Joe Biden

President Joe Biden toured hurricane-devastated areas of Puerto Rico on Monday, promising the sometimes overlooked US territory that this time, "America's with you."

The president and First Lady Jill Biden -- who on Wednesday will also visit the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian in Florida where dozens have died -- headed to Ponce, on the south coast of Puerto Rico, pounded by Hurricane Fiona last month.

The media industry's Editor and Publisher magazine released its cover story Monday about the Fox News empire and their efforts to "deliver cheap, expedient, viscerally-agitating content instead of the journalism its viewers need and deserve."

The report began with Jim Small, an Arizona political reporter who has been on the beat for 20 years. Until recently he covered rallies at the Capitol and political events, but now he has to put his safety first. Someone decked out in extremist insignias came after one of his colleagues. "I know who you are, and I'm keeping my eye on you, and if you make a wrong move, you're going to get it," the man told the reporter. Law enforcement did nothing, how could they? Threats on reporters happen constantly in wake of Donald Trump's war on the media.

If Republicans retake the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms, it’s a safe bet that the January 6 select committee will cease to exist — while House Republicans launch new investigations of the president’s son Hunter Biden. It won’t take a major red wave like the ones of 1994 and 2010 in order for Republicans to recapture the House; all they will need to do is flip five or more Democrat-held seats.

Journalist Eric Cortellessa examines House Republicans’ plans for Hunter Biden-related investigations in an article published by Time on October 3.

The landmark sedition trial of five members of the far-right Oath Keepers opened Monday with prosecutors telling a jury that the group heavily armed itself on January 6, 2021 to attack the Capitol to keep Donald Trump in the presidency.

Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Nestler said that Stewart Rhodes, the eyepatch-wearing former soldier and Yale law school graduate, knew exactly what he was doing when he led the militia's followers towards the Capitol.

March for Our Lives co-founder David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting that killed 17 people, on Friday called for people to stop using mental illness as an excuse for racism.

“It’s time we put an end to it and we go after the one thing that these politicians care about, which is their votes and their power. We start calling out the bullshit that is out there constantly that says shooters, like the person at my high school who had repeatedly drawn Nazi symbols and swastikas on things and who repeatedly said hateful things about Black and Brown people, about immigrants and Muslim people – stop using mental illness as an excuse for white nationalism,” Hogg said at a Lansing event. “Frankly, we just need to stop calling f–king racism mental illness.”

On Monday, NBC News reported that the Supreme Court has denied a petition from MyPillow CEO and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell to review a lower court ruling that allowed a defamation lawsuit against him to move forward.

"The justices’ decision not to hear the case means a federal judge’s ruling in August 2021 that allowed the lawsuit to move forward remains in place," reported Lawrence Hurley. "Dominion sued Lindell and MyPillow in February 2021, claiming $1.3 billion in damages and alleging that Lindell purposely pushed the 'big lie' that Trump won the 2020 election."

Republicans have promised to impeach President Joe Biden if they retake the House majority, but MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said that could cost them a shot at winning.

The White House reportedly is gaining confidence that the various investigations being proposed by congressional Republicans may backfire politically, and the "Morning Joe" host agreed that might motivate the ultra-MAGA base but would doom their chances with other voters.

In a column for the Bulwark, conservative commentator Amanda Carpenter predicted that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) knows that he will have to keep the far-right members of his caucus occupied and happy if the Republican Party takes control of the House as expected in November.

With that in mind, she suggested that McCarthy will bow to pressure from the so-called MAGA caucus and let them go ahead with the impeachment of President Joe Biden and hearings on his son Hunter Biden, with the conservative commentator saying the members need a "shiny object" to keep them out of McCarthy's hair.

Nye County, a rural enclave in Nevada, has positioned itself as the epicenter of a Donald Trump-fueled conspiracy about the security of electronic vote tabulators.

The Nye County Commission voted in March to make the county one of the first to act on the false narratives that machines that count votes are rigged. County Clerk Mark Kampf, who has falsely claimed that Trump won the 2020 election, has said that volunteer voters there will hand count the roughly 30,000 ballots expected in the November election.

Today's Republican Party has effectively become an authoritarian political cult led by Donald Trump. His millions of followers — with their votes, money, menace and potential or actual violence — have become his primary means of controlling the party and progressively undermining American democracy and society.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Republicans are noticing a worrying trend for their chances of retaking congressional majorities.

In four congressional special elections held since June, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned abortion rights, suburban and urban counties averaged 27-percent turnout while rural counties averaged just 22 percent, and Democratic candidates in each of those contests overperformed President Joe Biden's results in 2020, reported Politico.