How Many Americans Support Political Violence?

Probably a lot fewer than you’ve been led to believe, but more than enough to make you nervous.

A mob breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021, after attending the Save America Rally for supporters of former President Donald Trump contesting the 2020 election results

.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

By Blake Hounshell and Leah Askarinam
Jan. 5, 2022

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to political news. We’re your hosts, Blake and Leah.

The new politics of rage

As the anniversary of the storming of the U.S. Capitol arrives, we’re hearing a lot about the number of Americans in general, and Republicans in particular, who have embraced the use of violence to achieve their political goals. And, at first blush, those numbers seem alarming:

In February, a poll by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life found that nearly 40 percent of Republicans agreed that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.”

In September, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 30 percent of Republicans agreed that, “Because things have gotten so far off-track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

In December, an AP-NORC poll found that majorities of Democrats and independents called the events of Jan. 6 either “extremely” or “very” violent. A plurality of Republicans surveyed — nearly 40 percent — described the events as either “extremely” or “very” violent, while 29 percent of Republicans rated the events of Jan. 6 either “not very violent” or “not violent at all.”

Few have explored this issue more deeply than Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, co-authors of the forthcoming book, “Radical American Partisanship.” Drawing on years of research, they warn that rising public support for political violence is creating a toxic public atmosphere that encourages a tiny but growing number to act.

As they write, “Our results show that mass partisanship is far more volatile than we realized; it may even be dangerous.” Perhaps the book’s most disturbing finding is that, according to a February 2021 survey, “Twelve percent of Republicans and 11 percent of Democrats said assassinations carried out by their party were at least ‘a little bit’ justified.”

The circle of violence

Imagine a series of concentric circles. People who actually commit acts of violence are the smallest circle. The next biggest might include people who attend meetings, donate money or read the website of an extremist group. Then there’s a much larger and more diffuse outer circle of people who identify with some ideas — say, that the 2020 election was stolen — but don’t participate in any activities.

Consider what happened last year at the Capitol.

“It helps to understand Jan. 6 as three different streams of right-wing activity,” said Kathleen Belew, a historian who studies domestic extremism. “There were people who might have gone to express their dissatisfaction with the election results. There were people who became violent that day. And then, there were the people who went there to commit violence.”

Lumping those groups together can lead to confusion — and that can happen if your survey questions are too broad, some polling experts say.

Researchers led by Sean J. Westwood of Dartmouth College, in a paper titled “Current Research Overstates American Support for Political Violence,” argue that “documented support for political violence is illusory, a product of ambiguous questions, conflated definitions, and disengaged respondents.” Often, pollsters were just capturing people expressing their partisan tribalism.

So in a new YouGov survey of 2,750 Americans conducted in November, a group of political scientists known as Bright Line Watch took another whack at it.

When they asked more finely calibrated questions aimed at getting around the ambiguity of the word “violence” — which could mean anything from sending threatening messages to overthrowing the government by force — they found that the number of Americans who supported political violence was closer to 4 or 5 percent.




Image



They also divided respondents into two groups: those who identified strongly with their party and those who didn’t. Slicing the numbers that way gives you 9 percent support for the Jan. 6 violence among the most hard-core Republicans and 6 percent for less-partisan Republicans.

Even that lower number is not so reassuring when you map it to the U.S. population as a whole. The bottom line, said Kalmoe: “Millions of Americans — and perhaps tens of millions — think that violence against their partisan opponents is at least a little bit justified.”

Understand the Jan. 6 Investigation

Both the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here's where they stand:

Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.

Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.

A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?

Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”

The violent inner circle

It’s even harder to measure how many Americans are ready to actually commit political violence.

Arrests are one indicator. In the year since the storming of the U.S. Capitol, at least 725 people have been arrested for some level of involvement in the riot. Many of them were Trump supporters who weren’t involved in anti-government militias. But several dozen were members of radical groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, which led the charge into the building.

Both groups saw their fund-raising and membership numbers plummet after Jan. 6, according to The Wall Street Journal. “We’ve been bleeding money since January, like hemorrhaging money,” Enrique Tarrio, a Proud Boys leader, told The Journal. Former Oath Keepers said that the group’s membership had dropped to roughly 7,500.

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But their true level of support could be higher. In September, more than 38,000 email addresses purportedly from the Oath Keepers’ private chat room were leaked online. The list included everyone from current members to people who had merely signed up for the group’s mailing list, Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, noted. “In other words,” Segal said, “the data was open to interpretation.”

Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center who has been tracking the growth of local Proud Boys chapters, said the steady normalization of political violence on the right had given the group new legitimacy.

“I think they are operating from a place of strength in our current political moment,” she said.

The White House pushback

Invoking Jan. 6, the Biden administration has tried to reorient federal law enforcement agencies around fighting homegrown extremism:

In March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed that domestic violent extremists posed a “heightened threat.”

In May, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security declared, “The greatest terrorism threat to the Homeland we face today is posed by lone offenders, often radicalized online, who look to attack soft targets with easily accessible weapons.”

In June, the White House unveiled its strategy to combat domestic terrorism, an entire pillar of which is about preventing radicalization before it starts.

The federal government doesn’t officially track the size of extremist groups, because it’s legal to join them. Membership also tends to be fluid, which means it’s hard to gauge whether Biden’s strategy is working.

“They’re just much less structured and hierarchical,” said a senior administration official. “They’re better defined as movements. People flow into them, they could dabble in two at the same time, or go in and out.”

So this official, recounting domestic terrorism incidents like the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, said, “Our hope is to have as few of those bad days as possible. We measure ourselves as trying to avoid the worst possible day.”

MICHIGAN
Activists and historians remember Jim Toy as a pioneering leader in LGBTQ rights


By — Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Education 

Jan 5, 2022 

Narratives around queer history are often told from the perspective of major coastal centers of queer activism, such as the Stonewall Riots in New York City or the openly gay Harvey Milk running for office in San Francisco. But activists and historians across the country this week are mourning leader Jim Toy, widely believed to be the first person in Michigan to publicly come out as gay, who died Jan. 1 at the age of 91.

Toy is remembered as a pioneer who spent his life advocating for LGBTQ people and working for human and civil rights for everyone, though he did not enter the national consciousness as deeply as other wider-known queer activists such as Milk, Marsha P. Johnson or Bayard Rustin.

“Jim Toy’s life is a reminder that LGBT history and LGBT civil rights were also made here in the Midwest, and that Asian Americans and other people of color were a critical part of that movement,” Ian Shin, a University of Michigan assistant professor of history and American culture, told the PBS NewsHour.

Toy was known across the country as a leading Asian American advocate for the LGBTQ community for more than 50 years, working at the community, collegiate, state, and national levels.

READ MORE: The Census Bureau’s first ever data on LGBTQ+ people indicates deep disparities

Toy’s legacy “is the courage he helped so many of us find within ourselves through his support, encouragement, and belief that we each deserved all of what we wanted for ourselves in this life,” Will Sherry, director of the University of Michigan Spectrum Center, told the NewsHour.

Toy’s role as community elder is also important. “It means so much to have elders in queer community. To have people you can see yourself in, who believe in your value and worth and the possibilities for your future that you sometimes cannot see for yourself,” Sherry said. “He represents the opportunity we all have to create space for others to live into who they are. He represents possibility.”

Michigan pioneering LGBTQ activist Jim Toy as a young man. Courtesy of Jim Toy.

Toy was born in New York in 1930 to a Chinese American father and a Scottish Irish American mother. His mother died when he was born, so his father moved them to live with his maternal grandparents in Granville, Ohio, a small village in the central part of the state.

Toy’s father later remarried. Toy recalled that they were one of only three families of color in the village, which at the time had a population of about 1,200. During World War II, when anti-Japanese sentiment was at its highest, his white stepmother sent him to middle school with a cardboard sign around his neck that read, “I AM NOT A JAP.”

But aside from that, Toy would recount in his adult years, there was little discussion of race, and none of sexual orientation, while he was growing up. He said that he did not even know what the words homosexual or gay meant until someone told him years later that he was gay, which he denied for some time longer.

READ MORE: ‘About time’: LGBTQ Olympic athletes unleash a rainbow wave

“My ‘identity’ is a tapestry of many threads — race and ethnicity, color, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability/disability, appearance, age, religious belief, political belief,” Toy said in a 2015 interview with NBC Asian America. “If one of the threads is plucked, the whole fabric is bound to move. Anyone struggling to consolidate and manifest any thread of their identity may find help from allies — and possibly from counseling or therapy.”

An early leader in LGBTQ activism

While living in Ann Arbor and working as a church music director in 1970, he said he saw a notice for a “gay meeting” at St. Joseph Episcopal Church in Detroit, an integrated Episcopal church in Detroit which also supported the Vietnam War draft-resistance movement and was the site of the Freedom School in the 1960s. He said although he was afraid that if he went to the meeting, that would mean that he was actually gay, he went and became a founding member of the Detroit Gay Liberation Movement (DGLM). A few months later, he co-founded of the Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Front (AAGLF).

Toy was also a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. On April 15, 1970, the DGLM participated at an anti-Vietnam war rally at Kennedy Square in Detroit. The person that was supposed to speak on behalf of the group suddenly changed his mind, and at the last minute, Toy stepped up. He said he had never spoken in public before, but he scribbled some notes on a notepad, and he introduced himself with his name, his age, and said that he was gay. The rally was covered by local media, and it is widely believed that Toy is the first person in the state of Michigan to publicly come out as gay.

“Like many Asian Americans of his generation, the racism as well as the homophobia that Jim faced led him to protest injustice and oppression not only here in the United States, but also overseas,” Shin said. “His life is an inspiring example of how all these issues intersect, and how our activism can also.”

READ MORE: Study finds more racial diversity in LGBTQ film characters

In 1971, pressured by the AAGLF, the University of Michigan created the Human Sexuality Office, the first staffed university office in the country – and, as Toy was known to say, “likely the world” — to address sexual-orientation concerns. There, he served as co-coordinator together with Cynthia Gair and as gay male advocate from 1971 to 1994. The office was later renamed the Spectrum Center, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, and currently works for the concerns of transgender, bisexual, lesbian, gay, and queer students and allies.

Michigan LGBTQ pioneer Jim Toy cutting the ribbon at the opening of the University of Michigan Jim Toy Library. Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

“Jim’s legacy is deep within LGBTQIA+ higher education,” Sherry told the NewsHour. “Jim anchored the work of our office in support and advocacy. He sought to support and help those who were struggling while at the same time hold accountable the institutions and structures that perpetuate harm. He worked to change the world we live in, to make it better, and he did that through his actions each day.”

While working at the Spectrum Center, Toy also completed a master’s degree in social work at the University of Michigan. Sherry, who attended the School of Social Work decades later, appreciated Toy’s dual roles as both community leader and social worker. “He taught me how to center my values and ethics within myself and to live those out all the places that I go,” Sherry said.

Toy’s impact in Michigan

Toy also fought a 21-year battle with the University of Michigan Regents to amend its bylaws to include non-discrimination due to sexual orientation. He worked with the Michigan House of Representatives to try to expand Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Act to include sexual orientation, gender identity and expression as protected classes. He co-authored the city of Ann Arbor’s first “Lesbian-Gay Pride Week Proclamation, believed to be one of the first issued by any governing body in the U.S., and he co-authored the city’s non-discrimination policy in regard to sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. He founded and served on many HIV/AIDS organizations and task forces. A University of Michigan library is named in his honor, a community resource center is named in his honor, and the city of Ann Arbor named April 29 — “Jim Toy Day.”

“The legacy of Jim Toy’s work has been one centered on inclusion. He was passionate about visibility, community, and advocacy.” Joe Halsch, president of the Jim Toy Community Center, told the NewsHour.

WATCH MORE: House votes to expand legal safeguards for LGBTQ people

Toy often said he preferred to use the term “TBLGQI” instead of the more commonly used “LGBTQIA” in order to invert the power relationships and to prioritize transgender and bisexual people, whom he said are at the greatest risk of harassment, discrimination, and assault. He said that in the 1970s, it took a decade to convince many groups to list lesbian before gay as in LG instead of GL which he saw as sexist.

Jim Toy speaking on a panel for the U-M Lesbian Gay Male Bisexual Programs Office (now Spectrum Center). Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Roland Hwang, a lecturer at University of Michigan who helped nominate Toy for an honorary doctorate, which Toy received in 2021, noted that despite his many accolades and recognitions, “Jim always, year after year, made time to come to the classroom to talk about his humble childhood in Ohio, about gender and its meaning, and his views for effective advocacy.”

Ron Aramaki, another University of Michigan lecturer, told the NewsHour that Toy was an agent of change as well as a Renaissance person. “He was a musician, a natural leader, a speaker of truth, a powerful force for social change, and a good friend for many years.”

Michigan pioneering LGBTQ activist Jim Toy at the 2014 Ann Arbor Fourth of July Parade. Toy died Jan. 1, 2022, at 91 years of age. Courtesy of Jim Toy Community Center.

After Toy’s death was announced, leaders and organizations across the state of Michigan shared condolences and remembrances, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, State Sen. Jeff Irwin, University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel, the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, and more. On Monday, the Ann Arbor City Council dedicated a moment of silence to him.

In a series of tweets, Dingell wrote that Toy was a champion for equality, a trailblazer for LGBTQ rights in Michigan but also across the country, and a dear friend to her and her late husband, former U.S. Rep. John Dingell. “Often I think about Jim’s words, ‘I am committed to making as much trouble as I can to create and maintain justice.’ He fought with every bone in his body to support the LGBTQ community, to fight for marriage equality, to ensure protections for so many.”

“Asian American and TBLGQI issues intersect in all our struggles for justice and equality, our attempts to gain and retain our human and civil rights,” Toy said in a 2015 interview with NBC Asian America. “Human and civil rights are essential to human dignity.”

Michigan’s pioneering LGBTQ activist Jim Toy died on Jan. 1, 2022, at 91 years of age. Courtesy of Jim Toy Community Center and University of Michigan Spectrum Center.

Left: Michigan LGBTQ pioneer Jim Toy speaking at the 2017 University of Michigan graduation ceremony for LGBTQ students known as the "Lav Grad." Courtesy of the University of Michigan Spectrum Center.

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U.K. expands 'Turing's Law' to pardon past same-sex convictions

The new measure will widen the criteria of a 2017 law, making anyone convicted for consensual gay sex under now-defunct laws eligible to be pardoned.

Jan. 5, 2022
By Jay Valle

In a long-awaited triumph for the U.K.’s LGBTQ community, the government on Tuesday announced that anyone convicted of consensual same-sex activity under now-defunct laws will soon be eligible to be pardoned and have their records wiped clean.

This week’s announcement follows a less-expansive 2017 measure that was limited to nine former offenses that targeted gay and bisexual men. The new amendment will widen the criteria to anyone officially warned or convicted for an abolished civil or military offense that was imposed due to consensual gay sex.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel at a media briefing at Downing Street last January.Matt Dunham / WPA Pool/Getty Images file

British Home Secretary Priti Patel said in a statement that it was only right that where offenses have been abolished, "convictions for consensual activity between same-sex partners should be disregarded, too.”


“I hope that expanding the pardons and disregards scheme will go some way to righting the wrongs of the past and to reassuring members of the LGBT community that Britain is one of the safest places in the world to call home,” she said.

According to the U.K. government's statement, those eligible can apply to have their convictions wiped from their records under the condition that the sexual activity is currently legal and that any party involved was 16 or older at the time of the incident. The plan also includes a posthumous pardon granted to those who have died before the amendment's ratification and within 12 months after.

Britain started to legalize consensual sex between men in 1967. Then in 2001, the age of consent for gay and bisexual men was lowered from 21 to 16, bringing it on par with the age of consent for heterosexuals. For comparison, England’s sodomy laws were repealed long after similar laws in France were abolished in 1791, but before all American sodomy laws were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.

In 2013, Alan Turing, the codebreaker who aided in the defeat of the Nazis, was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II for a same-sex offense he was convicted of in 1952. Then in 2016, the U.K announced its pardon plan, dubbed “Turing’s Law,” which granted posthumous pardons to thousands of men convicted under now-repealed laws.

Approximately 65,000 men were convicted under these abolished measures, according to Lord John Sharkey, a British politician who had been pushing for the pardons. In 2016, Sharkey estimated that 15,000 of these men were still alive, NBC News reported at the time.

LGBTQ advocates welcomed Tuesday’s announcement, but some called for the government to issue a formal apology to those affected by the historical convictions.

“Posthumous pardoning offers only a symbolic gesture to those who have since died without clearing their name,” the British advocacy group LGBTQ Foundation said in a statement, adding that the government must recognize "the pain, trauma and lifelong guilt and stigma these convictions gave many LGBTQ+ people, who were simply trying to live their lives and be their true selves.”

The group also said that the government should not make LGBTQ Britons apply for their convictions to be removed, which “has the potential to bring up past trauma.” Instead, they argued that the government should remove the offenses automatically.

The United Kingdom is not the only country to pardon past crimes involving consensual same-sex relationships. A similar victory swept across Australia in 2008, when all states and territories passed legislation allowing for the expungement of past homosexual offenses. And in the U.S., California Gov. Gavin Newsom created a pardon process in 2020 for LGBTQ Californians convicted under outdated laws criminalizing same-sex activity.

#ABOLISHSECONDAMENDMENT
Toddler Shoots Mother, Infant Sibling Outside Texas Walmart

Woman taken by air ambulance to an area hospital in unknown condition; baby suffers non-lethal injuries, police say

A woman and her infant child were injured when a toddler accidentally fired a gun in a car parked outside a Granbury, Texas Walmart on Wednesday morning.

Police said a 1-year-old child and a 3-month-old child were inside a vehicle at the time of the incident. The mother of the children, a 23-year-old woman, was standing outside next to the driver’s door while their father, a 26-year-old man, was standing at the rear of the truck.

IMPROPER STORAGE, SAFETY LEFT OFF, GUN LOADED
The 1-year-old child is believed to have picked up a handgun that was concealed between the seat and center console, causing the gun to discharge once, police said.

According to police, the bullet went through soft tissue in the 3-month-old child’s leg, through the mother’s arm, and into her side in the chest area.

Police said the mother was transported to a Fort Worth hospital by air and the baby was transported to a Fort Worth hospital by ground.

The baby’s injury is not believed to be life-threatening, police said. The mother’s injury is potentially more serious, but her current condition is not known at this time.

No other injuries have been reported.

It's not clear what charges, if any, will be filed in the case.

Blair's defense secretary says he was told to burn memo saying Iraq war may be illegal

Revelation comes as over 700,000 sign petition to strip former UK premier of his recently awarded knighthood

Karim El-Bar |06.01.2022

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. President George W. Bush, 

May 28, 2002, Italy, Rome

(ANADOLU AGENCY-CHRIS WARDE-JONES)


LONDON

Former British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, who was in office during the Iraq War, claimed he was told to burn a memo from the attorney general that said the invasion of Iraq could be illegal, local media reported Wednesday.

Hoon served as defense secretary between 1999 and 2003 under former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Iraq was invaded in 2003 by a coalition led mainly by the US and the UK.

Hoon made the claim in his recently published memoir See How They Run.

The Daily Mail was the first to report the story and said that then Chief of Defense Staff Mike Boyce wanted legal backing that British troops could fight in Iraq.

Hoon in turn received a “very long and very detailed opinion” from the attorney general that essentially said the invasion of Iraq could be seen as lawful if the prime minister believed it was in the UK’s national interest.

“It was not exactly the ringing endorsement that the chief of the defense staff was looking for, and in any event, I was not strictly allowed to show it to him or even discuss it with him,” Hoon wrote in his memoir.

“Moreover, when my principal private secretary, Peter Watkins, called Jonathan Powell in Downing St and asked what he should now do with the document, he was told in no uncertain terms that he should ‘burn it’.”

Hoon said he did not end up burning the document.

“I agreed that we should lock the document securely into an MoD safe to which only he had access. For all I know, it is probably still there.”

Separately, Powell, who was Blair’s chief of staff, denied to the Daily Mail that he demanded the legal advice be burned, instead saying he told Hoon to destroy a separate document from months earlier.

Blair was awarded a knighthood by the Queen in her New Year honor’s list – but over 700,000 people have signed a petition calling for it to be rescinded.

The petition on Change.org reads: “Tony Blair caused irreparable damage to both the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation’s society. He was personally responsible for causing the death of countless innocent, civilian lives and servicemen in various conflicts. For this alone he should be held accountable for war crimes.”

For his part, current Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer told local media: “I don’t think it’s thorny at all. I think he deserves the honor. Obviously I respect the fact that people have different views.”

Pentagon spending stuck in neutral even as lawmakers back budget boost

House Democrats plan to shine a light on the dire budget situation next week when top Pentagon officials testify on the impact of temporary funding on the military.


"We can stand here … and declare our unwavering support for our troops and their families. We can claim to support a strong national defense,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Leahy, seen here on Wednesday, said last month. “But until we put our money where our mouth is and provide the funding we say we support, then those words ring hollow." | Elizabeth Frantz/Pool via AP


By CONNOR O’BRIEN and JENNIFER SCHOLTES

01/05/2022 

Congress has overwhelmingly backed a $25 billion increase to President Joe Biden's Pentagon budget, but the battle over defense spending is far from over.

Biden last week signed annual defense policy legislation that calls for significantly boosting his $715 billion Pentagon blueprint to $740 billion. But the just-enacted National Defense Authorization Act doesn’t actually provide any money, and lawmakers have until mid-February to reach a deal to fund the Pentagon and other federal agencies for the rest of the fiscal year.

There are, however, signs that Congress is inching toward a deal, after POLITICO first reported that House Democratic appropriators are preparing to agree to a larger defense budget than either they or Biden wanted.

In the meantime, though, the Defense Department — and all other federal agencies — are stuck at even lower budget levels agreed to during the Trump administration because they are funded through a temporary measure.

"We can stand here … and declare our unwavering support for our troops and their families. We can claim to support a strong national defense,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in a floor speech last month. “But until we put our money where our mouth is and provide the funding we say we support, then those words ring hollow. It's only rhetoric."


Final defense bill shakes up military prosecutions, boosts Indo-Pacific fund
BY CONNOR O’BRIEN, PAUL MCLEARY, LEE HUDSON AND BRYAN BENDER

The government is now operating under a continuing resolution that runs out on Feb. 18. Lawmakers need to pass spending legislation before then or risk trapping agencies at last year’s levels, a prospect that’s particularly unpopular in the halls of the Pentagon.

House Democrats plan to shine a light on the dire budget situation next week when top Pentagon officials testify on the impact of temporary funding on the military.

While Democrats appear ready to accept a defense boost, top Republicans are also insisting on “parity” between spending on the Pentagon and non-defense programs as well as ground rules for handling contentious policy riders — including whether to renew the Hyde Amendment that bars federal funds for abortion.

The top Senate Appropriations Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), spoke with Leahy about a spending deal on the floor Wednesday, and said negotiations are headed in the right direction.

“We're still talking, and we're not there yet. We also are aware that we've got a Feb. 18 deadline,” Shelby told POLITICO. “Could we meet it? Probably not, but I'd like to see us do it."

A full-year spending package is within reach, he added, if Democrats and Republicans can agree on the balance of defense and domestic spending along with policy riders.

"If we could cut a deal, and it's something we could live with, that's what this place is about,” Shelby said. “And that's what we have to do sometimes. But it has to be something that would be palatable to our caucus and theirs too — maybe not everything everybody wants.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell underscored the framework of “basic traditional riders, no poison pills and parity for defense and non-defense” for a spending deal on Tuesday.

“To the extent that the Democrats are willing to meet those conditions, then I would think we’d have a chance of getting an omnibus appropriation Feb. 18,” McConnell told reporters.

The Pentagon side of the ledger may well be the least contentious part of the deal to clinch. Signs so far point to more defense cash if a full-year spending deal emerges.

House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and her committee staff have made calls to members over the recess to see if they’d support spending more on the Pentagon than the administration wants. DeLauro has said she’d be open to boosting defense spending to secure a full-year omnibus spending bill.

House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro and her committee staff have made calls to members over the recess to see if they’d support spending more on the Pentagon than the administration wants. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the Capitol joined forces to supersize the price tag of defense policy legislation by $25 billion. 

And while the House Appropriations Committee was the only panel that stuck with Biden’s lower budget request in its fiscal 2022 defense appropriations bill, draft Pentagon spending legislation released by Senate appropriators this fall backed the higher increases called for in the NDAA.

"I think the number on the defense side is pretty well there — everybody understands what that number's going to be, both in the House and the Senate and the White House,” Rep. Ken Calvert of California, the top Republican on the House Defense Appropriations panel, told POLITICO in a December interview. “The negotiation is on how much do they lower non-defense discretionary spending."

Despite the momentum for more military money, congressional leaders have been at odds over Democratic efforts to up spending for domestic agencies.

Republicans have long complained that the Defense Department is singled out in Biden’s budget request, whose original level they contend would be swallowed by inflation and wouldn't keep up with world threats.

With a continuing resolution now poised to consume more than a third of fiscal 2022, the military is losing out on as much as $36 billion in added cash, compared to the level endorsed by the NDAA. The Pentagon is operating at the $704 billion budget level agreed to near the end of the Trump administration, even lower than Biden’s $715 billion proposal that was rejected by Congress.

"You're losing purchasing power under the CR, 100 percent,” explained Mackenzie Eaglen of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “And you're losing it double with inflation. So it's a double whammy."

Stopgap funding also bars the Pentagon from starting new initiatives or ramping up existing ones unless lawmakers grant an exemption.

Initiatives greenlit by lawmakers in the NDAA — such as more than $7 billion aimed at deterring China in the Indo-Pacific region and a $4.7 billion increase to shipbuilding efforts to purchase five more ships than the Navy requested — won’t be fulfilled under a continuing resolution.

Lawmakers, administration officials and the defense industry have also expressed concerns that efforts to field hypersonic missiles will fall behind without increased spending this year, even as policymakers worry about China’s recent gains on the new weapons.

Others have warned that military readiness will be hurt if a 2.7 percent troop pay raise takes effect without increased funding, forcing the Pentagon to raid other accounts to cover the added cost of higher military pay.

"Reality as it is, we're operating on the Trump budget right now,” Calvert said. “And the Dems, it must drive them crazy, but that's what we're operating under."

New York to Spend $500 Million to Fuel Boom in Offshore Wind

David R. Baker, Bloomberg News

The GE-Alstom Block Island Wind Farm stands in the water off Block Island, Rhode Island, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016. The installation of five 6-megawatt offshore-wind turbines at the Block Island project gives turbine supplier GE-Alstom first-mover advantage in the U.S. over its rivals Siemens and MHI-Vestas. Photographer: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- New York state will spend $500 million building up ports and manufacturing infrastructure for offshore wind farms in a bid to become home base for the nascent industry.

The investments announced Wednesday by Governor Kathy Hochul will focus on building the supply chain for offshore turbines, which can provide clean power to a densely populated coast with little room for onshore wind farms or solar power plants.

“With this investment, New York will lead the nation on offshore wind production, creating green jobs for New Yorkers, and powering our clean energy future,” Hochul said in the statement.

New York also plans to initiate its next bidding process this year for companies interested in building offshore wind farms. The process is expected to authorize enough turbines to power 1.5 million homes. The state also will begin planning a seafloor cable network to deliver power from offshore turbines directly to New York City.

Nearby states have similar goals: In December, officials in Maryland and Massachusetts approved offshore wind farm projects that will use port facilities in both states as construction hubs.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

• Facebook’s failures with election misinformation contributed to the deadly Capitol insurrection.
  
  A year later, the platform has failed to fix its problems.
  
  Media Matters’ latest analysis has identified hundreds of active posts and Facebook groups still pushing “Stop the Steal” lies
  
  WRITTEN BY KAYLA GOGARTY & CLARA MARTINY
  
  RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM CARLY EVANS, NENA BEECHAM & JEREMY TUTHILL
  
  
  PUBLISHED 01/05/22
  
  Following the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Facebook vowed to reduce election misinformation and prevent further incitement of violence by removing harmful content and suspending former President Donald Trump. But Media Matters’ latest analysis found that in the year since the January 6 attack, Facebook has not only repeatedly failed to moderate “Stop the Steal” content, baseless claims of election fraud, and other election misinformation, but its algorithm and other features have enabled such content to flourish.
  
  Key findings:
  Right-leaning pages earned a greater proportion of interactions on election-related posts in the year after the January 6 insurrection than in the year before. In fact, these pages earned over 2 billion interactions -- or 54% of total interactions on election-related content -- on nearly 570,000 posts between January 7 and December 31, 2021.
  There are still at least 484 posts referencing “stop the steal” or “sts” still active on Facebook that were created by right-leaning Facebook pages in the year leading up to the insurrection, earning over 2.6 million interactions
• Since January 7, 2021, another 238 posts with “stop the steal” or “sts” were posted by right-leaning pages and remain on the platform. These posts have earned over 415,000 interactions combined.
• As of January 3, there were at least 203 groups spreading election misinformation and blatant conspiracy theories, with nearly 240,000 combined members; 18 of them specifically include “Stop the Steal” or mention a “stolen election” in their name
  
  On November 17, 2020, just weeks after the presidential election, CEO Mark Zuckerberg boasted that Facebook’s “systems performed well” during the election cycle, ignoring the platform’s litany of failures related to election misinformation before and after Joe Biden was elected. In December 2020, Facebook removed the “break glass” measures it had implemented during the campaign to boost authoritative sources and reduce election misinformation -- a move which seemingly contributed to the insurrection on January 6.
  
  While Facebook had claimed victory, the company failed to recognize what it later called “a coordinated effort to delegitimize the election.” Even more embarrassing for the platform, Facebook researchers clearly had access to troves of data evincing the danger these efforts posed -- even while Media Matters and other external researchers and journalists were sounding the alarm. But Facebook still claimed ignorance when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol on January 6 in an attempt to stop the certification of the election.
  
  The deadly insurrection on January 6 was aided, in part, by Facebook’s litany of failures before, during, and after the election, which include
• Allowing Trump and other right-wing pages to push harmful election misinformation -- and other misinformation and extreme rhetoric -- with impunity. Notably, Trump posted 433 times with election-related keywords between November 3, 2020, and November 2, 2021, earning over 176 million interactions, even as 75% of them featured at least one of Facebook's 18 different labels related to the election. Additionally, roughly a quarter of Trump's 6,081 Facebook posts that were created between January 1, 2020, and January 6, 2021, contained COVID-19 misinformation, election lies, or extreme rhetoric about his critics.
• 
  Failing to enforce its political ad ban and allowing right-wing pages to continue to run political ads with misinformation. Between November 4 and December 8, 2020 -- while the ban was in place -- Facebook enabled right-wing outlet The Daily Wire to earn millions of impressions on 24 political ads before finally removing them. There were another 50 ads that appeared to address social issues, elections, or politics, but ran without a disclaier to circumvent the platform’s ban.
• Failing to moderate “Stop the Steal” content, even after January 6, when the platform announced it would remove content with the phrase. Between Election Day and January 13, “Sedition Caucus” members -- the 147 Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying the election results after pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol -- mentioned keywords related to “Stop the Steal” a total of 193 times on Facebook.
  Earning revenue from ads with election misinformation even after January 6. On November 1 -- nearly 10 months after the January 6 insurrection -- Media Matters found at least 46 ads on Facebook and Instagram calling to “decertify” the 2020 election. The ads earned over 8 million impressions.
  
  In 2021, Facebook failed to effectively tackle election misinformation and penalize bad actors pushing it. Instead, the company has seemingly prioritized profit and positive PR over addressing the problems that made its platform a hotbed for fomenting political violence. One year after the deadly Capitol riot, these failures continue.
  
  FAILURE: Right-leaning pages earned more interactions on election-related posts than other political pages -- including by spreading known election misinformation
  
  Media Matters and other researchers have demonstrated again and again that there is no bias or censorship against conservatives on Facebook, despite right-wing claims to the contrary. In fact, right-leaning pages actually benefit from Facebook’s algorithm, which rewards sensational, divisive, and false content -- and the platform continued to disproportionately benefit right-wing content about voting and elections even after the Capitol attack.
  
  Between January 7 and December 31, 2021, right-leaning Facebook pages that cover U.S. news and politics posted about election-related topics more frequently than left-leaning or ideologically nonaligned pages, making nearly 570,000 posts, or almost 44% of the total. Notably, right-leaning pages also earned the most interactions -- over 2 billion, or 54%. Left-leaning pages earned over 1.1 billion interactions (31%) on nearly 300,000 election-related posts, while ideologically nonaligned pages earned nearly 560 million interactions (15%) on over 430,000 such posts.
  
  A similar pattern occurred in the year before the insurrection, as right-leaning pages earned over 3.2 billion interactions on over 750,000 election-related posts created between January 6, 2020, and January 6, 2021 -- earning roughly 50% of total interactions on just over 40% of such posts. Left-leaning pages earned nearly 32% of total interactions on over 25% of election-related posts during this time, and ideologically nonaligned pages earned almost 18% of total interactions on nearly 25% of such posts.
• 
  
  FAILURE: Facebook continues to platform numerous posts from right-leaning pages about “Stop the Steal”
  
  
  In response to the January 6 Capitol attack, Facebook vowed to remove posts with the phrase “stop the steal” under its Coordinating Harm policy, including retroactive removal. However, Facebook used a very narrow interpretation of its policy, allowing many posts and groups with similar language about a “stolen election” to remain active on the platform. On January 28, 2020, Media Matters reported that over 150 Facebook groups focused on election fraud had avoided removal, including 23 groups that mentioned “stop the steal” or used similar language about a “stolen election” in their name or within posts.
  
  A year after the January 6 attack, there are still posts with the phrase circulating on Facebook. In fact, we found at least 484 posts with “stop the steal” or “sts” that were created by right-leaning pages in the year before the riot -- between January 6, 2020, and January 6, 2021 -- that Facebook has failed to remove. These posts earned over 2.6 million interactions. Notably, the top 10 “Stop the Steal” posts from this time frame with the most interactions were either posted by Trump, his campaign, or right-wing outlet Newsmax. Five of these posts were from Trump and his campaign.
• 

• 

Additionally, between January 7 and December 31, 2021, right-leaning pages made 238 posts mentioning “stop the steal” or “sts,” which earned over 415,000 interactions combined. These include at least 40 posts that push election misinformation, criticize Facebook for banning the phrase, or contain misinformation about the insurrection.

FAILURE: There are still hundreds of groups filled with election misinformation on Facebook

Two days after Election Day 2020, it was clear that Facebook was already having problems. The platform took down one of the biggest “Stop the Steal” groups at approximately 300,000 members, and it added labels to posts discussing election results. However, like many of Facebook’s actions to stem misinformation, this was too little too late. By then, groups were proliferating on the platform, finding ways around Facebook’s moderation, and using the platform to organize and prepare for violence on January 6.

A year later, election misinformation continues to spread in private and public Facebook groups as administrators only gained more power to evade content moderation.

In October 2021, we identified 203 active groups dedicated to pushing election misinformation -- and that number has increased since then. As of January 3, there are still 203 groups spreading election misinformation and conspiracy theories, with nearly 240,000 members; 18 of them specifically use variations of “stop the steal” or mention a “stolen election” in their name. Another 15 groups spreading election misinformation during that time have since been archived -- meaning that members have access to posts in the groups but can no longer create new ones.

While some of these groups are still focused on the 2020 presidential election, others have pivoted to combat so-called “election fraud” in state-level elections. For example, “NJ Election Integrity Project” has spread misinformation about the 2021 gubernatorial race. It is perhaps Facebook's biggest failures that it has let misinformation about 2020 election seep into 2021 and beyond.

Methodology


Media Matters used the following method to compile and analyze election-related posts from political pages on Facebook:

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled a list of 1,773 Facebook pages that frequently posted about U.S. politics from January 1 to August 25, 2020.

For an explanation of how we compiled pages and identified them as right-leaning, left-leaning, or ideologically nonaligned, see the methodology here.

The resulting list consisted of 771 right-leaning pages, 497 ideologically nonaligned pages, and 505 left-leaning pages.

Every day, Media Matters also uses Facebook's CrowdTangle tool and this methodology to identify and share the 10 posts with the most interactions from top political and news-related Facebook pages.

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled all posts for the pages on this list that were posted between January 6, 2020, and December 31, 2021, related to elections and voting. We reviewed data for these posts, including total interactions (reactions, comments, and shares).

We defined posts as related to elections and voting if they had any of the following terms in the message or in the included link, article headline, or article description: “ballot,” “biden,” “democrats,” “dems,” “election,” “general chatter about voting,” “poll watcher,” “polling place,” “polling station,” “republicans,” “the election,” “trump,” “vote,” “voted,” “your state,” “election results,” “rigged,” “election integrity,” “voter,” “voter fraud,” “electoral college,” “ballots,” “certifying,” “chosen electors,” “corrupt,” “corruption,” “count,” “decertification,” “decertify,” “decertifying,” “democratic process,” “dominion,” “election,” “election fraud,” “election victory,” “electoral college,” “found ballots,” “stolen election,” “stop the steal,” “vote dump,” “vote tabulation,” “voter dump,” “voter fraud,” “voter tabulation,” “voting,” “mail-in ballot,” “mail-in box,” “election box,” “election machines,” “stopthesteal,” “#stopthesteal,” “2020 election,” “election 2020,” “mail in ballots,” “mail-in ballots,” “mail in ballot,” “mail-in ballot,” “integrity hearings,” “integrity hearing,” “fraud hearing,” or “fraud hearing.”

Seattle Jewish Federation Outraged After ‘Inadequate’ Response to Police Official Who Displayed Nazi Insignia

by Algemeiner Staff
JANUARY 5, 2022 


Aerial view of Kent, Washington as of 2021. Photo: Imogen Caroline/Wikimedia

A major Seattle Jewish organization criticized city officials in Kent, Washington — part of the Seattle metropolitan area — for their response to an assistant police chief who posted a Nazi military insignia on his office door and allegedly made jokes about the Holocaust.

Assistant Kent Police Chief Derek Kammerzell was suspended for two weeks and ordered to attend cultural sensitivity training last July for violating city policy prohibiting harassment and discrimination and for unbecoming conduct in violation of police policy, according to the Kent Reporter.

Police Chief Rafael Padilla accepted his subordinate’s claim that he did not know the symbol, which indicated a military rank, was of Nazi origin.

A Dec. 28 statement released by Kent’s municipal communications staff said that two independent law firms had reviewed the case and, “based on labor law and the advice of the employment law firm, the city believes a two-week suspension was an appropriate and defensible response to the conduct identified in the investigation.”

The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle objected, saying, “The City of Kent’s response demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the impact of these acts by one of its assistant police chiefs on our local Jewish community.”

“We call on the City of Kent to immediately revisit the situation, publicly recognize the harm and hurt caused to our Jewish community, and treat the offenses with the seriousness and care they deserve,” they said.

“This is an affront to the entire Puget Sound Jewish community and inexcusable,” the Federation added. “Synagogues, Jewish community centers, and Jewish organizations rely on law enforcement to help protect them from violent, antisemitic attacks.”

“The two-week suspension and sensitivity training given in response are completely inadequate, especially at a time when incidents of hate against the Jewish people are higher than they’ve been in almost 45 years,” they asserted. “The absence of true accountability demanded of Kammerzell and the sheer lack of consequences in this situation are shocking.”

While isolated from his colleagues as a COVID precaution, Fox's Gutfeld declares “the pandemic is over”

Gutfeld: “This is absolutely great news. This is the double destruction of the pandemic and of the teachers unions”

WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
PUBLISHED 01/05/22 
CitationFrom the January 5, 2022, edition of Fox News' The Five

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): You have to look at this from the positive perspective. This is absolutely great news. This is the double destruction of the pandemic and of the teachers unions happening at exactly the same time, right? We now know that the pandemic is over. The teachers unions pushed us over the cliff. It's going to happen February 1st -- this is all going to be behind us. And it's time now to sever the ties with the least competitive entity on the planet since the Washington Generals. Our education -- educational system is just like the Washington Generals in that we pay them to lose. The only thing worse is that they're teaching our children to lose. They're going to lose in life because they're falling behind. We've learned one really important thing from remote learning -- no one is remotely learning.