James.galbraith

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The word hubris comes from Ancient Greece, meaning “exaggerated pride or self-confidence.” And no word seems more fitting to describe former President Donald Trump walking into Trump Tower in New York City with his son Eric Trump last week to sign a reported $4 billion deal with a Saudi Arabian real estate company to build a mammoth project in Oman.

The word hypocrite also comes from the Ancient Greek word hypokrites, which means “an actor,” another word most fitting to describe the Republican Party, which, after winning the House by a razor-thin margin, is promising to spend every minute of its time impeaching President Joe Biden and investigating his son, Hunter Biden, amid unabashedly bogus allegations of conflict of interest.

Trump is no stranger to selling his brand, but the Saudi deal is a bold move considering that he’s just thrown his name in the hat for a third run at the presidency.

RELATED STORY: Trump’s Saudi-backed golf event is ‘offensive, disrespectful, and hurtful’ to 9/11 victims’ families

This particular deal puts him directly into murky waters. According to The New York Times, the project isn’t just some random real estate deal—it’s a deal with the government of Oman itself. Conflict of interest much?

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, tells the Times, “This is yet another example of Trump getting a personal financial benefit in exchange for past or future political power. … The Saudis and Oman government may believe that giving Trump this licensing deal will benefit them in the future, should Trump become president again. This deal could be a way to ensure that they will be in Trump’s good graces.”

The behemoth AIDA project is led by the Saudi-based Dar-Al Arkan and is in conjunction with the government of Oman, which the Times reports owns the land. The concept includes 3,500 high-end villas, two hotels with around 450 rooms, a golf course (of course), and retail shops and restaurants.

This is just Trump’s most recent project with the Saudi government. Trump also hosted two Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournaments—including one in late July held just 50 miles from Ground Zero, a memorial on the location where the World Trade Center South Towers once stood. Trump stood on the sidelines and cheered despite the fact that the 9/11 families had pleaded with the former president to cancel the tournament.

According to Newsweek, when Trump was asked about the 9/11 families’ plans to protest the LIV Golf event, Trump told an ESPN reporter, “Nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately.”

He added that the people who committed the attack on 9/11 were “maniacs” and that they did a “horrible thing to our city, to our country, to the world. … But I can tell you that there are a lot of really great people that are out here today, and we're gonna have a lot of fun, and we're going to celebrate. Money's going to charity—a lot of money's going to charity," he said.

But Trump hasn’t just been in deals with the Saudis when he wasn’t in office. During his time in the White House, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who worked for the administration, took in a $2 billion investment from the Saudi government to his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, per the Times.

Of course, let’s not forget the massive grifting Trump was involved in during his reign as he took in millions to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. According to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, between 2017 and 2020, Trump’s hotel received $3.75 million from foreign governments. The Times reports that, according to the Trump Organization, profits from all of the hotel stays were paid annually to the Treasury Department.

This new Trump-Saudi project hopes to build a more robust tourism sector for Oman and likely a better relationship with the U.S. The nation refused to sign the Abraham Accords while Trump was in office, a plan that had high hopes of thawing relations between Israel and the Middle East.

All of this was announced just as Trump declared his candidacy, and the Trump family and the Trump Organization are being investigated on charges of tax fraud. 

Remember, according to a report from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, Trump is the same guy who committed 3,403 conflicts of interest during his presidency. So far, the Republicans have announced zero investigations into even one of those.

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Less than a week before Election Day, South Dakota state Senate candidate Joel Matthew Koskan was charged with child abuse. Court documents allege the GOP candidate groomed his adopted daughter, controlled her, and ultimately sexually assaulted her over a period of 6 years. The probable cause statement reads like a manual of sexual grooming for a child molester. 

The 44-year-old, three-time Republican candidate Koskan is out on a $100,000 bond, having paid out $10,000 in cash. As the Dakota Free Press reports, about a week before the charges were made public, the Senate Republican Campaign Committee sent Koskan $10,000. There is no evidence that any of this money has been used for anything at this point, and Koskan seems to have slowed his campaign spending considerably in the weeks leading up to the announcement of the charges.

The details of the charges are intense. Koskan’s accuser says he began grooming her at a young age with unhealthy performative affectionate displays that made her uncomfortable. After she discussed the interactions at a “faith-based” summer sleep-away camp, counselors at the camp contacted the Department of Social Services at that time. Koskan’s adopted daughter was 14 years old at that time and chose not to cooperate, saying she feared being “without a family again.” 

According to the statement, the teenager was roundly criticized by Koskan’s wife for reporting her adoptive father, and while Joel Koskan kept a distance from her for about a year or so, the victim claims the abuse started up again. This time, he added video surveillance to her room and began an aggressive abuser’s set of habits. This included forcing her to only wear nightgowns with no undergarments and penetrating her with fingers and inevitably with his penis. The accusations also include a steady pattern of control being exerted over the accuser, including tracking her with GPS, an intense regimen of phone calls, and physical assault as a result.

The investigation has gone on since May, and Koskan was arrested and charged with one count of felony child abuse for allegedly exposing a minor to a foreseeable harm. The charge is a Class 4 felony, bringing with it a maximum of 10 years in prison. However, according to the Argus Leader, a proposed plea deal filed on Nov. 7 would have “all jail and prison time suspended for Koskan.” The deal would include Koskan undergoing a “psycho-sexual assessment,” though the details of what that assessment may entail is unknown, and paying for the accuser’s therapy sessions if she chooses to attend therapy, as well as:

• Koskan will continue paying the victim's course of study, including any tuition, fees, books and room/board at an accredited academic institution. The obligation will cease upon the victim's graduation or until she reaches the age of 22, whichever comes first, according to court documents.
• A 2017 Chevy Malibu in the victim's possession provided by Koskan will be signed over to her guaranteeing her continued use of the vehicle.
• Koskan will continue to provide health, eye and dental insurance for the victim until she graduates or reaches the age of 22, whichever comes first, according to court documents.
• Koskan will have no contact, either by direct or indirect means, except as authorized by the court with the victim.

Koskan, his attorney, and the deputy attorney general’s names are signed to the plea deal document that was dated to the first week of September. KEVN reports that the agreement attorney with the South Dakota Attorney General’s office, Brent Kempema, told Sixth Circuit Judge Margo Northup that his office’s discussions with the accuser had led the state to understand “that her desired outcome of the case would ultimately almost be a non-prosecution.” Kempema went on to say, “She would like to come to a resolution on this matter that would address her primary concern, that the defendant receives help for any issues he may have.”

Koskan’s accuser is now 20 years old and what she believes is the best thing for her going forward is something only she can decide. The only aspect of this that gives me pause is that Koskan’s side of the plea deal allows him to deny that any sexual assault occurred during the abuse, while allowing for “some responsibility for his actions.” Judge Northrup, who must sign off on the agreement, told lawyers for both sides that she will consider the plea deal over the next month. The deal, as it sits now, would allow Koskan to plea to a charge that does not require him to register as a sex offender.

Koskan never pulled out of the race, and had signed off on a plea deal admitting to being guilty of child abuse. He did not pull out of the race even after he was charged with the crime and that crime became public. There is something more, in my opinion, that needs to be done to protect the community from a man who is accused of being a true predator. South Dakota’s recently impeached Republican Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg received similarly light plea deal considerations for having killed a man with his car in September 2020.

The only good news here is Koskan lost his race to Democratic Rep. Shawn Bordeaux in one of the few blue areas of South Dakota, receiving 41.74% of the vote. This was the least number of votes Koskan received in his three attempts at elected office—so, that’s something? I guess these GOP voters are totally cool with actual “grooming” and very real child sexual abuse if the candidate is a Republican. Pretty gross and the hypocrisy isn’t simply terrible—it shows the extent of the right’s debased morality.

Judge Northrup’s decision on the plea deal is set for a Dec. 12 court appearance.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints confirmed on Monday that the Club Q shooting suspect was a member of their church. The shooter killed five people and injured nearly two dozen more at the LGBTQ club, which was celebrating Transgender Day of Remembrance — a day devoted to those lost in the trans community to violence. Colorado Springs is a conservative community that is home to groups such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, which have been labeled hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They’ve all been part of a decades-long crusade against the LGBT…

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Chris Dalla Riva analyzed key changes in songs that made the Billboard Hot 100, between 1958 and 2022. Key changes are near non-existent after 2010. The most interesting part is why:

Thus, if you changed the key of “Juicy,” Biggie wouldn’t necessarily have to change how he raps, but if you changed the key of “Over the Rainbow,” Judy Garland would have to sing different pitches. If you picked the wrong key, those pitches might be outside of her vocal range. In short, key doesn’t matter as much in hip-hop.

As hip-hop grew in popularity, the use of computers in recording also exploded too. Whereas the guitar and piano lend themselves to certain keys, the computer is key-agnostic. If I record a song in the key of C major into digital recording software, like Logic or ProTools, and then decide I don’t like that key, I don’t have to play it again in that new key. I can just use my software to shift it into that different key. I’m no longer constrained by my instrument.

See also the increasing similarity of Billboard songs.

Tags: Billboard, keys, music, Tedium

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Abortion opponents are pushing the GOP to campaign more openly and forcefully against the procedure after the party suffered a string of losses in House, Senate, state legislative and ballot initiative fights.

Less than six months after celebrating their decades-long goal of toppling Roe v. Wade and watching access to abortion nearly disappear in a quarter of the country, conservatives saw their hard-fought court victory galvanize abortion-rights supporters to outspend and outvote them in the midterms.

That whiplash has left the anti-abortion movement mired in infighting, finger-pointing and bitter disagreements over what messages and messengers they should embrace in a post-Roe era. Some are faulting party leaders including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP candidates such as Senate contender Mehmet Oz for not running harder on abortion restrictions.

“I hope Republicans got the message loud and clear that running away from the issue doesn’t work,” said Marilyn Musgrave, a former GOP member of Congress who now leads government affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “We saw the Democrats go all in on saying women wouldn’t be able to get health care and would be punished, and we did not see a Republican response to counter all those lies.”

The divisions among anti-abortion groups and Republican leaders threaten to undercut a movement that for decades has shaped party platforms, tipped the scales in primaries, and helped steer the federal judiciary rightward.

Even before the final votes were tallied, some anti-abortion groups called for an internal reckoning on how they message abortion restrictions, particularly to younger voters. They are also debating what policies to push in the coming years and weighing tactics for countering the ballot initiatives abortion-rights activists plan to use to overturn restrictions in several red states.

Others believe the only problem was the midterm message didn’t reach enough voters and are anxious to amplify their talking points, clashing in state capitols over how far to go on limiting abortion access, working to influence the outcome of Tuesday’s court showdown in Kentucky over the state’s near-total ban, and pouring at least $1 million into mobilizing conservative voters in the Georgia Senate runoff after getting massively outspent in key November races.

“There are a lot of different ways to build a culture for life, but it’s frustrating when we start to attack each other privately or publicly,” said Jeanne Mancini, the president of the anti-abortion group March for Life that is preparing to hold its 50th-anniversary march in D.C. in January. “We need to get on the same page about what we stand for.”

Now that Republicans have eked out a narrow majority in the House, the divisions are also playing out on Capitol Hill.

Some advocacy groups are demanding Republicans prioritize a federal 15-week abortion ban that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced earlier this year, which many lawmakers have been hesitant to cosponsor, while others insist the issue should be left to the states. Others still say the 15-week bill doesn’t go far enough because more than 90 percent of abortions in the U.S. happen before that point in pregnancy. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said she is hopeful a bill prohibiting abortion after the detection of fetal cardiac activity, which is around six weeks of pregnancy, will be introduced soon.

Others, including Students for Life, are pushing their fellow activists to “get more creative” with legislative, oversight and legal battles, urging a focus on defunding Planned Parenthood and going after FDA’s regulation of abortion pills. On Friday, the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on behalf of several anti-abortion organizations challenging the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.

“We’re not looking for show-votes,” said Kristi Hamrick with Students for Life, an anti-abortion advocacy group active in 33 states in the midterms. “And we are going to have to be more innovative than the currently discussed options.”

Some of the largest anti-abortion groups are lashing out at McConnell — the person arguably most responsible for securing the Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe — for keeping the issue at arm’s length while voters in his home state considered and rejected a Republican-sponsored ballot initiative limiting abortion rights.

“If the argument is that this is a state issue, McConnell was not in the state arguing for the ballot initiative. There was nobody in the state … making it clear what was at stake,” Frank Cannon, a political strategist for SBA Pro-Life America, told reporters. “The pro-life movement has to do a better job and the political element of the pro-life movement has to step up. Without that, we’re going to be in trouble.”

McConnell’s office declined to comment.

The election left neither party with the votes to pass a federal law restricting or protecting abortion, meaning the fate of abortion access, for the most part, is up to states.

Leading national groups have vowed to ramp up their state policy work in light of the midterm elections. Mancini noted that March for Life held five marches in state capitals in 2022 and plans to double that next year in addition to their signature January event in D.C. — the theme of which will be “Next Steps: Marching into a post-Roe America.”

Mancini and other leaders said, however, that the anti-abortion state constitutional amendments Republicans put to voters in Kansas, Kentucky and Montana this year were failures that should not be repeated.

“They're so expensive and so confusing,” she said.

State-level anti-abortion groups have long dominated conservative politics at the local level and have seen sweeping success over the last several election cycles — helping to lock in GOP supermajorities in many states. But many were taken aback by the midterm results and are now struggling to regroup.

In Pennsylvania, Oz’s campaign repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether he would vote for Graham’s bill banning abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy as he stressed his personal opposition to abortion while arguing the issue should be left to the states.

Hamrick is among several anti-abortion leaders arguing Oz’s decision to avoid the issue cost Republicans a winnable seat.

"Dr. Oz was as articulate on abortion as his opponent was during the debate,” she said, comparing Oz’s reluctance to speak on the issue to Senator-elect John Fetterman’s verbal struggles after his stroke. “Running away from the pro-life issue like that really discourages a very motivated core of voters. This year wasn’t the time, if you were trying to draw a distinction, to back away."

A spokesperson for Oz did not respond to a request for comment.

In Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul eeked out reelection victories, ensuring their legal challenge to the state’s pre-Roe abortion ban will continue. Republicans also failed to secure a supermajority in the state legislature that would have allowed them to override Evers’ vetoes.

“Here in Wisconsin, we’ve already had a staff call where we’re talking about this: We have to step up,” said Gracie Skogman with Wisconsin Right to Life. “We have to be educating, specifically, [the younger] generation, because we have seen minds change and minds shift on the matter of abortion, on the matter of life, when we’re able to educate and have conversations. We know we can move into those spaces, but if we’re not, this is ultimately what happens.”

Infighting has also broken out in Michigan following the state’s blue wave election that kept the Democratic governor, attorney general and secretary of state in power and flipped control of the statehouse to Democrats for the first time in decades.

The state GOP put out a memo blaming Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, who they called an “untested candidate” with “low name ID” for failing to raise enough money to counter the wave of ads highlighting her support for a near-total abortion ban. Ads using “Dixon’s own words” of support for a near-total abortion ban with no exemptions for underage victims of rape or incest, they said, “doomed” both her race and several others.

Between August and November, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s campaign and the Democratic Governors Association-backed group Put Michigan First spent $9.7 million on ads quoting Dixon on her abortion position, according to a POLITICO analysis of data from AdImpact.

“Middle-of-the-road voters simply didn’t like what Tudor was selling,” the GOP leaders wrote.

Dixon hit back, calling the state GOP leaders “incompetent” and urging their ouster.

“A lot of people are feeling that they should have done something different, or someone else should have done something different,” said Caroline Smith with the group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, which was active in Michigan and other states where abortion was on the ballot this year. “We’re upset. We’re truly grieving the loss because there are literally lives on the line. But that’s not going to help anything. We have to move forward.”

In some states, the post-election disunion is already having legislative consequences. In South Carolina, Shane Massey, the Senate majority leader, implored his colleagues to change tactics after a monthslong debate over whether to ban abortion starting at conception with limited exceptions ended in a bitter stalemate.

A court injunction on the state’s restrictions — which prohibit abortion after the detection of fetal cardiac activity, around six weeks of pregnancy — means abortion remains legal in most instances.

“Fire and brimstone is not going to persuade people. You might scare a few people into a vote here or there, but you are not going to win the issue with fire and brimstone, and so no matter how many times you say the people who voted to ban abortion at six weeks are pro-abortion — good grief — how would anybody who’s pro-abortion vote to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat’s detected? That’s ridiculous,” Massey said. “If we want to move the ball forward, the whole effort has to change.”

Other anti-abortion groups, however, are vowing to stay the course, pointing to decisive reelection victories for Republican governors in Iowa, Florida, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee — all of whom have signed anti-abortion bills into law — as a vindication of their position.

In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine defeated Democratic challenger Nan Whaley by nearly 26 points. Republicans in the state also gained ground in the state legislature and ensured conservative control of the state Supreme Court, which is expected to hear a constitutional challenge to a state law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

“There were no shades of gray. On one side, you had Governor Mike DeWine who signed the pro-life bill. On the other side, you had former Mayor Nan Whaley who believed in abortion up to and including the ninth month. Voters had a clear choice and by over 20 percentage points Governor DeWine got reelected,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life. “It was a red tsunami.”

Meanwhile, for some in the anti-abortion movement, the midterm results were evidence that their energies are best spent outside of the electoral arena for the time being.

“We can’t just rely on the political side of things,” Smith, from Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, said, calling for a focus on “non-violent direct action” at abortion clinics and other locations going forward. “We can’t rely on lawmakers to make the change we need. Institutions are letting us down. Voters aren’t doing what we hoped they would do. We have to take things into our own hands.”

We don’t know a great deal yet about the young man who walked into a queer club in Colorado Springs late Saturday night and opened fire on the people inside with an AR-15, killing five and wounding 18, before he was subdued and eventually arrested. We know his name and his age. We also know he was arrested last year after threatening to blow up his mother’s house with a homemade bomb, but that the charges were dropped and the case sealed. But we know next to nothing about his motives.

What we do know, however, is that this horrific act of domestic terrorism occurred in a cultural environment in which the LGBTQ community has been under siege by an American far-right apparatus wielding eliminationist rhetoric: Demonizing and dehumanizing them (particularly transgender people and drag queens) as pedophilic “groomers,” attacking specific events that are targeted by far-right social-media influencers, and setting them up for a range of levels of violence, including the extreme and lethal kinds. This is exactly how stochastic terrorism works.

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The killer, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich of Colorado Springs, was arrested last year after he kidnapped his mother, Laura Voepel, threatened to kill her with a homemade bomb, and then engaged responding SWAT team officers in a standoff at a nearby house for nearly an hour. The incident forced police to evacuate his neighborhood, and he was initially charged with felony menacing and kidnapping—but the charges were mysteriously dropped, and the case sealed.

Aldrich is the grandson of a far-right California legislator who has praised the Jan. 6 insurrection. Laura Voepel’s father is outgoing Republican State Assemblymember Randy Voepel, who represented the 71st District in the San Diego area. After Voepel—the former mayor of Santee, California—made comments comparing the Jan. 6 attacks to the Revolutionary War, some constituents called for his removal. He lost his primary in 2022. Laura Voepel has written posts on Facebook praising her father; Anderson Aldrich is in a family photo taken with Randy Voepel that she posted on Facebook in 2014.

The Colorado Springs Gazette reported that after the El Paso County district attorney decided not to press charges in the case and the court record was sealed, Aldrich called their offices in August and demanded that their original June 2021 reportage on the bomb threat be removed.

"There is absolutely nothing there, the case was dropped, and I'm asking you either remove or update the story," Aldrich said in a voice message to the Gazette. "The entire case was dismissed," he said.

The 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen, a “law and order” Republican, did not comment on why he declined to prosecute Aldrich in 2021.

The Gazette also noted that Aldrich’s earlier arrest “could raise questions about why Colorado's new red flag didn't come into play.”

The new law, now in effect for nearly 19 months, is supposed to give law enforcement agencies and concerned family members a powerful tool to help prevent mass shootings.

The statute allows law enforcement officers or private citizens to petition a county court to confiscate firearms temporarily from people who pose an imminent threat to themselves or others.

El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, an opponent of the law, at one point threatened to sue the state if the red flag statute became law. No lawsuit was filed however, and Elder later made clear that El Paso County deputies will carry out the law.

Those authorities so far have declined to say anything about the perpetrator’s motive for the shooting, citing the ongoing investigation.

The victims, however, had no hesitation in identifying it as an anti-LGBTQ hate crime.

“Club Q is devastated by the senseless attack on our community,” the club posted on its Facebook page. It said its prayers were with victims and families, adding: “We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.”

“You can draw a straight line from the false and vile rhetoric about LGBTQ people spread by extremists and amplified across social media, to the nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year, to the dozens of attacks on our community like this one,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), said in a statement. “That this mass shooting took place on the eve of on Transgender Day of Remembrance, when we honor the memory of the trans people killed the prior year, deepens the trauma and tragedy for all in the LGBTQ community.”

While it appears that Anderson Aldrich didn’t have much of a public social media profile and doesn’t appear to have authored a manifesto like other far-right mass killers, both the target and the mode of attack—as well as a cultural environment rife with violent anti-LGBTQ rhetoric—make it extremely likely (if not certain) that the attack was fueled by anti-gay animus. No doubt, we will be learning more in the coming days and weeks.

Certainly the environment in south-central Colorado contributed to one suggesting violence against the LGBTQ community, including its political culture. Heidi Beedle at the Colorado Times-Recorder has been documenting the war being waged against transgender Coloradans by conservative Republicans in the state, notably a member of the state House from Colorado Springs named Dave Williams who openly demonizes them.

“I mean, they are grooming these kids,” said Williams, the Colorado Springs lawmaker ... “They are trying to get them to become transgendered and to become, you know, drag queens and then continue on in this behavior. And the problem with doing that is they are children, they’re minors. You shouldn’t be trying to decide whether or not they’re some other gender. I mean, this is insanity. And by the way, if you look at all the statistics on this issue, people that are transgendered, they don’t typically have a great life. Their suicide rates are among the highest and they have huge mental health problems. And a lot of times they’re legitimate creeps. I mean, if you look at some of the stuff that was reported by these guys who infiltrated the bar about the performers, you’ll find out that they’re unsavory characters. They really are legitimate creeps who want to harm children.”

Nor is it a coincidence that the violence is occurring at a time when right-wing extremists have been engaging in protests and other actions targeting the LGBTQ community, particularly drag-queen events, such as the one scheduled for the next day at Club Q. Jay Ulfelder at Counting Crowds has been tracking these attacks on the community, noting that there has been “a steep and sustained increase in the rate of right-wing demonstrations pushing anti-LGBTQ+ claims” that describe queer people as an existential threat to children:

• These anti-LGBTQ+ actions represent a still-modest but growing fraction of all right-wing protests and demonstrations in the U.S. In CCC’s data, the monthly share of right-wing events with anti-LGBTQ+ claims stayed at or close to zero from the start of collection in 2017 until mid-2022. By September of this year, however, it had increased to about 16 percent.
• A substantial share of these recent anti-LGBTQ+ events have explicitly targeted transgender people.
• Drag shows and Drag Queen Story Hours have also been a common target of the current hate wave. So far in 2022, CCC has logged more than 40 actions targeting these events, including at least 15 so far in September.
• Firearms have also become more common at anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations. Armed protests with these theme are still the exception rather than the rule, but they have clearly been more frequent this year than they were last year. (CCC only started consistently tracking this and other tactical specifics in 2021.)

Ulfelder notes that a number of these protests have turned ugly and threatening, including a Sept. 24 protest outside a drag bingo event at First Christian Church in Katy, Texas. After Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast show targeted the event, the crowd of protesters included not just Proud Boys, but also neofascist Patriot Front marchers and Aryan Freedom Network members bearing swastika-design banners.

The rhetoric has been increasingly vicious in smearing the LGBTQ community as a threat to children. At transphobe activist Matt Walsh’s rally in Nashville this weekend, people carried signs reading "Mutilate the mutilators" and "Doctors who mutilate children should be killed."

This is all part of the far right’s concerted attacks on the LGBTQ community that arose this summer around Pride events, smearing queer people as a whole as pedophiles and “groomers.” It inspired neofascists to turn up at Pride events like drag shows and drag queen reading events to threaten and intimidate participants. In Idaho, Patriot bikers threatened to hold a gun-related gathering next to an annual Pride event, and eventually attracted a phalanx of 31 neofascist Patriot Front marchers who were arrested by police outside the venue.

Those elements were particularly drawn to Coeur d’Alene by a handful of far-right influencers, primarily Chaya Raichik’s Twitter-based LibsofTikTok account, which had hyped the event beforehand. Indeed, it soon became apparent that the “groomer” rhetoric was being spread widely by only a handful of top influencers, LibsofTikTok particularly.

That toxic influence has been wildly amplified by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who has hosted Raichik on several occasions to help promote her attacks on the LGBTQ community, as well as to deny any responsibility for the barrage of threats they inspired against children’s hospitals around the country for providing gender-affirming care. Ironically, Carlson has attempted to accuse liberal Democrats of engaging in scripted violence against conservatives by calling out white racism while simultaneously dismissing the entire concept of stochastic terrorism as merely a meaningless academic term.

That assault has not slowed down in the intervening months. Indeed, Boston Children’s—one of the care facilities targeted by LibsofTikTok—received yet another bomb threat just last week.

The threat of violence, in fact, appears to inspire them to push for more: On Sunday, just hours after the shooting in Colorado, LibsofTikTok posted another tweet targeting another Colorado LGBTQ organization, as well as two Democratic politicians, for encouraging kids to understand drag performances.  

There was little doubt that Raichik (who describes herself semi-mockingly in her Twitter bio as a “stochastic terrorist”) was building on the previous night’s violence to encourage more of the same, particularly among her avid followers, who posted responses clearly referencing the Colorado Springs attack: “No death has ever been more deserved,” read one.

This how stochastic terrorism has always worked: Announce and identify the target with eliminationist rhetoric, and then let random actors inspired by the surrounding hateful rhetoric conduct the acts of violence it’s intended to inspire. Statistically predictable, but individually unpredictable.

“When politicians and pundits keep perpetuating tropes, insults, and misinformation about the trans and LGBTQ+ community, this is a result,” tweeted Colorado Rep. Brianna Titone, one of the politicians targeted by Raichik, on Sunday.

“We don’t know for sure what motivated the (Colorado Springs) shooter or what they were targeting. But we do know what motivates Chaya Raichik. We know she has seen these events and said, ‘Yes, more,’ ” transgender activist Erin Reed tweeted. “Every trans person who follows this has been warning this would happen. And here we are.”

Authorities are investigating the attack as a potential hate crime.

Editor’s note: This is a breaking news story and will be updated throughout the day with new information.

A gunman entered an LGBTQ nightclub and opened fire, killing five people and injuring 25 others on Saturday night in Colorado. The gunman is in police custody.

Though the shooter’s motive isn’t yet known, the attack at Club Q in Colorado Springs coincides with the rise in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, legislation, harassment, and violence in the US.

At least two club patrons confronted the attacker, who was armed with a long gun and at least one other firearm, and managed to subdue him, according to Colorado Springs Police Department Chief Adrian Vasquez. “We owe them a great debt of thanks,” he said.

The victims have not yet been publicly identified. Of the 25 injured, several are in critical condition with multiple gunshot wounds, according to NBC. Others were apparently injured while fleeing from the scene. The attacker is being treated for injuries, although Lt. Pamela Castro of the Colorado Springs Police Department said she did not know what those injuries entail. A man matching the suspects’ name and age had previously been arrested for threatening his mother with a bomb and other weapons in June of last year, according to NBC News. Although the outcome of that case is unclear, a spokesperson for Colorado’s 4th judicial district attorney’s office told NBC that the bomb threat “is part of the investigation at this time.”

Police received a call at 11:57 pm describing the shooting and were on the scene in five minutes, according to Castro. Attorney General Merrick Garland has been briefed on the incident, according to the Associated Press, and the FBI has offered assistance to the Colorado Springs police department in the investigation.

“Club Q is devastated by the senseless attack on our community,” the nightclub wrote in a Facebook post. “Our prays [sic] and thoughts are with all the victims and their families and friends. We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.”

Authorities are investigating the attack as potential hate crime, according to CNN. Such a charge depends on the motive of the attacker and whether the crime was committed “on the basis of the victim’s perceived or actual race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability,” at least on the national level. Colorado law stipulates that bias need only be part of the attacker’s motivation and specifically outlines sexuality but not gender identity as one of the classifications for a hate crime.

Club Q’s Facebook page advertised a punk drag show and a birthday party on Saturday night. Drag queen Del Lusional, who performed that evening, described the experience on Twitter: “I never thought this would happen to me and my bar. I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t stop hearing the shots.”

The shooter perpetrated the attack on the eve of Trans Day of Remembrance, an annual observance to commemorate the transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people killed in anti-trans attacks.

The attack echoes recent incidents of anti-LGBTQ violence

The shooting follows multiple attacks on LGBTQ individuals and institutions over the last several years, including a wave of attacks over the summer of 2021 on queer and nonbinary people near the Brooklyn, New York bar Happyfun Hideaway. In April, a man set another Bushwick gay bar, Rash, on fire.

The Colorado Springs attack has echoes of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, where a shooter pledging allegiance to the Islamic State entered the club on its Latino Night and went on a rampage that killed 49 people and injured 53. The 2016 shooting is the deadliest single attack on LGBTQ people in US history. At the time, it was also the country’s deadliest mass shooting.

President Joe Biden tweeted a statement about the shooting Sunday afternoon, saying, “Jill and I are praying for the families of the five people killed in Colorado Springs, and for those injured in this senseless attack.” Biden also acknowledged the stigma and challenges LGBTQ people still face, and called for firearm restrictions.

Colorado in particular has seen several mass shootings in the past 25 years, starting with the Columbine High School shootings in 1999. On a national level, lawmakers have failed to curtail the national epidemic of mass shootings, despite their sustained intensity and deadliness. Mass shootings at schools including Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and most recently Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas have taken the lives of dozens of teenagers and young children.

LGBTQ rights are on the line in the current political climate

Republicans have stepped up anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric in recent years, particularly against trans people. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation earlier this year preventing teachers in public schools from discussing gender identity or sexuality with students from kindergarten through third grade, “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” the law reads.

DeSantis has also approved a measure banning Medicaid patients from using the service to access gender-affirming healthcare. That legislation will affect more than 9,000 trans Floridians who use Medicaid as their primary health insurance, according to a statement from the Human Rights Campaign.

In Texas, Republican lawmakers have pursued policies aimed at trans children, most notably targeting parents who provide their children with gender-affirming care. In March, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a directive to the state’s health agencies deeming gender-affirming care “child abuse” and mandating teachers and health care providers to report parents seeking such care to the Department of Family and Protective Services. This policy is contrary to medical science.

More broadly, Republican lawmakers in multiple states have restricted or attempted to restrict the rights of LGBTQ people, which Democrats and LGBTQ advocates say portends potential rollbacks on a national level.

To that end, 62 senators, including 12 Republicans, has voted to advance the Respect for Marriage Act, which would protect the marriages of LGBTQ couples and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The amended bill will return to the House for a vote before final approval by the Senate, likely after the Thanksgiving holiday.

In a tremendous public service to the grassroots universe, Daily Kos and Civic Shout commissioned Civiqs to conduct a survey about how Democratic voters feel about unsolicited fundraising emails and texts. There is a whole lot for the DNC, the DSCC, the DCCC, and every candidate to learn from this. Number one: Stop it.

The survey was of self-identified Democrats and Independents who voted Democratic in the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections, asking about the unsolicited contacts. These voters are not fans, as Josh Nelson, CEO of Civic Shout, tweets.

That’s just a smattering of the responses. According to Civiqs director Drew Linzer, there’s much, much more like that. They also heard:

• “It is very annoying and counterproductive to building meaningful relationships with voters, volunteers, and donors. Receiving messages on behalf of out of state candidates makes even less sense and should be generally abolished as a practice.”
• “I find it very annoying and it makes it clear my email has been shared or sold without my permission. This reduces trust which is important with political candidates. It also makes me regret the donations that I have made.”

In other words, “Make it stop.” (It’s worth noting at this point that neither Daily Kos nor Act Blue will sell your email addresses when you donate through us. Don’t blame us for your inbox!)

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Clear majorities of both independent voters (57% of them) and the critical group of all voters aged 18-34 (59%) agreed with this statement: “I get too many impersonal emails and text messages from Democratic campaigns that I never signed up for.” Out of the whole group of respondents, 60% said that Democratic campaigns should not be sending out emails and text messages to people who didn’t sign up for them. Just 18% of people are okay with that.

A big majority, 57%, said they got “a lot” of emails, and 46% said they didn’t sign up for them. One-third of them said that those emails were “mostly annoying,” 35% said they were “tolerable,” and only 14% found them helpful. Not as many said they got “a lot” of texts (36%), but 54% said they had never signed up to get them, and 32% found them “mostly annoying.”

Here’s a really troubling finding: 24% said have been demotivated by the cold contacts because getting involved in the campaign would just result in them receiving more unwanted emails and texts. They agreed with statement that ”There have been times when I have decided not to donate to or volunteer for a Democratic campaign because that just means I’ll get more emails and text messages.”

Campaigns might counter, “yeah, but it works.” Except for the response to this question: “Did you donate any money to a Democratic political campaign based on any emails or text messages that you received from Democratic groups in recent months?” More than two-thirds—68%—said “no.” Oh, and to reiterate what that one person said: “I did not vote for any of the candidates that were harassing me by email and text.”

Overwhelmingly voters said they wanted out: 57% of all of the surveyed voters said if there was a universal way to opt out of all these unsolicited contacts, they would use it; a full 72% of independents and 67% of 18- to 34-year-olds (the people who got Democrats elected this time around) said they would to stop receiving all political campaign emails and texts if they could.

The survey didn’t get into the content of the messages, the never-ending “DOOM” and “THE END IS NEAR” and “WE’RE IN CRISIS MODE” subject lines screaming across the internet to land in your inbox, multiple times. It would be helpful to see as well just how motivating—or not—that is. But based on conversations with all the people I know who follow campaigns closely and give money, they hate them.

But the message from this group of Democratic voters is clear: Being inundated by spam fundraising requests is at best annoying and at worst angering enough to make them tune out. “Democratic campaigns are demoralizing their supporters, annoying potential donors and driving independents away by inundating Americans with unsolicited fundraising emails and texts,” said Nelson. “If Democrats want to preserve their major advantage in grassroots online fundraising, they must stop spamming and scamming potential supporters.”

“Democratic and independent voters are being absolutely inundated with unsolicited digital campaign materials from Democratic Party campaigns and organizations,” said Civiqs director Linzer. “These voters are clear: It’s too much, and they want a way out.”

Election Night 2022 was full of surprises—mostly for people pushing the last couple months of traditional media narrative of a "red tsunami." The problem is that Americans are not super into the GOP. Markos and Kerry have been saying the media narrative was wrong for months, and on Tuesday, Daily Kos and The Brief team was validated.

Daily Kos recruited more than 50,000 volunteers to get out the Democratic vote for the November election. Chip in $5 to help us get out the vote for the Georgia runoff.

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Dammit roko

1Password has announced that passkey support will be available to its customers in "early 2023," allowing users to securely log in to apps and websites without a password. The Verge reports: Passkeys are a passwordless login technology developed by the FIDO Alliance, whose members include most of the Big Tech companies. The tech allows users to replace traditional passwords with their device's own authentication -- such as an iPhone with Face ID -- offering greater security and protection since there's no password to steal or accidentally hand over via a phishing attack. 1Password claims its own variation, called Universal Sign On, will be superior to others by supporting multiple platforms and cross-platform syncing when it launches next year. By contrast, passkey support through companies like Apple is only built to seamlessly synchronize access on devices within the same ecosystem. A live demonstration of how passkeys will work is available for 1Password users using the latest version of its Chrome browser extension, alongside a video demo for those not using the service and a directory listing which websites, apps, and services are using passkeys for authentication. 1Password will bring full support for passkeys to its browser extension and desktop apps in early 2023, with mobile support to follow.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

His fitness for public office is at about a negative 14, but where material for comedy is concerned, GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker inspires greatness. In his set at a New York City comedy club, Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. included material from Walker's campaign speech on Wednesday.

Walker told a crowd in McDonough, Georgia, that if a vampire in the 1985 film Fright Night can have faith against holy water in his face and a cross on his forehead, we can have faith in this country. Have faith, that was Walker’s point. I got to it in two sentences.

The person running to represent the state of Georgia in the U.S. Senate spent more than two minutes getting to the point in the kind of summary that would make a second-grade teacher cry.

It did fairly well before a comedy crowd, though.

RELATED STORY: Herschel Walker can be Lindsey Graham's greatest role model, but keep Black people out of it

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Repeating the early parts of Walker’s speech, Wood started weaving together the same mumbling and seemingly pointless vampire/werewolf narrative that the Senate hopeful did. “You gotta keep the faith,” the comedian started. “I was watching a movie. You ever watch a movie late at night, think the movie gon’ get better, it don't get no better, you keep watching it anyway? 

“I was watching this movie, ‘Fright Night,’ freak night ... It was. a bunch of vampires in the movie. Didn't know this but vampires are pretty cool people aren't they? You all agree on that. I was watching that movie ‘Fright Night’ about the vampires. I didn’t know this. Did you know that a werewolf could kill a vampire? I didn’t know that. I found that out. I was like I want to be a werewolf. I don’t want to be a vampire no more.”

Wood got a couple chuckles here and there, but largely the audience didn’t seem to understand where he was going. And really who could until Wood delivered the punchline?

”And those are the exact words verbatim from Herschel Walker at a f—king campaign event,” the comedian said, earning him screams. 

If you’re a Democrat in Georgia, however, you’re more likely to cry at the thought of Walker in the Senate. 

Please help us end this man’s access to a national spotlight and elect Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock on Dec. 6. Our state has been embarrassed enough.

Here are all the ways you can help get out the vote in Georgia, many from the comfort of your own living room.

Please donate $10—or $20, or even $100 if you're able—to help Raphael Warnock win a full six-year term!

RELATED STORY: GOP seems to think Black people will vote for anyone Black, so Georgia pastor corrects misconception

Above all, Republicans seem determined to avoid telling Trump voters the truth.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

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The real trick is when companies use it to get you to buy things like my new book Bea Wolf, which will change your life.

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The major reflections, arguments, and spin.

When he was campaigning for governor of Minnesota, Scott Jensen first said he’d ban abortions with no exceptions for rape and incest. Later, he said the governor couldn’t do anything about abortion anyway, given Minnesota’s constitutional protections. Last weekend, in a 22-minute Facebook Live video reflecting on his bruising loss, he made a new argument.

“This election was not about inflation, and crime and education...for so many Americans across the country this election was about an intrusion into a person’s autonomy,” he said, referring to abortion. “In the future I think the lesson is clear — at least it should be to Republicans. If you infringe on someone’s freedom, you may well lose. You’ll probably lose.”

The 67-year-old politician and physician announced his support for birth control over the counter, and morning-after pills in every medicine cabinet. “The pro-life movement should not be about trying to determine what the sexual mores or behaviors are of an American country,” he said.

A week out from the 2022 midterm elections, where abortion played a pivotal role in shaping both campaigns and voter turnout, candidates like Jensen, conservative strategists, and leaders of the movement to restrict abortion rights have been taking stock of the results for a cycle that was expected to be a much bigger blowout for Republicans.

Finger-pointing abounds — at other Republicans, at Democrats, at the media.

Some argue the midterm results are less bad than they first seem; despite losing every abortion rights ballot initiative, and some key statewide races that would have enabled the legislatures to pass new abortion restrictions, Democrats failed to unseat incumbent governors and didn’t win enough seats in Congress to pass any federal legislation restoring abortion rights. “If anything was less impressive on election night than the ‘red wave,’ it was the abortion wave,” quipped Catherine Glenn Foster, the president of Americans United for Life.

Others, like Jensen, say the abortion results were terrible for Republicans and the party requires strategic recalibration if they’re to win in the future. The reactions showcase the divisions and potential directions for the anti-abortion movement in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, where the fate of reproductive rights in America now lies largely in the hands of governors, state legislatures, and voters.

Anti-abortion leaders argue the midterms showed politicians who restrict abortion access won’t pay a price

Some leaders and commentators who want to restrict abortion rights say they see no convincing reason to moderate their goals in the wake of the midterms.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, has been working to push back on what she calls a “facile narrative” that abortion rights were a winning issue for Democrats. In a Fox News op-ed she published on Monday, Dannenfelser argued that Republican candidates who went on the offense on abortion, and challenged their opponents’ “pro-abortion extremism” prevailed, citing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, North Carolina Senator-elect Ted Budd, and Ohio Senator-elect J.D. Vance. She contrasted them with Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Adam Laxalt in Nevada, who she said “buried their heads in the sand” on abortion. (Laxalt ran an ad this fall stressing that abortion rights are protected under Nevada law, and Oz mostly focused on how the federal government shouldn’t be involved.)

Dannenfelser argued her movement was just outspent, and dinged leaders like Mitch McConnell for not campaigning against the anti-abortion ballot measure in his home state.

Glenn Foster, president of Americans United for Life, has put out similar glass-half-full post-mortems, noting that public officials who backed or enforced abortion restrictions were re-elected in nearly 20 states. “Democrats didn’t crack state governor, state attorney general, or state house seats in red states that have enforced abortion limits since June,” she wrote. “Abortion activists couldn’t defeat public officials in those states or win the U.S. House or Senate to block those state laws.”

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Anti-abortion media ran with similar arguments, emphasizing that Democrats and pro-choice activists failed to unseat politicians in certain races where they made abortion rights central. “Texas Pro-Life Republicans Win Every Race After Democrats Promised to Beat Them for Banning Abortions,” read one report in LifeNews. “Every Pro-Life Republican Governor Who Signed an Abortion Ban Won Re-Election” read another.

John Gizzi, the chief political correspondent for the right-wing NewsMax, published analysis concluding that arguments that abortion hurt Republican candidates are “just a lot of bunk” by “big media” and those who want abortion rights. “In race after race, abortion was not the deciding factor,” he argued, and pointed to New York, where anti-abortion gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin over-performed, and nine out of 10 anti-abortion Republicans won congressional seats. “In many significant races across the U.S., Democrats used the abortion card without success,” Gizzi added.

Other conservative writers joined in to say the results were not as bad as the left suggested. “Despite setbacks, despair is unwarranted,” concluded Jonathon Van Maren in First Things magazine. John McCormack, the Washington correspondent for National Review, described the results as “messy” but noted that there was no evidence Senate candidates paid a price for embracing a 15-week federal abortion ban. “For all the disappointment some Republicans felt on election night, a clean sweep for incumbent GOP governors was no small thing,” he added. “By protecting the Senate filibuster at the federal level, pro-lifers ensured the survival of state laws that have taken effect since Roe ... and lived themselves to fight another day.”

And rather than losing because they embraced unpopular positions on abortion, as Jensen, the gubernatorial candidate from Minnesota, asserted, some conservative writers argued candidate quality was the far more persuasive explanatory variable. “I’ll put it plainly: Donald Trump continues to be a significant drag on the GOP,” wrote Alexandra DeSanctis in the National Review. “Nearly every single one of his handpicked candidates failed or underperformed relative to other Republicans, in an economic climate highly favorable to the GOP. That’s the story of last night’s midterms.”

Other conservatives say the midterms show the need to stake out more popular positions

Not all conservatives are viewing the midterm results with rose-tinted glasses.

William Saletan, a writer for The Bulwark, a center-right news outlet, published an analysis calling abortion “decisive” in the midterms and said Republican candidates paid the price. Using national exit polls and a separate study overseen by the Associated Press, Saletan concluded the Dobbs decision influenced which candidates people voted for, and whether they voted at all. “Politically, the result is clear,” he wrote. “Most voters are pro-choice. They don’t like what the Court did.”

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Several pieces argued the results reflect the weaknesses of the anti-abortion movement. In an op-ed entitled “Pro-lifers were the midterms’ biggest losers,” writer Ben Kew said the results show “hardline abortion restrictions” will hurt Republicans, and one solution could be to rally behind the “safe, legal, and rare” position espoused by Clinton. “Yet in these febrile and divided political times, anyone expecting an amicable compromise is likely to be in for a very rude awakening,” he concluded pessimistically.

Aaron Renn, who runs a Substack focused on Christianity and politics, said the anti-abortion movement is “dead in the water” and emphasized the degree of actual support from Republican legislators has been vastly inflated in the past. “Conservative Christians need to understand that the majority of the public simply does not agree with their social positions,” he wrote. “This is going to be a painful adjustment for a lot of people who are used to thinking of themselves as a ‘moral majority.’”

To stay politically relevant going forward, some anti-abortion writers urged their allies to seek “compromise and credible commitment to supporting women and children” as Patrick Brown wrote in America magazine. This might require anti-abortion advocates to downgrade their absolutist goals. “Republicans will have to figure how to get half a loaf on this issue because trying to get a whole loaf will cause the oven to explode in their faces,” wrote Ross Kaminsky in the Spectator.

The Wall Street Journal was even more blunt with its midterm assessment. “Independent voters in swing states may be unhappy with the direction of the country, but they didn’t trust the GOP enough to give them power,” the paper’s influential editorial board wrote. “Abortion seems to have been one factor that cut against the GOP this year, and the pro-life party will have to adjust its policy and message for 2024.”

Some anti-abortion leaders say the problem was they were outspent by opponents, and were disadvantaged by a biased media landscape

There were wide spending gaps between anti- and pro-abortion rights activists, and conservatives focused on those in their post-mortems. “During this general election, Democrats spent an unprecedented $391 million on abortion-focused TV ads alone, compared with only $11 million on the GOP side — outspending them more than 35-to-1,” wrote Dannenfelser in Fox News. In Michigan, the pro-choice coalition organizing to pass a ballot measure raised more than $40 million, more than double the $16.9 million the anti-abortion coalition fundraised.

Lila Grace Rose, president of the anti-abortion group Live Action, reacted to the abortion rights ballot measures by saying the results showed “the need to redouble our efforts of education & persuasion on the value of human life” and to “match & exceed the reach & resources of the abortion industry.”

Evan Vucci/AP

The advantage in spending, anti-abortion leaders argued, was coupled with lies perpetuated by Democrats and the media.

“We need to recognize that voters are regularly lied to about abortion policy, and Republicans don’t do enough to counter those lies,” wrote DeSanctis in National Review, arguing voters in Michigan were presented with an inaccurate picture of the stakes of the abortion rights ballot measure. “For Democrats who spent millions casting their opponents as heartless villains who don’t care if women die, and were met with silence or a weak response, lying worked,” added Dannenfelser.

Van Maren said pro-choice activists had adopted the same misleading playbook as reproductive rights activists used in Ireland. “A relentless torrent of newspaper stories, commercials, and social media ads hammered this simple narrative: Vote for abortion, or women will die,” he wrote. “Pro-lifers pushed back on these claims, but their rebuttals did not receive the same coverage.”

The anti-abortion movement frames their post-Roe efforts as a decades-long project

Many anti-abortion leaders say publicly they are not too worried about the results of the election and predict Dobbs outrage will fade the further away from the decision the country gets. While direct-democracy ballot measures proved a tough vehicle for anti-abortion advocates, they for now take solace that voters seem open to electing anti-choice politicians.

“The midterms were disappointing, but not terrible for pro-lifers,” said Brad Mattes, president of the Life Issues Institute. “Overturning Roe was one generational struggle, persuading people about the evil of abortion is the next generational struggle.”

Ramesh Ponnuru, a National Review editor, predicted after the midterms that most Republicans will keep saying they are pro-life when pressed but won’t talk about the issue much, and others “may now put a higher premium on prudence” in their rhetoric and anti-abortion governance.

Van Maren urged his anti-abortion movement to lean into “victim photography” going forward to show the public gruesome images that could change their mind on abortion. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, said the midterm ballot measure losses convinced her that more focus needs to be on the federal level. “Like other injustices our nation faced in our past,” she tweeted, “some states will just refuse to acknowledge human rights and progress.”

Why Democrats have to head off another debt ceiling standoff while they still can.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A first-term Democratic president, after spending two years managing a precarious majority in Congress, loses control of the House. The new majority, brought to power by the election of highly ideological and conservative first-term members skeptical of the Republican “establishment,” tries to extract concessions from the president by declining to raise the debt ceiling, a federal law limiting how much the government is allowed to borrow. If the ceiling is not raised, the result could be a large-scale recession or even a global financial crisis.

Fearing the worst outcome, the White House agrees to the second worst: over a trillion dollars in spending cuts to placate the new Republican House. Those cuts have major negative consequences for the country over the next decade.

The above all happened in 2011, as President Barack Obama dealt with new Republican House Speaker John Boehner and the hardline Tea Party-backed members of Congress brought to power in the 2010 midterm elections — largely driven by the continuing pain and outrage caused by the 2007-2009 recession.

But it could happen again in 2023. Republicans have retaken the House, albeit narrowly in a weaker than expected performance, and the next likely House speaker, current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, has already signaled that he wants concessions from President Joe Biden in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. McCarthy was heavily involved in the 2011 crisis as House majority whip, and this time around he has even more radical, Trump-loyal members to manage. Denouncing the “out of control spending” of the Biden administration and pledging to hold the debt limit hostage were popular talking points among Republican candidates this cycle.

We cannot be certain how this showdown will end. Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and reelected Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have said they will try to nip the problem in the bud and raise the debt ceiling before January; Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) has said he’d be open to using budget reconciliation rules, which would not require any Republican support. Some Democrats, like Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), have called for eliminating the ceiling altogether, which would prevent any repeat of the 2011 standoff in the future.

President Biden could also use executive power to subvert the ceiling, either by asserting that ignoring the limit is the “least unconstitutional” option he can take (compared to ignoring tax and spending laws passed by Congress), or by minting a platinum coin worth trillions of dollars, which is totally a real option.

But despite those options, a full-on repeat of the 2011 standoff looks unnervingly possible. That ended with the Budget Control Act, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would reduce the deficit by $2.1 trillion over a decade through massive, obligatory spending cuts. Congress later undid some of the cuts included in the BCA, but Marc Goldwein, senior vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and a leading budget analyst in DC, tells me that total wound up being around $1.3 trillion. All of those savings were achieved not through raising taxes, but reducing spending. And almost all that reduced spending came from a relatively narrow slice of the federal budget, known as “discretionary spending.”

Large programs like Social Security and Medicaid were excluded entirely, and Medicare only saw modest cuts. But defense spending, federal support for K-12 schools, rental assistance vouchers, environmental protection, and various research and development programs all suffered.

The dynamics that led the Budget Control Act of 2011 to take the form it did have not suddenly disappeared. They reflect longstanding political pressures on both parties in Congress that persist to this day, and could easily lead to a similar deal if the debt ceiling is not raised in the lame-duck period. The 2011 deal cut billions in funding to priorities like clean air and water, education, housing, and more. A 2023 deal could do the same, or worse.

The US federal government is an insurance company with an army

There’s an old saying in DC that the federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. That’s not exactly true, but it’s close. Defense spending, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined made up about 62 percent of the federal budget in 2019 (see this CBO infographic). During the pandemic, huge stimulus and unemployment payments pushed that percentage down, but in normal times about three out of every five federal dollars go to those programs. If you add in other “mandatory” programs like federal employee pensions and food stamps, and interest payments on old debt, the share grows to over 85 percent.

Outside of defense, which Republicans are loath to cut, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are where the money is. More ideologically committed (see the Republican Study Committee, to which 156 members of Congress belong) and/or gaffe-prone (see Ron Johnson) Republicans tend to call for big cuts to these three. Some RSC members have explicitly demanded that a debt ceiling increase in 2023 be tied to reforms to these programs.

But those programs are also wildly popular, they’re the last things Democrats are likely to agree to cut, and they have a potent defender in Donald Trump, who repeatedly promised to protect them from cuts as president. That didn’t stop his administration from proposing budgets full of cuts to these programs, or from pushing for a health reform package that would gut Medicaid — but none of those policies actually passed, and the Republican in the White House being openly skeptical of entitlement cuts probably hurt their odds of passage.

Tellingly, Republican leaders spent 2022 running away from their past calls for entitlement cuts. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who months earlier proposed sunsetting every federal law (including Social Security and Medicare) every five years, told CNN in October, “I don’t know one Republican” who wants to reduce Medicare or Social Security benefits, and that he would oppose raising the retirement age for either. (He has apparently not met any of the 156 House members of the Republican Study Committee.) But after the election, Scott told the Washington Post, “We’re not going to just keep raising the debt ceiling without structural reform.”

Likely incoming speaker McCarthy disputed the idea that he’d use the debt ceiling to force cuts to Social Security and Medicare, telling CNBC, “The debt ceiling needs to be raised, but I also know I’m going to strengthen Social Security, Medicare. I never brought them up.”

The making of the 2011 debt ceiling deal

None of these dynamics are new. During the 2011 debt ceiling fight, the Obama White House took a firm line against any deal that cut Social Security or Medicare without increasing taxes. For a brief time, House Speaker John Boehner seemed to be playing ball, agreeing to as much as $800 billion in revenue increases, but it soon became clear that he could not get his caucus to support major tax increases. Without the tax hikes, the Social Security and Medicare cuts that Obama was open to — like slowing cost-of-living adjustments for the former and raising the age for the latter to 67 — went off the table.

Ultimately, the two sides agreed to $917 billion in spending cuts, mostly by capping discretionary spending (both defense and non-defense), but for the other $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction, they punted negotiations to a congressional committee (colloquially called “the supercommittee”). If the supercommittee failed to put together a package slashing $1.2 trillion through tax hikes or spending cuts, indiscriminate spending cuts would ensue through forced decreases in the caps on defense and non-defense discretionary spending. Unless Congress passed spending bills with totals below these new, even lower caps, a “sequestration” process forcing across-the-board cuts to every affected program would ensue.

The supercommittee failed, shocking no one. The across-the-board cuts included as a backup were never meant to take effect. They were an enforcement mechanism meant to pressure Congress into making a deal, the equivalent of paying a guy from Craigslist to punch you if you don’t get your work done on deadline.

But Congress rarely gets its work done on deadline, so it got punched in the face. Which means, of course, Americans who relied on this spending got punched in the face. Because the deal took cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and the beneficiary side of Medicare off the table, the punch was lighter than it could have been. (Medicare payments to providers were cut, though, which some studies have found reduces quality of care received.) Further, Congress agreed in another deal at the end of 2012 to delay the sequestration cuts for two months, so they began on March 1, 2013. But they took effect then, as planned.

The consequences of the 2013 sequestration

As I wrote at the time, the sequestration led to 7.7 percent across-the-board cuts to defense and 5.1 percent across-the-board cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Military operations funding fell by $17.1 billion, the National Institutes of Health by $1.6 billion, nuclear weapons security by $903 million, border security and immigration enforcement by a combined $890 million, and on and on.

Agency heads had little to no flexibility in distributing these cuts; every “program, project, and activity” had to be cut equally, and “activity” was defined to include things as small as a single buoy the government floated in the Chesapeake Bay. That buoy, somehow, had to be cut by 5 percent (in practice, that meant scraping 5 percent less bird poop off the buoy).

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

These across-the-board cuts, though, only came because Congress approved spending bills totaling more than the caps they set for themselves (again, assuming the cuts wouldn’t actually take effect). After 2013, Congress was free to pass spending bills that did abide by the caps, after which no across-the-board cuts would ensue. It simply had to make decisions about what spending it wanted to prioritize, subject to those limits. It also could, and occasionally did, change the caps, as in the 2013 and 2015 budget deals, which raised both defense and non-defense spending caps in the short term, partially offsetting that with lower spending later on. The 2018 and 2019 budget deals under Trump increased the caps still further and barely included any offsets, driven largely by a Republican desire to restore defense spending.

Taking all these changes together, the Committee on a Responsible Federal Budget’s Goldwein told me, the Budget Control Act of 2011, the fruit of the debt ceiling crisis, resulted in $1.2 trillion or so in overall deficit reduction, less than the $2.1 trillion originally promised (due to the repeated deals which raised the budget caps) but still sizable. Overall spending was substantially lower from 2011 until the Covid-19 pandemic hit (and threw the federal budget into general chaos) than previously planned.

So, what did this all mean for actual users of government services? For some, the impact was temporary. Head Start, the pre-K program for low-income children, kicked 57,000 kids off its rolls when the sequestration hit. But the next year, funding was restored and stayed roughly on track for the rest of the decade. Some affected spending categories actually rose dramatically over this period, most notably health care for veterans, which members of Congress prioritized in appropriations bills.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

So what did suffer? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ David Reich co-authored a category-by-category report and found that between 2010 and 2021, every single category of non-defense discretionary spending besides veterans’ programs saw declines after adjusting for inflation and population growth. Economic security, health care, and scientific research programs were close to stagnant, falling by 4 percent or less. But funding for environmental protection and parks fell by 15 percent; general government operations by 26 percent; education and job training by 14 percent; diplomacy and foreign aid by 19 percent; agriculture, energy, and commerce by 19 percent.

Housing vouchers through the Section 8 program could not keep up with rents; the Center estimated that between 2010 and 2017, voucher funding fell by 9 percent after adjusting for rent inflation. “We saw significant decreases in the number of families that were being served over that time,” Peggy Bailey, the Center’s vice president for housing and income security and a former senior adviser to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, told me.

A study from the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that aggregate research and development spending from the federal government was $200 billion lower due to the Budget Control Act; health research from the National Institutes of Health and the VA fell by over $7 billion a year relative to previous historical trends, while the National Science Foundation got almost $2 billion a year less.

That was bad news for people interacting with government programs. The two biggest social assistance agencies in the US are the Social Security Administration (which administers old-age and disability payments) and the Internal Revenue Service, which administers tax credits that are crucial for reducing poverty. Adjusted for inflation, funding for the agencies fell by 13 and 19 percent between 2010 and 2021, respectively.

The IRS lost a third of its enforcement staff, rendering it incapable of going after many high-income tax cheats. The Inflation Reduction Act included a historic infusion of funds to fix this problem, but McCarthy has said the very first bill a GOP House passes will be a measure to repeal those funds.

The federal government isn’t the main source of funding for K-12 schools, but what grants it does make fell by 11 percent from 2010 to 2021, adjusting for inflation.

Perhaps the single worst category of cuts that took effect — given what followed — were to programs related to pandemic preparedness and effectiveness. As Reich and Katie Windham note, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget fell by 7 percent from 2010 and 2021, and its grants to state and local public health agencies fell by 20 percent. That almost certainly hampered America’s ability to anticipate and respond to pandemics like Covid-19, and almost certainly cost lives.

Some of these funding gaps were made up in 2020 and 2021 through the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan. Those bills provided emergency rental assistance and supplemental funding to state governments that helped make up for years of declines in federal support for things like K-12 education. But those were emergency measures meant to assist states during an extraordinary historical moment. They didn’t guarantee adequate funding over the next decade.

What will a 2023 deal look like?

We do not know exactly how the new House majority will approach the debt ceiling. Maybe they’ll quietly approve increases and shrink away from a fight. Maybe Democrats will use the lame-duck session or a trillion-dollar coin to make the issue moot for good, or at least until 2025. Maybe Congress will suddenly decide that cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits while raising taxes on the middle class is a great idea.

Anything’s possible! But personally, I’m steeling myself for a repeat of the 2011 budget deal, precisely because the dynamics that led to it narrowly focusing on a small sliver of the budget are still there. Republicans are still vehemently opposed to tax increases, and Democrats are equally vehemently opposed to tax hikes affecting all but the richest 1 percent or so of Americans. Social Security and Medicare are still hot potatoes, and while other “mandatory” programs like food stamps are less popular, Democrats have historically held firm against any cuts to them.

That leaves discretionary programs, both defense and non-defense, covering everything from the FBI to medical research to our embassies abroad. Those programs took a severe battering during the 2010s under the Budget Control Act, and there’s every reason to expect them to take a battering in whatever deal emerges in 2023. The consequences are not straightforward to predict, but could weaken important parts of the government that have already been underfunded for a decade.

FTX suffered a "complete failure of corporate controls" according to the company's new chief executive who was appointed as part of the crypto exchange's bankruptcy process. From a report: In a filing [PDF] to federal bankruptcy court, John J. Ray, who has helped oversee some of the biggest bankruptcies ever, including Enron's, said despite his 40 years in the business of restructuring companies, he's never seen anything as bad as FTX. "Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Britain has lost its position as Europe's largest stock market, as Paris overtook London for the first time since records began in 2003. The Independent reports: According to Bloomberg, the combined market value of primary listings on Monday on the Paris bourse ($2.823 trillion ) surpassed that of the London Stock Exchange ($2.821 trillion) -- finally closing a gap of around $1.5 trillion which has been narrowing since the Brexit referendum. The milestone shift on Monday came as French stocks were buoyed by optimism over the demand for French luxury goods in response to China's slight easing of Covid-19 restrictions, while the sharper fall in the pound's value against the dollar compared with that of the euro this year has also played a role, Bloomberg noted. While the UK's FTSE 100 index has remain relatively stable this year, thanks in part to export revenues boosted by a lower pound, the FTSE 250 index -- comprising smaller, medium-sized businesses -- has plummeted in value by 17 per cent. This fall has been fueled by concerns over rocketing energy bills and interest rates, the latter of which surged in the wake of Liz Truss's disastrous mini-Budget which spooked investors with her rapidly-announced raft of unfunded tax cuts. By the fourth week of Ms Truss's premiership, British stock and bond markets had lost roughly $500 billion in combined value, Bloomberg reported. Speaking as Office for National Statistics figures showed that Britain's was the only G7 economy to shrink in the three months to September, the chancellor said on Friday he was "under no illusion that there is a tough road ahead" requiring "extremely difficult decisions to restore confidence and economic stability." "But to achieve long-term, sustainable growth, we need to grip inflation, balance the books and get debt falling," Mr Hunt insisted, adding: "There is no other way." However, Michael Saunders -- an economist who, until August, spent six years as one of the nine members on the Bank of England committee responsible for setting interest rates -- suggested on Monday that, were it not for Brexit, "we probably wouldn't be talking about an austerity budget this week."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Noted white supremacist Stephen Miller can add another loser to his flop of a political campaign that spent tens of millions of dollars on racist and transphobic ads across Arizona and more than a dozen other states. Following days of nail-biting ballot drops and counting, Democrat Katie Hobbs emerged as the state’s next governor, defeating Big Lie pusher Kari Lake.

Lake, a former newscaster, was among the slate of far-right candidates pushed by the MAGA base. But Lake stood out among them by going over and beyond in bear-hugging this abhorrent movement, at one point even regurgitating the 2015 speech where the insurrectionist former president called Mexican immigrants drug dealers, criminals, and “rapists”.

RELATED STORY: While votes are still being counted, it's clear Stephen Miller's racist political ads were a flop

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Lake’s “strident extremism defined her campaign from start to finish,” immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice said following her loss. “Her election denialism and her anti-immigrant extremism were the twin engines driving her message. Lake made the deadly white nationalist conspiracy about a so-called migrant invasion the centerpiece of her campaign, running multiple ads that promised to declare war on migrants as a day one priority.”

Lake’s platform was essentially state-endorsed lawlessness disguised as law and order, vowing to “send” migrants “back” despite immigration enforcement explicitly being the job of the federal government. Lake, like many other Republicans, also echoed the “invasion” rhetoric of racist mass killers. But Lake then one-upped these Republicans by repeating a portion of the racist, anti-immigrant speech the insurrection former president made during his campaign kick-off in June 2015. He lost countless deals, including from Macy’s, Univision, and NBCUniversal, following pressure from Latino and immigrant activists.

"The media might have a field day with this one, but I'm gonna just repeat something President Trump said a long time ago and it got him in a lot of trouble," Lake said in remarks reported by the Arizona Republic last month."They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime, and they are rapists, and that's who's coming across our border. That's a fact." Lake proudly, unabashedly spewed these lies while campaigning at a church, standing behind a lectern emblazoned with a cross.

In the days before the midterms, Lake also mocked the assassination attempt on Speaker Nancy Pelosi. While she was not at home at the time, the attack left her husband, Paul, in critical condition. "’Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C.—apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection,’ Lake said at a campaign event in Scottsdale, Arizona, sparking laughter from many in attendance,” NBC News reported last month.

Facing blowback for being a despicable piece of shit, Lake lied and claimed she wasn’t making light of the attempted assassination. We all saw the video, Kari. Lake then tried to turn her remarks into an attack on supposed “fake news media,” which she carried on into Election Day, when she arrogantly told assembled reporters she was going to be their “worst fricking nightmare for eight years,” apparently giving herself a second term before even confirming if she’d won the first one. I hope you kept the receipts for those curtains, Kari.

Back to Miller. He’s been assuring his racist base that a “red wave” was in store for Republicans, doing his part by launching hugely offensive ads that sobbed about supposed “anti-white bigotry” and pushed violent anti-immigrant imagery. Some were paid for by his America Legal First organization, while others were pushed by his associates at Citizens for Sanity. It was a massive waste of cash, with MAGA candidates going down in race after race.

There was no red tsunami, there was a red bloodbath, with Latino voters helping provide critical margins in Arizona, also helping defeat anti-immigrant creep Blake Masters.

“Even in an election cycle with fundamentals that were supposedly hostile to Democrats, Republicans lost due to GOP extremist candidates’ failure to articulate common sense solutions and connect with voters outside their hardcore and radicalized base,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “On immigration, voters are tired of cheap stunts and dangerous rhetoric and want solutions, not scare tactics.”

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The UK Treasury has opened an account on Discord to a torrent of abuse from users of the gamer-focused chat app -- abuse they managed to send despite the government blocking all comments on the service. The Guardian reports: With its community-focused approach, where servers encourage tight-knit groups to form and discuss issues related to the overall focus of the topic, Discord may seem an odd fit for the strait-laced world of government communications. But the app has a lot of users interested in finance, thanks to solid take-up among day traders and crypto fans, two groups the Treasury is eager to connect with. The result: a read-only Discord server, where the only user who is allowed to post is the snappily named HMTreasurySocialAdmin1, who shares tweet-length news about the Treasury and chancellor. But trolls will always find a way. Although posting is banned, emoji reactions are enabled, letting any user respond to a post from the Treasury with a single emoji, and new users are cheerily announced in a "welcome" channel. That means the Treasury's server has been eagerly posting automated messages such as, "Welcome, LOCK UP PRINCE ANDREW. We hope you brought pizza," and "Welcome Jeremy Corbyn. Say hi!". The latter does not appear to be the real account of the former leader of the opposition. [...] UPDATE: Emoji reactions and the welcome channel vanished but eventually returned. According to the HM Treasure admin, Discord is the reason to blame for the issues. "Due to the rapid growth of today's channel which has seen over 7,000 members join, a technical difficulty has led to reactions being paused," a post in the news channel read. "We are working with Discord to get reactions turned back on." The trolling can be continued here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rupert Murdoch has seen enough. After Donald Trump’s failed lineup of election deniers lost elections across the country, the Murdoch family and their media empire seem ready to cut ties with the man at the center of it all. 

On the very day Donald Trump has teased a big announcement at his Mar-a-Lago crime den this evening, the Murdoch-owned Fox News network has drawn a clear line in the sand. Check out their 2024 Republican big board from Tuesday afternoon:

RELATED STORY: Fox News is having a hard time dealing and Liz Cheney gets her revenge

You better believe the ketchup is flying down at Mar-a-Lago, as Trump is well-known to be a Fox News addict. 

As the red tsunami became a trickle last week, two other Murdoch-owned outlets have put a fork in Trump. The Wall Street Journal called Trump the “biggest loser” on the same day the New York Post ran with a front page graphic that surely cut deep.

Meanwhile, even Matt Gaetz, who recently said “there is no closer in American politics like Big Daddy Don,” apparently can’t find a flight into Mar-a-Lago for the announcement. See: rats and sinking ships.

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Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri—one of the Big Lie’s most prominent supporters—appears to have a big lie of his own on his hands. On Tuesday, Cole County, Missouri, Judge Jon Beetem ruled that the Republican broke the law in hiding communications that would’ve damaged his 2018 Senate campaign. The request for Hawley’s communications, which were apparently concealed off of a government server while Hawley was serving as Missouri attorney general, was submitted on behalf of his opponent, then-Sen. Claire McCaskill. 

“The requested documents showed—at a minimum—a questionable use of government resources, demonstrated by the fact that their eventual public release helped trigger an investigation by the Secretary of State’s Office into the potential misuse of government funds to support [Hawley’s] Senate campaign,” Beetem added. Hawley’s office failed to respond to records requests, concealed documents, and even used private email addresses to hide correspondences. All in the name of trying to save face for Hawley, who’s proven himself since the Jan. 6 insurrection to be a wildly embarrassing figure.

Beetem found that it would be appropriate to enforce the maximum penalty against Hawley. That penalty is paying up $12,000 for violating Sunshine Law requests in 2017 and 2018 and paying the plaintiff’s attorney fees.

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Election 2022 is officially in overtime, with a Georgia Runoff. We must get out every last Democratic voter for Raphael Warnock. Click here to volunteer in whatever way possible you can.

This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Hawley ran for election in 2018, not 2020.