Podcasts about federal elections commission

(AURN News) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused 60 Minutes, CBS and Paramount of committing what he called one of the “most egregious illegalities in Broadcast History,” and suggested The New York Times could also face legal consequences. In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump claimed the news program edited out Vice President Kamala Harris' original answer to a question during the 2024 campaign and replaced it with a different response, misleading the public. “Kamala Harris, during Early Voting and, immediately before Election Day, was asked a question, and gave an answer, that was so bad and incompetent that it would have cost her many of the Votes that she ended up getting,” Trump wrote. “It was a disastrous answer!” Trump alleged that 60 Minutes removed that original response and substituted a later one. He also accused the program and its corporate owners of deceiving voters and violating federal election laws. “60 Minutes perpetrated a Giant FRAUD against the American People, the Federal Elections Commission, and the Federal Communications System,” he wrote. Trump also criticized The New York Times for dismissing the allegations as “baseless,” calling the paper “Fake News” and accusing it of “tortious interference.” “The bottom line is that what 60 Minutes and its corporate owners have committed is one of the most egregious illegalities in Broadcast History,” Trump wrote. “They have to pay a price for it, and the Times should also be on the hook for their likely unlawful behavior.” According to a report this week by The New York Times, Paramount's board has shown interest in exploring a potential settlement of the lawsuit. The report also said the situation has caused internal divisions at CBS, and that the executive producer of 60 Minutes recently resigned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As I delve into the intricacies of Project 2025, a sprawling 927-page blueprint crafted by the Heritage Foundation, I am struck by the sheer ambition and far-reaching implications of this conservative initiative. Designed as a transition and policy guide for a potential second Donald Trump presidency, Project 2025 is more than just a set of policy proposals; it is a vision for a fundamentally transformed American government.At its core, Project 2025 aims to "destroy the Administrative State" by radically restructuring the federal government. This involves replacing merit-based civil service workers with loyalists to the president, a move that critics argue would undermine the independence and integrity of key government agencies. The plan calls for the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission, among others, to be brought under direct presidential control, aligning with a controversial interpretation of the unitary executive theory[1][2][4].One of the most striking aspects of Project 2025 is its proposal to dismantle or abolish several federal agencies. The Department of Education, for instance, would be eliminated entirely, a move that would gut federal education funding and have devastating consequences for public schools. The plan suggests replacing Title I funding, which has been critical for high-poverty schools since 1965, with no-strings-attached block grants to states. This change would further strain already tight education budgets and undermine the academic outcomes of millions of vulnerable students[3].The Department of Homeland Security is another target, with Project 2025 advocating for the arrest, detention, and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. This policy aligns with Trump's long-standing stance on immigration but takes it to an extreme level, proposing the deployment of the military for domestic law enforcement[1][4].Healthcare is another area where Project 2025's proposals are particularly contentious. The plan calls for cutting Medicare and Medicaid, stripping away healthcare coverage for pre-existing conditions, and slashing Social Security. These changes would have a profound impact on the most vulnerable segments of American society, leaving many without the safety net they rely on[3][4].Environmental regulations are also in the crosshairs. Project 2025 proposes reducing these regulations to favor fossil fuels, a move that would reverse many of the environmental protections put in place by previous administrations. Additionally, the plan suggests making the National Institutes of Health less independent and defunding its stem cell research, which could have significant implications for medical advancements[1].The project's social policy agenda is equally radical. It includes criminalizing pornography, removing legal protections against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The Department of Justice would be tasked with prosecuting anti-white racism instead, a shift that many see as a dangerous and divisive move[1].In the realm of media and communication, Project 2025 proposes defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports PBS and NPR, and revoking NPR stations' noncommercial status. This would force these stations to relocate on the FM dial, potentially making way for religious programming. The plan also advocates for more media consolidation and changes to FCC rules that would allow local news programs to be converted into national ones[1].The project's stance on social media is also noteworthy. It proposes legislation requiring social media companies not to remove "core political viewpoints" from their platforms and banning TikTok. Furthermore, it would prevent the Federal Elections Commission from countering misinformation or disinformation about election integrity[1].Despite Trump's attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, the overlap between his policies and the project's proposals is undeniable. Trump's recent actions, such as establishing a review council to advise on FEMA's disaster response capabilities and withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization, mirror key recommendations in the project's blueprint[5].Experts and critics alike have sounded the alarm about the potential impacts of Project 2025. The plan's reliance on Schedule F, a scheme to hire unlimited political appointees without civil service protections, raises concerns about corruption, political overreach, and the abuse of power. This would allow a president and their loyalists to have unchecked control over the executive branch, undermining the very fabric of American governance[2][3].As Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, ominously stated, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." This rhetoric, coupled with the project's sweeping policy proposals, paints a picture of a future where the balance of power in the U.S. government is dramatically altered[4].The American public's response to Project 2025 has been overwhelmingly negative. Polls indicate that a significant majority, including many non-MAGA Republicans, oppose the plan. The more people learn about it, the more they dislike it, with concerns ranging from the firing of civil service employees to the slashing of healthcare and social security benefits[3].As we move forward, the implications of Project 2025 will continue to be a focal point in American politics. With Trump having nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his administration, it is clear that many of these proposals are already being implemented. The coming months will be crucial as the nation watches to see how far these reforms will go and what the long-term consequences will be for American governance and society.In the words of Vice-President Kamala Harris, "It is a plan to return America to a dark past." Whether this vision of the future becomes a reality remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Project 2025 represents a seismic shift in the way the U.S. government operates, and its impact will be felt for generations to come.

As I delved into the intricacies of Project 2025, I couldn't help but feel a sense of both fascination and alarm. This sprawling, 900-page policy blueprint, crafted by the Heritage Foundation and a coalition of over 100 conservative groups, is more than just a set of recommendations; it's a comprehensive roadmap for a radical transformation of the American government.At its core, Project 2025 aims to reshape the federal government in a way that consolidates executive power, particularly in favor of a conservative agenda. The project's architects envision a government where key agencies, such as the Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, and the Federal Trade Commission, are brought under direct presidential control, eliminating their independence[1][3][4].One of the most striking aspects of Project 2025 is its plan to replace merit-based federal civil service workers with loyalists to the president. This is achieved through a mechanism known as Schedule F, which allows for the transfer of civil service employees into a category where they lose their protections against political overreach and abuse of power. This move would grant the president and his loyalists unparalleled control over the executive branch, raising serious concerns about the erosion of democratic institutions and civil liberties[2][3][4].The project's scope is vast and far-reaching. For instance, it proposes the dismantling or abolition of several federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education. The Department of State is also targeted, with plans to dismiss its leadership and replace them with acting roles that do not require Senate confirmation. Kiron Skinner, who wrote the State Department chapter, believes most State Department employees are too left-wing and need to be replaced by those more aligned with conservative values[1][2][4].Project 2025's policy objectives are equally ambitious. It advocates for significant tax cuts on corporations and capital gains, the implementation of a flat income tax, and reductions in Medicare and Medicaid. Environmental regulations would be rolled back to favor fossil fuels, and the National Institutes of Health would see its independence diminished, with a halt to its stem cell research funding. The project also proposes criminalizing pornography, removing legal protections against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Instead, the Department of Justice would focus on prosecuting what the project terms "anti-white racism"[1][2][4].The plan's stance on immigration is particularly draconian, calling for the arrest, detention, and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, as well as the deployment of the military for domestic law enforcement. It also suggests enacting laws supported by the Christian right, including criminalizing the sending and receiving of abortion and birth control medications and eliminating coverage of emergency contraception[1].In the realm of media and technology, Project 2025's proposals are equally radical. It recommends defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports PBS and NPR, and revoking NPR stations' noncommercial status. This could force these stations to relocate on the FM dial, making way for religious programming. The project also advocates for more media consolidation, allowing local news programs to be converted into national ones. Social media companies would be required to not remove "core political viewpoints" from their platforms, and TikTok would be banned. Furthermore, the Federal Elections Commission would be prevented from countering misinformation or disinformation about election integrity[1][3].The implications of these proposals are profound. Critics argue that Project 2025 represents a blueprint for an autocratic takeover, endangering democratic institutions and civil liberties. The project's emphasis on centralizing power in the White House, based on a controversial interpretation of the unitary executive theory, raises concerns about the potential for abuse of power and the undermining of independent agencies like the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission[1][3][4].Despite Donald Trump's attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, the overlap between his policies and the project's recommendations is undeniable. Trump's recent actions, such as reviewing FEMA's role in disaster response and withdrawing from the World Health Organization, align closely with Project 2025's proposals. The project's authors and contributors, many of whom worked in Trump's last administration or on his election campaign, see their goals as closely aligned with Trump's Agenda 47 program[1][4][5].As we move forward, the potential implementation of Project 2025's policies looms large. With Trump's second term underway, the stage is set for a significant reshaping of American governance. The next few months will be crucial, as the administration begins to enact its policies and face the inevitable pushback from opponents.In the words of Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." This statement, made on a conservative podcast, underscores the high stakes and the deep divisions that Project 2025 embodies[4].As I reflect on Project 2025, it becomes clear that this initiative is not just a policy document but a vision for a fundamentally different America. Whether this vision will come to fruition remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the journey ahead will be marked by intense political battles and profound implications for the future of American democracy.

Democrats sue to prevent Trump's takeover of the Federal Elections Commission, a privatized postal service could make mail-in voting more difficult and states move ahead with their own versions of the Equal Rights Amendment.  

The head of the new White House Faith Office draws scrutiny, Trump moves to fire the chair of the Federal Elections Commission and a North Carolina judge won't toss tens of thousands of ballots in a State Supreme Court race.

The Federal Elections Commission has issued rules that make coordination between campaigns and big donors legal and more direct. How's that shaping the 2024 election? We explore the connection between billionaires and the campaigns they're influencing.

OA1080 - As a weary nation watches the world's richest man try to buy a federal election in plain sight, we stop to consider the question which has so long plagued Elon Musk: There's gotta be a crime here, right? Somewhere? There has been plenty of debate this week about the legality of Musk's $1 million daily lottery for registered US voters in swing states, but there is something far more insidious going on in this story beyond the headlines. Matt explains how the Federal Elections Commission has recently taken the Supreme Court's perfectly good joke way too far before we consider what the rapidly evolving rules around super PACs could mean for the future of fair elections in the United States.  Finally, we drop a seasonal footnote to discuss how some Massachusetts 8th graders recently helped to close out a 332-year-old criminal case. “Judge Aileen Cannon, who tossed Trump's classified docs case, on list of proposed candidates for attorney general”  ABC News (10/22/2024) “Elon Musk's Big Business and Conflicts of Interest With the U.S. Government” The New York Times (10/20/2024) “A Democrat, Siding With the G.O.P., Is Removing Limits on Political Cash at ‘Breathtaking' Speed,” Shane Goldmacher  The New York Times (6/10/2024) The Illusion of Independence: How Unregulated Coordination is Undermining Our Democracy, and What Can Be Done to Stop It, The Campaign Legal Center (11/30/2023) FEC Advisory Opinion 2024-01 (3/20/2024) FEC Vice Chair Ellen Weintraub's dissent from Advisory Opinion 2024-07 (addressing Lindsay Graham campaign's question re: super PAC campaign fundraising coordination) Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do! If you'd like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

Reports over the weekend suggested that Donald Trump was considering picking Nikki Haley to be his running mate, but insiders said that this was only if Haley agreed to pay his legal bills. Trump was not happy about this leaked information, and he blasted the report on Truth Social claiming that Haley is NOT under consideration. At this point, Haley as VP might be Trump's only shot at winning in November.Also, the bankrupt former Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, just watched as his financial problems became so much worse as ABC Radio abruptly cancelled his radio show - right in the middle of the show! Giuliani's recent financial statements at bankruptcy court revealed that the radio show was one of his only sources of income, and given the high profile that Giuliani has, it is safe to bet that he was getting paid way too much for his show to begin with, but now that's gone. Farron explains how Giuliani's repeated lies about the 2020 election cost him this source of income.And a former Trump campaign aide from his 2016 campaign has filed a lawsuit against the campaign, alleging that they not only fired her for becoming pregnant, but also that they hid the payment they made to her from the public by illegally funneling it through other entities. Groups are now calling for the Federal Elections Commission to investigate the claims made in this lawsuit to find out if the campaign did, in fact, break the law by concealing the payments to keep the woman quiet.Finally, Donald Trump held a rally in New Jersey this past weekend that was allegedly attended by upwards of 80,000 people. The tens of thousands who showed up were treated to gems such as Donald Trump praising fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, and Trump being joined on stage by a registered sex offender. This campaign is almost too comical to even joke about at this point, but the crowd seemed to love every second of mayhem that Trump brought with him.Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date on all of Farron's content: https://www.youtube.com/FarronBalancedFollow Farron on social media!Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FarronBalanced/Twitter: https://twitter.com/farronbalancedInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/farronbalancedTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@farronbalanced?lang=en

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: That new ATF rule requiring more background checks for gun purchases has been targeted by the state in a lawsuit: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-ken-paxton-sue-rule-background-check-private-gun-sale/3529691/ Police arrested 21 pro-Palestinian protestors at UT Dallas yesterday in what's become a familiar scene across the country: https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/gaza-protest-encampment-university-texas-dallas/ ...The companies that protestors are demanding the UT System to divest from represent only about 1% of its total holdings: https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/university-texas-system-investments-several-companies-with-ties-israel/287-dec3727c-d93a-4bda-8ae1-558c3682675f ...UT professor Jeremy Suri notes that conservative aggression towards college culture has exacerbated tensions during the recent protests: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/29/opinions/campus-protests-university-of-texas-israel-gaza-suri/index.html A sitting member of the Federal Elections Commission, in charge of the complaint against Ted Cruz that his campaign is improperly profiting from his podcast, has a Ted Cruz campaign sign in his front yard: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/federal-elections-regulator-from-texas-has-ted-cruz-campaign-sign-in-front-yard/ar-AA1nZWTT?ocid=BingNews Bitcoin company Riot Platforms says they're set to make a bundle again this summer selling power back to the Texas power grid at a profit: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/bitcoin-miner-riot-riot-eyes-selling-power-in-texas-as-summer-nears Elon Musk "borrows" the phrase "Don't Mess With Texas" for a cheesy Tesla belt buckle: https://www.chron.com/culture/article/elon-musk-dont-mess-texas-19429328.php Mark your calendar for May 9 at 12 noon for our "Burning Issues" town hall on liquid natural gas (LNG) pollution in Texas: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/townhall_24 Also for your calendar: a public forum will be held on May 20 by the Texas Medical Board on proposed exceptions to Texas' near-total ban on abortion: https://x.com/hannahnorton89/status/1785054901661216800?s=12&t=Bt_w1MN2AlTfFkWGHJiOJg Progress Texas could use your help in funding our trip to June's Texas Democratic Convention in El Paso - thanks in advance! https://progresstexas.org/donate Early voting in the May 4 municipal elections ends today! https://progresstexas.org/blog/why-you-should-care-about-may-appraisal-district-elections ...And it will soon be time to vote in the May 28 primary runoffs! https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/26/texas-voting-2024-runoff-elections/ Progress Texas invites progressive candidates to share their views with us - which we'll then share with our statewide audience - via our Certified Progressive questionnaire: https://progresstexas.org/blog/progress-texas-certified-progressives-2024-progressive-values-questionnaire Instagram users: be sure to enable political content on that platform, which has begun opting users out: https://x.com/ProgressTX/status/1771276124498100667?s=20 Thanks for listening! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work this election year at https://progresstexas.org/.

Stigall wonders if everyone fully understands what's going on in this "criminal" trial of Donald Trump. The media has so overhyped this as meaningful and scandalous, which made Stigall think it's important everyone understand what this is and what this isn't when it comes up in conversation. Hans Von Spakofsky used to be on the board of the Federal Elections Commission - the very board this case was heard before years ago. Let's refresh our memories! What do you do when your voter base is full of racists and bigots? Ol' Joe has a problem as a striking number of Pennsylvania primary voters turning on him again yesterday. Stigall has all the panicked talking points from Democrats yesterday. Plus, a visit from senior advisor to the Trump 2024 campaign Lynne Patton. -For more info visit the official website: https://chrisstigall.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisstigallshow/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisStigallFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.stigall/Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/StigallPodListen on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/StigallShowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's an election year, and there's no doubt podcasting will play a role. Here's an interesting one.Ted Cruz is hosting a podcast, 3 days a week, distributed by Premiere Networks, part of iHeartMedia.   Now Senator Cruz, who's up for reelection this year, isn't being paid directly for his time, but get this.   His Political Action Committee, or PAC, is producing the show.  And a share of the ad revenue – over $630,000 so far – is going to a SUPER PAC – no his, but one that supports him.   What does this mean for podcasts and politics?  More: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/9/24125736/ted-cruz-podcast-verdict-iheart-fec-neon-hum-roost-sonyhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/03/20/super-pac-backing-ted-cruz-received-215000-from-iheartmedia-fueling-ethics-concerns-after-podcast-deal/?sh=502dbd2b60achttps://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/ted-cruz-podcast-iheartmedia-19373225.phpNow we've all been warned about campaign shenanigans created by AI, and podcasting is certainly grappling with this emerging technology.    It's the wild wild west out there.  And just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD.  A podcast company just settled with George Carlin's estate after they created a 60-minute episode of content with with him. The show has since been taken down..More: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240404-podcast-sued-for-ai-george-carlin-settles-with-comic-s-estateSpeaking of AI – OpenAI, and Chat GPT say they ingested and transcribed over a million hours of YouTube content, including podcasts, in order to train its latest version, Chat GPT-4.  Now, this has lots of legal ramifications that are too complicated for me to get into here – but if you're going to train a large language model – I guess it makes sense to turn to the largest source for content in the world.  Chat GPT can be a great tool.   I often use it to draft show notes based on podcast transcripts, which I then tweak. My theory on AI is that it's always improving, but you need a human gatekeeper to check the work.https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/6/24122915/openai-youtube-transcripts-gpt-4-training-data-googleAs always if you have questions about podcasting, or are interested in starting a show – find me online at JAG in Detroit dot com.  Lata! Find jag on social media @JAGinDetroit or online at JAGinDetroit.com

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Those "I'm In Control" pro-adoption billboards are not only misleading about the realities of adoption as an abortion alternative - they're also being paid for by YOUR tax dollars: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/misleading-ads-no-remedy-cruelty-texas-abortion-19324750.php ...While San Antonio officials argue over whether to use their Reproductive Justice Fund to pay for out-of-state travel for abortion care seekers: https://www.tpr.org/government-politics/2024-04-11/majority-of-san-antonio-city-council-supports-using-tax-dollars-for-out-of-state-abortion-travel ...And the Black reproductive health non-profit the Afiya Center highlights Colorado as its top choice for abortion care travel, due to that state's high standards of safety: https://www.9news.com/article/news/health/texas-nonprofit-calls-colorados-abortion-access-lifesaving/73-427eac86-3103-495f-8e93-ba260aa64ca0 So, is Ted Cruz's clandestine payoff from his podcast illegal? https://www.texasobserver.org/ted-cruz-podcast-payoff-fec-complaint/ ...Don't count on the Federal Elections Commission to be much of a problem for Cruz, as its current Trump-appointed chair is a MAGA diehard: https://www.sacurrent.com/news/head-of-commission-hearing-complaint-against-ted-cruz-once-worked-for-the-senator-34271983 Senator John Cornyn, having learned his lesson after crossing Texas gun nuts after the Uvalde shooting, is pledging to block new Biden admistration regulations on the "gun show loophole": https://www.chron.com/politics/article/john-cornyn-gun-reform-texas-19397377.php Don't forget about the Texas Gun Sense community picnic NEXT Saturday, April 20 in central Austin: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tx-gun-sense_texas-gun-sense-invites-all-of-our-supporters-activity-7183153558412750850-cS-U Progress Texas invites progressive candidates to share their views with us - which we'll then share with our statewide audience - via our Certified Progressive questionnaire: https://progresstexas.org/blog/progress-texas-certified-progressives-2024-progressive-values-questionnaire Instagram users: be sure to enable political content on that platform, which has begun opting users out: https://x.com/ProgressTX/status/1771276124498100667?s=20 Thanks for listening! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work this election year at https://progresstexas.org/.

Don't forget you can also watch these on YouTube!This week we welcome Stanford Law Professor Nate Persily to the podcast. I've known Nate since 2013/2014 when he held a gathering at Stanford with folks in the tech/digital industry and the Federal Elections Commission. Nate has been a thought leader his entire career with experiences across technology, academia and election administration. We get into all of that in this conversation. Some links from what we talked about:* Nate's bio* Stanford Cyber Policy Center* Social Science One research partnership with Facebook* Facebook 2020 election research* Senate Testimony on Platform Transparency Get full access to Anchor Change with Katie Harbath at anchorchange.substack.com/subscribe

Wednesday, March 16th, 2022In the Hot Notes: a judge orders Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio detained pending trial; the Senate passes a bill to stay on Daylight Saving Time by unanimous consent; a new document emerges about the plan to attack the Capitol that was mentioned in the Tarrio indictment; a second 1/6 Mike Pence script change is revealed through committee testimony; and a Dem Super PAC is filing a complaint with the FEC alleging Trump has violated federal campaign finance law by spending political funds on a 2024 run without formally declaring himself a candidate; plus Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.Follow our guest on Twitter:Glenn Kirschnerhttps://twitter.com/glennkirschner2Follow AG and Dana on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gillhttps://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodDana Goldberghttps://twitter.com/DGComedyHave some good news, a confession, a correction, or a case for Beans Court?https://www.dailybeanspod.com/confessional/  Live Show Ticket Links:Chicago, IL https://tinyurl.com/Beans-ChiPhiladelphia, PA https://tinyurl.com/Beans-PhillyNew York, NY https://tinyurl.com/Beans-NYCBoston, MA https://tinyurl.com/Beans-BosPortland, ORhttps://tinyurl.com/Beans-PDXSeattle, WAhttps://tinyurl.com/Beans-SEA Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:The Daily Beans on Apple PodcastsWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?Supercasthttps://dailybeans.supercast.com/OrPatreon https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr subscribe on Apple Podcasts with our affiliate linkThe Daily Beans on Apple Podcasts

In 2022, Patagonia outdoors-wear brand owner and self-described socialist Yvon Chouinard and his family transferred ownership of the company to Holdfast Collective, an LLC that controls 98 percent of the shares, and the Patagonia Purpose Trust, an entity that holds two percent of the shares and allows Chouinard's family to retain effective control of Patagonia. Holdfast Collective was announced as an environmentalist project, with Chouinard claiming, “Earth is now [Patagonia's] only shareholder.” But Americans for Public Trust found something curious in some FEC filings: Holdfast Collective is using some nonprofit groups it created and manages Arabella Advisors-style to make contributions to Democratic Super PACs, and the paperwork is questionable. Here to explain is Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of Americans for Public Trust, which filed a complaint asking the Federal Elections Commission to investigate. Links: Major outdoor clothing company quietly operating liberal dark money group hit with FEC complaintFEC ComplaintPatagoniaHoldfast CollectiveYvon ChouinardFollow us on our Socials:Twitter: @capitalresearchInstagram: @capitalresearchcenterFacebook: www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenterYouTube: @capitalresearchcenter

Alan discusses the distorted media controversy over the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Super Bowl ad; the Breaking Points focus group for supporters of RFK; RFK's lawsuit challenging Idaho's ballot access rules; and the implications of Green Party candidate Jill Stein's case against the Federal Elections Commission. To help support Political Dharma, you can donate via this secure link: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=SNUHH2GAX5GVW

The Trumpinator is taunting Jack Smith because he knows he's got no case. And now it appears official! Learn the latest on the DC case against Trump and find out why Trump is already taking some much deserved victory laps, not just when it comes to Jack Smith's implosion, but also Biden's collapse as well. They're calling Biden's polling disaster a ‘5 Alarm Fire'! DC is in panic mode today and I'm going to tell you exactly why! Highlights: “If you go to the DC federal court's calendar for scheduled trials, Jack Smith's case against President Trump not only has been removed from the originally scheduled March 4th trial date, it's been removed from the calendar entirely!” “Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna just tweeted out that she and her Republican colleagues sent a letter to Jack Smith, demanding that he produce information for precisely how he has conducted this sham indictment legally.” “As we speak, this rogue DC prosecutor, Jack Smith, is officially now in hiding! The case has been removed from the docket and Jack Smith is basically in hiding from this Congressional inquiry!” “The incumbent president always has the advantage in fundraising but not this time! According to the Federal Elections Commission, Trump raked in over $10 million more than Bumblin Biden.”       Timestamps:    [00:40] Trump speaking about Jack Smith [05:03] The trial for President Trump in DC postponed indefinitely [06:22] Jack Smith given 9 days to respond to Congressional inquiry on how he conducted this indictment legally [08:00] Jack Smith in hiding and how all of this bad news started for him [21:53] Biden's polling disaster has reached ‘5 Alarm Fire' status [26:00] How Trump is crushing Biden in fundraising [33:42] How Trump's 2024 strategy is causing Biden's political implosion [45:30] Q&A Resources: Don't let Big Tech WIN by staying connected to Dr Steve and joining the movement to reclaim our freedoms at: https://join.turleytalks.com/insiders-club=podcast Do you own a 401k or IRA? Are you worried inflation is slowly eating away at your retirement nest egg? Convert your savings to a Gold IRA by going to https://turleywarning.com Want free inside stock tips straight from the SEC? Click here to get started now: https://turleytalksinsidertrading.com/talk-registration/ HE'LL BE BACK! Get your limited edition TRUMPINATOR 2024 Bobblehead HERE: https://offers.proudpatriots.com/order-form-TurleyTalks_Podcast Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode.  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or leave a review. Make sure to FOLLOW me on X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/DrTurleyTalks BOLDLY stand up for TRUTH in Turley Merch! Browse our new designs right now at: https://store.turleytalks.com/ Do you want to be a part of the podcast and be our sponsor? Click here to partner with us and defy liberal culture! https://advertising.turleytalks.com/sponsorship If you want to get lots of articles on conservative trends, sign up for the 'New Conservative Age Rising' Email Alerts: https://turleytalks.com/subscribe/.  *The content presented by our partners may contain affiliate links. When you click and shop the links, Turley Talks may receive a small commission.* 

American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for Sept. 18, 2023Proposed Rule Change Could Make the Feckless Federal Elections Commission Even Less EffectiveThe feckless Federal Elections Commission may become even less effective.  A proposed rules change would task the usually deadlocked FEC commissioners with authorizing all campaign finance investigations, likely bringing meaningful accountability to a standstill.Today's LinksArticles & Resources:Federal Elections Commissioner Alan Dickerson - Investigations Conducted by the Office of General CounselThe Intercept - A TRUMP APPOINTEE IS TRYING TO GUT THE FEC'S ABILITY TO INVESTIGATE CAMPAIGN FINANCE CRIMESThe Daily Beast - How the Hell Is Trump 43-0 vs. Campaign Finance Watchdogs?Federal Elections Commission - Commission MeetingsFederal Elections Commission - Contact phone numbers and emailsCampaign Legal Center - CLC Files FEC Complaint Against Rep. George Santos for Violating Campaign Finance LawsCampaign Legal Center - Why the FEC Is Ineffective Groups Taking Action:Common Cause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Campaign Legal Center===Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter and SHARE!  Find all of our reports at AmericanDemocracyMinute.orgWant ADM sent to your email?  Sign up here!#Democracy  #DemocracyNews #ProtectElections #ProtectPollWorkers

In this week's Breaking Battlegrounds episode, we welcomed two prominent guests; John Pudner and Dawn Hawkins. John Pudner, President of Take Back Our Republic Action, joined Chuck and Sam for a discussion about the path forward for the GOP. We discuss topics like campaign contribution, abortion, faith-based voters, Department of Education and more. Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, highlighted a pressing issue - big tech's role in the proliferation of sexual exploitation. Shockingly, 13% of Twitter content is explicit. She shared that the organization has initiated multiple lawsuits against big tech to bring about necessary changes in their terms and conditions.Join us for an insightful discussion on these critical issues shaping our political landscape and digital age.-Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-AboutDuring John Pudner's tenure as Executive Director (2015-2021), Take Back Our Republic compiled a perfect record of five statewide referenda wins in five different states, and Pudner led a 2017 effort before the Federal Elections Commission, in which Take Back Action Fund defeated Facebook, requiring the social media giant to disclose who was paying for political ads on that platform.  These important successes were a prime motivator in Pudner's transition to full-time President of Take Back Action Fund, where he will be able to focus his attention on political and grassroots lobbying efforts. Before shifting his efforts to the integrity of the system itself, Pudner spent 25 years running Republican political campaigns, including the faith-based turnout in 16 states for George W. Bush, and was first featured on Fox News after directing the campaign strategy of Republican Dave Brat's historic primary upset of Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor. In the same period, he also won 185 out of 202 local zoning referenda, as well as dozens of Planning Commission and Supervisor votes, preventing developments that would have saddled communities not only with massive traffic jams, but also with flooding and erosion. -Dawn Hawkins is CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the leading organization exposing the connections between all forms of sexual exploitation, including sex trafficking, prostitution, pornography, and child sexual abuse. Dawn's energy, creativity and mobilization skills are deployed to build a world free from sexual violence, with freedom and human dignity for all.Dawn is deeply committed to bipartisan public policy solutions at the federal and state level. Her issue expertise, visionary initiatives, and innovative strategy have led to groundbreaking change in the legislative arena and in multimillion-dollar corporate policies. She has also envisioned and created a Law Center to challenge sexual exploitation profiteers in the courts.Dawn has been instrumental in re-imaging the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. She has centered the need to address sex buyer demand for commercial sex, has severely weakened the mainstream pornography industry, and is leading efforts to bring more accountability to technology platforms for child safety.Dawn has called out and changed corporate entities facilitating exploitation through the annual Dirty Dozen List, fostered a broad international coalition of 600+ organizations, and constantly: advocates for survivors. Her work has sparked change at Google, Hilton Worldwide, Comcast, Walmart, the Department of Defense, Instagram, TikTok, and other influential firms. Dawn has appeared on many television programs, including CNN, Fox & Friends, and Good Morning America. She regularly authors articles and speaks around the country addressing the public health harms of pornography, curbing demand for sex trafficking, protecting children and families in our digital world, and more.Dawn regularly volunteers for organizations devoted to helping children and refugees. She is a graduate of Tufts University and currently resides with her husband and five children in Virginia. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com

In this controversial (and dare we say

An Interview with Crypto CEO Sam Bankman-Fried Shows How  Reported - And Unreported -- Money Funds Our CandidatesThis is a rebroadcast of December 15, 2022Today's LinksArticles & Resources: Journalist Tiffany Fong - Interview with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (Campaign donation discussions at 13 minutes)CNBC - Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried hit with campaign finance complaint over GOP ‘dark' moneyForbes - Sam Bankman-Fried says he donated just as many millions to Republicans as Democrats, but didn't publicize it because reporters would ‘freak the f–k out'The Hill - FTX founder Bankman-Fried's campaign finance charges ‘just the tip of the icebergOpenSecrets.org - Largest Campaign DonorsGroups Taking Action:Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW), Public Citizen, Open Democracy Today's Script:  (Variations occur with audio due to editing for time)You're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.Recent revelations from a disgraced cryptocurrency CEO gives us a glimpse of just how much campaign money flows into our election system – both what gets reported, and what's called “dark money.”  And both the major parties refuse to stop the torrent.In an interview with journalist Tiffany Fong in November, FTX crypto exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, now in custody in the Bahamas, admitted that he had not only given $40 million to Democrats and Democratic PACs to fund primary races, but he said he also gave an equal amount of “dark money” to Republican candidates.   It's not known which dark money organizations, but typically 501c3 & 501c4 nonprofits, Limited Liability Corporations and other instruments are used to shield donor identities. Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington, has since filed a campaign finance reform complaint with the Federal Elections Commission. CREW suggested that Bankman-Fried contributed as much as $37 Million more to campaigns than was reported to the FEC, and says that while the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allows independent expenditures to groups, it doesn't not allow those groups to “pass through” donations directly to candidates. Several politicians, including Arizona U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, have reportedly returned money given to them by Bankman-Fried.  We have links to the campaign funding transparency website OpenSecrets, and more details on the allegations at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org.   For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter and SHARE!  Find all of our reports at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org#Democracy  #DemocracyNews

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: TX19's Jodey Arrington under attack in DC; said to be called “incompetent” by U.S. House Speaker McCarthy. Caucus divisions explored in a New York Times piece that shows Arrington to be outside of the trust or respect of senior leadership.Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.The Texas House debates its version of the budget today along with many amendments, some of which are test votes on things like school choice. Additionally, why does the do little early House have to put huge bill debates on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week spilling into Good Friday? I find it offensive especially give how much time they have not spent debating bills before now.And much more from the legislature including: Why should we repeal the 1973 sodomy laws to appease the Left? Is a big scandal about to be made known involving a vocal Texas House conservative Republican? I'll not name names until there is more detail known beyond the rumors swirling everywhere today.Our old friend Trey Trainor, now a commissioner on the Federal Elections Commission, points out that the FEC has already decided that Trump's issues upon which he has been indicted in NY are “…not a campaign finance violation. It's not a reporting violation of any kind.“I comment on the false narrative present in a new media attack on Justice Clarence Thomas.And, other news of Texas.Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

Highlights:  ●      “This Manhattan DA Bragg is trying to prove a federal crime that the Justice Department didn't think worthy of a charge. But now we have this leaked letter written to that very agency, the Federal Elections Commission, that shows, unequivocally, that their chief witness Michael Cohen is either lying then or he is lying now!” ●      “All this means, in the end, is that you have a potential misdemeanor of falsifying business records. That's it! The only way this thing could have any teeth at all is if prosecutors found that Trump not only intentionally falsified his business records, but did so in order to hide or conceal a second crime, something else entirely!” ●      “Not only does the Manhattan DA not have jurisdiction over trying a federal crime, but the institution that does, the Justice Department, is on record saying they don't think that such a case has any merit. That's how utterly insane this whole partisan circus is!”     Timestamps:  [01:12] What the leaked letter reveals [03:37] How fatal is this document to the prosecution and how Bragg is getting push backs [06:27] Why we may be looking at the utter collapse of this partisan witch hunt Resources: ●      Find out how you can pay off your mortgage in 5-7 years with Replace Your Mortgage at https://replaceyouruniversity.com/steveturley  ●      Ep. 1497 How Russia and China Are DESTROYING the WOKE Liberal World!!! ●      Experience China Before Communism, Experience Shen Yun performance at a city near you: https://shenyun.live/STEVE ●      Get Over 66% OFF All of Mike Lindell's Products using code TURLEY: https://www.mypillow.com/turley ●      Email me at steve@turleytalks.com or comment below on what you'd like to see in my new guidebook about Escaping the Great Reset! ●      Learn how to protect your life savings from inflation and an irresponsible government, with Gold and Silver. Go to http://www.turleytalkslikesgold.com/ ●      Join Dr. Steve for an unedited, uncensored extended analysis of current events in his Insiders Club at https://insidersclub.turleytalks.com/ ●      BOLDLY stand up for TRUTH in Turley Merch! Browse our new designs right now at: https://store.turleytalks.com/ ●      Make sure to FOLLOW me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrTurleyTalks ●      Get 25% off Patriotic Coffee and ALL ITEMS with Code TURLEY at https://mystore.com/turley   Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode.  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or leave a review. Sick and tired of Big Tech, censorship, and endless propaganda? Join my Insiders Club with a FREE TRIAL today at: https://insidersclub.turleytalks.com  Do you want to be a part of the podcast and be our sponsor? Click here to partner with us and defy liberal culture!  If you would like to get lots of articles on conservative trends make sure to sign-up for the 'New Conservative Age Rising' Email Alerts.

Live from the Heart of America—I'm Steve Gruber—ready to deliver an inclusive and diverse discussion on the most important topics of the day—giving you better analysis and insight that anyone else—shining a spotlight on the cockroaches of the swamp—and delivering truth and justice just when hope was starting to fade—   Here are the 3 Big Things you need to know to start today—   Number One— Tony Fauci said in a PBS documentary—that he had to ‘Break Republicans' on the vaccine to get the pandemic under control—totally political Tony Fauci—   Number Two— A shocking revelation—The Biden Administration is trying to quietly bail out Moderna—no I am serious—   Number Three— The walls are closing in on Donald Trump—this time they really got him—how many times do we have to hear that—before we are totally immune—   I mean the Democrats really are looking a lot like Charlie Brown as Lucy pulls the football away—AGAIN—   Another day—and no indictment of Donald Trump—can you imagine what its like inside MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times—do you think Joe and Mika are sobbing and consoling each other?   These outlets have spent the entire week drooling at the idea of Donald Trump being arrested—they dreamed of the mugshot to plaster all over social media—oh, the parties they were going to hold—Oh, and the perp walk—would be a divine payoff for all the misery going all the way back to Hillary Clintons victory party that turned into a funeral dirge—   By God this time they had him for sure—they went on and on about how his former attorney Michael Cohen and a B-list porn actress were going to the be the downfall of the former President—they could enjoy a huge measure of Trump Derangement Syndrome—they could see him in handcuffs and play it over and over again—   BUT—not of it happened—AGAIN—   Once again—Charlie Brown went running up to the football dreaming of kicking the game winning field goal—faster and faster—until suddenly he hit nothing but air—a complete whiff and he comes crashing back to earth on his back—all of the wind knocked out of him—   The long faces—the smeared make-up inside the former newsrooms in cable TV that long ago traded in credibility for tickets to Democrat cocktail parties—silent—shell shocked again—as once again they get to feast on a big fat nothing burger—   Once again—Teflon Don flies away—   This time the Manhattan D-A, some political hack by the name Alvin Bragg thought he could turn a non-disclosure payment to Stormy Daniels into a misdemeanor—even though the statute of limitations ran out at least four years ago—and then he was going to parlay that bogus charge into a federal campaign violation—and make that a felony and voila—he would be the hero the left had been praying for (even though they don't really pray anymore)—they would erect statues to replace the awful Republican villains like Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt they had torn down in pursuit of perfect wokeness—   They would celebrate his name in history books—except—well except there was no crime—and everyone knew it—even liberals knew it—   Real Liberals—not the Molotov cocktail throwing criminals that call themselves Liberals but that are actually facists—hiding behind the anti-facist costume of Antifa—   No, the real liberals that know hunting down your political opponents using the intelligence community and twisting the law to destroy them is wrong—and always will be—they knew that this case was a stone cold loser— here is Alan Dershowitz from this program earlier this week—   So now, once again—the bitterness is setting in—the acrid taste and smell of getting burned by your own hubris and stupidity—that leaves you looking like the fools you are—   It began with Grand Jury testimony on Monday from Robert Costello—who was a legal advisor to Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen—who has since been disbarred and sent to federal prison for perjury—and Costello told the Grand Jury that Michael Cohen is a serial liar—that had actually gotten the $130,000 to pay Stormy Daniels from a Home Equity Loan—known as a HELOC—meaning the money didn't even come from Donald Trump—   Then D-A Bragg panicked—and said he had one more crucial witness to hear from—BUT that was supposed to be yesterday—But mysteriously—the Grand Jury was told nobody would be coming—BUT maybe tomorrow—   Inside of Braggs office we are told there is complete chaos—infighting and battling over what to do now—   I mean they led all the Orange Man Bad Faithful—to begin gyrating in anticipation of the heavenly perp-walk—the celebrations in the streets—the end of President Donald Trump was at hand they were led to believe—   But there goes Charlie Brown sailing through the air—   And then yesterday afternoon another bombshell rocks the entire flimsy case—when a letter from 2018—that had been hidden, rose to the surface for all to see—   A letter written to the Federal Elections Commission by Stephen Ryan—an attorney for Michael Cohen— in the letter Ryan spelled out that the money given to Stormy Daniels was a private transaction between Cohen and Daniels and explained clearly on February 8th, 2018—that Donald Trump was neither a party to the transaction—or had any knowledge of the transaction—and further explained that Trump never reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000—   The letter concluded that any complaint involving Donald Trump should accordingly be dismissed— that was more than 5 years ago—and yet for some reason we are yet to understand—Alvin Bragg failed to mention that key piece of evidence—   THUD! Charlie Brown just hit the ground again—   Can you please mail some Kleenex to the kids at The Atlantic, The Washington Post and don't forget Chuck Todd will need a few boxes too—

DISCLOSE Act Reintroduced in the U.S. House & Senate to Shine a Light on Dark MoneyToday's LinksArticles & Resources:U.S. Congress -  DISCLOSE Act - 2022 versionOpen Secrets - (2022)  With Deadlocked Vote on Dark Money, DISCLOSE Act Fails to Clear SenateOpen Secrets - ‘Dark money' groups aligned with party leadership steer hundreds of millions of dollars into 2022 federal electionsCongressman David N. Cicilline  - Whitehouse, Cicilline Reintroduce DISCLOSE Act to End Corrupting Influence of Dark Money in American DemocracyGroups Taking Action:League of Women Voters US, Sierra Club, End Citizens United, Brennan Center for JusticeToday's Script:  (Variations occur with audio due to editing for time) You're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.Over $606 million dollars in Dark Money was poured into the 2022 midterm races by nonprofit groups, most of which do not disclose their donors.  The DISCLOSE Act, just proposed again in the U.S. Senate, tries to shine a light on those donors.February 23rd, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Rep. Dan Cicilline reintroduced the legislation, along with 163 House & Senate co-sponsors.  The bill deadlocked in the U.S. Senate in 2022.  Should it pass, the legislation requires nonprofit 501c3 and 501c4 groups making political expenditures to immediately disclose any donor contributing $10,000 or more.  Money-in-politics research group Open Secrets found that both Republican and Democratic dark money groups funneled millions in cash into ads and SuperPACs, much of which was never disclosed directly to the Federal Elections Commission.  Since the 2010 Citizens United decision, dark money skyrocketed from $5 million dollars in 2006 to over $1 billion dollars in 2020.  The legislation would also crack down on the use of shell corporation donors, and requires an organization running television advertising to disclose its top five funders at the end of ads.  We have more about the DISCLOSE Act and stunning Open Secrets dark money data at  AmericanDemocracyMinute.org. For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.   

Republicans sue to ban abortion pill in entire U.S. | Arizona legislators narrowly avoid school funding crisis | Adam Frisch, who nearly beat Rep. Lauren Boebert in 2022, is running for Congress again in 2024 | Colorado and 10 other states consider Right to Repair legislation, and the Farm Bureau is not going to be on boardSong playsIntro by hostWelcome to High Country - politics in the American West. My name is Sean Diller; regular listeners might know me from Heartland Pod's Talking Politics, every Monday.Support this show and all the work in the Heartland POD universe by going to heartlandpod.com and clicking the link for Patreon, or go to Patreon.com/HeartlandPod to sign up. Membership starts at $1/month, with even more extra shows and special access at the higher levels. No matter the level you choose, your membership helps us create these independent shows as we work together to change the conversation.Alright! Let's get into it: DENVER (AP) COLORADO NEWSLINE: REPUBLICAN AG'S WANT TO BAN THE ABORTION PILLWASHINGTON — Attorneys general representing nearly two dozen Republican states are backing a lawsuit that would remove the abortion pill from the United States after more than two decades, eliminating the option even in states where abortion access remains legal.  The lawsuit argues, on behalf of four anti-abortion medical organizations and four anti-abortion physicians, that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration exceeded its authority when it approved mifepristone to end pregnancies in the year 2000.The prescription medication is used as part of a two-drug regimen that includes misoprostol as the second pharmaceutical. It's approved to terminate pregnancies up to 10 weeks.The abortion pill is legal at the federal level, though several GOP-led states have laws in place that restrict abortion earlier than 10 weeks, setting up a dispute between state laws banning abortions and the federal government's jurisdiction to approve pharmaceuticals.The U.S. Justice Department argued the anti-abortion groups' “have pointed to no case, and the government has been unable to locate any example, where a court has second-guessed FDA's safety and efficacy determination, and ordered a widely available FDA-approved drug to be removed from the market. It certainly hasn't happened with a drug that's been approved for over 20 years.”Dr. Jamila Perritt, president & CEO for Physicians for Reproductive Health, said abortion medication is safe and effective, and that “when abortion is more difficult to access, we know this means abortion gets pushed later and later into pregnancy as folks try to navigate these barriers.”Dr. Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said “restricting access to mifepristone interferes with the ability of obstetrician–gynecologists and other clinicians to deliver the highest-quality evidence-based care for their patients.”The judge in the lawsuit, Trump appointee Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk, could rule on whether to pull mifepristone from the market as soon as this month. Any ruling is likely to be appealed and could eventually come before the U.S. Supreme Court. AZMIRROR: az legislature averts massive school funding cutsAdvocates, teachers call on lawmakers to fix school spending limitBY: GLORIA REBECCA GOMEZ - FEBRUARY 14, 2023 3:31 PMLast week, the Republican majority reluctantly approved a one-year exemption from a spending cap, called the aggregate expenditure limit - or AEL - placed in the state constitution by voters in 1980. Without that waiver, schools would have been forced to cut $1.4 billion from their budgets immediately, resulting in mass layoffs and closures. Now that the crisis has been temporarily averted, public school advocates are turning their attention to a more lasting fix as the issue is likely to resurface next year. Stand for Children Arizona's executive director, Rebecca Gau, called on lawmakers to move bills that would give voters the option to repeal the cap entirely, or recalculate it to current spending levels. But none of them have been put up for a vote. Gau warned that refusing to act would only worsen the strain on public schools. They face enough difficulties, without adding a recurring annual threat onto the pile. She cited the results of a public opinion survey conducted by Stand for Children Arizona, which found that 62% of voters in the state might say yes to a ballot measure to permanently raise the AEL. High school teacher Jacquelyn Larios said the ongoing uncertainty presented by the spending limit has prompted her to reconsider teaching in Arizona. Her school district warned that faculty would be facing a 26% salary cut if lawmakers weren't able to lift the cap by March. “I explained to my daughters that, even though I love teaching so much, I just don't know if I can continue,” Larios said. “We can't afford this.”For Yazmin Castro, a senior at Apollo High School, that means her classes are overcrowded — despite being a part of advanced courses that are meant to include more one-on-one interactions. She said the continued unwillingness from Republican lawmakers to resolve the AEL sends a message to students like her, that they'd rather hold onto outdated policies than support reforms that could make things better.“It tells us we're not valued,” she said. “That our education is not a priority and that our future does not matter.” Republican lawmakers, who hold a one-vote majority in each legislative chamber, have repeatedly called for accountability and transparency measures in exchange for school funding. This year, that resulted in several GOP members voting against lifting the cap, citing concerns about what's being taught in schools. Gau said while that argument might appeal to an extreme and vocal minority of constituents, the majority of voters support and trust their public schools. “Voters are watching,” she warned. “And organizations like mine will be here to make sure that voters in 2024 know who had the backs of kids, and who didn't.”COLORADO SUN: Not his first rodeo.Democrat Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman who narrowly lost his bid in November to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, will run again to represent the 3rd Congressional District in 2024.“November's election results show us that Boebert is weak and she will be defeated, which is why I have decided to launch my 2024 congressional campaign,” Frisch said.Frisch filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission to run against Boebert just days after her win was finalized. His formal campaign announcement kicks off what's likely to be one of the nation's most closely watched congressional contests. Frisch lost to Boebert by 546 votes, or 0.07 percentage points, in 2022. The margin was so narrow that it triggered a mandatory recount under Colorado law. Boebert's near-loss was shocking given the electorate in the 3rd District, which spans the Western Slope into Pueblo and southeast Colorado.The 3rd Congressional District leans 9 percentage points in the GOP's favor, according to an analysis by nonpartisan Colorado redistricting staff. Republicans have a voter registration advantage in the district, which has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. House since 2008. Frisch will hold his first 2024 campaign event in Pueblo on Wednesday. He ran in a crowded primary in 2022, and it's likely he will face Democratic primary opponents in 2022 as well.Boebert has started fundraising for her 2024 reelection bid. “I won my last race by a razor-thin margin,” she wrote in a fundraising email sent out last month. “As you can imagine, left-wingers are going to rally around (Frisch) big time after they came so close this past election.”Riiiight. The left-wingers in your R+9 District. So you perform 9 points worse than a generic Republican. That's not a left-winger problem, Congresswoman, that's a you problem. AMERICAN PROSPECT and ASSOCIATED PRESS:  Colorado and 10 other states consider right to repair legislation.On Colorado's northeastern plains, where the pencil-straight horizon divides golden fields and blue sky, a farmer named Danny Wood scrambles to raise millet, corn and winter wheat in short, seasonal windows. That is until his high-tech Steiger 370 tractor conks out.The tractor's manufacturer doesn't allow Wood to make certain fixes himself, and last spring his fertilizing operations were stalled for three days before the servicer arrived to add a few lines of missing computer code - at a cost of $950.“That's where they have us over the barrel, it's more like we are renting it than buying it,” said Wood, who spent $300,000 to buy the used tractor.Wood's plight, echoed by farmers across the country, has pushed lawmakers in Colorado and 10 other states to introduce Right to Repair bills that would force manufacturers to provide the tools, software, parts and manuals needed for farmers to do their own repairs — avoiding the steep labor costs and delays that erode their profits.Rep. Brianna Titone, a Denver metro Democrat and one of the bill's sponsors said “The manufacturers and the dealers have a monopoly on that repair market because it's lucrative for them, but farmers just want to get back to work.”In Colorado, the legislation is largely being pushed by Democrats while their Republican colleagues find themselves in a tough spot: torn between right-leaning farming constituents who want the change, and the multinational corporations who bankroll GOP campaigns.The manufacturers argue Right to Repair legislation would force companies to expose trade secrets. They also say it would make it easier for farmers to tinker with the software and illegally crank up the horsepower and bypass the emissions controller — risking operators' safety and the environment.In 2011, Congress passed a law ensuring that car owners and independent mechanics — not just authorized dealerships — had access to the necessary tools and information to fix problems.Ten years later, the Federal Trade Commission pledged to beef up its right to repair enforcement at the direction of President Joe Biden. And just last year, Rep. Titone sponsored and passed Colorado's first right to repair law, empowering people who use wheelchairs with the tools and information to fix them.For the right to repair farm equipment — from thin tractors used between grape vines to behemoth combines for harvesting grain that can cost over half a million dollars — Colorado is joined by 10 states including Florida, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Texas and Vermont.Many of the bills are finding bipartisan support, but in Colorado's House committee on agriculture, Democrats pushed the bill forward in a party line vote with every Republican opposed. “That was really surprising, and upset me,” said the farmer Danny Wood, who votes Republican.Wood's tractor, which flies an American flag reading “Farmers First,” isn't his only machine to break down. His combine was dropping into idle, and the servicer took five days to arrive on Wood's farm — a setback that could mean a hail storm decimates your wheat field, or the soil temperature moves out of the optimal zone for planting.Wood said “Our crop is ready to harvest and we can't wait five days, but there was nothing else to do. When it's broke down you just sit there and wait, and that's not acceptable. You can be losing $85,000 a day.”Rep. Richard Holtorf, the Republican who represents Wood's district and is a farmer himself, said he's being pulled between his constituents and the dealerships in his district. He voted against the measure, siding with the dealers.“I do sympathize with my farmers,” said Holtorf, but he added, “I don't think it's the role of government to be forcing the sale of their intellectual property.”This January, the Farm Bureau and the farm equipment manufacturer John Deere did sign a memorandum of understanding — a right to repair agreement made without government intervention. Though light on details, Deere's new memorandum would make it somewhat easier for farmers to get repair service independent from the company. It would ease restrictions on machine parts from manufacturers and open up other fix-it tools, such as the software or handbooks that Deere technicians rely on.This olive branch, however, is predicated on a major concession from the Farm Bureau - which is one of the nation's most powerful lobbying forces advocating on behalf of farmers. The Farm Bureau has agreed not to support any Right to Repair legislation, or any other provisions at all that would go beyond what's outlined in the agreement.But Nathan Proctor of the Public Interest Research Group, who is tracking 20 right to repair proposals in a number of industries across the country, said the memorandum of understanding has fallen far short.One major problem with agreements like this is that there's no enforcement mechanism. If John Deere doesn't live up to the memorandum, farmers have no path for recourse.“The slippery language gives the company enormous discretion to just set policy as it goes,” said Kevin O'Reilly, the director of the Right to Repair campaign at U.S. PIRG.Deere's track record on this issue isn't great. In 2018, John Deere issued a “statement of principles” that foreshadowed the provisions in the new memorandum. But farmers never received access to the machine parts and software they'd been promised.“Farmers are saying no,” said Nathan Proctor. “We want the real thing.”Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.CONCERT PICK OF THE WEEK: The RZA with the Colorado Symphony - 36 Chambers of Shaolin and A Ballet Through Mud - From the mind of the RZA comes a symphonic double-feature that bridges the gap between classical and contemporary music. With spoken word, live ballet, and rich orchestration with the Colorado Symphony. Friday and Saturday Feb 17 and 18 at Boettcher Concert Hall. Tickets at ColoradoSymphony.orgWelp, that's it for me! From Denver I'm Sean Diller. Original reporting for the stories in today's show comes from Colorado Newsline, Associated Press, Colorado Sun, American Prospect, Arizona Mirror, and Denver's Westword.Thank you for listening! See you next time.

Republicans sue to ban abortion pill in entire U.S. | Arizona legislators narrowly avoid school funding crisis | Adam Frisch, who nearly beat Rep. Lauren Boebert in 2022, is running for Congress again in 2024 | Colorado and 10 other states consider Right to Repair legislation, and the Farm Bureau is not going to be on boardSong playsIntro by hostWelcome to High Country - politics in the American West. My name is Sean Diller; regular listeners might know me from Heartland Pod's Talking Politics, every Monday.Support this show and all the work in the Heartland POD universe by going to heartlandpod.com and clicking the link for Patreon, or go to Patreon.com/HeartlandPod to sign up. Membership starts at $1/month, with even more extra shows and special access at the higher levels. No matter the level you choose, your membership helps us create these independent shows as we work together to change the conversation.Alright! Let's get into it: DENVER (AP) COLORADO NEWSLINE: REPUBLICAN AG'S WANT TO BAN THE ABORTION PILLWASHINGTON — Attorneys general representing nearly two dozen Republican states are backing a lawsuit that would remove the abortion pill from the United States after more than two decades, eliminating the option even in states where abortion access remains legal.  The lawsuit argues, on behalf of four anti-abortion medical organizations and four anti-abortion physicians, that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration exceeded its authority when it approved mifepristone to end pregnancies in the year 2000.The prescription medication is used as part of a two-drug regimen that includes misoprostol as the second pharmaceutical. It's approved to terminate pregnancies up to 10 weeks.The abortion pill is legal at the federal level, though several GOP-led states have laws in place that restrict abortion earlier than 10 weeks, setting up a dispute between state laws banning abortions and the federal government's jurisdiction to approve pharmaceuticals.The U.S. Justice Department argued the anti-abortion groups' “have pointed to no case, and the government has been unable to locate any example, where a court has second-guessed FDA's safety and efficacy determination, and ordered a widely available FDA-approved drug to be removed from the market. It certainly hasn't happened with a drug that's been approved for over 20 years.”Dr. Jamila Perritt, president & CEO for Physicians for Reproductive Health, said abortion medication is safe and effective, and that “when abortion is more difficult to access, we know this means abortion gets pushed later and later into pregnancy as folks try to navigate these barriers.”Dr. Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said “restricting access to mifepristone interferes with the ability of obstetrician–gynecologists and other clinicians to deliver the highest-quality evidence-based care for their patients.”The judge in the lawsuit, Trump appointee Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk, could rule on whether to pull mifepristone from the market as soon as this month. Any ruling is likely to be appealed and could eventually come before the U.S. Supreme Court. AZMIRROR: az legislature averts massive school funding cutsAdvocates, teachers call on lawmakers to fix school spending limitBY: GLORIA REBECCA GOMEZ - FEBRUARY 14, 2023 3:31 PMLast week, the Republican majority reluctantly approved a one-year exemption from a spending cap, called the aggregate expenditure limit - or AEL - placed in the state constitution by voters in 1980. Without that waiver, schools would have been forced to cut $1.4 billion from their budgets immediately, resulting in mass layoffs and closures. Now that the crisis has been temporarily averted, public school advocates are turning their attention to a more lasting fix as the issue is likely to resurface next year. Stand for Children Arizona's executive director, Rebecca Gau, called on lawmakers to move bills that would give voters the option to repeal the cap entirely, or recalculate it to current spending levels. But none of them have been put up for a vote. Gau warned that refusing to act would only worsen the strain on public schools. They face enough difficulties, without adding a recurring annual threat onto the pile. She cited the results of a public opinion survey conducted by Stand for Children Arizona, which found that 62% of voters in the state might say yes to a ballot measure to permanently raise the AEL. High school teacher Jacquelyn Larios said the ongoing uncertainty presented by the spending limit has prompted her to reconsider teaching in Arizona. Her school district warned that faculty would be facing a 26% salary cut if lawmakers weren't able to lift the cap by March. “I explained to my daughters that, even though I love teaching so much, I just don't know if I can continue,” Larios said. “We can't afford this.”For Yazmin Castro, a senior at Apollo High School, that means her classes are overcrowded — despite being a part of advanced courses that are meant to include more one-on-one interactions. She said the continued unwillingness from Republican lawmakers to resolve the AEL sends a message to students like her, that they'd rather hold onto outdated policies than support reforms that could make things better.“It tells us we're not valued,” she said. “That our education is not a priority and that our future does not matter.” Republican lawmakers, who hold a one-vote majority in each legislative chamber, have repeatedly called for accountability and transparency measures in exchange for school funding. This year, that resulted in several GOP members voting against lifting the cap, citing concerns about what's being taught in schools. Gau said while that argument might appeal to an extreme and vocal minority of constituents, the majority of voters support and trust their public schools. “Voters are watching,” she warned. “And organizations like mine will be here to make sure that voters in 2024 know who had the backs of kids, and who didn't.”COLORADO SUN: Not his first rodeo.Democrat Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman who narrowly lost his bid in November to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, will run again to represent the 3rd Congressional District in 2024.“November's election results show us that Boebert is weak and she will be defeated, which is why I have decided to launch my 2024 congressional campaign,” Frisch said.Frisch filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission to run against Boebert just days after her win was finalized. His formal campaign announcement kicks off what's likely to be one of the nation's most closely watched congressional contests. Frisch lost to Boebert by 546 votes, or 0.07 percentage points, in 2022. The margin was so narrow that it triggered a mandatory recount under Colorado law. Boebert's near-loss was shocking given the electorate in the 3rd District, which spans the Western Slope into Pueblo and southeast Colorado.The 3rd Congressional District leans 9 percentage points in the GOP's favor, according to an analysis by nonpartisan Colorado redistricting staff. Republicans have a voter registration advantage in the district, which has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. House since 2008. Frisch will hold his first 2024 campaign event in Pueblo on Wednesday. He ran in a crowded primary in 2022, and it's likely he will face Democratic primary opponents in 2022 as well.Boebert has started fundraising for her 2024 reelection bid. “I won my last race by a razor-thin margin,” she wrote in a fundraising email sent out last month. “As you can imagine, left-wingers are going to rally around (Frisch) big time after they came so close this past election.”Riiiight. The left-wingers in your R+9 District. So you perform 9 points worse than a generic Republican. That's not a left-winger problem, Congresswoman, that's a you problem. AMERICAN PROSPECT and ASSOCIATED PRESS:  Colorado and 10 other states consider right to repair legislation.On Colorado's northeastern plains, where the pencil-straight horizon divides golden fields and blue sky, a farmer named Danny Wood scrambles to raise millet, corn and winter wheat in short, seasonal windows. That is until his high-tech Steiger 370 tractor conks out.The tractor's manufacturer doesn't allow Wood to make certain fixes himself, and last spring his fertilizing operations were stalled for three days before the servicer arrived to add a few lines of missing computer code - at a cost of $950.“That's where they have us over the barrel, it's more like we are renting it than buying it,” said Wood, who spent $300,000 to buy the used tractor.Wood's plight, echoed by farmers across the country, has pushed lawmakers in Colorado and 10 other states to introduce Right to Repair bills that would force manufacturers to provide the tools, software, parts and manuals needed for farmers to do their own repairs — avoiding the steep labor costs and delays that erode their profits.Rep. Brianna Titone, a Denver metro Democrat and one of the bill's sponsors said “The manufacturers and the dealers have a monopoly on that repair market because it's lucrative for them, but farmers just want to get back to work.”In Colorado, the legislation is largely being pushed by Democrats while their Republican colleagues find themselves in a tough spot: torn between right-leaning farming constituents who want the change, and the multinational corporations who bankroll GOP campaigns.The manufacturers argue Right to Repair legislation would force companies to expose trade secrets. They also say it would make it easier for farmers to tinker with the software and illegally crank up the horsepower and bypass the emissions controller — risking operators' safety and the environment.In 2011, Congress passed a law ensuring that car owners and independent mechanics — not just authorized dealerships — had access to the necessary tools and information to fix problems.Ten years later, the Federal Trade Commission pledged to beef up its right to repair enforcement at the direction of President Joe Biden. And just last year, Rep. Titone sponsored and passed Colorado's first right to repair law, empowering people who use wheelchairs with the tools and information to fix them.For the right to repair farm equipment — from thin tractors used between grape vines to behemoth combines for harvesting grain that can cost over half a million dollars — Colorado is joined by 10 states including Florida, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Texas and Vermont.Many of the bills are finding bipartisan support, but in Colorado's House committee on agriculture, Democrats pushed the bill forward in a party line vote with every Republican opposed. “That was really surprising, and upset me,” said the farmer Danny Wood, who votes Republican.Wood's tractor, which flies an American flag reading “Farmers First,” isn't his only machine to break down. His combine was dropping into idle, and the servicer took five days to arrive on Wood's farm — a setback that could mean a hail storm decimates your wheat field, or the soil temperature moves out of the optimal zone for planting.Wood said “Our crop is ready to harvest and we can't wait five days, but there was nothing else to do. When it's broke down you just sit there and wait, and that's not acceptable. You can be losing $85,000 a day.”Rep. Richard Holtorf, the Republican who represents Wood's district and is a farmer himself, said he's being pulled between his constituents and the dealerships in his district. He voted against the measure, siding with the dealers.“I do sympathize with my farmers,” said Holtorf, but he added, “I don't think it's the role of government to be forcing the sale of their intellectual property.”This January, the Farm Bureau and the farm equipment manufacturer John Deere did sign a memorandum of understanding — a right to repair agreement made without government intervention. Though light on details, Deere's new memorandum would make it somewhat easier for farmers to get repair service independent from the company. It would ease restrictions on machine parts from manufacturers and open up other fix-it tools, such as the software or handbooks that Deere technicians rely on.This olive branch, however, is predicated on a major concession from the Farm Bureau - which is one of the nation's most powerful lobbying forces advocating on behalf of farmers. The Farm Bureau has agreed not to support any Right to Repair legislation, or any other provisions at all that would go beyond what's outlined in the agreement.But Nathan Proctor of the Public Interest Research Group, who is tracking 20 right to repair proposals in a number of industries across the country, said the memorandum of understanding has fallen far short.One major problem with agreements like this is that there's no enforcement mechanism. If John Deere doesn't live up to the memorandum, farmers have no path for recourse.“The slippery language gives the company enormous discretion to just set policy as it goes,” said Kevin O'Reilly, the director of the Right to Repair campaign at U.S. PIRG.Deere's track record on this issue isn't great. In 2018, John Deere issued a “statement of principles” that foreshadowed the provisions in the new memorandum. But farmers never received access to the machine parts and software they'd been promised.“Farmers are saying no,” said Nathan Proctor. “We want the real thing.”Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.CONCERT PICK OF THE WEEK: The RZA with the Colorado Symphony - 36 Chambers of Shaolin and A Ballet Through Mud - From the mind of the RZA comes a symphonic double-feature that bridges the gap between classical and contemporary music. With spoken word, live ballet, and rich orchestration with the Colorado Symphony. Friday and Saturday Feb 17 and 18 at Boettcher Concert Hall. Tickets at ColoradoSymphony.orgWelp, that's it for me! From Denver I'm Sean Diller. Original reporting for the stories in today's show comes from Colorado Newsline, Associated Press, Colorado Sun, American Prospect, Arizona Mirror, and Denver's Westword.Thank you for listening! See you next time.

HE FEDS HAVE ATTACKED INDEPENDENT CAMPAIGNS; THE RABBI CELEBRATES THE EARTH At GREEGREE #125 Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party's 2016 Presidential candidate, schools us in how the Federal Elections Commission protects America's duopoly. Stein is being PERSONALLY sued by the FEC for an independent campaign dating to seven years ago.  It's an astounding story of fascism in action with serious implications for grassroots campaigns going forward. RAY MCCLENDON of the Georgia NAACP and co-convenor JOEL SEGAL confirm the need to transform how we connect with grassroots donors and volunteers to challenge the duopoly's unyielding power. “We need publicly financed elections, period,” says Segal.   With Stein's terrible experience as background, the FEC must be changed to a non-partisan operation.  “It's all about the oligarchy,” says Stein. TATANKA BRICCA tells us about Exxon now pouring trillions of dollars into Swiss “non-profits” to hide their money while promoting fossil/nuclear fuels which destroy the Earth. We then hear from CAROLINA AMPUDIA about the fight for progressive policies within the Florida Democratic Party. WENDI LEDERMAN tells us about the fight over privatization of water in the Sunshine State. LORENZO CANIZARES updates us on the situation in Peru. LINDA SEELEY from the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace tells us of the horrendous licensing scams being pulled at the Diablo Canyon atomic reactors. RABBI ART WASKOW then takes us into a brilliant, fascinating tour of the destruction of Atlanta's forest land along with the horrific murder of a young eco-activist with no less than 13 bullets. Art is a long-standing activist based in Philadelphia who has joined radical Judaism with ecological protection.  This broadcast is happening on the Jewish holiday, “the New Year of Trees...a fount of pleasure, of joy…” and much more. His lifelong career has moved thousands of activists around the world, both within and outside the Jewish community, working for peace, social justice, protection of the Earth, an end to racism and anti-semitism and much more. Art's visit is punctuated with great comments by RON LEONARD, MYLA RESON and many more. This is a fantastic, uniquely wonderful gathering.  Don't miss it!!!

Hans Von Spakovsky is the manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative. He's also a former member of the Federal Elections Commission. After reviewing the Twitter Files, released by Elon Musk, Von Spakovsky argues that the social media platform's bias before, during, and after the 2020 elections is an in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign and says the FEC should investigate the actions as such.

Final January 6th Committee Hearing Dec. 19th, Including a Criminal Referral Vote for Fmr. President TrumpArticles & Resources: NPR - The Jan. 6 committee will take up criminal referrals against Donald TrumpAxios - Jan. 6 committee teases new evidence ahead of final hearingJanuary 6th Committee - Live Stream of the Hearing, Monday, December 19, 1 pm EasternLos Angeles Times - Previous Hearing Timeline &  TV schedule for the final Jan. 6 committee hearing?Washington Post - Jan. 6 committee to vote Monday on riot criminal referrals Today's Script:  (Variations occur with audio due to editing for time) You're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.Monday, December 19th, 1 pm Eastern, the January 6th Committee holds its last hearing, with some additional witness information from members of the U.S. Secret Service, and a vote on criminal referrals – including for former President Trump.NPR reports, based on anonymous sources, that two criminal referrals will be considered for the former President, including obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States.  A vote to make the referrals does not compel the Justice Department to act.Also expected is recent testimony from members of the U.S. Secret Service on former President Trump's actions during and after the rally, trying to corroborate White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony that Trump attempted to force his detail to return him to the insurrection. Other recent testimony includes former staffer Hope Hicks, former adviser Kellyanne Conway, and Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.In addition to criminal referrals, recommendations are expected for others involved in the attempt to subvert the election, including to the Federal Elections Commission, the House Ethics Committee and state bar associations. The committee's 1000 page report will be released no later than December 21st.Most major radio & TV networks are likely to carry the hearing.   Links to articles and the January 6th committee's timeline can be found at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org.   For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.

An Interview with Crypto CEO Sam Bankman-Fried Shows How  Reported - And Unreported -- Money Funds Our CandidatesToday's LinksArticles & Resources: Journalist Tiffany Fong - Interview with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (Campaign donation discussions at 13 minutes)CNBC - Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried hit with campaign finance complaint over GOP ‘dark' moneyForbes - Sam Bankman-Fried says he donated just as many millions to Republicans as Democrats, but didn't publicize it because reporters would ‘freak the f–k out'The Hill - FTX founder Bankman-Fried's campaign finance charges ‘just the tip of the icebergOpenSecrets.org - Largest Campaign Donors Groups Taking Action:Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW), Public Citizen, Open Democracy Today's Script:  (Variations occur with audio due to editing for time) You're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.Recent revelations from a disgraced cryptocurrency CEO gives us a glimpse of just how much campaign money flows into our election system – both what gets reported, and what's called “dark money.”  And both the major parties refuse to stop the torrent.In an interview with journalist Tiffany Fong in November, FTX crypto exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, now in custody in the Bahamas, admitted that he had not only given $40 million to Democrats and Democratic PACs to fund primary races, but he said he also gave an equal amount of “dark money” to Republican candidates.   It's not known which dark money organizations, but typically 501c3 & 501c4 nonprofits, Limited Liability Corporations and other instruments are used to shield donor identities. Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington, has since filed a campaign finance reform complaint with the Federal Elections Commission. CREW suggested that Bankman-Fried contributed as much as $37 Million more to campaigns than was reported to the FEC, and says that while the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allows independent expenditures to groups, it doesn't not allow those groups to “pass through” donations directly to candidates. Several politicians, including Arizona U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, have reportedly returned money given to them by Bankman-Fried.  We have links to the campaign funding transparency website OpenSecrets, and more details on the allegations at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org.   For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is hoping to become the next speaker of the House—gives a major announcement about how the GOP plans to respond to the border crisis. This as an Arizona Democrat says members of his own party don't understand the border issue. Dr. Anthony Fauci's final moments on the White House podium: what does he say as Republicans vow to investigate him in the upcoming Congress? Should illegal immigrants or noncitizens be allowed to vote? Washington D.C. city officials have voted in favor. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced legislation pushing back. Both the political left and the right are reacting to Twitter reinstating conservative accounts. We have a former Commissioner of the Federal Elections Commission joining us to discuss. Vice President Kamala Harris makes a promise during her visit to the Philippines regarding the nation's disputes in the South China Sea. Getting ready for the busiest travel days of the year? We have what you need to know about the upcoming Thanksgiving travel rush. ⭕️Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

Republicans have blamed President Joe Biden for the jump in gasoline prices that have plagued drivers this year. But a POLITICO review of federal data shows that compared to the early months of the Trump administration, Biden's Interior Department has approved new oil and gas wells at a far faster clip produced more crude oil over the same period. POLITICO's Ben Lefebvre breaks down that data. Plus, Republican members on the Federal Elections Commission blocked it from sanctioning a Russian-funded Texas energy company for campaign donations to Louisiana lawmakers.    Josh Siegel is an energy reporter for POLITICO.  Ben Lefebvre is an energy reporter for POLITICO.  Nirmal Mulaikal is a POLITICO audio host-producer.  Raghu Manavalan is a senior editor for POLITICO audio. Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO's audio department.

If this were a Leap Year, July 18 would be the 200th day of 2022. However, this Monday is in fact the 199th day of the year and we are 532 days away from 2024. Are these numbers compelling or a distraction from the beginning of this 409th installment of Charlottesville Community Engagement? Let’s ask the Magic 8-ball! I’m your host, Sean Tubbs. Sign up for a paid subscription to ensure this work continues long into the future! Ting will match your first payment! See below for more. In today’s installment:An update on the COVID-19 pandemic as local experts anticipate a future surgeThe Virginia Department of Health is cautioning swimming in the western tributaries of Lake AnnaThe latest campaign finance numbers are in for Virginia’s Fifth District Storefront vacancies are up in the six commercial areas tracked by the city of CharlottesvilleAnd some updates on infrastructure projects in Albemarle CountyFirst shout-out: Piedmont Master Gardeners want to help you rethink your lawnIn today’s first subscriber supported public service announcement: Have you thought about changing up your lawn to something more sustainable for pollinators and other creatures? The Piedmont Master Gardeners wants you to know about a program called Healthy Virginia Lawns which can assist you in your transition. The program is a joint venture of Virginia Cooperative Extension and the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. If interested, the first step will be for a Piedmont Master Gardener to come for a visit for an assessment and soil tests. Healthy Virginia Lawns will give you a customized, science-based roadmap to a greener landscape that protects water quality, wildlife and other resources along the way. Visit piedmontmastergardeners.org to learn more!Youngkin’s health department makes COVID quarantines optional in education and childcare settingOn Friday, Governor Glenn Youngkin announced that the Virginia Department of Health has updated its guidance for children, teachers and staff in educational and camp settings. “This revised guidance outlines that quarantine is no longer routinely recommended for asymptomatic individuals after exposure to COVID-19 infected individuals,” reads the updated guidance “In general masks are not routinely recommended in these settings, indoors or outdoors, except during isolation.”The guidance continues a shift away to individual decisions related to the pandemic rather than mandates. The federal Centers for Disease Control has a much more broad system of quarantine protocols, which can be reviewed here.Dr. Costi Sifri, director of hospital epidemiology at the UVA Health System, said schools and day care facilities should do what they can to improve spaces to reduce transmission, especially before the school year begins. “Those include things like just understanding whether there are more opportunities to improve ventilation and those other engineering type approaches to reducing risk of transmission within schools,” Dr. Sifri said. “We know the virus is not going to go away.” Today the Virginia Department of Health reports a seven-day average of 2,930 new cases a day and the seven-day percent positivity ratings for PCR tests is at 23 percent. This continues an upward trend that dates back to the spring as newer strains became more prevalent. Dr. Sifri said the Omicron subvariant BA.5 continues to spread and he expects an additional surge in cases at some point in the near future. “We’ve had new variants that have replaced previous variants and for most of 2022 what we’ve seen is that these variants are descendants or are related to the Omicron variant that was called BA.1,” Dr. Sifri said. Dr. Sifri said reinfection is becoming more likely due to the new strains. “That really helps us think about perhaps whom we should be trying to protect by revaccinating,” Dr. Sifri said. “The challenge is that the COVID vaccines are based on the original strain of COVID and the protection from that or from previous infection is unfortunately not as robust for general infection due to BA.5 or some of these newer variants.” Dr. Sifri said vaccination and previous infections do protect against serious outcomes, except for those who are immunocompromised. “So the CDC guidance and our recommendations are that if you are in a high-risk group, then you should make sure you are up to date with your COVID vaccine,” Dr. Sifri said. Dr. Sifri noted that nearly half of the country is currently considered by the CDC as an area of high transmission. He recommends people wear masks, but acknowledged the political reality of America in the third year of the pandemic. “We know that’s not being done in many places around the country,” Dr. Sifri said. “I just flew in from the west coast earlier this week and masking is really the exception to the rule on airplanes and in more airports right now. If you are in those situations and you’re not wearing a mask, you should anticipate that you could be exposed to COVID.”To find out if you are eligible for another vaccine dose or to get vaccinated for the first time, visit vaccinate.virginia.gov to learn more. Harmful algae bloom at Lake AnnaThe Virginia Department of Health is asking people to avoid swimming in or contact with waters on the western side of Lake Anna and its tributaries due to the presence of a harmful algae bloom. “Samples collected at six sites on the Upper and Middle Pamunkey Branch, including Terry’s Run, and the Upper and Middle North Anna Branches indicated a cyanobacteria bloom with cell concentrations at unsafe levels,” reads a VDH update posted on Friday.The next update from VDH will be given some time in the second week of August. Until then, VDH cautions people to not fish, swim, or let pets in bodies of water that smell bad, look discolored, or have visible foam or scum on the surface. For more on the topic across Virginia, visit www.swimhealthyva.com. Good leads Throneburg in fundraising for 5th District RaceThere are 113 days until election day and 59 days until the next time that candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives will have to file campaign finance reports. The most recent deadline was this past Friday for activity through June 30.In the Fifth District, Republican Incumbent Bob Good of Evington has raised $848,271 in his reelection campaign for a second term, including $149,017 in transfers. Of the $679,372 in contributions, nearly 75 percent comes from individuals or entities who contributed $200 or more. About eleven percent came from political action committees. Good has spent $570,585 and had an ending cash balance of $328,023 on June 30.Democratic challenger Joshua Throneburg of Charlottesville has raised $446,579 so far, including $50,000 in loans. Just under 77 percent of the $396,379 in contributions came from individuals  or entities who gave $200 or more. So far, Throneburg has spent $320,531 and had $126,048 in cash on hand at the midway point of the year.  For all of the details, read the quarterly reports on the Federal Elections Commission’s website. Here’s the one for Throneburg and here’s the one for Good. Second shout-out is for LEAP’s new Thermalize Virginia program In today’s second Patreon-fueled shout-out: Have you been thinking of converting your fossil-fuel appliances and furnaces into something that will help the community reduce its greenhouse gas emissions? Your local energy nonprofit, LEAP,  has launched a new program to guide you through the steps toward electrifying your home. Thermalize Virginia will help you understand electrification and connect you with vetted contractors to get the work done and help you find any rebates or discounts. Visit thermalizeva.org to learn more and to sign up!  Storefront vacancies up slightly in Charlottesville Storefront vacancies are up in the six commercial areas tracked by the City of Charlottesville. That’s according to the latest twice a year report put together by the Office of Economic Development (read the report).“This study examines only the ground-level retail storefronts at the six major shopping centers, so vacancies on the second floor and higher are not included,” reads the report. “Not all vacant buildings are included in the vacancy rate provided .”Those six commercial areas include Barracks Road, the Downtown Mall, McIntire Plaza, Preston Plaza, Seminole Square, and the Corner. There were 22 vacancies in January and that has risen to 33 in July. That does not include storefronts that are under renovation. When factored in percentage, the vacancy rate increased from 5.01 percent to 7.21 percent. The study also does not cover West Main Street, which has some buildings that have storefronts that have never been filled. The Flats at West Village used to have a restaurant that closed before the pandemic, and one retail space required to be built due to the zoning has never been occupied. The Lark has seen two breweries come and go but the second closed during the pandemic. A retail space on Roosevelt Brown Boulevard has never been occupied.The Standard has several retail spaces, and only one has been occupied. Another appears to be a storefront, but is actually an advertisement for a ghost kitchen. Urban sidewalks are among several infrastructure projects under construction in AlbemarleEvery quarter, Albemarle County’s Facilities and Environmental Services Department puts out an update of its activities. The latest is on the consent agenda for Wednesday’s meeting of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors. (read the report)Here are some of the highlights:Construction got underway in June on over 2,000 feet of sidewalk to connect Albemarle High School to Greer Elementary School. Funding comes from a one-time Neighborhood Improvements Funding Initiative as well as the Safe Routes to School program. Replacement of 376 exterior windows at the county’s office building on McIntire Road is also underway. The windows all date back to the late 70’s when Albemarle bought the former Lane High School from the city of Charlottesville. This will reduce energy costs and the report notes that electricity consumption in June was down 13 percent over the same month in 2021. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently awarded Albemarle a $96,261 grant to study the potential for flooding in the 770-acre Branchlands watershed. This may take some years to complete. Design for an entrance road for the first phase of Biscuit Run is still ongoing with negotiations continuing between county staff and the Virginia Department of Transportation. The first phase will consist of that road, restrooms, and a parking area. According to the report, completion of the first phase is now expected in September 2023. Albemarle is considering using land proffered to the county as part of the Brookhill development for many uses, including a relocation of the vehicle maintenance facility used by Albemarle Public Schools. Other uses might include a solid waste convenience center, such as the one that will soon get under construction in Keene. A feasibility study for the Brookhill land should be ready in mid-August. The Southern Convenience Center is expected to be completed in December on a nearly $1.1 million budget. Completion of several sidewalk projects is expected in the coming weeks. Albemarle was successful in getting revenue-sharing funds from the Virginia Department of Transportation for sidewalks and improvements on Rio Road, Avon Street, and U.S. 250 West in Crozet.“The Rio Road Sidewalk Improvement project will connect the Stonehenge residential neighborhood to the John Warner Parkway and Rio Road sidewalk system. The Avon Street Walkway/Crosswalks Improvement project will provide sidewalks on the east side from Swan Lake Drive to Mill Creek Drive and then to Cale Elementary School [sic] and on the west side from Stoney Creek Drive to Arden Drive. The US 250 West-Crozet project will consist of the construction of sidewalk and crosswalks from Cory Farms to the Cloverlawn commercial area and Blue Ridge Shopping Center.”Cale Elementary was renamed Mountain View in 2020. Secure this work’s future with financial supportThis is episode 409 of this program and I’ll be getting to work on 410 and beyond. I really want to get to 818, 820, and so on. This is the work I want to do and I believe the community benefits when I’m able to spend my time as a reporter. Town Crier Productions is not a nonprofit organization, but around a third of the audience has opted to contribute something financially. It’s similar to the old days when you would subscribe to a newspaper. I subscribe to several, myself, and would greatly appreciate your subscription. Supporting the program through a Substack contribution or through Patreon makes it very easy for me to get paid and every single dollar that I get makes me want to work that much harder to serve the community. In just under two years, I’ve produced hundreds of stories that seek to give you information about how decisions are made in our community and in the Commonwealth of Virginia.For more information on all of this, please visit the archive site Information Charlottesville to learn more, including how you too can get a shout-out! Thank you for reading, and please share with those you think might want to learn a few thing or two about what’s happening.Also, Ting will match your initial payment! Visit them today to see if they can help you speed your Internet up. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Lawsuit Filed Against FEC for Dismissing Credible Complaint on Secret Payments to Trump Family & InsidersToday's Links:   ArticlesCampaign Legal Center - CLC Sues FEC over Dismissal of Complaint Alleging Violations by Trump CampaignBusiness Insider  -  Trump's campaign committee dodges penalty as federal watchdog deadlocks on complaint it laundered hundreds of millions of dollars Associated Press - FEC deadlocks, won't punish Trump over questionable 2020 campaign spending Campaign Legal CenterOrganizations Taking ActionCampaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Public CitizenYou're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.We reported back in May on the Federal Elections Commission deadlock over alleged secret payments benefitting Trump family members.   The complaint alleges Trump family members and insiders financially benefited from sweetheart contracts paid out by a political action committee supporting President Trump's re-election campaign.  The Campaign Legal Center has now filed a lawsuit contesting that decision.    Based on 2020 reporting by the Business Insider,  the Make America Great Again PAC allegedly misreported the payees of secret payments made to American Made Media Consultants, LLC, set up by Jared Kushner.  The LLC had Vice President Pence, Lara Trump, and Kushner as board members, among others.   American Made Media Consultants was reported to have been paid $617 million dollars from the PAC, and some of that money was used to compensate Trump campaign staffers and the partners of his adult children, violating campaign transparency rules.   Parscale Strategy, LLC, headed by Brad Parscale, former Trump campaign manager, was also accused of having received misreported payments.    Despite significant evidence, the FEC's three Republicans and three Democrats deadlocked on whether further investigation was warranted. The Campaign Legal Center lawsuit contests that decision, pointing out that the commissioners' reasonings for rejecting the complaint don't stand up to legal scrutiny.  They ask that the court invalidate the FEC's dismissal, and that the alleged violations be investigated.   Stay tuned for more on this story. We have links to articles and groups taking action at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org.  Granny D said “Democracy is not something we have, it's something we DO.” For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.

FEC Deadlocks on Trump Campaign Payments to Family-Controlled LLCToday's Links:    Articles:  Business Insider,  Associated Press, Campaign Legal Center Organizations fighting political corruption:  Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW),  Public Citizen You're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping your government by and for the people.One of the many reforms in the S. 1 For the People Act, which stalled in the U.S. Senate earlier this year, would have fixed the Federal Elections Commission.  Over the last two decades, the bipartisan members of the FEC routinely deadlock on campaign corruption and misdeeds complaints, using their role not to uphold the rules, but to protect their own parties.  In a report by Business Insider, the FEC has apparently deadlocked again, this time over sketchy 2020 payments made from former President Trump's campaign to even sketchier LLCs and holding companies set up by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.The Make America Great Again PAC was accused by the Campaign Legal Center for misreporting the payees of secret payments made to American Made Media Consultants, LLC, set up by Kushner, and which included Vice President Pence, Lara Trump, and Kushner as board members, among others.   American Made Media Consultants was reported to have been paid $617 Million dollars from the Trump campaign coffers.   Parscale Strategy, LLC, headed by Brad Parscale, former Trump campaign manager, was also accused of having received misreported payments.Even though the FEC deadlocked, it's not yet over. Campaign Legal Center filed a federal lawsuit on this matter in March after its complaint in January to the FEC.   We have more information and links to organizations fighting corruption at our website, AmericanDemocracyMinute.org/  Granny D said, “Democracy is not something we have, it's something we DO.” For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.

You're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.A glimmer of good news from California to share on the Money-in-Politics front today. Last week, AB1819 advanced out of the California State Assembly's Election Law committee, which prohibits “foreign-influenced business entities” from spending money in the state's elections and ballot initiatives. This includes the use of “straw man” entities where money is given to someone who doesn't work for the company makes the contribution.As foreign company holdings in the US has increased, so has their influence. The Federal Elections Commission recently levied the largest campaign finance fine ever on a Canadian steel executive who used his Pennsylvania subsidiary to illegally contribute $1.75 million dollars to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.A frequent tool of foreign companies wanting to make anonymous contributions to campaigns and political action committees has been Limited Liability Corporations, which make the donations in the company's name, not the actual donors. A 2020 report called “Mystery Money” by campaign finance reform group Issue One demonstrates how this is done, and the havoc it can wreak on U.S. Elections. AB 1819 is headed next to the Appropriations committee as it winds throught the California legislature.Visit AmericanDemocracyMinute.org to find Issue One's report and more information on AB 1819 at advocacy group Free Speech for People. Granny D said, “Democracy is not something we HAVE, it's something we DO.” For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl. 

On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were fined by the Federal Elections Commission. Specifically, six years after the actual race, the Federal Elections Commission has issued a fine against Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign as well as the DNC for violating federal law and not accurately describing the payments that they made to a law firm—which then funneled the money to an ex-British spy. Meanwhile, while I was in Florida about two weeks ago, I had the unique opportunity to sit down and speak with Jeffrey Lord, who was a former member of the Reagan administration, and we discussed the new changing global world order—and what American's place in it can look like. ⭕️ Sign up for our NEWSLETTER and stay in touch

Reports from the Federal Elections Commission show that Lauren Boebert continues to raise more money than other candidates for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. She raised over $800,000 in the last three months of 2021. That brings the total amount of funds raised so far to $3.58 million. Support the show: https://www.montrosepress.com/site/forms/subscription_services/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week's episode covers all the things you love: Ted Cruz, Shaky Campaign Finance Laws, and rich people winning political offices.  Your boys revisit some food talk while discussing Federal Elections Commission v. Ted Cruz, which discussed whether Ted Cruz can get repaid for a $10,000.00 loan he made to Ted Cruz.  Law starts at (10:35).

This Week in Oklahoma Politics, KOSU's Michael Cross talks with Republican Political Consultant Neva Hill and Civil Rights Attorney Ryan Kiesel about the state of Oklahoma announcing its taking part in at least five lawsuits against the Biden Administration over vaccine mandates, the state's new public health lab in Stillwater comes under federal scrutiny and the Department of Education is starting an investigation of Epic Virtual Charter School after allegations from a resigning member of its governing board. The trio also discusses a call by community activists for a Grand Jury investigation into Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater and an audit of the State Republican Party by the Federal Elections Commission over issues during the 2020 election cycle. Support this podcast

Free speech is under attack. It's often targeted by those on the -left- who want to gag the speech of those who espouse conservative values or any information that the -left- doesn't want released for public consumption. This takes place on numerous fronts and one of them involves speaking out on the issue of elections. --This has resulted in the recent filing of a lawsuit in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The case is known as Wisconsin Family Action v. Federal Elections Commission.--Joining Jim to discuss this lawsuit were two guests. The first was Michael Dean. Michael is an attorney with First Freedoms Foundation, a public interest law foundation defending historic civil liberties and constitutional principles through litigation and education.--Also part of the discussion was Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action.--Michael described how special interest groups -such as Wisconsin Family Action- organize such lawsuits for a particular purpose. In this case a left-leaning group in Washington known as Citizens for Responsibility - Ethics in Washington -CREW- were looking for a specific result. --The D.C. Circuit had the case of CREW v. The Federal Elections Commission -F.E.C.- before them. The case grew out of their lawsuit to force the F.E.C. to prosecute a group known as Crossroads, a 501-c-4 organization which is the same IRS classification held by Wisconsin Family Action. It was a high-profile case because it was going after an organization on the -right-.

Trending Topics at 5 o'clock. A discussion on who can fill the seat vacated by Nunes leaving Congress. State Senator Andreas Borgeas' office has confirmed that paperwork has been filed with the Federal Elections Commission. Coach Tedford is back at Fresno State! Elon is ready to do brain implants.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Trending Topics at 5 o'clock. A discussion on who can fill the seat vacated by Nunes leaving Congress. State Senator Andreas Borgeas' office has confirmed that paperwork has been filed with the Federal Elections Commission. Coach Tedford is back at Fresno State! Elon is ready to do brain implants.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Free speech is under attack. It's often targeted by those on the -left- who want to gag the speech of those who espouse conservative values or any information that the -left- doesn't want released for public consumption. This takes place on numerous fronts and one of them involves speaking out on the issue of elections. --This has resulted in the recent filing of a lawsuit in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The case is known as Wisconsin Family Action v. Federal Elections Commission.--Joining Jim to discuss this lawsuit were two guests. The first was Michael Dean. Michael is an attorney with First Freedoms Foundation, a public interest law foundation defending historic civil liberties and constitutional principles through litigation and education.--Also part of the discussion was Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action.--Michael described how special interest groups -such as Wisconsin Family Action- organize such lawsuits for a particular purpose. In this case a left-leaning group in Washington known as Citizens for Responsibility - Ethics in Washington -CREW- were looking for a specific result. --The D.C. Circuit had the case of CREW v. The Federal Elections Commission -F.E.C.- before them. The case grew out of their lawsuit to force the F.E.C. to prosecute a group known as Crossroads, a 501-c-4 organization which is the same IRS classification held by Wisconsin Family Action. It was a high-profile case because it was going after an organization on the -right-.

Independent, investigative news, reporting, interviews and commentary

Independent, investigative news, reporting, interviews and commentary

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Angela Box is a popular conservative radio host of Angela's Soap Box. She's also a political consultant who works to help conservatives get elected, and she's a former teacher and actress. Angela writes original content for her own website — www.AngelasSoapBox.com. Angela will discuss how some participants in the 9/11 20 year commemoration memorial services equated terrorists who flew planes into buildings and killed nearly 3,000 Americans with Americans who distrust their government.TOPIC: Arizona's lawsuit against the Biden vaccine mandate!! Dan Gainor is the Vice President for Free Speech America at the Media Research Center. He's also a veteran editor whose work has been published or cited in most of the nation's top publications and broadcast programs. Dan will discuss the media's dishonest treatment of Larry Elder as he ran for Governor in the California Recall election. Dan will also discuss how the Federal Elections Commission has decided that what used to be considered an illegal campaign contribution is now legal because it benefited the liberal in the election. Dan will also talk about the most recent scandalous revelations about General Milley and his unfitness for service and the possibility that he committed treason.

Independent, investigative news, reporting, interviews and commentary

Independent, investigative news, reporting, interviews and commentary

Tonight: the abject Republican surrender imperiling Democracy. Then, why Mitch McConnell is actually feeling heat after his brush with honesty. Plus, how did the Federal Elections Commission let Donald Trump off for the criminal conspiracy that sent his lawyer to prison? And why there is genuine alarm for the economic recovery from the pandemic after today's bad jobs report.Guests: Barbara Comstock, Benjy Sarlin, Hayes Brown, Betsey Stevenson, Ellen Weintraub

H.R. 1 is a radical assault on American democracy, federalism, and free speech. It is actually several radical left-wing wish lists stuffed into a single 791-page sausage casing. It would override hundreds of state laws governing the orderly conduct of elections, federalize control of voting and elections to a degree without precedent in American history, end two centuries of state power to draw congressional districts, turn the Federal Elections Commission into a partisan weapon, and massively burden political speech against the government while offering government handouts to congressional campaigns and campus activists. Merely to describe the bill is to damn it, and describing it is a Herculean task in itself. - National Review   National Review H.R. 1 Is a Partisan Assault on American Democracy By THE EDITORS March 8, 2021 11:53 AM https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/h-r-1-is-a-partisan-assault-on-american-democracy/ The Heritage Foundation The Facts About H.R. 1: The “For the People Act of 2021” https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/the-facts-about-hr-1-the-the-people-act-2021   Bonehead Award How & Why the U.S. Has Excluded Non-Citizens from Our Democracy | The History of Voting | We Count! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARg0CqydpXY How Long Does It Take to Get U.S. Citizenship After You Apply? https://www.immigrationhelp.org/learning-center/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-u-s-citizenship-after-you-apply

Did you check that $3 box on your tax return? No, this is NOT the IRS asking for an extra donation. Checking the box is the only way that taxpayers can direct their own federal tax dollars towards a cause they care about. In fact, if more taxpayers learned about the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Box and checked it on their taxes, we could transform the state of our politics and our elections. Click here to learn more about the Presidential Election Campaign Fund run by the Federal Elections Commission. Go to pryorityfinance.com to have your taxes filed by a professional on our team.

In this episode, I rant about how the candidates you elect are bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists who work to push the agenda of their clients. The results of Citizens United vs. The Federal Elections Commission gave corporations the right to spend as much money as they want on "electioneering communications." These corporations (and labor unions) spend millions each year to influence you and politicians. They convince you on who to vote for, and they convince the elected officials to vote for policies that favor their bottom line. Many of these corporations own shares in the news outlets you rely on for the information you vote on. There is also a strong correlation between the amount a corporation spends on lobbying and the profits they make. Still think your vote really matters?

Over the past few days I have been listening to the testimony of election volunteer and workers telling their story on the unethical practices of those in government as they handled government election data. It is apparent that government is now controlled by politics and power, the American people and their rights to vote doesn't matter. Data has been manipulated, deleted, added to, created by various means, to get the election results of unethical government works and those organizations they are members of or who support them. We have seen, and continue to see, bad data in the covid numbers. But the data has been manipulated to control a free people. The election data has been corrupted by a coordinated effort to manipulate an election. We have found that our election data is controlled by a foreign corporation where our data is distributed to foreign countries to report the election. The controls on how our election data is corrupted by unethical practices, no consistency of ethics. Just remember, your vote is data and it is being manipulated in directions we didn't want our vote to go. Ethics has to be the new discussion that Americans have to have and demand for. We have to hold these individuals accountable who are controlling the data of elections and of healthcare. The Federal Elections Commission in Washington DC has to take a stronger stance and write election guidelines that everyone must practice to ensure a ethical political election. In no way should our elections be handled by a foreign company with ties to unethical political organizations and people. We have come to the point that we, as Americans, must doubt everything that government touches when it comes to data because they have corrupted the process with a political drive for power.If you have any questions or comments, send me a text to 818.252.5682. If you want to know what I do for a day job visit www.lodge-co.com

This week on The Final Straw, we present a conversation that I had with Lorax B. Horne, a non-binary writer and journalist from Canada, Ecuador and the United Kingdom who is currently the Editor-In-Chief of the data transparency collective, Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDOSecrets. In June of this year, the collective released roughly 269 gigabytes of hacked information from 251 law enforcement agencies, dubbed BlueLeaks. The data comes from the shadowy hacker group, Anonymous, and was retrieved from Federal Fusion centers which facilitate information gathering and dissemination between high level agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and the FBI with state and local law enforcement and are situated around the so-called United States. For the hour, Lorax talks about the development of fusion centers, the contents of the #BlueLeaks trove, insights drawn by journalists who have used the data to cover things like far-right conspiracy theories entering law enforcement bulletins, their editing process, social media and governmental attempts to cover up the contents and the persecution of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. To check out a collection of the articles written about the BlueLeaks collected by Lorax, check out the article up on medium.com entitled “What is BlueLeaks”. For some useful links to their work, you can check out our show notes at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org. To dig into the data itself and see other collections released by Distributed Denial of Secrets and other groups like Unicorn Riot, you can visit ddosecrets.com, see the #AssangeLeaks at AssangeLeaks.org, their Project Whispers is a searchable database of fascist discord logs at Whispers.DDOSecrets.com, and you can support DDOS with recurring payments at their OpenCollective.com page. You can also keep up on their work by following them on Mastadon, fedbook, Telegram, InstaGram and SubStack NewsLetter, many of which links and more show up on their Linktr.ee. You can find Lorax's writing on MuckRack and follow them on twitter at @BBHorne. Sean Swain As a quick update on Sean Swain's situation, he's still stuck without phone or email access, but he appears to be getting his mail. This is a hard situation for a presidential candidate and surely some listeners have pull with the Federal Elections Commission to correct this injustice. A couple of ways to help out Sean from where you're at include contributing to the fundraiser set up to help raise legal funds for him or you can contact the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections director Annette Chambers-Smith by calling:  614-387-0588 or writing to: 4545 Fisher Road, Suite D, Columbus, OH 43228 Sean'd probably appreciate you asking why Sean Swain (Ohio number A243205) is being denied access to jpay services, what happened to his hundreds of dollars of music and other items that didn't transfer over to him in Virginia and why his phone services are currently shut down. New Episodes of "Live Like The World Is Dying" The Final Straw is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another member of CZN, Margaret Killjoy. We suggest listeners check out the recent practical episodes of ‘Live Like The World is Dying', covering topics of how to treat gunshot wounds, good approaches to masking up against chemical agents, body armor, open source medical chemistry and a more... . ... . .. Public Domain music for this episode: Explosion - Vodovoz Music Productions Downtown - Vodovoz Music Productions

Today we welcome Ann Ravel, candidate for State Senate District 15. She and Jarhett start by discussing her background. She has been at every level of government from the Santa Clara city government, to being appointed by Jerry Brown to the California Fair Political Practices Commissions, then to the Federal Elections Commission by President Obama and why she decided this was the right time to try for elected office, and to tackle her primary issues of wealth disparity, homelessness and healthcare. They then discuss the campaign changes Covid caused, missing the connection with voters, and getting experts in different fields to answer the concerns of her potential constituents. The conversation shifts to her expertise in campaign finance, the potential of public funding, the drawbacks of grassroots only camping, what can be done about Citizens United, and what can be learned from other counties electoral systems. They also discuss what CA can do about Covid, social justice and why she thinks she’ll be a different kind of legislator. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Attorney General Bill Barr testified to Congress yesterday, and folks, it was not a reassuring performance. Listening to America’s top cop defend human rights abuses across the country, it’s easy to understand why over a hundred genocide experts signed a letter warning of mass atrocities against civilians in the United States Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats signaled their willingness to give up fighting for extended unemployment benefits for tens of millions of Americans thrown out of work during the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats, we’re begging you: Do better. And lastly, the American Federation of Teachers national convention was held yesterday, online. Members will go on strike in the fall if the government cannot ensure the safety of students and educators alike. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: One of the highest-ranking officers in the Washington, DC National Guard who was present for the violent clearing of Lafayette Square last month testified to Congress yesterday. Major Adam DeMarco, an Iraq war veteran, told an investigative panel in the US House of Representatives that the crowd of protesters was peaceful before they were, “subjected to an unprovoked escalation and excessive use of force.” DeMarco said he believes people’s First Amendment rights were violated. He also said he saw Park Police attack protesters who were fleeing with clubs and chemical agents. Attorney General Bill Barr, who oversaw the violent June 1 crackdown, also testified to the House yesterday. The questioning was intense and at times emotional. Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana told Barr to keep the name of the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis out of his mouth. Barr had mentioned Lewis in his opening statement. Barr insisted the police aren’t racist and praised the abuse of protesters by federal forces in DC and in Portland, Oregon, where local leaders have called for a federal “cease-fire.” Barr also made no apologies his intervention in the criminal case of former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone, whose sentence Trump commuted. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York asked Barr what he would do if Trump loses the election but refuses to leave office. Barr said he himself would leave office “if the results are clear.” Barr also declined to answer whether the president can move the date of the presidential election, although, as the American Civil Liberties Union noted, the Constitution grants that power to Congress alone. Separately, a group of over one-hundred human rights, counterterrorism, and democratization professionals with experience in war zones and authoritarian countries issued a joint warning statement yesterday. The signatories included Elizabeth Shackelford, a career diplomat who served in South Sudan during the civil war, and who resigned from the State Department in 2017 in protest of the Trump administration’s disdain for human rights. The experts’ letter said, in part: “We write to issue an unequivocal warning to the leaders of the United States of America that without urgent action the country risks having a mass atrocity event and constitutional crisis that will threaten both human security and the future of the republic.” The group urged local authorities to regain complete control of their police and and mandate an immediate cessation of violence against civilians and the press. They also urged Congress to make preparations for Trump’s refusal to leave office. Democrats Caving on Unemployment Bad news from Congress for thirty million unemployed Americans. The US House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, told CNN yesterday that Democrats are willing to concede on the six hundred dollar monthly benefits bonus that expires in three days. The party’s position, Hoyer says, is not, as he put it, six hundred dollars or bust. He said Democrats entered into negotiations over the expanded unemployment benefit with values, not redlines. I tell you what, a lot of people would value that money. Six hundred bucks wasn’t enough, anyway! Mckayla Wilkes, Hoyer’s progressive challenger in Maryland’s fifth congressional district, who lost the Democratic primary in June, spoke for many yesterday. On Twitter, she asked, QUOTE Why are we immediately publicly caving on the only thing keeping millions of people afloat? What is the point of this? ENDQUOTE. According to CNN, Hoyer conceded the Republican’s argument that the soon-to-expire $ six hundred dollar benefit was too generous and created a disincentive for people to return to work. Republicans want to cut the enhanced benefit to two hundred dollars for two months only, after which, people would receive a paltry seventy percent of their prior earnings. If the Democrats go along, they’ll ensure that some families will go hungry and homeless in the weeks ahead. In the richest and supposedly greatest country in the world, there is no excuse for this kind of cruelty. Separately, House Democrats Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut joined California Senator Kamala Harris to introduce a bill that would fund legal assistance for twelve million Americans facing eviction soon. Not housing – legal assistance. Teachers Plan Safety Strikes The American Federation of Teachers is considering of so-called safety strikes to protect teachers, kids, and families from the coronavirus as many public schools prepare to reopen in a matter of weeks. In a speech to members attending the union’s national convention yesterday, AFT president Randi Weingarten said strikes would be a last resort. She promised that just as organized labor has fought to protect healthcare workers, her union would fight on all fronts for the safety of students and their educators. The union’s executive committee approved a resolution that effect last Friday. Union members were polled in June about returning to work, and seventy-six percent said they would be comfortable doing so if proper safeguards were in place. But now, Weingarten said, they are angry and afraid. Many are quitting, retiring, or writing their wills, she said. In so many words, Weingarten told Congressional Republicans and the White House to sit in the corner and think about what they’ve done. She said Trump offers no funding, has no plan, and has, frankly, no idea what he is talking about when he calls on schools to hold classes as normal during the pandemic. The AFT represents some one point seven million members. Its resolution says that in addition to providing protective gear and enforcing distancing protocols, districts should only reopen schools in areas where the infection rate for coronavirus is below five percent and where the transmission rate is below one percent. Sooooo.... Strikes it is, then! AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A nonpartisan election watchdog, the Campaign Legal Center, yesterday filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission against Trump’s reelection campaign. The complaint says the campaign intentionally obscured the recipients of one-hundred and seventy million dollars in expenditures, using so-called pass-through vendors. The ultimate recipient of the funds remains unknown, but former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is implicated in the scheme. Construction commenced yesterday in France on the world’s largest nuclear fusion project. French president Emmanuel Macron congratulated representatives from the European Union, Britain, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US who are contributing to the twenty-three-billion-dollar Iter project. First conceived in 1985, the reactor is supposed to be up and running in a little over five years from now. Twitter placed restrictions on the account of Donald Trump Junior after he shared a viral video with a dodgy doctor promoting a bogus cure for COVID-19. The Daily Beast reports that the doctor, a Houston woman named Stella Immanuel, also believes that demons have sex with people in their dreams, reptilian aliens run part of the US government, and that witches are trying to seize control of children. Aliens and demons and witches, oh my! Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced his plan for Black, Native American and Latino Americans to overcome poverty. Are you ready? It involves spending thirty billion dollars on something called a small business opportunity fund for entrepreneurs. The plan also includes as refundable tax credits for first-time home buyersfklakdkflknz sz zzz. .. Sorry, must’ve dozed off there for a second. July 29, 2020 - AM Quickie HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

With over 300 employees, the Federal Elections Commission is the independent agency that enforces campaign finance law here in the U.S., but it can only do so when it has a quorum. Last week, one of the commissioners resigned, leaving the FEC without its needed quorum. The election is four months away and Courtney Bublé has covered the FEC’s ups and downs . She joined the podcast to talk about the commission’s latest turn and what that means for the November elections up and down the ballot.  

This story about an alleged Russian operation in Afghanistan, as it's currently being reported, makes no sense to me. First, the opening sentence of Friday's story in the New York Times states, “American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including American troops.” Who are these vague, unmentioned “officials”? Second, why would Russia have to offer bounties to the Taliban? They will kill US forces for free. Third, I don't know that Russia has the type of relationship with the Taliban where this makes sense.According to a Sunday article in Common Dreams, "Confirmed global cases of the coronavirus hit 10 million Sunday, a grim milestone that came as reported deaths from the disease climbed toward 500,000 and a top US health official warned the country's chances of getting the outbreak back under control were fast disappearing." Meanwhile, according to a Friday piece in the Washington Post, "Rising economic nationalism was already chipping away at globalization before the first patients in Wuhan, China, began to fall ill in December. But the coronavirus, which has sickened at least 9.6 million people and killed more than 487,000, is now reshaping long-standing cultural, economic and political relations in an increasingly polarized world."Common Dreams reported Friday, "After 10 months, the Federal Elections Commission in May regained a quorum with the confirmation of Republican appointee Trey Trainor — and promptly lost it just over five weeks later on Friday when commissioner Caroline Hunter resigned to join the Koch-funded group Stand Together, leaving the regulatory body again essentially powerless as the November general election draws closer." Should this be of concern to Americans?GUESTS:Ray McGovern — Works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. During his 27 years as a CIA analyst, he led the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and prepared the President's Daily Brief for US Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.Dr. Linwood Tauheed — National Economic Association (NEA) president and associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.Dr. Yolandra Hancock — Board-certified pediatrician and obesity medicine specialist. She is on the faculty at the Milken School of Public Health at George Washington University and has a telemedicine practice called Ask Dr. Yola.Greg Palast — Award-winning investigative reporter featured in The Guardian, Nation Magazine, Rolling Stone magazine, BBC and other high profile media outlets. He covered Venezuela for The Guardian and BBC Television's "Newsnight." His BBC reports are the basis of his film "The Assassination of Hugo Chavez."

Last week, theatre insiders found on the website Federal Elections Commission that Nederlander Organization President James Nederlander had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Donald Trump. These contributions to Trump Victory and Donald J. Trump for President and ranging $2,700 to $50,000, were made in 2015 and 2016 at the same time as the Nederlander's nine Broadway theatres were running inclusive productions like On Your Feet!, Motown and Hamilton. How could an organization that gives home to these productions channel ticket sales into campaign contributions to Donald Trump? That's the question asked by Marla Louissaint. A 2015 Jimmy Award winner, Louissaint and other participants of the awards Award participants are asking how an organization that supports progressive stories could also fund the campaign of a president that promised to hurt Black and Brown people. Along with other Jimmy Award winners such as Kyle Selig and Eva Noblezada, Louissaint has created a Change.org petition calling on Jimmy Nederlander to make a statement about his campaign contributions. She joined me over the phone to talk about what the contributions mean to Black artists like her. Sign the petition here: https://www.change.org/p/james-m-nederlander-call-on-nederlander-to-make-a-statement-on-his-fiscal-support-of-45-and-donate-to-blm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since August 2019, the Federal Elections Commission has lacked the minimum number of commissioners it needs to undertake some of its most essential operations, including the enforcement of America's federal election laws. With the 2020 campaigns well underway, Blair Schuman, a compliance expert and the founder of Roger That Compliance, joins the Money in Politics Podcast to talk about why this matters, how we got here, and what may be in store for the future of the FEC.

Dr. Melissa K. Miller, 2019 ICS Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science at BGSU, discusses her research on women in politics. Dr. Miller shares her findings from her analysis of media coverage of the unprecedented number of women running for office during the 2018 election cycle. Dr. Miller explores how media coverage influences voter perception of mothers running for office. Transcript: Introduction: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society. This is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie S.: To the BG Ideas podcast. A collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, an associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today I'm joined by one of ICS' faculty fellows, Dr. Melissa K. Miller. She's an associate professor of political science and affiliated faculty in the department of women's gender and sexuality studies here at BGSU. Her current research is focused on women who are mothers who ran congressional campaigns in the 2018 midterm elections. This is the first extensive bi-partisan study of mother candidates and we're thrilled to be here to discuss her research. Thanks for joining me, Melissa. Melissa M.: Thanks for having me. Jolie S.: The 2018 midterm elections really put the spotlight on women running for political office. Can you talk to us about what initially drew you to focus on candidates who were also mothers? Melissa M.: I really have always been interested in the intersection of women, media, voters, campaigning. Gender and politics is a study of my research and I'm an expert on American politics. What happened? I go all the way back to 2008. A friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Jeff Peak, he's a presidency scholar. I'm a gender scholar within the political science department and we decided to do a collaborative project where we content coded press coverage of the presidential candidates back in 2008 and we thought what a great slew of candidates to look at. I of course was most interested in looking at how Hillary Clinton was covered by the press in her 2008 attempt to get the democratic nomination. Melissa M.: He was interested in all the candidates as a presidency scholar and so we did a press coverage study of Hillary Clinton and it was amazing to do. We published our results in the journal called Politics and Gender and there were some real gendered aspects of her coverage that really jumped out. In the midst of that campaign, from my perspective as a gender scholar, I was so pleased to be able to study Hillary Clinton's press coverage. We content coded 6,000 news articles about the democratic race specifically to look at her coverage and then come around August, John McCain, the Republican nominee named Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor as his running mate. And so suddenly our study is underway and it was like we'd won the lottery. Melissa M.: At least it felt that way for me. Holy cow, now I can study a Republican woman also competing not for president but as a vice presidential running mate. So we also, Jeff Peak and I, did a study of how Sarah Palin was covered and in both Clinton's coverage and Palin's coverage back in 2008 there were real gendered coverage markers. Their gender was mentioned at a disproportionate rate. Their marital status was mentioned at a disproportionate rate. In Hillary Clinton's case, her press coverage was much more negative than her male rivals and the content of that negative coverage was highly personal. Really personal descriptives that were very negative about her. Melissa M.: For Sarah Palin, her coverage was very distinguished by the fact that she was objectified. Her appearance and clothing was mentioned off the charts relative to Joe Biden who was the democratic counterpart on the democratic ticket. So fast forward, we published these two studies, one about Clinton, one about Palin and a couple of years go by and I get an email from a couple of scholars who are interested in publishing a book on the intersection of motherhood and politics. And they reached out to me knowing my work on the 2008 campaign and the two Clinton and Palin studies I'd published. And they said, "Would you be willing to write our chapter on mothers running for political office and their media coverage?" Melissa M.: I said, "Absolutely." So I did a deep dive back into that 2008 data and I wrote a book chapter really dissecting going back into all the articles and looking about how their motherhood status was portrayed in 2008 and it was fascinating and it suggested to me right away that motherhood can be both an asset and a liability on the campaign trail. So for Hillary Clinton in 2008 her daughter Chelsea was an adult. Chelsea was out on the campaign trail. Chelsea was viewed positively. The coverage in the media was that she was sort of an asset to her mother, really effective on the stump. For Palin, it was scandal, scandal, scandal with her kids and it was a different, she had young children. The youngest was a special need infant. She had five kids. There were three separate scandals that the press really sort of harped on. Melissa M.: One was the pregnancy of her teenage daughter. One was the use of state funds as governor of Alaska to take her kids with her to official events. And the third was the use of Republican campaign funds to pay for clothing for her kids. It was a real negative in her coverage. Over the course of that research too, of course, I'm soaking up and reading everything. There's very little scholarly work on mothers and how they're treated on the campaign trail, so what I'm finding is more press coverage accounts and what I find is that for instance, Lisa Madigan, the Illinois attorney general was badgered by the Chicago Sun Times when she was considering running for governor. Already elected to statewide office by the way but badgered by the press for how could she raise young kids while being governor. Jane Swift, this is going back to 2001 so a little bit further back, was Lieutenant governor ascended. Melissa M.: She was next in line. The governor leaves office mid term. She ascends. She's vilified in the press because she's eight months pregnant with two twins. One set of twins. I said that wrong. You go back a little further. Patty Murray was derided as just a mom in tennis shoes by a Washington state legislator when she was not yet running for office but she was lobbying her state legislature to save an important preschool program in the state of Washington. While she went on and took that derisive comment by a male state legislator and made it a campaign slogan and ended up running for office and eventually won a seat in the US Senate. So as I'm reading all of this for this motherhood chapter in the book that was published recently, it's called Mothers and Others, I just thought, oh my goodness, more work has to be done. Melissa M.: There've been so many strides that have been made frankly in terms of women's press coverage but it seemed to me that it's still problematic. I think the media and possibly voters have not yet grappled with, is it okay for a mom to run for high office if she has young kids and questions would be raised about the appropriateness of this. In a way that in my own view and studying press coverage, those kinds of questions are not typically raised about men with young children. So I wanted to do a project. Jolie S.: And with that project, what are the kinds of women you're talking about when you are following candidates on the campaign trail? Do they share similar demographics, political affiliations or other characteristics? Melissa M.: I'm actively trying to interview both Republicans and Democrats. It's a little bit harder to find Republicans because there were not as many women who ran in 2018. The big surge of women's candidacies were among Democrats but I still nevertheless have already interviewed two Republican women. Melissa M.: They tend to be in their late 30s, early to mid 40s. There are women of color. I've interviewed one already in my sample so far and it is important to me to try to get as many different types of women amongst this group that I get their stories from. I mean I'm looking for where I think the challenge is greatest. So I'm really looking for mothers who have kids that are anywhere from infant stage till around 12, 13 years old. So I have women who've raised as little as $40,000 for their campaign to as much as $8 million. So there's also a range in how viable their candidacies were. The mother who only raised $40,000, I will tell you was the nominee of the Republican party. She did not raise a lot of money. She was running in what we call a blue district and she was very candid about saying that she felt she didn't get a lot of hostile questions about the raising of her kids. She said, "I don't think anyone thought I could win so it wasn't an issue." Melissa M.: I've heard that from a couple of women. At the other end of the spectrum, I have candidates who raised hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars all the way up to around $8 million, women who came very, very close to winning. And so I think so far I've got a good mix. It's not the kind of large end statistical study where I'm trying to get a representative sample but I am purposely trying to get a variety of mothers who come from different backgrounds and experiences and also from different parts of the country. So already I have women candidates from the South, the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West. So it is nationwide. And what I'm finding so far is what appear to be some regional differences and what appear to be some generational differences in terms of whose concerned about their ability to serve as mothers. Jolie S.: On that question of the generational differences, I mean one of the things that seems really striking about the 2018 midterms and what's been happening since then, is that a wave of younger candidates won and so the face of the woman in politics has now a generation younger than maybe what most voters were thinking of. And do you have a sense either through your teaching or through some of your other outreach activities of what effect that is having on young voters? Maybe folks who this is their first time able to vote that they're in their late teens or early 20s. Melissa M.: So in 2018 there was a surge of women candidates who ran and a lot of them were younger. This was a huge exception to the rule. So what we know from the gender and politics literature is that women tend to wait longer to launch their first campaign. Why? Precisely because they're having families. They're having their kids and it's not until the kids are raised, grown up, much older that they start to entertain the idea of running for elective office. Men don't do it that way. So there are plenty of examples for generations of men with young little children, babies who nevertheless run for public office and get elected. Melissa M.: So the fact that sort of the face of people running changed is part because of gender, part because of age and at the intersection of that is motherhood. So suddenly you have women who were socialized. If they're in their 30s and 40s I mean, these are women who were raised at a time their mothers were working perhaps full time. Also, perhaps involved in civic activities and other things so they are noticing. And I think the 2016 election, particularly for the democratic women that I've interviewed, it was an eyeopener. Melissa M.: And one of the things I ask every one of my interviewees, and in part it's sort of an icebreaker to start the interview at the general level, what motivated you to run? A lot of these women, particularly the Democrats, it was the 2016 election. It was the big disappointment they felt and it was the sense that I need to do something. They were so disappointed and concerned about the outcome of the election. They felt I need to do something and what will I tell my kids when they're older if I didn't step up. So motherhood I'm learning is really an impetus for a number of these women. It's because I'm a mother that I felt I needed to do something to better my country. Going back to your question, I think I've gone astray Jolie, so remind me if I haven't. Jolie S.: How do you see young people today who are in their late teens or early 20s sort of responding to that 2018 surge? Melissa M.: First of all, I think young people are beginning to much more readily envision politics as an important sphere in which they can be involved almost without question. The women that I've interviewed, those who were able, who ran campaigns that were quite competitive, they raised hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. They had staff. Well guess what? Political staff, whether you're male or female running your campaign tends to be staffed by younger people. I'll never forget what one of these democratic women told me. She was a mother candidate and I ask as I do each of them, did you decide to sort of broadcast that you were a mother? Did you decide to showcase that in your advertising, on your website, in your speeches and so forth? And this particular mother had. She ran, as several of them had as a "working mom." Working mom is the phrase that's in the advertising at the website and so forth. Melissa M.: And I said, "What did your staff think about that?" And she just laughed. She said, "I'm not sure I quite understand why." She said, "Because I've got all these 20 something millennials, they're single, they don't have kids. They totally wanted me to run as a mom." she said. So they felt that broadcasting their motherhood softened them a little bit. Look, I'm a mom. Look at my happy family. I think they found it helpful and certainly their millennials staffers encouraged them to broadcast their motherhood. Jolie S.: Part of this research study involved you being on the trail and sort of having close interaction with some of the campaigns. So can you talk about sort of what that experience was like and how that has shaped this research maybe differently than some of those more macro level studies you've done in the past? Melissa M.: Absolutely. So I ended up only doing one campaign observation. It was phenomenal. It was fascinating. In brief, I was embedded for three days on a campaign, a congressional campaign on the West coast. I was with the candidate. This candidate had raised several hundred thousand dollars at that point, went on to raise several hundred thousand dollars more and I had set up the observation weeks ahead. It involved airfare of course so you do this kind of thing. And listeners, maybe as dismayed as I was when I arrived, the campaign was out of the home at that point and that's common by the way. In the interviews I've done subsequently, that's very common that the campaign is the office is at home. I arrived at the door on the appointed morning. The candidate was very gracious and meeting me at the door, but apologetic. Apologetic because they had canceled all of the scheduled activities, events with voters for the next couple of days. Melissa M.: Why? Because, she was considering dropping out. Why? Because, she was facing intense pressure from the party. She happened to be a Democrat. The party had held its endorsement meeting and she had not gotten the endorsement of the democratic party and she was getting intense pressure to drop out and she apologized. "I know we set this up in advance. I didn't want to cancel. You're not going to get to see me with voters as much." So of course as the scholar, my heart sinks initially. In a way Jolie, how valuable was that for me to be still invited in. I observed, listened in on every meeting with campaign manager, spouse, outside paid consultants over speaker phone. We did go to a couple of meetings with local elected democratic politicians as she was trying to decide whether to stay in or not. Melissa M.: Do you know what's interesting? She is one of two candidates that I have interviewed, and this happened to be an observation for whom her motherhood status as a mother of three young kids was a huge problem. She faced so many thinly veiled critical questions about who will raise your kids and the candidate that the party endorsed was a single woman with no children. Now I know having studied politics for so long that the reason a party chooses to endorse one candidate over the other those reasons are complex. But it is interesting that she told me that her opponent... She was literally being told by Democrats that your opponent, Republican voters, if one of you is going to become the nominee and we're worried if it's you with your little kids, Republican voters will never vote for you because of their traditional values and so forth. Melissa M.: So it's hard to pinpoint exactly how much that entered into the party's endorsement decision. She ended up not being endorsed. It was a grueling scene to watch the decision. She ultimately decided to stay in the race. She ultimately did not win the nomination so she did not go on to the general election. But that campaign observation was absolutely eyeopening for me. First of all, to see what it's like to run a campaign out of a private home when you have three little kids. I'll never forget they had devoted a room on the second floor, obviously a bedroom rather oversized so that was nice, into an office with kind of office Ikea office furniture. But you could hear the comings and goings of the part time nanny that they had. You could hear dad who had fortunately a flexible work schedule changing the diaper, possibly a pull up for those of you who know the difference amongst our listeners, singing old McDonald. Melissa M.: There we are sitting in the war room, not me, I'm just listening, but the candidate's having difficult conversations about whether to stay in the race and all of this is going on. One of the factors that entered in her decision to stay in the race was, I'll stay in, but we have to get an office outside of the home. This is too much conflict to have inside the home. So in addition to the observation, I interviewed her at the end of the observation as sort of a separate matter and I asked her about that. I said, "You mentioned conflict in the home. What do you mean by that?" That could be shouting matches. She said, "No, just people involved on campaigns are type A personalities. It's hard driving. Quick decisions have to be made. We have to hash out strategy. Staffers can disagree over what neighborhood we ought to canvas in and the like." So it was more it was important for her who had three small children under the age of five to get an office and about a week after the observation they did get an office. Jolie S.: Can you elaborate a little bit more on how this research then can be put into the hands of potential candidates and campaign workers to maybe help them think differently about what some of those options are? Melissa M.: Yes. It's a great question because I've always been about doing research that has public implications and trying to get the important findings of this kind of research out to the public. And first I think is just to publicize mothers of young children are now running. They are running. This may be new in many districts in many places but it's happening. It will eventually begin to normalize. The more women with young children run the more it will become normal. So, that's one thing. I'll also say, I alluded to this earlier that the stereotypes about a woman's proper place when her children are young is at home with maybe a regular job but certainly not Congress. What I'm finding in my interviews is that those kinds of stereotypes being raised by voters tend to be projected by older voters so not younger voters. Cultural change is slow unfortunately. We like to speed it along and I think my research can speed it along. Melissa M.: So part of the plan is of course it's not journalism. I mean I'm not on a 24 hour deadline. As I continue to do my interviews and then begin to write and publish in academic outlets, I'm definitely planning to do outreach. There's a group that I have discovered called Vote Mama. This is a fascinating group. It has just been established, I believe early 2019 by a mother of young children who ran in the state of New York. She ran out on Long Island. Her name's Luba Shirley and she actually asked the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission to approve her use of campaign funds to pay for childcare for her children so that she could run. Melissa M.: Nobody had done this before and in fact, when I was observing my candidate on the West coast in that three day embedded experience I had, she lamented that the understanding was the FEC won't allow you to use your campaign donations to pay for childcare, which she thought was outrageous because she said, "Running is a full time job and I had to take a leave of absence from my job." she said, "So that I could run and now I can't possibly run effectively without childcare." And she was advised by her male campaign manager not to make a request to the FEC because if word got out in her district that she was asking the FEC to use the campaign funds, it would come back to bite her. Melissa M.: Little did she know that on the other coast out on Long Island, there was a similar mother in a similar position who for whatever reason did decide to ask the FEC and she got permission. And so I think about a dozen candidates in 2018 both women and men, interestingly enough, using the new FEC ruling began to use their campaign funds to pay for childcare. That is a huge breakthrough. That the woman who filed the case with the FEC and won that case has since founded this Vote Mama organization. It is specifically designed for democratic women mind you, so it's not bi-partisan, but it's to elect democratic women who are mothers of young children up and down the ballot. Melissa M.: She believes this founder of Vote Mama as well as the women I've talked to, they say we need government to represent us. This is true for Democrats and Republicans. Why can't mothers of young children. They have a unique perspective. They should be at the table. It's been absolutely fascinating to hear about their lived experiences and learn from them. And I absolutely hope and plan for my moms on the run study to be educational and informative to campaign professionals, to politicians and party members. I do think 2018 with the record number of women elected, I think that women now have the attention of the parties. So I do think both parties will realize that putting women on the ballot can be a win. Putting women with young children on the ballot can also be a win as we've seen from the 10, 12 women who are mothers of young children who were elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018. Jolie S.: Thanks so much, Melissa. We're going to take a quick break now. Thank you for listening to the BG Ideas podcast. Introduction: If, you are passionate about big ideas consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie S.: Today I'm talking with Dr. Melissa K. Miller about her research on mothers who ran for Congress in the 2018 midterms. We have a student who has a couple of questions. Would you say your name first and then your first question? Christina: Yes. Hello. My name is Christina and I am an MPA student at BGSU. My first question for you, Dr. Miller is, have you talked to the spouses of these women to see how they have supported them? Melissa M.: That is a great question. I talked to the spouse of one woman. The woman that I embedded in her campaign for three days. So I literally met the spouse on day one. I saw the spouse every day. I mentioned earlier in the podcast, this was a campaign where this particular mom candidate was being kind of pushed out. There were activists trying to push her out, so I got to observe the brain trust trying to make a final decision. Was she going to stay in the race or not? Her spouse participated in that. At the end of the observation period, I asked him, having met him, "Can I interview you?" Melissa M.: And he had me do that. He let me do that. I was so pleased. His interview as well was about 60 to 90 minutes long. I did it a few days after returning to campus and his insights were amazing in part because you heard from his perspective what the discussions he had with his wife were like when they were trying to decide how would they make this work. I mean they had real decisions to make about their jobs, their schedules, if either of them could go part time, whether they could afford a nanny and the like. It was because I had the opportunity to talk to him that in every subsequent interview I've done, I am only interviewing the mom candidates, but I always ask, "What is the role of your spouse on this campaign?" And I've seen a real variety of roles, Christina. Everywhere from full blown partner advising me at every turn. Melissa M.: My husband's taken over everything in terms of household and childcare and all that. This by the way, was from a mom who, what she described prior to the campaign was they really had a partnership thing going. It wasn't she was fulfilling a traditional role of doing the majority of housework. They were partnering. And at the other end I had a mom in a very traditional marriage who her husband was very supportive and he would do additional school pickups and that kind of thing but she literally complained to me. Did not do any extra dishes. Didn't do any meal preparation and you could tell, I mean, she told me in a discouraging sort of disappointed tone, she said, "I doubt there are a lot of men out there who are running for Congress who get home at the end of a very busy day to a sink stacked full of dirty dishes and laundry all over the place. Melissa M.: So I found that fascinating because her husband fully supported her running, but she was in a household where she still had to do all of the regular chores, those gendered domestic chores that traditionally women have done. So we saw a real difference. And I do think in every case though, it was a negotiation between mom, candidate and spouse. How were they going to make it work? And several of these women also indicated to me that they perceived at least that dad candidates out there didn't have to have these same kinds of negotiations. So, that's been very illuminating. Speaker 6: How have the narrative surrounding children on the presidential campaign for say, Clinton, Bush and the Obama's compared? Melissa M.: It's a great question because really if we just as individual voters, listeners we think to ourselves, what do we know about campaigns? Well, what your average American knows about campaigns is what they see every four years in the most high profile campaign in the country. So your average voter, that's what they know of campaigns is what they see. And unfortunately, for reasons that I gave at the outset, what they see may discourage women of young children from running. For instance, Sarah Palin and the treatment of her children and how she was really put under the microscope and her parenting was really subjected to just, oh, tons of criticism. And we can debate some of that, the scandals. Some of that press coverage may have been warranted and important. Melissa M.: But what's interesting to me is in that very same election, Barack Obama, just a candidate back then a US Senator from Illinois, had young children. I think they were aged maybe seven and six, six and nine or something along those lines. And because I studied his press coverage alongside Hillary Clinton's, I can tell you there was very little mention of his kids in his press coverage far more for Clinton, way more for Palin. The fact that he had young kids and was running for president was not an issue for him in the way it was for Palin or frankly in the way I've learned it was for women who ran for Congress in 2018 simply because society has different expectations about women's role in the household when there are young children versus men's. Another thing you mentioned the Bushes. I might also bring in President Trump and his young son Barron. Occasionally and fortunately it doesn't happen very often, but occasionally the children of these high profile politicians, elected officials will really be attacked. Melissa M.: I think this happened in a couple isolated cases for the Bush girls when George W. was in the White House. It's happened a few times for Barron, President Trump's son. That's most recent. Also, perhaps most visible because now we're in the Twitterverse so all over social media and one nice thing I see is that there's always a big backlash when the children of a politician get attacked or criticized. Another example that comes to mind toward the end of the Obama administration, his daughters now teenagers appearing at some public events with their father, the way they dressed was criticized. And the good news is, at least in the mainstream media, there's a real backlash where you have reporters saying... Jolie S.: That's off limits. Melissa M.: Absolutely off limits. What worries me though is when there are these high profile examples of presidents' kids who get dragged into the media or made fun of or victimized somehow online. There are mothers out there and fathers as well, I would imagine, who don't want to get into it. They don't want to subject their kids to that kind of scrutiny. So I do hope that the project that moms on the run will at least elevate awareness that women with young children can run. They do run, they are running, they're winning. And again, as I said earlier, women running with small kids for office, whether it's US House of Representatives or lower level office, it's just what women do just like men with young children do. Again, however, cultural change is slow, which is why I think it's an important study. It's an important time to be studying this, to push cultural change along a little bit, I guess would be my broad goal. Jolie S.: Thank you so much for being here with us today. I really enjoyed talking with you about your research. If you're interested in learning more about the issues that Dr. Miller's work raises, you can visit our website at www.bgsu.edu/ics. Our producers for this podcast are Chris Covera and Marco Mendoza. Research support for this podcast was provided by the following, ICS undergraduate interns, Olivia Davis, Melanie Miller, Strati Mustikus and Sarah Schaller.  

This week, Working is bringing you unaired episode from October 2019’s Working With Code mini-series, where Slate’s own Greg Lavallee talked to people who write the software that makes your digital life possible.  In this episode, Greg sits down with Laura Beaufort, a backend engineer for the Federal Elections Commission. Laura talks about her experiences working as a coder for a government agency, the collaborative nature of open-source coding, and how she achieves “flow.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Working is bringing you unaired episode from October 2019’s Working With Code mini-series, where Slate’s own Greg Lavallee talked to people who write the software that makes your digital life possible.  In this episode, Greg sits down with Laura Beaufort, a backend engineer for the Federal Elections Commission. Laura talks about her experiences working as a coder for a government agency, the collaborative nature of open-source coding, and how she achieves “flow.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 So many of the people appointed to important Federal positions by President Donald Trump seem to have been picked to destroy the institutions they are to run.  Or in the case of the Federal Elections Commission, Trump’s not filling seats has left the FEC paralyzed, even as our elections are under more threats than ever before. 

In 1916 a socialist ran for president of the United States. The US Post Office, stretching bck to the American Revolution, had always granted free or nearly free postage for newspapers and magazines, so socialist tracts and magazines had subscription lists in the millions. The 1916 socialist candidate got 600,000 votes, about 3% of the total. The first World War was on the horizon, and socialists opposed that war, viewing it as a conflict between empires in which ordinary people had no stake. So the US government ended postal subsidies for newspapers and magazines. In 1920, another socialist, Eugene Victor Debs ran for president. By then a widespread crackdown on socialists in public life was underway, and Debs was imprisoned for his opposition to World War 1. Debs got 900,000 votes, 4% of the total cast from his cell in a federal prison in Indiana. In 1924 another socialist, Robert LaFollette ran for president on the ticket of the Progressive Party and got 5 million votes, one sixth of the total votes cast for president that year. The establishment was in a sort of panic. The lords of capital, the bankers, the industrialists, represented today as they were a hundred years ago by the Democrats and the Republicans were not about to allow themselves to be simply voted out of power. So they passed a briar patch of restrictive laws on the state level to make it increasingly difficult or impossible for socialist candidates to get on the ballot in the first place. The most effective of these laws, which are still with us today, are the petitioning laws, rules which do not apply to Republican or to Democratic parties or their candidates, but only to other parties whom voters might go for if only they were allowed access to the ballot. Having been law for a hundred years now, most people have forgotten the purpose of these laws or are simply not aware of them at all. But they are still on the books and with some variations, still enforced in about half the 50 states. For all its faults and lapses, right now, in the years 2019 and 2020, the only national party that calls itself socialist – more precisely ecosocialist – outside the Democrats and Republicans and intent upon competing with them is the Green Party. And the Green Party is intent on organizing to break the two party monopoly on the ballot. It won’t be cheap and it won’t be easy, and it hasn’t been done nationally in the hundred years that the restrictive anti-socialist ballot access laws have been in place. In Texas for instance, a party other than the Democrats or Republicans, whose ballot access is grandfathered in, must gather 83,000 signatures in 75 days, and they must be voters who have not recently voted in either a Republican or a Democratic party primary election. As a practical matter, this would require the full time mobilization of about 200 signature collectors dispersed around the state for ten and a half weeks. It’s not impossible, but it is expensive and difficult. In Georgia, a state with less than half the population of Texas, new parties are required to gather a little over 65,000 signatures over a 14 month period. This is what’s called a party petition, since it allows a qualifying party to place candidates via nomination at a state convention. Georgia also separates congressional elections from all others, so a more restrictive rule applies to congressional candidates, who must produce 18 to 24 thousand petition signatures of qualified registered voters. Like many other states, Georgia law also provides a presidential-only petition, with a much lower requirement of only 7,500 signatures, but presidential-only petitions actually prevent the building of local party organizations, since they do not allow for the running of candidates for local office. Alabama requires 51,500 signatures to put a new party on the ballot with the ability to name candidates for all partisan elected offices, but a much lower threshold for presidential only campaigns. Generally Greens prefer not to run presidential only campaigns for the quite sensible reason that building local electoral power requires local candidates and local campaigns, in addition to somebody at the top of the ticket. Tennessee law demands the Greens come up with 56,000 signatures for party access to the ballot; Ohio, 43,200; Indiana 42,900; Oklahoma 35,600; and Illinois 25,000 signatures in 90 says, and this is far from a complete list of even the worse offenders. Again, most of states allow lower petitioning thresholds for presidential-only campaigns. The most extreme example is Minnesota, which requires only 2,000 signatures for a presidential-candidate-only ballot access, but demands more than a hundred thousand signatures to allow a party to nominate local candidates throughout the state. Greens will not formally choose their presidential candidate until the summer of 2020, but the presumptive nominee is New York’s Howie Hawkins, a retired teamster out of Syracuse who was one of the party’s founders and the first candidate of any party to campaign on the Green New Deal. Hawkins is the only one of the Green candidates to have put together a team and begun to raise the $3 to $5 million it will take to run a credible campaign in 2019 and 2020. Ballot access is the key. Without breaking the century old ballot access barriers which the capitalist parties have erected against challenges from the left the Greens or any other socialists are going nowhere fast. The battle for national ballot access for the Green Party will require about 1.2 million petition signatures nationwide, a load of organizing talent and a good $2 million dollars. The talent is mostly there, the money has to be raised, beginning now. By the summer of 2020 when Democrats kick Bernie Sanders to the curb again it will be too late. Petitioning deadlines in places like Arizona and Kansas fall in the early spring of 2020, so efforts in these and a dozen other states need to be off the ground in late fall and winter. There’s a reason these barriers have blocked socialist challengers from the ballot for a century now. It’s what they were designed to do. HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO… Go to http://howiehawkins.us and take a look at what the Real Green New Deal, not the pale Democratic appropriation of the name is all about. Then drop some coin, make a donation to the only campaign dedicated to organizing a national attempt to break the restrictive ballot access regime wide open – that’s Howie Hawkins’ campaign. Know that once the Hawkins campaign gathers $5,000 in each of 20 states in donations of $250 and less it qualifies for matching funds from the Federal Elections Commission, a law that fearful Democrats are trying to scuttle in HR 1. Your donation NOW helps us break the ballot access barrier in 2020. Even if you’re a one of those who calls yourself a Democrat and a socialist, your position inside the capitalist party can only be strengthened by the existence of a viable left OUTSIDE that party as well. And if Bernie or Bust busts again, you’ll be needing a new home. We’re building it now. Bernie has a plan B. It’s Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Pete WhatsHisHame. What’s your plan B? For Black Agenda Radio Commentaries I’m Bruce Dixon. In full disclosure, I’m a Green and a member of Howie Hawkins’ campaign committee too. Black Agenda Report has been named by anonymous cowards as a tool of the Russians, so we are censored by Google and other corporate social media. That’s the way it works nowadays. The only way you can be sure you’re getting the latest news, commentary and analysis from the black left is to subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter, with links to all our newly published audio, video and print material neatly packaged for your reading listening and viewing convenience. To do this, visit us at www.blackagendareport.com, that’s www.blackagendareport.com and hit the subscrible button. Thank you.

In 1916 a socialist ran for president of the United States. The US Post Office, stretching bck to the American Revolution, had always granted free or nearly free postage for newspapers and magazines, so socialist tracts and magazines had subscription lists in the millions. The 1916 socialist candidate got 600,000 votes, about 3% of the total. The first World War was on the horizon, and socialists opposed that war, viewing it as a conflict between empires in which ordinary people had no stake. So the US government ended postal subsidies for newspapers and magazines. In 1920, another socialist, Eugene Victor Debs ran for president. By then a widespread crackdown on socialists in public life was underway, and Debs was imprisoned for his opposition to World War 1. Debs got 900,000 votes, 4% of the total cast from his cell in a federal prison in Indiana. In 1924 another socialist, Robert LaFollette ran for president on the ticket of the Progressive Party and got 5 million votes, one sixth of the total votes cast for president that year. The establishment was in a sort of panic. The lords of capital, the bankers, the industrialists, represented today as they were a hundred years ago by the Democrats and the Republicans were not about to allow themselves to be simply voted out of power. So they passed a briar patch of restrictive laws on the state level to make it increasingly difficult or impossible for socialist candidates to get on the ballot in the first place. The most effective of these laws, which are still with us today, are the petitioning laws, rules which do not apply to Republican or to Democratic parties or their candidates, but only to other parties whom voters might go for if only they were allowed access to the ballot. Having been law for a hundred years now, most people have forgotten the purpose of these laws or are simply not aware of them at all. But they are still on the books and with some variations, still enforced in about half the 50 states. For all its faults and lapses, right now, in the years 2019 and 2020, the only national party that calls itself socialist – more precisely ecosocialist – outside the Democrats and Republicans and intent upon competing with them is the Green Party. And the Green Party is intent on organizing to break the two party monopoly on the ballot. It won’t be cheap and it won’t be easy, and it hasn’t been done nationally in the hundred years that the restrictive anti-socialist ballot access laws have been in place. In Texas for instance, a party other than the Democrats or Republicans, whose ballot access is grandfathered in, must gather 83,000 signatures in 75 days, and they must be voters who have not recently voted in either a Republican or a Democratic party primary election. As a practical matter, this would require the full time mobilization of about 200 signature collectors dispersed around the state for ten and a half weeks. It’s not impossible, but it is expensive and difficult. In Georgia, a state with less than half the population of Texas, new parties are required to gather a little over 65,000 signatures over a 14 month period. This is what’s called a party petition, since it allows a qualifying party to place candidates via nomination at a state convention. Georgia also separates congressional elections from all others, so a more restrictive rule applies to congressional candidates, who must produce 18 to 24 thousand petition signatures of qualified registered voters. Like many other states, Georgia law also provides a presidential-only petition, with a much lower requirement of only 7,500 signatures, but presidential-only petitions actually prevent the building of local party organizations, since they do not allow for the running of candidates for local office. Alabama requires 51,500 signatures to put a new party on the ballot with the ability to name candidates for all partisan elected offices, but a much lower threshold for presidential only campaigns. Generally Greens prefer not to run presidential only campaigns for the quite sensible reason that building local electoral power requires local candidates and local campaigns, in addition to somebody at the top of the ticket. Tennessee law demands the Greens come up with 56,000 signatures for party access to the ballot; Ohio, 43,200; Indiana 42,900; Oklahoma 35,600; and Illinois 25,000 signatures in 90 says, and this is far from a complete list of even the worse offenders. Again, most of states allow lower petitioning thresholds for presidential-only campaigns. The most extreme example is Minnesota, which requires only 2,000 signatures for a presidential-candidate-only ballot access, but demands more than a hundred thousand signatures to allow a party to nominate local candidates throughout the state. Greens will not formally choose their presidential candidate until the summer of 2020, but the presumptive nominee is New York’s Howie Hawkins, a retired teamster out of Syracuse who was one of the party’s founders and the first candidate of any party to campaign on the Green New Deal. Hawkins is the only one of the Green candidates to have put together a team and begun to raise the $3 to $5 million it will take to run a credible campaign in 2019 and 2020. Ballot access is the key. Without breaking the century old ballot access barriers which the capitalist parties have erected against challenges from the left the Greens or any other socialists are going nowhere fast. The battle for national ballot access for the Green Party will require about 1.2 million petition signatures nationwide, a load of organizing talent and a good $2 million dollars. The talent is mostly there, the money has to be raised, beginning now. By the summer of 2020 when Democrats kick Bernie Sanders to the curb again it will be too late. Petitioning deadlines in places like Arizona and Kansas fall in the early spring of 2020, so efforts in these and a dozen other states need to be off the ground in late fall and winter. There’s a reason these barriers have blocked socialist challengers from the ballot for a century now. It’s what they were designed to do. HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO… Go to http://howiehawkins.us and take a look at what the Real Green New Deal, not the pale Democratic appropriation of the name is all about. Then drop some coin, make a donation to the only campaign dedicated to organizing a national attempt to break the restrictive ballot access regime wide open – that’s Howie Hawkins’ campaign. Know that once the Hawkins campaign gathers $5,000 in each of 20 states in donations of $250 and less it qualifies for matching funds from the Federal Elections Commission, a law that fearful Democrats are trying to scuttle in HR 1. Your donation NOW helps us break the ballot access barrier in 2020. Even if you’re a one of those who calls yourself a Democrat and a socialist, your position inside the capitalist party can only be strengthened by the existence of a viable left OUTSIDE that party as well. And if Bernie or Bust busts again, you’ll be needing a new home. We’re building it now. Bernie has a plan B. It’s Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Pete WhatsHisHame. What’s your plan B? For Black Agenda Radio Commentaries I’m Bruce Dixon. In full disclosure, I’m a Green and a member of Howie Hawkins’ campaign committee too. Black Agenda Report has been named by anonymous cowards as a tool of the Russians, so we are censored by Google and other corporate social media. That’s the way it works nowadays. The only way you can be sure you’re getting the latest news, commentary and analysis from the black left is to subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter, with links to all our newly published audio, video and print material neatly packaged for your reading listening and viewing convenience. To do this, visit us at www.blackagendareport.com, that’s www.blackagendareport.com and hit the subscrible button. Thank you.

When Congress delegates to a federal agency the responsibility for implementing, administering, and enforcing a law, it also authorizes the agency to make and promulgate rules about how it will do that. These rules will often be issued first as a notice of proposed rulemaking, giving the public the opportunity to comment before the regulation becomes final and goes into effect. Many agencies, however, also avail themselves of another, less well-known rule-making tool: adjudication. Rather than promulgate a regulation, these agencies often announce and apply new policies - even ones that will have broad applicability – in the form of decisions resolving disputes with the agency. These decisions are then applied as precedent by the agency. Some agencies including the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Elections Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and other federal agencies, essentially announce and implement all policies this way. That agencies use adjudication to announce and implement policy is not new, but critics contend that it eliminates fair notice of the rule and avoids public participation in its development.Policy implemented through notice-and-comment rulemaking is generally applied prospectively only, and has the benefit of the agency having solicited and, ideally, responded to public comments. Policy implemented through adjudication, however, has not had the benefit of public input. Further, the application is generally retroactive. To avoid retroactive application of a rule, regulated parties can be inclined to simply comply with an agency's demands, thus depriving the public of a fair test of the agency’s position. Finally, agency adjudication – performed by an agency’s administrative law judge, and appealable to agency leadership who may wish to use the case to make new policy - can be seen to be biased.How weighty are these concerns? What is the proper role of agency adjudication? What deference, if any, should courts give policies agencies announce through adjudication? What safeguards could be designed and implemented to prevent the misuse of agency adjudication?Prof. Jack Beermann, Professor of Law, Boston University School of LawMrs. Allyson N. Ho, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & CrutcherMr. Stephen A. Vaden, Principal Deputy General Counsel, United States Department of AgricultureProf. Christopher J. Walker, Associate Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of LawModerator: Hon. Gregory G. Katsas, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit

When Congress delegates to a federal agency the responsibility for implementing, administering, and enforcing a law, it also authorizes the agency to make and promulgate rules about how it will do that. These rules will often be issued first as a notice of proposed rulemaking, giving the public the opportunity to comment before the regulation becomes final and goes into effect. Many agencies, however, also avail themselves of another, less well-known rule-making tool: adjudication. Rather than promulgate a regulation, these agencies often announce and apply new policies - even ones that will have broad applicability – in the form of decisions resolving disputes with the agency. These decisions are then applied as precedent by the agency. Some agencies including the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Elections Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and other federal agencies, essentially announce and implement all policies this way. That agencies use adjudication to announce and implement policy is not new, but critics contend that it eliminates fair notice of the rule and avoids public participation in its development.Policy implemented through notice-and-comment rulemaking is generally applied prospectively only, and has the benefit of the agency having solicited and, ideally, responded to public comments. Policy implemented through adjudication, however, has not had the benefit of public input. Further, the application is generally retroactive. To avoid retroactive application of a rule, regulated parties can be inclined to simply comply with an agency's demands, thus depriving the public of a fair test of the agency’s position. Finally, agency adjudication – performed by an agency’s administrative law judge, and appealable to agency leadership who may wish to use the case to make new policy - can be seen to be biased.How weighty are these concerns? What is the proper role of agency adjudication? What deference, if any, should courts give policies agencies announce through adjudication? What safeguards could be designed and implemented to prevent the misuse of agency adjudication?Prof. Jack Beermann, Professor of Law, Boston University School of LawMrs. Allyson N. Ho, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & CrutcherMr. Stephen A. Vaden, Principal Deputy General Counsel, United States Department of AgricultureProf. Christopher J. Walker, Associate Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of LawModerator: Hon. Gregory G. Katsas, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America enjoy watching U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stand her ground after chief Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow suggests Haley was confused about whether new sanctions had been ordered against Russia.  They also shudder as more horrible allegations come out against disgraced Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, and because he won't resign even after top GOP leaders urged him to step down.  They roll their eyes as independent 2016 presidential candidate Evan McMullin remains mired in campaign debt and has missed his last three required filings with the Federal Elections Commission.  And Jim and Greg pay tribute to the remarkable life of former First Lady Barbara Bush.

  Bio Danielle Keats Citron (@daniellecitron) is the Morton & Sophia Macht Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law where she teaches and writes about information privacy, free expression, and civil rights and was the recipient of the 2005 “Teacher of the Year” award. Professor Citron is an internationally recognized information privacy expert. Her book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace (Harvard University Press 2014) explored the phenomenon of cyber stalking and how law and companies can and should tackle online abuse consistent with our commitment to free speech. The editors of Cosmopolitan included her book in “20 Best Moments for Women in 2014.” Professor Citron has published more than 20 law review articles appearing in California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Harvard Law Review Forum, Boston University Law Review, Fordham Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Texas Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Washington & Lee Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, Washington Law Review, UC Davis Law Review, among other journals. Her opinion pieces have appeared in media outlets, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Time, CNN, The Guardian, New Scientist, ars technica, and New York Daily News. In 2015, the United Kingdom's Prospect Magazine named Professor Citron one of the “Top 50 World Thinkers;” the Daily Record named her one of the “Top 50 Most Influential Marylanders.” Professor Citron is an Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Center on Internet and Society, Affiliate Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project, and Senior Fellow at the Future of Privacy, a privacy think tank. She is a technology contributor for Forbes. Professor Citron has advised federal and state legislators, law enforcement, and international lawmakers on privacy issues. She has testified at congressional briefings on the First Amendment implications of laws regulating cyber stalking, sexual violence, and nonconsensual pornography. From 2014 to December 2016, Professor Citron advised California Attorney General Kamala Harris (elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016) on privacy issues. She served as a member of AG Harris's Task Force to Combat Cyber Exploitation and Violence Against Women. In 2011, Professor Citron testified about online hate speech before the Inter-Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism at the House of Commons. Professor Citron works closely with tech companies on issues involving online safety and privacy. She serves on Twitter's Trust and Safety Council and has presented her research at Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. In addition, Professor Citron is an advisor to civil liberties and privacy organizations. She is the Chair the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Board of Directors. Professor Citron is on the Advisory Board of Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, Without My Consent, Future of Privacy, Teach Privacy, SurvJustice, and the International Association of Privacy Professionals Privacy Bar. She is a member of the American Law Institute and serves as an adviser to the American Law Institute's Restatement Third Information Privacy Principles Project. Professor Citron has presented her research at federal agencies, meetings of the National Association of Attorneys General, the National Holocaust Museum, Wikimedia Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League, major universities, and think tanks. Professor Citron has been quoted in hundreds of news stories including in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired,USA Today, HBO's John Oliver Show, HBO's Vice News, Time, Newsweek, New Yorker, New York Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Barron's, Financial Times, The Guardian, Vice News, and BBC. She is a frequent guest on National Public Radio shows, including All Things Considered, WHYY's Radio Times, WNYC's Public Radio International, Minnesota Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, WYPR's Midday with Dan Rodricks, WAMU's The Diane Rehm Show, and Chicago Public Radio. Resources Hate Crimes in Cyberspace by Danielle Keas Citron (Harvard University Press, 2014) Constitutional Coup: Privatization's Threat to the American Republic by Jon D. Michaels (Harvard University Press, 2017) University of Maryland Carey School of Law News Roundup DOJ sues to block AT&T/Tribune Merger The Department of Justice has sued to block AT&T's proposed $85 billion acquisition of Times Warner. The complaint states that the merger would violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act. It refers to AT&T's objection to Comcast's previous acquisition of NBC/Universal, back in 2011, which was also a so-called vertical merger. AT&T argued that a "standard bargaining model" could have been used to show the harmful effect the merger would have had on pricing. If the case reaches the Supreme Court, it will be the first time a vertical merger case has reached the Court since 1972, in the Ford-Autolite case. The Trump administration has been vocal about opposing the AT&T/Time Warner merger and the president himself has railed repeatedly on Twitter about CNN's coverage of his administration. AT&T says it would not rule out using the judicial process in order to obtain correspondence between the White House and the DOJ which would help illustrate that the DOJ's lawsuit is politically motivated. Brian Fung reports in the Washington Post. FCC rolls back media regulations, Lifeline, cracks down on robocalls In its monthly meeting last week, the Federal Communications Commission killed long-standing media ownership rules, including the Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership rule which, since 1975, had prevented the owner of a  tv station from owning  a newspaper in the same market. The Commission also eliminated the so-called eight-voices test, which required at least eight independently owned TV stations to remain in the market before any entity could own two stations in the market. Critics say the rules were cancelled simply to pave the way for Sinclair Broadcasting, which has proposed to acquire Tribune Media for $4 billion. Two high-ranking Democrats--Frank Pallone and Elijah Cummings--are calling for an investigation into Ajit Pai's relationship with Sinclair. The Commission also restricted Lifeline support--that's the $9.25 per month subsidy for qualified customers who use it to help pay their internet bill. It restricted that support on tribal lands. The Commission is also seeking comment on a proposed plan to cap Lifeline expenditures. The Commission also voted unanimously to crack down on robocallers by giving phone companies more authority to block annoying phone calls from marketers who play a pre-recorded message when you answer the phone. Also at the November meeting, the Commission voted to expand broadcasters' ability to experiment with the Next Generation Broadcast Standard, which will enable closer targeting of viewers for advertising. The Commission also adopted several other rules and proposed rules ostensibly geared toward stimulating broadband infrastructure investment and deployment. In December, FCC Chair Ajit Pai is expected to overturn the net neutrality rules passed during the Obama administration. Wall Street Journal: Comcast seeks to acquire 201st Century Fox Comcast has joined a long list of companies, including Verizon, that are seeking to buy 21st Century Fox, according to the Wall Street Journal. Fox is looking to sell off everything except its news and sports assets. Verizon and Disney also also rumored to be potential suitors. Federal Elections Commission opens rulemaking on political ads The Federal Elections Commission put out a rulemaking for public comment on revisions to the political ad disclosure rules to apply them to internet companies. The rulemaking follows allegations of Russian efforts to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump by placing ads and sponsored content on on Facebook and Twitter. China's supercomputers surpass the U.S. The U.S. has dropped to second place, behind China, in its total number of super computers. The U.S. has 144 compared to China's 202. The number of China's supercomputers rose by 43 over just the last 6 months, compared to a drop in the U.S. by 25.

It’s 2010. The Supreme Court is hearing the infamous case that decided elections law in the United States… Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. You’ll often hear political candidates cite the case when talking about how campaigns are funded and thus sometimes unjustly balanced. This week’s episode comes from WAMC Programming Intern, Stefan Lembo Stolba. […]

Good news, bad news in the courts. Bad news: medicinal marijuana users don’t have Second Amendment rights. Good News: Scalia being dead means North Carolina’ Voter ID law will remain voided.Also, Americans’ hopes of an alternative to ISP conglomerates took a blow this month, after a federal appeals court ruled against an FCC municipal broadband initiative, and then commission said it wouldn’t appeal. Chris Mitchell, the Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self Reliance explains to discuss the issue.And, it’s Friday, which means someone is going in the Garbage Can. Those vying for the dishonorable tossing include the Bloomberg Editorial Board, NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, and the Federal Elections Commission.

Good news, bad news in the courts. Bad news: medicinal marijuana users don’t have Second Amendment rights. Good News: Scalia being dead means North Carolina’ Voter ID law will remain voided.Also, Americans’ hopes of an alternative to ISP conglomerates took a blow this month, after a federal appeals court ruled against an FCC municipal broadband initiative, and then commission said it wouldn’t appeal. Chris Mitchell, the Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self Reliance explains to discuss the issue.And, it’s Friday, which means someone is going in the Garbage Can. Those vying for the dishonorable tossing include the Bloomberg Editorial Board, NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, and the Federal Elections Commission.

In Episode 8 of Capitol Fight Club, John Gray, Brian Darling, Sam Sacks and Sam Knight and Nate Madden battled over the Federal Elections Commission’s (FEC) ruling this past week on an alleged campaign finance violation by a coal company during the Romney campaign and whether Facebook discriminates against conservatives. Capitol Fight Club is a weekly face-off between two political insiders on the right versus two on the left. Darling and Gray worked for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and both write for Conservative Review. Our progressive friends, “The Sams,” Sam Sacks and Sam Knight, are the co-founders of the progressive blog The District Sentinel. Nate Madden of @CR is the ref and the moderator of the podcast.

Guest this hour - David Bossie (Citizens United). -George Clooney has a BIG EVENT to back campaign finance reform...and raises A LOT of money! lol -45% of Americans pay no income taxes. -AND we round off the hour with David Bossie talking with Mark about Clooney's BIG EVENT, "Hillary: The Movie", electioneering laws, and Citizens United VS. The Federal Elections Commission. The Mark Larson Show mornings 6-9, on AM 1170 "The Answer".

-AND we round off the hour with David Bossie talking with Mark about Clooney's BIG EVENT, "Hillary: The Movie", electioneering laws, and Citizens United VS. The Federal Elections Commission.

Edition #890 Today we take a look at how over-policing and the threat of constant surveillance chips away at freedom in direct and indirect ways and why you should be concerned (if it weren’t already obvious) Be part of the show! Leave a message at 202-999-3991 Show Notes Ch. 1: Opening Theme: A Fond Farewell - From a Basement On the Hill Ch. 2: Act 1: How Did The NSA Become Big Brother? - @TestTube - Air Date: 6-16-14 Ch. 3: Song 1: The Safety Dance (Video Version) - Rhythm of Youth Ch. 4: Act 2: NSA releasing documents about broken laws on Christmas Eve - Le Show (@theharryshearer) - Air Date: 12-28-14 Ch. 5: Song 2: Abuse of Power - As the Stars Fall Ch. 6: Act 3: @CatherineNCrump: The small and surprisingly dangerous detail the police track about you - @TEDTalks - Air Date: 12-11-14 Ch. 7: Song 3: Don’t Worry, We'll Be Watching You - Making Mirrors Ch. 8: Act 4: FBI, CIA Terrified They Won't Be Able to Spy on Your New Phone - @RedactedTonight - Air Date: 11-13-14 Ch. 9: Song 4: Let My Love Open the Door - Hit & Run (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Ch. 10: Act 5: The NSA Has an Advice Columnist - @onthemedia - Air Date: 9-26-14 Ch. 11: Song 5: Hate Me - Foiled Ch. 12: Act 6: @ggreenwald: Why privacy matters - @TEDTalks - Air Date: 10-10-14 Ch. 13: Song 6: Burn It Down - Dancing In The Streets Ch. 14: Act 7: If you're not worried about spying then your privilege is showing - @Radio_Dispatch - Air Date: 10-15-14 Ch. 15: Song 7: Rockin' the Suburbs - Rockin' the Suburbs Ch. 16: Act 8: Prohibit Mass Surveillance via @EFF - Best of the Left Activism Ch. 17: Song 8: "This fickle world" - Theo Bard Ch. 18: Act 9: From Drones to Chokeholds, We're Over-Policed! - @GRITlaura Flanders of @grittv - Air Date: 12-15-14 Voicemails Ch. 20: Watch what the local police are saying - Chrisanne from New Jersey Ch. 21: There should be a movement to divest from the prison industrial complex - Ian from Chattanooga, TN Ch. 22: Capitalism and people of color - Vloral from Atlanta, GA Ch. 23: Thoughts on aparthied America - Fisher from Buffalo, NY Voicemail Music: Loud Pipes - Classics Ch. 24: Final comments on the Surveillance Self-Defence info pack from the Electronic Frontier Foundation Closing Music: Here We Are - Everyone's in Everyone Bonus Episode I mentioned: (2013/11/18) Another terrible pipeline (School-to-prison) Activism: Prohibit Mass Surveillance via @EFF Take Action: SIGN the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) petition: "Tell Obama: Stop Mass Surveillance Under Executive Order 12333” Additional Activism/Resources: Leave a comment for the Federal Elections Commission via EFF: "No New Regulation for Online Political Speech” SIGN the ACLU pledge: "Invasion of the Data Snatchers” Sources/further reading: "PEN America: "'The Harm Caused by Surveillance...is Unmistakable’” via EFF "Global Chilling: The Impact of Mass Surveillance on International Writers” from PEN American Center "The Fight in Congress to End the NSA’s Mass Spying: 2014 in Review” at EFF "ACLU accuses NSA of using holiday lull to ‘minimise impact’ of documents” by Nicky Woolf at The Guardian "US tries to strike deal with EU for immunity over online security breaches” by Phillip Inman at The Guardian Written by BOTL social media/activism director Katie Klabusich Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Thanks for listening! Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Check out the BotL iOS/Android App in the App Stores! Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Review the show on iTunes and Stitcher!

http://bit.ly/crH2MT Sign the Letter to call for an investigation into Christine O'Donnell's abuse of campaign funds. There is strong evidence that O'Donnell has been living off her campaign funds and has submitted false reports to the Federal Elections Commission. These practices are illegal! We must stand united in supporting leaders who abide by the law, not break it.