Here's how Trump's comments show he is planning a 'dictatorship': Historian

Matthew Chapman
September 1, 2023

On Friday, presidential historian Michael Beschloss analyzed Trump's recent speeches in which he valorized his own criminal indictments, and warned MSNBC's Ali Velshi that he is planning a "dictatorship" if he manages to get into power again.

"In 2016, I declared, I am your voice," said Trump in one clip. "Today, I add that I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and been betrayed, I am your retribution. In the end, they're not coming after me, they're coming after you, and I am just standing in their way. Here I am, standing in their way." In a second clip he said, "Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists, fascists indict me, I consider it a great, great, great badge of honor ... because I am being indicted for you."

"Using the example you and i just talked about, if you and I ever get indicted for anything, I am not sure I can get away with that," said Velshi with a bitter laugh. "I am getting indicted for you. Who are these people that are cheering for him? I didn't do anything, I did not commit a foul crime."

"A duet to the music of totally devoted to, you know, proudly indicted. I'm still not sure that will earn us very much money," said Beschloss. "But this is as serious as it can possibly get because, look what's at stake November of next year. Donald Trump has told us if he becomes president again, he wants a presidential dictatorship without much regard to Congress, without much regard to the courts, without people in the executive branch who are ever going to say no, and also, locking a lot of people up."

This sort of agenda, Beschloss warned, is "much more the language of Mussolini and other fascists and dictators throughout history, than anything else we have seen in the American story."

"All I am saying is, anyone who does not understand what this means — a year from November, we could have lockups, we could have fascists, we could have a dictator," added Beschloss. "That is what all this really means, and what happens between now and then, largely as a result of how people react today trials, is going to determine the fate."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

 

Trump considered sending political foes to Gitmo -- here's why he didn't: Ex-Trump official

David McAfee
September 2, 2023

Donald Trump actually once considered sending his political enemies to Guantanamo Bay, but didn't in part because it would be too expensive, according to a former Trump administration official.

Ex-DHS official Miles Taylor, known for secretly voicing his Trump criticisms while employed within the administration, appeared on MSNBC's Alex Witt Reports on Saturday and was discussing Trump's purported tendency to weaponize the justice system against his "adversaries."

"A number of folks who worked in the Trump Administration with me and have since spoken out against the ex president, we joke darkly about the fact that in the second term, a number of us will be in orange jumpsuits in Guantanamo Bay," Taylor said, adding that the joke isn't entirely outside of the realm of reality.

"I say that the comment is half facetious, because Donald Trump actually did have a vision, while I was in the administration, to go use the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay to house political prisoners," he said. "In that case what he wanted to do is use it to move people from the southern border to send a message and put them in the same place where people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, sits behind bars, and send a message."

He noted that "the only reason Donald Trump didn't start sending people to Gitmo" is because "he was convinced it would be too expensive, and the facility couldn't house the number of people he wanted to send there. That was the mindset of the man when he was president of the United States.

Watch below or click the link here.

DEATH THREATS

Conspiracy Theory Kingpin Calls for Hunter Biden’s Execution

At a wild pitstop of the ReAwaken America tour, headlined by Donald Trump Jr., Stew Peters demanded “permanent accountability” for another presidential failed son

NOBODY SAID THIS ABOUT JARED


BY TIM DICKINSON
ROLLING STONE
SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

Stew Peters speaks at the ReAwaken America tour's latest pitstop in North Las Vegas STEW PETERS NETWORK/RUMBLE


CONSPIRACY THEORIST STEW Peters made a startling demand for public executions at the latest stop on the ReAwaken America tour — calling for the death of Joe Biden’s son Hunter as well as Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom Peters insisted should “hang from a length of thick rope until he is dead.”

Peters speaks in the argot of the tin-foil-hat set. To hear him tell it, Fauci deserves the gallows because the federal physician-scientist supposedly backed a Wuhan “bioweapons lab” — and that this “illegal research” cost “millions of lives.” The younger Biden should get the “Julius and Ethel Rosenberg” treatment, Peters insisted, for the “treason” of “selling this country off to rich oligarchs.” Peters also demanded that Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, be executed as “a treasonous traitor” because he has permitted legions of “rapists and murderers and killers and goons” to breach the border.

“In the world that we are going to build,” Peters declared, “traitors will hang.”

As Peters ramped up this violent diatribe, including with a call to drown doctors who care for transgender patients, no one cut his microphone. The North Las Vegas crowd didn’t recoil; rather, they filled the giant air-conditioned tent hall with hoots and hollers of approval. After Peters thundered his demand for “permanent accountability with extreme prejudice,” emcee Clay Clark treated Peters as if he were a WWE star. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he intoned. “Let’s hear it for Stuuuuuuuuuuuuuu Peters!!”

ReAwaken America is a traveling, far-right roadshow, headlined by pardoned criminal Gen. Michael Flynn, and Clark, the Tulsa-based entrepreneur radio personality. It has drawn raucous crowds across the country, with an atmosphere that’s part political convention, part religious revival, and part QAnon circus. Just minutes after Peters’ call for Hunter Biden’s execution, a different presidential failson, Donald Trump Jr., picked up the same red-white-and-blue mic, and began preaching to the MAGA minions about the dangers and “derangement” of the Left.

Peters couldn’t be a more natural fit in this setting. He is a media maven for a country hooked on conspiracy theories,catering to a religious, red-pilled audience that chooses to live in a dark irreality, full of horrific plots, satanic forces, and illicit knowledge. No longer just a sideshow on the right’s lunatic fringe, Peters, through his dark films and on his nightly streaming broadcast, is reaching an audience of millions. Increasingly, he’s playing host to elected officials, including sitting members of congress, at least one of whom praises him as a “friend.”

Peters is a prolific conspiracy content creator. In the last two years, he has churned out a pair of feature-length films — “Watch the Water” and “Died Suddenly” — each falsely purporting to reveal demonic plots behind the novel coronavirus and the “bioweapon” vaccines allegedly foisted on an unsuspecting public by a nefarious cabal.

His first film absurdly purported that Covid is connected to snake venom in the water, and that mRNA jabs transform humans into satanic “hybrids.” The second movie spreads the widely debunked conspiracy theory that Covid vaccines are causing an epidemic of heart failure — which Peters paints as part of a genocidal plot by “globalist” elites to “depopulate” the world. The noxious films have been streamed by tens of millions of viewers.

In addition to the viral success of his smooth-brained cinema, Peters has also built a large audience for his weeknight broadcasts of the “Stew Peters Show,” which has more than half a million subscribers on Rumble alone. Peters did not respond to an interview request to discuss his worldview or his calls for public hangings. But such calls to violence — in particular toward Fauci — are a staple of Peters’ schtick. As is lofting new, ever-more-absurd conspiracy theories, like that the Titan submersible was destroyed to prevent the public from learning that the Titanic was not, in fact, sunk by an iceberg but in a nefarious plot linked to the Rothschilds.

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In a sane world, Peters would be politically radioactive. But the conspiratorial audience that Peters is building is, to be frank, a key component of the modern GOP base. And these days, Peters’ broadcast is not just filled with fellow-citizen crackpots. It’s becoming a venue for right-wing GOP politicians who treat Peters as just another media persona. Peters has interviewed many members of the United States Congress, including Paul Gosar, Bob Good, Pete Sessions, and Andy Biggs, who signed off with the encouraging words to Peters: “Keep preaching, my friend.” He’s also interviewed the anti-vax extremist Robert Kennedy, Jr., now a Democratic candidate for president.

Peters has long hungered for this kind of limelight. He grew up in Minnesota and first attempted to launch a career as a rapper, performing under the name Fokiss, pronounced “focus,” while sporting a frosted-tip mini mohawk.

His boastful bars included predictions of triumph: “The future looks real bright for Fokiss/ we’re planning shows in the tropics / I’m talking Grammys and Oscars.” But when his rap dreams fizzled, Peters turned to a different life on the edge — as a bounty hunter.

In this business, Peters was infamous for controversial outfits, including a dark uniform and a badge, that critics contended could be confused with law enforcement. The Minnesota legislature took this issue seriously enough to make changes to state law in 2015 that, as AP reported it, were “aimed mostly at curtailing Peters.” (At the time, Peters insisted he had no intention of being confused for a policeman. “We’re proudly bounty hunters,” Peters said. “I don’t go out to play cops and robbers.”) But Peters’ career catching bail hoppers petered out, around the time he ran afoul of the law himself in 2021 — reportedly getting sentenced to probation after a domestic dispute.

But by then, Peters’ conspiracy-laced, shock-jock enterprise was already taking off. His online show launched in 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic struck. Is Peters a true believer in the garbage he peddles? Or a cynical man who found lucrative way to build an audience? In the end, any level of ironic detachment from the material matters less than surface-level ugliness that Peters is preaching to rapt crowds.

At ReAwaken America, Peters flashed the full, rancid, often bigoted, display of his conspiratorial repertoire. (Peters’ dark comments were first highlighted by Right Wing Watch.) The theme of his address was how “Trust the Plan” — a popular slogan among believers in the QAnon conspiracy — may be too passive, and why listeners must decide to make their own plan.

“The group of people who can sit around and ‘trust the plan’ are liberal Democrats,” he argued. “Our enemies have a plan. Our enemies’ leader has a plan. We all have one common enemy, his name is Satan,” Peters said, giving the speech a dark, biblical twist. “And right now his minions are trying to run this country.”

Even as he invoked the Good Book, Peters wove in the latest, utterly abominable conspiracy about the Obamas, suggesting Michelle Obama is secretly a man (known to believers of this hokum as “Big Mike”) and insisting, therefore, Barack Obama was the “first gay president” — with Peters sneering hatefully that liberals want “our first tranny president.”

Lacking a theory to peddle as much as just naked, bigoted disrespect, Peters then railed against “big, fat, black Fani Willis,” the Fulton County DA who indicted Trump for election crimes, before pivoting to a medley of Covid misinformation, and then adding a soupçon of QAnon: “Our opponents have a plan to make America communist, to overthrow our constitution,” he said, and “to turn our children into their painted sex slaves.”

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In his ReAwaken calls for public executions, it should be noted, Peters did call for nominal trials before imposing the death penalty. But introducing a video of his speech on the Christian nationalist social network Gab, Peters seemed to suggest he’d be also alright with wild-west style justice.

“The plan is called EXTREME accountability,” he wrote. “So get your ropes ready…”

‘The Matthew Shepard Story’ documentary to premiere 25 years after tragic anti-LGBTQ hate crime

2023/09/01

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America/TNS

Ahead of the 25th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s tragic death, a new documentary has been announced to honor the posthumous impact made by the gay college student, who died after being abducted, beaten and left for dead in Laramie, Wyoming.

Investigation Discovery announced Thursday that “The Matthew Shepard Story: An American Hate Crime” will premiere Oct. 9 at 9 p.m. ET.

Featuring interviews with friends and allies, local journalists and community members, and even celebrities who were deeply affected by Shepard’s story — including Rosie O’Donnell, Andrew Rannells and Adam Lambert — the film will shine a light on “the worst anti-gay hate crimes in American history as well as a turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights,” according to its description.

“Matthew’s story remains just as heart-wrenching and relevant today as it was 25 years ago,” ID chief Jason Sarlanis said in a statement. “This tragedy ignited an incredibly emotional and influential chapter in the fight against LGBTQ+ discrimination that brought great progress. By revisiting Matthew’s story, we hope to educate a whole new generation and underscore the power love and acceptance play in continuing the fight against violence and discrimination in all its forms.”

Shepard, who died on Oct. 12, 1998, was just 21 when he was brutally beaten to death in a remote area east of Laramie. Five days before, his attackers pretended to be gay in order to gain the University of Wyoming student’s confidence and then rob and kill him.

Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson are both serving life sentences after pleading guilty to the hate crime.

After much lobbying, the Matthew Shepard James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act — the first federal law to criminalize violence against members of the LGBTQ community — was passed and signed by Congress on Oct. 29, 2009.

Byrd Jr., who also died in 1998, was a Black victim of a racially motivated hate crime in East Texas.

© New York Daily News

FBI whistleblower suspected Giuliani was a Russian 'dupe' – but DOJ stifled probe: report

Travis Gettys
September 1, 2023

(Photo by Mandel Ngan for AFP)

An FBI whistleblower came forward with his suspicions that Rudy Giuliani “may have been compromised” by Russian intelligence while working as Donald Trump's campaign lawyer and adviser, but he claims the bureau stifled his concerns

FBI agent Jonathan Buma sent a 22-page letter in July to the Senate Judiciary Committee alleging that the former New York City mayor had been used as an asset by a Ukrainian oligarch with ties to Kremlin intelligence and other Russian operatives to spread disinformation in an effort to discredit Joe Biden, reported Mother Jones.

"A source familiar with his work tells Mother Jones that other potential FBI whistleblowers who participated in the investigation involving Giuliani have consulted the same lawyer as Buma and might meet with congressional investigators in coming weeks," reported Dan Friedman and David Corn. "That attorney, Scott Horton, declined to comment."

Giuliani was indicted last month on racketeering charges in Georgia, where he just lost a defamation case, and he faces a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems and a rape complaint filed by a former assistant, but Buma's statement suggests Trump's former campaign lawyer may have somehow avoided even more trouble.

"It is widely known that Giuliani tried mightily to unearth and disseminate dirt on Biden in Ukraine — particularly regarding the unfounded allegation that as vice president Biden squashed an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company for which his son Hunter was a director," Friedman and Corn wrote. "This smear campaign led to Trump’s first impeachment and resulted in a federal investigation into whether Giuliani violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Prosecutors ended that probe last year."

Buma alleges that officials with the Department of Justice and the FBI blocked his efforts to investigate Giuliani's ties to Ukrainian developer Pavel Fuks, who federal agents determined to be a “co-opted asset” of Russian intelligence, and the FBI agent claims that Fuks maintained an indirect connection to Giuliani through Ukrainian diplomatic official Andriy Telizhenko after 2019.

"Giuliani’s role in Trump’s coup attempt and his string of public humiliations may overshadow the Ukrainian chapter in Giuliani’s downfall," wrote Friedman and Corn. "But, according to Buma and various U.S. intelligence findings, Giuliani apparently was a dupe — a useful idiot — for suspected Russian operatives and propagandists. And the bureau, Buma says, investigated this — until it didn’t."

Buma also reveals that he examined whether Russian operatives or assets assisted Giuliani's 2020 effort to make a film about Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine, which has become a central focus of House Republicans after they retook the majority at the start of this year -- but the FBI whistleblower says they passed on his findings when approached in April.

"Earlier this year, Buma watched with keen interest as the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee geared up for public hearings into the Biden Administration’s alleged political 'weaponizing' of the F.B.I. The Republicans claimed that the Bureau had relentlessly pursued former President Trump and his allies while neglecting leads about the Bidens," the New Yorker reported two weeks ago, when Buma's letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee first leaked.

"In April, Buma reached out to [House Judiciary Committee chair Jim] Jordan’s office, offering public testimony as a whistle-blower," the New Yorker added. "He later gave a detailed phone interview to two former federal agents whom the committee had hired to investigate what its conservative members call 'the Biden family business.'"

‘Jobs report couldn’t be much better’: Economists say U.S. ‘on or near the flight path’ for ‘soft landing’

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
September 1, 2023

President Joe Biden (Shutterstock)

The August jobs report shows the U.S. economy added 187,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate ticking up slightly to 3.8%, still near historic lows, as economists say the increase is due to more people entering the job market.

"The August jobs report couldn’t be much better," declared Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "Job growth is solid but slowing. Unemployment rose, but for that right reason - more labor supply as participation jumped. Wage growth continues to moderate and hours worked rose."

"The rise in the unemployment rate might cause concern in some quarter, but I'm less worried," says professor of economics and Brookings senior fellow Justin Wolfers. "Looking beyond the month-to-month sawtooth, the underlying pace of jobs growth is +150k per month, which is more than enough to keep unemployment stable or falling."

Zandi says the report "has soft landing written all over it," referring to how the United States has recovered from the COVID pandemic's effect on the economy, after nearly two years of many, especially Republicans, claiming the U.S. was in or would go in to recession.

Wolfers appears to agree: "Look up your charts of what a soft landing looks like, and we're either on or near the flight path."

On Thursday Insider reported, "The US is nearing a dream no-recession scenario, according to Morgan Stanley's top economist.

Falling inflation and steady growth show the Federal Reserve is closing in on a soft landing, Seth Carpenter said."

This month's jobs report has many different factors affecting the bottom line, including some revisions to prior months, and the closing of the trucking company Yellow, and the Hollywood strike affecting total numbers, as Wolfers noted.

Summing it up, he writes: "So there you have it: The labor market is either just right, a little too cool, or a little too hot."

Maine is fighting to stop a Nazi group from building massive HQ in the state: report

Sky Palma
September 1, 2023

(John Kittelsrud/Flickr)

A neo-Nazi group is planning to build a huge headquarters in Maine – and the state is desperately trying to find a way to halt the development, The Daily Beast reported.

The group, which calls itself "Blood Tribe," is planning a swastika flag march in Florida next month, just days after a racist mass shooter killed three Black people at a Dollar General in the city of Jacksonville. Its leader says it will be the biggest Nazi march since Hitler's rallies.

But, "despite their far-flung recruiting efforts, it’s in Maine that Blood Tribe and its leader Christopher Pohlhaus are trying to establish themselves," The Beast's report stated.

"In the sparsely populated town of Springfield, Blood Tribe is buying up land, trying to establish a white supremacist hub — and getting its supporters banned from Airbnb in the process."

Maine State Sen. Joe Baldacci is proposing legislation to stop the building of the "military-style" camp. Twenty-five states already have similar laws that prevent private groups of setting up training facilities, the Beast reported.

The proposed HQ would take up 120 acres of land in what Pohlhaus calls the "white state."

According to Pohlhaus, the legislation is "not going to stop me at all."

While a date for the planned Florida march has not been announced, Pohlhaus told The Beast that he would be traveling for the event on Sept. 6.

Pohlhaus says the event shows that his group has had little pushback from the police.

“The cops being there definitely gives you the leeway to be as insufferable and obnoxious as possible. I can say whatever to encourage the most emotional response,” Pohlhaus said.

Read the full report at The Daily Beast.

GOP has become a 'de facto criminal organization': analyst

Matthew Chapman
September 1, 2023

Under former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party has become a "de facto criminal organization" with him sitting on top as the crime boss, wrote analyst Chauncey DeVega for Salon.

Indeed, he argued, it's like the mob in virtually every way — even in terms of violence, with Trump using "threats of violence and intimidation to keep control and to punish his enemies" — with the only difference being that the oath they take is "administered in public."

This comes as the former president is facing four different indictments totaling over 90 charges, including an election racketeering case in Georgia that includes 18 co-defendants like his own lawyers and state Republican operatives. But despite all of that, DeVega noted, six out of eight of his rivals at the Wisconsin primary debate said they would back him as the nominee even if he is convicted of a crime.

What further compounds on this, DeVega continued, is that Trump engaged in his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in broad daylight, and is "unapologetic in his criminality and proud of his evil behavior – and promises to get revenge on him and his fascist MAGA movement's 'enemies' when/if he takes back the White House in 2025." Traditional GOP think tanks are even helping him organize a plan to purge the civil service and replace the workforce of the federal government top to bottom with loyalists.

None of this is a problem for the Republican electorate; a recent poll by POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos shows 60 percent of Republicans think Trump didn't even commit crimes at all, and 85 percent believe he shouldn't face punishment even if he did.

The rest of the country, said DeVega, needs not just to defeat and imprison Trump, but to take serious steps to put down the movement propping him up once that happens.

"American neofascism and the type of criminogenic politics it encouraged and was born of did not come into being over the course of less than a decade, such elements where present long before the Age of Trump," concluded DeVega. However, he said, it is vital once Trump has been removed from the picture that "pro-democracy forces" step up to move the country forward.

U$A
CPAC slapped with $55 million 'racial discrimination and defamation' lawsuit
Brandon Gage, Alternet
September 2, 2023, 

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 20: American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill September 20, 2022 in Washington, DC. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) discussed her legislation named the Protect Childrens Innocence Act, which would prohibit gender-affirming healthcare to transgender people under the age of 18

. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The Conservative Political Action Committee and its chairman Matt Schlapp have been accused of "racial discrimination and defamation" by a former female employee, The Washington Post's Maegan Vazquez and Beth Reinhard report.

"Regina Bratton, who worked as a communications and marketing supervisor in 2021 and 2022, said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Virginia on Friday that she was the only African American employee out of about 30 employees, interns and volunteers across CPAC. She claims she faced hostility up and down the chain of command," Vazquez and Reinhard write.

Bratton, who "seeks $55 million in damages," alleges that CPAC's leaders "conspired to and embarked upon a systematic, concerted effort to create a hostile work environment," the Post explains. "The lawsuit also names as defendants CPAC's parent organization, the American Conservative Union, and its foundation arm. Schlapp, a prominent ally of former President Donald Trump; Schlapp's wife and CPAC senior fellow Mercedes Schlapp; and general counsel David Safavian are also listed as defendants."

Per the Post, Bratton's complaint states that "the culture at CPAC was terrible, as Matt Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, ran the organization as if they were the King and Queen — like a dictatorship which ignored rules, laws, and basic decency when dealing with employees."

The ACU responded on Friday, stating that it "will vigorously defend against this suit, which was filed by a disgruntled former employee," adding, "As CPAC continues to expand both in the US and internationally, we will weather these attacks and stay focused on the mission (of) fighting for America and Freedom."

Vazquez and Reinhard note that Bratton's lawsuit "threatens to compound CPAC's mounting legal expenses. Earlier this year, Republican operative Carlton Huffman sued Schlapp, accusing him of sexual battery and defamation in a suit seeking $9.4 million in damages. Schlapp has staunchly denied any wrongdoing."

Nonetheless, Vazquez and Reinhard continue:

Bratton alleges a subordinate was repeatedly hostile and defiant toward her and told her that he didn't like 'working with or for women.' Bratton also said that as she tried to hire a diverse group of freelancers, the staffer complained that CPAC was 'not an affirmative action employer.'

Bratton said she was under pressure to perform personal tasks for the Schlapps outside of her job description. She was asked to style Mercedes Schlapp's hair and promote Matt Schlapp’s book, which she says was a personal project, according to the lawsuit.

Bratton said she complained to her bosses about a number of workplace issues and raised concerns about racial bias but was retaliated against. She also claims she was fired for having another job even though she had disclosed to the Schlapps that she was working for a media company that operates as the Washington news bureau of the Chinese government outlet CCTV. Bratton alleges she later learned that the Schlapps and Safavian suggested she was fired for being 'an agent for China.'

'Weirdest thing I'd seen': CPAC sources describe Matt Schlapp holding 'exorcism' in his office

Brad Reed
September 1, 2023

Linda Blair in Warner Bros.' 'The Exorcist' [MovieClips.com]

Multiple sources have told The Daily Beast that scandal-plagued CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp held an "exorcism" in his office to rid it of potential "evil spirits" left behind by staff members who quit their jobs after their requests for raises were denied.

The publication writes that both Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, decided that the exorcism ritual would be the best way to cleanse the office from the negative energies left behind by the staffers.

"On an afternoon in spring 2022, CPAC employees at their offices in Alexandria, Virginia — about eight miles from the fabled staircase featured in the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist — found themselves suddenly in the presence of a Catholic priest," writes The Daily Beast. "The priest, sources said, sprinkled holy water around the CPAC premises and blessed all the staff, regardless of their faith. As part of the rite, according to these people, the priest placed a medallion above doors in the offices and explained that it would help ward off evil spirits."

One source who witnessed the ritual told The Daily Beast that it was "the weirdest thing I'd seen" during their tenure working under Schlapp.

"I had no idea what was going on," the source added.

The Schlapps earlier this week lashed out at The Daily Beast and described it as "Satan's publication," although it's not clear whether their attacks were related to the publication's story about their exorcism ritual.

Matt Schlapp is currently under scrutiny amid multiple allegations of sexual misconduct made by three different men.

U$A
Defund the Supreme Court: legal analyst poses solution to ethics problems
Sarah K. Burris
August 31, 2023, 7:19 PM ET

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. (Photo by Preston Keres/USDA)

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' drama continued to unfold as he announced Thursday that he "forgot" to disclose two of his trips from a GOP megadonor. Now, one legal analyst has found a solution.

Speaking to Dr. Jason Johnson, in for Ari Melber, "The Nation's" Elie Mystal devised a solution: defund the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice John Roberts has been criticized for refusing to curb the problem by setting strict standards or penalties for filing disclosures. He also refused to speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the matter when called.

The two men discussed a video in which Clarence Thomas talked about his favorite vacations -- the ones where he goes RVing around from Walmart to Walmart.

"The RV that Thomas was in in that video was paid for by a Republican donor," quipped Mystal. "Of course that means the public has less confidence, but from where I sit, that confidence is still too high. The Supreme Court is at 40 percent approval rating. That should be in the 20s. That should be the lowest historically ever, because if you have these people who are not only lying about where they're getting their money from. But [they] are specifically getting their money from people who have an interest in things going on at the Supreme Court. It doesn't just matter if, like, they're the name on the RV in the document."

He noted that this term the Supreme Court will decide whether corporate taxation is governed by the 16th Amendment. It's an issue that all large donors would likely have an interest in.

"You think Harlan Crow doesn't have an opinion on that?" Mystal asked. "Where do you think Crow's been spending his money this summer talking to Clarence Thomas about it? The other big issue here is one of Thomas' things, I think you mentioned, is that he needed to do this for private security. The security in the upcoming budget has requested $783 million in extra security funds because people have noticed how ridiculous they are, right? So if Thomas is saying he needs to take private planes to have increased security. My question, so Thomas, can we have that money back then? Because surely $783 million, we can use that money to provide, I don't know, student debt relief to people who don't have rich Republican donors buying their mother's house and paying tuition for their secret sons, right?"

He noted that perhaps if Crow is willing to do it for Thomas, he might be able to extend the same courtesy to other justices, "and not just his pets."

At some point, he said, the public, which is paying for the Supreme Court, "need to demand that money back if they can engross themselves through Republican donors. And again, that comes back to Congress and that comes back to Congress pulling their funding until the Supreme Court submits to basic ethics reform."


See the full conversation in the video below or at the link here.

U$A

Guaranteed Rate continues layoffs as housing market slowdown persists
2023/08/30

Victor Ciardelli, founder of Guaranteed Rate, at the company's headquarters on April 8, 2014.

 - Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Chicago-based mortgage company Guaranteed Rate has been quietly laying off employees across the country for more than a year, according to former and current Guaranteed Rate employees.

The Tribune spoke with more than a dozencurrent and former employees, and many told the Tribune that layoffs have happened several times in recent weeks, withentire teams wiped out. More layoffs are potentially on the horizon, and company morale is “in the toilet,” as one current employee put it.

“We’ve had progressive layoffs since early 2022 in an effort to right-size for the volume that existed in the industry,” said John Palmiotto, Guaranteed Rate’s chief of retail production until his resignation last week. “In fairness, we probably hired more people in the earlier years during COVID than other companies. We staffed up significantly to meet the demands that we had at that time,” adding that the company “probably did” overstaff.

The layoffs come at a time when the hot pandemic-era housing market has turned on its head, with the average for a 30-year fixed loan skyrocketing to more than 7% on more than one occasion, keeping would-be sellers in their homes, buyers without homes to purchase and a mortgage industry with a lot fewer loans to close.

In a statement to the Tribune, CEO and founder of Guaranteed Rate Victor Ciardelli acknowledged the layoffs and said they happened for two reasons: high mortgage rates led to a decrease in loan volume and a need to “right-size the business and create more efficiencies,” as well as the development of new technology by the company in an effort to streamline its processes, which “dramatically reduced the people and time needed to fund a loan.”

“While these actions were difficult, they were necessary to continue to provide a best-in-class experience to consumers in the new rate environment,” Ciardelli said.

Guaranteed Rate, whose name has adorned the home of the Chicago White Sox since 2016, is the country’s second largest retail mortgage lending company, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a subscription-based industry news and data provider.As a retail mortgage lender, Guaranteed Rate works directly with consumers, while other mortgage lenders work through intermediaries such as real estate brokers. Some lenders use both models.

Inside Mortgage Finance finds business is down nearly 60% for Guaranteed Rate in the first three months of this year compared with 2022, with other mortgage companies seeing similar harsh declines.

Guaranteed Rate did not make Ciardelli available for an interview, nor did the company answer questions regarding how many positions have been eliminated, the processes surrounding the layoffs or the state of morale at the company.

Andrew Pohlmann, chief marketing officer, said in an email, “Unfortunately, we are unable to comment on the process of our reductions or how we communicated to employees.”

Pohlmann declined to say how many people work at the company. Different parts of the company’s website cite the total number of employees ranging from more than 9,000 to more than 15,000. Current and former employees told the Tribune in recent days this number is down well below 10,000.

Palmiotto, 57, said layoffs likely numbered in the thousands, with the company having around 8,000-9,000 employees prior to the layoffs in 2022. Furloughs also took place last year, Palmiotto and other employees said.

“We tried to maintain staff as much as we could, hoping that business would bounce back or that conditions would change,” Palmiotto said. “They didn’t really improve.”

Real estate industry news outlet HousingWire first reported on August layoffs at the company last week.

There have been no Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification layoffs — the type of job cuts that require notifying the state when mass layoffs are issued or a plant is shuttered — at Guaranteed Rate from 2021 until now, according to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

After six years with Guaranteed Rate, Palmiotto now works at The Money Store, a subsidiary of MLD Mortgage, based in New Jersey. He said he switched jobs because “I felt going to a smaller organization, I would have more influence and more of an ability to be more involved in strategic direction and decisions.”

Palmiotto said he was one of around 10 people who reported to Ciardelli.

Khadijah Parks, 27, worked for Guaranteed Rate as a remote employee based out of New Jersey before she was laid off from a technology team in October 2022. She was brought on during the hiring boom to be on a new team that helped support other mortgage companies Guaranteed Rate was acquiring and creating. Now, she said, her team and other tech teams have been decimated.

Parks worked for the company for about 11 months and was laid off right before her severance package would have increased significantly if she had made the one-year mark, she said.

“It was terrible,” Parks said, who had come back from vacation the day of her layoff. “They had the nerve to even say I could feel free to finish up the work I was doing.”

Parks remains unemployed.

Current and former employees including Parks said that there was a lack of communication from upper management about layoffs.

Palmiotto said he doesn’t know why messaging wasn’t better, but there were conversations around it. He also said he wasn’t privy to what morale was like given that he was a remote employee not based in Chicago.

“I feel like everybody handled it the best they could,” Palmiotto said, adding that he didn’t think the layoffs could have been prevented and that layoffs were not unique to Guaranteed Rate.

Other mortgage companies including Rocket Mortgage, United Wholesale Mortgage and Better.com have also faced layoffs and buyouts because of the slowdown in the housing market.

Mindy Marchetti, 47, was a manager on a technology team like Parks’ for Guaranteed Rate. She started in August 2021 as a remote employee and voluntarily left the company in March of this year after she witnessed the layoffs.

“When I was hired, we were in a mortgage boom, so things were amazing. We had all kinds of resources, and company morale was excellent …” Marchetti said. “As the rates started to increase, layoffs came. And I am a single mom, and I had to make sure that I had some career stability, so that is why I chose to look elsewhere.”

Marchetti said Ciardelli and Nik Athanasiou, COO of Guaranteed Rate, mentioned the need for layoffs due to the market downturn at some weekly calls with team managers and loan officers.

By the time she left, Marchetti said there were layoffs every two weeks, resources were waning on her team, morale was “very low” and there was a feeling of “instability.”

“It just felt like your number could be called next,” Marchetti said.

© Chicago Tribune