North Dakota state Representative Brandon Prichard, a Republican who co-sponsored legislation that was passed into law that bans all gender-confirming surgeries and medication for minors in his state, went on an anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalist tirade including a call for state ordinances to declare “Jesus Christ is King.”
“Every conservative state should put into code that Jesus Christ is King and dedicate their state to Him. Force RINOs to say no to Jesus and then brutalize them in elections. We need a government of Christians, not fakers,” wrote Rep. Pritchard Sunday evening.
Pushback came swiftly, from politicos including former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, who responded saying, “Not in this country. Never. Our Constitution won’t allow it. And that’s a damn good thing. Shame on you.”
Rep. Pritchard’s remarks in recent days have taken on a similarly strong Christian nationalist theme.
“Here is a simple test to determine if you are conservative: Should the church of Satan or satanic temple be allowed the freedom to worship in the same way as Christians? If you answer yes, you need to rethink your claimed political identity because you are not conservative,” he wrote Friday.
Later that same day, he added, “Real conservatives will never put the constitution above natural law. The constitution is only useful insofar as it forces our government to limit power and pursue objective truth. It is a powerful means to an end, nothing more, nothing less.”
Over the weekend Pritchard issued a call to ban pornography, saying it “serves no positive benefit in society, destroys men, and treats women as objects.”
A social media account that appears to be for the adult site Just for Fans mocked him, writing on social media, “If you want to cancel an account, please contact our customer service department.”
Also over the weekend, Pritchard called for any Republican who thinks children should be allowed to attend drag shows to be “censured or expelled from the party.”
He then wrote he was “extremely disappointed” with North Dakota State University “over their decision to have two homecoming kings and NO homecoming queen. People will be mad when I introduce a bill next session to say that state-funded schools cannot pick homecoming royalty of the same sex, but I didn’t start the fight.”
Pritchard also declared, “All schools should have LGBTQ history taught and lesson one should be Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Monday morning the lawmaker claimed, “All I want is to buy some land, raise a family, and mind my own business. Everything changes when you realize the left is militantly against this existence and will do everything to destroy our families and religion. We must take power or risk being controlled, it’s simple.”
The North Dakota state constitution requires lawmakers to take an oath that reads: “‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of North Dakota; and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of _________ according to the best of my ability, so help me God’ (if an oath), (under pains and penalties of perjury) if an affirmation, and any other oath, declaration, or test may not be required as a qualification for any office or public trust.”
North Carolina's recently approved state budget would give legislators investigative powers that Democrats compared to a "secret police force" in Nazi Germany.
The Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations – or GovOps – would have the authority to investigate state and local government agencies, as well as any agency that received taxpayer funding, and public employees contacted by investigators would be required to keep those communications and requests for information confidential, reported WRAL-TV.
“We do not need a legislative spy agency," said state Sen. Graig Meyer (D-Orange), who compared the proposed investigative unit to the "Gestapo." "[It's a] dangerous level of dark and dangerous government."
Gov Ops staff would be authorized to enter any building owned or leased by a state or non-state entity without a warrant, and lawmakers say that would include private residences owned by contractors and subcontractors who run businesses from their homes.
“If you do business with the state, and your business is registered at your home, then partisan legislative staff from Gov Ops could go into your home without a warrant to get documents from your home, including computer files,” Meyer said. “I am upset because this is a level of intrusion of government that I don’t think the majority of us want whether we are Republican or Democrat.”
House speaker Tim Moore brushed aside Meyer's concerns as hyperbole, saying that lawmakers wanted to investigate state agencies for the government's slow response to Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018, which Republicans have blamed on Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
"People three years, four years after the hurricane still didn't have a home, and hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent," Moore said, "and those people were asking why. Their representatives were asking why, and so we asked why, and we got stonewalled a lot, so we need to have the ability to demand and insist that that information be provided.”
But Meyer insisted the investigative powers could easily be abused for partisan purposes.
“I don’t think I have ever publicly called the GOP leadership ‘authoritarian’ because that’s not a term I take lightly, but their approach to seizing power and cover up their tracks now fits the bill,” Meyer told Popular Information. “The hypotheticals of how Gov Ops power could be abused are endless. Verbal assurances of restraint are inadequate; we need clear guardrails in law.”
The legislature created the Gov Ops committee years ago to hold government institutions accountable, but unlike most watchdog groups it is dominated by Republican lawmakers, and partisan politics strongly influence its investigations -- such as a recent inquiry into diversity training programs at the University of North Carolina.
“For the life of me, I don’t understand why any government entity needs this much control on a partisan level,” said state Rep. Allison Dahle, a Wake County Democrat. “This is not a way for us to run our government, folks. This is a scary, scary step."
Donald Trump and his three eldest children are all scheduled to testify for both the defense and the prosecution in the $250 million New York fraud trial, but one other switch-hitter witness could prove to be the key to the case.
Rosemary Vrablic, who once advised Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as a private banker at Deutsche Bank AG, is expected to be called by both sides in the trial starting Monday, and Bloomberg columnist Tim O'Brien said her testimony should be highly intriguing.
Deutsche extended loans and sold debt for Trump during the late 1990s and 2000s in deals worth about $825 million to help jump-start its U.S. banking operations at a time when other lenders wouldn't touch the serial bankruptcy artist, and the bank stood by him after his casino company defaulted on $400 million in bonds and loaned him another $640 million for a Chicago development -- but he sued to avoid repaying after the 2008 financial crisis.
The bank finally stopped doing business with Trump after that, but Vrablic stepped in to rescue Trump and signed off on $300 million in loans before he ran for president in 2016, so O'Brien said it will be important to show how she answers questions about whether she knowingly loaned him money despite his misleading statements.
"Whatever course the questioning takes, Vrablic can’t say yes in exactly the same way that both the prosecution and defense need her to say it," O'Brien wrote. "Yet each side has called her as a witness, suggesting that each is optimistic it will get the testimony it seeks. In that regard, Vrablic, who resigned from Deutsche three years ago, is the embodiment of James’ entire case against Trump."
At his 2023 “Election Summit,” Mike Lindell, the exuberant pillow peddler turned election truther, was more manic than usual.
Lindell had assembled the most fervent election deniers from every state, mostly Trump cultists, at a conference center in Springfield, Mo., where, with great fanfare, he promised to unveil “The Plan” to prevent elections from being stolen.
Lindell’s audience was a who’s who of the election denial movement. The seats were filled with activists who had filed lawsuits challenging election results from 2020 and 2022, when the candidates they supported lost. Some had convinced a few county boards in presidential swing states such as Arizona to flout official procedures and not certify results until all of the ballots were counted by hand. There were publicity hounds, too — self-proclaimed experts on election technology, voter turnout, cyber-hacking and the hunting of suspected illegal voters. Many were right-wing media regulars who preached how Trump and his tribe were robbed, and that America’s elections cannot be trusted.
Now, in late 2023, their grievances had evolved into the realm of something that more closely resembled science fiction. Trumpian acolytes claimed that invisible hands had used the internet to sabotage computers managing voter rolls and counting votes. This narrative, and other conspiracy theories like it, were rejected in courtrooms across America by Republican and Democratic judges alike who ruled that Trump, and Trump-aligned candidates, presented no proof.
But Lindell, like other Trumpers, viewed this as a grand coverup. Even more infuriating for him: judges and journalists kept quoting election officials who insisted their counting systems were accurate and trustable – especially because they were not connected to the internet. That rationale pushed Lindell, a former crack addict who found God and became a self-made millionaire, to spend his fortune on a quest to prove otherwise.
And at his August summit, he could not keep himself from interrupting panelists to hype his plan and repeat his new war cry.
“They lied. They lied,” Lindell bellowed. “Every person lied! And every person followed that lie. Instead of wanting to look into things, they say, ‘Well, it’s not on the internet!’”
Lindell proceeded to unveil a series of electronic tools that he said would push the country to adopt a voting system that more closely resembled something out of the 19th century than the 21st: hand-marked paper ballots, in-person voting only on Election Day, all votes tallied by hand.
Lindell’s vision means ditching every computer used in conducting an election, which, literally, would revert to the late 1800s before voting machines were invented to try to prevent rigged results achieved by stuffing ballot boxes with phony paper ballots.
“I’m getting rid of these electronic voting machines to save our country,” Lindell told me in a follow-up interview. “I know exactly what I’m doing ... I’m making our sales pitch easy.”
‘The plan’
Lindell’s quest is decidedly quixotic, beyond the fringe to some, particularly in light of outsized voting-fraud claims made by right-wing election vigilantes, such as True the Vote, that have consistently withered under scrutiny and failed to materialize around Election Day.
But there is a method to Lindell’s mayhem, which is both relentless and accepted as bedrock truth by a subset of Trump’s most ardent and impressionable supporters. With this comes a real danger of inciting more threats to elections officials, distrust of elections, generally, and civil strife. Come 2024, thousands of like-minded local activists may be receiving deeply misinformed messages — via Lindell’s social media network that their local polls and county election headquarters might be under an active cyber-attack.
At the Springfield conference center, Lindell, the ringmaster, instructed everyone to look at the big screen. A video camera from a drone hovered above the building. The drone approached it and flew into its lobby, and then into the large meeting room. It landed on a table on the stage where Lindell sat in front of a banner with a badge-shaped “Election Crime Bureau” logo.
The room cheered as Lindell removed and displayed its cargo. He held up a small, dark gray, electronic gadget with a blue, wallet-size screen. The gadget, he said, would prove that computers and devices used at America’s polling places and election headquarters were connected to the internet, were going online and offline, and, thus, could be invisibly manipulated from afar by their political enemies – who he frequently called the “uni-party,” meaning anti-Trump Democrats and Republicans.
“What if I told you that there was a device that had been made for the first time in history that can tell you that the machine was online?” Lindell said. “And then you could tell what the device was, where it was at, what the name of it was – ES&S 60503 – and you knew the second it went online. Well, this is what we’ve been working on for over a year. And I’m going to show you.”
He played a short video with a British-accented narrator who described what he called the “Wireless Monitoring Device.”
As the narrator told it, this WMD — not to be confused with the common acronym for “weapon of mass destruction” — was more than a box listing WiFi signals like one’s phone. It would find and identify “access points,” “routers”, “printers,” “computers,” “phones” and other devices using WiFi. It would identify their makes, models and serial numbers. It would detect online commands that engaged polling station electronics.
It would not, however, interfere with data transmission. Rather, it would send, in less than a minute, all of the detected information to a nationwide hub – dubbed the “Election Crime Bureau.” This Election Crime Bureau, in turn, would send alerts and texts via an app to activists living near the surveilled sites.
“You get the gist of the reporting, right?” Lindell said. “You’re gonna sit in your easy chair on your phone or whatever. And you’re gonna see real-time crime coming. You’re gonna know what a box [election computer] goes live. You’re going to know when a router goes live, when a polling book goes live and everything, okay… We will now become a policing of our own election.”
Lindell would not reveal where the Election Crime Bureau was located nor who would be staffing it.
The app would also address another GOP obsession. Its “Identifying and Reporting Voter Discrepancies” feature would track suspected illegal voters, he said. (Lindell later told me it would use the most current voter roll data from states and send out an alert when it detected that that six or more people with same address on their voter registration file had voted.) This feature would allow activists to investigate, he told the hall, presumably by knocking on their doors and reporting their findings to authorities.
The WMD device and voter-fraud detection app would create a true picture of why elections in America were untrustworthy, because it relied on data from the only messengers that those in Trump circles should trust – patriots like himself, Lindell said. It would enable anyone in the country using his app to see what was really happening.
“You’ll be able to find out what’s going on in other places, immediately, in real time,” he said. “You’ll be able to report that, and send it out on all your social media and everything… The way we get around the media, and the way we communicate, [is] the communication hub.”
People in the room reacted to the spyware, especially the WMD device, with glee. Those watching and chatting online via sites such as Right Side Broadcasting Network — where I saw the debut – were mixed. Some praised it. Some were skeptical.
But the WMD’s potential to incite or magnify strife around upcoming elections became instantly clear. This was a Mike Lindell-backed broadcast system that fabricated voter fraud evidence, misinterpreted facts and sounded alarms.
Among Lindell’s circle, this mattered not. They relished the prospect of a new plan to confront their critics.
“This is intended to put the fear of God into the people who stole our elections,” said Jeff O’Donnell, the WMD’s inventor, in an August 18 webcast on Telegram, a popular right-wing social media platform. “I will guarantee you RINOs [Republicans in name only] and Democrats and foreign intelligence services are talking and they’re talking about how can we still steal elections? Now the light is going to be shined on these machines that we have been promised – cross our heart and hope to die – that these machines are not on the internet.”
A reality check
Lindell spoke to me for an hour in mid-September, even though I was reporting for Raw Story, which he called “horrible, horrible news.”
I repeatedly went over “The Plan,” which had evolved since August’s summit.
I also pushed back against his baseline assertion that officials were lying when they said that no election computer was connected to the internet. I have covered election administration for two decades. I have repeatedly heard the claim of no internet connection only in regard to the machines that handled ballots and counted votes.
I told Lindell that his WMD alerts would be going off everywhere because many states use online connections for e-pollbooks — which are often i-Pads – to make sure only registered voters get a ballot. In addition, almost every voting site has printers in case a voter needs a new ballot. In other words, his system would be flagging routine polling station operations as possible cyber-attacks.
He didn’t care.
“Here’s why we did this,” Lindell told me. “This has been a year to develop these. Here’s why. All my evidence in the beginning was all cyber evidence. Okay? All cyber.”
The short comment needs unpacking.
Basically, Trump and his allied candidates have lost in court since 2020 because they could not satisfy the judiciary’s rules of evidence. So, in a sense, they today find themselves where they started – pushing conspiracy theories of “cyber” plots that somehow explain their loss by proclaiming there are hidden hands fabricating voters and tilting vote counts.
Lindell took offense when I suggested that there was other data in voting system computers that would show that almost every voter who cast a ballot was qualified. With vote counts, I said, the results could be compared to paper ballots and other data at the starting line of the tabulation process. (A year ago, I co-wrote a short e-book describing those details with Duncan Buell, a retired computer scientist and county election commissioner from South Carolina.)
Again, Lindell balked, but noted that I was citing evidence he could not see, because in some states that information was not a public record. He then complained that the voting system industry was privatized. (To be fair, those complaints also have arisen in progressive circles.)
Moving on, I asked about the WMD itself. What’s the sale price? Where can someone get one?
Lindell said the WMD, which he is manufacturing, will be road tested in three states where senior state elections officials are Republicans: Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi. In mid-September, he sent out a fundraising email saying, “For now, it is our goal to put at least 1,000 tools in 3 key states and targeted counties across the country for this November’s down ballot races. The cost of each of these tools in this beginning phase is $600 a piece.”
Unlike at the summit where he suggested that activists could buy the WMD, Lindell said he would start by giving these devices to county officials so that they could see for themselves if their computers were being sabotaged from afar.
“What we’re going to be doing is distributing them first to the clerks that we know out there that want to have them [the WMD] themselves, because they’re running their elections and they need to know if these machines companies lied to them — which they did,” he said.
What Lindell hopes to prove in Louisiana is unclear. The state has some of the oldest and least-reliable voting machinery in the country – entirely paperless touchscreen computers that have been considered unreliable for years. Officials cannot recover lost votes on them. They do not allow recounts. Some Mississippi counties use the same paperless machines.
Lindell said Republican election officials in these states and others were as bad as Democrats. But he said that he had a new card to play. The Republican National Committee recently passed a resolution calling for the return to hand-marked paper ballots. It also calls for minimal early voting, minimal vote-by-mail options, hand counts and the avoidance of using computers wherever possible.
“Now, the Republicans, if they push back on us, they’re gonna stand out like a sore thumb,” he said. Lindell hoped that his WMD device and app-sparked pressure by local activists would push officials to dump their election computers and embrace a machinery-free process.
That answer allowed me to raise my top concern: whether his machine might provoke violence. I asked if he was worried that his app alerts might prompt some people “to get upset and go charging down to county headquarters and start banging on doors” — which happened in 2020, and was a prelude to threats by some Trump supporters to elections officials across the country.
Again, Lindell dismissed that concern.
“No, no,” he replied. “If you remember when I had people reach out for the cast-vote records [a public records campaign in 2022], that didn’t happen, did it? I’ve got a lot of calls to action. This isn’t ‘Go march on City Hall’… I would hope people would say, ‘We want these machines gone.’”
That response is not exactly accurate, either. A recent report by VoteBeat, an online journal, profiled an Arizona election worker who was threatened and driven to end her 33-year career by some of the same people following Lindell’s call for public records.
Lindell compared this entire effort to his early strategy around inventing and selling pillows.
“I reverse-engineered any reason why you would buy this pillow and it’s the same way with these election officials,” he said. “I want to take [away] any way they could say ‘no.’ Because right now the biggest reason they’re saying no is they think the machines are secure and they are not hooked up to the internet. And they’re just using that for an excuse.”
But there is a lot that Lindell is not thinking about.
In some states, officials may not be allowed to use federally uncertified equipment at voting sites and inside county headquarters. His app that tracks allegedly illegal voters could spawn vigilante squads that violate federal civil rights laws barring voter intimidation. His WMD alarm could test new post-2020 laws that criminalize any harassment or threats to election officials. And nobody can say if an emotional and enraged partisan will be provoked by a false claim of a cyber-attack and angrily head to a poll or their county headquarters.
After all, January 6 was a “peaceful protest,” not a bloody insurrection.
WASHINGTON – The House seems to have averted a government shutdown, for now, but no one’s cheering in the Capitol.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy had to punch, scratch and claw just to buy the nation an extra 45 days of government funding. In the process, he seems to have burned more bridges than he built, which portends more “chaos” ahead because the House is now overflowing with distrust.
“There's no trust. No trust on our side for them. No trust within their own conference for each other,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told Raw Story. “This is all about Kevin McCarthy remaining speaker for another day, no matter the consequences to the country.”
Early this afternoon, House attendants and Capitol Police officers were catching some college football – “Oh shit, touchdown,” an officer with one eye on the USC game cursed – while lawmakers were heading to the House floor to cast their first vote of the day. Confusion erupted.
“Don’t vote! Don’t vote!” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and others yelled to their Democratic colleagues. “Don’t vote!”
McCarthy and his GOP lieutenants had only just sprung the temporary government funding measure on Democrats.
“I literally ran from my house to get here as fast as possible – I’m trying to make sure there’s, like, no tricky shit in there,” Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) told Raw Story.
After the speaker walked away from the deal he had struck with President Joe Biden to avoid a default on US debt obligations back in May, Democrats scoured the funding measure. McCarthy’s word has lost its value on their side of the proverbial aisle.
“This kinda feels a little bit like spousal abuse,” Raw Story overheard Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) describing McCarthy’s weekend tactics to former Democratic leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) as they made their way to an impromptu Democratic Caucus meeting Saturday afternoon. “You know, ‘Okay honey, you’re not gonna do it anymore. I get it, you brought me flowers, you said nice things.’ Then the next week, you had one too many beers and I didn’t cook the chicken right.”
Democrats doubted the speaker now dared cross the Freedom Caucus and other far-right lawmakers, after spending the past couple weeks trying to appease the fringe wing of his conference by walking away from bipartisan solutions.
In recent government shutdown, it was clear what both sides wanted. For instance, the longest shutdown in American history – 34 days – occurred when Donald Trump was president and demanded funding for a wall with Mexico before he’d fund his own agencies. Democrats knew where Trump and the GOP stood, at the very least, which is no longer the case in Speaker McCarthy’s House.
“Even when we've had [previous] shutdowns, the issue has never been trust,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) told Raw Story. “I don't think he's a bad person. I think he's a decent person who put himself in a situation where he's coming across as untrustworthy.”
Cleaver says, “There is no trust,” because McCarthy seemed to cede the speaker’s gavel to the fringe right.
“The mega militants are the ones who were controlling things,” Cleaver said before the House passed the funding measure. “Even if we avert a complete shutdown, the Ukrainians are gonna feel let down, and the world is going to be concerned that the U.S. is in a meltdown. Nobody can celebrate this. Everybody loses, including the world.”
The open secret is, the measure that sailed through the House by wide bipartisan margins could have passed weeks ago, but the very moderate Democrats who threw McCarthy a lifeline then felt he snubbed them today.
“As someone who has so diligently worked on navigating bipartisan possibilities, to see how this was just handled, is not just disappointing but it's just disgusting,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) told Raw Story. “He tried to jam us – the very people that have been offering to be helpful if he was willing to be principled. That's really upsetting.”
In the end, 90 House Republicans opposed it, along with one Democrat, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), who opposed Ukraine aid being stripped from the bill.
While Democrats felt disrespected, the far-right felt betrayed.
“It's disappointing. We really developed some momentum,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told a scrum of reporters outside the Capitol Saturday.
Gaetz has threatened to challenge McCarthy’s speakership if he reached across the aisle, but ahead of the Saturday vote, he refused to say if his plan was going forward.
“Whether or not Kevin McCarthy faces a motion to vacate is entirely within his control, because all he had to do was comply with the agreement that he made with us in January, and putting this bill on the floor and passing it with Democrats would be such an obvious blatant clear violation of that,” Gaetz said.
Like Democrats, Gaetz too left the Capitol feeling burned by the speaker.
“We are at this point, because Kevin McCarthy has made multiple contradictory promises about the budget top line to different groups of people,” Gaetz said.
While Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) counts McCarthy as an ally, she’s upset Republicans pulled the pin but never threw the grenade.
“The American people don't give a damn about the government shutting down. They care about the government that they pay with their tax dollars actually serving them for once in this nation's history,” Greene told reporters outside the Capitol ahead of the final vote.
Sentiments like that had Democrats doubtful 'til the end.
“There’s so much chaos over there, it’s just frustrating,” Rep. Nanette Barragain (D-CA) complained to Raw Story.
Even as McCarthy and the GOP helped avert a shutdown, they seem to have also lobbed more fuel on the fire that is the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The House has become ungovernable. It's been one crisis after the next,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) told Raw Story. “It's an unsustainable dynamic.”
After a couple of weeks of performative legislative theatre, Torres says McCarthy ended up right where Democrats asked him to begin – which is also right where we’ll all be in 45 days.
“I never quite understood why the speaker felt the need to pander to the far right of his party and debase himself in front of the world, knowing that, inevitably, he would have to get to a bipartisan outcome,” Torres said. “We all knew the end of the story.”
The conservative activist who has ignited panics over anti-racism lessons and other elements of the so-called "woke" agenda hosted a social media debate aimed at eliminating the Republican Party's political rivals.
Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute fellow and close ally of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, commended "thoughtful points" made by participants and notably did not disagree when one suggested that conservatives align with a hypothetical white nationalist dictator “in order to destroy the power of the left," reported The Guardian.
“Let’s say a real white nationalist arose who had real political power," said former shampoo magnate and would-be "warlord" Charles Haywood, "and therefore [could] be of assistance against the left. I think that the answer is that you should cooperate with that person in order to destroy the power of the left.”
The debate Rufo hosted on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter, centered around Haywood's promotion of a strategy he calls "no enemies to the right," which urged conservatives not to criticize anyone on their own side -- including right-wing extremists.
Haywood responded to concerns about right-wing authoritarianism by praising it as something of a necessary evil.
"When we’re talking about people like Franco or Pinochet or even Salazar … they did kill people," Haywood said. "They killed people justly, they killed people unjustly, and that’s just a historical fact. But they saved a lot more people than they killed.”
Augusto Pinochet tortured, exiled or killed tens of thousands of people as military dictator of Chile, while Francisco Franco killed up to 200,000 people during his reign as dictator of Spain, and António de Oliveira Salazar cracked down on political opponents and imposed brutal colonial policies in Africa as head of Portugal’s authoritarian, one-party state.
“I think there is a room for engaging the dissident right and the establishment right," Rufo said at the conclusion of the debate. "I think we need to have a bridge between the two and engage in thoughtful dialogue.”
Rufo reportedly helped draft Florida's "Stop Woke Act" and was appointed by DeSantis to the the board of trustees of Florida’s New College, which he has helped transform from a traditional liberal arts college to a more conservative institution.
Haywood, who sold his Indianapolis-based shampoo manufacturing company Mansfield-King in 2020 and started Society for American Civic Renewal, which he describes as an “organizing device" to conduct "more-or-less open warfare with the federal government" in the eventuality that "central authority has broken down."
WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House plans to vote on a stopgap measure to keep the government open for the next month and a half.
Rules Committee chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) told reporters the measure would keep spending at current levels for 45 days, adding money to domestic disaster relief but no funding for Ukraine aide sought by the White House, according to the Washington Post.
"There’s not going to be a shutdown," one senior Republican lawmaker told Raw Story. "Before midnight we’ll pass a clean [continuing resolution] along with the Senate.”
It's not clear whether the bill would pass the House or Senate, but the government will shut down Sunday at 12:01 a.m. if an agreement isn't reached.
"[Democrats are poring over the measure to] see if they put any sneaky sh*t in there,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (R-AZ).
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has threatened to file a motion to vacate if House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) works with Democrats to pass a continuing resolution to extend current funding levels.
"I would say he's on very tenuous ground," Gaetz told reporters Saturday afternoon.
GOP leaders announced after a private meeting Saturday morning that they would move forward with the stopgap spending bill to give themselves more time to pass a full-year spending bill, but they will need support from a significant number of Democratic lawmakers to pass the temporary measure.
Senators are expected to vote Saturday afternoon on a bill that would fund the government through Nov. 17 and provide additional aid to Ukraine.
A whistleblower has accused Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' office of misconduct.
Rogers-based attorney Tom Mars sent a letter to state Sen. Jimmy Hickey (R-Texarkana) offering testimony from the whistleblower and documents to show the governor's office improperly altered and withheld public records related to its spending, reported News from the States.
"The letter says Mars’ client 'can provide clear and convincing evidence' that Sanders’ office altered and withheld documents that Little Rock attorney and blogger Matt Campbell of the Blue Hog Report requested in recent weeks," the website reported. "Campbell has been scrutinizing and reporting Sanders’ use of the Arkansas State Police airplane for in-state travel as well as her office’s spending habits and purchase of the lectern from an out-of-state events company with a state-issued credit card."
Hickey asked the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee on Wednesday to investigate the purchase of a $19,000 lectern and the retroactive shielding of government records after Sanders signed new exemptions for the Freedom of Information Act.
The whistleblower accused the governor's communications director Alexa Henning of altering a FOIA-accessible document to change the meaning and directed state officials not to share the original with the blogger and also withheld other documents that showed Amazon purchases by Sanders' office.
Sanders' staff also removed portions of FOIA-accessible email threads and directed an attorney who oversaw FOIA responses for the state to alter the contents of a flash drive for the governor's office.
The first of 19 co-defendants in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' RICO and election interference case against Donald Trump has pleaded guilty in what is being described as a "plea deal."
"Under the terms of an agreement with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's office, Hall pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit computer theft, conspiracy to commit computer trespass, conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy, and conspiracy to defraud the state," NBC News reports. "Under the terms of the deal, he's being sentenced to five years probation."
CNN previously reported "Hall, a bail bondsman and pro-Trump poll-watcher in Atlanta, spent hours inside a restricted area of the Coffee County elections office when voting systems were breached in January 2021. The breach was connected to efforts by pro-Trump conspiracy theorists to find voter fraud. Hall was captured on surveillance video at the office, on the day of the breach. He testified before the grand jury in Fulton County case and acknowledged that he gained access to a voting machine."
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and frequent MSNBC contributor, says Hall "was in the thick of things with Sidney Powell on Jan 7 for the Coffee County scheme involving voting machines. If he's cooperating, it's a bad sign for her."
Hall's plea deal "spells bad news for, among others, Sidney Powell," says former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, an NYU Law professor of law. Goodman posted a graphic showing the overlap in charges against Hall and Powell, which he called "alleged joint actions."
WASHINGTON – This week, when Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told the GOP presidential primary audience “America is not a racist country,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) says he heard a whistle loud and clear.
“That was Tim Scott completely pandering to the conservative Black audience to position himself to be Donald Trump's VP choice,” Bowman exclusively told Raw Story.
“Now the fact that he would want to be VP to a racist, fascist person is beyond me, but that was him pandering to the Sambo section of the Black community,” Bowman continued, using a derogatory term for people of African descent.
Since the debate, Scott has been widely praised by pundits as having a “breakout performance” and “raising his preacher voice” after he addressed race in America. While Scott still trails former President Donald Trump in national polls by significant margins, he’s running in the top five in Iowa, which conducts the nation’s first presidential caucus.
“I have been discriminated against, but America is not a racist country,” Scott told the audience. “Frankly the city on the hill needs a brand new leader, and I’m asking for your vote.”
There was nothing praiseworthy that Scott said on race, said Bowman – a member of “The Squad” with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other prominent progressives members of the Congressional Black Caucus. .
“White supremacy is not just the color of your skin, it's an ideology. It's a mindset. It’s colonial. So once white supremacy colonizes your mind, you will behave in accordance with white supremacy, so it's not just the color of your skin,” Bowman said.
Raw Story reached out to Scott’s campaign for a comment, but his team didn’t immediately respond.
All told, Bowman says these are scary days for African Americans.
“It’s very dangerous. All of it is dangerous – his whitewashing on that Republican stage, the book bans happening across the country, the attack on diversity, equity and inclusion,” Bowman says. “What's happening in Houston is deplorable. In terms of taking over the school district and closing libraries and opening up detention centers, so everything that's happening and scary. That's why we can't pull our punches, and we got to fight like hell.”
While Bowman “can't stomach an entire Republican debate,” he said he caught two segments and was disturbed by what conservative voters witnessed from the seven candidates who showed up.
“What I saw in two segments was everybody yelling and screaming,” Bowman said. “Pence looked terrible. And they tried to fit every Republican talking point into every answer, and they were talking so fast trying to do that – it was just gross.”
The debate did open Bowman’s eyes as to why Trump, who skipped the debate, has consistently been dominating GOP primary polls.
“And I said to myself, ‘no wonder Trump is the front runner. These people are terrible,’” Bowman said.
As for Trump’s absence – including the Fox Business moderators not even mentioning the 91 felony counts facing the former president – Bowman says the Republican Party is ruled by fear.
“If they criticize Trump, then you know the MAGA majority will turn on them, and they have no way of winning if the MAGA majority turns on,” Bowman said.
Bowman did leave with some takeaways.
“No one up there had the courage – well, I shouldn’t say no one. [Fmr. New Jersey] Gov. [Chris] Christie, you know, he's the one who has the courage to go after Trump, and he sounds reasonable when he speaks,” Bowman said. “Tim [Scott] sounds reasonable with a lot of his answers. Nikki [Haley] won the debate, I thought. The rest of them, I mean, they all were bad, but those three sound at least reasonable.”
Not reasonable enough to Bowman, who left his interview with Raw Story with what he says was a stomach ache.
“I don't know how you write this facial expression, but please write that,” Bowman said, his face contorting in disgust as he grimaced. “Worried. Yeah, grimacing. That literally turned my stomach. It's bad out here, man.”
Michael Alan Jones, a former Proud Boy and self-admitted paid FBI informant, is a free man after a federal judge issued a suspended sentence with two years of supervised release — a lighter-than-anticipated punishment — for illegally possessing a firearm as a felon.
Judge David G. Larimer cited a leg infection Jones developed as a reason for departing from the sentencing guideline range calling for 24-30 months in prison, as the government had requested. Jones’ infection nearly resulted in an amputation.
Jones’ lawyer cited his client’s work for the FBI as a paid informant as evidence of his reform. But Jones came to trial with an extensive history of extremist activity, including avowed white supremacist beliefs.
Left unexplained in the Rochester, N.Y., courtroom: Why was Jones and a friend driving around rural Genesee County with an AR-15, ammunition, crossbows, bolt-cutters and other suspicious items at the time when they were pulled over by sheriff’s deputies in March 2022?
“Make no mistake: Carrying around an AR-15 for no particular purpose is a grave matter,” Larimer told Jones during the sentencing in Rochester on Wednesday. “There’s no evidence that you used the gun for any illegal purpose. But I don’t know what you were doing driving around Genesee County with that weapon and the other things that you had.”
The 25-year-old Jones offered no explanation, although he made a public apology in court, saying, “I just want to do better tomorrow. All I can do is apologize for my past. Sorry, your honor.”
Jones will be required to report to a federal probation officer in North Carolina for two years. He did not respond for an interview forwarded through his lawyer.
Discussion during Jones’ sentencing about his extremist history was limited to the Proud Boys, with whom the defendant rallied in North Carolina in late 2020 and then in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021.
Jones was arrested and charged by D.C. Metropolitan police with violating curfew on Jan. 6, along with four other North Carolina Proud Boys.
But despite evidence uncovered by volunteer sleuths showing that he battled police on the west plaza and then went inside the Capitol, Jones has faced no federal charges to date for his role in the Jan. 6 attack.
Steven Slawinski, Jones’ lawyer, told the court on Wednesday that his client was cooperating with the FBI before Jan. 6.
“I believe it led to arrests, if I’m not mistaken.” Slawinski said. “And he was a paid informant for the FBI.”
Slawinski characterized Jones’ extremist activity as misplaced patriotism. He told the judge that his client’s military career was derailed two months into Basic Training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri when charges stemming from sexual contact with a minor caught up with the then-19-year-old. It ended his plans to become a military police officer.
“At the age of 19 or 20, he was really dispirited,” Slawinski said. “He felt like he had gotten a raw deal. He was young, and he fell into this group — this Proud Boys group — and he was sort of entranced by it.
“And because he couldn’t be a military policeman, he thought that he was protecting his country in a different way,” Slawinski added.
Slawinski also brought up Jones’ brief military service while addressing the firearms offense, noting the similarities between the AR-15 his client was caught with and M-16s, which military police use for training.
“So, it’s not an unnatural gun for somebody in the military to know how to handle,” Slawinski said.
Undiscussed details
Neither the defendant nor the government brought up Jones’ involvement with the Base and Patriot Front, two groups that are even more ideologically committed to white supremacy than the Proud Boys.
In a statement submitted to the court prior to sentencing, Slawinski wrote that the onset of Jones’ leg infection took place in December 2021 “when he sought treatment while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.”
In fact, according to internal chats leaked to Unicorn Riot, Jones — who posted under the name “Adam NC” — was hospitalized in Wytheville, Va. while returning from a Dec. 4, 2021 Patriot Front rally in Washington, D.C., where he coordinated radio communications for the white supremacist group.
Without mentioning Patriot Front specifically, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Moynihan alluded to Jones’ continued extremist activity after he supposedly renounced the Proud Boys. Moynihan told Larimer, the judge, that “the fact that what follows after that is he gets arrested for possessing this rifle” undercuts the claim that Jones matured.
Moynihan could not be reached for comment by Raw Story.
“It’s unfortunate that the court didn’t consider the breadth of Jones’ extremist activities, which could have been used as an aggravating factor,” Jeff Tischauser, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Raw Story. “It’s something that we’ve seen for the last 50 years — are prosecutors and the entire criminal justice system have not prosecuted white supremacist on multiple charges. There’s a history of not prosecuting white supremacists for their full crimes, but instead only narrowly prosecuting them for weapons charges.”
‘It was something not good’
During his sentencing on Wednesday, Jones told the judge that “my work with the FBI led me into this situation” while also faulting “falling in with the wrong crowd.”
The FBI did not respond to an inquiry from Raw Story.
But if, as Jones and his lawyer contend, Jones worked as a paid FBI informant, Jones’ claim that his informant work “led” to his arrest raises a question about whether his FBI handler was aware that he was traveling through rural New York with an assault rifle.
Police body-camera video obtained by the Batavian newspaper captured the traffic stop. In it, Jones and the 18-year-old passenger give contradictory statements, with neither man initially claiming ownership of a crossbow found in the car, and Jones denying there was a firearm in the vehicle before the deputies recovered the AR-15.
“There’s a certain sense of satisfaction that we know that we’re part of something larger, though we probably won’t ever know what that was,” Deputy Kenneth Quackenbush told the Batavian. “But at the end of the day, you know, we don’t know why they were here. And based on their behavior, it was something not good. And so, we were able to intervene in that and at least delay plans, if nothing else.”
The Batavian also obtained video of an investigator identified by the newspaper as an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force agent.
After noting that the location of the traffic stop was about 30-to-45 minutes east of the Rochester area, where the 18-year-old passenger lived, the Joint Terrorism Task Force agent asked Jones: “So, what brings you out this way?”
“We can talk about that another time,” Jones replied. “Nothing illegal, I promise…. I really would not mind talking to you more, but we kind of started getting into specifics on why I may or may not be here. You can understand why I’d be a little hesitant about that without a lawyer, right?”
During the interview, the Joint Terrorism Task Force agent specifically expressed concern about whether Jones knew anyone who might carry out an act of violence.
“Although they may not be committing any crimes, if they’re going to pose a threat of violence to the community or have plans to commit some kind of force, you know, against public property, whatever, I want to know about it,” the agent said. “If you have that information, I would appreciate it.”
Jones replied: “I don’t think there are any immediate concerns. Like, I don’t think there’s anything that’s gonna pop up in the next day or two before talking to a lawyer that would actually give you cause for concern. At least, not to my knowledge.”
Tischauser said that based on the tools found in the car, which included bolt-cutters and knives, it’s possible that Jones and the 18-year-old friend were planning to cut through a fence to access a restricted area and carry out an act of vandalism. Patriot Front members are expected to participate in propaganda efforts that include stickering, dropping banners and spray-painting. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Patriot Front members have “destroyed dozens of murals, statues and other public displays that celebrate Black culture, LGBTQ pride or commemorate victims of police murder and racially targeted violence.”
“When you see the weapons, you could speculate on what they would use that for,” Tischauser told Raw Story. “But with the bolt-cutters and hunting knives, I’ve seen Patriot Front propaganda videos with unidentified Patriot Front members with bolt-cutters and knives using them to cut through fencing on interstates and cover billboards with racist propaganda.”
Tischauser said the revelation that Jones was a paid FBI informant might explain “why he got a slap on the wrist.” The use of informants to build cases against extremists presents an ethical quandary, he added.
“If I’m being targeted by this guy, I want him locked up,” he said. “But if he’s providing information that might bring down some of these groups, that’s a trade I’m willing to take.
“Ideally, the prosecutors are thinking this through and trying to do what’s in the best interest of community justice,” Tischauser added. “The outcome we saw in Jones’ case does not serve community justice. But there might be something I don’t know yet.”
Slawinski, Jones’ lawyer, suggested a cleaner resolution to Jones story.
“Michael Jones took responsibility for his actions, and has left the Proud Boys,” Slawinski told Raw Story. “He is happy with the result and is looking forward to getting on with his young life.”
U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) turned the tables on Republicans during the House Oversight Committee’s first impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden by sarcastically referring to “all those Biden towers all over the world where foreign partnerships were formed and influence was used here in the US.”
It forced the witness to correct him and point out he actually meant ex-President Donald Trump.
The hearing, chaired by Rep. Jim Comer (R-KY), was widely seen as another failed effort by House Republicans against President Biden. It took a turn when Republicans’ own witness, law professor and Fox News media contributor Jonathan Turley, said he saw no evidence that warrants an impeachment of the president.
Meanwhile, Connelly’s scathing remarks quickly spread across social media, garnering hundreds of thousands of views in just hours.
“Um, well let’s see,” Connolly began, slowly, “I’m looking at, um, I heard again, um, I think it was professor Hurley talk about – because he’s not prejudging of course, but he’s just suggesting that maybe we want to look into criminal activity like obstruction, fraud, and abuse of power.”
“So let’s take fraud. So shouldn’t we be concerned that a New York judge just found President Biden’s organization committing fraud every year for the last 10 or 15 years,” Connolly continued, “and that, under the Martin law, that Biden organization is now subject to dismemberment and dismantlement because of the fraudulent activity?”
“That should be of concern to Mr. Trump,” the witness, Professor Michael Gerhardt, replied.
“Mr. Trump again!” Connolly sarcastically exclaimed, feigning surprise. “And in this case, we’re not speculating, a judge actually made that ruling?”
“Yes sir,” Gerhardt replied.
"Should we be concerned about the personal – I mean, while we’re at it, while we’re loading on – shouldn’t we be concerned about the personal behavior of the President, for example, President Trump or President Biden, being found guilty of sexual assault and defamation associated with that activity, again in a civil court?”
“We should be concerned as it related to Mr. Trump,” Gerhardt again replied.
“With Mr. Trump again?” Connolly again said mockingly.
“I just think that one of the reasons we’re here is because somebody has been indicted in four different locales, on four different sets of concerns, with I think 81, 91 actual counts, and has been found guilty in two civil proceedings, one involving sexual behavior and one on actual corporate fraudulent activity. And we don’t want to talk about any of that. We want to speculate about discredited testimony from discredited witnesses,” Connolly added.
“Distract, deflect, dissemble,” Connolly added. “I think this hearing’s all about ‘look over here, not over there.’”
“I’ve heard concerns about ‘branding,'” Connolly continued. “So, shouldn’t we be concerned about all those Biden towers all over the world where foreign partnerships were formed and influence was used here in the United States? I’ve seen these towers in Indonesia, in the Philippines, in Turkey. I even saw one in Chicago. Shouldn’t that be a source of concern of this committee in terms of influence, both foreign and domestic, when Biden became president?”
“If there were such things as ‘Biden building,'” Gerhardt said.
“Well, was there anyone who did have them?” Connolly asked. “Well, could you tell us? Just give me the name.”
“I think we’re talking about Mr. Trump,” Gerhardt replied.
“So, when President Biden appointed his son to manage U.S. foreign policy, both in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East peace, by the way, a son who couldn’t qualify for getting a security clearance, but President Biden apparently granted it to Hunter anyhow – and then, after leaving the White House, getting a $2 billion deal … shouldn’t that be of concern to us that maybe a sweetheart deal occurred with the blessing of the president, with foreign money, and shouldn’t we look into Hunter Biden for that, given the fact that he handled Middle East peace in the White House?”
“It should have been a concern with President Trump and his son-in-law,” Gerhardt said.
“Oh Trump. I got that wrong again,” snarked Connolly.
INDIANAPOLIS — Just outside the offices of the Indiana Department of Education and the Indiana Supreme Court clerk, in this deep-red state’s seat of government, Lucien Greaves began his concert.
“Welcome to this celebration of Satan at the Indiana state capitol,” Greaves said.
Soon, the band Satanic Planet launched into the song “Exorcism,” beginning a 20-minute performance that delighted, disturbed, puzzled and amused the diverse audience of about 250 in the ornate building.
In attendance: Satanists in regalia, Christians, cops and state workers on their lunch break.
The concert was inspired by alleged Christian nationalist Sean Feucht, whose hour-plus “Let Us Worship” event in May was staged inside Indiana’s capitol at the invitation of Lt. Governor Suzanne Crouch. During the event, Feucht prayed over Crouch, who’s running for the Republican nomination for governor.
That offended Greaves, who called it a “full-on revival” and an egregious violation of the separation of church and state. He wanted a turn. And he had his faith behind him: In 2019, the Internal Revenue Service recognized the Satanic Temple as a religion, at least for tax purposes.
After initial resistance from the state of Indiana and the intervention of The Satanic Temple’s lawyer, Satanic Planet received equal time for its “Let Us Burn” tour. The Satanic Temple often asserts itself in situations where it believes church-state separation has been breached.
“We do not believe in either God or the Devil as supernatural forces,” says an introduction to the group. “We bow to no god or gods and celebrate our outsider status. To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions.”
Lucien Greaves and Shiva Honey sing Thursday during Satantic Planet's concert inside Indiana's state capitol building. Mark Alesia/Raw Story
So, around 12:30 p.m. on a Thursday, at a place where former Vice President Mike Pence served as governor and signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Satantic Planet performed “Unbaptism” as audience members approached the band for an “unbaptism” ritual.
School field trips frequently tour the capitol, opened in 1888, but there were no field trips on this day.
A spokesman for Crouch, who was scheduled to be in Fort Wayne, Ind., said she would not comment on the performance. Last month, Crouch told Raw Story through a spokesman, “As a person of faith, I’m not supportive of this event.”
With the American and state of Indiana flags behind him, Greaves told the audience why the band was here.
“Earlier this year the capitol was made available for Christian theocrat Sean Feucht who performed here under the mistaken notion that one religious viewpoint should dominate the public square,” Greaves said. “But we are a nation built on religious liberty and pluralism, and when Suzanne Crouch opened the doors for Feucht, she opened the doors for Satanic Planet.”
Gunta Irbe of Indianapolis was among those who showed up to pray quietly.
“Jesus is my Lord and Savior and I believe what the Bible says,” Irbe said. “There’s God and Jesus, and Satan, and I believe Satan has power, but Jesus has more, and I want Jesus to win in my city.”
Irbe said her husband heard about the event on a Christian website. She said the site recommended that people show up, pray and not engage with Satanists.
Some people apparently didn’t get that message. A member of a Christian group dressed in fatigues shouted throughout the event, toeing a line that law enforcement appeared to have drawn for where he could stand. Another person from the group walked quietly with a sign promoting Christianity.
Greaves grinned throughout the performance, sometimes switching to a smirk toward a protester.
After the unbaptism, Greaves and the audience shouted, “Hail Satan,” raising an arm to make the sign of the horn, which in sports would be a salute to the University of Texas Longhorns.
Lucien Greaves and Shiva Honey sing Thursday during Satantic Planet's concert inside Indiana's state capitol building. Mark Alesia/Raw Story