The Conversation -- October 26, 2024

Robert Draper of the New York Times profiles Kamala Harris.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "Other countries overcame this stereotypical thinking about women leaders, but there is still a thick strain of it in America.... Trump is running a hypermasculine campaign -- with Chief Bro Elon Musk bizarrely bouncing up and down -- that is breathtakingly offensive to women. Trump is exploiting the crisis among Gen Z men, a crisis driven by loneliness, Covid isolation, economic insecurity, a lack of purpose and a feeling that the modern world seems more accommodating to young women.... At a Trump rally in Georgia on Wednesday, Tucker Carlson gave a rant that became an instant classic of perversion.... Somehow, Carlson was even more creepy and retrogressive than JD Vance, with his denunciations of 'childless cat ladies' and his dissing of postmenopausal women. Trump is phallocentric -- always a sign of insecurity. At a rally in Latrobe, Pa., he rhapsodized about Arnold Palmer's anatomy." ~~~

~~~ Marie: Oh, you might as well watch this, as I wouldn't be surprised if it's the SNL cold open tonight (Update: SNL ran a rerun tonight, so no Tucker): ~~~

Elon Musk, Illegal Immigrant. Edward Helmore of the Guardian: "Elon Musk briefly worked illegally in the US after abandoning a graduate studies program in California, according to a Washington Post report that contrasted the episode with the South African multibillionaire's anti-immigration views.... [Musk] has previously maintained that his transition from student to entrepreneur was a 'legal grey area'. But the Washington Post reported Saturday that the world's wealthiest individual was almost certainly working in the US without correct authorization for a period in 1995 after he dropped out of Stanford University to work on his debut company, Zip2, which sold for about $300m four years later. Legal experts said foreign students cannot drop out of school to build a company even if they are not getting paid. The Post also noted that -- prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks against the US in 2001 -- regulation for student visas was more lax. 'If you do anything that helps to facilitate revenue creation, such as design code or try to make sales in furtherance of revenue creation, then you're in trouble,' Leon Fresco, a former US justice department immigration litigator, told the outlet." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Reading the WashPo story, it appears Elon worked in the U.S. illegally at least into 1997. He seems to have broken the law in other ways, too, by lying to authorities about his immigration status a few times & by persuading his brother Kimbal -- who also was an undocumented immigrant -- to run his company. BTW, according to the WashPo story, Elon never was a student here; he was accepted into a grad program at Stanford but never enrolled in classes. Frankly, I'm not a bit troubled by workers who don't have legal status, but I am offended by hypocrites who got here as undocumented workers, yet now campaign against and even vilify today's undocumented workers.

Sure, Trump Cares About You. Jill Colvin, et al., of the AP: "Many of Donald Trump's supporters left a Michigan rally before he arrived after the former president kept them waiting for three hours to tape a popular podcast interview. Those who remained at the outdoor rally on an airport tarmac huddled in the cold Friday night as they waited for the former president to touch down in the battleground state. Trump apologized to the crowd for the delay, which he blamed on an interview with Joe Rogan, the nation's most listened-to podcaster and an influential voice with younger male voters Trump is aggressively courting.... [Even when his plane was more than two hours away,] Trump recorded a video from his plane urging his supporters to stay, noting it was Friday night and promising, 'We're going to have a good time tonight.'"

Glenn Thrush, et al., of the New York Times: "... law enforcement officials are confronting a rising wave of threats to election workers and political activists.... On Monday, the Justice Department unsealed a complaint against a man in Philadelphia who had vowed to skin alive and kill a party official recruiting volunteer poll watchers. On Tuesday, the police in Tempe, Ariz., arrested a man in connection with shootings at a Democratic campaign office, which resulted in no injuries, and other acts of political vandalism. On Wednesday, prosecutors charged a 61-year-old man from Tampa, Fla., with threatening an election official -- on top of pending charges over menacing messages sent in the past five years. And on Thursday, police officers in Phoenix arrested a person in connection with a mailbox fire, damaging some 20 ballots in a Democratic stronghold.... [A Brennan Center survey of election workers] found that almost 40 percent had been the target of threats or harassment."

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Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.

Kay Graham Is Rolling in Her Grave. Hadas Gold & Brian Stelter of CNN: "For the first time in decades, The Washington Post will not endorse a candidate in this year's presidential election, the newspaper's publisher announced Friday, a decision that sparked widespread outrage among the paper's staffers.... The Post reported the decision not to endorse was made by the newspaper's billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, citing two sources briefed on the matter. The Post's editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris and it was ready to be approved by its board, but the draft was never presented, a person with knowledge of the matter told CNN.... Robert Kagan, an editor-at-large at the Post, told CNN he had resigned from the newspaper over Bezos's decision to block the endorsement. The move was also quickly denounced by Marty Baron, the Post's former executive editor who led the newspaper through its coverage of the January 6, 2021, attack. 'This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Donald Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner Bezos (and others),' Baron wrote in a social media post. 'Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ David Folkenflik of NPR broke the story earlier. Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.)

Sewell Chan of the Columbia School of Journalism reports on the tick-tock of how Washington Post "leadership" quashed the Harris endorsement.

Washington Post Opinion Columnists in the Washington Post: "The Washington Post's decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love.... An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn't the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution." -- Karen Attiah, Perry Bacon Jr., Matt Bai, Max Boot, E.J. Dionne Jr., Lee Hockstader, David Ignatius, Heather Long, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Alexandra Petri, Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson, Jennifer Rubin, Karen Tumulty & Erik Wemple

Anna Betts of the Guardian: "There was uproar and outrage among the Washington Post's current and former staffers and other notable figures in the world of American media after the newspaper's leaders on Friday chose to not endorse any candidate in the US presidential election.... In a statement, the union representing editorial staff and reporters at the Washington Post expressed that they were 'deeply concerned' by the decision 'especially a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election'.... Semafor reported that in the 24 hours ending on Friday afternoon, about 2,000 subscribers had already canceled their subscriptions.... 'So much for "Democracy Dies in Darkness",'[former ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice] said.... 'This is the most hypocritical, chicken-shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.'"

Marie: WashPo publisher William Lewis claimed in his CYA "explanation" for the Post's decision not to endorse was that it was "returning to its roots." But as Ben Wittes points out (essay linked below), those so-called roots were remarkably shallow: "The Post before Nixon was a bit of a backwater. It was small, privately held. It had not yet become a national voice. It had not yet benefited from the collapse of the other major Washington newspaper. The traditions of the Washington Post are the traditions of the Washington Post of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate era and the subsequent decades. "That is to say, if it walks like a chicken, pecks like a chicken & squawks like a chicken, then it probably is a chicken. Susan Rice is on the mark.

Michael Schaffer of Politico Magazine: "There is nothing quite so frustrating as an act of cowardice presented as an act of principle. That's the essence of the short statement today authored by Will Lewis, the publisher of The Washington Post. According to Lewis, the paper is not making an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race in order to make a brave declaration about its independence. 'We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for...,' Lewis wrote. 'We also see it as a statement in support of our readers' ability to make up their own minds,' he added. Lewis, a former Rupert Murdoch associate hired less than a year ago by Post owner Jeff Bezos, picked an awfully convenient moment to embrace readers' decision-making.... The timing of this stinks -- a self-inflicted wound at best, and something a lot more sinister at worst."

"The Guardrails Are Already Crumpling." Jonathan Last of the Bulwark: "It's a situation analogous to what we saw in Russia in the early 2000s: We are witnessing the surrender of the American business community to Donald Trump.... This story is ... about the most consequential American entrepreneur of his generation signaling his submission to Trump -- and the message that sends to every other corporation and business leader in the country. In the world. Killing this editorial says, If Jeff Bezos has to be nice to Trump, then so do you. Keep your nose clean, bub."

Bemjamin Wittes in the Bulwark: "... Trump spent a lot of time attacking Bezos and Amazon during his first term over Washington Post content and that he has more recently become cozy with Elon Musk, with whom Amazon competes in a number of areas.... If you're not prepared to defer to the editorial board you have hired to think things through for you, you have no business owning the Washington Post.... Democracy, and journalism, cannot rest on the shoulders of oligarchs.... Bezos did a lot of good for the Post when he first took it over, but the consent of the billionaire is not a stable structure for newspapers or magazines in an authoritarian era. Eventually, they can be counted upon to protect themselves, and that may sometimes mean not speaking the truth -- either by lying or, as here, just by not speaking at all."

Dan Froomkin in Salon: The Washington Post's decision to kill its endorsement of Kamala Harris "says: We are so terrified of a Trump presidency that we are bending the knee in advance. Most importantly, it makes clear that owner Jeff Bezos doesn't want to lose government business in a second Trump administration.... [This, along with the Los Angeles Times' similar move days earlier] makes it more clear than ever: You cannot be a truly independent news organization if you are owned by an oligarch.... Just as these oligarchs are a plague on society, they are a plague on the news business. They have now ruined -- possibly for good -- two of our most treasured news organizations.... An overarching theme here is that the moves by the Post and the LA Times reflect what Timothy Snyder, the author of 'On Tyranny,' calls 'anticipatory obedience.'... These institutions are not just succumbing to authoritarianism, they are advancing it."

Margaret Sullivan of the Guardian: "There's no other way to see this other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty."

Parker Molloy of the Present Age cites a number of participants, authorities & observers of this performative capitulation to an anticipated authoritarian regime. They point to a few other examples of media conglomerates compromising their news outlets to accommodate their other business interests. MB: There's a reason I call network execs "the suits" long after that term seems to have been discarded.

Cheryl Rofer of LG&$ Headline: "I didn't know that "Democracy Dies in Darkness" was an instruction to the editorial staff."

Ross Lincoln of the Wrap: "Alongside its endorsement of Kamala Harris, the Los Angeles Times editorial board had also planned a multi-part series against Donald Trump before the whole thing was quashed by owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, TheWrap has learned. According to internal memos viewed by TheWrap, the series, tentatively called 'The Case Against Trump,' would have ran throughout this week. The endorsement of Kamala Harris would then have been published on Sunday. However, Soon-Shiong ordered the cancellation of the series and the endorsement without explanation, current and now former staffers have confirmed.... The South African-American billionaire's interference in his paper's editorial independence has sparked a rise in canceled subscriptions and several high profile resignations....

"In a dissembling statement of his own posted Wednesday on ... [X], Soon-Shiong blamed the editorial team itself for the lack of an endorsement, yet also essentially confirmed he had in fact shut it down.... So far, the Los Angeles Times Guild is the only institution within the paper that has commented publicly on the matter. 'We are deeply concerned about our owner's decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race,' the union said in a statement Wednesday. 'We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse." ~~~

~~~ AP: "Two more members of the Los Angeles Times editorial board have resigned after the newspaper's owner blocked the board's plan to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Veteran journalists Robert Greene and Karin Klein announced their resignations Thursday, a day after the editorial page editor Mariel Garza left in protest over LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong's decision not to endorse a candidate. Greene, a Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing, said in a statement shared with the Columbia Journalism Review that he was 'deeply disappointed' in the decision not to endorse Harris.... Editorial writer Tony Barboza, who remains on the editorial board, said in a post Friday on an internal Los Angeles Times message board that the board had planned a series of editorials that would have culminated on Sunday with a Harris endorsement."

Marie: It's dusk & you glimpse a burglar lurking in the bushes. Do you lock the doors? Do you call 911? Do you arm yourself? No, you do not. You open all the doors and lay out the sterling & Grandma's diamond brooch so he can't miss them. If democracy dies in darkness, the darkness has come this time as a result of voluntary capitulation -- or "anticipatory obedience." This is a siren warning to every voter, a confirmation that those of us who for years have been pointing at the Trumpian threat to democracy were right all along. Sadly, far more than half of Americans still cannot hear us. The billionaires are closing ranks against us: Musk, Dimon, Soon-Shiong, Bezos. Along with this Forbes list of Trump's top billionaire donors. (To be fair, at this point, also according to Forbes, more billionaires [81] are supporting Harris than are supporting Trump.)

Presidential Race

Reid Epstein, et al., of the New York Times: "Vice President Kamala Harris diverted from the presidential battlegrounds on Friday to receive the endorsement of the global superstar Beyoncé in Texas, in an event almost entirely focused on abortion rights. With the presidential race deadlocked, the Harris campaign sought to use Beyoncé's status -- particularly in her hometown, Houston -- to focus attention on the state's near-total abortion ban as a cautionary tale for what could happen throughout the country should ... Donald J. Trump win another term in the White House. The rally in Houston was not only her campaign's largest but also its most emotionally charged event since she became the Democratic nominee. Beyoncé offered a speech focused on a more optimistic future, and the wrenching stories of Texas women who suffered life-threatening health complications as a result of being denied proper care for pregnancy complications were center stage. Ms. Harris and many of the speakers laid the blame solely on Mr. Trump, who frequently boasts of appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022."

Ashleigh Fields of the Hill: "The Houston Chronicle's editorial board officially endorsed Vice President Harris in a Friday write-up hours after The Washington Post revealed it would cease presidential endorsements for years to come. Journalists drew stark contrasts between Harris and former President Trump early on in the piece, highlighting the candidates' different responses to the devastation caused by hurricanes Helene, Milton and Harvey."

Today, the New York Times online edition republished its September 30 presidential endorsement: "Kamala Harris is the only choice." MB: This may be a case of the Times highlighting its superiority to the Washington Post, but that's okay with me.

Arizona. Carl Gibson of AlterNet: "A coalition of Islamic leaders in a must-win battleground state is now urging their respective communities to get behind Vice President Kamala Harris in November. The New Republic reported that more than 100 progressive Democratic Palestinian, Arab and Muslim leaders in Arizona have now co-signed a letter in support of Harris' candidacy. The letter, which was posted to X ... by Arizona-based progressive activist Kai Newkirk, acknowledges that while many Muslim voters are understandably upset about how President Joe Biden's administration has handled Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, affected communities cannot afford to have ... Donald Trump return to power. 'In our view, it is crystal clear that allowing the fascist Donald Trump to become President again would be the worst possible outcome for the Palestinian people,' the letter read. 'A Trump win would be an extreme danger to Muslims in our country, all immigrants, and the American pro-Palestine movement.'"

Maya King of the New York Times: "Former President Barack Obama offered a stark warning on Friday night of dangers posed by a second Donald Trump presidency, pleading with North Carolina voters to cast their ballots over the final days of early voting in the state. Speaking for nearly 50 minutes to a crowd of hundreds of supporters in the Charlotte Convention Center on Friday, Mr. Obama highlighted Gen. John Kelly's claims that Mr. Trump had spoken admiringly of Hitler. He laid out the concerns raised by former Trump administration officials and senior Republican White House staff members about what they saw as abuses of power and authoritarian tendencies that made Mr. Trump a threat to America's democratic principles. Alluding to recent erratic behavior..., Mr. Obama posited that his successor in the White House was unfit in more ways than one. 'If a family member acted like that, you might still love them, but you wouldn't put them in charge of anything,' Mr. Obama said. 'And yet, when Donald Trump lies or cheats or shows utter disregard for our Constitution, when he calls our service members who died in battle "losers," when he calls our fellow citizens "vermin," people make excuses."

Neil Vigdor & Simon Levien of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump gave a fiery rebuttal on Friday to two damning quotations attributed to him by [editor Jeffrey Goldberg of] The Atlantic magazine, which accused him of disparaging fallen veterans and of making a racist remark about a murdered Mexican-American soldier. During a campaign stop in Texas, Mr. Trump vehemently denied being opposed to paying for the funeral of Specialist Vanessa Guillén, a Fort Hood soldier who was murdered in 2020, when Mr. Trump was president, because of the cost. He was joined at the event in Austin, Texas, by some of Specialist Guillén's relatives.... While hosting her family at the White House in April 2020, Mr. Trump had offered to help cover any expenses not picked up by the military. 'It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!' the article quoted Mr. Trump saying [after an aide told him the bill's total]. On Friday, the former president said Specialist Guillén's family had stepped forward to help vindicate him.... A lawyer for the family of Specialist Guillén told The Atlantic that she had sent the bill to the White House but that no money was ever received by the family from Mr. Trump.... In a statement, Mr. Goldberg defended his reporting.... [Noting that the family did not attend the meeting where Trump disparaged Mexicans, Goldberg wrote,] 'I stand by my reporting, including the undisputed detail that Trump never provided the family with any financial assistance.'"

Michael Gold, et al., of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump taped a nearly three-hour episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience' on Friday. He courted the show's young male audience by floating the idea of eliminating the income tax, talking about mixed martial arts fighters, praising the military skills of Gen. Robert E. Lee and speculating that there was 'no reason not to think' there could be life on Mars and other planets.... That Mr. Trump opted to ... spend hours in Mr. Rogan's studio in Austin[, Texas] -- a detour that delayed the start of his remarks at a rally on Friday evening in Michigan by several hours -- was a mark of Mr. Rogan's reach and the importance of the audience he draws.... Mr. Rogan ... offer[ed] Mr. Trump a platform to repeat his debunked claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election and the lie that he won that year.... Mr. Rogan seemed to back Mr. Trump's questioning of election processes.... Mr. Rogan was a friendly interviewer, often praising Mr. Trump."

Former President Trump has a "For Sale" sign around his neck and appears to be willing to sell basically any policy in exchange for campaign contributions. -- Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a nonprofit that seeks stronger regulations ~~~

~~~ Riding on the Shake-Down Express. Shane Goldmacher, et al., of the New York Times: Donald Trump "has come a long way from his 2016 campaign pitch that he was so rich he was incorruptible. Back then, he mocked the G.O.P.'s donor-lobbyist class and boasted in his announcement speech, 'I don't need anybody's money.' Today, Mr. Trump is looking everywhere for cash: asking small donors online, pressing fellow billionaires over private meals in Trump Tower and lobbying for donations from industries regulated by the government. As he does so, he is sometimes making overt promises about what he will do once he's in office, a level of explicitness toward individual industries and a handful of billionaires that has rarely been seen in modern presidential politics. In some cases, Mr. Trump has sought to shake loose cash from industries like oil and energy that have long aligned with his deregulation agenda. In others, Mr. Trump has flipped his positions, such as on crypto."

Paul McLeary of Politico: "The Army on Friday released the report from a controversial August incident between the Trump campaign team and an Army staff member working at Arlington National Cemetery, in which the campaign staffer made contact with the Army official 'with both hands,' according to the heavily redacted document. The release, which identifies the incident as 'simple assault,' comes amid fresh scrutiny over Trump's treatment of veterans, including comments by former chief of staff John Kelly, who said the former president disparaged wounded and fallen troops.... A judge ordered the Army to release the document by Friday following a lawsuit by American Oversight, a government watchdog group." ~~~

This Is Rich. Anthony Adragna of Politico: "Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asked Vice President Kamala Harris in a rare joint statement to tone down her rhetoric in the lead-up to Election Day, days after Harris said she considered Donald Trump a fascist.... 'She must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions,' Johnson and McConnell said in their statement. 'We call on the Vice President to take these threats seriously, stop escalating the threat environment, and help ensure President Trump has the necessary resources to be protected from those threats.' Their statement does not mention Trump's recent rhetoric, in which he's referred to Harris as a 'fascist,' 'marxist,' 'communist' and 'comrade.' The former president has also railed against 'enemies within' and called for using government resources to prosecute domestic political opponents -- such as California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Johnson downplayed Trump's comments on Sunday shows." MB: Both MSNBC & CNN played video montages of Trump calling Harris a fascist on about 10 different occasions.

Mississippi, Plus. Voter Suppression, Fifth-Circuit Style. Emily Pettus & Kevin McGill of the AP: "A conservative federal court said Mississippi cannot count mail-in ballots that arrive shortly after Election Day, however Friday's decision was not expected to affect the Nov. 5 election. Although the appellate judges firmly asserted that counting late ballots violates federal law, even if those ballots are postmarked by Election Day, the judges stopped short of an order immediately blocking Mississippi from continuing the practice. Their ruling noted federal court precedents have discouraged court actions that change established procedures shortly before an election. The outcome may be negligible in most elections in heavily Republican Mississippi, but the case could affect voting in swing states if the Supreme Court ultimately issues a ruling.The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a July decision by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had dismissed challenges to Mississippi's election law by the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others. The appeals court order sent the case back to Guirola for further action. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said he was so proud of the USPS in 2020 when, he claimed, almost 99 percent of mail-in ballots were delivered within seven (7) days of posting. Mind you, most of these ballots were just going across town, not across the country. But the vote in swing states very well could be closer than one percent (and I don't know what almost 99 percent means). In the 2020 election in Georgia, for instance, President Biden beat the other guy by less than one quarter of one percent (and that means 0.23 percent) Similarly, in Arizona in 2020, Biden won by 0.30 percent. IOW, DeJoy himself tacitly admits that -- all by itself -- the USPS could swing the election in close states simply by failing to deliver a small percentage of postmarked ballots.

North Carolina. Congressman: Forget the Vote, Choose Trump Electors. Kyle Cheney of Politico: "The chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus says the North Carolina Legislature should consider allocating the state's presidential electors to Donald Trump even before votes are counted in the swing state. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said Thursday that such a step by North Carolina's Republican-controlled Legislature 'makes a lot of sense' given the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in the western part of the state. Counties in that region are expected to vote heavily for Trump. Potential difficulties with voting in the hurricane-damaged area would be a basis for the state Legislature to declare in advance that Trump should win the state's 16 electoral votes, Harris said at a Republican Party dinner in Maryland's Talbot County." The New York Times story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'm just gonna assume that Andy Harris is no relation to Kamala Harris. You have to admit it's quite impressive all the excuses people can invent to undermine democracy. Here are the brilliant minds at the country's major newspapers saying let the people decide (when they mean we're afraid of the big, bad dictator), while Rep. Dipshit is saying the people are too distressed to decide (so let the GOP legislature decide).

Boris & Natasha Meddle in Pennsylvania Election. Melissa Goldin, et al., of the AP: "Russian actors were behind a widely circulated video falsely depicting mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania, U.S. officials confirmed on Friday. The video had taken off on social media Thursday but was debunked within three hours by local election officials and law enforcement after members of the public reported it. U.S. officials said in a statement sent by the FBI that they believe the video was 'manufactured and amplified' by Russian actors. The officials said it's part of 'Moscow's broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.'" The New York Times story is here.

Uh, Who You Callin' "Comrade?" Eric De La Garza of the Raw Story: "Calling reports of ongoing conversations between tech billionaire Elon Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin 'concerning,' the head of NASA [Administrator Bill Nelson] on Thursday called for an investigation into the bombshell accounts 'if the story is true.' The comments came a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk, a vocal Trump supporter, and Putin had been in regular communication for at least two years.... The [WSJ] notes that Musk's security clearance gives him access to certain classified information and that he has 'deep business ties with U.S. military and intelligence agencies. SpaceX, which operates the Starlink service, works on classified government programs and is also the primary rocket launcher for the Pentagon and NASA.'" ~~~

~~~ Lora Kolodny of CNBC: "Russia's KGB, and its successor agency the FSB have, for decades, been interested in controlling media narratives and reaching as many people as possible with anti-Western or pro-Kremlin messages. The conversations between Musk and Putin, who once ran the KGB, reportedly occurred as Musk was in the midst of a leveraged buyout and takeover of Twitter.... In 2022, Eurasia Group founder and political analyst Ian Bremmer wrote that Musk had spoken to Putin before the X owner posted social media messages in early October about Russia's war on Ukraine. Musk had proposed that Ukraine should hand over Crimea to Russia and that Kyiv should remain 'neutral' rather than attempting to join NATO. He continued to promote the idea, via X (formerly Twitter) that some Ukraine citizens would prefer to join Russia. Kremlin officials praised Musk for his opinion then...."

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South Carolina Judge: The State Screwed Up So You Can't Vote, Kids. Jeffrey Collins of the AP: "A judge in South Carolina ruled Friday that it is too late to reopen voter registration for nearly 1,900 teens after the state Department of Motor Vehicles failed to notify election officials that they checked the box to register as they got their driver's licenses. The teens were 17 at the time they went to the DMV, but would be 18 by Election Day. A glitch in the DMV's computers did not identify the teens as qualified and did not present them with an additional electronic form certifying they were citizens, not felons and otherwise qualified to vote. The American Civil Liberties Union sued to reopen registration on Tuesday, a day after early voting started in South Carolina. They provided several possible ways the teens could register and be allowed to cast ballots. But Judge Daniel Coble said it is just too close to Election Day to do something so drastic as to alter the voting rolls." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I can't figure out why the AP puts the number of disenfranchised South Carolina teens at only 1,900. According to this Democracy Docket report, "approximately 17,000 young voters were not registered to vote despite indicating a desire to do so. These voters were also not notified that their registrations had been rejected. The DMV has been working to identify the impacted voters. So far, 6,000 were able to register through other means and the names of the remaining 11,000 were sent to the SEC for processing. The SEC has thus far refused to register those 11,000 voters." South Carolina's population is more than 5 million, so 17,000 17-year-olds seeking driver's licenses sounds more likely, but I'm no actuary so don't trust me.

Texas. Natalia Contreras of the Texas Tribune: "An election clerk in San Antonio was allegedly assaulted late Thursday and the suspect, a voter..., was arrested on suspicion of injury to an elderly person, a felony. The incident is first instance of reported violence against an election worker this fall.... According to a sheriff's report, the suspect, 63-year-old Jesse Lutzenberger, walked into the polling location ... wearing a Make America Great Again hat..., which is considered electioneering and against the law in Texas. The poll worker, 69, asked Lutzenberger to remove the hat, which he did, officials said. Lutzenberger went on to cast his ballot. While still inside the polling location, Lutzenberger put the hat back on.... The poll worker approached the man to tell him that was unacceptable and then began to escort the man out as they were approaching the doors of the location. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said a surveillance video showed Lutzenberger 'throw an arm back toward the victim.... The victim seemed to push off of the suspect. At that point, the suspect then turned and threw several punches right at the face of the victim,' Salazar said."

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Israel/Palestine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Saturday in Israel's wars are here.: "The Israeli military said Saturday that it had struck Iran in response to several Iranian attacks on Israel, raising fears that a long-brewing confrontation between two of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East could escalate into an all-out war. The military said in a statement at 2:30 a.m. that it was 'conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran' in response to more than a year of attacks on Israel by Iran and its allies across the Middle East. Just after 6 a.m., the military said the strikes had concluded."

The Conversation -- October 25, 2024

Kay Graham Is Rolling in Her Grave. Hadas Gold & Brian Stelter of CNN: "For the first time in decades, The Washington Post will not endorse a candidate in this year's presidential election, the newspapers publisher announced Friday, a decision that sparked widespread outrage among the paper's staffers.... The Post reported the decision not to endorse was made by the newspaper's billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, citing two sources briefed on the matter. The Post's editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris and it was ready to be approved by its board, but the draft was never presented, a person with knowledge of the matter told CNN.... Robert Kagan, an editor-at-large at the Post, told CNN he had resigned from the newspaper over Bezos's decision to block the endorsement. The move was also quickly denounced by Marty Baron, the Post's former executive editor who led the newspaper through its coverage of the January 6, 2021, attack. 'This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Donald Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner Bezos (and others),' Baron wrote in a social media post. 'Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.'" ~~~

     ~~~ David Folkenflik of NPR broke the story earlier. Thanks to RAS for the link.

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Presidential Race

"Yes, We Can.” Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: "Former President Barack Obama sought to transfer the energy of his political movement to Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally on Thursday night outside Atlanta -- their first joint appearance of the campaign -- as he tried to help propel her over the finish line. 'Together, we have a chance to choose a new generation of leadership in this country,' Mr. Obama told a crowd of 23,000 people at a high school football stadium in Clarkston, Ga. 'And start building a better and stronger and fairer and more hopeful America.' When Ms. Harris took the stage, he lifted up her arm like a prizefighter in celebration. She quickly seemed to try to adopt his mantle, leading the audience, the largest she has drawn since becoming the Democratic nominee, in a chant of 'Yes, we can,' Mr. Obama's 2008 campaign slogan."

Sarah Rumpf of Mediaite: "Former Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who served 18 terms in Congress before retiring last year, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris -- issuing a scathing condemnation of his own party's nominee..., Donald Trump. Upton told The Detroit News that he was voting for Harris -- his first time supporting a Democrat for president, although he has split his ticket on other down-ballot races in the past -- because Trump had 'not changed his colors' and continued pushing his baseless claims about fraud in the 2020 election.... '... he's still talking about the election being stolen, trashing women left and right. He's just totally unhinged,' he added. 'We don't need this chaos. We need to move forward, and that's why I'm where I am. Upton told The Detroit News that he had spoken with Harris's running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on Wednesday. The two served together in the House for twelve years.... Upton was one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, drawing his ire -- and then gloating after Upton announced his retirement." The New York Times story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

Lydia O'Connor of the Huffington Post: "The longest-serving member of the Wisconsin state Senate ― a Republican who's been in the chamber since 1987 ― revealed Thursday that he's voting Kamala Harris for president, warning that Donald Trump is 'a totalitarian and very much a fascist.' State Sen. Robert Cowles, who's retiring at the end of his term, shared his decision with Madison-based radio station Civic Media, saying this will be the first time he's not picking a Republican for president because of the threats the former president poses to American democracy."

Julie Bosman of the New York Times: "Mayor Shawn Reilly of Waukesha, Wis., an independent who was a Republican for most of his life, said in an interview on Wednesday that he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president. The endorsement is a key one for Ms. Harris, whose campaign has lavished attention on the suburbs of Milwaukee, which lean Republican but are so densely populated that they deliver a pivotal number of Democratic votes.... Mr. Reilly, 63, said that he had never endorsed a Democrat before. But this election is different, he said, describing his own evolution from loyal Republican for decades to an independent in 2021. 'It's very easy to not even stick your nose in this...,' he said. 'But the reason I'm doing it is because I think we're at a crossroads. I'm very afraid of the direction our country will head in if Donald Trump becomes president. I think we'll be heading down a road of authoritarianism and fascism.'" The NBC News story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

Katrina Miller of the New York Times: "More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president. 'This is the most consequential presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States,' reads the letter.... 'We, the undersigned, strongly support Harris.'... Donald Trump ... would 'jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,' the letter said." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ That's Fine, Smart People. But There Is No One to Save Us from Stupid. Marie: While I was working on the entry above, a CNN reporter was saying on the teevee that he had interviewed many young swing-state college men, and that they liked Kamala Harris better than Donald Trump -- BUT they were planning to vote for Trump because he would be better for business. Also (but this seemed to be secondary), that they were of draft age and Trump would keep the U.S. out of wars.

Meryl Kornfield & Marisa Iati of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump painted a dark picture of the United States under the Biden administration at a campaign rally [in Tempe, Az.,] Thursday, comparing the country to 'a garbage can for the world' because of illegal border crossings. The remark was a new rendition of a common refrain for Trump, who has repeatedly used dehumanizing language when talking about immigrants.... He spent much of his insult-laced rally decrying a border 'invasion' that he blamed on Vice President Kamala Harris. For roughly an hour, the Republican presidential nominee interwove attacks on illegal immigration and invective aimed at Harris -- the Democratic nominee -- other Democratic politicians and journalists." The NBC News story is here.

Big Surprise. Amy Wang & Meryl Kornfield of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump said Thursday that he would 'fire' special counsel Jack Smith on his first day back in the White House if he is elected again, making clear that he would push to drop a pair of federal cases against him.... The authority to hire and fire a special counsel falls to the attorney general. But if Trump wins the election, he is expected to appoint an attorney general who would dismiss both federal cases against him.... Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign said Thursday that Trump's latest comments indicate that the former president thinks he is above the law...." (Also linked yesterday.)

"Believe Him." New York Times Editorial Board: "Donald Trump has described at length the dangerous and disturbing actions he says he will take if he wins the presidency.... These statements are so outrageous and outlandish, so openly in conflict with the norms and values of American democracy that many find them hard to regard as anything but empty bluster. We have two words for American voters: Believe him. The record shows that Mr. Trump often pursues his stated goals, regardless of how plainly they lack legal or moral grounding. The record further shows that many of his most reckless efforts in his first administration were stymied only because of others in his administration who blocked, delayed or watered down his aims.... Mr. Trump has learned from that experience to surround himself with supplicants who would instead obey his wishes and bring his words and ideas to life even if they contradict facts, the public interest or the Constitution.... The promises Mr. Trump made during his first presidential campaign, in 2016, turned out to be a pretty good road map of the policies and priorities he pursued as president." The editorial then lays a number of Trump's threats along with evidence that he means them.

Believe Him. Isaac Arnsdorf, et al., of the Washington Post: "In running to retake the White House, Trump has named his unfulfilled demands to deploy the military against civil unrest as one of his top regrets -- and one he aims not to repeat. His allies have laid plans for him to do so by invoking emergency authority under the Insurrection Act of 1807.... In a Fox News interview Oct. 13, he said the military could handle his domestic political opponents such as congressional Democrats and election protesters, whom he deemed 'the enemy from within.'... Some of Trump's most senior former advisers are warning Americans to take his militaristic impulses seriously."

Believe Him. Thomas Frank & Scott Waldman of Politico's E&E News: "In early September 2020, wildfires tore through eastern Washington state, obliterating tens of millions of dollars of property, displacing hundreds of rural residents and killing a 1-year-old boy. But then-President Donald Trump refused to act on Gov. Jay Inslee's request for $37 million in federal disaster aid because of a bitter personal dispute with the Democratic governor.... Trump sat on Inslee's request for the final four months of his presidency.... Trump ignored Inslee's 73-page request even after the Federal Emergency Management Agency found during weeks of inspection that the wildfires easily met the federal damage threshold for disaster aid. 'It really was an outrageous abuse of power,' Inslee said in a recent interview with E&E News."

Meredith McGraw of Politico: "More than a dozen former Trump administration officials on Friday came out in support of former chief of staff John Kelly, who went on the record this week to say the former president fits the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator and has no concept of the Constitution. In a new letter, shared exclusively with Politico, the former Trump administration officials -- some of the officials have been outspoken Trump critics for years -- stated, 'this is who Donald Trump is.' The letter was signed by Trump administration officials, including Kevin Carroll, former senior counselor to Kelly; former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews; former assistant secretary of homeland security Elizabeth Neumann; former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci; former chief of staff at the Dept. of Homeland Security Miles Taylor; former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham; former press secretary to the vice president Alyssa Farah Griffin; and former national security adviser to vice president Pence, Olivia Troye."

Isaac Arnsdorf & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "Trump's recent public appearances have been strikingly erratic, coarse and often confusing.... His speeches have gotten longer and more repetitive compared with those of past campaigns. He promotes falsehoods and theories that are so far removed from reality or appear wholly made up that they are often baffling to anyone not steeped in MAGA media or internet memes. He jumps more abruptly between subjects and from his script to improvising, sometimes offering what sound like non-sequiturs. He occasionally mixes up words or names, and some of his sentences are meaningless or nonsensical. As he delivered more speeches in October, he has made multiple slip-ups per day. He has become more profane in public."

Marie: Sometimes, some stories are too icky for me to stomach. This is one. I should have linked something about it earlier, but, well, ick! I apologize both for not linking it earlier and for linking it at all. ~~~

~~~ Maggie Astor of the New York Times: "The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson stirred up a crowd of Trump supporters on Wednesday night with a bizarre extended metaphor that cast ... Donald J. Trump as an angry father about to come home and give a 'vigorous spanking' to his disobedient daughter.... In Duluth, Ga., Mr. Carlson said that the country under Democratic leadership was like a toddler allowed to 'smear the contents of his diapers on the wall of your living room,' or a 'hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter' who gives her parents the finger and slams her bedroom door. And he cast Mr. Trump as the strict, disappointed father. 'When Dad gets home, you know what he says? "You've been a bad girl, you've been a bad little girl, and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now,"' Mr. Carlson said. Grinning, he went on: 'And ... this is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl.' The crowd went wild. Mr. Carlson's speech -- at a rally ... that featured Mr. Trump as the headline speaker -- was full of disparaging comments about women....

"He cast Democrats as illegitimate, calling them 'the most parasitic, useless, violent, nasty, aggressive people in your country.' In an apparent reference to people who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, he continued: 'They tore down statues to their memory. People who never built anything in their lives, they went out of their way to humiliate you and spit on you and the graves of your ancestors.'And he told the crowd directly that they should not accept the election results if Ms. Harris wins." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ezra Klein of the New York Times interviews Maggie Haberman about Donald Trump. This is an edited transcript and includes video of the interview. MB: Edited or not, it's still quite long, and I have lost most of my curiosity about what makes Donald tick because I find him just as fascinating as I do Tucker Carlson (see story linked below).

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: "Something is wrong with this split-screen picture. On one side..., Donald Trump rants about mass deportations and claims to have stopped 'wars with France,' after being described by his longest-serving ... chief of staff as a literal fascist. On the other side, commentators debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris performed well enough at a CNN town hall to 'close the deal.'... It is apparently baked into this campaign that Trump is allowed to talk and act like a complete lunatic while Harris has to be perfect in every way."

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "CNN is reporting that Fox News edited out several portions of a recent event with ... Donald Trump to omit what it describes as his 'rambling answers and false claims.' During one point in Trump's chat with Black voters in a New York barbershop, the former president was asked about eliminating federal taxes. On the Fox News broadcast, Trump was simply shown saying that 'there's a way' to get the job done -- but the full video shows something else entirely. 'That response from Trump actually came more than seven minutes later, after Trump... brought up other topics, including inheritances, the Keystone Pipeline, Ronald Reagan, Russia, and transgender sports players,' CNN writes. 'Trump had to be nudged back on track several times by the unnamed audience member, who kept circling back, apologetically, and said "I wasn't able to finish my question.' After he repeated his tax inquiry yet again, Trump said "there is a way."'" The CNN story is here; it is firewalled. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Wait, I thought even minor, immaterial edits were reasons for a network to lose its license (even though a network does not actually have a broadcast license). So what does Trump propose to do to Fox?

Avery Lotz & Ivana Saric of Axios: "Elon Musk's super PAC announced two lottery winners Thursday in its daily $1 million giveaway, defying a warning from the Justice Department.... The winners of the $1 million prizes are the first to be announced since news broke that the DOJ had sent a letter notifying America PAC, Musk's pro-Trump group, that its lottery could violate federal law against paying people to register to vote, per multiple outlets."

Scott Lemieux, in LG&$, republishes a chunk of a Wall Street Journal article that goes like this: "Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022. The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.... Musk has emerged this year as a crucial supporter of Donald Trump's election campaign, and could find a role in a Trump administration should he win. While the U.S. and its allies have isolated Putin in recent years, Musk's dialogue could signal re-engagement with the Russian leader, and reinforce Trump's expressed desire to cut a deal over major fault lines such as the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the contacts also raise potential national-security concerns among some in the current administration, given Putin's role as one of America's chief adversaries." Lemieux: "The fact that this authoritarian dipshit still has a security clearance is a classic example of the very rich being exempt from rules and norms that apply to anyone else."

Tara Copp of the AP: "In a rare move, the Pentagon strongly pushed back Thursday against misinformation spread on social media that falsely suggests U.S. troops have been authorized to use force against American citizens during the election. The misinformation -- spread online by former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., among others -- suggests that a Defense Department policy revision released in late September was timed to interfere with the Nov. 5 presidential election. Use of force by federal troops on U.S. soil against U.S. civilians is against the law -- except in cases of self-defense -- and is outlined in the Posse Comitatus Act. Kennedy ... tweeted the false narrative to his 4 million followers. It falsely claims that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris ... pushed through a Defense Department directive allowing lethal force against Americans who protest government policies."

Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "Now, as voters and campaign professionals prepare for what promises to be a hard-fought election match, a smaller group of lawyers and longtime MAGA supporters is preparing the ground for an even harder-fought post-election rematch. And as they did in 2020, they are preparing to battle on the grounds of certification.... What I found [during interviews in four battleground states] was that although the Stop the Steal movement of 2020 has evolved into the considerably more sophisticated 'election integrity' movement of 2024, its success is still premised on persuading election administrators of two things that are not true: that widespread election fraud is a real and present threat to democracy and that they have not only the authority but also the legal duty to do something about it -- that they must 'do their duty' and deny certification. I also found a growing number of election officials who seemed willing to do exactly that. For them, going so far as to block certification wasn't a partisan gambit; it was a patriotic duty."

Christopher Maag of the New York Times: "Two brothers from upstate New York were arrested Thursday on charges of attacking law enforcement agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and of participating in the violent mob that attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Roger A. Voisine Jr., 48, and Reynold R. Voisine, 47, face felony charges including civil disorder and assaulting an officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon."

For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books. But now our administration's work will ensure no one will ever forget. -- Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a Native American, who traveled to Arizona with President Biden ~~~

~~~ Aishvarya Kavi of the New York Times: "President Biden on Friday will formally apologize for the role of the federal government in running boarding schools where thousands of Native American children faced abuse, neglect and the erasure of their tribal identities. 'I'm heading to do something that should have been done a long time ago, to make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years,' Mr. Biden said on Thursday as he departed the White House for Phoenix, where he will address the Gila River Indian Community on Friday. The trip is Mr. Biden's first visit to a Native American reservation as president, and the first time an American president has apologized for the abuses that happened on the federal government's watch over more than a century. From the early 1800s to the late 1960s, the U.S. government removed Native children from their families and homes and sent them to boarding schools for the purpose of erasing their tribal ties and cultural practices."

Katie Mettler of the Washington Post: "The owner of the Dali container ship that crashed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge earlier this year, collapsing the span and killing six people, has agreed to pay more than $100 million in damages to resolve a Justice Department lawsuit, authorities said Thursday. The Justice Department announced the settlement agreement in a news release, saying that the ship's owner, Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and operator, Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., would pay $103 million in funds that would go to federal agencies affected by the collapse. That figure far exceeds the $43.6 million cap the companies had sought on the liabilities they could be made to pay -- and signals the possibility of many more payouts on the horizon. The state of Maryland, which owned and operated the Key Bridge, is pursuing separate damages, the department said, alongside dozens of others who have made claims against Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine since the disaster seven months ago."

~~~~~~~~~~

Jessica Piper of Politico: Elon "Musk gave $10 million to the Mitch McConnell-linked Senate Leadership Fund on Oct 1., according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday. He also gave $2.4 million to The Sentinel Action Fund, a super PAC formerly linked to the Heritage Foundation that is spending to boost several GOP Senate candidates as well as ... Donald Trump."

California. Tim Arango & Matt Stevens of the New York Times: "The Los Angeles County district attorney said on Thursday that he would request the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who killed their parents in 1989, a step that could lead to their release from prison. The district attorney, George Gascón, announced his decision at a news conference at the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles. 'I believe that they have paid their debt to society,' he said. Mr. Gascón, who was surrounded by members of his office and members of the Menendez family, said he would ask the court on Friday to resentence the brothers to a murder charge that comes with the possibility of parole.... The district attorney noted that there was disagreement in his office about whether to move forward with the resentencing. He cited a recent documentary that he said 'brought a tremendous amount of public attention' and requests for information."

Ohio. Kim Bellware of the Washington Post: "An Ohio judge struck down a state law that banned nearly all abortions on Thursday, ruling it was unconstitutional in light of a 2023 voter referendum to constitutionally protect abortion access. The decision carries important implications for access to reproductive health care, even after the law's core restriction, a six-week abortion ban, has been unenforceable for nearly a year. The decision brings finality to a five-year legal battle that began in 2019 when Ohio's Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the six-week ban into law.... The law was immediately blocked from taking effect since Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, but it later took effect the day of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in June 2022.... It was blocked months later by a temporary restraining order.... [The state attorney general's] office ... did not immediately say whether it would appeal." The AP's report is here.

Pennsylvania. Simon Levien of the New York Times: "The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that voters who submit mail-in ballots that are rejected for not following procedural directions can still cast provisional ballots. The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, the swing state that holds the most electoral votes and is set to be the most consequential in the presidential election. The court ruled 4 to 3 that the Butler County board of elections must count provisional ballots cast by several voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for lacking mandatory secrecy envelopes.... In Pennsylvania, voters must accurately sign and date this outer envelope before sending in their ballots.Under the new ruling, voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for being 'naked ballots,' lacking the secrecy envelope, or for bearing inaccurate or missing information on the envelope will be given the chance to cast a provisional vote at their polling place. The ruling makes the practice available statewide.... Many counties in the state will notify voters if their mail-in ballots are rejected for not following technical procedures and will give them the opportunity to cast a provisional vote." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: When I read this, I saw a lawsuit coming. I didn't know what the basis of a suit might be, but election law expert Rick Hasen does: "... in 2020 ... Justice Alito, facing a similar issue in a case involving ballots arriving within 3 days after election day ordered to be counted during the pandemic by the state supreme court, ordered those ballots sequestered. A sequestration order could happen again, and there could be a fight over the treatment of these ballots. Let's hope the margin of victory of the winning candidate in PA exceeds greatly the number of these ballots." (Also linked yesterday.)

~~~~~~~~~~

Israel/Palestine, et al. The New York Times live updates of developments Friday in Israel's wars are here: "Israeli forces carried out attacks across Gaza overnight, raiding one of the last working hospitals in the north of the territory and launching airstrikes in the south that left dozens dead, Gazan health officials said on Friday. The Health Ministry also said that Israeli forces had raided Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning in northern Gaza.... Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Friday with Arab officials in London, concluding a weeklong diplomatic tour aimed at jump-starting negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza." ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings of developments Friday are here.

News Lede

New York Times: "A sweeping onion recall linked to an E. coli outbreak involving McDonald's Quarter Pounders has prompted several other major fast-food chains to remove raw onions from their menu offerings. Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC and Burger King have stopped adding fresh onions to their signature items at certain locations. A spokeswoman for Yum Brands, which owns several fast-food chains, said that its restaurants were yanking onions from their menus 'out of an abundance of caution.' Yum Brands would not elaborate or say how many sites in how many states would not offer onions."

The Conversation -- October 24, 2024

Marie: Sometimes, some stories are too icky for me to stomach. This is one. I should have linked something about it earlier, but, well, ick! I apologize both for not linking it earlier and for linking it at all. ~~~

~~~ Maggie Astor of the New York Times: "The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson stirred up a crowd of Trump supporters on Wednesday night with a bizarre extended metaphor that cast ... Donald J. Trump as an angry father about to come home and give a 'vigorous spanking' to his disobedient daughter.... In Duluth, Ga., Mr. Carlson said that the country under Democratic leadership was like a toddler allowed to 'smear the contents of his diapers on the wall of your living room,' or a 'hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter' who gives her parents the finger and slams her bedroom door. And he cast Mr. Trump as the strict, disappointed father. 'When Dad gets home, you know what he says? "You've been a bad girl, you&'ve been a bad little girl, and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now,"' Mr. Carlson said. Grinning, he went on: 'And ... this is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl.' The crowd went wild. Mr. Carlson's speech -- at a rally ... that featured Mr. Trump as the headline speaker -- was full of disparaging comments about women....

"He cast Democrats as illegitimate, calling them 'the most parasitic, useless, violent, nasty, aggressive people in your country.' In an apparent reference to people who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, he continued: 'They tore down statues to their memory. People who never built anything in their lives, they went out of their way to humiliate you and spit on you and the graves of your ancestors.'And he told the crowd directly that they should not accept the election results if Ms. Harris wins."

Sarah Rumpf of Mediaite: "Former Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who served 18 terms in Congress before retiring last year, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris -- issuing a scathing condemnation of his own party's nominee..., Donald Trump. Upton told The Detroit News that he was voting for Harris -- his first time supporting a Democrat for president, although he has split his ticket on other down-ballot races in the past -- because Trump had 'not changed his colors' and continued pushing his baseless claims about fraud in the 2020 election.... '... he's still talking about the election being stolen, trashing women left and right. He's just totally unhinged,' he added. 'We don;t need this chaos. We need to move forward, and that's why I'm where I am. Upton told The Detroit News that he had spoken with Harris's running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on Wednesday. The two served together in the House for twelve years.... Upton was one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, drawing his ire -- and then gloating after Upton announced his retirement." The New York Times story is here.

Julie Bosman of the New York Times: "Mayor Shawn Reilly of Waukesha, Wis., an independent who was a Republican for most of his life, said in an interview on Wednesday that he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president. The endorsement is a key one for Ms. Harris, whose campaign has lavished attention on the suburbs of Milwaukee, which lean Republican but are so densely populated that they deliver a pivotal number of Democratic votes.... Mr. Reilly, 63, said that he had never endorsed a Democrat before. But this election is different, he said, describing his own evolution from loyal Republican for decades to an independent in 2021. 'It's very easy to not even stick your nose in this...,' he said. 'But the reason I'm doing it is because I think we're at a crossroads. I'm very afraid of the direction our country will head in if Donald Trump becomes president. I think we'll be heading down a road of authoritarianism and fascism.'" The NBC News story is here.

Katrina Miller of the New York Times: "More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president. 'This is the most consequential presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States,' reads the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. 'We, the undersigned, strongly support Harris.'... Donald Trump ... would 'jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,' the letter said." ~~~

     ~~~ That's Fine, Smart People. But There Is No One to Save Us from Stupid. Marie: While I was working on the entry above, a CNN reporter was saying on the teevee that he had interviewed many young swing-state college men, and that they liked Kamala Harris better than Donald Trump -- BUT they were planning to vote for Trump because he would be better for business. Also (but this seemed to be secondary), that they were of draft age and Trump would keep the U.S. out of wars.

Big Surprise. Amy Wang & Meryl Kornfield of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump said Thursday that he would 'fire' special counsel Jack Smith on his first day back in the White House if he is elected again, making clear that he would push to drop a pair of federal cases against him.... The authority to hire and fire a special counsel falls to the attorney general. But if Trump wins the election, he is expected to appoint an attorney general who would dismiss both federal cases against him.... Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign said Thursday that Trump's latest comments indicate that the former president thinks he is above the law...."

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "CNN is reporting that Fox News edited out several portions of a recent event with ... Donald Trump to omit what it describes as his 'rambling answers and false claims.' During one point in Trump's chat with Black voters in a New York barbershop, the former president was asked about eliminating federal taxes. On the Fox News broadcast, Trump was simply shown saying that 'there's a way' to get the job done -- but the full video shows something else entirely. 'That response from Trump actually came more than seven minutes later, after Trump... brought up other topics, including inheritances, the Keystone Pipeline, Ronald Reagan, Russia, and transgender sports players,' CNN writes. 'Trump had to be nudged back on track several times by the unnamed audience member, who kept circling back, apologetically, and said "I wasn't able to finish my question." After he repeated his tax inquiry yet again, Trump said "there is a way."' The CNN story is here; it is firewalled. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Wait, I thought even minor, immaterial edits were reasons for a network to lose its license (even though a network does not actually have a broadcast license). So what does Trump propose to do to Fox?

Pennsylvania. Simon Levien of the New York Times: "The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that voters who submit mail-in ballots that are rejected for not following procedural directions can still cast provisional ballots. The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, the swing state that holds the most electoral votes and is set to be the most consequential in the presidential election. The court ruled 4 to 3 that the Butler County board of elections must count provisional ballots cast by several voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for lacking mandatory secrecy envelopes. Secrecy envelopes are commonly used to protect the privacy of a person's vote. In Pennsylvania, voters must accurately sign and date this outer envelope before sending in their ballots.Under the new ruling, voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for being 'naked ballots,' lacking the secrecy envelope, or for bearing inaccurate or missing information on the envelope will be given the chance to cast a provisional vote at their polling place. The ruling makes the practice available statewide.... Many counties in the state will notify voters if their mail-in ballots are rejected for not following technical procedures and will give them the opportunity to cast a provisional vote." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: As soon as I read this, I saw a lawsuit coming. I didn't know what the basis of a suit might be, but election law expert Rick Hasen does: "... in 2020 ... Justice Alito, facing a similar issue in a case involving ballots arriving within 3 days after election day ordered to be counted during the pandemic by the state supreme court, ordered those ballots sequestered. A sequestration order could happen again, and there could be a fight over the treatment of these ballots. Let's hope the margin of victory of the winning candidate in PA exceeds greatly the number of these ballots."

~~~~~~~~

Presidential Race

Reid Epstein & Lisa Lerer of the New York Times: "Early in a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania [Wednesday evening, Vice President Harris] readily agreed with the host, Anderson Cooper, when he asked whether she believed Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist. 'Yes, I do,' she quickly shot back. 'Yes, I do.' Later, when asked about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, she jumped into a loaded critique of her rival. 'For many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,' she said. 'They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.'... Over the course of the 80-minute town hall, Ms. Harris was asked about a wide range of policy issues.... Her answers boiled down to: Donald Trump would be worse." Bender goes on to criticize Harris's responses. The AP's report, which is here, does not. ~~~

~~~ Dan Merica of the AP: "The Democratic presidential nominee said Kelly's comments ... were a '911 call to the American people' by the former chief of staff. They were quickly seized by Harris as part of her closing message to voters as she works to sharpen the choice at the ballot box for Americans. 'I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America,' she said, saying the American people deserve a president who maintains 'certain standards,' which include 'certainly not comparing oneself, in a clearly admiring way, to Hitler.'" Eric Bradner, et al., report CNN's takeaways from the town hall.

Katie Rogers & Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: "Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that ... Donald J. Trump's reported comments praising Nazi generals offered 'a window into who Donald Trump really is,' calling it 'deeply troubling' that her Republican rival had apparently invoked Hitler in conversations with one of his former chiefs of staff, John F. Kelly.... In her brief remarks, delivered at the vice president's residency in Washington, Ms. Harris warned that Mr. Trump had grown 'increasingly unhinged and unstable' and said that he would require that the U.S. military 'be loyal to him personally,' even if Mr. Trump did not obey the law during the course of a second term." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

Lisa Kashinsky, et al., of Politico: "A former senior Homeland Security official in the Trump administration said Wednesday that the former president has 'authoritarian tendencies' and 'does not operate by the rule of law' -- echoing a denunciation by his former chief of staff and other senior figures. Elizabeth Neumann, who served as deputy chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security and assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy, said she agreed with former Marine Gen. John Kellys explosive assessment that Donald Trump is not fit for the office.... Neumann, who has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, said in a brief interview with Politico, 'Is he kind of leaning towards that ultra-nationalism component? Absolutely.... He's made nationalism the new definition of the Republican Party.'... Trump, long prone to violent and inflammatory rhetoric, has become more extreme in his third presidential bid."

digby does a quick rundown of "Trump is a Fascist" literature, old and new. "We've learned over the years, through many reports, memoirs and tell-all books that Trump tried to govern in dictatorial fashion at every turn but was either too mentally undisciplined to follow through or was held back by people around him who kept him from acting on his worst impulses. This campaign has shown him ratcheting up the fascist rhetoric to previously unseen heights, saying that immigrants are 'poisoning the blood' and calling his political opponents 'vermin' and 'enemies within' that must be purged."

Here's Trump's response to John Kelly's revelations about him, via Mediaite.

Phil Mattingly of CNN: "More than half of the living US recipients of the Nobel Prize for economics signed a letter that called Vice President Kamala Harris' economic agenda 'vastly superior' to the plans laid out by ... Donald Trump. Twenty-three Nobel Prize-winning economists signed onto the letter, including two of the three most recent recipients.... The letter serves as a stamp of approval for Harris less than two weeks from Election Day on the issue voters consistently rank as the most important in surveys: the economy.... The letter was spearheaded by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor and 2001 winner of the prize, and marks the second major foray into the campaign by a group of Nobel laureates.... The letter points to Trump's tariff and tax policies as inflationary and likely to balloon the federal deficit == a widely held view among economists. But it also issues a stark warning. 'Among the most important determinants of economic success are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these,' the economists write." More on Trump's economic policies, linked below. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Sure, but what do a bunch of ivory-tower eggheads know? Donald Trump is a successful, common-sense businessman.

Morgan Rimmer of CNN: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a scathing assessment of the modern Republican Party in an upcoming biography, saying the 'MAGA movement is completely wrong.'... 'I think Trump was the biggest factor in changing the Republican Party from what Ronald Reagan viewed and he wouldn't recognize today,' McConnell told the Associated Press' Michael Tackett for the upcoming biography 'The Price of Power' obtained by CNN ahead of its release.... The Republican leader eventually voted to acquit Trump during the second impeachment trial, focused on the former president's involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. However, Tackett reports that McConnell had leaned towards voting to convict at certain points." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Allow me to remind you, Mitch, that had you had the gumption to find Trump guilty in that second impeachment trial, and brought a few of your colleagues along with you (which would not have been a heavy lift), the country would not now be beset by the prospect of this particular fascist finding his way back to the Oval Office. It is, Chicken Mitch, all your fault. Consider yourself the poor man's version of the King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and German president Paul von Hindenburg, who put Mussolini & Hitler in power, respectively. Nice company, Mitch.

Clara Morse, et al., of the Washington Post: "In every state across the country, more people donated to Vice President Kamala Harris than to ... Donald Trump. Registered voters in suburbs were about twice as likely to give to Harris as to Trump. A vast majority of Trump's donors under 35 were men. And in the battleground state of Georgia, where Black voters make up one third of the electorate, less than 4 percent of Trump donors were Black. Those are among the findings from a Washington Post analysis of online contributions to the Trump, Harris and President Joe Biden campaigns, combined with voter registration data." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: That was the good news. Now, here's the fun part. You can plug in your Zip code (in the box just below the subhead "How online donors gave near you") and find out the number of donors to each campaign in your Zip code & how much they gave in total. I'm happy to say that in my neighborhood, the donation total was 10-to-1 for Harris/Biden over Team Hitler.

Stephanie Kirchgaessner & Lucy Osborne of the Guardian: "A former model who says she met Donald Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower in 1993, in what she believed was a 'twisted game' between the two men. Stacey Williams ... said she first met Trump in 1992 at a Christmas party after being introduced to him by Epstein, who she believed was a good friend of the then New York real estate developer. Williams said Epstein was interested in her and the two casually dated for a period of a few months. 'It became very clear then that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,' Williams said. The alleged groping occurred ... in the late winter or early spring of 1993, when Epstein suggested during a walk they were on that he and Williams stop by to visit Trump at Trump Tower.... Moments after they arrived, she alleges, Trump greeted Williams, pulled her toward him and started groping her. She said he put his hands 'all over my breasts' as well as her waist and her buttocks. She said she froze because she was 'deeply confused' about what was happening. At the same time, she said she believed she saw the two men smiling at each other."

Donald Trump is on the verge of once again becoming the Worst U.S. President* in History, after already once winning the prize for Worst U.S. President* in History. And one again, he will not be prepared to do the Worst Job Ever: ~~~

~~~ Rebecca Shabad of NBC News: "The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, is sounding the alarm over ... Donald Trump's failure to enter into key agreements with the Biden administration for the presidential transition process, warning that it could endanger the peaceful transfer of power and threaten U.S. national security. In a letter sent Wednesday to Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, obtained ... by NBC News, Raskin warned that they are 'breaking the precedent set by every other presidential candidate since 2010' by not accepting resources provided by the federal government for a smooth transition." MB: I guess fascists don't need no stinkin' "process."

Danny Hakim, et al., of the New York Times: "Mr. Trump's presidential campaign and his closest allies are again trotting out the theories [that voting machines have been hacked] as part of a late-campaign strategy to assert that this year's election is rigged -- although this time Mr. Trump's campaign appears to be largely acting behind the scenes. The theories are rampant on social media and widely embraced by activists. They have frequently shown up in the blitz of lawsuits that Republicans have filed in the run-up to the election, including a Georgia lawsuit that a judge dismissed this month, calling the security concerns about voting machines raised in the suit 'purely hypothetical.' Mr. Trump's name was not on the suit, nor was the Republican National Committee's. But text messages reviewed by The New York Times suggest that the former president's top aides were behind it." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Stuart Thompson of the New York Times: Georgia "election officials ... said that ... a woman ... visited a polling site in Whitfield County last week and used a touch-screen voting machine to cast her ballot. She mistakenly selected one candidate's name when she had intended to choose another.... The voter tried again, fixed the mistake and successfully cast her ballot. But online, the story quickly took on a life of its own, catapulted to prominence by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, and transforming into an elaborate conspiracy theory involving voting machines that were somehow 'flipping' votes between candidates en masse.... [After posting the false claim on X,] Ms. Greene also joined Alex Jones, the far-right radio host known for spreading conspiracy theories, on his livestream to repeat the false claim.... Election officials in Georgia tried to counter the narrative, but their efforts appeared to pale in comparison to the reach that Ms. Greene and Mr. Jones had online." (Also linked yesterday.)

Catherine Belton of the Washington Post: "A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin's most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents show that John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government, was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service.... Disinformation researchers say Dougan's network was probably behind a recent viral fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, which U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday was created by Russia." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I scanned the whole story, and Dougan has a long and sordid past. The story doesn't say one thing about Donald Trump. Still, my twisted, conspiratorial mindset cannot get past Dougan's history in Palm Beach County, home of Mar-a-Lardo. Dougan is a Trumpy sort of guy, someone Trump might hire as an occasional bodyguard, someone Trump might like to chat with on road trips to the Doral golf resort. Just saying.

Marie: Just in case you question whether or not a woman has the emotional strength to be president, here's a woman with a great deal more courage than has Jamie Dimon, the powerful CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who normally just loves publicity. ~~~

~~~ Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Katie Robertson of the New York Times: "The head of The Los Angeles Times's editorial board resigned on Wednesday after the paper's owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris. In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Mariel Garza, who held the title editorials editor, said she had quit because 'I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I'm standing up.' Ms. Garza said that the editorial board had planned to endorse Ms. Harris, but that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, decided this month that the newspaper would not make any endorsement for president. The paper did not explain to readers why it was not issuing an endorsement." ~~~

     ~~~ The Columbia Journalism Review report & interview (also linked above) is by Sewell Chan, a friend of Garza's & a former LA Times editorial page editor.

Marie: A couple of days ago, Ken W. recommended this Substack essay by Heather Cox Richardson, and I just got around to reading it yesterday. Richardson discusses political scientist Rachel Bitecofer's Substack essay on Trump's plans, in which Bitecofer gives a very short-course on Hitler's plans, and then, you know, finds parallels that leads her to conclude that Trump will be, after all, a dictator, too. You can read Bitecofer's essay here. But the most striking graf, to me, in Richardson's essay is her own, one in which she recounts a visit by "the First Lady of American Journalism" Dorothy Thompson, to Germany in 1931. Then the wife of Sinclair Lewis, who had just won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Thompson interviewed Adolf Hitler. Thompson was no ingenue. By that time, she had been a journalist in Europe for ten years, both freelancing & representing various U.S. news organizations. She was "the undisputed queen of the overseas press corps, the first woman to head a foreign news bureau of any importance."

Nonetheless, Cox writes that Thomas did not see Hitler as "the future dictator of Germany." "She asked him if he would 'abolish the constitution of the German Republic.' He answered: 'I will get into power legally' and, once in power, abolish the parliament and the constitution and 'found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.' She did not believe he could succeed: 'Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights,' she wrote in apparent astonishment." Yes, indeed. Imagine that! (Also linked yesterday.)

Elisabeth Zerofsky of the New York Times Magazine: "The historian Robert Paxton ... is one of the foremost American experts on fascism and perhaps the greatest living American scholar of mid-20th-century European history.... In a column for a French newspaper, republished in early 2017 in Harper's Magazine, Paxton urged restraint [against describing Donald Trump as a fascist]. 'We should hesitate before applying this most toxic of labels,' he warned. Paxton acknowledged that Trump's 'scowl' and his 'jutting jaw' recalled 'Mussolini's absurd theatrics,' and that Trump was fond of blaming 'foreigners and despised minorities' for 'national decline.' These, Paxton wrote, were all staples of fascism.... [But] Jan. 6 proved to be a turning point.... 'The turn to violence was so explicit and so overt and so intentional, that you had to change what you said about it,' Paxton told me.... In a column that appeared online on Jan. 11, 2021, Paxton wrote that the invasion of the Capitol 'removes my objection to the fascist label.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Perhaps the most important point Paxton shares with Zerofsky is this one: "Whatever Trumpism is, it's coming 'from below as a mass phenomenon, and the leaders are running to keep ahead of it,' Paxton said.... For fascism to take root, there needs to be 'an opening in the political system, which is the loss of traction by the traditional parties' he said. 'There needs to be a real breakdown.'... Trump's power, Paxton suggested, appears to be different. 'The Trump phenomenon looks like it has a much more solid social base,' Paxton said. 'Which neither Hitler nor Mussolini would have had.' [since both were legitimately appointed to lead their governments]." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Marie: An Onion parody RAS linked yesterday is consistent with Paxton's view of Trump's base. The headline is "Both Campaigns Release Ads Showcasing Trump's Most Racist Comments." "Featuring nearly identical video footage in two separate $25 million ad buys, the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns both debuted new commercials Tuesday that attempt to win support for their respective candidates with a supercut of Trump's most racist comments.... However, sources indicated there is a difference in tone between the two ads, with one using sinister music and the other employing a rousing, triumphal score." Worth reading in its entirety for the fun of it. But you get the point: Trump's appeal is "a mass phenomenon," as Paxton writes.

Theodore Schleifer & Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "The Justice Department sent a letter to the super PAC founded by Elon Musk this week warning that awarding $1 million to registered voters who signed a petition might violate federal laws against paying voters, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Similar warning letters from the department's public integrity unit have been sent to businesses and organizations that tied promotions to voting and are intended to suggest that continuing such an activity could result in a criminal investigation.... Three voters in Pennsylvania and one in North Carolina have been awarded $1 million checks, and Mr. Musk has promised to award one voter $1 million every day through Election Day as part of his efforts on behalf of ... Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign." The 24sight Website broke the news. (Also linked yesterday.) CNN's report is here.

Here's a great example of how Trump's economic policies work. Hint: not for you & me: ~~~

~~~ Jake Johnson of Common Dreams, republished by the Raw Story: "The 15 largest corporate beneficiaries of ... Donald Trump's 2017 tax law have dumped a combined $839 billion into executive-enriching stock buybacks and dividends since the measure's passage, according to research released Wednesday by the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US. The new analysis ... comes as Trump ... is campaigning on a fresh round of tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations. Republican lawmakers, bolstered by an army of corporate lobbyists, have signaled that they are prepared to quickly ram through new tax breaks if Trump wins the presidency and the GOP secures control of the House and Senate in next month's election." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: In case you missed it, those tax breaks, for the most part, did not "trickle down" to benefit you and me; they went right into the pockets of top executives & stockholders. Sure, those fatcats will buy some stuff with their tax-break windfall that ultimately could slightly benefit others, and some of us may profit from the increased value of dividends in our savings portfolios. But Trump's tax cuts did not translate to business expansions, innovations, higher wages or new jobs for ordinary workers or generally higher consumer spending and consumer confidence. That is, they increased the federal deficit without goosing the economy, when goosing the economy is the only economic reason for increasing an already-gigantic deficit.

Josh Gerstein & Kyle Cheney of Politico: "A highly unusual ultimatum from a frustrated judge caused House Republican investigators to postpone their demand for testimony from two Justice Department tax attorneys in a probe of Hunter Biden's finances. 'I'm willing to bet everything I own, plus my dog Scout, that these two line attorneys are going to have zero information to confirm your suspicion,' U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes told a lawyer representing the House GOP on Wednesday. Reyes threatened to order Attorney General Merrick Garland and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to show up next week in her Washington courtroom for legal arguments on the dispute. 'Don't test me on this ... I'm not bluffing,' said Reyes, an appointee of President Joe Biden who is often seen around the federal courthouse with her golden retriever. The fight emerged from House Republicans' long-running search for evidence that the White House exerted political pressure on officials who investigated the younger Biden's failure to pay income taxes. As part of that inquiry, the House Judiciary Committee tried to obtain testimony from two Justice Department tax lawyers who worked on the case."

Niraj Chokshi of the New York Times: "Boeing's largest union rejected a tentative labor contract on Wednesday by a wide margin, extending a damaging strike and adding to the mounting financial problems facing the company, which hours earlier had reported a $6.1 billion loss. The contract, the second that workers have voted down, was opposed by 64 percent of those voting, according to the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers."

~~~~~~~~~~

Arizona. Meet Your Trump Supporter. Tim Balk of the New York Times: "An Arizona man has been arrested on terrorism charges in connection with three shootings at a Democratic Party campaign office in suburban Phoenix that wounded no one but rattled campaign workers in a bitter election season. The man, Jeffrey Michael Kelly, 60, was arrested Tuesday, according to the authorities. Mr. Kelly also set out anti-Democratic Party signs lined with razor blades near his home, attaching bags filled with an unknown white powder and labeled 'Biohazard,' according to court papers. The shootings at the Democratic Party's campaign office in Tempe, Ariz., started in mid-September and all took place between midnight and 1 a.m., according to the police. After the third shooting, on Oct. 6, the Arizona Democratic Party closed the office. More than 120 guns, 250,000 rounds of ammunition and a grenade launcher were uncovered at Mr. Kelly's home, a lawyer for the Maricopa County attorney's office, Neha Bhatia, said at a virtual court appearance on Wednesday. Some of the firearms were machine guns, she said, adding that the authorities believed he was 'preparing to commit an act of mass casualty.'" The CBS News story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: No matter what Harris says about how what we have in common is greater than our differences, I don't think I have much in common with this guy. For starters, I have not spent any of my income amassing a quarter million rounds of ammo.

Georgia. Simon Levien of the New York Times: "Georgia's secretary of state warded off a cybersecurity threat this month against what was most likely an attack by a foreign country targeting its website that voters can use to request absentee ballots. An unusual spike in users on the site appeared to be an attempt to shut it down. There were ultimately no disruptions to absentee ballot access."

~~~~~~~~~~

Canada. Ian Austen of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada faced the stiffest challenge to his leadership from fellow elected Liberal Party members on Wednesday during a closed-door meeting where he was urged to resign to avoid torpedoing the party's chances in the next election.... On Wednesday..., most of the 153 Liberal members of Parliament gathered in Ottawa for a scheduled caucus meeting.... While caucus proceedings are typically secret, Mr. Trudeau, according to Canadian news media citing unnamed sources, was presented with a letter signed by about two dozen caucus members calling on him to step down.... CBC News reported that Mr. Trudeau told the closed meeting that he would reflect on the concerns raised." (Also linked yesterday.)

Israel/Palestine, et al.

The Washington Post's live updates of developments Thursday in Israel's wars are here: "Israel pounded Beirut's southern suburbs with strikes overnight, and six buildings were destroyed in the al-Laylaki neighborhood, Lebanese state media reported. The Israel Defense Forces said it hit Hezbollah military facilities in the Dahieh area south of Beirut, adding that the sites were 'under and inside civilian buildings in the heart of populated areas.' Fighting also continues in northern Gaza, where Israel launched a major offensive this month, particularly around the Jabalya refugee camp, which relief organizations say has been accompanied by a severe restriction on aid delivery. Israel says it is targeting Hamas fighters who are regrouping there."

Euan Ward, et al., of the New York Times: "Israel attacked the ancient port city of Tyre in Lebanon on Wednesday after issuing its broadest evacuation order there so far, pressing on with its bombing campaign against Hezbollah even as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken toured the region in pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the escalating conflict.... In a departure from his usual talking points on Gaza cease-fire proposals, Mr. Blinken said that the United States was 'looking at new frameworks and formulations as a possibility.' He did not provide details, but a senior U.S. official said he was referring to the possibility that Israel might be willing to pause its Gaza offensive briefly in return for the return of a small number of hostages."

Aaron Boxerman of the New York Times: "The Israeli military on Wednesday accused six Al Jazeera reporters based in Gaza of being fighters in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the latest escalation in Israel's ongoing feud with the Arabic-language broadcaster backed by Qatar. The Israeli military distributed what it said were documents seized from Gaza that showed membership lists, phone directories and salary slips for members of the Qassam Brigades and the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wings of the two groups. The lists included names matching those of the Al Jazeera reporters. Al Jazeera strongly denied the accusations, which it said were based on 'fabricated evidence' and followed a long history of Israeli hostility toward the network. The authenticity and accuracy of the documents could not be immediately confirmed."