Category: Vote / Voting

This Is Very Seriously A Big Deal: Pro-Trump dark money network tied to Elon Musk behind fake pro-Harris campaign scheme

An initiative called Progress 2028 that purports to be Kamala Harris’ liberal counter to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is actually run by a dark money network supporting former President Donald Trump.

Building America’s Future, the dark money group at the helm of the network, has steered money to a constellation of groups and initiatives boosting Trump’s agenda and spreading messaging aimed at chipping away voters from Harris. The dark money group reportedly received over $100 million in funding from billionaire Elon Musk, along with other donors, the New York Times recently reported. 

The newest effort to benefit from their largesse is Progress 2028. Building America’s Future registered to use Progress 2028 as a fictitious name on Sept. 23 and the website was created three days later, OpenSecrets’ analysis of corporate filings and DNS records found. 

The Progress 2028 site appears to be created by IMGE LLC, a firm run by Republican political operatives that the New York Times described as the “hidden hand” behind Building America’s Future, and a page on the Progress 2028 site includes the firm’s sizzle reel. 

IMGE LLC has also done work for Elon Musk’s America PAC and several other Republican political committees, including a super PAC funded by America’s Future Fund named Future Coalition PAC, as first pointed out by Brendan Fischer, Deputy Executive Director of Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project.

The Progress 2028 manifesto draws clear parallels to Project 2025, a controversial blueprint for restructuring the executive branch under the next Republican administration. The Project 2025 blueprint was developed by the Heritage Foundation and written by many conservatives who worked in or with Trump’s administration. Project 2025 has drawn intense criticism, and the former president has said it does not reflect his own priorities should he return to the White House.

Some of the policies listed in Progress 2028 highlight disproven and misleading claims about Harris’ positions. Policies listed include “Empowering Undocumented Immigrants, Building Our Future” and “Expanding Medicaid to Undocumented Immigrants.”

“Undocumented immigrants are the backbone of our country, and by removing barriers, we unlock incredible potential,” the document states. “Kamala Harris believes that every person, no matter their immigration status, deserves access to basic healthcare.”

Harris expressed support for allowing immigrants residing in the U.S. to obtain health insurance with her 2019 Medicare for All plan but did not indicate whether there would be a cost. Her 2024 running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, recently said that Harris does not currently support programs for undocumented immigrants to qualify for free government health care, free tuition at state universities or driver’s licenses.

The document claims Harris will “support policies that protect minors’ access to gender-affirming care and ensure that schools provide comprehensive LGBTQIA education.” 

“She’s committed to banning fracking, phasing out internal combustion engines, and rolling out the most progressive Green New Deal yet,” another section of the Progress 2028 plan reads. Harris has explicitly stated that she won’t ban fracking natural gas but her campaign has sent mixed signals about her own position on regulation of gas-powered cars.

Some individuals have received text messages directing them to the Progress 2028 page. 

“Kamala Harris will support a nationwide gun buy-back program that will take dangerous weapons off our streets,” one text message reads, noting, “A mandatory buy-back is the only way to keep our streets safe.” Harris expressed support for a mandatory buyback of military assault weapons in 2019 but has expressed a more lenient stance in 2024, highlighting her own gun ownership. 

(snip-graphics on the page)

Digital advertisement featuring Kamala Harris paid for by Progress 2028 (Screenshot from Meta Ad Library)

Progress 2028 has also started pouring money into digital advertising. Since Oct. 11, several digital ads on Facebook and Instagram have included the disclaimer “paid for by Progress 2028” — totaling over $36,000 in ad buys over just five days.

While the ads appear to include pro-Harris messaging, they lean into contentious issues listed on the Progress 2028 site that have created friction among different divisions of the party. 

“Let’s remove barriers for undocumented immigrants who are undocumented!” one ad states, adding, “Access to affordable housing, driver licenses, and fair wages creates a stronger America for everyone.”

Another ad reads, “A national, mandatory buy-back program means fewer guns & fewer tragedies. Kamala Harris gets it!”

Operating under a shroud of aliases, Building America’s Future has funneled tens of millions of dollars in dark money from anonymous sources into campaigns boosting Trump ahead of the 2024 election. The dark money network also has a history of fueling initiatives impersonating and parodying Democrats. 

Building America’s Future is the top funder of Citizens for Sanity, a dark money group that bankrolled inflammatory ads mocking Democrats and progressive policies in battleground states ahead of 2022 midterms, tax returns show. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Elon Musk secretly steered tens of millions of dollars through Building America’s Future to help fund the effort. 

Citizens for Sanity spent over $90 million on messaging pitting minority communities against each other and chipping away at traditionally Democratic voting blocs. 

Similar to Progress 2028, the ads hit on contentious issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and criminal justice reform. The ads have been accused of trying to suppress voting among minority communities.

(snip-embed video on the page)

Citizens for Sanity does not disclose its donors but other groups were legally required to report money they gave to it. That includes $43 million from Building AmerIca’s Future as well as $28.7 million from Freedom’s Future Fund, a sister group of Building America’s Future, and $13.4 million from American Commitment.

The many faces of Building America’s Future

Building America’s Future has also fueled other pro-Trump groups and was the sole funder of the Future Coalition PAC, new Federal Election Commission records filed Oct. 15 show.

The super PAC that has run ads targeting Harris in Michigan by highlighting her positions that are pro-Israel and the Jewish faith of her spouse, Doug Emhoff. The ads are reported to be pro-Harris but have been criticized as featuring antisemitic dog whistles. The PAC has been accused of attempting to use the conflict in the Middle East as a wedge issue to depress turnout for Harris in Michigan, a state with a significant Muslim and Arab American population.

Future Coalition PAC reported receiving $3 million from Building America’s Future through the end of September.

Another $16 million was steered through Building America’s Future to Duty to America PAC, according to new FEC disclosures filed Oct. 15. The super PAC has targeted young male voters and Black voters trying to persuade them to vote for Trump. 

Building America’s Future was also the top funder of Stand For Us PAC, OpenSecrets’ analysis of FEC reports filed Oct. 15 found. The super PAC received at least $3.8 million from the dark money group and has spent over $15 million on ads attacking Republican primary candidates in Ohio with divisive messaging tying a prescription drug program to immigration and transgender rights. 

In addition to funding a cluster of political groups, Building America’s Future operates under several fictitious names such as Americans for Consumer Protection. 

In August, Americans for Consumer Protection launched an ad campaign criticizing the White House’s proposal to ban menthol cigarettes. CNBC reported that the effort was intended to chip away at Harris’ key base of Black voter support in swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Building America’s Future reportedly raised and spent more than $100 million over the last four years, the New York Times reported. 

Building America’s Future is not legally required to report its finances, vendor payments or outgoing grants for 2023 until after Election Day and, even then, will not be required to disclose its donors.

OpenSecrets’ requests for comment to Building America’s Future and Progress 2028 were not returned prior to publication.

Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit OpenSecrets.
For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact OpenSecrets: info@opensecrets.org

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/10/pro-trump-dark-money-network-tied-to-elon-musk-behind-fake-pro-harris-campaign-scheme

Things to Remind People in the Grocery Line

or wherever mentions of prices, and whatever else has improved since Pres. Biden took office. I post this because my own US Rep is campaigning about how bad everything is, with facts from the Don’s admin when they’re facts at all. I’m certain he’s not the only “safe” (I voted for the Dem-we actually have a Dem running!) Republican running for the US House, as they’re all up for election every two years. Anyway, he makes the claims that things are bad under Biden-Harris, and how he’s just focusing on improving those very things that have improved thanks to Biden-Harris and the legislators who managed to get things passed (most Republicans are not among those legislators, btw.) Anyway, here’s Heather Cox Richardson:

October 17, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 18, 2024

In a new rule released yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission requires sellers to make it as easy to cancel a subscription to a gym or a service as it is to sign up for one. In a statement, FTC chair Lina Khan explained the reasoning behind the “click-to-cancel” rule: “Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” she said. “Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.” Although most of the new requirements won’t take effect for about six months, David Dayen of The American Prospect noted that the stock price of Planet Fitness fell 8% after the announcement. 

When he took office in January 2021, with democracy under siege from autocratic governments abroad and an authoritarian movement at home, President Joe Biden set out to prove that democracy could deliver for the ordinary people who had lost faith in it. The click-to-cancel rule is an illustration of an obvious and long-overdue protection, but it is only one of many ways—$35 insulin, new bridges, loan forgiveness, higher wages, good jobs—in which policies designed to benefit ordinary people have demonstrated that a democratic government can improve lives.

When Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, she noted that the administration “has driven a historic economic recovery” with strong growth, very low unemployment rates, and inflation returning to normal. Now it is focused on lowering costs for families and expanding the economy while reducing inequality. That strong economy at home is helping to power the global economy, Yellen noted, and the U.S. has been working to strengthen that economy by reinforcing global policies, investments, and institutions that reinforce economic stability. 

“Over the past four years, the world has been through a lot,” Yellen said, “from a once-in-a-century pandemic, to the largest land war in Europe since World War II, to increasingly frequent and severe climate disasters. This has only underlined that we are all in it together. America’s economic well-being depends on the world’s, and America’s economic leadership is key to global prosperity and security.” She warned against isolationism that would undermine such prosperity both at home and abroad.

The numbers behind the proven experience that government protection of ordinary people is good for economic growth got the blessing of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday, when it awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and to James Robinson of the University of Chicago. Their research explains why “[s]ocieties with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better,” while democracies do.   

Although democracy has been delivering for Americans, Donald Trump and MAGAs rose to power by convincing those left behind by 40 years of supply-side economics that their problem was not the people in charge of the government, but rather the government itself. 

Trump wants to get rid of the current government so that he can enrich himself, do whatever he wants to his enemies, and avoid answering to the law. The Christian nationalists who wrote Project 2025 want to destroy the federal government so they can put in place an authoritarian who will force Americans to live under religious rule. Tech elites like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel want to get rid of the federal government so they can control the future without having to worry about regulations. 

In place of what they insist is a democratic system that has failed, they are offering a strongman who, they claim, will take care of people more efficiently than a democratic government can. The focus on masculinity and portrayals of Trump as a muscled hero‚ much as Russian president Vladimir Putin portrays himself, fit the mold of an authoritarian leader.

But the argument that Americans need a strongman depends on the argument that democracy does not work. In the last three-and-a-half years, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Democrats have proved that it can, so long as it operates with the best interests of ordinary people in mind. Trump and Vance’s outlandish lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene are designed to override the reality of a competent administration addressing a crisis with all the tools it has. In its place, the lies provide a false narrative of federal officials ignoring people and trying to steal their property.  

Their attack on democracy has another problem, as well. In addition to the reality that democracy has been delivering for Americans for more than three years now—and pretty dramatically—Trump is no longer a strongman. Vice President Kamala Harris is outperforming  him in the theater of political dominance. And as she does so, his image is crumbling.

In an article in US News and World Report yesterday, NBC’s former chief marketer John D. Miller apologized to America for helping to “create a monster.” Miller led the team that marketed The Apprentice, the reality TV show that made Trump a household name. “To sell the show,” Miller wrote, “we created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty.” But the truth was that he declared bankruptcy six times, and “[t]he imposing board room where he famously fired contestants was a set, because his real boardroom was too old and shabby for TV,” Miller wrote. While Trump loved the attention the show provided, “more successful CEOs were too busy to get involved in reality TV.” 

Miller says they “promoted the show relentlessly,” blanketing the country with a “highly exaggerated” image of Trump as a successful businessman “like a heavy snowstorm.” “[W]e…did irreparable harm by creating the false image of Trump as a successful leader,” Miller wrote. “I deeply regret that. And I regret that it has taken me so long to go public.” 

Speaking as a “born-and-bred Republican,” Miller warned: “If you believe that Trump will be better for you or better for the country, that is an illusion, much like The Apprentice was.” He strongly urged people to vote for Kamala Harris. “The country will be better off and so will you.” 

A new video shown last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live even more powerfully illustrated the collapse of Trump’s tough guy image. Written by Jesse Joyce of Comedy Central, the two-minute video featured actor and retired professional wrestler Dave Bautista dominating his sparring partner in a boxing ring and then telling those who think Trump is “some sort of tough guy” that “he’s not.” 

Working out in a gym, Bautista insults Trump’s heavy makeup, out-of-shape body, draft dodging, and physical weakness, and notes that “he sells imaginary baseball cards pretending to be a cowboy fireman” when “he’s barely strong enough to hold an umbrella.” Bautista says Trump’s two-handed method of drinking water looks “like a little pink chickadee,” and goes on to make a raunchy observation about Trump’s stage dancing. “He’s moody, he pouts, he throws tantrums,” Bautista goes on. “He’s cattier on social media than a middle-school mean girl.”

Bautista ends by listing Trump’s fears of rain, dogs, windmills…and being laughed at.” “And mostly,” Bautista concludes, “he’s terrified that real, red-blooded American men will find out that he’s a weak, tubby toddler.” Calling Trump a “whiny b*tch,” Bautista walks away from the camera. 

The sketch was billed as comedy, but it was deadly serious in its takedown of the key element of Trump’s political power.

And he seems vulnerable. Forbes and Newsweek have recently questioned his mental health; yesterday the Boston Globe ran an op-ed saying, “Trump’s decline is too dangerous to ignore. We can see the decline in the former president’s ability to hold a train of thought, speak coherently, or demonstrate a command of the English language, to say nothing of policy.” 

Trump’s Fox News Channel town hall yesterday got 2.9 million viewers; Harris’s interview got 7.1 million. Today, Trump canceled yet another appearance, this one with the National Rifle Association in Savannah, Georgia, scheduled for October 22, where he was supposed to be the keynote speaker.

Meanwhile, Vice President Harris today held rallies in Milwaukee, Green Bay, and La Crosse, Wisconsin. In La Crosse, MAGA hecklers tried to interrupt her while she was speaking about the centrality of the three Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices to the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion. 

“Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally,” Harris called to them with a smile and a wave. As the crowd roared with approval, she added: “No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.” 

—

Notes:

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/16/nx-s1-5154814/click-to-cancel-subscriptions-memberships-ftc-rule

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-click-cancel-rule-making-it-easier-consumers-end-recurring

https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/dave-bautista-trump-jimmy-kimmel-masculinity-rcna175963

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2654

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/03/29/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-summit-for-democracy-virtual-plenary-on-democracy-delivering-on-global-challenges/

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/press-release/

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/popular-information/

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-ditches-nra-event-latest-cancellation-1970902

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-16/we-created-a-tv-illusion-for-the-apprentice-but-the-real-trump-threatens-america

https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-fox-news-interview-ratings-donald-trump-1970906

Kamala Harris storms through Wisconsin, with events in Milwaukee, Green Bay, La Crosse

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/10/16/opinion/trump-cognitive-decline-press-republicans/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/10/16/trumps-unwieldy-speeches-raise-questions-about-his-mental-acuity/

https://www.newsweek.com/dancing-donald-trump-clearly-steep-decline-opinion-1969551

X:

ddayen/status/1846991070309101761

ddayen/status/1847011806587634007

carlquintanilla/status/1847051458618736920

KamalaHQ/status/1847026957407449361

YouTube:

watch?v=rn-Dw2JUVmo&t=910s (video starts at 15.23)

Reblog from Janet

I think Janet makes important points about directness.

Transgender Rights: Tim Walz Takes a Stand Against Opposition

Please click on through-

-turns out FOX News viewers got a goodly dose of truth from our VP.

Harris v Fox News

A TV station stopped playing pro-abortion rights ads after state’s threats, lawsuit says

A TV station stopped playing pro-abortion rights ads after state’s threats, lawsuit says
The lawsuit is asking the federal courts for an injunction.

One Fort Myers TV station acquiesced and stopped playing pro-abortion rights ads after a Department of Health (DOH) lawyer threatened Florida TV stations with criminal prosecution.

It’s a revelation in a new First Amendment lawsuit as the political committee supporting the Amendment 4 abortion rights initiative sued a pair of state officials Wednesday in federal court.

Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF) is currently negotiating with CBS affiliate WINK-TV to get the ads back on air, but representatives for the PC say it has lost valuable time to reach voters in that market with the election just three weeks away.

FPF is suing Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who is also the head of DOH, and John Wilson, the Department’s former General Counsel who wrote the letters, in the U.S. District Court’s Tallahassee Division.

“The State’s threatened sanctions against third-party media organizations that host the advertisement — in a heavy-handed effort to silence FPF’s speech — is a classic and deeply disturbing example of unconstitutional coercion,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants’ threat is an escalation of a broader State campaign to attack Amendment 4 using public resources and government authority to advance the State’s preferred characterization of its anti-abortion laws as the ‘truth’ and denigrate opposing viewpoints as ‘lies.’”

 

The lawsuit is asking the federal courts for an injunction to stop the state from threatening or intimidating more TV stations over the ads, aimed at supporting a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights in Florida’s Constitution and overturn the state’s current six-week abortion ban. FPF is also asking for compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys fees.

“CBS affiliate WINK News, a leading local news station in Southwest Florida, has stopped airing a false advertisement created by a dark money group to push Amendment 4,” the Vote No On 4 Florida opposition group said in a Wednesday afternoon statement. “The ad was removed for making a patently inaccurate and harmful claim about Florida law: That it prohibits abortion even when the pregnancy is a threat to the mother’s life.”

The ad at the heart of the controversy is about a Tampa woman who found out she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant with her second child. Before Florida’s current abortion law, she was able to get an abortion to get chemotherapy that extended her life for her family.

“Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine. Amendment 4 is going to protect women like me. We have to vote ‘yes,’” the woman identified as Caroline says in the ad.

But in his cease and desist letters to Florida TV stations, Wilson argued, “The advertisement is not only false; it is dangerous. Women faced with pregnancy complications posing a serious risk of death or substantial and irreversible physical impairment may and should seek medical treatment in Florida.”

 

Wilson wrote that TV stations playing the ad were violating sanitary nuisance laws that were punishable as a second-degree misdemeanor.

FPF’s lawsuit countered that examples of health sanitary nuisances are things like garbage and dead animals — not “political advertising that contradicts state officials’ political beliefs.”

Wilson’s Oct. 3 letters caused the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair to issue a reprimand.

“The right of broadcasters to speak freely is rooted in the First Amendment,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “Threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government’s views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.”

Wilson left DOH a short time later, according to the Miami Herald, which reported that the reason for his departure was unclear.

FPF also stood by the Caroline ad and called it an accurate depiction of the state’s abortion law.

“Suffice to say, FPF disagrees with the State of Florida’s narrative about its current law, which bans most abortions after six weeks’ gestation,” the lawsuit said. “FPF sponsored Amendment 4 precisely because current Florida law does not protect women and instead runs roughshod over their rights and imperils their health by substituting the government’s judgments for those of women and their healthcare providers.”

FPF plans to keep running more ads, the lawsuit added.

US Justice Department says Virginia is illegally striking voters off the rolls in new lawsuit

US Justice Department says Virginia is illegally striking voters off the rolls in new lawsuit

Republicans know their idea are unpopular and people don’t want their polices.  So instead of changing to do the will of the people are they are hired / elected to do, they simply remove voters who won’t vote for them.  Very democratic.  They demand to rule over the people not represent the people’s will.  Hugs.

Across the country, conservatives have challenged the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

 / October 11, 2024
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during a news conference at the state Capitol in Richmond, Va., on Jan. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
 

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Virginia election officials Friday that accuses the state of striking names from voter rolls in violation of federal election law.

The lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria says that an executive order issued in August by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin requiring daily updates to voter lists to remove ineligible voters violates federal law. The National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of elections for the maintenance of voter rolls.

“Congress adopted the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period restriction to prevent error-prone, eleventh hour efforts that all too often disenfranchise qualified voters,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy and the Justice Department will continue to ensure that the rights of qualified voters are protected.”

A similar lawsuit was filed earlier this week by a coalition of immigrant-rights groups and the League of Women Voters.

In its lawsuit, the Justice Department said the quiet-period provision reduces the risk that errors in maintaining registration lists will disenfranchise eligible voters by ensuring they have enough time to address errors before the election.

On Aug. 7 — 90 days before the Nov. 5 federal election — Youngkin’s order formalized a systemic process to remove people who are “unable to verify that they are citizens” to the state Department of Motor Vehicles from the statewide voter registration list.

Virginia election officials are using data from the Department of Motor Vehicles to determine a voter’s citizenship and eligibility, according to the filing. The lawsuit alleges the DMV data can be inaccurate or outdated, but officials have not been taking additional steps to verify a person’s purported noncitizen status before mailing them a notice of canceling their voter eligibility.

In a statement on Friday, Youngkin said that state officials were properly enforcing state law requiring the removal of noncitizens from voter rolls.

“Virginians — and Americans — will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy,” Youngkin said of the Justice Department’s lawsuit.

“With the support of our Attorney General, we will defend these commonsense steps, that we are legally required to take, with every resource available to us. Virginia’s election will be secure and fair, and I will not stand idly by as this politically motivated action tries to interfere in our elections, period,” Youngkin said.

Across the country, conservatives have challenged the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The Republican National Committee, newly reconstituted under Trump, has also been involved in efforts to challenge voter rolls before the November election.

__

By OLIVIA DIAZ Associated Press/Report for America

 

Trump, after mocking Harris over teleprompter use, stops rally to remove sign that fell on his

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-teleprompter-harris-reno-rally-b2628157.html

With maga every accusation is a confession.  Hugs.

Former president often mocks Kamala Harris for using a teleprompter

Video at link above.  
 

After mocking Vice President Kamala Harris over her teleprompter, Donald Trump’s rally in Reno, Nevada, ground to a halt as he was was forced to fix his on-stage after a campaign sign fell on it.

“Thank god I don’t use teleprompters too much,” Trump told rally goers after the sign fell on the teleprompter, causing the script to stop being projected. “I look at the teleprompter, it’s totally gone. I say ‘What the hell happened.’ The sign fell on top of it.”

Former president Donald Trump removed signage that fell on top of his teleprompter at a rally in Reno, Nevada
Former president Donald Trump removed signage that fell on top of his teleprompter at a rally in Reno, Nevada (AP)
 

The irony of the incident comes to light when reflecting on the number of times the former president has accused Harris of relying on a teleprompter and mocking her for it.

 

Trump told supporters on Friday he would “level” with them, and admitted to his teleprompter usage, yet still asserted Harris uses one more.

“Isn’t it nice to have a guy that doesn’t need a teleprompter, a president, a potential president that doesn’t need a teleprompter?” Trump asked supporters moments after fixing his teleprompter.

He went on to, again, falsely accuse Harris of using one during her town hall with Univision on Thursday.

Both the Harris campaign and Univision have confirmed to CNN that the vice president did not use a teleprompter during her town hall. A teleprompter that was seen in a photo from the event was in Spanish and meant for the moderator, not Harris.

 

Trump and his allies have previously accused Harris of using a teleprompter in interviews when she did not. In instances where the vice president has used a teleprompter, they have mocked her and insinuated she needs one because she is not intelligent.

Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, boasted about not needing a teleprompter during a rally in August claiming, “I’ve actually got thoughts in my head. Unlike Kamala Harris.” At that same rally, he misspoke about a terrorist event in Afghanistan.

 

Similarly, Trump told supporters on Friday night that “there’s something wrong with [Harris]” for using teleprompters.

He added: “I don’t use them that much. The concept I use but I don’t like it.”

He then embarked on a hard-to-follow rant about making speeches.

“When you can’t get up and make a speech, like, normally, like – when all the work we do, you’d think you could for 40 minutes – well she makes very short speeches too. Have you ever noticed they’re like 10 minutes,” he told the crowd at Reno.

 

Peace & Justice History for 10/17:

October 17, 1898
The U.S. took control of Puerto Rico. One year after Spain granted Puerto Rican self-rule, following their rout in the Spanish-American War, troops raised the U.S. flag over the Caribbean island nation, formalizing American authority over the island’s one million inhabitants.
Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth, though the U.S. controls all aspects of its military, trade, media, banking and international affairs. Though Puerto Ricans are citizens, they don’t pay income taxes, nor are they represented in Congress or able to vote for president.

Timeline: Puerto Rico 
October 17th, every year
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty was designated by the United Nations in 1992. It began in 1987 when 100,000 people gathered in Paris and declared poverty a violation of human rights.
This year’s theme “Building a sustainable future: Coming together to end poverty and discrimination” 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october17

“Threatening to cancel votes”: Florida officials allege fraud to kneecap abortion rights amendment

https://www.salon.com/2024/10/12/threatening-to-cancel-votes-florida-officials-allege-fraud-to-kneecap-abortion-rights-amendment/

The last-minute report threatens to “cancel” votes for an amendment to restore abortion rights in the state

By Griffin Eckstein

News Fellow

Published October 12, 2024 2:06PM (EDT)

Abortion rights advocates participate in a protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on June 24, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Abortion rights advocates participate in a protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on June 24, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

In a last-minute effort to kill a proposed ballot amendment that would restore abortion rights in Florida, state officials are accusing a group that gathered signatures to get the amendment on this year’s ballot fraud.

Florida Deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay claimed in a 348-page report released on Friday night that Floridians Protecting Freedom paid out-of-state petition circulators to harvest fraudulent signatures. That group that gathered nearly 1 million signatures for the abortion rights effort. The report alleges the Department of State has been flooded with complaints about potential fraud, and that it had opened over 100 criminal investigations.

Related

The fallout of Florida’s abortion ban has been “chaos,” experts say

“The allegations included reports of paid FPF petition circulators signing petitions on behalf of deceased individuals, forging or misrepresenting elector signatures of petitions, using electors’ personal identifying information without consent, and perjury/false swearing,” the report claims, noting that “more than 20” of the 911,000 signatures were from now-deceased Floridians.

Florida law allows voters to add amendments to the state constitution directly, if 60% of voters agree with a given proposal. Though the election is just three weeks away and ballots have been printed, challenges to the amendment could invalidate votes cast for the initiative. 

Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration has worked hard to kneecap the rights-restoring proposal, reportedly sending state troopers to interrogate petition signers and threatening to prosecute television stations that run ads supporting the measure. On Thursday, state’s Supreme Court ruled DeSantis was not abusing his powers in his attacks on the amendment. 

Florida Democrats warn that the report is just another tactic aimed at killing the effort to repeal the state’s DeSantis-enacted six-week abortion ban.

“DeSantis is so obsessed w/ending reproductive freedom in FL that he has weaponized every state agency against us, is spending PUBLIC $ to campaign against [the ballot initiative] & now — while we’re recovering from a hurricane  — releasing late night reports, threatening to cancel our votes,” Democratic state Representative Anna V. Eskamani wrote in a post to X.

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MORE FROM Griffin Eckstein

We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/12/trump-racist-rhetoric-immigrants-00183537

A POLITICO analysis of more than 20 of his rallies and campaign events shows Trump has demonized minority groups in all of them.

 
 
 
 
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By Myah Ward

Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.

Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”

He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.

 
 

In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks.

“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said.

His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.

“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who writes about authoritarianism and fascism and has been outspoken about the dangers of a second Trump administration.

 

“So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us,” she continued. “That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”

The Trump campaign said while the “media obsesses over rhetoric,” the former president is responding to voters’ concerns.

“The American people care about results that impact their lives. President Trump will take action to deport Kamala’s illegal immigrants and secure the border on day one. That’s what Americans want to hear,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to POLITICO.

Trump has long deployed racist attacks for political gain, including spreading conspiracy theories about whether former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was born in the United States. And when he launched his first campaign in 2015, Trump said Mexico was “not sending its best,” calling immigrants from the country “rapists” who are bringing in crime and drugs. He also promised that day to build a “great big wall.”

But times have changed, and so has he.

The country has moved to the right on immigration — including the Democratic Party and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Trump repeatedly bashed Harris as “dumb,” questioned her racial identity and has called her a “DEI” candidate — perpetuating the idea that women and people of color can only be in positions of power because of quotas and preferential treatment.

Harris has touted her record prosecuting transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers and has promised strict enforcement at the Southern border — an effort to appease Americans’ concern about illegal migration. The vice president has vowed to go even further than the Biden administration’s crackdown on asylum.

 

As the political conversation around immigration has shifted, Trump has not only intensified his rhetoric, but his policy plans.

He has increasingly targeted specific communities, including Springfield, Ohio, Charleroi, Pennsylvania and Aurora, arguing that immigrants are destroying American towns and cities across the country and using those examples to call for large-scale federal response. Trump has spent the last month on the trail elevating the claims about those communities — even as local officials have been denying these allegations and asking the Republican nominee to stand down.

Trump on Friday used false stories about gang takeovers in Aurora as he announced he would remove migrants connected to gangs under an “Operation Aurora” based on presidential wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act. (While police in Aurora have encountered some gang activity tied to a Venezuelan group, there has been no gang takeover in Colorado.)

“Efforts to blame outsiders, a politically voiceless group, which Trump is an expert at doing, has led to atrocities in the United States — everything from Japanese internment to Operation Wetback,” said Ediberto Román, a Florida International University law professor who studies xenophobia and immigration.

Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. women and girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.

But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”

“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”

 
 
 
 
 
 

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