidency, saying they are “patriots” who have been “treated unfairly” and “have shown incredible courage and sacrifice,” and has promised that if reelected, he will pardon the nearly 1,000 people found guilty of crimes related to that event.  

A gala to celebrate and raise money for those attackers—the J6 Awards Gala—was scheduled to be held at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club this Thursday but has just been called off until after the election. 

The celebration of violence is now deeply embedded in the MAGA movement with leaders like North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, who recently attacked an assortment of enemies and assured his audience: “Some folks need killing!” As Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo wrote on August 27, this violent tendency has become for MAGA Republicans a fantasy about deploying the military against American citizens. 

Yesterday, on the same day that Trump declared he had the right to interfere in a presidential election to put himself in power, the pro-Trump owner of X, Elon Musk, reposted to his nearly 200 million followers a statement suggesting that women and men who can’t physically defend themselves are inferior to “alpha men” and are not good participants in government because they lack the ability to think critically. “This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making,” the original post said. “Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think.” 

Over the statement, Musk posted: “Interesting observation.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

Donald Trump’s newly installed leadership team at the Republican National Committee on Monday began the process of pushing out dozens of officials, according to two people close to the Trump campaign and the RNC.

All told, the expectation is that more than 60 RNC staffers who work across the political, communications and data departments will be let go. Those being asked to resign include five members of the senior staff, though the names were not made public. Additionally, some vendor contracts are expected to be cut.

In a letter to some political and data staff, Sean Cairncross, the RNC’s new chief operating officer, said that the new committee leadership was “in the process of evaluating the organization and staff to ensure the building is aligned” with its vision. “During this process, certain staff are being asked to resign and reapply for a position on the team.”

The overhaul is aimed at cutting, what one of the people described as, “bureaucracy” at the RNC. But the move also underscores the swiftness with which Trump’s operation is moving to take over the Republican Party’s operations after the former president all but clinched the party’s presidential nomination last week.

Trump’s campaign took over operational control of the RNC on Monday. On Friday, former North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley was elected the RNC’s new chair, and Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump was elected as co-chair. Both had Trump’s endorsement. Additionally, Trump senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita was named as the RNC’s new chief of staff.

Whatley is replacing Ronna McDaniel, who stepped down last week after serving more than seven years in the post. Trump and McDaniel had been longtime allies, but the former president had soured on the chairperson as of late because he felt that she was not doing enough on “voter integrity”-related issues, and because she hosted Republican primary debates that she refused to participate in.

Trump advisers have described the RNC’s structure as overly bloated and bureaucratic, which they believe has contributed to the party’s cash woes. The RNC had about $8 million at the end of December, only about one-third as much as the Democratic National Committee.

Under the new structure, the Trump campaign is looking to merge its operations with the RNC. Key departments, such as communications, data and fundraising, will effectively be one and the same.

[darkmaga-retard]

The Republican National Committee, Michigan GOP, and chairpersons for Wayne County Republican committees are suing Detroit over hiring seven-times more Democratic poll workers than Republican ones in the state's primary election earlier this month, in an alleged violation of state law, the RNC said Friday.

The suit is related to the Aug. 6 primary election, acording to the RNC.

Detroit hired 2,340 Democratic poll workers and 308 Republicans ones for the primary. However, state law requires that the number of poll workers from each major political party be "an equal number, as nearly as possible."

The lawsuit was announced following reporting Tuesday by Just the News reporting on the disparity.

Also, in May, the national Republican Party provided Detroit with a list of 676 Republican election worker candidates for the primary election, but the city only hired 52 of them.

"Detroit’s failure to hire Republican poll workers is the kind of bad-faith Democrat interference that drives down faith in elections," RNC Chairman Michael Whatley and RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump said in a joint statement.

[amagi2000]

Stolen Valor + Cowardice = "Tampon" Tim Walz

And that's merely Tim's military record.

[steelbluehome]

I just want you all to know, I didn't originally want this to be any kind of political blog. But I am queer, I live in a red state, I can't afford to move, I am disabled, I am on several prescription medications, and I am literally scared af that Trump will win.

I have nightmares about it.

If Trump wins, sometime during his 4 years, I will die.

I will lose my financial support, or my meds will be priced beyond my financial ability to purchase them. The air and water quality will no longer be under a department of the federal government. I believe that hate crimes will no longer be punished or prosecuted, and that their instances will skyrocket.

So you are seeing a lot of political posts here now. I just hope it encourages you to vote, and maybe make sure that like-minded people vote as well. Keep them from refusing to vote out of a defeatist attitude. Provide transportation if they need it. Convince them that it is important. Their one vote does count! At least argue that it won't take long at all, if they vote by absentee ballot they don't even have to leave the house, offer to mail it for them. Please do what you can. You will not want to live in this country under Trump.

Even if you think the things I have written are hysteria or hyperbole, still vote. PLEASE!

Project 2025

"The 2025 Presidential Transition Project paves the way for an effective conservative Administration based on four pillars: a policy agenda, Presidential Personnel Database, Presidential Administration Academy, and playbook for the first 180 days of the next Administration."

****

Trump’s plans if he returns to the White House include deportation raids, tariffs and mass firings

***

Donald Trump has insisted on the campaign trail that life was better under his administration, and he has vowed to reverse many of the policies enacted since he left office. His successor's sweeping climate change agenda, new restrictions on guns and protections for transgender people would all be on the chopping block, he has said.

***

Trump reveals how he would govern if reelected to another term in the White House

"he was asked, should states monitor pregnancies to determine if an abortion happened in a state where it is illegal? Trump responded: "I think they might do that."

Then, should states process women for abortions? He said: "The states are going to say. It's irrelevant whether I'm comfortable or not."

Now, again, this is a consistent "states will do what they should do" policy from the former president. It is a policy proposal. It is also political. But this idea that states monitoring pregnancy is something that he could accept is incredibly notable. Whether he's a president who vetoes legislation or not, he's the leader of the Republican Party making these statements."

***

Trump may get another chance to be president. He's planning an aggressive second term

"If elected again, Trump would gut the federal bureaucracy and remake it in his ideological view, using something called Schedule F to fire career nonpartisan civil servants. A similar purge and rebuilding of the Republican National Committee and several key state Republican parties has taken place in recent years, with Trump's daughter-in-law Lara leading the RNC alongside former North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley.

Trump said in the interview he would not hire anyone who believed Biden won the 2020 election, continuing to repeat false claims that voter fraud cost him the presidency but saw Republicans elected up and down the ballot in key states."

***

Time

". . . an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen."

***

This is real. He is telling you exactly what will happen. Click on the links, read the entire articles, understand what is happening.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Eric Hananoki at MMFA:

Right-wing commentator Ed Martin, who was recently appointed to a senior position for the Republican National Convention, has complained about Spanish speakers in the United States and said he is a “big admirer” of leading white nationalist group VDare. 

VDare has posted content claiming that “one problem with these Hispanic immigrants is their disgusting behavior”; “America does not need ANY immigrants from Africa”; the United States needs to “rethink Martin Luther King Day”; “Miscegenation has risks”; antifa and Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 might be part of a “Jewish coup”; and the country should “EXPEL Muslims.”  Martin is a podcaster, author, and frequent guest on right-wing media programs. He briefly worked as a pro-Trump pundit on CNN from 2017 to 2018 but was fired after he repeatedly embarrassed the network, including attacking his colleagues as “Black racists.” Martin, who was on a 2020 Trump campaign advisory board, was also a notable figure after the 2020 presidential election when he helped organize “Stop the Steal” rallies and later defended accused participants in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He has also pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, repeatedly using the movement’s slogan “WWG1WGA,” short for “Where we go one, we go all.” 

The RNC announced Martin’s appointment as deputy policy director of the Republican National Convention’s Committee on the Platform on May 15, with RNC Chairman Michael Whatley praising Martin and other selections as “brilliant” and having “sound judgement and principled vision.” Martin joins Russ Vought, a key Project 2025 figure who has pushed for Christian nationalism and “ideological purity tests” for civil servants, on the committee.  [...] Martin also repeatedly hosted VDare leader and white nationalist Peter Brimelow on his now-defunct radio program The Ed Martin Movement. During an episode that aired on November 29, 2018, Martin praised Brimelow as “a guy worth listening to” and told him, “I'm always glad to give you a voice, you’re always welcome here.” (In addition to leading VDare, Brimelow has, among other things, pushed an effort to “rethink Martin Luther King Day,” “arguing that MLK was a deeply flawed figure and an inappropriate role model for American whites.”) 

Right-wing commentator Ed Martin was named to a senior position within the RNC, and he has stated his admiration for White Nationalist group VDARE.

[tomorrowusa]

Just as the Nazi Party in Germany was essentially the Hitler Party, the Republican Party has become the Trump Party. There may be a few odd holdouts, but the GOP has been overwhelmingly MAGAfied.

At the Republican National Committee, he is moving to replace longtime supporters with allies even more closely bound to him, including his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. In the House, Republicans are more compliant than ever. Most vividly, Speaker Mike Johnson — ostensibly the party’s top-ranking official — backtracked on an endorsement in a crucial Senate race because Mr. Trump disagreed. On Thursday, Mr. Johnson’s candidate ended his campaign less than one week after opening it. In the Senate, which has been less beholden to Mr. Trump, his influence over a failed border bill made one of the party’s most effective lawmakers, Mitch McConnell, look weak. The displays of obedience emerging in recent weeks remove any lingering doubt that the Republican Party is aligned to advance the interests of one man, signaling that a sweep of victories from Mr. Trump and his allies in November could also mean replacing checks and balances in Washington with his wishes and whims.

Through fear and intimidation, the GOP is now just a subsidiary of the Trump Organization. The GOP stands for nothing except more power for Trump.

Mr. Trump, who long accused Republican leaders of rigging the system for their self-gain, has come to mirror their methods. The swamp that he once declared in need of draining, he now sees as wetlands in need of protecting. Mr. Trump’s team argues that he is giving voice to popular opinions that had no champion in the party, and that the changes at the Republican National Committee are intended with a single goal in mind: electing him to a second White House term.

Being a nepo baby himself, Trump understands the value of having his relatives run the GOP.

Mr. Trump’s next chairman at the R.N.C. is likely to be Michael Whatley, a supporter of the former president’s false election claims. Mr. Trump also endorsed as party co-chair his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who has had various roles in his political operation.

When somebody now votes Republican at any level, they are essentially voting for Trump.

This forced merger of MAGA and the GOP establishment could bring catastrophe to the party if Trump unequivocally loses this year. Those who supported Trump halfheartedly and only out of fear would then openly blame MAGA for a Republican defeat while the hardcore Trump loyalists would claim that they lost because they weren't MAGA enough. A convincing Democratic presidential and congressional victory might cause the GOP to split and go the way of the Whigs.

[bighermie]

Share Link

Exclusive – Michael Whatley: RNC Hiring ‘Election Integrity Councils’ in Battleground States https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/03/28/exclusive-michael-whatley-rnc-hiring-election-integrity-councils-battleground-states/

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

September 2, 2024 (Monday)

In an interview with right-wing host Mark Levin on the Fox News Channel last night, Trump complained about the new grand jury indictment of him for trying to steal the 2020 presidential election. “Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it,” he asked.

In fact, no one has a right to interfere with a presidential election. Several federal laws prohibit such interference.

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance added: “This is the banality of evil right here—Trump asserting he can override the will of the voters to claim victory in an election he lost. And, he will do it again. We must vote against him in overwhelming numbers.”

Former president Trump is approaching the election of 2024 the way southern white supremacists approached elections from 1876 to 1964. He has made it very clear he is not trying to win the votes of a majority of Americans. He and his loyalists are trying to intimidate his opponents to keep them from voting while egging on his supporters to commit violence. They are bringing the tactics of the reactionary southern Democrats after the Civil War forward to the present day in an attempt to impose the same sort of minority rule on the nation as a whole.

Trump has made it clear he is not trying to win the popular vote. When his primary challenger Nikki Haley dropped out of the race in March, Trump’s team made no effort to win over her voters; it was President Joe Biden’s reelection team that reached out to them.

A few days later, when Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and his loyalist Michael Whatley took over the Republican National Committee, they killed the plans of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to open 40 satellite campaign offices across ten battleground states. As The Dispatch noted, that meant very little ground game: doors knocked on, phone calls made, or volunteers organized. The new leadership of the RNC also fired 40 out of 60 employees whose job was field organizing.

Trump was clear what he was doing: rather than worrying about attracting voters, he intended to play out the game of the Big Lie that he had won the 2020 presidential election.

Since the 2020 election, at least 28 states have passed laws making it harder to vote in 2024. Whatley was a chief proponent of the Big Lie that justified those laws, and Trump put him in place, saying he wanted the RNC to prioritize “election integrity” efforts. The campaign has focused on lawsuits to make it harder to vote and to put their own loyalists into positions where they might be able to affect the certification of the 2024 vote. As Peter Nicholas reported at NBC News yesterday, Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits that seemed designed not only to game the system, but also to convince supporters that the election is rigged against Trump.

That lie was the argument Florida governor Ron DeSantis made to justify creating an election police unit in 2022 to stop what he claimed was illegal voting, although voter fraud is vanishingly rare. The unit conducted raids—mostly in the early morning—primarily against Black Americans shortly before the 2022 election. Most of the cases were later dropped or those charged agreed to a plea deal without jail time.

(THOSE FALSELY ACCUSED SHOULD COUNTERSUE!!!! WITH THE ACLU'S HELP!!!)

The raids did, though, depress voting. In its 2023 annual report, the Office of Election Crime and Security wrote: “Enforcing Florida election law has the primary effect of punishing violators, but enforcement also and equally as important acts as a deterrent for those who may consider voting illegally or committing other election related crimes.”

Now MAGA Republicans have joined Trump in arguing that Democrats are trying to get noncitizen immigrants to vote for their candidates, although a federal law in place since 1996 makes it clear that it is illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress. It does not appear to matter to Republicans that there is no evidence that noncitizens try to vote. As House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in May: “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable.”

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton also created an “Election Integrity Unit” in the wake of the 2020 election, and on August 21, 2024, after Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo repeated a baseless rumor about noncitizens registering to vote, Paxton launched what he called an undercover investigation that, just days later, launched raids against Latino activists. “It is evident through his pattern of lawsuits, raids, searches, and seizures that he is trying to keep Latinos from voting,” Latino leaders say.

This pattern echoes the Reconstruction Era intimidation of Black voters and their white Republican allies, and it does so with the same justification: the idea that business regulation, social welfare, infrastructure, and civil rights policies are “socialism.”

Those policies had nothing to do with the actual principles of socialism, which call for the government to control the means of production. This “socialism” echoed the argument of southern white supremacists who used it to attack Black voting in 1871 after the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified the year before, made it unconstitutional to stop someone from voting on the basis of race.

As newly enfranchised formerly enslaved men who owned little property—because enslavers took what they produced—and white Republicans voted for lawmakers who would rebuild the South, white supremacist Democrats maintained that the roads, schools, and hospitals a healthy society needed could be paid for only with tax dollars. Since white men owned most of the property, such improvements were, they said, a redistribution of wealth.

In the nineteenth century, that argument led first to voter suppression and then to the argument that anyone who did not vote to keep the white supremacists in power was a danger to society. Good Americans must keep such dangerous people out of any proximity to power. In that light, outright violence to maintain the rule of the minority was a demonstration of civic virtue.

True to form, Trump and his supporters have made it clear they consider their ascendancy imperative to recover America from the carnage into which they allege President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have led it. And, if their opponents are truly as dangerous as they insist, those opponents must be capable of any of the actions MAGA Republicans falsely attribute to them.

Trump and his campaign advisor Corey Lewandowski have recently asserted the lie that Democrats kill newborn babies, for example, and Trump told the right-wing Moms for Liberty organization on Friday that schools are operating on children to transition them to a different sex. In a direct link to the ideas of the late nineteenth century that white supremacists used to justify taking power, Trump routinely calls Vice President Harris a communist.

Trump’s lies have become cartoonish as his attachment to reality has slipped, but behind them is a demonizing of his opponents that echoes the past argument that certain people must be kept from power and, possibly, purged from society.

(YEAH! HIM AND ALL HIS MAGA FOLLOWERS!!!)

Many of those arrested for attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, told the court they believed they were defending American democracy from those who were destroying the country and had stolen the election. Trump has championed those arrested for trying to install him into the presidency, saying they are “patriots” who have been “treated unfairly” and “have shown incredible courage and sacrifice,” and has promised that if reelected, he will pardon the nearly 1,000 people found guilty of crimes related to that event.

A gala to celebrate and raise money for those attackers—the J6 Awards Gala—was scheduled to be held at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club this Thursday but has just been called off until after the election.

The celebration of violence is now deeply embedded in the MAGA movement with leaders like North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, who recently attacked an assortment of enemies and assured his audience: “Some folks need killing!” As Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo wrote on August 27, this violent tendency has become for MAGA Republicans a fantasy about deploying the military against American citizens.

Yesterday, on the same day that Trump declared he had the right to interfere in a presidential election to put himself in power, the pro-Trump owner of X, Elon Musk, reposted to his nearly 200 million followers a statement suggesting that women and men who can’t physically defend themselves are inferior to “alpha men” and are not good participants in government because they lack the ability to think critically.

“This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making,” the original post said. “Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think.”

Over the statement, Musk posted: “Interesting observation.”

(EMO MUSKRAT'S CITIZENSHIP NEEDS TO BE REVOKED AND HE NEEDS TO BE DEPORTED TO S. AFRICA!!!)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 5, 2024 (Tuesday)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 6, 2024

Possibly the biggest story today in terms of its impact on most Americans’ lives is that as part of its war on junk fees, the Biden administration announced an $8 cap on late fees charged by credit card issuers that have more than a million accounts. These companies hold more than 95% of outstanding credit card debt. Currently, fees average $32, and they fall on more than 45 million people. The White House estimates that late fees currently cost Americans about $25 billion a year. The rule change will save Americans about $10 billion a year.

The administration also announced a “strike force” to crack down on “unfair and illegal pricing.” Certain corporations raised prices as strained supply chains made it more expensive to make their products. But after supply chains were fixed and their costs dropped, corporations kept consumer prices high and passed on record profits to their shareholders. The strike force will encourage federal agencies to share information to enable them to identify businesses that are breaking the law. 

Banking organizations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce came out swinging. Executive vice president Neil Bradley said that such regulation “to micromanage how private businesses set prices will have the same result: shortages, fewer choices for consumers, a weaker economy, and less jobs.” 

And in what perhaps illustrates why voters don’t appear to know much about what the administration is doing, these stories have gotten far less attention today than the primaries and caucuses. 

Today is Super Tuesday, when 15 states and one territory choose their primary candidates for president and for the House of Representatives and the Senate (although in Alaska, only Republicans vote today and in American Samoa, only Democrats vote today). About 36% of Republican delegates will be awarded today, and that’s the side people will be watching because on the Democratic side, Biden has a virtually uncontested lead with the exception of candidate Jason Palmer, who won the Democratic caucuses in American Samoa.

Trump is expected to win today’s Republican contests, but observers are watching to see what percentage of the vote challenger Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, takes from him. As I write this, she appears to have won Vermont and run strongly elsewhere, especially in the suburbs. Three states conducted exit polls and they, too, show warning signs for Trump as 78% of Haley voters in the North Carolina primary, 69% in California, and 68% in Virginia refused to say they would support the party’s nominee no matter who it is. 

It is also notable that polls showed Trump with a much stronger margin over Haley than materialized today. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, it is not yet clear what that means.

Trump is on his way to becoming the Republican presidential nominee. On Friday the Republican National Committee (RNC) will meet in Houston to choose a new chair. The only people running are Trump loyalist Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who hope to become co-chairs. Natalie Allison reported today in Politico that the RNC will not vote on a resolution that would have prohibited the RNC from covering Trump’s legal bills. 

Trump is certainly in need of money. Today, his lawyers demanded a new trial in the second E. Jean Carroll case, complaining that the judge limited what he could say, and asked for a judgment figure significantly lower than the $83.3 million the jurors awarded. By the end of Friday, Trump must post either the money or a bond covering it.

This morning, Trump told Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends that he was not worried about coming up with the money to pay the $454 million he owes in the New York fraud case, or the interest it is accruing at more than $100,000 a day. “I have a lot of money. I can do what I want to do,” Trump said. “I don't worry about anything. I don't worry about the money. I don't worry about money.”

Yesterday, Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, admitted he lied under oath during his testimony in that case. He will be sentenced in April. 

Super Tuesday is also the day that the 2024 presidential campaign begins in earnest for those who had not previously been paying much attention, and Taylor Swift today urged her 282 million followers on Instagram “to vote the people who most represent YOU into power. If you haven't already, make a plan to vote today,” she wrote.

The presidential contest is only one of the many contests on the ballot today, but most of those results are not yet in. 

Although the Arizona primary will not be held until March 19, we did learn today that Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) will not run for reelection. Her exit will leave the Arizona senator’s race to election-denying Trump Republican Kari Lake, who lost the Arizona governorship in 2022 (although she continues to insist she won it), and Arizona Democratic representative Ruben Gallego. 

Just as voters don’t appear to know much about what the administration has done to make their lives better, a recent study from a Democratic pollster suggests that voters don’t seem to know much about Trump’s statements attacking democracy. When informed of them, their opinion of Trump falls.

Trump has called for mass deportations of immigrants and foreign-born U.S. citizens; on February 29, he said he would use local police as well as federal troops to round people up and move them to camps for deportation. Asked yesterday by a Newsmax host if he would “order mass deportations if you win the White House,” Trump answered: “Oh, day one. We have no choice. And we’ll start with the bad ones. And you know who knows who they are? Local police. Local police have to be given back their authority, and they have to be given back their respect and immunity.” 

On the one hand, caps to credit card late fees and an attempt to address price gouging; on the other hand, local police with immunity rounding up millions of people and putting them in camps, for deportation. And, in between the two, an election. 

People had better start paying attention. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON