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Ohio Republican lawmakers in the state House of Representatives are at each other's throats in a growing schism — and after a particularly public floor fight this week, both sides are fuming, according to News 5 Cleveland.
The latest fight took place when right-wing Rep. Josh Williams tried to introduce amendments on the House floor, only to be passed over by more moderate GOP House Speaker Jason Stephens.
"Williams had two amendments he wanted to bring forward. He wanted to replace Rep. Jon Cross (R-Kenton) with Phil Plummer (R-Dayton) for the assistant majority floor leader role and he wanted to change a specific rule dealing with quorums," reported Morgan Trau. "Williams, and many others within his group, shouted out to Stephens, objecting to moving forward without hearing their amendments. Stephens skipped over him."
"Even if you properly stand up and operate within the rules and you are the most educated on a particular subject, we are going to ignore you and we are going to continue to operate under traditions that were made before individuals that looked like you were even present in the House. That hurt to my core," said Williams, a constitutional law professor by training. Stephens, meanwhile, told News 5, "They wanted chaos on the floor. They were just trying to create controversy and maybe get their name in the paper or get on the news."
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The core of the issue is the election of Stephens as Speaker in the first place. The GOP caucus had selected farther-right Derek Merrin as their choice for Speaker, but during the full House vote, Stephens and a group of more moderate Republicans cut a deal with Democrats, giving him the gavel instead in a bipartisan vote.
Such deals have happened before in Ohio politics; former Speaker Larry Householder also made a deal with Democrats to be elected. He is now on trial in a massive public corruption case stemming from his role in a years-long, $60 million bribery scheme by utility companies to pass a law bailing out coal and nuclear plants and gutting renewable energy standards.
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Revealed: 'Explosive' meeting that led DOJ official to quit Durham probe in protest
January 27, 2023
A New York Times reporter revealed new details about an explosive meeting between Department of Justice investigators tasked with probing the origins of the Donald Trump-Russia case.
DOJ official Nora Dannehy blew up at lead investigator John Durham in September 2020 when she discovered that he'd acquiesced to attorney general William Barr's demand to produce an interim report about their work before it was completed -- and less than two months before the presidential election, and reporter Charlie Savage told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about the confrontation.
"She had had a series of prosecutorial ethics disputes with Durham, it turns out, and the first of which was that she wanted Bill Barr to stop talking about their investigation, in line with Justice Department principles, and asked Durham to tell Barr to stop," Savage said. "He was unwilling to challenge the attorney general. She opposed the step we talked about, using the grand jury powers to get information, a judge said they lacked legal basis to obtain about George Soros aide's e-mails, she opposed that and said Durham had done it without telling her."
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"Then she came across an interim draft report in September 2020 that she had not known was in the works that Barr pushed Durham to produce, and he had other people on the team draft up," Savage added. "She exploded. There was a big argument in which she said it was inappropriate to issue a report before an investigation was done, definitely inappropriate to do so before an election, and the report contained some dubious information that it took at face value, and she sent them an e-mail to people in the investigative team outlining those concerns in greater detail and quit the next day. That is what happened in September 2020, when Durham's longtime colleague and No. 2 deputy in this situation abruptly quit."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
01 27 2023 07 06 02 www.youtube.com
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Because major advertisers are avoiding Donald Trump's Truth Social, users are instead being exposed to a flood of ads from what the New York Times characterizes as "miracle cures, scams and fake merchandise," as the platform is forced to take what it can in an effort to survive.
That, in turn, has led to complaints aimed at the former president in his comment sections for allowing the forum to turn into a cesspool of ads from scam artists.
As the Times is reporting, Truth Social is almost devoid of ads from large corporations for a multitude of reasons that include the toxic rhetoric on the site, its small reach due to few users and the fact that the predominant demographic is not one that advertisers are trying to reach.
As the Times' Stuart Thompson wrote, "Ads from major brands are nonexistent on the site. Instead, the ads on Truth Social are for alternative medicine, diet pills, gun accessories and Trump-themed trinkets, according to an analysis of hundreds of ads on the social network by The New York Times," before adding, "The ads reflect the difficulty that several far-right platforms, including Rumble and Gab, have faced in courting large brands, preventing the sites from tapping into some of the world’s largest ad budgets."
READ: Pssst! Wanna buy a Supreme Court Justice?
As the report notes, Truth Social was initially financed with $37 million from GOP donors, and is currently estimated to be burning through $1.7 million per month and money is running out because of problems with the Security Exchange Commission.
Upon its launch, Devin Nunes, the chief executive of Trump Media, announced major advertisers would flock to the site -- which has not happened -- and the gap has been filled by companies that are much less desirable.
Add to that, according to one advertiser, the money he has spent on Truth Social has gone nowhere when it comes to sales.
"Maxwell Finn, an online marketer, said in a YouTube video that he was one of Truth Social’s top advertisers, spending more than $150,000 on ads, including those for Trump-themed hats, shirts, coins and novelty bills. In the video, he called the ad platform 'frustrating' and 'bare bones,' adding that it lacked even basic functionality, forcing his company to manually track ad performance — a method that would prove impossible for advertisers with larger budgets," the report states with Finn explaining, "Do I think this is a platform where you can be spending tens of thousands of dollars a day, especially if you only have a few products? No, probably. The audience is just too small.”
As for those who are still advertising on the site, fans of the former president are furious that advertisers are not being vetted.
"Over time, the low-quality ads on Truth Social have irritated its own users, who have complained to Mr. Trump after repeatedly seeing the same disturbing images or after falling for misleading gimmicks," the Times is reporting before adding an example of one user complaining directly to Trump, "Can you not vet the ads on Truth? I’ve been scammed more than once.”
You can read more here.
ALSO IN THE NEWS: Trump's own DOJ considered wiretapping his aides: new book
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