WASHINGTON, D.C. — The bipartisan Senate group was finally able to agree on the text of a gun safety bill together and a vote was held on Wednesday ahead of the two-week break during the Independence Day holiday.
The bill passed 64 to 34 less than two hours after the final text was published. When asked why so many Republicans voted against the bill if it was bipartisan, Sen. John Cornyn told Raw Story it was because people were miffed they didn't have enough time to see the final text before voting on it.
"Some people felt like they were being crunched," said Cornyn.
Republicans have been negotiating for the past several weeks with Democrats over the top issues, so anyone casually monitoring the discussions would know what was in the legislation. Senators also could have asked colleagues for any specifics.
The bill wasn't what Democrats wanted, leaving out a number of items on their list like increasing the age to buy a gun to 21 or increasing the age to buy an automatic weapon to 21 years old.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has pushed gun safety legislation since the Sandy Hook massacre in his home state asked not to let the "perfect be the enemy of good." While the bill isn't what Democrats want, it makes some minor changes that will help in the future.
One of the top issues linking mass shootings is domestic violence. The existing laws only considered firearms restrictions on people who abused their partners if they were married, lived together or had children together. So, other intimate partners, like anyone who was abused by someone they dated became a loophole. The bill sought to close that.
Cornyn wouldn't say whether he was getting calls from the state about the bill. He was booed over the weekend for his willingness to work on the legislation.
Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway will headline a seminar next month hosted by the Republican Congressional Wives Speakers which is open to all members' spouses, POLITICOreports.
Bannon's appearance at the seminar will take place once day after his trial on contempt of Congress charges begins. The charges are in relation to his refusal to abide by a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.
"Dr. Robert Malone, who has come under fire for spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines on conservative platforms, is also on the list, as is Frank Gaffney — who has faced charges of trafficking in Islamophobia dating back to his time as a 2016 campaign adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)," POLITICO reports. "The head of the Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote, Catherine Englebrecht, is also on the list of speakers. Her group has raised millions of dollars by parroting claims of widespread voter fraud, according to Reveal, which is part of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting."
Bannon, who investigators suspect could have information on links between the White House and the Trump supporters who invaded the Capitol, was charged with two counts of contempt -- for ignoring subpoenas to appear for a deposition and for failing to supply documents to the committee.
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack subpoenaed Bannon, 67, on September 23. He was among the first of dozens of people who have been called to testify on the violent attack that shut down Congress as it convened to certify Joe Biden's election win over Trump two months earlier.
The committee said it has reason to believe Bannon has "information relevant to understand important activities that led to and informed the events at the Capitol."
The committee pointed to his presence at activities focused on blocking Congress's certification session the day before, when he said: "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow."
After Trump claimed executive privilege to block aides from testifying and to prevent the committee from accessing documents from his administration, Bannon said he would not testify until questions over privilege had been resolved.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on Congress to pass a three-month suspension of the federal gasoline tax to help combat record pump prices and provide temporary relief for American families this summer.
"We can bring down the price of gas and give families just a little bit of relief," Biden said in a White House address.
The president also urged states to temporarily suspend state fuel taxes, which are often higher than federal rates, the official said, and will challenge major oil companies to bring ideas on how to bring back idled refining capacity when they meet with his energy secretary on Thursday.
Biden and his advisers have been discussing the issue for months amid increasing pressure to act as record-high gas prices weigh down the president's poll ratings and cast a dark cloud over Democrats' chances of retaining congressional power in November's elections.
A suspension of the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gasoline tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax would require congressional approval, likely making Biden's pitch largely symbolic.
Lawmakers in both parties have expressed resistance to suspending the tax, with some Democrats, including House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, worried the move could have limited effect on prices if oil companies and retailers pocket much of the savings.
Biden asked Congress to suspend the fuel tax through September, a move that will cost the Highway Trust Fund roughly $10 billion in forgone revenue but could be made up from other areas of a budget that is seeing revenue grow and deficits shrink as the United States emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Peter DeFazio, a Democrat and the chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, told reporters Wednesday a federal gas tax holiday would provide "miniscule relief" while blowing a budget hole in a Highway Trust Fund needed to fix crumbling bridges and build a modern infrastructure system."
Some states, such as New York and Connecticut, have already paused state fuel taxes, while others have floated ideas such as consumer rebates and direct relief.
Refiners are struggling to meet global demand for diesel and gasoline, exacerbating high prices and aggravating shortages.
"Pausing the federal gas tax will certainly provide near-term relief for U.S. drivers, but it won’t solve the root of the issue – the imbalance in supply and demand for petroleum products," a spokesperson for the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers industry group said.
Longer-term policies are still needed to boost U.S. energy production, it said.
U.S. pump prices are averaging near $5 a gallon as soaring demand for motor fuels coincides with the loss of about 1 million barrels per day of processing capacity. In the last three years many plants were closed when fuel demand cratered at the height of the pandemic.
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; additional reporting by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Susan Heavey, Nick Zieminski and Grant McCool)
Although one of the Republican witnesses against Donald Trump admits he'll back him again in 2024, at least one GOP lawmaker has seen enough from the House select committee.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told CNN's Manu Raju on Wednesday that after watching the panel's public hearings he "will not be supporting" the former president in the 2024 Republican primary, if Trump announces he is running.
Bacon's announcement came shortly after news broke that Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified against Trump during Tuesday's hearing and said the ex-president's supporters threatened his family, said he would still vote for him if he won the GOP nomination.
State lawmakers and poll workers described Tuesday how their lives had been upended by threats of violence as Trump singled them out in his bid to overturn the 2020 US election.
Trump was personally involved in an intense campaign of pressure on officials in key swing states he had lost to Joe Biden, the fourth congressional hearing into the former president's bid to cling to power after his defeat was told.
Members of the committee probing the January 2021 assault on the US Capitol that followed the election have spent much of June setting out their initial findings that Trump led a multi-pronged conspiracy to overturn the results, culminating in the insurrection in Washington.
On Tuesday they heard from poll worker Shaye Moss, who was falsely accused by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani alongside her mother Ruby Freeman of "rigging" the election count in Georgia with "suitcases" full of ballots for Biden.
Moss, who is Black, described people making "hateful" and "racist" threats of violence following the baseless accusations, including one message saying: "Be glad it's 2020 and not 1920."
"This turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card, I don't transfer calls," Moss testified.
"I don't want anyone knowing my name... I don't go to the grocery store. Haven't been anywhere at all."
Freeman said in her deposition she had lost her good name and sense of security because "number 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen."
The mother and daughter were among poll workers or election officials in several states who found themselves pressured to thwart the will of millions of voters based on bogus claims of fraud, the panel said.
Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, testified that he asked Giuliani "on multiple occasions" for evidence of his stolen election claims.
He told committee members Giuliani said "we've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence."
Trump issued a statement, read out during the hearing, attempting to discredit Bowers, calling him a "RINO" -- Republican In Name Only -- and claiming that the lawmaker had told Trump the election was rigged and that Trump had in fact won Arizona.
A school board in southeastern Wisconsin has rejected a book recommended for use in a 10th-grade accelerated English class due in part to concerns that it lacked “balance” regarding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The Curriculum Planning Committee for the Muskego-Norway district, which serves about 5,000 students in Waukesha and Racine counties, had selected “When the Emperor Was Divine,” a 2002 historical novelby Julie Otsuka based on her own family’s experiences. The book, winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award and the Asian American Literary Award, tells in varying perspectives the story of a Japanese American family uprooted from its home in Berkeley, California, and sent to an internment camp in the Utah desert.
But on June 13, the board’s Educational Services Committee, made up of three of its seven members, sent the book back to the curriculum committee, from which it is not expected to return.
At that meeting, committee and school board member Laurie Kontney complained that “When the Emperor Was Divine” was selected as a “diverse” book, according to detailed notes taken by Ann Zielke, a school district resident and parent. Corrie Prunuske, a Muskego resident and parent, confirms hearing this: “I think she said, ‘They only looked at diverse books.’ ”
“I asked why that would be an issue,” Zielke recounts in her notes. “[Kontney] said it can’t be chosen on that basis and I asked again if she had proof of that. Which they don’t. She said it can’t be all about ‘oppression.’ ” Committee member Boyer, by this account, said the selection committee needed to pick a book that was “without restriction”—that is, not intended to promote diversity.
Kontney is the board’s newest member, having been elected in April on a platform that included, “CRITICAL THINKING NOT CRITICAL RACE THEORY.”
Zielke also says she was told, in conversations with school board president Chris Buckmaster and board member Terri Boyer, who serves on the Educational Service Committee, that using the book would create a problem with “balance,” in part because the accelerated English class curriculum already includes a 10-page excerpt from a nonfiction book about the internment camps.
“So their claim is that having two texts in this class from what they’re terming is one perspective — meaning it’s the perspective of the Japanese who were interned — creates a balance issue,” Zielke says in an interview. The feeling was that “we need to have more perspective from the American government about why they did this.”
Buckmaster, she says, explained to her that the kind of balance he has in mind would include discussion of the Rape of Nanjing, the mass killing of Chinese civilians committed by the Japanese that began on Dec. 13, 1937 and continued for six weeks. “So what he’s saying is, what you would need in this class is some sort of historical context of how horrible the Japanese were during World War II in order to understand the viewpoint of the American government in interning the Japanese.”
‘False balance’
Zielke, for her part, sees “no need for this type of false balance or both-sides-ism in telling the story of Japanese internment. The American government was wrong and has apologized for the racism that led to Japanese internment.”
David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, a national nonprofit with offices in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., agrees.
“The call for a ‘balanced’ viewpoint in the context of the incarceration of Japanese Americans is deeply problematic, and racist, and plays into the same fallacies the United States Army used to justify the incarceration,” he wrote in a letter to the Muskego-Norway School Board. “We urge you to reconsider your position on the book’s use, understanding that while not every book and story can be told, to deny the use of one such as this under the pretenses you’ve given is wrong.”
Zielke says both Buckmaster and Boyer, in their conversations with her, said the district’s Curriculum Planning Committee may have been given a directive — it’s not clear from whom — to select a book by a non-white author. According to Zielke, “the board is saying that that somehow negates the process, because that is akin to some type of discrimination.”
After the June 13 committee meeting, Buckmaster got into a heated exchange with Hapeman, who works for the district as an educational assistant. She says he told her, regarding the board’s action, “This is why they were elected. This is what they ran on.” Emily Sorensen, a community member who was sitting nearby, says she heard him make this comment.
Buckmaster, Boyer, Kontney, and Tracy Blair, the third board member who serves on the Educational Resources Committee, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did Kelly Thomspon, the district superintendent.
Absent from ‘banned books’ lists
Across the country, the MAGA crowd has gone on a rampage against educational materials deemed inappropriate for young minds.
PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for freedom of expression, tracked 1,585 instances of books being banned from schools between July 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, involving 1,145 unique titles.
“When the Emperor Was Divine” is not among them.
In a letter to the Muskego-Norway board, Jordan Pavlin, editor-in-chief at Alfred A. Knopf and Otsuka’s editor at the publishing house, noted that “When the Emperor Was Divine” “has been course adopted in hundreds of schools throughout the country, where it has become a staple of high school English classes.”
She added that historical fiction “has the power not only to edify but to transform and deepen our perspectives; it enables us to look outward, beyond the confines of our circumscribed lives, with greater sympathy and understanding.”
In the 2020 presidential election, the city of Muskego, which makes up the majority of the Muskego-Norway School District, voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden by a margin of two to one. That’s even higher than the margin that voted for Trump in all of deep red Waukesha County, in which Muskego resides.
Yet all of the objections to “When the Emperor Was Divine” have come from school board members, not the community at large.
“I am not aware of any opposition to the use of the Otsuka book from any parents, students, teachers, or community members,” Hapeman says. “The only opposition to the book I am aware of is from school board members.”
Parents show support
Indeed, in advance of the June 13 meetings, more than 130 parents and community members, many of them alumni of the Muskego-Norway School District, signed a petition supporting the book’s selection. Written by Lawrence Hapeman, Allison’s son and a 2021 graduate of district schools, the 1800-word petition takes issue with the various objections to “When the Emperor Was Divine.”
These included a claim, purportedly made by more than one school board member, that the book is “too sad.” The petition calls this argument “fundamentally nonsensical,” noting that other books approved for classroom use in the district include Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” “in which most characters die by the end of the novel in often brutal and graphic ways.”
The petition also argues that the educational staff involved in the selection of “When the Emperor Was Divine” deserve to have their decisions supported. It cites a June 10 article in the Wisconsin Examiner about how the school district of Waukesha “has received at least 54 resignations from employees between April 1 and June 5 of this year, as compared to 28 resignations last year during that same time period—a 93% increase.”
“Many of these resignations come from teachers who have cited a lack of respect and acceptance from their school board as primary causes for their departure,” states the petition. It anonymously quotes two district teachers about a perceived lack of support.
“I’ve never felt so under attack for just doing my job or doing my duty to teach kids about others and their world,” one teacher says. “I feel like I have to defend every book that has a person of color in it.” Another teacher says, “The anti-diversity and lack of pushback against that from district leaders has left me actively seeking other positions in districts that support diversity.”
As for the argument that “this book should not be approved because the selection committee was non-negotiably set on picking a work by an author who is a woman of color,” the petition links to a district directive, issued in 2020, to seek ways “to support understanding of the history of marginalization and the positive impact we can have on a daily basis when we use an equity focused mindset that addresses disparities.”
The petition states: “As residents of the world and heirs of its history, we must be given the opportunity to reflect on the past and point out the pain and suffering caused in the past. This reflection is meant to prepare ourselves to create a stronger country and world by rejecting outright the mistakes of the past.”
Or, as Inoue put it in his letter to the school board, “The story of what happened to the Japanese American community is an American story, one that balances the challenges of injustice, but also the patriotic stories of service and resistance. If anything, these are stories that need to be told more in our schools.”
Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.
In several midterm primary races across the United States, political organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party—including Speaker Nancy Pelosi's House Majority PAC—are spending big to boost far-right Republican candidates in the hopes of securing more favorable general election matchups for Democrats.
What could possibly go wrong?
"It's untenable for Democrats to ally themselves with their own executioners."
Quite a lot, according to progressive critics who have warned in recent days that the strategy has a strong chance of backfiring horribly, potentially ushering into office extremist candidates who pose an even greater threat to democracy than the run-of-the-mill establishment Republican.
"On the one hand, they're trying to motivate voters to come to the polls by raising legitimate concerns about what will happen to the country if Republicans retake power," The New Republic's Alex Shephard noted in a column on Tuesday. "On the other, they're working behind the scenes to elevate many of the most dangerous Republicans running for office right now. It's untenable for Democrats to ally themselves with their own executioners."
In Colorado's newly created 8th Congressional District, the Pelosi-aligned House Majority PAC has spent tens of thousands of dollars on television and digital ads spotlighting the far-right record and policy positions of Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine, who is competing against three other Republicans in the June 28 primary for a spot in the U.S. House.
The ColoradoSunreports that while one of the Democratic-funded Saine ads is "framed as an attack on Saine, it also calls her a 'conservative warrior' and highlights her strident positions on abortion, immigration, and guns—stances that appeal to many Republicans."
A new Democratic super PAC is also running ads characterizing Colorado state Rep. Ron Hanks—a far-right U.S. Senate candidate who attended the rally and march that preceded the January 6 Capitol attack—as "one of the most conservative members in the statehouse," a portrayal that's likely to bolster his status among many GOP primary voters.
According to one recent survey, just 21% of Republican voters believe President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory was legitimate.
"The eleventh-dimensional chess-like thinking behind this spending is clear: The 2022 midterms will be tight, and boosting ultraconservatives more likely to alienate moderate voters might help Democrats in desperate need of a leg up," Shephard wrote Tuesday. "And yet this elliptical strategy is also incredibly reckless given the increasingly authoritarian turn within the Republican Party."
If extremist, election-denying Republicans win the races in which Democratic groups are intervening, added Shephard, "Democrats would have played a role—and perhaps a decisive one—in the ongoing MAGAfication of the Republican Party."
As Audrey Fahlberg of The Dispatchreported last week, "Democrats are deploying similar tactics across the country and down the ballot."
"Take Pennsylvania," Fahlberg noted, "where Democratic gubernatorial candidate and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro spent $1.7 million on TV ads boosting the conservative credentials of gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a far-right candidate who bussed rally-goers to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and who was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the events of that day."
"That single ad buy," according to Fahlberg, "amounted to more money than Mastriano's campaign spent during the entire primary."
"Either this is a crisis moment or it isn't. And if it is—which it is—you don't play cute in a crisis."
Mastriano, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, won the key battleground state's Republican gubernatorial primary last month.
The Democratic Governors Association (DGA), which is running ads characterizing far-right Illinois gubernatorial hopeful Darren Bailey as a candidate who "embraces the Trump agenda," insisted in a statement to The Dispatch that its efforts are simply educational, an attempt to make voters aware of the danger posed by GOP extremists.
"These elected and formerly elected officials want to deceptively retell their histories," said DGA spokesperson David Turner, "and we're just filling in the gaps."
While the approach of assisting supposedly unpalatable candidates in primaries has been touted as a success in the recent past, it infamously crashed and burned in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election after her campaign worked to elevate Trump in the GOP nominating contest.
Concerns that the Democratic groups' strategy could backfire like it did in 2016 aren't just being voiced by progressive commentators and watchdogs; some establishment Democrats are also raising alarm, particularly as Republicans appear well-positioned to seize control of at least one chamber of Congress in November.
"I think it's very dangerous and potentially very risky to elevate people who are hostile to democracy," Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson told the Washington Post earlier this month. "Either this is a crisis moment or it isn't. And if it is—which it is—you don't play cute in a crisis."
Future House Select Committee hearings are going to detail the Trump administration's relationship with the far-right Proud Boys gang, according to a new filing by the United States Department of Justice.
As flagged by CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, the DOJ argued in a recent court filing that there should be a delay in the trial of several Proud Boys who have been accused of seditious conspiracy for their roles in inciting the January 6th Capitol riots.
The reason for the delay is that the DOJ wants access to full transcripts from the House Select Committee, which it says are essential evidence to both the government's case and the Proud Boys' defense.
What's more, the DOJ specifically says that "the relationship between the Trump Administration and the Proud Boys and other groups will be the subject of a future hearing" from the January 6th Committee.
During a presidential debate with Joe Biden in 2020, Trump infamously told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" when he was asked if he'd denounce them by a debate moderator.
The DOJ has gathered evidence that the Proud Boys played a central role in inciting the Capitol riots, and they've been among the very few January 6th defendants who have been hit with the very serious charge of seditious conspiracy.
Wisconsin Democrats on Tuesday led calls for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson's resignation after the House January 6 committee revealed texts indicating that the Republican's office wanted to hand-deliver certificates of fake electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence in service of former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"Ron Johnson actively tried to undermine this democracy. He literally tried to hand Mike Pence fake ballots."
The bipartisan congressional panel probing the deadly 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol showed an exchange of text messages initiated by Johnson's chief of staff Sean Riley to Pence legislative director Chris Hodgson that the Republican senator wanted to advance an "alternate slate of electors" for Wisconsin and Michigan, both of which Biden won.
"Do not give that to him," Hodgson texted back.
In response to the presentation during Tuesday's hearing state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-76) tweeted that "Sen. Ron Johnson should resign, effective immediately."
While Johnson is not among the 147 congressional Republicans who voted to overturn President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory, he did host a December 2020 hearing at which supporters of Trump's "Big Lie" that the election was "stolen" spent hours promoting conspiracy theories about the contest.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) called Johnson's action "direct support for for Trump's conspiracy to overturn the will of the people in Wisconsin."
Four Democratic candidates for Johnson's Senate seat also called on him to resign.
"Ron Johnson actively tried to undermine this democracy. He literally tried to hand Mike Pence fake ballots," Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said in a statement. "Once again, Ron Johnson has proven he's a danger to our country and our fundamental rights. I'm calling for him to resign immediately."
State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski argued that "it is clear Ron Johnson is a threat to our democracy and is unfit to continue serving in the United States Senate."
Former state lawmaker Tom Nelson called Johnson "a criminal and a traitor" who should "be prosecuted."
"He must resign," Nelson added.
Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry, also running in the primary to oust Johnson, tweeted that "Trump and his MAGA allies planned, promoted, and paid for a seditious conspiracy to overturn an election they lost. And Ron Johnson attempted to deliver it to D.C. on a silver platter."
Responding to the congressional committee's revelation, Johnson spokesperson Alexa Henning tweeted that "the senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office."
"This was a staff-to-staff exchange," she added. "His new chief of staff contacted the vice president’s office," which "said not to give it to him and we did not. There was no further action taken. End of story."
Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler will on Wednesday take another step towards breaking his international isolation by paying his first visit to Turkey since the murder in 2018 of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate.
The talks in Ankara between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan come one month before a visit to Riyadh by US president Joe Biden, for a regional summit focused on the energy crunch caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Erdogan's decision to revive ties with one of his biggest rivals is also driven in large part by economics and trade.
Turks' living standards are imploding one year before a general election that poses one of the biggest challenges of Erdogan's mercurial two-decade rule.
After Khashoggi's death, Erdogan's Islamic-rooted government released drip-by-drip details of the gruesome murder that deeply embarrassed the Saudi crown prince.
But it is now drumming up investment and central bank assistance from the very countries it opposed on ideological grounds in the wake of the Arab Spring revolts.
"I think this is probably one of the most significant visits to Ankara by a foreign leader in almost a decade," said the Washington Institute's Turkey specialist Soner Cagaptay.
"Erdogan is all about Erdogan. He's all about winning elections and I think he has decided to kind of swallow his pride."
Cagaptay said Prince Mohammed is also trying to see whether he can win broader backing ahead of a possible new nuclear agreement between world powers and the Saudis' arch-nemesis Iran.
"I think the Saudis are hedging their bets," Cagaptay said.
'You should be ashamed'
Turkey's rapprochement with the Saudis began with an Istanbul court decision in April to break off the trial in absentia of 26 suspects accused of links to Khashoggi's killing and to transfer the case to Riyadh.
US intelligence officials have determined that Prince Mohammed approved the plot against Khashoggi -- something Riyadh denies.
The court's decision drew strong protests from Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz.
But it paved the way for a visit to Saudi by Erdogan three weeks later, when he hugged the crown prince.
"He gets off the plane and hugs the killers," fumed Turkey's main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu -- Erdogan's likely chief rival in the presidential race.
"You should be ashamed."
Ankara expects the mending of fences between the two Sunni powers to help prop up the Turkish economy at a crucial stage of Erdogan's rule.
A Turkish official said the sides will discuss a range of issues that include cooperation between banks and support for small and medium-size businesses.
Lack of trust
Erdogan's unconventional economic approach has set off an inflationary spiral that has seen consumer prices almost double in the past year.
Analysts believe the resulting drop in Erdogan's public approval and the depletion of state reserves means the Turkish leader can ill afford to maintain his hostile stance toward the petrodollar-filled Gulf states.
Turkey's problems with the Saudis began when Ankara refused to accept Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Cairo in 2013.
The Saudis and other Arab kingdoms viewed the Brotherhood as an existential threat.
Those rivalries intensified after Turkey tried to break the nearly four-year blockade the Saudis and their allies imposed on Qatar in 2017.
Analysts believe that Washington is watching this gradual return of regional calm with an approving nod.
"Encouraged by the United States, this rapprochement is relaxing tensions and building diplomacy across the region," said Gonul Tol, Turkish studies director at the US-based Middle East Institute.
But Tol questioned whether Prince Mohammed was prepared to fully trust Erdogan.
The crown prince "will not easily forget the attitude adopted by Turkey after the Khashoggi affair", she said.
"In the short term, I do not think there will be a dramatic improvement in the Turkish economy."
Two Trump-backed congressional candidates came up far short in Tuesday’s runoff election, serving as further evidence of the former president’s waning influence in Georgia.
Former Democratic state Rep. Vernon Jones left the governor’s race to run for Congress in a deep red east Georgia district with former President Donald Trump’s blessing. Jones was a close second place last month but lost in a landslide Tuesday to trucking executive Mike Collins after a bitterly fought runoff.
And closer to Atlanta, Roswell attorney Jake Evans often touted Trump’s endorsement and attempted to paint Rich McCormick as too centrist. McCormick, who is an emergency medicine doctor, clinched the GOP nomination with a resounding win Tuesday.
The Associated Press called both races Tuesday night. McCormick and Collins will face Democratic challengers in November, but the two districts strongly favor Republicans.
“I’m going to put this in perspective: We just went up against – let me be careful, I’m on camera – we just took on the machine and we won,” McCormick said to cheers at his election watch party at the Polo Golf and Country Club in Cumming. “And it feels good.”
McCormick playfully held up one of his opponent’s mailers calling him a “RINO,” for Republican in Name Only, and threw it on the ground before striking a conciliatory tone.
“We just got a call from Kevin McCarthy. He said congratulations,” McCormick said, referring to the U.S. House minority leader. “I expect Donald Trump to call us and Newt Gingrich, because we’re going to be friends and we’re going to win this together and we’re going to move forward together because that’s what the party is about.”
McCormick, a U.S. Marine who competed on “American Gladiators” in the 1990s, built up his name recognition after narrowly losing to Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Bourdeaux in the neighboring district in the north Atlanta suburbs in 2020.
The Suwanee Republican will face Dawsonville Democrat and combat veteran Bob Christian in the fall, but the district was redrawn last year to include conservative turf reaching up into Dawson County.
The incumbent, Democratic Congresswoman Lucy McBath, opted to run in the neighboring 7th District instead of facing an uphill battle in her current district. McBath soundly beat Bourdeaux last month without a runoff and will face Republican Mark Gonsalves in the fall, though the district was redrawn as a safer Democratic seat.
In the 10th District, Collins handily won after running as a pro-Trump candidate even if he didn’t have his official backing. But he did have the endorsement of Gov. Brian Kemp, whose refusal to help overturn the 2020 election made him one of Trump’s favorite targets.
“I think we got the Trump supporters. I think they were there. Because they knew from the beginning that I was on the Trump team way before he was the nominee,” Collins said Tuesday night in Jackson. “So, I believed in those policies, that America first agenda, and I actually have lived that.
“Everybody knew that the endorsement was not to run for Congress, but to get out of the governor’s race. So, he could have run for dog catcher, and he’d have got that endorsement,” he added.
Trump effect dulled in Georgia
Jones and Evans were part of a slate of 13 Trump-endorsed candidates in Georgia’s GOP primary. Only two of the former president’s picks – former University of Georgia football star Hershel Walker for the U.S. Senate and state Sen. Burt Jones for lieutenant governor – were successful. Others, like former U.S. Sen. David Perdue, lost overwhelmingly last month.
The congressional candidates did not back away from Trump’s support for the runoff. The former president held a brief tele-rally for Evans Monday night, calling him a “MAGA warrior.” Evans, who is the former chairman of the state ethics commission, made clear in the lead-up to Tuesday that he had no plans to “shy away” from Trump’s support.
“It’s bittersweet in some ways. I think it’s the ending of one chapter and the beginning of a new chapter,” Evans told supporters Tuesday night in Alpharetta, pledging to “continue to fight for the values that this country is based on.”
McCormick downplayed what Evans’ loss might say about the state of the Republican party.
“I’d like to say the people of Georgia got this right. They saw past the endorsements, which I think endorsements can get you started, but they’ll never finish you,” he told reporters. “And I think if you look at the races, they kind of define themselves.”
Jones stepped intothe national spotlight in 2020 as an outspoken supporter of Trump and the lifelong Democrat became a Republican darling among the Trump faithful after the former presidentdemanded Kemp resign for refusing to overturn his narrow 2020 Georgia election loss to President Joe Biden.
With “Trump Endorsed!” emblazoned on campaign banners hanging inside a Covington tavern Tuesday, a few dozen of his supporters found out early after polls closed that he’d lost his bid to become Republican nominee for the 10th Congressional District.
The Associated Press called the race slightly before 8 p.m., an hour after polls closed for the district that spans from northeast of Atlanta toward Augusta.
A subdued crowd became more energetic as Jones joined them for handshakes, hugs, andabriefconcessionspeechinsidethedowntownSocialGoatTavern. Jones pledged to remain involved in politics.
When asked why the crowd was behind him, Atlanta Tea Party co-founder Debbie Dooley did not hold back in her response: They were tired of the weak, pandering Republican officials.
“I’m going to work hard every day to make sure we elect conservatives who help this country back on the right track,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done and I can do as much out of office as in office. They can’t silence me, they can’t bury my passion.”
Georgia Recorder Senior Reporter Stanley Dunlap contributed to this report.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.
Former Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL) on Wednesday delivered an excoriating assessment of former President Donald Trump's actions in the wake of his loss in his 2020 election.
During a panel discussion, Rooney was asked about revelations that Trump campaign officials created phony electors that would be used to overturn the certified results in states he lost to President Joe Biden.
"That tells me that they would go to any length to destroy our American institution of democracy," Rooney said. "This reminds me so much of Chavez in Venezuela when 80 percent of his precincts reported exactly the same vote. I mean, that's not what our country is all about. It's about respecting the elections and process win, lose or draw."
Rooney was also asked about Sen. Ron Johnson's involvement in the fake electors scheme, and he said that he wasn't convinced by his denial of having knowledge of the plot.
"Part of the problem with the people who serve in those jobs is they throw the staff under the bus to protect themselves," he said. "I think it's absurd that he denied that he knew about it and sent the poor staffer to take that over to Pence's office."
On Tuesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Associated Press projected that former Georgia state Sen. Vernon Jones has lost his bid for the Republican nomination for Georgia's 10th Congressional District.
Jones, a former Democrat who left his party after proclaiming his support for former President Donald Trump, lost the nomination for the safely Republican seat to businessman Mike Collins — despite the former president's glowing endorsement for the seat.
Trump made the endorsement in February, saying “When it comes to Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, I have only one choice, and the man’s name is Vernon Jones, a very special person.”
Jones, a controversial figure who also faces a rape allegation, had originally planned a run for governor, attacking incumbent Republican Brian Kemp for not throwing out President Joe Biden's win in the state.
However, Trump pushed him out of that race in return for endorsing him in the congressional race, preferring instead to back former Sen. David Perdue for the gubernatorial contest.
Perdue, who also ran on Trump's conspiracy theories that the election was stolen, lost his bid as voters renominated Kemp for a second term in late May.
\u201c@GovKemp Several networks have now called the 10th District race for Mike Collins. A former GOP legislator writes of Jones: "What is left for Vernon to run for? I give him credit for staying in the spotlight -- which has always been his goal." #gapol\u201d
When Virginia “Ginni” Thomas sent an email to Arizona lawmakers in November 2020 asking them to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state, she did so using an advocacy platform that a Republican legislator-elect would go on to own, the Arizona Mirror has discovered.
FreeRoots, the email campaign service that makes it easy for people to send pre-written emails to elected officials that are created and promoted by activist groups was used by Thomas to encourage 29 Arizona lawmakers to use their “plenary powers” to choose Donald Trump over Joe Biden, according to reporting by the Washington Post.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are continuing to press Thomas to testify about her role in pressuring lawmakers to overturn the results of the election which included emails from the FreeRoots platform. Queen Creek Republican Jake Hoffman, who sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence asking him on January 5 to not accept the election results and was one of Arizona’s fake Trump electors, now seems to operate a website built on FreeRoots and has connections to the old platform’s owner.
The company is owned by Eric Berger, who has previously worked at the Heritage Foundation and is an operative of the secretive and powerful political Christian group, Council for National Policy.
But Berger is not the only one who is an operative of the group.
FreeRoots doesn’t send out emails like it once did, it just shows you a landing page that states they and their parent company GPX LLC are looking to “secure SaaS (software as a service) offerings.”
Enter AlignAct.com.
The campaign pages for AlignAct and FreeRoots look nearly identical when put side by side. Both companies offer the same service, an easy way for constituents to reach out to policymakers via email and phone and share the campaign on social media.
While FreeRoots appeared to try to court people from across the political spectrum at one point in time, with people like Chris Cuomo sharing campaigns aimed at pandemic assistance, AlignAct is aimed directly at conservatives.
The main landing page for AlignAct has campaigns directed at hot topics in the conservative ecosphere such as alleged vaccine passports, alleged grooming in schools and unfounded claims of election fraud.
A review of Hoffman’s financial disclosure statements for 2022 shows that the lawmaker lists AlignAct LLC along with two other “Align” related entities as a controlled business, meaning he owns 50% or more of the company. Hoffman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The visual similarities on the website are not the only connections, the Mirror has found.
On AlignAct’s website, users can download a worksheet to help them craft their campaign prior to creating one. Metadata on the Microsoft Word document lists Eric Berger’s email address under the author section.
After the Mirror reached out to both Hoffman and FreeRoots about the metadata contained within the document, the worksheet was changed to a .pdf and all metadata was scrubbed.
It is unclear how long Hoffman has been involved with FreeRoots and AlignAct. On his most recent financial disclosure statement, he lists “n/a” when asked what type of business activity AlignAct conducts, only describing it as “Public Engagement Software.”
Hoffman has a track record of using technology for conservative political activism. His company, Rally Forge, was found to have created “troll farms” alongside Turning Point USA ahead of the 2018 midterms, operating Facebook accounts that appeared to be Democrats but were in fact pushing conservative political messaging and disinformation.
Hoffman still lists the company in his financial disclosure statements.
While AlignAct is not a “troll farm” like Hoffman’s other venture, it is connected to a number of organizations that have been spreading disinformation on a variety of subjects.
The email sent by Thomas came from a campaign organized by Act for America which initially started its life as an anti-Muslim group founded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It’s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, has said that any practicing Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States.”
Thomas’ email to Arizona lawmakers came from an Act for America campaign that linked to a video urging lawmakers to use their “plenary powers” to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory and instead declare that Donald Trump won. Arizona law does not allow the legislature to take such an action.
Other organizations with ties to extremism have continued to use Hoffman’s new platform, such as America’s Frontline Doctors, whose members continue to push conspiracy theories and false treatments for COVID-19 as well as being embroiled in Jan. 6.
The anti-feminist, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ Eagle Forum also has a presence on the site, as do a number of Tea Party organizations. Their advocacy ranges from including border security to alleged election fraud to stopping the United Nations.
The Mirror created an account to better understand campaigns and their creation on the platform.
AlignAct allows for users to choose if they want to target federal, state, school board or “any other government figure.” The site also allows for “advocates” to add .csv files or choose from lists to “send their message to a strategic group of lawmakers in Congress!”
A donation feature is listed as coming soon. In his financial disclosure, Hoffman reported owning “AlignPay,” which he described as a “Payment Processing Solutions” business.
Those setting up a campaign can also check a box to ask “advocates” for their phone numbers so the campaign organizer can send them text messages at a later date.
Hoffman did not respond to questions about what exactly his role is in AlignAct, what his involvement is in the day-to-day operations and if he was involved with FreeRoots when Thomas sent her emails. However, a letter signed by Hoffman and others lists him as the “President and CEO” of another Align related initiative called “Align for Freedom.”
Berger also did not respond to a request for comment.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.
