In my previous article, I explained how the Republican party carried out a coup during the Trump administration. Specifically, a type of coup called a "self-coup", where a legally-established government moves to unlawfully change or disregard procedures in order to exceed the powers granted to it. In this situation, it means they have bypassed the Constitution for the duration of Trump's 4 years as President in all three branches of government. In the event that Trump loses the 2020 election, it would mean the self-coup would dissolve with the transfer of power to a new presidential administration on January 20, 2021 (at least in the Executive branch, which is critical for Republicans to be able to hold their coup together).
In order to continue to illegally maintain powers beyond those allowed by the Constitution, the Republican party would have to begin a separate coup attempt to undermine the election or otherwise prevent a transfer of power to a new administration. Packing the Supreme Court 8 days before the end of the election, spending months sabotaging the Postal Service and mail-in voting, and literally discussing ways to ignore the results of the election can be seen as actions in the ongoing, new, Republican coup attempt. This is the sort of coup we typically think about, i.e. when there is an illegal change of administrations or prevention/refusal to change administrations.
This blog post does not attempt to provide an exhaustive analysis of the ongoing coup attempt, but provides a recap of recent events that have not yet been covered in previous posts.
***
The most recent, and most blatant, act in the ongoing coup attempt is the rapid appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Multiple articles could be written on the corruption and hypocrisy surrounding her nomination, but I will attempt to keep it brief.
On September 18, 2020, 87-year-old Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. On September 26, Trump announced he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett to fill her spot. Ginsburg wasn't buried until September 29.
Let that sink in--Republicans were so eager to nominate a new judge they announced their pick before the old judge was even buried...
Even with delays from a Coronavirus super-spreader event which infected many Republican officials (which occurred at a gathering in the White House Rose Garden to announce Barrett's nomination!), Barrett was swiftly confirmed by the Senate on October 26.
On February 13, 2016, during Obama's final term in office, Judge Antonin Scalia died. Obama nominated Merrick Garland (who multiple high-ranking Republican leaders explicitly named as a judge they would endorse). Nevertheless, Republicans in the Senate refused to even hold a confirmation hearing, claiming it was "too close" to the election to nominate a judge and that the judge should be chosen by the next president to "express the will of the people."
"I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination." -Lindsey Graham, 2016.
Despite Graham and other Republicans claiming they were setting a precedent regarding judicial nominations, they rammed Barrett's confirmation through 8 days before the 2020 election will end on November 3. Notice I say before the election ends, not "before the election." At the time of her confirmation, 60 million Americans had already voted.
Moreover, opinion polling showed a majority of Americans did not support the Republican's court packing attempt and wanted to wait until after the election to nominate a judge.
Let me reiterate that, if there was no nefarious intent behind putting her onto the court, Republicans could have just waited 8 days until the election was over. Clearly, they (1) believe Trump is unlikely to win the election, (2) need to pack the court with this particular judge immediately in order to have any chance of Trump remaining in office, and (3) need this particular judge to help shield them from the criminal investigations that would occur during a Crimes Commission after Trump loses.
***
Why Barrett in particular?
Like other Trump judges, she was hand-picked by the Federalist Society, an organization of judges, lawyers, lawmakers and others whose mission is to increase right-wing influence in the legal system.
She has indicated her willingness to pursue Republican party goals of overturning the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade. (Of course, that shouldn't be surprising.)
She has been criticized by Democrats for not having enough judicial experience to be qualified for the highest court in the land. However, she did have experience in one very high-profile case, and because of this we can see why Republicans truly view her as qualified.
She was a lawyer for Republicans during the Bush v. Gore case, helping George W. Bush "win" the 2000 election.
In the 2000 election, the result in Florida was extremely close (a margin of less than 1,000 votes). Florida was doing a recount, but the US Supreme Court ordered it to stop, effectively declaring George Bush as the winner of the election. Subsequent analyses of Florida's votes show that if all votes were counted, Gore would have won. However, Republicans set the precedent that they can stop counting votes and declare the result of the election if they are ahead.
To give an overview of the 2000 election in Florida:
"Bush led the election-night vote count in Florida by 1,784 votes. The small margin produced an automatic recount under Florida state law, which began the day after the election. That first day's results reduced the margin to just over 900 votes.[4] Once it became clear that Florida would decide the presidential election, the nation's attention focused on the manual recount."
(As a side note, one of the leaders of the Bush legal team was Roger Stone, who was recently convicted for crimes he committed for the Trump administration).
"Following the statewide machine recount, the Gore campaign requested a manual recount in four counties. [...] Meanwhile, the Bush campaign worked to stop the recount. On November 11, it joined a group of Florida voters in suing in federal district court for a preemptive injunction to stop all manual recounting of votes in Florida. [...] On November 13, the federal court ruled against an injunction.
[...]
On December 8, the Florida justices, by a 4–3 vote, rejected the selective use of manual recounts in just four counties and ordered immediate manual recounts of all ballots in the state where no vote for president had been machine-recorded, also known as undervotes.
The U.S. Supreme Court convened on December 1 to consider Bush's appeal. On December 4, the Court ordered the Florida Supreme Court to clarify its ruling that had extended the certification date. On December 9, the Court suspended the manual recount, in progress for only several hours, on the grounds that irreparable harm could befall Bush, according to a concurring opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia.
Meanwhile, on December 6 the Republican-controlled Florida legislature convened a special session to appoint a slate of electors pledged to Bush, as the U.S. Constitution bestows upon state legislatures the duty to determine how its state's electors are appointed. On December 12, the same day as the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the Florida House approved awarding the state's electoral votes to Bush, but the matter was moot after the Court's ruling."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida
Trump has publicly announced his criminal intent to stop counting votes precisely on election day, in order to ignore mail-in votes which would tip the tide against him in key states. Beyond this, the Republican-controlled legislature in states such as Pennsylvania have considered whether they could potentially circumvent the votes and directly appoint electors should the vote count be disputed.
Now you know why Trump has tried so hard to cast his opponent's party as being rife with voter fraud and illegitimacy--because he's trying to distract from his own party's plans.
"Separately, under questioning from Democratic senators, Barrett declined to commit to recusing herself from any Trump election case. Trump has speculated that the Supreme Court could face another major lawsuit over the November presidential contest. "I think this will end up at the Supreme Court," he said last month. "And I think it's very important that we have nine justices.""
***
Kavanaugh also worked on the Bush v. Gore case, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts (who was appointed to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush in 2005). Although to be fair to Roberts, he has generally made rulings based on principles rather than politics. The same cannot be said about Kavanaugh's character.
Demonstrating that their decision in the Bush v. Gore ruling was not based on any firm principles, the Supreme Court strongly implied their decision was a one-time only decision and should not be used as precedent. (Had their ruling been based in actual legal principles, as court rulings are expected to be, there would be no reason why a Supreme Court ruling shouldn't set a precedent).
Even so, Kavanaugh cited this 'shouldn't be used as a precedent' case in order to help Trump rig mail-in voting efforts in Wisconsin (a state Trump narrowly won by less than 23,000 votes). In a shocking statement reeking of political bias, Kavanaugh wrote, "thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day [would] potentially flip the results of an election."
Did you catch his Orwellian language? Those absentee ballots are the results of the election. Trump is trying to follow the Bush v. Gore playbook of stopping the vote count while he is ahead, and A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE IS HELPING HIM WITH THIS BLATANTLY ILLEGAL POWER GRAB. This is yet another reason why Kavanaugh is utterly unqualified and must be removed from the Supreme Court.
If those votes aren't counted, that will be evidence of a Republican coup.
"Last night at a rally in Michigan, [Trump] once again baselessly suggested that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, asking the crowd “Who’s sending them? Where are they going? Who’s sending them back?” And on Wednesday, he just gave up the entire game:
“We’ll see what happens at the end of the day [on Election Day],” he told reporters. “Hopefully it won't go longer than that. Hopefully the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after November 3 to count ballots, that won’t be allowed by the various courts.”
[...]
Wednesday was obviously not the first time that Trump has explicitly described how he might steal a second term, regardless of the actual outcome of the election. Asked last month if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power even if he lost, the president told reporters, “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and...we’ll have a very peaceful—there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it.”"
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/donald-trump-election-supreme-court
"The Trump campaign has been waging an unprecedented legal battle against mail-in voting—which is surging amid the pandemic—in states that could ultimately decide the race, seeking to limit votes that the president has repeatedly claimed, without any basis, would lead to widespread fraud and delegitimize the election. On Monday, they got perhaps their biggest victory so far: A 5–3 Supreme Court ruling that absentee ballots in Wisconsin must be received by Election Day or else they won’t be counted, even if the late arrival isn’t the fault of the voter. It’s a decision that could nullify thousands of votes in a state Trump narrowly won four years ago, and sow confusion just over a week before Election Day. And if that isn’t concerning enough, there’s the argument the Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices used to rationalize the ruling, a faulty justification that seems to have leapt from the president’s Twitter feed to the bench.
At issue in Wisconsin was a grace period for election officials to receive ballots sent through the mail, which has been facing delays thanks to the pandemic and to changes implemented by Trump’s handpicked postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a big dollar GOP donor. As long as absentee ballots are postmarked by Election Day, they should be counted, Democrats and voting rights advocates argued. But the high court shot them down, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing that the “last-minute changes” to the election rules would invite “confusion and chaos.” “No one doubts that conducting a national election amid a pandemic poses serious challenges,” Gorsuch wrote. “But none of that means individual judges may improvise with their own election rules in place of those the people’s representatives have adopted.” Concurring, Brett Kavanaugh went even further, arguing that late arriving ballots could prevent states from “definitely [announcing] the results of the election on election night," something that, as CNN’s Abby Philip noted, states do not do.
“States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.”
This is completely ludicrous. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, “there are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted.”"
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/brett-kavanaugh-wisconsin-supreme-court-trump-wins-election
The implications of this ruling are far-reaching. The US is a federalist system of government. This was intended so that the state governments had some amount of autonomy separate from the federal government, and could insulate themselves from and fight back against potential corruption at the federal level. This ruling, however, makes it much easier for the federal government to interfere in state matters.
When the federal government steps in to force states to abandon something like racial segregation, that is a good thing. But when the federal government, which has been taken over by the Republican party in a self-coup, is attempting to rig the election so that their party's control of our government continues, that is very bad, to say the least.
"What is surprising, however, is two concurring opinions by Justices Neil Gorsuch [note: Trump appointee] and Brett Kavanaugh, each of which takes aim at one of the most foundational principles of American constitutional law: the rule that the Supreme Court of the United States has the final word on questions of federal law but the highest court in each state has the final word on questions of state law.
[...]
They also sent a loud signal, just eight days before a presidential election, that long-settled rules governing elections may now be unsettled. Republican election lawyers are undoubtedly salivating, and thinking of new attacks on voting rights that they can launch in the next week.
[...]
As Gorsuch notes in his concurring opinion, which is joined by Kavanaugh, the Constitution provides that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” A separate constitutional provision provides that “each State shall appoint” members of the Electoral College “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,”
According to Gorsuch, the key word in these constitutional provisions is “Legislature.” He claims that the word “Legislature” must be read in a hyper-literal way. “The Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules,” he writes.
The implications of this view are breathtaking. Just last week, the Supreme Court split 4-4 on whether to overturn a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that also would have allowed some mailed-in ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted. Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were among the dissenters, though because there were no written opinions, neither explained why they would have thrown out the state supreme court’s decision.
We now know why. Based on Gorsuch’s reasoning in Democratic National Committee, it’s clear that both he and Kavanaugh believe the Supreme Court of the United States may overrule a state supreme court, at least when the federal justices disagree with the state supreme court’s approach to election law.
That is, simply put, not how the balance of power between federal and state courts works. It’s not how it has ever worked."
See the rest of this article for more analysis:
https://www.vox.com/2020/10/26/21535503/supreme-court-wisconsin-democratic-national-committee-neil-gorsuch-brett-kavanaugh-bush-v-gore
Not only is Kanvanaugh himself dangerous, but so are other judges who follow his lead:
"Brett Kavanaugh's Ruling on Mail-in Ballots Is Already Being Used to Suppress Votes. A Minnesota appeals court cited the Trump nominee's ruling in its decision to cut the state's grace period for receiving absentee ballots.
[...]
That Brett Kavanaugh’s argument this week forcing Wisconsin to reject mailed-in ballots received after Election Day made no sense was beside the point. The purpose of his concurring opinion was to lay the groundwork for other states to similarly limit efforts to expand vote-by-mail, which Donald Trump has repeatedly and erroneously described as rife with fraud. On Thursday, just days after the Wisconsin decision, a federal appeals court in Minnesota followed Kavanaugh’s blueprint, ruling 2–1 to cut the state’s grace period for receiving absentee ballots, citing the Trump appointee’s argument as justification."
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/kavanaugh-mail-vote-ruling-wisconsin-minnesota
Going back to Judge Barrett, Republicans needed to pack the court with her in order to win more cases. Although the Wisconsin decision was 5-3 along party lines, a similarly critical ruling on the time limit for Pennsylvania mail-in votes was split 4-4. With Barrett on the court, next time the Supreme Court sees this case and others like it, she will cast the deciding vote in favor of her party.
(And, of course, it is no coincidence that population centers in Pennsylvania, such as Philadelphia, were heavily impacted by Postmaster General DeJoy's election sabotage efforts. Lower courts have ordered the Postal Service to restore its mail sorting machines, but, again, the damage has been done.)
"After a very long delay in an emergency election case, the shorthanded United States Supreme Court came to a 4–4 tie in an election law case out of Pennsylvania on Monday evening. While a tie result that leaves the lower court ruling standing is a clear short-term win for Democrats in making it easier to vote in the Keystone State in November, Republicans could end up with a much bigger victory if there is any post-election Trump v. Biden litigation. If Amy Coney Barrett joins the court next week as expected, she could be the deciding vote in any case that challenges election or recount rules set out by a Democratic-dominated state Supreme Court in a place like Pennsylvania or North Carolina in opposition to those states’ Republican legislatures.
First, here’s how we got here. In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court released a series of decisions making it easier to vote by mail during the pandemic. The court relied upon the state constitution’s right to vote provision in granting the expansion. Republicans went to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge part of that ruling that allows ballots received up to three days after Election Day without a legible postmark to be accepted as valid votes and counted as part of the vote totals. Among the arguments that Republicans made against this order was that the state Supreme Court acted unconstitutionally in relying on the state constitution against the wishes of the state legislature.
As I explained a few weeks ago at Slate:
The final argument that Republicans are advancing is the boldest and perhaps most dangerous one. The argument is that when state supreme courts apply their state constitutions’ provisions protecting a right to vote to loosen voting rules in a pandemic, these state courts are usurping the power given by the Constitution to state legislatures to set the manner for conducting presidential elections. The argument echoes an argument that three conservative justices on the Supreme Court accepted in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case ending that presidential election. It’s a dangerous idea that a state court applying a state constitution is taking away legislative power, particularly in states like Pennsylvania where the state legislature has itself approved the constitutional provisions being applied.
But this argument is likely to resonate with at least some of the conservative justices on the court. As professor Ned Foley explains, this argument for vast legislative power to set the rules for presidential elections could have dire consequences and that “partisan state legislatures wielding this power could create difficulties that call into question the fairness of the election.”
Of all the arguments advanced by Republicans in these lawsuits, this argument about legislative power can do the most mischief. Most dangerous is the idea, furthered in a recent Bart Gellman Atlantic piece, that state legislatures could try to disenfranchise voters and take back their power to appoint presidential electors directly even after the votes are counted."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/supreme-court-pennsylvania-election-law-order.html
The issue of which votes to count and which to throw out is going to come up again and again in this election. In Texas, which had more early votes than all votes cast in the 2016 election, Republicans are already fighting in the courts to prevent legally-cast votes from being counted. This, as well as issues in other states, are likely to end up in front of the Supreme Court.
"Texas Republicans have asked a federal judge to throw out at least 117,000 ballots cast in Harris County, a heavily Democratic area that has experienced an unprecedented surge in early voting this month. The brazen effort to undo legally cast ballots in a diverse, populous county is an eleventh-hour attempt to diminish Joe Biden’s chances of carrying the swing state on Nov. 3. Republicans claim that Harris County’s use of drive-thru voting violates the U.S. Constitution, requiring the judge to throw out every ballot cast this way—more than 117,000 as of Friday. This argument is outrageous and absurd. But the case landed in front of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, one of the most notoriously partisan conservatives in the federal judiciary. Democrats have good reason to fear that Hanen will order the mass nullification of ballots as early as Nov. 2, when he has scheduled a hearing.
[...]
However Hanen rules, his decision will be appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Thanks to President Donald Trump, the 5th Circuit is one of the most extreme and partisan appeals courts in the country and an avowed enemy of voting rights. Its members may be eager to seize upon this case to prevent Joe Biden from carrying Texas. At that point, only the U.S. Supreme Court could end Republicans’ mischief. And SCOTUS’ ultraconservative bloc has already expressed its zeal to throw out as many Democratic ballots as possible under the theory that only legislatures get to run elections."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/texas-drive-through-voting-throw-out-ballots.html
"Texas Supreme Court rejects Republican-led effort to throw out nearly 127,000 Harris County votes.
[...]
The Republican plaintiffs, however, are pursuing a similar lawsuit in federal court, hoping to get the votes thrown out by arguing that drive-thru voting violates the U.S. constitution. A hearing in that case is set for Monday morning in a Houston-based federal district court, one day before Election Day. A rejection of the votes would constitute a monumental disenfranchisement of voters — drive-thru ballots account for about 10% of all in-person ballots cast during early voting in Harris County."
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/01/texas-drive-thru-votes-harris-county/
***
Can we learn anything from this debacle?
Pelosi said she would "use every arrow in our quiver" to delay the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Barrett. That didn't amount to much, and there is not much Democrats could have done. The President is Constitutionally allowed to nominate a judge whenever there is a vacancy; there is nothing illegal about this. The nomination of a judge so close to an election highlights the extreme hypocrisy of Republicans, but it in and of itself is not really contestable.
This why the Democrats should have done so much more to fight Trump over the hundreds of illegal things his administration has done over the past four years!!! Yet Pelosi decided to pass over those opportunities.
This could have also been avoided if Ginsburg had simply retired during the Obama administration instead of having the hubris to remain on the court decades after 'normal' retirement age.
Good point, but age isn't just a problem in the judicial branch...
***
More developments on election rigging and Republican voter fraud:
See my previous blog posts on this:
https://authenticamericandream.blogspot.com/2020/10/more-people-are-recognizing-republican.html
https://authenticamericandream.blogspot.com/2020/08/trump-sabotages-postal-service-to-rig.html
https://authenticamericandream.blogspot.com/2020/09/trump-sabotages-postal-service-to-rig.html
"DeJoy Says Mail Sorting Machines Were Stripped For Parts And Can’t Be Reinstalled; The postmaster general and the U.S. Postal Service argue they can’t comply with a judge’s order to return 700 high-speed mail processors to service."https://www.huffpost.com/entry/postmaster-dejoy-sorting-machines-stripped-for-parts_n_5f6d71d5c5b64deddeeb9107
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee "pretended" to commit voter fraud as a joke on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/govmikehuckabee/status/1320104112420212739
Which has reached the attention of Federal Election Commission (FEC) member Ellen Weintraub and likely the FBI (given the dozens and dozens of comments on Twitter saying they have appropriately reported Huckabee for engaging in or encouraging criminal activities).
https://twitter.com/EllenLWeintraub/status/1320161049769889792
Huckabee really shouldn't joke about filling out a ballot for his dead parents, since a Trump supporter was arrested for that exact thing 3 days prior to his Tweet.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/-trump-supporter-arrested-voter-fraud-pennsylvania_n_5f91e43ec5b61c185f4848de
(This adds to the pile of examples of Republicans committing actual voter fraud while at the same time trying to blame Democrats for non-existent fraud.)
On multiple occasions, Trump has encouraged his supporters to illegally vote twice (and thereby committed a crime itself).
Trump lackey Attorney General William Barr defend Trump on this issue, and pretended he didn't know if it was illegal to vote twice. (Yet another reason Barr is utterly unqualified for his position and must be removed immediately)...
"Barr tried to defend Trump's comments in an interview with CNN minutes later.
"Well, I don't know exactly what he was saying," Barr said. "But it seems to me what he's saying is he's trying to make the point that the ability to monitor this system is not good and if it was so good, if you tried to vote a second time, you would be caught if you voted in-person."
"That would be illegal if somebody mailed in a ballot and then actually showed up to vote in person. That would be illegal," anchor Wolf Blitzer replied.
"I don't know what the law in the particular state says," Barr claimed.
"Is there any state that says you can vote twice?" Blitzer pressed.
"There are some that maybe you can change your vote up to a particular term," Barr replied. "Why are you asking me what he's saying?"
"Wait, the AG isn't sure that voting twice is illegal?" Elias questioned. "That he needs to check state law?"
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein warned voters that trying to cast two ballots is absolutely illegal."
***
Voter intimidation:
In Texas, a group of many dozens of Trump supporters waited on the side of a highway in their vehicles to ambush a Biden campaign bus. When the bus came by, they surrounded it at very unsafe distances. They ended up crashing into a Biden staffer's vehicle. Eric Cervini, who filmed the event, said, "The police refused to help. When I flagged down one officer, he said his hands were tied: “not my jurisdiction.” He was wearing a blue stripe bandana."
So we may venture to assume many in the local police knew about this ambush and supported it.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-camp-cancels-austin-texas-event-after-pro-trump-ambush-on-campaign-bus
https://twitter.com/ericcervini/status/1322336490836381696
Trump praised the ambush.
Trump has repeatedly called on his supporters to engage in widespread voter intimidation, saying, “I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it.”
"Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford tweeted Wednesday night that Trump was not talking about poll watching, he was talking about “voter intimidation.”
“Voter intimidation is illegal in Nevada. Believe me when I say it: You do it, and you will be prosecuted,” he added.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring issued a statement Wednesday calling Trump’s rhetoric “dangerous."
“The President is blatantly urging his supporters to congregate at polling places, go inside, and ostensibly harass and intimidate voters,” he said. “While there are authorized ‘poll watchers’ who monitor polls on Election Day, their duties are clearly laid out, and they do not include what President Trump has suggested.”"
States are preparing to send the National Guard to cities on election day. This may be in part to further intimidate voters, or it may be because the Governors want to prevent widespread chaos caused by pro-Trump voter intimidation squads. Especially as we have seen that many local police are complicit in pro-Trump violence and willingly turn a blind eye.
"The Texas National Guard said Monday that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is sending 1,000 troops to five of the state's biggest cities to handle any outbreaks of violence or unrest on Election Day or afterward, a move that left his political rivals uneasy.
The cities would include Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
The possibility that some of the troops might be sent to polling locations in those areas as soon as this weekend prompted Democrats to speculate about voter suppression and intimidation."
https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-national-guard-deployment-polling-sites
***
Trump and treasonous activities:
"Trump’s Former National Security Adviser Accused Him of Treasonous Conduct. And No One Cared.
In any other time, it would have been front-page news and ignited days or weeks of controversy. But last week, when a former top government official accused the president, for whom he once worked, of treasonous conduct, the story lasted nanoseconds and was blown away by the never-ending firehose of craziness and disinformation generated by the commander-in-chief and his crew.
[...]
I am referring to an interview retired General H.R. McMaster, who served as Trump’s national security adviser after Michael Flynn was bounced, gave to MSNBC, in which he said that Trump was acting like a traitor. This sounds hyperbolic. But how else to frankly characterize McMaster’s remarks? He stated that Trump “is aiding and abetting Putin’s efforts” to intervene in the 2020 presidential contest. This is a helluva accusation being leveled by a man who once was Trump’s most senior national security aide: the president is currently assisting a foreign adversary’s covert attack on the United States."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/trumps-former-national-security-adviser-accused-him-of-treasonous-conduct-and-no-one-cared/
See interview here:
https://www.msnbc.com/hallie-jackson/watch/full-interview-h-r-mcmaster-on-trump-s-aiding-and-abetting-of-putin-92938821649
"With less than one month until the election, President Donald Trump is calling for his attorney general to indict his challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, for the "greatest political crime in the history of our country."https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-calls-ag-barr-indict-joe-biden-26-days-until-election-1537518
"Soon after, during a brief tarmac Q&A, a reporter asked the president why he keeps accusing his opponent of being a criminal. Instead of answering in any meaningful way, Trump simply said, "He is a criminal. He's a criminal.... Let me tell you something: Joe Biden is a criminal, and he's been a criminal for a long time."
[Trump] proceeded to tell a group of supporters at an Arizona rally that the former vice president is lucky that Bill Barr is the current attorney general, "because I know people that would have had him locked up five weeks ago." It came on the heels of a Georgia rally in which he similarly said, "Lock them up. You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens."
What's more, two weeks ago, Trump publicly demanded that Barr prosecute his political opponents, including the former vice president before Election Day. "Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes -- the greatest political crime in the history of our country -- then we're going to get little satisfaction," the president told Fox Business. "These people should be indicted ... and it includes Biden.""
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/reasons-unknown-trump-says-biden-should-be-jail-n1243982
"On Aug. 11, John Nagl and Paul Yingling, both retired Army officers and Iraq war veterans, published an open letter to General Milley on the website Defense One. “In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your constitutional oath,” they wrote. “If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order.”
Pentagon officials swiftly said such an outcome was preposterous. Under no circumstances, they said, would the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff send Navy SEALs or Marines to haul Mr. Trump out of the White House. If necessary, such a task, Defense Department officials said, would fall to U.S. Marshals or the Secret Service. The military, by law, the officials said, takes a vow to the Constitution, not to the president, and that vow means that the commander in chief of the military is whoever is sworn in at 12:01 p.m. on Inauguration Day.
But senior leaders at the Pentagon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they were talking among themselves about what to do if Mr. Trump, who will still be president from Election Day to Inauguration Day, invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to send troops into the streets, as he threatened to do during the protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Both General Milley and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper opposed the move then, and Mr. Trump backed down.
Several Pentagon officials said there could be resignations among many of Mr. Trump’s senior generals, starting at the top with General Milley, should troops be ordered into the streets at the time of the election."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/us/politics/trump-military-election.html
"Trust me, I leaked the Pentagon Papers. Trump is an enemy of the Constitution and must be defeated."
https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2020/10/13/trust-me-i-leaked-the-pentagon-papers-trump-is-an-enemy-of-the-constitution-and-must-be-defeated
(The Pentagon Papers was a secret history of the true scope and motives of the US during the Vietnam war, initiated by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967. Although McNamara was initially in favor of the war, by the time he initiated this project he regretted the disaster he helped to create. This project was kept secret from President Johnson and largely ignored within the government when it was completed. Daniel Ellsberg leaked it to the press in 1971 so the American public could see the true barbarity of the war.)
Trump owes over $1 billion in debt (early reports stated $400-500 million, but new information has shown it is much higher). Much of this debt is due within the next few years. Intelligence officials have pointed out this is an incredible national security threat. Whoever Trump owes this money to has massive leverage over him, especially if he's laundering Russian money.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2020/10/16/donald-trump-has-at-least-1-billion-in-debt-more-than-twice-the-amount-he-suggested/?sh=75d25a204330
https://time.com/5894199/trump-debt-national-security-threat/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/donald-trump-loans-deutsche-bank/
https://www.vox.com/21472063/trump-tax-returns-debts-owes-money
***
Republican government supporting White Supremacist terrorists:
"What in the Unholy F*ck Are These Idiots Doing? The Department of "Homeland Security" rallied to the defense of a guy who allegedly crossed state lines with an illegal firearm and killed two people.
In preparing Homeland Security officials for questions about Rittenhouse from the media, the document suggests that they note that he "took his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners." Another set of talking points distributed to Homeland Security officials said the media were incorrectly labeling the group Patriot Prayer as racists after clashes erupted between the group and protesters in Portland, Oregon. It is unclear whether any of the talking points originated at the White House or within Homeland Security's own press office.
[...]
It was inevitable that Rittenhouse would be made into a hero by the camo-and-long-guns crowd. But having the Executive Branch of the United States government go out of its way to concoct a public defense of someone who allegedly crossed state lines and killed two people and wounded one more with an illegal firearm is a step beyond the right's usual lunacy. The deprogramming is going to take decades."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34239473/homeland-security-defend-kyle-rittenhouse/
Previously I covered how the Michigan Governor said Trump was complicit in a far-right plot to murder her and overthrow the Michigan government. (Imagine what we would have done to Obama, or even George Bush, if they implicitly supported a similar plot?)
***
Facebook and the election:
"Facebook's Former Director Of Monetization Says Facebook Intentionally Made Its Product As Addictive As Cigarettes — And Now He Fears It Could Cause 'Civil War'"
https://www.businessinsider.com/former-facebook-exec-addictive-as-cigarettes-tim-kendall-2020-9
"Leading the effort to downplay these concerns and shift Facebook’s focus away from polarization has been Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global public policy and former chief of staff under President George W. Bush. Kaplan is a controversial figure in part due to his staunch right-wing politics — he supported Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh throughout his nomination — and his apparent ability to sway CEO Mark Zuckerberg on important policy matters. Kaplan has taken on a larger role within Facebook since the 2016 election, and critics say his approach to policy and moderation is designed to appease conservatives and stave off accusations of bias.
Kaplan, for instance, is believed to be partly responsible for Facebook’s controversial political ad policy, in which the company said it would not regulate misinformation put forth in campaign ads by fact-checking them. He’s also influenced Facebook’s more hands-off approach to speech and moderation over the last few years by arguing the company doesn’t want to seem biased against conservatives."
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-division-news-feed-algorithms
"Indeed, Zuckerberg started forming close ties to conservatives with the help of the Trump-backing Facebook board member Peter Thiel and global head of policy Joel Kaplan, a former deputy chief of staff to George W. Bush.
One of Zuckerberg's newfound ties is to President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. The two "sometimes discuss Facebook policies over WhatsApp," the Journal reports. And earlier this year, people familiar with the matter say Zuckerberg talked about the video app TikTok's U.S. presence with Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. "Zuckerberg also has forged ties with right-leaning publishers that drive engagement on the platform," including Ben Shapiro, who formerly ran the conservative Daily Wire, the Journal writes."
https://news.yahoo.com/mark-zuckerberg-reportedly-keeps-open-213400690.html
******
Due to the insane times we are living in, I'm sure there are many other recent developments I have missed. Regardless of who wins the election, plenty of additional corruption and insanity will occur between the end of elections and January 20...
Stay safe, and look out for members of your community. "Non-white" individuals and houses with political yard signs are likely to be among the first targeted by far-right groups. Organize within your neighborhood and be ready to help each other out at a moment's notice.
