Politicus Pod

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Centrism is often mistaken in our modern political lexicon for those who want to work together through bipartisanship. Centrism is not the same as moderation, and when centrism is propped up by billionaires and sending the message of both sides do it, it is the sort of lie that is a danger to the nation.

Morals and decency are not partisan. Having facts and information is not enough. Please consider becoming a subscriber to support news with a heart, and a mission to hold power to account.At every turn, the conservative movement is putting women and children in their crosshairs, enabling mass shootings in schools and domestic violence attackers to be armed with guns, at the same time as they are inciting their supporters to threaten violence against people with whom they disagree. It has gotten so bad it is now identifiable as a voluntary violation of morals. Moral depravity: “A state of voluntary violation of morals, values, customs, or manners leading to an aberrant style of personality commonly known as antisocial psychopathy.” Also known as the dark rot corrupting the U.S. government from within.The Right to Life Outweighs the Right to Bear Arms“The right to life surely outweighs the right to bear arms,” a Sky News reporter pushed a fleeing Tennessee Republican Representative Andy Ogles. There was nothing but silence in response. The right to life surely outweighs the right to bear arms? No, it does not, in effect. Nashville Republican Representative Andy Ogles, whose district — thanks to Tennessee Republicans redrawing the district lines last year to gerrymander the red state even further — includes Covenant, the Christian school in which there was a horrific mass shooting just two days ago on Monday March the 27, ran away when confronted by a Sky News reporter (it took someone from the UK to push like this) with the notion: “The right to life surely outweighs the right to bear arms… Does the right to life outweigh the right to bear arms?”This confrontation on Tuesday occurred during questioning about Ogles’ obscene family Christmas photo (above), which included his children and wife posed around a tree holding guns with the caption, “"MERRY CHRISTMAS! The Ogles Family," the post reads, adding in quotes: "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."This is the Republican position: Guns deserve a place of honor with all that’s good. Over children.SKY NEWS TO OGLES: “Do you regret your family gun photo? Why did you take it down from your Facebook feed now?” Rep. @AndyOgles(R) - who reps the district #CovenantSchool is in - didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but says he doesn’t regret it.Moral depravity, you ask? Why yes. This man, Congressman Andy Ogles, took nearly $25,000 he claimed in a GoFundME was meant for a child burial garden and he won’t say what he did with it. He used the photo of a stillborn child to grift, “promising a place for burial of babies with benches for families, life-size statue of Jesus. It never happened, and he won’t say where money went.” The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Contagion of CowardiceA contagion of cowardice spread among Republican lawmakers like Speaker McCarthy and Andy Ogles on Tuesday as they ran away from the press, loath to answer questions about their anti-safety, gun-fetishizing stances after the mass shooting in Nashville took the lives of 6 people, including 3 children.The 28 year-old-school shooter legally bought the seven firearms that were hidden at home even though that shooter, Audrey Hale, was under care for an emotional disorder, according to Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has refused to answer questions about the Nashville shooting and when reporters tried to ask him anything about guns, he ran away.McCarthy was asked at least two questions about Nashville including, “should there be any gun restrictions at all?” He responded by not even looking at the reporters and walking away. Speaker McCarthy gave the weakest imaginable response to the question.“Republicans like McCarthy appear to lack the courage to state their belief that sacrificing the lives of young children is acceptable in defense of an unlimited Second Amendment,” Jason Easley wrote in PoliticusUSA.Moral depravity is the themeWe have devolved into a state of moral depravity due to the dark money corruption that runs the U.S. government. This money attracts lawmakers who have no moral center, people like leader of the Republican Party Donald Trump, let’s say. Or George Santos. Or Andy Ogles. A party led by someone who bragged he could shoot someone and not lose voters does not attract the best people.These lawmakers are why children are being murdered in their classrooms. They vote against abortion putting women and young girls’ lives and health at risk, but enable mass slaughter of actual children. No lawmaker who votes against gun control should be allowed to argue against abortion without pushback from a free press.It’s absurd and obscene position, given that the leading cause of death for children in the United States is guns, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.This means that guns have more rights than children do, largely because of the party that calls themselves “pro-life.” The Bill of Rights to the Constitution states in the 14th amendment (why is it that we so rarely hear about any amendments but the second?), “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”It’s clear that guns pose a threat to the right to life. Yet an inanimate object has more rights than human beings, including children, in the United States.Hiding behind concern for fetusesWhat kind of movement shields itself under the cover of concern for fetuses, while actively ensuring that dangerous people who have threatened women and children are allowed access to as many weapons as they please? It’s the same movement that works in the dark, has corrupted our judicial system and is judge shopping to overturn rulings they don’t like, and has seemingly bought off so called “representatives” in Congress.The violence isn’t an accidentA knife-wielding Trump supporter threatened a woman and her children outside of the Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday.Trump took his authoritarian circus show to Waco, but claimed he wasn’t signaling what a trip to Waco symbolizes. Meanwhile, his followers got the messages he sent, either from his social media postings or his rally rantings, or both.A Trump supporter was arrested on Tuesday for threatening a mother and children with knife outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, which began preparing over a week ago for a possible indictment against the man known for inciting violence. Angela Rucker, 39, was holding a yellow sign with black lettering that said, “I’m With Trump Are You?” when she got embroiled in an argument with two women, one with two small kids and the other with a child in a stroller, according to Lucien Chalfen, spokesman for the New York State Office of Court Administration.As the verbal dispute flared up, Rucker whipped out a knife from her hip pocket and started waving it at the woman in a threatening way, the spokesman added. A letter sent from Florida to the Manhattan DA contained white powder and threatened to kill the DA. The rally Trump held also glorified violence and elevated people in prison for their involvement in the domestic terrorist attack of January 6th into martyrs. It’s partisan. But it shouldn’t be.Basic safety is now partisan. In the summer of 2022 after mass shootings at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school and a Buffalo, New York supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood, 34 Republican senators voted against the bipartisan gun safety bill, which was itself brought by Republican Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis and Democratic Senators Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema (who is no longer a Democrat).If some of those names have you side-eying this bill, you wouldn’t be wrong. But in this country, we take the crumbs we can get when it comes to the Right to Life.Fourteen House Republicans finally got on board with Democrats to pass first major federal gun safety legislation in decades, which did not ban any weapons and was a country mile short of what Americans want in polls and indeed what President Biden and the Democrats pushed for. While Mitch McConnell and 14 Republican Senators joined Democrats for this watered down barely asking for a

This is Sarah Jones on the Politicus Pod for PoliticusUSA’s The Daily.Make sure you subscribe to our Substack so you don’t miss any episodes.There’s a troubling theme coalescing on the Right that points to being anti-U.S. defense and anti-U.S. national security. Let’s break it down.Tucker Carlson, McCarthy, all Republicans know what really happened on Jan 6th. Why are they pushing lies that not only whitewash the attack but make the next one more likely?TreasonTHEY KNOW. They know this is all bad for the United States and that it looks like treason.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. In a Washington Post piece on the internal Fox News correspondence being released in recent in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the most watched conservative media outlet, we found out that Fox called what Trump did “treason”: Raffel (Josh Raffel, former Trump White House aid) flagged to Shah a tweet noting that Trump’s daily schedule now carried with it the vague assurance that the president would make “many calls and have many meetings” and “work from early in the morning until late in the evening.”“I think what they meant is The President will wake up early and commit many, many crimes including but not limited to obstruction of justice, attempted fraud, and treason in an effort to conduct a coup. Then he’ll fly to a rally in furtherance of the same,” Raffel wrote. “It’s really disheartening,” Shah responded. “The only clear cut evidence for voter fraud is the failed attempts from Trump.”“Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson wrote in a Nov. 17 text.“Might wanna address this, but this stuff is so f------ insane. Vote rigging to the tune of millions? C’mon,” (senior vice president of Fox Corp. Raj Shah, who had also served as a senior aide in Trump’s White House) wrote.As for what they really think of their viewers to whom they lie regularly? “Cousin f***ing” “terrorists”:Carlson’s producer, Alex Pfeiffer, responded: “It is so insane but our viewers believe it so addressing again how her stupid Venezuela affidavit isn’t proof might insult them.”“Like negotiating with terrorists,” (Pfeiffer) added, “but especially dumb ones. Cousin f----- types not saudi royalty.”McCarthyRepublican barely Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has opened multiple doors to threaten our security, from Marjorie Taylor Green to Tucker Carlson to his refusal to comply with the bipartisan House January 6 Select Committee’s subpoenas about his knowledge regarding the Republican Presidential-led attempted coup attack on the United States Capitol.Now Kevin McCarthy is in charge of a very small Republican majority in the House, and he is using that power to weaponize the government to hold misleading hearings about imaginary conservative grievances that are sometimes a clear case of “DARVO”: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, and give 1/6 security footage to a partisan liar to launder for Republicans.In one of those hearings, Marjorie Taylor Greene divulged classified information.A Problem Like Marjorie McCarthy has ensured that Marjorie Taylor Greene is in the position to continue to endanger the U.S.. Rep. Greene didn’t realize that Ukraine was in Europe. She was just so sure, you see.“I’ve never seen Putin actually show in any detail his plans to invade Europe. No one has shown me that. So I don’t believe the lies that I’m being told about this.”Well. Putin didn’t need to detail it, did he. Because he has already invaded. This fact is a lie, according to Greene, who clearly didn’t know Ukraine is the second-largest European country. For a self-asserted expert on borders, she also seems clueless that Ukraine borders Russia. Perhaps a map would be helpful for the homeland security expert?That’s right. The Georgia Republican is on the Homeland Security Committee, specifically the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability and the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement. Yet:During a border hearing, after being told that the information she was divulging was given to the Chief in a secure SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) and not something he thought he should share, Greene dismissed him with: “I understand Chief Ortiz, but I’m not gonna be confidential because I think people deserve to know.”This is made all the worse because the “explosive device” MTG thinks justifies her sharing classified information when she feels like it was actually…DIRT. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.“During a Jan. briefing, leadership was notified that Agents found a duct-taped ball filled with sand that wasn't deemed a threat to agents/public.”Sure, Chief Ortiz, but you know who is a threat to agents and the public? That’s right. Marjorie Taylor Greene.Laundering Russian PRBefore we get to this next part, it’s important to put the lie in context. On Thursday, the Polish interior minister said the nine people arrested in Poland as part of what it says is a Russian spy ring had received orders from Russia “to carry out propaganda activities in order to destabilize Polish-Ukrainian relations, incite and arouse hostile sentiments toward NATO countries in Poland, and to attack the Polish government’s policy toward Ukraine.”Sound familiar? Yep. Here we go to Fox News to get the latest Russian talking points from Tucker Carlson’s show.Guest Douglas MacGregor sold some hardcore Russian propaganda on Tucker Carlson’s anti-U.S. TV program on Wednesday night, falsely claiming that “this war was not started by Russia.”“The truth is coming out that this war was not started by Russia. That Russia begged us not to try and drag Ukraine into NATO. We ignored Russia. And Russia made it very clear that they were going to defend their national interest. All they wanted was neutrality for Ukraine.”Russia is committing war crimesRussia invaded Ukraine illegally. Russia is also committing war crimes.Yes, war crimes, which isn’t new. A top United Nations human rights inquiry in 2022 found Russia to be committing war crimes, and the latest report goes so far as to recommend Russia be investigated for crimes against humanity.And while in 2022 they found two instances of Ukrainian forces responsible for human rights violations, they found “significantly larger numbers of instances that amount to war crimes on the part of the Russian Federation.” Meanwhile, Russia is engaging in torture, unlawfully transferring children and deporting them, separating them from their families, raping children as young as 4 years old, the willful killings of civilians, rape and other sexual violence. And again, they invaded a sovereign nation.Isolationists?The Republican Party is suddenly led by “isolationists”… but only when it comes to Ukraine. That’s the generous way of discussing an appeasement strategy, but since it only applies to Russia, it would be misleading to leave it there. This is not an isolationist party, save for some members of the Libertarian wing. The Republican Party has always been the party of war hawks, pro-defense to the point of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq on a false premise. We discussed the Republican Russian backstory and Ron DeSantis joining the growing collection of weak Republican Putin slaves on Tuesday. A dozen or so Republican Senators found the courage to speak out against DeSantis’ Ukraine stance, showing the growing division in the party between the Trump Russia wing and the patriot wing of pro-small d democracy Republicans.Pushing Jan 6th LiesMcCarthy still has not released the 1/6 security footage for the public to see it in an unedited format. Why?Instead, McCarthy chose to even further elevate Tucker Carlson, the aforementioned Russian propagandist, by giving Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of January 6th security footage with which to amplify 1/6 lies. Some members of Congress have condemned McCarthy’s actions, but words don’t matter to politicians who cater to the No Shame constituency. Tucker has willfully and deceptively edited the footage in an attempt to create the false impression that the Trump terrorists were just “sightseers.” These “sightseers” were a part of the attack on the U.S. Capitol working to stop the certification of the 2020 election. That is not what a sightseer does. January 6th: What It Was Really Like(trigger warnings for violence) FBI Director Christopher Wray labeled the January 6th a domestic terrorist attack.In March of 2021, Wray “bluntly labeled the January riot at the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism” Tuesday and warned of a rapidly growing threat of homegrown violent extremism that law enforcement is scrambling to confront through thousands of investigations.”Tucker Carlson, Speaker McCarthy, all of the Republicans on the Homeland Security committee, they all know this. Why are they pushing lies that not only whitewash the attack but make the next one more likely?Here’s a video, with the warning that it’s violent and disturbing:Here is the truth from people who were actually there, instead of someone vaccinated and protected in a Fox News studio getting his makeup done so he could lie more to his viewers."It was like something from a medieval b

MAGA Republicans Pose Threat to U.S. National Security and FreedomMany MAGA Republicans have positioned themselves as weak and even impotent on the fundamental issue of basic freedom, even while the U.S. is effectively at war.The United States is, effectively, at war. Except it’s a different kind of war so far. One in which we don’t have troops on the ground.  It’s an indirect conflict. We, along with our closest allies, are in a fight against rising global fascism as represented most horrifically right now by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  But the threat is bigger than Ukraine, and that’s why we and our closest allies are pouring so many resources into helping Ukraine defend itself. Putin isn’t going to stop at Ukraine. He has an avaricious, predatory outlook and is driven by revenge against countries he feels have weakened and wronged Russia.MAGA Republicans continue to attack President Biden and even call for his impeachment as he takes brave steps to help Ukraine win this bloody, tragic, genocidal war Russia is waging on them in their home country.It’s past time wondering if this is a feature, not a bug, given the connections and money flowing from Russia to MAGA Republicans, their leader, and even Republican Senate funds and the NRA. There’s a pattern that is simply too blatant to ignore, but at the same time there is not evidence that someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Speaker Kevin McCarthy is working for Putin or Russian oligarchs.But they are both, for some reason, doing their best to assist Putin in his goal to undermine democracy.  Their latest effort being to give Tucker Carlson, himself an ongoing mouthpiece for Russian propaganda, access to footage from the January 6th terrorist attack, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pointed out puts everyone in that building at risk because it shows, for example, where all of the security cameras are.“(T)he Senate strongly objects to the release of this sensitive security footage to Tucker Carlson & Fox News. The speaker— nor any elected official— does not have the right to jeopardize the safety of senators nor Senate & Capitol staff for their own political purposes.”State of PlayGlobally, every weak spot in the fabric of democracy is strained as encroaching authoritarianism keeps pushing at the vulnerable spots. This is why it’s so important that we somehow get Republicans on board to act as a unified coalition on this one issue.Russia pulled out of the START treaty on Wednesday, the last arms control treaty between the United States and Russia. Together, the two countries possess “roughly 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons with a stockpile of over 8,000 between them.”Foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen wrote on her Diplomatic Substack, “Putin holds arms treaty ‘hostage’ to war on Ukraine,” noting, “World powers that previously compartmentalized arms control from their other disagreements now no longer appear willing to do so, putting solutions to limit the threat of nuclear proliferation in jeopardy, on Iran and globally.”“It’s terrible,” one European official who works on arms control said, about the end of Western/Russian cooperation on curbing Iran’s nuclear program. “The work of twenty years somehow lost.”That’s pretty alarming. Alarming enough that anyone with an ounce of care for the basic concept of freedom should be grabbing the hands of whoever is nearest to help hold the line. But that’s not happening here, in the United States. Too many MAGA Republicans are undermining the United States’ unity, with Marjorie Taylor Greene even calling for secession in the form of a national divorce.World War III Threats… Can’t Ukraine Just Give In For “Peace”?One of Russia’s strongest talking points to get people to parrot their propaganda is that if Ukraine would just give in, there would be peace and if they don’t, there will be World War III.This idea has taken root on both the far Left and not so far Right, and is repeated constantly on conservative media, Elon Musk repeats it on Twitter, which he owns now. Most of you probably know this isn’t workable, but let’s examine what’s going on right now because the stakes have been raised by Russia with the START treaty suspension and threats to other countries.This conflict, which has given rise to the bloodiest war since World War II, started in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Ukraine was a divided state and Russia took advantage of this by arming separatists. (This might seem little too close to home for comfort for those of us paying attention to Putin’s successful efforts at dividing this country - see MTG’s “divorce” call.) Ukraine represents power to Russia, power and the image of being a superpower. Putin wants it back because Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is aligned with western-style democracy, which makes a stark contrast to Putin’s autocratic regime in Russia. There are additional interests for Russia in terms of trade, energy, and Putin’s feeling that NATO’s post–Cold War expansion is a humiliation.“During one year of the full-scale invasion Russia launched almost 5000 missiles and made almost 3500 airstrikes against Ukraine. Russia also made almost 1100 attacks using drones, the Ukrainian General Staff reported,” the Kyiv Post reported. Russia is threatening GermanyDuring a rally led by Putin on Wednesday,  Russians sang that they are “defending the fatherland by raising the red flag over Berlin.”The Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine warned: “Attention, Germany! Russians sing about "Russian flag over Berlin" at Luzhniki stadium.”Russia, the country that invaded the sovereign state of Ukraine, calls Ukrainians “demons” and claims that missiles are flying as a “cure for sick Ukrainians.”“Meanwhile in Mordor: Putin led another rally, full of gruesome narratives. Listen to the words of their songs, about their arms covered in blood up to their elbows and sending missiles ‘to cure sick Ukrainians,’ whom they also described as "demons,’” Russian media monitor Julia Davis wrote above this clip.ChinaThere is also growing concern over China’s support for Russia’s military.MexicoJust as an example of how the world is at war with encroaching authoritarianism,  the President of Mexico’s majority in Congress passed “legal changes to gut Mexico's independent elections body in what most experts see as the country's most consequential democratic setback in recent decades.”If that sounds a lot like what Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida, based on the model set by Viktor Orbán  of Hungary, that’s because it is.Bowing Down to Global ThreatThe president of the United States is very busy upholding freedom. Naturally, MAGA Republicans are outraged.As Republicans war within their own party about support for Ukraine and the more vocal members attack President Biden for his show of strength and support for Ukraine via his iconic visit, Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz introduced a bill to cease support, citing Ukraine “fatigue” (if you Google this phrase, you’ll see that they’re running with it as hard as they can with former Rush Limbaugh replacement host using that phrase as the title to an opinion piece claiming that Ukraine fatigue is “building on the horizon”). Speaker McCarthy is doing that McCarthy dance, the one many have tried before him and failed, of not taking a public side but even then he still made sure to make it known that Republicans wouldn’t rubber stamp any aide for Ukraine.McCarthy, who barely won his gavel after a record setting 15 rounds of votes, hit Biden with an accusation that his actions are “a bit too late.” So, they don’t support Ukraine funds and they hate Biden’s trip to Ukraine, but also, Biden is late and not doing enough. Yikes. Over in the Senate, the grown up in the room happens to be the same Senator who single-handedly stole a Supreme Court seat from President Obama, and thus can be held responsible for a lot of the resulting current loss of freedoms in this country (from abortion to state’s rights to make gun laws).Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to change the narrative from the weak isolationist voices in his party to his own pronouncement, “Reports about the death of Republican support for strong American leadership in the world have been greatly exaggerated.”Well. Even Mitch McConnell can’t bring Marjorie Taylor Greene to heel to pretend to support a Democratic president purely because it looks bad on the global stage to have Republicans not supporting freedom and American leadership.Former Republican Representative Adam Kinszinger wrote of Greene’s secession push, “In the old days a politician would be kicked out for oppos

Every president faces tests, Joe Biden more than many as he came into office during a global pandemic and had to hit the ground running to make up for lost time saving lives. While he was at it, he also managed to bake into the response concern for the working class with the Amerian Rescue Plan as well as the legacy shaping Infrastructure and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.President Biden faced the tests of a nation at war with a virus and came out on top in terms of job growth because of the choices he made and the way he handled the crises.You won’t hear nearly as much about an economy that is working for The People as you did about the stock market and inflation before the midterms.This failure to inform people about what is working is just as dangerous as the failure to hold power accountable, because the goal should be an informed electorate. How can people know how to vote or who is looking out for their interests if the media doesn’t center their interests and explain policies that are impacting them.The media is supposed to be a guardian for the people. A guardian is “a defender, protector, or keeper.” A DEFENDER of the people should most certainly care when job numbers make history in a positive way. The latest job numbers came out on Friday and were more affirmation that President Biden is overseeing incredible job growth. Outgoing Chief of Staff Ron Klain proudly shared, “More jobs created in two years, than in ANY President's four year term.” This is the kind of thing all administrations push. But is it real? It turns out that this time, it is real. The unemployment rate is at its lowest level since 1969.“Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 517,000 in January, and the unemployment rate changed little at 3.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.”Even the New York Times is a little (relatively) breathless, “After several months of cooling, the economy added far more jobs than economists anticipated. The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since 1969.” They even managed to squeeze out the begruding admission that “January’s job growth is a boost for Biden.”My goodness. What’s next? Will this good news cover the front pages and be preached from on high TV screens around the country? Of course not.While multiple intersecting factors are responsible for job numbers and some of the job growth can be attributed to pandemic recovery jobs, creating good paying jobs for people including those without a college degree has been a priority of Joe Biden’s throughout his career, and certainly as president.This priority was baked into all of his administration’s policy pushes. In his April 2021 address to a Joint Session of Congress, Biden stumped for his American Jobs Act, explaining that the jobs would pay well and "can't be outsourced," before adding that nearly 90% of them won't require a college degree. "The American Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America.”According to a Senate manufacturing report, as of October, 2022 we had added 696,000 manufacturing jobs in the 20 months since President Joe Biden came into office, whereas in the 20 months preceding the coronavirus pandemic, we had added just 92,000 manufacturing jobs. Why does this matter if you’re not in manufacturing? Another way to look at building back the blue-collar work force is as an important protection for democracy itself. It’s easy to draw people in to conspiracies and propaganda when they’re scared about the future. Unemployment can play a role in temporary depression and is therefore creates a vulnerability ripe for the sort of psyops we continue to see from bad actors like the Russians.“Any honest look at the data over the last 30 + years and it's pretty clear that it is only the Democratic Party that is good at this capitalism thing. Dems = growth, lower deficits progress Rs = recession, higher deficits, decline,” Simon Rosenberg wrote.It should be noted that Rosenberg is the founder of a liberal think tank and advocacy group in D.C. But he does bring receipts.Job growth is historically better under Democrats, he notes: “33.8m jobs = 16 yrs Clinton Obama 12.1m jobs = 2 yrs Biden 1.9m jobs = 16 yrs Bush Bush Trump 6 times more jobs created in 2 yrs under Biden then under last 3 GOP Presidents *COMBINED*.”The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.To be fair, if we expand out, we see that job growth was pretty amazing under Reagan as well. But that was a long time ago and ended in January of 1989. Since Reagan left office, no Republican has come close to Democrats for job growth. So while it’s always tricky to ascribe job growth to a president’s policies and there are reasons to give the first part of an administration to the previous inhabitant, the numbers show that job growth has done better under Democrats than Republicans since Reagan left office in 1989, that is, for 34 years Democrats have significantly outperformed Republicans on job growth and of course, unemployment is better right now than it’s been in 53 years.Here’s a chart from the Washington Post on a 2021 piece titled: “Trump will have the worst jobs record in modern U.S. history. It’s not just the pandemic” that shows Reagan’s history but also recent Republican presidents in the bottom portion of the chart:Critics have pointed out that the job growth is benefiting from jobs coming back after the pandemic. And this is accurate. But Rosenberg points out that the U.S. is doing better than others: Also, Factcheck for January 2023 writes “The economy added 10.7 million jobs under Biden, putting the total 1.2 million higher than before the pandemic.”And those manufacturing jobs numbers were a comparison of Trump to Biden from before the pandemic for Trump. The numbers back up the claims. So why don’t we hear about this huge success for the people on par with how we heard about inflation than this tepid “This will be a boost for Biden.” Framing important economic numbers like this as political for the President isn’t ideal, because the most important thing is how is the economy impacting The People.One aspect of the way financial news is framed in this country is that it is presented from the point of view of Biden’s political prospects, wealthy investors, big business, the stock market and earnings. This explanation from the Times is a bit of what I mean, “By raising interest rates — on Wednesday, Fed officials did so for the eighth time in a year — policymakers hope to force businesses to pull back on their spending, including hiring.”If businesses should pull back on their spending, why don’t we focus on pushing them not to do stock buybacks instead of suggesting that hiring workers is the issue? Of course, paying workers is spending, but the entire frame is warped by late-stage capitalism. Big Oil had another record year of profits. Exxon reported a $56 billion net profit in 2022. The industry as a whole set a record with $1 trillion in profits. “Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and Shell all reported record profits in 2022… Global oil companies have rebounded since the pandemic to post their highest ever profits since people started using petroleum.”Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in floor remarks Thursday, “And what did oil companies do with this tsunami of cash? They could have prioritized paying their workers better. They did not.They could have made transformative investments in new clean tech and help push the frontier in clean energy, which we all know is coming, but they did not.Or maybe best of all, they could have lowered gas prices, but they did not!You know what the oil companies did? This is just as galling, galling! They rewarded shareholders by implementing stock buybacks, at near record levels.”This is the important takeaway: We have normalized corporate greed while we continue to suggest that workers getting a raise or even a job is hampering the economy. Somehow our culture has so bought into the corporate line, to being simps for Big Business, that media seems to present news from the point of view of Big Money instead of from the point of view of The People. That’s what we are trying to do here, at PoliticusUSA’s The Daily, with your help. We see our mission as being a voice for The People, not beholden to power in D.C. or Think Tanks or advertisers or a board. None of those entities need help being heard. It’s The People who are not being heard and the media is a big player in that formula that is working so well for the wea

“Their plan is to literally kill people. Please please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”A lead investigator for the 1/6 House Select Committee determined that the inadequate defense of the U.S Capitol wasn’t due to a lack of knowledge, but rather a failure to act on intelligence they received. They had knowledge but chose not to act.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The January 6th Committee had to make choices about what to focus on in its televised hearings, and they choose to focus on Trump world’s role in inciting the attempted self-coup/domestic terrorist attack.But they left out some vital information about the failure of law enforcement to act on a large volume of advance tips. They left this out of the final report, as well, and that raises a lot of questions that we aren’t likely to get answers to so long as Republicans are in charge of the House.“The House Jan. 6 committee concluded that the FBI and other federal security agencies could have prevented a violent mob from overrunning the Capitol had they acted on the large volume of intelligence collected beforehand, the chief investigator told NBC News in an exclusive interview — a judgment the committee left out of its televised hearings and final report.”Heaphy said he agrees with what Washington, D.C.’s National Guard commander, William Walker, told the committee: The response would have been much different, before and during the attack, “if these protesters were Black and brown.”They determined that the inadequate defense of the U.S Capitol wasn’t due to a lack of knowledge, but rather a failure to ACT on intelligence they had that warned extremists were coming to Washington to use violence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.The lead investigator told NBC: “There was a lot of advance intelligence about law enforcement, about carrying weapons, about the vulnerability of the Capitol. The intel in advance was pretty specific, and it was enough, in our view, for law enforcement to have done a better job.”Here’s an example of the kinds of tips that got ignored. An FBI tipster in December 2020, reported under types of tips: “Attempted coup/terrorist attack on Jan 6th.”“They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped. They believe that since the election was ‘stolen’ that it’s their constitutional right to overtake the government and during this coup no US laws apply ... Their plan is to literally kill people. Please please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This tipster also linked to the actual plans for the attack. The tipster said they planned to overtake the White House and that they would be armed.The tip form asks if there are known associates. The tipster has an answer for that, too.  “Donald Trump - Proud Boys believe that Trump called them to action by telling them to go to DC on Jan 6th and act "wild". The group that is organizing the attack is the Proud Boys terrorist group.”Even for an agency that must get a lot of reports, this seems like a huge miss. They must have a flag set up for “domestic terrorism” tips.But that there was that memo reported in the fall of 2021 demonstrating how Homeland Security suddenly decided to control and restrict the flow of “election-related threats” to law enforcement ahead of 1/6.CNN reported on September 14, 2021:“A few months before rioters stormed the US Capitol, the Department of Homeland Security restricted the flow of open-source intelligence reports about “election-related threats” to law enforcement, citing First Amendment concerns, according to documents reviewed by CNN.”That staffer — the guy who sent the order to restrict the flow of election-related threats — he also served on the House January 6th Committee.“Joseph Maher, who changed the protocols around disseminating open-source information as head of DHS’ intelligence arm, is now on the staff of the House Select Committee on January 6.”We discussed the suppression of information and downplaying of troubling connections between Trump and the Russians in the Russia investigation last week. One aspect that we are still going to dig into more is the failure of law enforcement, given the arrest for the former head of counterintelligence at the New York FBI office, where “tips went to die,” for allegedly working for the Russian he was supposed to have been investigating prior to his retirement.Let’s take that established suppression of information that was damaging to Trump and view it along with this lead investigator saying, “The intel in advance was pretty specific, and it was enough, in our view, for law enforcement to have done a better job.”We know that under Trump the Department of Homeland Security deliberately and with no legitimate reason cited — especially given that administration’s contempt for the First Amendment — restricted, as in stopped the flow, of intel relating to domestic terrorism threats and election-related violence.The 1/6 Committee put Maher in charge of investigating intelligence dissemination failures that occurred, as critics pointed out in the CNN piece, “under his leadership.” The 1/6 Committee says Maher recused himself from these matters, but it’s fair to ask why they chose not to share this vital part of their findings, given that the safety of Americans is quite literally hanging in the balance. So this is two times that we know of, and not even including the scourge of Trump protector Bill Barr weaponizing the DOJ for Trump and hiding potential criminal tips about Trump’s financial dealings, in which someone has been put in a position of oversight or investigation into matters in which they are possibly compromised or at the very least, incapable of impartiality. Government is always full of corruption, like all entities, and that is why oversight is so important. But it’s also true that Trump took this corruption to heretofore unseen heights. His ability to corrupt the DOJ, FBI offices, and the DHS should be investigated and prioritized with legislation to keep from happening again.The Republican-led House won’t do it, but don’t let their lack of patriotism stop you from demanding that they do their job.Thank you for reading The Daily. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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It’s been a shocking and dismaying week for our national security and now Republicans are kicking Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) off of the intel committee in part because, in my opinion, because he is an expert on dealings with Russia.Schiff said on Wednesday: I could just say that Mr. McCarthy’s rationalizations, justifications keep shifting. The cardinal sin appears to be that I led the impeachment of his master in Mar-a-Lago, for withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid in Ukraine, a nation at war with Russia in order to extort that country into helping Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. We proved those facts and got the first bipartisan vote in the Senate in history to remove a president. Kevin McCarthy calls that a hoax. Well, it was not a hoax.Indeed. In the last week, ex-FBI counterintelligence chief in New York Charles McGonigal was arrested for allegedly working for the Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, whom he was supposed to be investigating. He is now under indictment for his ties to this oligarch, with charges including money laundering and conspiring to help these oligarchs evade Russian sanctions.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.McGonigal was appointed in 2010 by Robert Mueller (yes that one), and then James Comey (yes, that one) elevated him weeks before 2016 election.Deripaska is the same person who had employed Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chief. Manafort secretly worked for the Russian billionaire earning millions helping him promote Russian interests.Photo by Jørgen Håland on UnsplashWhy did it take this long for our government to arrest ex-FBI counterintelligence chief in New York Charles McGonigal? He retired from the FBI in 2018. It’s 2023.That rather astonishing discovery of the former FBI chief who seemingly betrayed his country to Russia didn’t happen in a vacuum, though. Globally, this story is quite frankly disconcerting.In the past week, there was a shocking accusation by a whistleblower that MI5 refused to investigate a Russian spy's “infiltration” of the conservative Tory party in Britain, news that "a vast cache of hacked emails shows that, under the leadership of Rishi Sunak, the UK Treasury issued special licenses in 2021 to let the oligarch override sanctions and launch an aggressive legal campaign against a journalist in the London courts."“The UK government helped the boss of Russia’s murderous mercenary army to circumvent its own sanctions and launch a targeted legal attack on a British journalist, openDemocracy can reveal.”Rishi Sunak has been the conservative Prime Minister since October, 2022 when the head of lettuce lasted longer than Liz Truss. He previously held two cabinet positions under conservative Boris Johnson.  Also, the European Court of Human Rights is demanding a response from the British government over a legal claim by opponents accusing it of failing to investigate alleged Russian interference in elections and referendums like Brexit.The thread between all of these stories is Russians-to-conservatives. Now Timothy Snyder*, a Yale professor whose course on Ukraine I am watching on YouTube and highly recommend, put the Russia story in badly needed context (full thread below sources):Reconsider how the FBI treated the Trump-Putin connection in 2016. Trump and other Republicans screamed that the FBI had overreached. In retrospect, it seems the exact opposite took place. The issue of Russian influence was framed in a way convenient for Russia and Trump.The FBI investigation, Crossfire Hurricane, focused on the narrow issue of personal connections between the Trump campaign and Russians. It missed Russia's cyber attacks and the social media campaign, which, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, won the election for Trump.(Trump’s former campaign manager Paul) Manafort worked for Deripaska, the same Russian oligarch to whom McGonigal is linked, between 2006 and 2009. Manafort's assignment was to soften up the U.S for Russian influence. He promised "a model that can greatly benefit the Putin government."Informed people said at the time: this sort of thing was supposed to go through the FBI counter-intelligence section in New York, where tips went to die. That is where McGonigal was in charge.We need to understand why the FBI failed in 2016 to address the essence of an ongoing Russian influence operation. The character of that operation suggests that it would have been the responsibility of an FBI section whose head is now accused of taking Russian money.Right after the McGonigal story broke, Kevin McCarthy ejected Adam Schiff from the House intelligence committee. Schiff is expert on Russian influence operations. It exhibits carelessness about national security to exclude him. It is downright suspicious to exclude him now.Back in June 2016, Kevin McCarthy expressed his suspicion that Donald Trump was under Putin's influence. He and other Republican members concluded that the risk of an embarrassment to their party was more important than American security.Schiff told the Council on Foreign Relations in April of last year,  “I think Russia is a declining power, but like a lot of wounded animals it’s still very dangerous.”The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t be gaslit anymore.Russia is a danger to western democracy. They’ve been working hard to undermine the United States of America, and Republicans, from leadership on down, have been willing to help them. Those who might be doing so unwittingly certainly have had every opportunity to know better. Those who have simply remained silent are also now complicit. In 2019, a Senate investigation determined: “The congressional probe into the National Rifle Association’s relationship with Russia shows a U.S. tax-exempt organization working as a conduit to provide Russian officials access to Republicans with the quid pro quo of ‘lucrative personal business opportunities.’”I pointed out then, “Looking for that quid pro quo Republicans claim doesn’t exist? Here it is, but with the Russians and elected officials of the NRA variety.”Since then, Russia has spent millions spreading anti-vax conspiracies just to harm small d democracy, including paying influencers to lie and fear-monger about the vaccines.Republicans and conservative activists mock journalists who bring up Russia because they want to shut down the discussion. But this discussion needs to be had. We all need a government that actually puts “America first” –- but the Republican Party is not currently on board with that most basic and primitive premise of patriotism.This is Sarah Jones on the Politicus Pod for PoliticusUSA’s The Daily. If you’re tired of billionaires controlling the news you see and you want to support independent news that puts The People first, please subscribe to our Substack.Sources:* https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/25/influencers-say-russia-linked-pr-agency-asked-them-to-disparage-pfizer-vaccine* https://archive.is/hhMHk* https://www.politicususa.com/2019/09/27/senate-nra-russia.html* https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-chairman-adam-schiff-2* https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/prigozhin-government-russia-ukraine-hack-libel-slapp/* https://www.politicususa.com/2023/01/25/adam-schiff-torches-kevin-mccarthy-after-being-blocked-from-intel-committee.html* https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1618309363084718080.html*Full thread by Snyder:In April 2016, I broke the story of Trump and Putin, using Russian open sources. Afterwards, I heard vague intimations that something was awry in the FBI in New York, specifically counter-intelligence and cyber. We now have a suggestion as to why. 0/20The person who led the relevant section, Charles McGonigal, has just been charged with taking money from the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Follow this thread to see just how this connects to the victory of Trump, the Russian war in Ukraine, and U.S. national security. 1/20The reason I was thinking about Trump & Putin in 2016 was a pattern. Russia had sought to control Ukraine, using social media, money, & a pliable head of state. Russia backed Trump the way that it had backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in the hopes of soft control 2/20Trump & Yanukovych were similar figures: interested in money, & in power to make or shield money. And therefore vulnerable partners for Putin. They also shared a political advisor: Paul Manafort. He worked for Yanukovych from 2005-2015, taking over Trump's campaign in 2016. 3/20You might remember Manafort's ties to Russia from 2016. He (and Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.) met with Russians in June 2016 in Trump Tower as part of, as the broker of the mee

Vive la liberté! A French union threatened to cut off electricity to lawmakers and billionaires before a strike on Thursday.This story about a strike in France is relevant to American politics because a secure working class is the best antidote to encroaching fascism, and nothing has solidified security for workers better than unions. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new podcasts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.It’s particularly relevant right now, as MAGA Republicans threaten to stop paying our nation’s bills if they aren’t allowed to cut social safety nets for working people. Instead of reacting to Republican hypocrisy and grift for the top 1% as if shame would stop them, it’s time to give them something to react to by demanding fairness. The People can do this, if they stand together.Today is the “first day of mobilization” in France as Unions are protesting French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise the retirement age in France from 62 to 64.Retiring at age 62 with a pension probably sounds pretty great to most Americans. But this story is about how we get what we settle for and we settle for what we are conditioned to accept.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This strike is being posed as a test of weakening support for unions who have struggled in France, much like here, to convince workers to strike."I suggest they also go see the nice properties, the nice castles of billionaires," Philippe Martinez, leader of France's second-largest trade union, is reported to have said on Wednesday according to Reuters.Indeed, workers did strike and march today across the country. They halted trains and cut electricity in protest to Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64:The stoppages are a major test for President Emmanuel Macron, who said on Thursday that his pension reform plan, which opinion polls show is hugely unpopular, was "just and responsible" and had to be carried out."It's salaries and pensions that must be increased, not the retirement age," read one large banner carried by workers that opened the protest march in Tours, in western France.The strike “led to a substantial fall in electricity output and halted deliveries from refineries” on Thursday. In fact, the rate of striking workers that are a part of the Electric and Gas Industries union exceeded 50% by midday, a spokesperson for the union told Reuters.This is also a story about working people battling entrenched propaganda that is directly against their best interests and does more to mislead than to inform. Much as it is here, this hit to workers is being called “pension reform.” And the problem starts right there.Reform is defined as, “make changes in (something, typically a social, political, or economic institution or practice) in order to improve it.”It’s not reform. It’s not going to “improve” the pension plan for workers. It’s theft from working people. It’s an attack on security. It’s not reform.The BBC explained how the French system works:Under the French system, very few people have personal pension plans linked to capital investments.Instead, the pensions of those who are retired are paid from the same common fund into which those in work are contributing every month. Workers know they will benefit from the same treatment when they retire.All the country's unions - including so-called "reformist" unions that the government had hoped to win to its side - have condemned the measure, as have the left-wing and far-right oppositions in the National Assembly.Macron will likely get support from right-leaning factions. Let’s ask ourselves about all of the propaganda we’ve been told about our Social Security, is anyone else doing better? It turns out we aren’t even in the top ten. Of the top countries with the best pensions in 2022, the U.S. is not on the list and neither is France:1. Iceland2. Netherlands3. Denmark4. Israel5. Finland6. Australia7. Norway8. Sweden9. Singapore10. U.K: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern IrelandSo workers in France are already at a disadvantage compared to many other countries. The United States ranked 20th on the list. It had an overall grade of C+ and a score of 63.9.Want to guess how Iceland pays for that top rating? It’s doing what the unions suggested the French government do, which is to say the programs are income-related. “(T)he amount can decrease if you have other income and be canceled entirely if your income exceeds a certain amount.”The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Unions are basically collective bargaining, which is a way of gathering enough power to take a stand against the powers setting the working conditions to secure higher wages and better benefits.The arguments against unions read like our entire culture, simping for billionaires. This is the editor’s guild’s take on the against arguments, which is obviously coming from a union but cuts through the dishonestly too well to dismiss: “The anti-union arguments management makes tend to cluster around three major themes: (1) employees should trust management to do what's best for everyone, without management having to formally negotiate with employees; (2) the union can't be trusted; and (3) sticking with the status quo is better than the uncertainty ...”In the U.S., while the Republican Party stands most defiantly against unions – including rejecting thousands of good paying jobs for their residents, like Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin just got busted for doing by reportedly halting a Ford plant in Virginia according to sources – our entire culture is anti-union, anti-worker, and pro-big corporation, pro-billionaire.By the way, that plant in Virginia “location is in Pittsylvania County, near Danville, and is one of the poorest areas of Virginia. The $3.5 billion plant would have created an estimated 2,500 jobs in Southside Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Danville Register & Bee reported Monday.”And who can forget in 2014 when South Carolina’s then Governor Republican Nikki Haley announced that Detroit’s Big Three automakers should look elsewhere because “she discourages companies from building new facilities in South Carolina if they are planning to bring a union with them.”Even her Democratic opponent at the time couldn’t muster up full-throated support for unions, saying he thought the state should “remain a right-to-work state where workers are free to decide whether to join unions or not.”Right to work states do not in effect offer choices as their main function.Nurses are on strike right now in Britain as they struggle to pay their own bills and ambulance workers are planning to go on strike. “The NHS faces prospect of biggest walkout in its history” the headlines tell us. Exhausted and struggling to pay bills, British nurses go on strike.They’re being maligned with the same kind of anti-worker propaganda we get here:‘Striking workers are being greedy and their demands are unaffordable’“Where is [Rishi Sunak’s] big effort to mobilise the country against these greedy union extremists?” – Douglas Murray, the Sun, 8 December“Inflation-matching or inflation-busting pay rises are unaffordable … There simply isn’t the money.” Transport secretary, Mark Harper, Sky News, 27 NovemberNotice how none of these arguments take the issues and complaints and even crisis level emergency facing the healthcare system into account? They all place the burden right back on the workers. In this case, it’s nurses who after nearly three years of a global pandemic, are also struggling to make their own rent. That’s not acceptable.The headlines against the nurses in Britain tell us a lot about

Have you noticed how establishment media doesn’t label January 6th a domestic terrorist attack, in spite of FBI Director Wray specifically labeling it as such in a hearing? Or the way social media goes out of its way to appease Republicans who violate its rules, only to have them turn around and accuse the same media of catering to liberals? It’s called working the ref. Republicans have been doing this for decades, accusing the media of being liberal even as media has been consolidated by right wing power brokers, billionaires, and far right demagogues.In order to appease the right, media enforcement has to gaslight the rest of us about known facts and obvious threats to our own safety, including the proliferation of gun-fetishizing incels, racially-radicalized failures intent on harming people of color to excuse their own inadequacies, and anti-government terrorists who are so angry about being asked to wear a thin paper mask that they plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor. We might note that many of these types also identify as Trumpzis, and they were represented on Jan 6th, and many were wearing a mask to hide their identity.The recent far right attempt to elevate the “Twitter files” to mean the opposite of what the evidence provided suggested worked in so far as it sucked up the oxygen in the room so it seemed few noticed the story being told by the evidence, and so conservatives are nursing their self-pity and victim status in what is a typical abuse manipulation tactic comprised of deny, attack, reverse victim and offender (DARVO).They do it because it works. It works on establishment corporate media and it works on establishment corporate social media.


Photo by little plant on UnsplashTech Dirt pointed out we “learned is that Trump and other Republican leaders were actually given special treatment over the years, because they tended to violate policies way more often than Democrats. But, knowing that Republicans would flop to the ground and fake injury any time they were faced with even having to take the slightest bit of responsibility for violating policies, all the big social media platforms went above and beyond to better protect the high profile accounts of Republican rule breakers.”The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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“Do you want to have more blood on your hands?” a Twitter safety employee asked top Twitter executive Del Harvey when Harvey questioned whether Trump could inspire more violence in the insurrection’s aftermath.The exchange, relayed by former Twitter employees to the Jan. 6 committee, was included in a summary of investigative findings prepared by committee staff and obtained by Rolling Stone, “most of which were not included in the committee’s final report.”Gee.“Twitter reportedly told the committee that it instituted the draft coded incitement to violence policy once rioters made it inside the Capitol, but former employees said the on-the-fly implementation was vague, confused, and ad hoc. The result of the delay, they argued, meant that “members of the Safety Policy Team were manually taking down violent tweets, including those including ‘#ExecuteMikePence,’ using only the Twitter search function.”“The sheer scale of Republican post-election rage paralyzed decision makers at Twitter and Facebook, who feared political reprisals if they took strong action.”In a jointly published Just Security/ Tech Policy Press piece adding context for what didn’t make it into that report that Rolling Stone obtained, investigators wrote that right-wing networks played a key role in driving the spread of content behind the attack:“While Trump played an instrumental role in driving the attack, right-wing networks – comprised of everyone from mainstream talking heads to extremist armed groups – drove the mass spread of conspiracy theories and far-right content on social media. “That spread could not have occurred without corporate policies of social media platforms and other enterprises that allowed dangerous rhetoric to proliferate online and ultimately contribute to violence in the real world. As investigators for the Committee, we were charged with examining the role these factors played in the events of January 6th. In this essay, we aim to call attention to the role that social media activity irrefutably played in the insurrection and to highlight the continuing threats to American democracy, as well as to share lessons learned that may help prevent future political violence.”We have long been told that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were just catering to their bottom line in allowing the proliferation of hate. But this additional reporting shows that it was not their profit they had in mind. It was fear of Republicans.

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“While it is possible this is true more generally, our investigation found little direct evidence for this motivation in the context of the 2020 election. Advocates for bold action within these companies – such as Facebook’s “break glass” measures or Twitter’s policies for handling implicit incitement to violence – were more likely to meet resistance for political reasons than explicitly financial ones.”Why does it matter? Because even when Trump is gone, the rising threat of domestic terrorism will not go away. By focusing on Trump as the driver, the real power behind him, such as the elites driving the Republican Party platform, get off scot-free to rinse and repeat, just as Trump was a repeat on steroids of Sarah Palin’s hate.“While skeptics of social media’s role in the attack might say that the causal relationship between these tools and the violence itself is tenuous, this is a strawman argument. Regardless of whether online activity is a direct cause of extremist violence, social media platforms are responsible for conducting due diligence against abuse of their services.”“The events of January 6th resulted from many interrelated factors, including increasingly radical rhetoric from leading conservative voices both on- and offline, and an alarming uptick in people who believe political violence to be a viable solution.These threats to U.S. democracy are likely to outlive Trump’s political relevance, and they were not outside the purview of the Committee…Our findings suggest that the intersection between social media and violent extremism remains pervasive and, in fact, a central component of the Internet.”And lastly, because facts matter, “One clear conclusion from our investigation is that proponents of the recently released “Twitter Files,” who claim that platform suspensions of the former President are evidence of anti-conservative bias, have it completely backward. Platforms did not hold Trump to a higher standard by removing his account after January 6th. Rather, for years they wrote rules to avoid holding hi

Have you noticed how establishment media doesn’t label January 6th a domestic terrorist attack, in spite of FBI Director Wray specifically labeling it as such in a hearing? Or the way social media goes out of its way to appease Republicans who violate its rules, only to have them turn around and accuse the same media of catering to liberals? It’s called working the ref. Republicans have been doing this for decades, accusing the media of being liberal even as media has been consolidated by right wing power brokers, billionaires, and far right demagogues.In order to appease the right, media enforcement has to gaslight the rest of us about known facts and obvious threats to our own safety, including the proliferation of gun-fetishizing incels, racially-radicalized failures intent on harming people of color to excuse their own inadequacies, and anti-government terrorists who are so angry about being asked to wear a thin paper mask that they plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor. We might note that many of these types also identify as Trumpzis, and they were represented on Jan 6th, and many were wearing a mask to hide their identity.The recent far right attempt to elevate the “Twitter files” to mean the opposite of what the evidence provided suggested worked in so far as it sucked up the oxygen in the room so it seemed few noticed the story being told by the evidence, and so conservatives are nursing their self-pity and victim status in what is a typical abuse manipulation tactic comprised of deny, attack, reverse victim and offender (DARVO). They do it because it works. It works on establishment corporate media and it works on establishment corporate social media. Photo by little plant on UnsplashTech Dirt pointed out we “learned is that Trump and other Republican leaders were actually given special treatment over the years, because they tended to violate policies way more often than Democrats. But, knowing that Republicans would flop to the ground and fake injury any time they were faced with even having to take the slightest bit of responsibility for violating policies, all the big social media platforms went above and beyond to better protect the high profile accounts of Republican rule breakers.”The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.“Do you want to have more blood on your hands?” a Twitter safety employee asked top Twitter executive Del Harvey when Harvey questioned whether Trump could inspire more violence in the insurrection’s aftermath.The exchange, relayed by former Twitter employees to the Jan. 6 committee, was included in a summary of investigative findings prepared by committee staff and obtained by Rolling Stone, “most of which were not included in the committee’s final report.”Gee.“Twitter reportedly told the committee that it instituted the draft coded incitement to violence policy once rioters made it inside the Capitol, but former employees said the on-the-fly implementation was vague, confused, and ad hoc. The result of the delay, they argued, meant that “members of the Safety Policy Team were manually taking down violent tweets, including those including ‘#ExecuteMikePence,’ using only the Twitter search function.”“The sheer scale of Republican post-election rage paralyzed decision makers at Twitter and Facebook, who feared political reprisals if they took strong action.”In a jointly published Just Security/ Tech Policy Press piece adding context for what didn’t make it into that report that Rolling Stone obtained, investigators wrote that right-wing networks played a key role in driving the spread of content behind the attack:“While Trump played an instrumental role in driving the attack, right-wing networks – comprised of everyone from mainstream talking heads to extremist armed groups – drove the mass spread of conspiracy theories and far-right content on social media. “That spread could not have occurred without corporate policies of social media platforms and other enterprises that allowed dangerous rhetoric to proliferate online and ultimately contribute to violence in the real world. As investigators for the Committee, we were charged with examining the role these factors played in the events of January 6th. In this essay, we aim to call attention to the role that social media activity irrefutably played in the insurrection and to highlight the continuing threats to American democracy, as well as to share lessons learned that may help prevent future political violence.”We have long been told that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were just catering to their bottom line in allowing the proliferation of hate. But this additional reporting shows that it was not their profit they had in mind. It was fear of Republicans.Thank you for reading The Daily. This post is public so feel free to share it.“While it is possible this is true more generally, our investigation found little direct evidence for this motivation in the context of the 2020 election. Advocates for bold action within these companies – such as Facebook’s “break glass” measures or Twitter’s policies for handling implicit incitement to violence – were more likely to meet resistance for political reasons than explicitly financial ones.”Why does it matter? Because even when Trump is gone, the rising threat of domestic terrorism will not go away. By focusing on Trump as the driver, the real power behind him, such as the elites driving the Republican Party platform, get off scot-free to rinse and repeat, just as Trump was a repeat on steroids of Sarah Palin’s hate.“While skeptics of social media’s role in the attack might say that the causal relationship between these tools and the violence itself is tenuous, this is a strawman argument. Regardless of whether online activity is a direct cause of extremist violence, social media platforms are responsible for conducting due diligence against abuse of their services.”“The events of January 6th resulted from many interrelated factors, including increasingly radical rhetoric from leading conservative voices both on- and offline, and an alarming uptick in people who believe political violence to be a viable solution.These threats to U.S. democracy are likely to outlive Trump’s political relevance, and they were not outside the purview of the Committee…Our findings suggest that the intersection between social media and violent extremism remains pervasive and, in fact, a central component of the Internet.”And lastly, because facts matter, “One clear conclusion from our investigation is that proponents of the recently released “Twitter Files,” who claim that platform suspensions of the former President are evidence of anti-conservative bias, have it completely backward. Platforms did not hold Trump to a higher standard by removing his account after January 6th. Rather, for years they wrote rules to avoid holding him and his supporters accountable; it took an attempted coup d’état for them to change course. Evidence and testimony provided by members of Twitter’s Trust & Safety team make clear that those arguing Trump was held to an unfair double standard are willfully neglecting or overlooking the significance of January 6th in the context of his ban from major platforms. In the words of one Twitter employee who came forward to the Committee, if Trump had been ‘any other user on Twitter, he would have been permanently suspended a very long time ago.’”So why is everyone pretending they don’t smell the stench? Why did the committee leave this important context out? Why is our media pretending January 6th was a “riot” instead of domestic terrorism, other than to appease right-wingers? If we are too afraid to use the proper labels for things like domestic terrorism because they might offend people, we are incentivizing them to further political extremism and violence, because it is working for them. Might I suggest that we instead incentivize them to stop committing acts of terrorism by not catering to their threats, by not giving them what they want and hoping they don’t get angry. They’re always angry. They’re going to be angry and make accusations no matter what. That’s the nature of the beast. What else comes to mind here is that for all of their accusations of liberals being snowflakes and their mocking of the use of pronouns, it is conservatives who are so sensitive about being labeled that our entire media structure is bending over backward to avoid the elephant in the room.Yes, using threats of violence to get a political outcome is domestic terrorism. End of story. For the safety of all citizens, these people need to be held to account. Social media companies need to stop bending the rules to accommodate violent and dangerous rhetoric.Next time we’re doing to dive into how law enforcement has obstructed attempts by lawmakers to get information about domestic terrorism.This