Trump Sues CNN For Defamation Teases Lawsuits Against Other 'Fake News Media Companies' Will Follow
Trump Sues CNN For Defamation, Teases Lawsuits Against Other 'Fake News Media Companies' Will Follow https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-sues-cnn-for-defamation-teases-lawsuits-against-other-fake-news-media-companies-will-follow/
Former President Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN and teased that more legal battles against other media outlets will follow.
“CNN has sought to use its massive influence— purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source—to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically, culminating in CNN claiming credit for ‘[getting] Trump out’ in the 2020 presidential election,” the lawsuit filed Monday alleged. “CNN’s campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander against the Plaintiff has only escalated in recent months as CNN fears the Plaintiff will run for president in 2024. As a part of its concerted effort to tilt the political balance to the Left, CNN has tried to taint the Plaintiff with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler.’”
“These labels are neither hyperbolic nor opinion: these are repeatedly reported as true fact, with purported factual support, by allegedly ‘reputable’ newscasters, acting not merely with reckless disregard for the truth of their statements… but acting with real animosity for the Plaintiff and seeking to cause him true harm,” the suit continued.
CNN STARS CONTINUE USING ‘BIG LIE’ TERM ABOUT TRUMP, FLOUTING NEW BOSS WHO PREFERS DIFFERENT PHRASE
Former President Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN over its hostile coverage of him, specifically over the networks use of the phrase “The Big Lie” to describe his claims about the 2020 presidential election. (Getty Images)
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, cites CNN’s repeated use of the phrase “The Big Lie” to label Trump’s claims about the 2020 presidential election and numerous comparisons to Adolf Hitler in recent years.
“The ‘Big Lie’ is a direct reference to a tactic employed by Adolf Hitler and appearing in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. As commonly understood: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’ The ‘Big Lie’ was used by Hitler to incite hatred of the Jews and to convince people to ostracize Jewish people. It was an entire propaganda campaign to justify Jewish persecution and genocide. The phrase is not taken lightly and is not bandied about blithely. CNN anchors and commentators understand this. They have not used it against other political leaders and previously criticized political analogies to Nazi Germany and to Hitler,” the lawsuit claims.
CNN, MSNBC AVOID BIDEN’S ‘WHERE’S JACKIE?’ SNAFU AFTER OBSESSING OVER TRUMP’S ‘TIM APPLE’ GAFFE
The suit continues, “CNN has adopted the ‘Big Lie’ as its turn of phrase to describe the Plaintiff and the Plaintiff’s concerns over election integrity. The repeated use of the “Big Lie” in relation to the Plaintiff is not innocently rendered, but rather a deliberate effort by CNN to propagate to its audience an association between the Plaintiff and one of the most repugnant figures in modern history.”
Former President Trump stressed the importance of restoring law and order in America in his first speech in Washington D.C. since leaving office. (Getty Images)
In a letter sent through his Save America PAC, Trump hinted that CNN is the first of several lawsuits he will file against other media giants.
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“In the coming weeks and months we will also be filing lawsuits against a large number of other Fake News Media Companies for their lies, defamation, and wrongdoing, including as it pertains to ‘The Big Lie,’ that they used so often in reference to their disinformation attack on Presidential Election of 2020,” Trump wrote in the letter.
A spokesman for CNN declined to comment.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
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Trump Files $475 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against CNN | Politics
Trump Files $475 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against CNN | Politics https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-files-475-million-defamation-lawsuit-against-cnn-politics/
Former President Donald Trump on Monday sued CNN, seeking USD475 million in damages, saying the network had defamed him in an effort to short-circuit any future political campaign.
The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, focuses primarily on the term “The Big Lie” about Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud that he says cost him the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
There was no immediate comment from CNN.
Trump repeatedly attacked CNN as president, which resonated with his conservative followers. He has similarly filed lawsuits against big tech companies with little success. His case against Twitter for knocking him off its platform following the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection was thrown out by a California judge earlier this year.
Numerous federal and local election officials in both parties, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even Trump’s own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the election fraud he alleges.
Trump’s lawsuit claims “The Big Lie,” a phrase with Nazi connotations, has been used in reference to him more than 7,700 times on CNN since January 2021.
“It is intended to aggravate, scare and trigger people,” he said.
In a statement Monday, Trump suggested that similar lawsuits would be filed against other news organizations. And he said he may also bring “appropriate action” against the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters. The lawsuit comes as he is weighing a potential bid for the presidency in 2024.
New CNN chief Chris Licht privately urged his news personnel in a meeting more than three months ago to refrain from using the phrase because it is too close to Democratic efforts to brand the former president, according to several published reports.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Trump Rallies Drift To Fringe Ahead Of Potential 2024bid
Trump Rallies Drift To Fringe Ahead Of Potential 2024 bid https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-rallies-drift-to-fringe-ahead-of-potential-2024-bid-3/
WARREN, Mich. — Paige Cole is one of the “Anons.” The mother of three from Eastpointe, Michigan, says Joe Biden is a sham president and believes Donald Trump will soon be reinstated to the White House to finish the remainder of Biden’s term.
“His whole inauguration was fake. He didn’t have real military people. He had, like, fake badges, fake people. And Trump is actually our president,” she said while waiting in line for his latest rally on Saturday at Macomb Community College. Wearing a pink “Trump 2024” hat and draped in a large “TRUMP WON” flag, Cole — a former Democrat who says she voted twice for Barack Obama — began to cry as she described the significance of Trump’s return and the 1,000 years of peace she believes will be ushered in with it.
“It’s gonna change everything,” she says, “like we have never in humanity seen before.”
Trump’s rallies have always attracted a broad swath of supporters, from first timers taking advantage of their chance to see a president in person, to devotees who camp out for days and follow him around the country like rock band groupies. But after spending much of the last two years obsessively peddling false claims of a stolen election, Trump is increasingly attracting those who have broken with reality, including adherents of the baseless QAnon conspiracy, which began in the dark corners of the internet and is premised on the belief that the country is run by a ring of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and cannibals that only Trump can defeat.
As he eyes another White House bid, Trump is increasingly flirting with the conspiracy. He’s reposted Q memes on his social media platform and amplified users who have promoted the movement’s slogans, videos and imagery. And in recent weeks, he has been closing out his rally speeches with an instrumental song that QAnon adherents have claimed as their anthem and renamed “WWG1WGA” after the group’s “Where we go one, we go all” slogan.
Trump and his allies often dismiss suggestions that he advances conspiracy theories or condones violence. “The continued attempts by the media to invent and amplify conspiracies, while also fanning the flames of division, is truly sick,” his spokesperson, Taylor Budowich, said in a statement. “America is a nation in decline and our people are suffering, President Trump and his America First movement will not be distracted by the media’s nonsense, and he will instead continue fighting to Make America Great Again.”
But interviews with more than a dozen Michigan rallygoers Saturday underscore his influence and serve as a reminder that many cling to his every word and see his actions as validation.
Several of those interviewed said they only began attending Trump’s rallies after the 2020 election, when they said they had become more politically engaged. Several, like Virginia Greenlee, of Holland, Michigan, said they had been in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, trying to halt the peaceful transition of power by disrupting the certification of Biden’s win.
“President Trump really woke people up because I didn’t even know there was a deep state or fake media, fake news, until he started bringing light,” said Greenlee, who said she did not go inside the building but watched from outside. She blamed the violence on leftist protesters masquerading as Trump supporters, though there is no evidence to support that claim.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to elevate those who peddle conspiracies. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow salesperson who has spent millions trying (and failing) to prove the election was stolen, spoke twice Saturday — once outside to attendees waiting in line to enter and again during the rally program. Also in attendance was Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman who told the crowd that “Democrats want Republicans dead. And they’ve already started the killings.”
Trump has long used angry and violent rhetoric to rile up his supporters, even after Jan. 6 made clear that some may act on that anger. As he inches closer to a possible announcement, Trump has leaned into the kind of racist and violent language that helped him clinch victory in 2016, when his ever-more-shocking statements — and the inevitable backlash — helped him dominate the news.
On Friday, he again attacked Mitch McConnell, this time in a racist post on his social media site that accused the Senate Republican leader of having a “death wish” and derided McConnell’s wife, who was born in Taiwan and served in Trump’s administration as a Cabinet secretary.
On Saturday, the crowd cheered enthusiastically as Trump touted plans to use the death penalty to kill drug dealers and traffickers if he returns to the White House, emulating the strongman leaders he’s often admired. And again, he empathized with the Jan. 6 defendants who have been jailed for their role in the insurrection, casting the rioters — whom he has already pledged to pardon if he runs and wins — as “political prisoners” and accusing authorities of “persecuting people who just happened to be there, many of them didn’t even go in.”
The crowd in turn, broke into numerous “Lock her up!” chants directed at Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as the state’s Democratic governor, secretary of state and attorney general, whom his endorsed candidates are trying to unseat.
Still, Trump aides seem to want to have it both ways. As he began to wrap up his speech, some in the crowd raised their index fingers in what has been described as a QAnon salute. But for the second week in a row, burly event staff with tattoos carefully scanned the crowd, quickly asking those who raised their fingers to put them down.
“They said they didn’t want hands in the air,” one of them explained he’d been told.
Still, Trump’s nods to QAnon are encouraging to people like Cole, who said Trump had opened her eyes “to everything, to the evil in the world.”
A 55-year-old semi-retired certified nursing assistant who relies on a bevy of fringe podcasts for information since eschewing cable news, Cole believes “our money’s no good because it was controlled by the Rothschilds,” an anti-Semitic trope, and that the Supreme Court has “already overturned” the 2020 election, but “they’re just sitting on it and they’re waiting for things to come about.”
“We have to listen to underground news to get the truth of what’s going on, really,” she said.
Trump’s decision to play the song, she said after the rally, shows the American people “and all those affiliated and committed in with the WWG1WGA bond and mission, that President Trump, too, is doing his best to help all involved to eradicate worldwide evil and helping to make the world better for all. It brings me strength in my mind to hold onto the hope and promises for a better life for all.”
But some in the crowd voiced discomfort.
Christina Whipkey, 50, who lives in Warren, Michigan, said she found Trump’s flirtations with QAnon “kind of weird” and “odd” and worried their presence at his rallies was playing into negative stereotypes.
“I didn’t like that,” she said. “It’s telling people what they said about us all along, that we’re all just a bunch of QAnon supporters.”
“You don’t want people to think just because you support him that you’re that far into it, that you’re one of those people,” she went on. “You don’t want people to think that about you.”
A longtime Trump supporter who remembers talking about him running for president while playing his board game in high school, Whipkey also said she thinks it’s time for Trump to move on from the 2020 election, even if she has concerns about the vote.
“I just wish he’d let that go now. Focus more on the future than on the past,” she said, worried he was turning off potential voters. “They’re tired of hearing it … You get to a point where it’s like, ‘All right, buddy. We heard it enough. We got it. We know.’”
Laurie Letzgus, 51, a machine operator from Port Huron, Michigan, and another longtime supporter, agreed.
“It is time to move on, I think,” she said. “Let’s look forward. And let’s look to 2024.”
But Sharon Anderson, a member of the “Front Row Joes” group that travels the country to see Trump and who was attending her 29th rally Saturday, including the one held Jan. 6, disagreed. While she doesn’t “put a lot of faith in some of their beliefs,” she took no issue with QAnon’s growing presence at the rallies.
“There’s a lot of people, a big group that comes to his rallies. And they are for him, too. They’re for his policies. Now whether they are trying to push their beliefs, I don’t know,” said Anderson, who lives in East Tennessee. “But I do know that everybody here that I’ve encountered supports Donald J. Trump. That’s what matters.”
Jill Colvin, The Associated Press
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A Trump Lawyer Refused Trumps Request To Say All Documents Returned
A Trump Lawyer Refused Trump’s Request To Say All Documents Returned https://digitalarizonanews.com/a-trump-lawyer-refused-trumps-request-to-say-all-documents-returned/
Former president Donald Trump asked one of his lawyers to tell the National Archives and Records Administration in early 2022 that Trump had returned all materials requested by the agency, but the lawyer declined because he was not sure the statement was true, according to people familiar with the matter.
As it turned out, thousands more government documents — including some highly classified secrets — remained at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club. The later discovery of those documents, through a May grand jury subpoena and the Aug. 8 FBI search of the Florida property, are at the heart of a criminal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified material and the possible hiding, tampering or destruction of government records.
Alex Cannon, an attorney for Trump, had facilitated the January transfer of 15 boxes of presidential records from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives, after archives officials agitated for more than a year to get “all original presidential records” back, as they are required by law to do. Following months of stonewalling by Trump’s representatives, archives officials threatened to get the Justice Department or Congress involved.
Trump himself eventually packed the boxes that were returned in January, people familiar with the matter said. The former president seemed determined in February to declare that “everything” sought by the archives had been handed over, said the people, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Around the same time The Washington Post reported that the archives had retrieved documents from Mar-a-Lago, the people said, Trump asked his team to release a statement he had dictated. The statement said Trump had returned “everything” the archives had requested. Trump also asked Cannon to send a similar message to archives officials, the people said. In addition, the former president told his aides that the documents in the boxes were “newspaper clippings” and not relevant to the archives, two of these people said, and complained that the agency charged with tracking government records was being so persnickety about securing the materials from his Florida club.
But Cannon, a former Trump Organization lawyer who worked for the campaign and for Trump after the presidency, told Trump he could not tell the archives all the requested material had been returned. He told others he was not sure if other documents were still at the club and would be uncomfortable making such a claim, the people familiar with the matter said. Other Trump advisers also encouraged Cannon not to make such a definitive statement, people familiar with the matter said.
The lengthy Feb. 7 statement was dictated by Trump but never released, people familiar with the matter said, over concerns by some of his team that it was not accurate. A different statement issued three days later said Trump had given boxes of materials to the archives in a “friendly” manner. It did not say that all of the materials were handed over.
“The papers were given easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis, which is different from the accounts being drawn up by the Fake News Media,” he said in the Feb. 10 statement, which came on the same day The Washington Post reported that classified material was found in the 15 boxes.
A Trump spokesman did not respond to specific questions for this article, instead issuing a statement that said the Justice Department “has no greater ally than the Bezos-subsidized Washington Post, which seems to only serve as the partisan microphone of leakers and liars buried deep within the bowels of America’s government. President Trump remains committed to defending the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency, ensuring the integrity of America for generations to come.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Cannon did not respond to a detailed email seeking comment about his interactions with Trump and the archives.
The question of whether Trump — or anyone else — knew that there was additional government material at Mar-a-Lago after the return of the 15 boxes has become a central issue in the Justice Department investigation.
Attempts to get Trump’s representatives to falsely state he had no presidential records in his possession could serve as evidence that he was intentionally and knowingly withholding documents. And if Trump continued to pressure aides to make false statements even after learning the Justice Department was involved in retrieving the documents, authorities could see those efforts as an attempt to obstruct their investigation.
Even as Trump was seeking to convey that he had complied fully with the archives’s request, Cannon appears to have been communicating a different message to officials at the agency.
On Feb. 8, according to people familiar with the matter, archives lawyer Gary Stern told colleagues at the agency that he had spoken with Cannon and that Cannon said he did not know if there were more relevant documents in Trump’s possession. Stern had been asking the Trump team to attest that all relevant documents had been returned, and privately feared they had not, these people said.
Months earlier, in late 2021, when the archives was seeking the return of certain missing presidential documents, Cannon had told Stern there could be more documents in Trump’s possession than what he was transmitting to the agency, but that he did not know one way or the other. Cannon also told Stern in conversations that he was not sure where all the documents were located, or what the documents were, according to people familiar with the conversations.
According to an account given to Stern’s colleagues, Stern also asked Trump lawyer Pat Philbin whether there were more documents, the people said. Philbin declined through a spokesman to comment for this article.
Cannon’s refusal to declare everything had been returned soured his relationship with Trump, people familiar with the matter said. Cannon, who had worked for the Trump Organization since 2015, was soon cut out of the documents-related discussions, some of the people familiar with the matter said, as Trump relied on more pugilistic advisers.
A separate issue of concern to Cannon and others was whether any of the material in the returned boxes might be classified, people familiar with the matter said. Cannon did not have a security clearance and had not reviewed the boxes himself, one of the people said. He had told other aides not to review the boxes either, saying that doing so could get them in trouble, these people said.
A total of 184 classified documents were found in the returned boxes, officials have said.
Trump’s team later returned 38 additional classified documents to the Justice Department in June in response to the May 11 grand jury subpoena, which sought any documents still at Mar-a-Lago that bore classified markings.
In August, believing there was still more classified material at Mar-a-Lago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a warrant to search the property and confiscated more than 27 additional boxes of material. Agents retrieved 11 sets of classified material in their search — totaling about 100 documents. Some of them contained closely held secrets of the U.S. government, people familiar with the matter have said, including information about a foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities.
In responding to the May subpoena, other aides to Trump agreed to assert all documents being sought had been returned. Evan Corcoran, who replaced Cannon, told the Justice Department he was handing over all the relevant materials, people familiar with the matter have said. Christina Bobb, another Trump lawyer, signed a document saying she had been advised that Trump’s team had given over all relevant documents after a diligent search.
The National Archives preserves all presidential records under the Presidential Records Act, “which states that any records created or received by the President as part of his constitutional, statutory, or ceremonial duties are the property of the United States government and will be managed by NARA at the end of the administration.”
Rosalind S. Helderman and Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.
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Trump Rallies Drift To Fringe Ahead Of Potential 2024 Bid Local News 8
Trump Rallies Drift To Fringe Ahead Of Potential 2024 Bid – Local News 8 https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-rallies-drift-to-fringe-ahead-of-potential-2024-bid-local-news-8/
By JILL COLVIN
Associated Press
WARREN, Mich. (AP) — Paige Cole is one of the “Anons.” The mother of three from Eastpointe, Michigan, says Joe Biden is a sham president and believes Donald Trump will soon be reinstated to the White House to finish the remainder of Biden’s term.
“His whole inauguration was fake. He didn’t have real military people. He had, like, fake badges, fake people. And Trump is actually our president,” she said while waiting in line for his latest rally on Saturday at Macomb Community College. Wearing a pink “Trump 2024” hat and draped in a large “TRUMP WON” flag, Cole — a former Democrat who says she voted twice for Barack Obama — began to cry as she described the significance of Trump’s return and the 1,000 years of peace she believes will be ushered in with it.
“It’s gonna change everything,” she says, “like we have never in humanity seen before.”
Trump’s rallies have always attracted a broad swath of supporters, from first timers taking advantage of their chance to see a president in person, to devotees who camp out for days and follow him around the country like rock band groupies. But after spending much of the last two years obsessively peddling false claims of a stolen election, Trump is increasingly attracting those who have broken with reality, including adherents of the baseless QAnon conspiracy, which began in the dark corners of the internet and is premised on the belief that the country is run by a ring of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and cannibals that only Trump can defeat.
As he eyes another White House bid, Trump is increasingly flirting with the conspiracy. He’s reposted Q memes on his social media platform and amplified users who have promoted the movement’s slogans, videos and imagery. And in recent weeks, he has been closing out his rally speeches with an instrumental song that QAnon adherents have claimed as their anthem and renamed “WWG1WGA” after the group’s “Where we go one, we go all” slogan.
Trump and his allies often dismiss suggestions that he advances conspiracy theories or condones violence. “The continued attempts by the media to invent and amplify conspiracies, while also fanning the flames of division, is truly sick,” his spokesperson, Taylor Budowich, said in a statement. “America is a nation in decline and our people are suffering, President Trump and his America First movement will not be distracted by the media’s nonsense, and he will instead continue fighting to Make America Great Again.”
But interviews with more than a dozen Michigan rallygoers Saturday underscore his influence and serve as a reminder that many cling to his every word and see his actions as validation.
Several of those interviewed said they only began attending Trump’s rallies after the 2020 election, when they said they had become more politically engaged. Several, like Virginia Greenlee, of Holland, Michigan, said they had been in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, trying to halt the peaceful transition of power by disrupting the certification of Biden’s win.
“President Trump really woke people up because I didn’t even know there was a deep state or fake media, fake news, until he started bringing light,” said Greenlee, who said she did not go inside the building but watched from outside. She blamed the violence on leftist protesters masquerading as Trump supporters, though there is no evidence to support that claim.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to elevate those who peddle conspiracies. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow salesman who has spent millions trying (and failing) to prove the election was stolen, spoke twice Saturday — once outside to attendees waiting in line to enter and again during the rally program. Also in attendance was Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman who told the crowd that “Democrats want Republicans dead. And they’ve already started the killings.”
Trump has long used angry and violent rhetoric to rile up his supporters, even after Jan. 6 made clear that some may act on that anger. As he inches closer to a possible announcement, Trump has leaned into the kind of racist and violent language that helped him clinch victory in 2016, when his ever-more-shocking statements — and the inevitable backlash — helped him dominate the news.
On Friday, he again attacked Mitch McConnell, this time in a racist post on his social media site that accused the Senate Republican leader of having a “death wish” and derided McConnell’s wife, who was born in Taiwan and served in Trump’s administration as a Cabinet secretary.
On Saturday, the crowd cheered enthusiastically as Trump touted plans to use the death penalty to kill drug dealers and traffickers if he returns to the White House, emulating the strongman leaders he’s often admired. And again, he empathized with the Jan. 6 defendants who have been jailed for their role in the insurrection, casting the rioters — whom he has already pledged to pardon if he runs and wins — as “political prisoners” and accusing authorities of “persecuting people who just happened to be there, many of them didn’t even go in.”
The crowd in turn, broke into numerous “Lock her up!” chants directed at Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as the state’s Democratic governor, secretary of state and attorney general, whom his endorsed candidates are trying to unseat.
Still, Trump aides seem to want to have it both ways. As he began to wrap up his speech, some in the crowd raised their index fingers in what has been described as a QAnon salute. But for the second week in a row, burly event staff with tattoos carefully scanned the crowd, quickly asking those who raised their fingers to put them down.
“They said they didn’t want hands in the air,” one of them explained he’d been told.
Still, Trump’s nods to QAnon are encouraging to people like Cole, who said Trump had opened her eyes “to everything, to the evil in the world.”
A 55-year-old semi-retired certified nursing assistant who relies on a bevy of fringe podcasts for information since eschewing cable news, Cole believes “our money’s no good because it was controlled by the Rothschilds,” an anti-Semitic trope, and that the Supreme Court has “already overturned” the 2020 election, but “they’re just sitting on it and they’re waiting for things to come about.”
“We have to listen to underground news to get the truth of what’s going on, really,” she said.
Trump’s decision to play the song, she said after the rally, shows the American people “and all those affiliated and committed in with the WWG1WGA bond and mission, that President Trump, too, is doing his best to help all involved to eradicate worldwide evil and helping to make the world better for all. It brings me strength in my mind to hold onto the hope and promises for a better life for all.”
But some in the crowd voiced discomfort.
Christina Whipkey, 50, who lives in Warren, Michigan, said she found Trump’s flirtations with QAnon “kind of weird” and “odd” and worried their presence at his rallies was playing into negative stereotypes.
“I didn’t like that,” she said. “It’s telling people what they said about us all along, that we’re all just a bunch of QAnon supporters.”
“You don’t want people to think just because you support him that you’re that far into it, that you’re one of those people,” she went on. “You don’t want people to think that about you.”
A longtime Trump supporter who remembers talking about him running for president while playing his board game in high school, Whipkey also said she thinks it’s time for Trump to move on from the 2020 election, even if she has concerns about the vote.
“I just wish he’d let that go now. Focus more on the future than on the past,” she said, worried he was turning off potential voters. “They’re tired of hearing it … You get to a point where it’s like, ‘All right, buddy. We heard it enough. We got it. We know.’”
Laurie Letzgus, 51, a machine operator from Port Huron, Michigan, and another longtime supporter, agreed.
“It is time to move on, I think,” she said. “Let’s look forward. And let’s look to 2024.”
But Sharon Anderson, a member of the “Front Row Joes” group that travels the country to see Trump and who was attending her 29th rally Saturday, including the one held Jan. 6, disagreed. While she doesn’t “put a lot of faith in some of their beliefs,” she took no issue with QAnon’s growing presence at the rallies.
“There’s a lot of people, a big group that comes to his rallies. And they are for him, too. They’re for his policies. Now whether they are trying to push their beliefs, I don’t know,” said Anderson, who lives in East Tennessee. “But I do know that everybody here that I’ve encountered supports Donald J. Trump. That’s what matters.”
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Trump News Live: Trump Sues CNN For Defamation As He Seeks To Delay Special Master Documents Case
Trump News – Live: Trump Sues CNN For Defamation As He Seeks To Delay Special Master Documents Case https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-news-live-trump-sues-cnn-for-defamation-as-he-seeks-to-delay-special-master-documents-case/
Former US president Donald Trump claims he can declassify top secret documents just ‘by thinking about it’
Donald Trump has filed a $475m lawsuit against CNN for defamation, claiming the network “fears” that he will run again in 2024.
Meanwhile, lawyers for Mr Trump are seeking to delay a hearing in the case of classified documents recovered from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home.
After the US Justice Department appealed a recent ruling appointing a so-called “special master” to review the documents seized from the former president’s property, Mr Trump’s lawyers want to push back a hearing on the matter to January 2023.
Meanwhile, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared silent days after his wife and Mr Trump’s former transportation secretary was subjected to “racist” comments from the former president.
Mr Trump said Elaine Chao was “China loving” in a Truth Social post and that her husband, the most senior GOP figure in Congress, had made “a DEATH WISH” by agreeing to a spending plan that would see the government funded until 16 December and after the midterm elections.
1664834453
Greg Abbott sends more migrants to Kamala Harris’s Washington DC home
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has sent a new group of migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’s Washington DC home.
The latest 46 migrants arrived by bus on Monday morning at the Naval Observatory in the northwestern parts of the US capital, according to an aid group.
The Republican leader, along with his ally Ron DeSantis in Florida, are plotting to continue the busings in an attempt to keep immigration enforcement a top issue on voters’ minds as midterms approach.
Read more from The Independent:
John Bowden3 October 2022 23:00
1664832183
Anger mounts over Trump’s McConnell ‘death wish’ but Republicans stay quiet
Few Republicans are speaking out — publicly — after Donald Trump’s latest unhinged attack on Mitch McConnell, including a racist jab at his wife.
The former president criticised Mr McConnell on his Truth Social account for supporting Democratic-led legislation after Mr McConnell voted for a continuing resolution to keep the government open.
Read more about this developing intra-party feud from Eric Garcia:
John Bowden3 October 2022 22:23
1664828957
Trump attacks Kamala Harris for not entering North Korea
Donald Trump attacked Kamala Harris in a Truth Social post on Monday for not physically entering North Korean soil (at Kim Jong Un’s invitation) as he had done.
A video posted by the ex-president on Monday depicted Ms Harris viewing the Demilitarized Zone through binoculars while next to it in a second clip Mr Trump is seen talking with the North Korean leader.
Mr Trump’s overtures towards North Korea during his presidency famously ended long before he left office after he failed to achieve a meaningful agreement with Pyongyang.
John Bowden3 October 2022 21:29
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Trump sent staffer to buy Superman shirt for planned dramatic reveal while in hospital with Covid
In another intriguing piece of reporting from Maggie Haberman’s upcoming book on Donald Trump, Confidence Man, the New York Times reporter reveals that the former president planned a made-for-TV return to the White House as he lay sick from Covid at Walter Reed Hospital.
According to Haberman, Mr Trump planned to rip his dress shirt open as he returned to the presidential residence to reveal Superman’s iconic logo — even going as far as sending a campaign staffer on a shopping trip in search of a Superman t-shirt.
Read more in The Independent:
John Bowden3 October 2022 21:00
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Trump nicknames Maggie Haberman ‘Maggot’ after serving as source for her book
Donald Trump has coined a new nickname for New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman after serving as a source for her book.
The former president has furiously claimed that much of the book’s reporting is false, particularly one reported anecdote in which he supposedly considered firing both his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner from the White House.
Read more from Gustaf Kilander:
John Bowden3 October 2022 20:33
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Journalist Maggie Haberman says Trump is driven to run again by desire for ‘revenge’ on Biden
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, author of a forthcoming book about Donald Trump, says Mr Trump misses the “pomp” of the presidency and wants revenge against Joe Biden.
Haberman remains one of the best-sourced correspondents following the former president and his closest allies. In a new interview about her upcoming book, she described the president’s primary motivations which have emerged following his 2020 loss.
“I … think he wants revenge on Biden, and on the media, and on a whole range of people,” she said.
Read more in The Independent:
John Bowden3 October 2022 20:02
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Trump asks appeals court to delay classified documents case until 2023
Attorneys for former president Donald Trump have asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to deny a Department of Justice request to expedite its appeal of a Trump-appointed judge’s decision which has effectively blocked the criminal investigation into whether the ex-president broke the law by hoarding government-owned records at his Florida beach club.
Mr Trump’s legal team has argued in court documents that it would be “appropriate” for a three-judge panel to hear oral arguments in the case in January 2023 at earliest.
Read more from Andrew Feinberg:
John Bowden3 October 2022 19:10
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Former DC police officer Michael Fanone blasts Kevin McCarthy as a ‘f**king weasel b***h’
Michael Fanone, the former Washington Metropolitan Police Department officer who was critically injured in the Capitol riots, has offered a stunningly harsh rebuke of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
In a new profile for Rolling Stone, he criticises the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and accuses him of lying his way through his meeting with Mr Fanone and the mother of Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after the riot.
Read more in The Independent:
John Bowden3 October 2022 18:48
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Donald Trump pushes to delay special master classified documents case until 2023
Former President Donald Trump wants a federal judge to wait until 2023 to procede further with a case examining whether he illegally retained documents, including classified materials, at his Florida estate.
That’s from a new court filing on Monday from the Trump team, who are asking for several months to review tens of thousands of pages of documents seized by the FBI for potential attorney-client privilege protections.
It’s unclear if the former president will get his way, but the new filing comes shortly after the Trump-appointed judge overseeing the case threw out the special master’s proposed timeline for a speedy review of the documents.
John Bowden3 October 2022 18:02
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Trump makes bizarre claim about Bolsonaro
Donald Trump took to Truth Social around noon on Monday and issues his first reaction to Jair Bolsonaro being forced into a runoff with Lula De Silva, his top opponent in Brazil’s presidential election.
In his post, the US president attempted to portray Mr Bolsonaro as an underdog — a perplexing label to slap on an incumbent president who has held rallies with thousands of people.
“So happy to have helped a great person and leader get into the difficult to achieve, with other Conservative candidates and certain difficult rules and regulations, run off for President of Brazil. The Voters made a great decision in giving such strong backing to the brilliant and very hard working current President, Jair Bolsonaro. Now, for the sake of Brazil and its future greatness, they have to get Jair over the finish line, against a Radical Left Socialist, on October 30th. Go Bolsonaro!!!” Mr Trump wrote on his site.
John Bowden3 October 2022 17:08
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Russian Journalist Who Protested Ukraine War On Air Escapes House Arrest
Russian Journalist Who Protested Ukraine War On Air Escapes House Arrest https://digitalarizonanews.com/russian-journalist-who-protested-ukraine-war-on-air-escapes-house-arrest/
RIGA, Latvia — Marina Ovsyannikova — the Russian journalist who made international headlines after protesting the war in Ukraine live on state television in March — has escaped house arrest and fled with her 11-year-old daughter, according to Russia’s Interior Ministry.
Ovsyannikova’s whereabouts are not known, nor is it clear exactly how she escaped her pretrial house arrest. The Interior Ministry put the 44-year-old on its wanted list Monday.
Ovsyannikova, a former senior editor at Channel One, the Russian state-controlled television channel, staged an astonishing protest live on air in March. She shouted, “No to war!” and held up a placard condemning the invasion of Ukraine and telling people not to believe government lies.
She has since been fined twice for the offense of discrediting Russia’s military and was placed under a two-month house arrest in August on charges of spreading fake news about the military, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years.
The latter related to a protest in July when she stood on the river embankment opposite the Kremlin in central Moscow and held up a poster calling the Russian president and his soldiers fascists.
“How many more children must die before you will stop?” the poster read.
Her ex-husband first reported her absence to authorities on Saturday, Russian media reported. Igor Ovsyannikov, in an interview with the pro-Kremlin RT network, said he did not know where his ex-wife was, but that his daughter did not have a passport.
Since April, Ovsyannikova and her husband have been in a custody battle over their two children. Their 17-year-old son has already declared that he wants to live with his father, Russian media reported.
“After my daughter went missing, I applied to the authorities, but I still haven’t received any official answers from them about the progress of the investigation,” Ovsyannikov said. “When I called my daughter, she was confused and answered my questions weirdly.”
Several other prominent figures, including activists Lucy Shtein and Maria Alyokhina of the band Pussy Riot, previously fled Russia despite restrictions on their movement.
Ovsyannikova’s escape is the latest embarrassment for Russia, which has faced stunning battlefield losses in Ukraine and rising criticism of the war at home, even among some key Kremlin supporters. At the same time, the Kremlin has cracked down on displays of dissent as it works to conscript thousands of new soldiers for the fighting in Ukraine.
Ovsyannikova did not respond to calls and text messages from The Washington Post on Sunday and Monday.
Born in Ukraine, Ovsyannikova had been a senior editor for Channel One. But when she went to the office the day after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, she said, she realized she could no longer work there.
“Unfortunately, I have been working at Channel One during recent years, working on Kremlin propaganda,” Ovsyannikova said in a video message she aired after the March protest. “And now I am very ashamed. I am ashamed that I’ve allowed the lies to be said on the TV screens. I am ashamed that I let the Russian people be zombified.”
“It is only in our power to stop this madness,” she said, alluding to the high price of dissent in Russia. “Take to the streets. Do not be afraid. They can’t jail us all.”
War in Ukraine: What you need to know
The latest: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees Friday to annex four occupied regions of Ukraine, following staged referendums that were widely denounced as illegal. Follow our live updates here.
The response: The Biden administration on Friday announced a new round of sanctions on Russia, in response to the annexations, targeting government officials and family members, Russian and Belarusian military officials and defense procurement networks. President Volodymyr Zelensky also said Friday that Ukraine is applying for “accelerated ascension” into NATO, in an apparent answer to the annexations.
In Russia: Putin declared a military mobilization on Sept. 21 to call up as many as 300,000 reservists in a dramatic bid to reverse setbacks in his war on Ukraine. The announcement led to an exodus of more than 180,000 people, mostly men who were subject to service, and renewed protests and other acts of defiance against the war.
The fight: Ukraine mounted a successful counteroffensive that forced a major Russian retreat in the northeastern Kharkiv region in early September, as troops fled cities and villages they had occupied since the early days of the war and abandoned large amounts of military equipment.
Photos: Washington Post photographers have been on the ground from the beginning of the war — here’s some of their most powerful work.
How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.
Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.
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Ferguson Law Group Announces 24-Hour Personal Injury Services In Phoenix AZ Digital Journal
Ferguson Law Group Announces 24-Hour Personal Injury Services In Phoenix, AZ – Digital Journal https://digitalarizonanews.com/ferguson-law-group-announces-24-hour-personal-injury-services-in-phoenix-az-digital-journal/
Ferguson Law Group is pleased to announce that it now offers 24-hour personal injury services in Phoenix, AZ. This means clients can now receive legal assistance anytime, including at night. The firm’s team of experienced attorneys is available to help clients with various legal issues, including car accidents and slip-and-fall accidents.
Personal injury law is vital for many reasons. It helps those who have been injured receive the compensation they deserve. Personal injury law also serves as a deterrent to negligent and reckless behavior and can help those harmed get back on their feet as quickly as possible.
Residents of Phoenix, AZ, need 24-hour personal injury services. There is never a dull moment in this city, and its residents love to take advantage of all it offers. This includes plenty of nightlife and activities that can keep them busy until the early morning hours. Unfortunately, with an active lifestyle comes the potential for accidents. While most people are careful and do their best to stay safe, mishaps can still happen. When they do, Phoenix, AZ, residents need personal injury services to get them back on their feet as quickly as possible.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, nearly 250,000 violent crimes were committed against persons aged 12 or older in 2016. Of those, about 80,000 were personal injury crimes, meaning that roughly one-third of all violent crimes were committed against persons intending to injure. Phoenix, AZ, is home to 1,445,632 residents. In 2017, there were 9,711 personal injury law filings in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
The Ferguson Law Group – Accident & Injury Lawyers offer 24-hour personal injury services that are convenient and meet the needs of residents in Phoenix, AZ. The staff is friendly, knowledgeable,and works diligently to obtain the best results possible. The office is centrally located, making it easy for residents to find them. They have a wide range of experience with many different types of personal injury cases. The lawyers are passionate about their work and fight hard for their clients. They have a successful track record of winning cases. They will keep clients updated on their case every step of the way. They are always available to answer any questions or concerns. Their goal is to get the best possible outcome for their clients.
“Phoenix, AZ residents can now receive the legal assistance they need at any time of day or night with Ferguson Law Group’s 24-hour personal injury services. This means that no matter what time of day or night an accident occurs, residents can get the help they need.” according to attorney Jason Ferguson.
Ferguson Law Group is a law firm specializing in 24-hour personal injury services. They offer a wide range of services to help those injured in an accident get the compensation they deserve. These services include assisting clients in filing a claim, negotiating with insurance companies, and representing clients in court. Ferguson Law Group also has a team of experienced attorneys dedicated to helping their clients get the best possible outcome for their cases.
###
For more information about Ferguson Law Group PLLC of Phoenix, contact the company here:
Ferguson Law Group PLLC of Phoenix
Jason Ferguson
(602) 780-1226
[email protected]
3111 N. Central Avenue. Ste. 212`, Phoenix, AZ 85012, USA
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Weakness In The Upper Extremity After A Fall https://digitalarizonanews.com/weakness-in-the-upper-extremity-after-a-fall/
AFFILIATIONS:
1Associate Professor and Chairman, Department of Family Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ
2PGY-1 Internal Medicine Resident, Centinela Hospital Medical Center, Inglewood, CA
CITATION:
Grover M, Koneru SS. Weakness in the upper extremity after a fall. Consultant. Published online October 3, 2022. doi:XX
Received February 28, 2022. Accepted August 18, 2022.
DISCLOSURE:
The authors report no relevant financial relationships.
CORRESPONDENCE:
Michael Grover, DO, Mayo Clinic, 13400 E Shea Boulevard, Scottsdale, AZ 85259 (Grover.Michael@mayo.edu)
Introduction. A 58-year-old woman with debility from end-stage liver disease visited the clinic reporting weakness of her right upper extremity for the past day.
Patient history. The patient had fallen from her bed and remained lying on the floor for several hours until help arrived. Her right arm was compressed under her body the entire time, and she said she was unable to extend her right wrist. She denied numbness and tingling in her right hand and had no pain.
Physical examination. On physical examination, she could not fully extend her right wrist (Figure), but sensation was intact throughout. Her right-hand grip strength was normal. The intrinsic hand muscles of the lumbricals and interosseous muscles were intact. She had normal distal pulses and capillary refill. Results from a spurling test was negative. The rest of her nervous system examination was normal, including normal gait, vision, and speech, and she was negative for the Babinski sign.
Figure. Photo shows the patient demonstrating right wrist weakness when asked to extend both hands.
Based on the patient’s history and physical examination, which one of the following is the most likely diagnosis?
A. Carpal tunnel syndrome
B. Cerebrovascular accident
C. Radial nerve compression
D. Cubital tunnel syndrome
E. Cervical radiculopathy
Answer and discussion on next page.
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Prosecution Says Oath Keepers Concocted A Plan For Armed Rebellion
Prosecution Says Oath Keepers ‘Concocted A Plan For Armed Rebellion’ https://digitalarizonanews.com/prosecution-says-oath-keepers-concocted-a-plan-for-armed-rebellion/
Defense lawyers said the far-right militia had assembled ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to await what they hoped would be a decision by Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
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Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, is facing a charge of seditious conspiracy.Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated Press
Oct. 3, 2022Updated 6:03 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — Two days after Election Day in 2020, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, sent an urgent, encrypted message to high-ranking members of his group, telling them to resist allowing Joseph R. Biden Jr. to enter the White House.
“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he wrote.
Setting out their opening statement in the trial of Mr. Rhodes and four other members of the Oath Keepers on charges of seditious conspiracy, federal prosecutors said on Monday that the message was an early step in a broad effort to stop the transfer of presidential power and to use the might of the far-right militia to keep President Donald J. Trump in office.
Over the next two months, Mr. Rhodes riled up and recruited dozens of Oath Keepers to join his plot, prosecutors said, eventually deploying them in Washington and across the river in Virginia to disrupt a key moment of the democratic process: the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Ever since our government transferred power from George Washington to John Adams in the year 1797, we have had a core custom of routine and peaceful transfer of power,” Jeffrey S. Nestler, a prosecutor, said in Federal District Court in Washington.
“These defendants tried to change that history,” Mr. Nestler went on. “They concocted a plan for an armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of democracy.”
In his own opening statement, Phillip Linder, Mr. Rhodes’s lawyer, said Mr. Rhodes and his subordinates had never planned an attack against the government on Jan. 6. Instead, Mr. Linder said, the Oath Keepers were waiting for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — a move, they claim, that would have given the group standing as a militia to employ force of arms in support of Mr. Trump.
Calling the Oath Keepers a “peacekeeping force,” Mr. Linder also argued that the group did not go to Washington on Jan. 6 to storm the Capitol but to provide security at political rallies for speakers and dignitaries, like Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longtime political adviser.
“Even though it may look inflammatory,” Mr. Linder told the jury, “they did nothing illegal.”
Mr. Rhodes and his four followers are the first defendants in the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack to face trial on charges of seditious conspiracy, a crime that traces back to the Union’s efforts to protect the federal government against secessionist rebels during the Civil War.
The proceeding, which is expected to last four to six weeks, will be both a primer on the inner workings of the Oath Keepers and a kind of test case for the sedition conspiracy charge. That is the most serious count the government has brought so far against any of the nearly 900 people charged in the Capitol assault.
During the trial, prosecutors intend to use Mr. Rhodes’s own words — in virtual meetings, letters to his members and encrypted text messages — to show how he fiercely opposed Mr. Biden’s victory in November and became increasingly convinced of the Oath Keepers’ role in keeping Mr. Trump in power.
The conspiracy, Mr. Nestler said, culminated on Jan. 6 when more than a dozen members of the Oath Keepers advanced in military-style “stacks” into the Capitol itself — with some moving off in search of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Other members, Mr. Nestler added, were stationed as a “quick reaction force” at the Comfort Inn Hotel in Arlington County, Va. — across the Potomac River from Washington — in case things went wrong.
How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.
Another key aspect of the trial will be the Oath Keepers’ relationship to Mr. Trump, a man they often supported as president despite their traditional antigovernment beliefs. The group, which was founded during the Obama administration to oppose what it saw as an overreaching government, mobilized to defend presidential power once Mr. Trump assumed office and embraced the deep-state conspiracy theories that marked his new administration.
Because of the nature of the Oath Keepers’ defense — and because of the government’s wealth of evidence — the trial is less likely to focus on disputes over what the group did in the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6 than it is to hinge on the question of why they did it.
The government contends that Mr. Rhodes and his four co-defendants — Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — willingly planned to use force against the government and carried out their attack even though Mr. Trump never did invoke the Insurrection Act.
The defense maintains that the Oath Keepers could not have seditiously sought to stop the transfer of power because they believed that the Insurrection Act would allow them to legally come to Mr. Trump’s aid. The group was primarily concerned with potential violence by counterprotesters and instituted the so-called quick reaction force to prevent attacks from leftist activists like antifa, David Fischer, Mr. Caldwell’s lawyer, told the jury.
“This is the biggest bait and switch in the history of the American justice system,” Mr. Caldwell said.
While the seditious conspiracy statute generally bars plots to overthrow the government, Mr. Rhodes and co-defendants have been accused of using force to block the execution of federal law — in this case, the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, both of which govern the transfer of presidential power.
The five defendants have also been charged with two other conspiracy counts. One accuses them of plotting to disrupt the election certification process on Jan. 6. The other charges them with plotting to prevent federal officers from discharging their duties that day.
Mr. Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper who wears a black eye patch — the result of a gun accident — is by far the best known member of the Oath Keepers. But during opening statements, some of his co-defendants’ lawyers sought to humanize their clients by telling the jury a little about them.
Mr. Fischer, for example, said Mr. Caldwell was a former naval officer with lingering injuries from his military service. Ms. Watkins’s lawyer, Jonathan Crisp, explained that she was a former Army Ranger and a transgender woman who had repeatedly struggled to fit in with the Oath Keepers. Lawyers for Mr. Meggs and Mr. Harrelson chose not to offer opening statements to the jury.
Much of the evidence the government plans to introduce has been disclosed over the past several months in court filings and hearings — including details such as a patch Mr. Meggs wore on Jan. 6 with a slogan: “I don’t believe in anything. I’m just here for the violence.”
Whatever new evidence emerges at the trial will likely come through the testimony of cooperating witnesses from inside the Oath Keepers, at least three of whom have already pleaded guilty to sedition charges. Mr. Rhodes is also expected to testify, Mr. Linder said.
One of the government’s witnesses was with Mr. Rhodes on Jan. 10, 2021. On that day, Mr. Nestler said, the Oath Keepers’ leaders met with an unnamed person, whom Mr. Rhodes asked to convey a message to Mr. Trump, explaining that the fight to keep the White House was not over.
The witness recorded the meeting, and Mr. Rhodes could be heard complaining that the rioters at the Capitol did not have weapons.
“My only regret is that they should have brought rifles,” Mr. Rhodes said, adding, “We could have fixed it right there and then.”
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Treasury's Financial Stability Watchdog Warns Cryptocurrencies Could Threaten Safety Of U.S. Economy
Treasury's Financial Stability Watchdog Warns Cryptocurrencies Could Threaten Safety Of U.S. Economy https://digitalarizonanews.com/treasurys-financial-stability-watchdog-warns-cryptocurrencies-could-threaten-safety-of-u-s-economy/
The Treasury Department warned Monday that unregulated cryptocurrencies could pose a risk to the U.S. financial system.
The warning was a part of the first major public report released by the Treasury’s Financial Stability Oversight Council on digital assets. The council identified digital or “crypto” assets such as stablecoins as well as lending and borrowing on the industry’s trading platforms as an “important emerging vulnerability.”
“The report concludes that crypto-asset activities could pose risks to the stability of the U.S. financial system and emphasizes the importance of appropriate regulation, including enforcement of existing laws,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. “It is vital that government stakeholders collectively work to make progress on these recommendations.”
The council first designated digital assets a priority area in February.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks at the Atlantic Festival on September 22, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
Global crypto-asset market capitalization reached a peak of roughly $3 trillion last November, comprising approximately 1% of global financial assets, according to the report. Though the impact is relatively small in the larger global financial system, digital financing is quickly gaining in popularity and is being manipulated by criminals for illegal gain, according to the report.
Earlier this year, the Treasury Department issued a series of sanctions against Russian oligarchs, certain Russian banks and other organizations for using crypto assets to evade sanctions. In September, the agency blocked all property in possession or control of U.S. persons for 22 individuals and two entities that helped digitally finance Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency popular on the foreign exchange market, are also overwhelmingly used in speculative crypto-asset trading, Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said during a Monday FSOC meeting. Created for price stability, the price of the stablecoin is linked to flat currencies, commodities or other crypto assets.
The group recommended legislation that empowers financial regulators to more vigorously oversee the industry as well as expanding bank exams to require federal and state agencies to look at services provided by crypto asset service companies.
Formed after the 2008-2009 financial crisis, FSOC identifies emerging threats to the country’s financial security and organizes a coordinated response across U.S. financial regulators. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the FSOC is authorized to supervise and regulate nonbank financial companies, financial market utilities and payment, clearing or settlement activities to address possible vulnerabilities to financial stability.
The report states that, to date, the FSOC has not used this authority to regulate the cryptocurrency market.
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Sun Devil Softball Hosts Golf Tournament On Nov. 12 Arizona State University Athletics
Sun Devil Softball Hosts Golf Tournament On Nov. 12 – Arizona State University Athletics https://digitalarizonanews.com/sun-devil-softball-hosts-golf-tournament-on-nov-12-arizona-state-university-athletics/
Softball | October 3, 2022
Arizona State head coach Megan Bartlett and the Sun Devil softball team, invites fans to join them for the 14th annual golf tournament in support of the 2023 Sun Devil Softball team Saturday, November 12, at the Ocotillo Golf Course in Chandler, Ariz.
Registration options include foursome, single golfer, tee sponsor, and hole-in-one sponsor. Silent Auction and raffle prizes include lunch with Coach Bartlett, dinner with the 2023 softball team at Farrington Stadium, Sun Devil Softball swag bags, Team autographed Salute to Service softball helmet, Sun Devil Football helmet, set of Airpods and much more.
Questions? Contact Giorgie Loomis at 480-645-2275.
Registration for this season’s tournament is open now. Fans who wish to register need to fill out this form and send to:
Sun Devil Softball
ATTN: Giorgie Loomis
P.O. Box 872505
Tempe, AZ 85287
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Trump Rallies Drift To Fringe Ahead Of Potential 2024 Bid
Trump Rallies Drift To Fringe Ahead Of Potential 2024 Bid https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-rallies-drift-to-fringe-ahead-of-potential-2024-bid-2/
WARREN, Mich. (AP) — Paige Cole is one of the “Anons.” The mother of three from Eastpointe, Michigan, says Joe Biden is a sham president and believes Donald Trump will soon be reinstated to the White House to finish the remainder of Biden’s term.
“His whole inauguration was fake. He didn’t have real military people. He had like fake badges, fake people. And Trump is actually our president,” she said while waiting in line for his latest rally on Saturday at Macomb Community College. Wearing a pink “Trump 2024” hat and draped in a large, “TRUMP WON” flag, Cole — a former Democrat who says she voted twice for Barack Obama — began to cry as she described the significance of Trump’s return and the 1,000 years of peace she believes will be ushered in with it.
“It’s gonna change everything,” she says, “like we have never in humanity seen before.”
Trump’s rallies have always attracted a broad swath of supporters, from first timers taking advantage of their chance to see a president in person, to devotees who camp out for days and follow him around the country like rock band groupies. But after spending much of the last two years obsessively peddling false claims of a stolen election, Trump is increasingly attracting those who have broken with reality, including adherents of the baseless QAnon conspiracy, which began in the dark corners of the internet and is premised on the belief that the country is run by a ring of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and cannibals that only Trump can defeat.
As he eyes another White House bid, Trump is increasingly flirting with the conspiracy. He’s reposted Q memes on his social media platform and amplified users who have have promoted the movement’s slogans, videos and imagery. And in recent weeks, he has been closing out his rally speeches with an instrumental song that QAnon adherents have claimed as their anthem and renamed “WWG1WGA” after the group’s “Where we go one, we go all” slogan.
A man holds up his index finger during former President Donald Trump’s rally in Warren, Michigan on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Jill Colvin)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Jill Colvin
Paige Cole from Eastpointe Michigan holds up the flag she brough to former President Donald Trump’s rally in Warren, Michigan on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Jill Colvin)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Jill Colvin
Sharon Anderson, wearing donkey ears, traveled to Warren, Michigan from Tennessee for her 29th Trump rally on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Jill Colvin)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Jill Colvin
Mike Lindell heads to the podium at a Donald Trump rally at Macomb Community College Sports & Expo Center in Warren, Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. (Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Todd McInturf
U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene waves on her way to the podium at a Donald Trump rally at Macomb Community College Sports & Expo Center in Warren, Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. (Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Todd McInturf
Former President Donald Trump tosses caps to the crowd as he steps onstage during a rally at the Macomb Community College Sports & Expo Center in Warren, Mich., Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. (Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Todd McInturf
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Trump and his allies often dismiss suggestions that he advances conspiracy theories or condones violence. “The continued attempts by the media to invent and amplify conspiracies, while also fanning the flames of division, is truly sick,” his spokesman, Taylor Budowich, said in a statement. “America is a nation in decline and our people are suffering, President Trump and his America First movement will not be distracted by the media’s nonsense, and he will instead continue fighting to Make America Great Again.”
But interviews with more than a dozen Michigan rally-goers Saturday underscore his influence and serve as reminder that many cling to his every word and see his actions as validation.
Several of those interviewed said they only began attending Trump’s rallies after the 2020 election, when they said they had become more politically engaged. Several, like Virginia Greenlee, of Holland, Michigan, said they had been in Washington on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, trying to halt the peaceful transition of power by disrupting the certification of Biden’s win.
“President Trump really woke people up because I didn’t even know there was a deep state or fake media, fake news, until he started bringing light,” said Greenlee, who said she did not go inside the building, but watched from outside. She blamed the violence on leftist protesters masquerading as Trump supporters, though there is no evidence to support that claim.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to elevate those who peddle conspiracies. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow salesman who has spent millions trying (and failing) to prove the election was stolen, spoke twice Saturday — once outside to attendees waiting in line to enter and again during the rally program. Also in attendance was Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman who told the crowd that, “Democrats want Republicans dead. And they’ve already started the killings.”
Trump has long used angry and violent rhetoric to rile up his supporters, even after Jan. 6 made clear that some may act on that anger. As he inches closer to a possible announcement, Trump has leaned into the kind of racist and violent language that helped him clinch victory in 2016, when his ever-more-shocking statements — and the inevitable backlash — helped him dominate the news.
On Friday, he again attacked Mitch McConnell, this time in a racist post on his social media site that accused the Senate Republican leader of having a “death wish” and derided McConnell’s wife, who was born in Taiwan and served in Trump’s administration as a Cabinet secretary.
On Saturday, the crowd cheered enthusiastically as Trump touted plans to use the death penalty to kill drug dealers and traffickers if he returns to the White House, emulating the strongman leaders he’s often admired. And again, he empathized with the Jan 6 defendants who have been jailed for their role in the insurrection, casting the rioters — whom he has already pledged to pardon if he runs and wins — as “political prisoners” and accusing authorities of “persecuting people who just happened to be there, many of them didn’t even go in.”
The crowd in turn, broke into numerous “Lock her up!” chants directed at Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as the state’s Democratic governor, secretary of state and attorney general, whom his endorsed candidates are trying to unseat.
Still, Trump aides seem to want to have it both ways. As he began to wrap up his speech, some in the crowd raised their index fingers in what has been described as a QAnon salute. But for the second week in a row, burly event staff with tattoos carefully scanned the crowd, quickly asking those who raised their fingers to put them down.
“They said they didn’t want hands in the air,” one of them explained he’d been told.
Still, the music is encouraging to people like Cole, who said Trump had opened her eyes “to everything, to the evil in the world.”
A 55-year-old semi-retired certified nursing assistant who relies on a bevy of fringe podcasts for information since eschewing cable news, Cole believes “our money’s no good because it was controlled by the Rothschilds,” an anti-Semitic trope, that the Supreme Court has “already overturned” the 2020 election, but “they’re just sitting on it and they’re waiting for things to come about.”
“We have to listen to underground news to get the truth of what’s going on, really,” she said.
Trump’s decision to play the song, she said after the rally, shows the American people “and all those affiliated and committed in with the WWG1WGA bond and mission, that President Trump too is doing his best to help all involved to eradicate worldwide evil and helping to make the world better for all. It brings me strength in my mind to hold onto the hope and promises for a better life for all.”
But some in the crowd voiced discomfort.
Christina Whipkey, 50, who lives in Warren, Michigan, said she found Trump’s flirtations with QAnon “kind of weird” and “odd” and worried their presence at his rallies was playing into negative stereotypes.
“I didn’t like that,” she said. “It’s telling people what they said about us all along, that we’re all just a bunch of QAnon supporters.”
“You don’t want people to think just because you support him that you’re that far into it, that you’re one of those people,” she went on. “You don’t want people to think that about you.”
A longtime Trump supporter who remembers talking about him running for president while playing his board game in high school, Whipkey also said she thinks it’s time for Trump to move on from the 2020 election, even if she has concerns about the vote.
“I just wish he’d let that go now. Focus more on the future than on the past,” she said, worried he was turning off potential voters. “They’re tired of hearing it … You get to a point where it’s like, ‘Alright buddy. We heard it enough. We got it. We know.’”
Laurie Letzgus, 51, a machine operator from Port Huron, Michigan, and another longtime supporter, agreed.
“It is time to move on, I think,” she said. “Let’s look forward. And let’s look to 2024.”
But Sharon Anderson, a member of the “Front Row Joes” group that travels the country to see Trump and was attending her 29th rally Saturday, including the one held Jan. 6, disagreed. While she doesn’t “put a lot of faith in some of their beliefs,” she took no issue with QAnon’s growing presence at the rallies.
“There’s a lot of people, a big group that comes t...
Torn-Up Trump Papers Missing Obama And Kim Jong Un Letters Detailed In New Release On White House Documents
Torn-Up Trump Papers, Missing Obama And Kim Jong Un Letters Detailed In New Release On White House Documents https://digitalarizonanews.com/torn-up-trump-papers-missing-obama-and-kim-jong-un-letters-detailed-in-new-release-on-white-house-documents/
A detailed property inventory of documents and other items seized from former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is seen after the document was released to the public by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in West Palm Beach, Florida, September 2, 2022.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
The National Archives and Records Administration on Monday publicly released a small fraction of communications related to government documents removed by former President Donald Trump and his reported destruction of some White House records.
The communications related to NARA’s efforts to recover those documents, which included letters to Trump from former President Barack Obama and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. They also expressed the agency’s concern about Trump’s reported penchant for ripping some documents he read in the White House.
Other communications released Monday included correspondence between NARA and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which earlier this year asked David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, for details about 15 boxes of presidential records that it had recently recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
The communications were released in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
NARA said it was withholding the vast majority of the communications, including letters it sent to Trump’s lawyer, the Department of Justice, Congress and the White House, because they were exempt from disclosure under FOIA.
The release comes as the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Trump for taking government documents with him when he left office.
That probe led to an FBI raid in early August of the Mar-a-Lago Club. Agents seized thousands of government records, a number of them highly classified. The raid occurred after the DOJ came to suspect that Trump had retained more official documents than the ones included in the 15 boxes given to NARA.
In all, NARA on Monday released 11 pages and withheld 298 pages of communications between the agency and representatives for Trump.
And it released just 54 pages of communications from NARA to what the agency called “external entities other than Trump representatives.” NARA is withholding 1,249 pages of communications in that category.
“NARA will continue to review additional responsive information in the coming months for possible release,” the agency said in a statement. “We are not able to comment more on today’s release because of pending litigation.”
In a May 2021 email that was released Monday, NARA General Counsel Gary Stern told lawyers for Trump about ongoing efforts to capture presidential records on social media accounts, but added, “There are also certain paper/textual records that we cannot account for.”
“We therefore need your immediate assistance to ensure that NARA receives all Presidential records as required by the Presidential Records Act,” Stern wrote.
As an example, Stern wrote “the original correspondence between President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un were not transferred to us; it is our understanding that in January 2021, just prior to the end of the Administration, the originals were put in a binder for the President, but were never transferred to the Office of Records Management for transfer to NARA.”
“It is essential that these original records because transferred to NARA as soon as possible.”
Stern added that the letter that former President Obama left for Trump at that Oval Office when Obama’s presidency ended likewise “has not been transferred” to NARA.
“It is a Presidential record,” and thus must be held by NARA, Stern noted.
Stern also wrote that NARA understood that about two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the residence of the White House during Trump’s final year in office, but had not yet been sent to NARA “despite a determination by [White House counsel] Pat Cipollone in the final days of the Administration that they need be.”
In another document released Monday, a June 2018 letter from Stern to Trump’s deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino, Stern noted that the news outlet Politico had published an article days earlier about two former White House employees who had been responsible for taping back together documents that “were torn up by President Trump.”
“I am writing to request information on how the White House is addressing this issue,” wrote Stern, who noted that such documents would be subject to retention under the Presidential Records Act.
“How many records were torn up? Have any records been destroyed or were in a state that they cannot be recovered,” Stern asked. “What steps are taken to recover any records that have been torn up?”
The records NARA released Monday do not include any response to Stern’s letter.
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Biden Draws Contrast With Trump During Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico Trip
Biden Draws Contrast With Trump During Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico Trip https://digitalarizonanews.com/biden-draws-contrast-with-trump-during-post-hurricane-puerto-rico-trip/
President Biden on Monday sought to contrast his support for Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Fiona to the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Maria during a trip to the storm-ravaged island.
Biden has repeatedly emphasized in recent days that he has the plight of Puerto Rico in mind even as much of the nation’s attention shifted to Florida and damage from Hurricane Ian. The president on Monday traveled to Ponce, a badly damaged part of the island, to deliver the message personally to residents, emergency responders and volunteers who are picking up the pieces after yet another devastating storm.
“I’m heading to Puerto Rico because they haven’t been taken very good care of. They’ve been trying like hell to catch up from the last hurricane,” Biden told reporters before leaving the White House on Monday.
After a tumultuous relationship between former President Trump and island leaders in recent years, Biden praised the resilience of the people of Puerto Rico in the face of numerous natural disasters. And he rattled off the steps he’d taken quickly to free up resources to ensure the island has what it needs to start the recovery process.
“We came here in person to show that we’re with you. All of America is with you as you receive and recover and rebuild,” Biden said during his visit. “I’m confident we’re going to be able to do all you want, governor, and I’m committed to this island.”
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi (D) said he’s “confident” that Biden will give equal treatment to the people of the U.S. territory.
“We want to be treated in the same way as our fellow Americans in the states in the times of need. All American citizens, regardless of where they live in the United States, should receive the same support from the federal government,” the governor said in remarks ahead of the president’s.
While on the island, Biden and the first lady helped pack bags with food and other goods alongside volunteers on the island, and he received a briefing from local officials on the state of the recovery from Hurricane Fiona.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre touted that Biden was traveling to Ponce, which she described as the hardest hit part of the island from the hurricane.
“And it is an area that presidents have not gone to before and I think that shows the president and the first lady’s commitment to the people of Puerto Rico,” Jean-Pierre said.
Many of the sights of Hurricane Fiona’s destruction were all too familiar for Puerto Rico after Maria in 2017. Fiona hit with sustained winds of 100 mile-per-hour, dropped 30 inches of rain in parts of the island, and caused an island-wide black out.
The dominant image of Trump’s visit to the island after Hurricane Maria in 2017 was of the then-president flipping paper towel rolls into a crowd as if he were shooting a basketball, prompting critics to accuse Trump of trivializing the moment.
Following Maria, the Trump administration blocked relief with red tape and was slow to deploy aid and funds for reconstruction projects. While Trump was reluctant to disburse funds, the former president celebrated the federal government’s reaction to Maria as an unsung success.
On Monday, Biden announced $60 million in additional funding, which stems from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to upgrade levees, flood walls, and create a new flood warning system in Puerto Rico.
He also announced a new effort to make Puerto Rico’s energy grid more resilient.
“I’m ready to deploy and expedite more resources from the Department of Energy and other federal agencies… to help transform the entire system so the Puerto Rican people can get clean, reliable, affordable power they need and the power stays in homes and hospitals when storms like Fiona strike,” the president said.
The hurricane once again showcased issues with Puerto Rico’s power grid, which completely collapsed after Maria and has not yet been fully rebuilt. The power grid has been managed by a private entity since June 2021 and the hurricane and blackout it caused raises more tensions over Puerto Rico’s infrastructure.
Jean-Pierre on Monday told reporters that the resilience of the grid is a “priority” for the administration when asked how long efforts to make it more secure will take.
When the hurricane first hit, Biden quickly activated emergency funds after Pierluisi declared a state of emergency and the president called the governor about the federal response.
The federal government has sent over 1,200 federal personnel since the hurricane hit, Biden said on Monday.
FEMA administrator Dianne Criswell told reporters en route to Puerto Rico that her first trip upon taking the job was to the island to get a handle on the challenges it faces and “to make sure they understood this administration, the Biden-Harris administration, we’re there to support them.”
Criswell said she’s gotten positive feedback from local officials on the island in their meetings. Asked about the contrast between the Trump administration and the Biden administration, Criswell said the current White House is “laser-focused” on supporting Puerto Rico.
“I’ll just say we’re focused on helping Puerto Rico,” Criswell said. “We know there may have been some issues in the previous administration. We are laser-focused on giving them the support they need. That’s what my job has been. That’s what the president has directed me to do. And that’s what I’m going to continue to do.”
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Noem To Campaign For Election Denier In Arizona https://digitalarizonanews.com/noem-to-campaign-for-election-denier-in-arizona/
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — On October 4, 2022, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is expected to be in Scottsdale, AZ, at the offices of Jetset Magazine (a publication which seeks to “define affluence with the best in luxury cars, travel, private jets, yachts, fine dining, fashion, and high-end living) for a campaign event for Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
The event, Coffee with Kristi & Kari, will be held at 9:00 a.m. Guests must RSVP to the event, which is being hosted by Moms For Kari.
Some in South Dakota may be wondering, who is Kari Lake?
Lake, who won her primary with 46.8% of the vote, is perhaps best known for her advocacy of baseless election fraud conspiracy theories. She has called the 2020 presidential election unfair, and claimed that it was stolen; that Biden “lost the election and shouldn’t be in the White House.” She went on to claim that had she been governor at the time, she would not have certified Biden’s win in Arizona.
A Republican-funded audit of the election in Arizona, which took six-months to complete, found that Biden had in fact won the state, and in fact found that he had won by 360 more votes than had officially been reported.
Lake even claimed fraud in her primary race, stating without evidence that she’d overcome 41,000 fraudulent votes to win the race. No evidence of such fraud has been found, nor has Lake offered any. Lake began making the claims of fraud before the official results were in. “If we don’t win, there’s some cheating going on,” she claimed. This was despite polls in late July showing her trailing her Republican primary challenger, albeit in a vary narrow race.
In a Republican primary debate, Lake asked her fellow Republican opponents to raise their hands if they believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, then later went on to claim that 200,000 false ballots were trafficked by mules, a claim for which there is zero evidence to support.
Lake is currently facing Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, in the general election.
The journey to politics for Lake was not necessarily typical. On her website a campaign video serves as a biography. In the video, Lake talks about her Midwest Iowa roots, and recalls a day from her childhood when she watched a plane fly over and had a vision from God.
“During that time when I lived out in the country, I remember having a really tight, close moment with God,” says Lake in the video. “I saw a plane flying over and it was really tiny, and I thought to myself, ‘someday I’m going to be on a plane doing something.’ And I had this God moment — where it was almost like God said to me ‘you are going to be on a plane — you’re going to go places — you’re gonna do something big.’”
Lake cites Ronald Reagan as her hero and the reason she registered as a Republican when she turned 18. Not mentioned in the campaign video is the fact that she switched her registration to Democrat in 2008, the day after Obama won the Iowa Caucus. She would later switch back to Republican in Obama’s final year in office.
She attended the University of Iowa, at which time she worked as a janitor before starting a career in TV journalism with Fox 10, a station in Phoenix, Arizona. She worked there for 27 years before quitting during the pandemic, saying she felt the media had an agenda for COVID.
Following her exit from journalism, Lake stepped into politics and was endorsed by Trump as she pushed conspiracies about the national presidential election and her own primary election.
After the Republican gubernatorial primary was called for Lake, her opponent Karrin Taylor Robson conceded her defeat, saying “The voters of Arizona have spoken — I accept the results, I trust the process and the people who administer it.”
Ahead of the primary election, when Lake was already spreading accusations of fraud if she was to lose, Robson criticized her, saying that Lake’s baseless accusations of fraud should disqualify her from holding office. “She is undermining the election before the votes are even counted,” Robson said of Lake.
On Lake’s campaign site’s ‘Issues’ page, she notes a belief that the COVID-19 vaccines have been revealed to have significant deadly side-effects, and that they provide little to no protection from contracting COVID-19.
According to the CDC, most side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine are mild, and while serious side effects can occur, they are very rare. The CDC also notes that the vaccines still provide substantial protection.
Much of the misinformation spread to imply that the COVID-19 vaccine has been found to deadly rely on misinterpretations of VAERS data, which is the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. This system shows that in the U.S., over 17,000 people who have been vaccinated have died. This does not mean the vaccine was a factor in these deaths.
The CDC specifically states that “VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event. A report to VAERS does not mean the vaccine caused the event.”
VAERS data cannot be used to determine the cause of events for several reasons. First of all, it is a passive reporting system, meaning that it is up to patients, relatives, providers and others to submit the data to the CDC. Due to variations in reporting, the data is not a complete set. Also, the system collects all adverse effects of a vaccine, which can range from things like light fatigue or a headache all the way up to death.
Healthcare providers are required to report certain types of events to the VAERS system. Since many people experiencing mild symptoms are unlikely to consult with a physician, those side effects are less likely to be reported. This means that more severe side effects (such as death) are reported at a higher rate, as such effects are required to be reported.
Finally, reports to VAERS are meant to incorporate any possible side effects to a vaccine, even if the symptom reported was not caused by the vaccine. For example, if a patient is vaccinated for COVID-19 and later dies of a brain aneurism, that death will still be reported to VAERS due to the fact that the patient had been vaccinated.
In short, deaths reported in VAERS are deaths of people who happen to have been vaccinated, not deaths caused by vaccination. This can all be understood better with help from the University of Missouri.
Lake also discusses her dislike of California, her concerns about the elections and her desire to build a wall and deputize Arizonans to perform border patrol duties.
Lake’s anti-abortion stance is also represented, where she advocates alternatives to abortion, including over-the-counter access to all common forms of birth control, as well as financial assistance for those who may not be able to afford birth control.
Other topics addressed include homelessness, education and shutting down teacher’s unions, the Second Amendment (“Shall. Not. Be. Infringed.,” is all that is written), supporting local business, religious freedom, support for police, rural community preservation, military support, water access, cancel culture and Arizona’s role in going to space.
KELOLAND News reached out to Noem’s campaign on the morning of Oct. 3, asking if an itinerary/schedule of Noem’s campaign trip will be provided, how the Governor is travelling to the campaign stop, and whether Noem supports Lake’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen.
In a response to these questions, Ian Fury, Noem’s communications director, who has taken a leave of absence to work on the campaign, did not answer any of the questions asked, instead writing in an email: “Why is it a surprise that Republicans are helping Republicans? South Dakota is proving that Freedom gets results, and Kari Lake will bring the same principles to Arizona.”
Lake herself weighed in on South Dakota politics on Monday, Tweeting at Noem’s Democratic challenger Jamie Smith in response to a Tweet of his about the campaign event with Noem.
Read More…
Russian Woman Behind On-Air War Protest Reportedly Escapes House Arrest
Russian Woman Behind On-Air War Protest Reportedly Escapes House Arrest https://digitalarizonanews.com/russian-woman-behind-on-air-war-protest-reportedly-escapes-house-arrest/
Russia has put Marina Ovsyannikova, the former state TV editor who interrupted a news broadcast to protest against the Ukraine war, on a wanted list after she reportedly escaped house arrest.
The Ukrainian-born Ovsyannikova, 44, gained international attention in March after bursting into a studio of Channel One, her then employer, to denounce the Ukraine war during a live news bulletin, holding a poster reading “no war”. At the time she was fined 30,000 roubles (£460) for shunning protest laws.
Ovsyannikova continued protesting against the war and was charged in August with spreading false information about the Russian army for holding up a poster that read “Putin is a murderer, his soldiers are fascists” during a solo protest on the Moskva River embankment opposite the Kremlin. She was subsequently placed under house arrest to await trial and was facing up to 10 years in prison if found guilty.
On Saturday, Ovsyannikova’s ex-husband said she had escaped house arrest together with her young daughter.
“Last night, my ex-wife left the place that the court assigned her, and disappeared with my 11-year-old daughter in an unknown direction,” Igor Ovsyannikov, who is employed at the state-run news outlet RT, said.
Ovsyannikova’s whereabouts are unknown and she did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, she was added to the interior ministry’s online list of fugitives, accompanied by a photograph.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has launched an unprecedented crackdown on protesters, independent news outlets and foreign social media networks. In early March, the president, Vladimir Putin, signed off on a draconian law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally “fake” news about the military, in effect criminalising any public criticism of the war.
Hundreds of leading Russian independent journalists and activists have fled the country, fearing a wave of government repression. But the war in Ukraine also resulted in a steady stream of resignations from Russia’s tightly controlled state-run television channels.
Last month, Zhanna Agalakova, a former Channel One newsreader who at the time of her resignation in March was the station’s correspondent in Paris, announced she was returning the two state medals she received from Putin for her work at the channel.
“Mr President, your leadership is leading the country to the abyss,” Agalakova said in a handwritten note posted on her Facebook page. “I consider your awards unacceptable.”
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Biden Pledges Support To Hurricane-Hit Puerto Rico: All Of America Is With You As It Happened
Biden Pledges Support To Hurricane-Hit Puerto Rico: ‘All Of America Is With You’ – As It Happened https://digitalarizonanews.com/biden-pledges-support-to-hurricane-hit-puerto-rico-all-of-america-is-with-you-as-it-happened/
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Biden spoke in Ponce, Puerto Rico this afternoon, pledging future support for the island as it still deals with the impact of Hurricane Fiona. Biden also announced $60mn in federal funding that will come from the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed last year.
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The White House did not confirm if Biden will be meeting with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, given the frayed relationship between the two politicians. Biden is scheduled to visit Florida on Wednesday to assess damage the state sustained from Hurricane Ian, but partisan tensions have been mounting as Republicans face backlash for previously downvoting federal assistance for states dealing with natural disasters.
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A jury heard arguments in seditious conspiracy charges against the founder of the far-right group Oath Keepers and four of its associates. The trial is the most serious case so far stemming from the 6 January capitol attack.
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The Supreme court started its new term today, hearing arguments about a case dealing with social media companies being held financially responsible for terrorism and enforcement of the Clean Water Act. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sat on the bench for the first time, the first Black woman to serve on the highest court.
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That’s it for today; thank you for reading!
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Biden just wrapped up remarks in Puerto Rico, where he discussed past failures to support the island during previous natural disasters and future initiatives to ensure proper storm preparation.
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Biden acknowledged previous shortcomings in aiding Puerto Rico during intense storms, including Hurricane Maria: “You haven’t gotten the help in a timely way,” said Biden.
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“You haven't gotten the help in a timely way,” @POTUS, in Ponce, says of #PuertoRico and disasters in recent years. pic.twitter.com/T4NCjjD9TG
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 3, 2022
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Biden added: “We came here in person to show that we’re with you. All of America is with you.”
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“I’m committed to this island,” said Biden, adding that he is “confident” the US can meet asks from governor Pedro Pierluisi for the US to extend the disaster declaration in Puerto Rico, cover 100% of the cost to move debris, and provide other federal assistance.
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Biden noted that more has to be done to help prepare Puerto Rico for future storms, announcing the $60mn that the island will receive in federal funding from the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed last year.
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“We have to ensure when the next hurricane hits Puerto Rico, we are ready,” said Biden.
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Biden added: “We are not leaving here as long as I am president until everything – I mean this sincerely – until every single thing we can do is done.”
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“We are not leaving here as long as I am president until everything – I mean this sincerely – until every single thing we can do is done,” Biden says in Puerto Rico.
— Joey Garrison (@joeygarrison) October 3, 2022
n”,”url”:”https://twitter.com/joeygarrison/status/1577018188155727873″,”id”:”1577018188155727873″,”hasMedia”:false,”role”:”inline”,”isThirdPartyTracking”:false,”source”:”Twitter”,”elementId”:”7f67e10c-efdb-48d1-8d0b-7920c87554d5″}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1664824640000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”15.17 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1664826017000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”15.40 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1664825721000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”15.35 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”15.35″,”title”:”‘All of America is with you’: Biden pledges support and funding post-Hurricane Fiona”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Mon 3 Oct 2022 16.02 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Mon 3 Oct 2022 08.56 EDT”},{“id”:”633b1b7e8f086bb4a78edcbd”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Here’s a recap of what’s happened so far today in the world of US politics:
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Biden and first lady Jill Biden are en-route to Puerto Rico, where he will survey damage sustained by Hurricane Fiona and announce $60mn in federal funding for the island’s storm preparations. He is scheduled to give remarks there at 2:30pm eastern time.
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Partisan tensions are boiling, with Hurricane Ian recovery efforts underway. Republicans are accused of withholding relief money that could help states dealing with similar natural disasters in the future following the current crisis in Florida.
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The White House did not confirm if Biden will be meeting with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, given the frayed relationship between the two politicians. Biden is scheduled to visit Florida on Wednesday to assess damage the state sustained from Hurricane Ian.
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A jury heard opening arguments in seditious conspiracy charges against the founder of the far-right group Oath Keepers, the most serious case so far stemming from the 6 January capitol attack.
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The Supreme court started its new term today, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sitting on the bench for the first time, the first Black woman to serve on the court.
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The Supreme Court’s new term begins today, with oral arguments set to begin at 10am.
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During today’s session, the court will hear arguments on holding social media companies financially responsible for terrorist attacks, reports the Associated Press.
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Relatives of people killed in terrorist attacks in France and Turkey had sued several social media companies including Twitter, and Facebook, accusing the companies of spreading terrorist messaging and radicalizing new recruits.
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Tomorrow, the court will hear arguments concerning a challenge to the Voting Rights Act, the historic legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting rules.
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Across the next, several months, the court will hear other cases centered on affirmative action, enforcement of the Clear Water Act, and other issues.
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court, will be sitting on the bench for today’s oral arguments.
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Jackson was celebrated during a ceremony at the court on Friday, attended by Biden, Kamala Harris, and other state officials.
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Wall Street Closes With Sharp Gains As Final Quarter Begins
Wall Street Closes With Sharp Gains As Final Quarter Begins https://digitalarizonanews.com/wall-street-closes-with-sharp-gains-as-final-quarter-begins/
U.S. factory activity slowest in ~2.5 years in Sept -ISM
Credit Suisse, Citi cut 2022 year-end target for S&P 500
Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq up
Oct 3 (Reuters) – Wall Street stocks ended with sharp gains on Monday at the start of the final quarter of a tumultuous year with interest rate hikes amid historically hot inflation and fears of slowing economic growth.
All 11 major S&P 500 (.SPX) sectors advanced to positive territory, with energy (.SPNY) being the biggest gainer.
Data showed manufacturing activity increased at its slowest pace in nearly 2-1/2 years in September as new orders contracted, likely as rising interest rates to tame inflation cooled demand for goods. read more
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The Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing PMI dropped to 50.9 this month, missing estimates but still above 50, indicating growth.
“The economic data stream actually came in worse than expected. In a very counterintuitive fashion that likely represents good news for equity markets,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth in Boston.
“(While) good economic data, strong readings had been a catalyst for selling, this is the first time we’ve actually seen some negative news be a catalyst.”
Further supporting rate-sensitive growth stocks, the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury yield fell after British Prime Minister Liz Truss was forced to reverse course on a tax cut for the highest rate.
“The U.S. yield markets (are) pulling back – that’s been a positive … and that connotes a more risk-on environment,” said Hogan.
All three major indexes ended a volatile third quarter lower on Friday on growing fears that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary policy will tip the economy into recession.
According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 92.81 points, or 2.54%, to end at 3,678.43 points, while the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) gained 235.42 points, or 2.23%, to 10,811.04. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 764.52 points, or 2.63%, to 29,480.41.
Citigroup and Credit Suisse became the latest brokerages to lower their 2022 year-end targets for the S&P 500, as U.S. equity markets bear the heat of aggressive central bank actions to tamp down inflation. read more
Credit Suisse also set a 2023 year-end price target for the benchmark index at 4,050 points, adding that 2023 would be a “year of weak, non-recessionary growth and falling inflation.”
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Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Additional reporting by Ankika Biswas and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva, Arun Koyyur and Richard Chang
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Students Staged A Walkout To Protest Arizonas New Anti-LGBTQ Laws
Students Staged A Walkout To Protest Arizona’s New Anti-LGBTQ Laws https://digitalarizonanews.com/students-staged-a-walkout-to-protest-arizonas-new-anti-lgbtq-laws/
JUNE 13 2021: Protest at Brooklyn for trans youth rightsPhoto: Shutterstock
Students of at least six Arizona schools staged a walkout last week to protest new anti-LGBTQ laws that went into effect in the state late last month.
According to the Phoenix New Times, more than 100 students walked out of Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona, on September 29. The demonstration was organized by Support Equality Arizona Schools, an organization founded by 16-year-old high school student Dawn Shim to advocate for minority and LGBTQ students.
Shim spoke to the students gathered on the lawn at the nearby Chandler Public Library, with a message aimed directly at Arizona’s Gov. Doug Ducey (R).
“These bills are killing us,” Shim said. “They are killing our peers. We do not need any more students hurt by your actions. We aren’t out here missing our school day and interrupting our education because we want to. We have been forced into it.”
“Across America, more and more anti-LGBTQ legislation is being passed by the people sworn in to protect us,” Shim continued. “We also have a burgeoning mental health crisis among young teens. These two factors are not coincidental. The Trevor Project finds that, in 2022, almost 45% of LGBTQ youth considered suicide in the last year.”
Across town, roughly 200 students staged a simultaneous walkout at Chandler High School. According to the AZ Mirror, Support Equality Arizona Schools also has supporters in Gilbert, Tucson, and Flagstaff.
The laws students were protesting all went into effect on September 24 and included laws against trans girls participating in girls’ sports; bans on minors accessing gender-affirming healthcare; and removing “sexually explicit” books from libraries.
Trans students were particularly worried about a new law that forces schools to share confidential student records, including health and counseling records, with parents. They say that could put transgender students in danger.
“School should be a safe place. Teachers are often the only people students with homophobic parents can talk to, and this law shatters that,” said 14-year-old Ace Yates.
“I have to stay hidden half of the time,” said trans student Jay Nash, who said he has to keep his gender identity secret from some unaccepting family members. “It sucks.”
Said Hamilton student Blues Patrick, “It is embarrassing that we live in a state and a country where people are at risk simply for being who they are and loving who they want.”
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BELGIAN WAFFLE RIDE REGISTRATION HAS OPENED! https://digitalarizonanews.com/belgian-waffle-ride-registration-has-opened/
First half of the Quadrupel Crown of Gravel Series Revealed
, /PRNewswire/ — Monuments of Cycling (MoC), a premier cycling events producer best known for its iconic Monument of Gravel, the Belgian Waffle Ride (BWR), has announced its burgeoning BWR calendar for the first half of 2023 with a North American expansion into Canada, along with a new Arizona venue in Scottsdale, plus the new Quadrupel Crown of Gravel Series format. The Quadrupel Crown, comprised of all the BWRs, is the largest gravel series in the world, which will be contested in a points-based omnium format across all the 2023 BWRs, including the Canada and Arizona events being added to the first half of the series. Riders competing for the Quadrupel honors and prize purse will be able to take the points of their top four (Quad) races to vie for the win – each rider MUST race BWR CA to qualify. The series will recognize professional riders and age-groupers alike. Registration for these events will open on Monday, October 3, 2022, at 9 a.m. PST at www.BWR.Bike.
This year with inflation affecting everyone’s wallets, including Monuments of Cycling, the BWR is announcing that it will NOT increase entry fees to reward loyal and new BWR competitors with pre-pandemic registration pricing. This is despite the rising costs of putting on world class events. The individual BWRs each have their own pricing and registration caps with these lower prices locked in for early registrants. Once those caps are reached, the pricing will go up.
Inaugural BWR AZ in Scottsdale, AZ on March 4 – 5, 2023
$200 for first 300, $225 for next 200, $250 thereafter – cap of 1,000
12th Annual BWR CA in San Diego on April 14 – April 16, 2023
$200 for first 1000, $225 for next 500, $250 thereafter – cap of 3000
Inaugural BWR BC on Vancouver Island, BC on May 26 – 28, 2023
$200 for first 300, $225 for next 200, $250 thereafter – cap of 1,000
3rd Annual BWR NC in Asheville on June 9 – 10, 2023
$200 for first 300, $225 for next 200, $250 thereafter – cap of 1,000
Created as an extremely challenging race in the spirit of the great European one-day Spring Classics, the BWR is known as the most unique cycling event in the country for its incredibly dynamic, multi-surface ‘unroad’ parcourses replete with single track, sand, rocks, gravel, water crossings, cyclocross features and even some asphalt.
The new BWR Arizona will be the kick-off to the 2023 Quadrupel Crown of Gravel Series and offer another unique way to experience the unroad dynamics only the BWR can offer. There will be three distances on offer, the longer Waffle event, with the half-as-long Wafer and even shorter Wanna rides being held March 5, 2023, in Scottsdale, AZ.
Registration for the back- half of 2023 events will open December 12, 2022.
ABOUT MONUMENTS OF CYCLING
Monuments of Cycling is committed to delivering the most unique cycling events in the country, offering experiences for the most elite athletes on the planet as well as those in awe of them, through the creation of world class races that engage riders in myriad and unexpected ways. Our mission is to inspire riders of all stripes to reach, grow and aspire to new levels of fulfillment and joy, finding unusual ways to test their physical and mental fortitude. To learn more, visit www.MonumentsofCycling.com.
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SOURCE Monuments of Cycling
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Donald Trump Will Be https://digitalarizonanews.com/donald-trump-will-be/
Conservative lawyer George Conway is predicting former President Donald Trump will be slapped with a felony conviction for various crimes by the end of the year.
“I think he could go to prison, but it is more likely that he will serve home confinement,” Conway told Salon in a wide-ranging interview published Monday.
“In all likelihood, he will be convicted of multiple felonies.”
In the past few months, Trump, who has not been formally charged with any crime, has faced mounting legal woes from various agencies and private litigants while remaining the most popular political figure in the Republican Party.
The FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, in August as part of an investigation into mishandled classified documents.
Trump is a target of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which could refer him to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. And he faces civil suit filed by the New York attorney general over fraudulent business practices.
Mar-a-Lago case: Judge gives Trump more time to challenge Mar-a-Lago documents
Conway, the husband of former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, said Trump has a history of settling civil cases, but that doesn’t believe the former president will take a plea deal if he is hit with more serious criminal cases.
Trump’s NY lawsuit: Running for president, fighting in court? How fraud lawsuit could complicate Trump’s plans
In 2016, Conway voted for Trump, but he has been converted into one of the former president’s chief critics. That is in sharp contrast to his wife, who ran Trump’s presidential campaign six years ago and was one of his top aides during his presidency.
“Reflecting on my own behavior, I thoroughly own up to the fact that I voted for Donald Trump and supported him in 2016,” he told Salon. “That was a grave moral error on my part, and I own it. I’m happy — well, not happy, but willing — to admit my error. But the fact is, that some people can’t do it that easily.”
The former president, Conway speculated, has a good chance of ending with a felony conviction sometime after the 2022 midterm elections but before the new year starts. If so, he said, the country should prepare for Trump to “incite violence on his behalf” much in the same way he did after losing the 2020 presidential election.
“This all goes so much to the core of Trump’s identity that he will try to tear the country apart before he settles one of these criminal cases,” Conway said.
But Trump has survived various legal allegations and court litigation during his decades as a real estate mogul.
Those suits and investigations also haven’t pierced his political popularity with the GOP base, which rallied behind Trump when the FBI searched his Florida estate and created a backlash against the federal agency among some conservative activists.
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Opinion | Make No Mistake: Donald Trump Is On The Ballot
Opinion | Make No Mistake: Donald Trump Is On The Ballot https://digitalarizonanews.com/opinion-make-no-mistake-donald-trump-is-on-the-ballot/
My friends,
Make no mistake: Donald Trump is effectively on the ballot in the midterm elections, five weeks from tomorrow (voting has already begun in several states). Even if he decides not to run, he’s laying the groundwork for authoritarianism.
In the upcoming midterms, 60 percent of us will have an election denier on our ballot, most of them endorsed by Trump.
In the upcoming midterms, 60 percent of us will have an election denier on our ballot, most of them endorsed by Trump. In the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates who embrace Trump’s Big Lie have won almost two-thirds of Republican nominations for offices with authority over elections.
Many are running for secretaries of state—the chief elections officers in 37 states, who will be overseeing voter registration and how elections are conducted. In the 2020 presidential election, people who held these positions were the last line of defense for our fragile democracy, upholding Joe Biden’s win despite heavy pressure from proponents of Trump’s Big Lie.
Which is why Trump and Trump’s lieutenants, including Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, are trying to fill these positions with Big Liars.
Michigan’s GOP candidate for Secretary of State is Kristina Karamo—who rose to prominence in conservative circles after falsely claiming to have witnessed election fraud as a pollster. Karamo has claimed that Trump won the 2020 election and that Antifa was behind the January 6 insurrection.
Arizona’s Republican candidate for Secretary of State is Mark Finchem, a QAnon-supporting member of the Oath Keepers militia, who participated in the January 6 insurrection. He cruised to victory in the GOP primary by claiming that Trump won the 2020 election.
Nevada’s GOP’s candidate for Secretary of State is Jim Marchant, who won his Republican primary by making Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud a cornerstone of his campaign. He also falsely claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, and wants to eliminate it altogether (despite the fact that he has voted by mail many times over the years).
In Wyoming, state representative Chuck Gray, who won last month’s GOP primary for secretary of state, faces no opponent. Gray has repeated Trump’s lies about 2020 being “rigged,” traveled to Arizona to watch a partisan review of ballots that was derided as deeply flawed and proposed additional regular election audits in Wyoming. In Alabama, state Rep. Wes Allen, the nominee for secretary of state, says he would have signed onto a 2020 Texas lawsuit to overturn Biden’s win (that case was swiftly thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court).
Trump-backed candidates for governor are also on the ballot in key states where governors play a critical role in certifying votes and upholding the will of the people.
Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial nominee is Doug Mastriano. If he wins, Mastriano would appoint Pennsylvania’s top election official. Mastriano was also at the Capitol on January 6, and has even been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee to testify about his involvement. Mastriano also helped lead the push to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial nominee is Kari Lake—who has said she does not recognize Joe Biden as the nation’s legitimate president, and would not have certified Arizona’s 2020 election results had she been governor.
Wisconsin’s Republican gubernatorial nominee is Tim Michels. Michels still questions the results of the 2020 election and refuses to say whether he will certify the state’s 2024 president election results. Right now, elections in Wisconsin are overseen by the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission, but if Michels wins he supports scrapping the Commission in favor of a plan that could shift oversight of the state’s elections to the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.
I don’t know about you, but all these Big Liars terrify me. If any one of them wins in a state that’s likely to be a battleground in 2024, they could tip the balance in a tight presidential election to Trump. What terrifies me even more is they could tip America away from democracy to authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, a third of all state attorney general races currently have an election denying Republican candidate on the ballot—including Alabama’s Steve Marshall, Idaho’s Paul Labrador, Texas’s Ken Paxton, South Carolina’s Alan Wilson, and Maryland’s Michael Peroutka.
Attorneys general also have key roles in election administration—defending state voting laws and election results in court, taking legal action to prevent or address voter intimidation or election misconduct, and investigating and prosecuting illegal attempts to suppress the vote.
I haven’t even talked about all the local and county election officials who are also Big Liars, and also on ballots in many states—and who could play roles in the 2024 election.
How can we fight back?
First: Spread the word about the Trump-GOP’s plans to capture the election process and undermine American democracy.
Inform your friends and family—including young voters who often don’t turn out in large numbers—about what’s at stake in the midterms.
Second: Make sure you and they vote down the entire ballot.
Too many Democrats vote for federal offices but disregard state races. A recent analysis of the last three presidential elections in ten swing states showed that Democrats voted down the ballot far less than Republicans. (Democratic presidential nominees at the top of the ticket received more votes 87 percent of the time than Democratic state legislative candidates, while Republican presidential nominees received more votes just 45 percent of the time than Republican state legislative candidates.)
Control of many state legislatures is often determined by a handful of races that can swing in either direction based on a relatively small number of votes. In the 2020 election, very small margins in a number of battleground races prevented Democrats from gaining control of state legislatures.
Had Democratic candidates received just 4,451 more votes in the two closest races in the Arizona state House, they would have flipped the chamber. In North Carolina, had Democrats received 20,671 more votes (just 0.39 percent of the votes cast) in the ten most competitive legislative districts, they would have flipped the state House—thereby preventing Republicans from gerrymandering the state and federal maps, which Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has no ability to veto. In Michigan, just 8,611 more votes for state Democratic candidates in the four districts with the closest margins would have flipped this crucial swing state, too.
Third: Familiarize yourself with state and local candidates, and share this information.
You may want to get your ballot early so you have ample time. Some great organizations to help you are Sister District, The States Project, Bolts Magazine, and People’s Action. (I’m linking to them here, but feel free to leave a comment with other local resources you’ve found helpful.)
***
As I said, Trump is effectively on the ballot in the midterms. Which means—regardless of whether he decides to run again for president—our democracy is on the ballot. The midterm elections in five weeks will lay the foundation for all future races.
My friends, I cannot say this with more concern: Trump’s anti-democracy movement has been making astounding progress. We must stop it.
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American Democracy Is In Extremis https://digitalarizonanews.com/american-democracy-is-in-extremis/
Commentary
The 900-pound gorilla lurking in every voting place in America as we enter the last month before the midterm elections is the fact that the national political media are continuing to repeat, almost in unison, that any possible dispute over the legitimacy and authenticity of the 2020 presidential election result has been resolved.
The evidence for this claim has been the failure of the many actions undertaken by Rudolph Giuliani on behalf of then President Donald Trump, and Sidney Powell acting independently but in the same interest, which made exaggerated claims and sought unrealistic remedies from the courts. The national political media were approximately 95 percent hostile to Trump according to independent media surveys by Pew Research and the Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. They reckoned that by debunking the Giuliani-Powell efforts, they would discredit all concerns about the authenticity of the election result.
There were 19 actions challenging the constitutionality of the voting and vote counting changes, supposedly to facilitate voting in the pandemic, particularly in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Most important was the action of the attorney general of Texas against those states, and he was joined in his complaint by 18 other state attorneys general, directly to the U.S. Supreme Court as the forum for inter-state lawsuits. This action alleged violation of the constitutional obligation of all states to ensure through their state legislatures, and not the executive or judiciary in those states, that presidential elections are fairly conducted within their jurisdictions. None of these cases was heard on its merits, a fact which received almost no publicity. Process objections were raised: lateness, wrong courts—everything was shuffled off until the clock ran out.
The pattern of judicial refusal to hear these cases was so uniform, and so speciously pretextual, that it evinces an absolute reluctance throughout the judicial branch of government to contemplate so controversial a measure as a reversal of the apparent result of a presidential election. This reluctance is understandable, as such an intervention would have led to a widespread demand, including likely by a majority in both houses of Congress in 2021, for radical revisions to the composition and prerogatives of the courts.
The supreme courts of Florida and the United States, with some dissent in both cases, effectively confirmed the apparent result of the only previous presidential election that was referred to the courts: that of 2000, which George W. Bush won by one electoral vote over Al Gore when Bush was deemed to have carried the state of Florida by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.
In 1800 (Jefferson, Burr, Adams) and in 1824 (Jackson, John Quincy Adams), the House of Representatives elected the president where there had been no majority in the Electoral College. And in 1876 (Hayes-Tilden), a special commission decided the result on a partisan basis, which was graciously accepted by Tilden in exchange for certain promises by his opponent, which Hayes honored. In 1960, there were many extremely close states and the result was unclear, but Vice President Richard Nixon declined to challenge the result despite President Dwight Eisenhower urging him to do so, because he believed that such a challenge would be damaging to the United States at the height of the Cold War, and President John F. Kennedy was elected.
In all those previous elections, when the apparently losing candidate challenged the process, there was some consideration of the merits of the case. The effect of the 2020 abstention is to give the decision to the apparent winner no matter what level of skullduggery may have been reached in producing the ostensible result.
In 2020, there were allegedly millions of so-called harvested ballots, where it could not be verified that the ballot was actually exercised by an identifiable voter, and a shift of just 50,000 votes in Pennsylvania and any two of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin would have flipped the Electoral College to Trump. No one knows who would have won an election whose fairness could be established. There is nothing to be done about it now, but the many close races in the midterms and the polls all show that approximately half the voters think the 2020 election was stolen. Trump doesn’t help himself with implausible claims that he really won the popular vote or absurd demands for a new election.
Last week here I described this as an “airtight sacred oath of secrecy” by the “entire American national political media … that 2020 was an unquestionably fair presidential election … an astounding and possibly unprecedented act of mass denial of the obvious.” An official of one of the major Internet political comment aggregators wrote me that “When millions of people simply close their eyes and turn off their minds, they become nothing more than sheep.”
Half of the public doesn’t buy it, so they are not sheep. But the refusal of the national political media to acknowledge that this controversy exists at all inflames current political discourse and makes an attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, seem half-believable, when it was really just hooliganism hiding behind the understandable peaceful annoyance of Trump’s followers.
Such a refusal ensures an escalation in the fury of the Trump camp, and an unjustified state of self-righteous complacency on the part of Trump opponents, who have no idea that he has a legitimate complaint. If a presidential election result is the third rail the courts won’t touch, all interested parties will have to litigate promptly to change what they think are improper changes in voting and vote counting rules. This was Trump’s mistake. The courts will still prevent a presidential election from being stolen, even if they won’t reverse one that has been stolen.
The United States is approaching the guardrails on each side of coherent political conduct. On the opposite side to the courts’ refusal to challenge an apparent presidential election result is some restraint toward frivolous and vexatious litigious persecution of a political opponent. No realistic person could be optimistic about where the intoxicating habit to criminalize policy differences will end. (It will probably start again in the new Republican congress, and not without some provocation.) If the unmitigated nonsense that led to the invasion of Trump’s house in Palm Beach leads to a spurious indictment, those responsible will be bringing down upon the country and its political and legal institutions a degree of deserved disrepute with no precedent since the Civil War.
It’s particularly distressing to see William Barr purport to perceive possible crimes at Mar-a-Lago—he who claimed to be riding to the rescue of legality as attorney general when he saw that the FBI and Justice Department had illegally conducted espionage against the Trump campaign and transition team, and gave us the snail’s pace fiasco of the Durham investigation. (At least the Durham investigation exists, unlike the previous attorney general, Jeff Session’s fictitious investigation of the same subject by John Huber of Utah.)
If the courts won’t touch crooked presidential elections and the winners will scurrilously prosecute “defeated” candidates, American democracy is in extremis. And if the media will not present the issues even slightly impartially, they have ceased to be of any utility to society and have already forfeited the right to be called a free press.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s most prominent financiers for 40 years and was one of the leading newspaper publishers in the world. He’s the author of authoritative biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and, most recently, “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other,” which has been republished in updated form. Follow Conrad Black with Bill Bennett and Victor Davis Hanson on their podcast Scholars and Sense.
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Dry Cleaning Hosting Free Rollerskating Listening Party In NYC For New Album 'Stumpwork'
Dry Cleaning Hosting Free Rollerskating Listening Party In NYC For New Album 'Stumpwork' https://digitalarizonanews.com/dry-cleaning-hosting-free-rollerskating-listening-party-in-nyc-for-new-album-stumpwork/
Dry Cleaning‘s anticipated second album, Stumpwork, is out October 21 and folks in NYC will have an opportunity to hear it early at a free roller-skating listening party at Rockefeller Center’s Flippers on October 10. The party is sponsored by Rough Trade, whose store is also at Rockefeller Center, and there are three album start times: 7:15 PM, 8:15 PM, and 9:15 PM.
The free skating is first-come, first serve, but you can guarantee entry by pre-ordering Stumpwork from Rough Trade.
Dry Cleaning will be on tour in early 2023, wrapping things up in Brooklyn at Pioneer Works on February 2. All dates are listed, along with videos for three Stumpwork tracks, below.
DRY CLEANING – 2022 TOUR DATES
JAN 10, 2023 MONTREAL, QC LA TULIPE
JAN 11, 2023 TORONTO, ON PHOENIX
JAN 13, 2023 CHICAGO, IL THALIA HALL
JAN 14, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS, MN FINE LINE
JAN 23, 2023 PHOENIX, AZ CRESCENT BALLROOM
JAN 24, 2023 TUSCSON, AZ CONGRESS PLAZA
JAN 26, 2023 DALLAS, TX TEXAS THEATRE
JAN 27, 2023 AUSTIN, TX MOHAWK
JAN 28, 2023 NEW ORLEANS, LA TOULOUSE THEATRE
JAN 29, 2023 ATLANTA, GA TERMINAL WEST
JAN 31, 2023 WASHINGTON, DC THE HOWARD THEATRE
FEB 01, 2023 PHILADELPHIA, PA UNION TRANSFER
FEB 02, 2023 BROOKLYN, NY PIONEER WORKS
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PSL Editorial Oath Keepers Attempted Insurrection Jan. 6. But Will The Masterminds Be Brought To Justice? Liberation News
PSL Editorial – Oath Keepers Attempted Insurrection Jan. 6. But Will The Masterminds Be Brought To Justice? – Liberation News https://digitalarizonanews.com/psl-editorial-oath-keepers-attempted-insurrection-jan-6-but-will-the-masterminds-be-brought-to-justice-liberation-news/
Photo: Attackers storm the capitol on Jan. 6. Credit — TapTheForwardAssist/Wikimedia Commons
The trial of Stuart Rhodes, the leader of the far right “Oath Keeper” paramilitary group, and four other senior members of the organization began today in Washington, D.C. They are faced with a litany of charges related to the January 6 assault on the Capitol, the most serious being seditious conspiracy. This is the most high-profile prosecution yet related to the attack.
The Oath Keepers are an ultra-reactionary group of former and active duty members of the armed forces and police agencies. Rooted in far right conspiracy theories about plots to infringe on “personal liberty”, the organization’s name is a reference to the oath taken by security forces to defend the constitution – the implication being that remaining faithful to this oath may mean waging war on the government. They are heavily armed and fanatical supporters of Donald Trump.
Prosecutors began to lay out a case today based in large part on the Oath Keepers’ internal communications showing how they made meticulous preparations for a decisive showdown on Jan. 6 that would involve Donald Trump seizing power and canceling the results of the 2020 election. They coordinated their actions as they entered the Capitol by force, hunting for top lawmakers. And they were prepared for a much more deadly confrontation – Oath Keepers assembled a cache of weapons and ammunition just across the border in Virginia that could be rushed to the scene if a firefight broke out.
Without a doubt, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers are avowed enemies of workers and oppressed people. If they are imprisoned as a result of this trial and their organization dispersed, then that is a positive development for all those who are fighting for equality and social change. But it would be a travesty of justice if this is the climactic moment of the inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack, an event that allows prosecutors to declare “mission accomplished” and end efforts to hold perpetrators to account.
The Oath Keepers were not able to breach all by themselves one of the most high-profile centers of the U.S. government at a time when hundreds of the most powerful members of the political elite were gathered, even as part of a much larger mob. What proved decisive on Jan. 6 was that the Capitol was so lightly guarded. The right wingers planned their attack in the open, clearly declaring online that they intended to use violence. And yet repeated and increasingly frantic requests to deploy the National Guard were refused by Trump’s newly-installed acting Secretary of Defense. At some points around the Capitol, police officers seemed uninterested in putting up serious resistance to the mob. And there were many reports of right wing members of Congress giving “reconnaissance tours” of the building ahead of the attack.
A full and aggressive investigation into the military and police hierarchy to get to the bottom of this has yet to take place. But there is no mystery as to who was at the top of the political command of the assault. Donald Trump and a close circle of ruling class political allies devised and implemented a strategy to falsely claim that the election was stolen, convince a large section of the population that this was true and leverage this pressure to overturn the vote. This grouping was actively exploring the possibility of declaring martial law so that Trump could remain in power.
In fact, this will reportedly form the basis of the Oath Keepers’ defense in court. The defense plans to argue that preparations made for armed combat were legal because they were only to be used in the event that Trump invoked the Insurrection Act – a law that would allow him to mobilize state militias to put down an effort to overthrow the government, which in this case would be the fictional “vote rigging” the right wingers say took place in the 2020 election. Their other activities, the Oath Keepers argue, were in essence constitutionally protected efforts to lobby Trump to use the powers they say the Insurrection Act grants him.
This approach was chosen after the judge in the case prohibited defense lawyers from making a much broader “public authority” argument in which they would contend that the Oath Keepers’ entire operation was done at the direction of Donald Trump using his lawful authority as president.
Trump and all those involved in the Jan. 6 attack should be brought to justice, no matter how powerful they are. Because authorities have waited now for nearly two years rather than taking decisive action in the immediate aftermath of the assault, they have made it much easier for the figures involved to portray themselves as victims of persecution at the hands of a politicized justice system. Ultimately, it will remain up to the masses of working class people who reject the ultra reactionary agenda of the far right to mobilize and put a stop to this menace.
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