Exclusive: DOJ investigating conservative-backed efforts in Wyoming to infiltrate DNC ahead of 2020 election, sources say

By Kara Scannell, CNN
 Fri June 9, 2023

CNN —

Federal prosecutors are investigating conservative-backed efforts in Wyoming to infiltrate the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors have subpoenaed Richard Seddon, a former British intelligence official, and Susan Gore, a Republican donor and heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, as part of the investigation, the people said.

The investigation appears to stem from a 2021 New York Times article that, citing interviews and documents, detailed “an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns, and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle.”

One of the subpoenas, which was sent in the past two weeks, seeks documents and communications from January 2018 through the present involving numerous limited liability companies and individuals, including Gore; Seddon; Erik Prince, the security contractor and brother to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and James O’Keefe, the former head of Project Veritas.

The people familiar with the investigation said prosecutors are looking into whether any campaign finance laws were violated. No one has been accused of any wrongdoing.

The investigation is being handled by the public corruption unit of the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC. A spokeswoman for the office said that it does not confirm or deny investigations.

Gore recently retained Nicholas Gravante Jr., a New York defense attorney who previously represented Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. Weisselberg cut a deal with prosecutors and testified at the tax fraud trial of the Trump Organization entities resulting in their conviction.

Gravante confirmed he represents Gore and declined further comment.

Seddon has retained Robert Driscoll, a well-connected Washington, DC, attorney who has represented numerous high-profile clients. Driscoll declined to comment.

Matthew Schwartz, a lawyer for Prince, said, “As far as we know, there are no federal criminal investigations involving my client whatsoever.”

An attorney for Project Veritas and O’Keefe referred CNN to the company. Project Veritas and O’Keefe could not immediately be reached.

According to the Times, Seddon, working with Prince, secured funding from Gore by the end of 2018 to train activists to infiltrate political groups. Seddon, according to the Times, recruited former operatives from Project Veritas, where he previously worked.

The Times reported that two operatives trained by Seddon pledged sizable political donations ranging from $1,250 to $10,000 to Democratic organizations and candidates. Some of the donations gained the operatives, a couple, entry to fundraisers and even a Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas.

It is not clear where the couple got the money to make the donations. It is illegal to use another person’s name to make political donations and prosecutors have brought numerous so-called straw donor prosecutions in recent years.

One of the subpoenas also seeks any communications involving the couple as well as the individuals and organizations that received the donations, a source said.

LIV Won. It’s Still a PR Disaster for Saudi Arabia.

The desert kingdom wanted to change its image by embracing the beloved sport of rich Americans. Instead, it drew attention to everything it wanted to hide.

Saudi Arabia — led by Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, shown here at a 2022 summit in the city of Jeddah — supported the LIV Golf/PGA merger. But it's hardly a PR win for the kingdom, argues Michael Schaffer. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

By MICHAEL SCHAFFER
Updated: 06/09/2023 
Michael Schaffer is a senior editor at POLITICO. His Capital City column runs weekly in POLITICO Magazine.

Maybe in a decade, we’ll all think of Saudi Arabia as a pleasant land of caddies and duffers, a desert golf oasis — like Scottsdale, Ariz, but with hundreds of ultra-rich royal princes.

For the time being, though, the kingdom has a rather different reputation — one that the wild latest twist of its foray into big-time golf has done nothing to allay. The stories about Tuesday’s out-of-the-blue merger between the PGA Tour and its Saudi-backed upstart rival LIV Golf were all full of words you’d rather banish if your goal is rebranding a problematic monarchy: “September 11,” “hijackers,” “Jamal Khashoggi,” “human rights abuses,” “dismemberment” and other tourist-unfriendly terms.

Weirdly, it could have been a good news cycle for the kingdom: The U.S. Secretary of State was literally in Riyadh to chat up a government that Washington once promised to shun. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had just won plaudits for bringing Ukraine’s heroic president to an OPEC meeting. In a country that hadn’t gotten a lot of media love, it was a rare bounce.

And then they had to go and buy the PGA.

Amid a torrent of headlines, the dynamics of the world’s worst sportswashing campaign asserted themselves anew: LIV may have pulled off an upset victory, but the news was all full of things the kingdom would rather not discuss. And now the long-dominant American golf organization was getting slimed, too.

This raises the question: Is this the dumbest PR campaign in the history of the Beltway’s influence industry?

LIV, of course, has always denied that its goal had anything to do with Saudi Arabia’s international reputation: It was always about a business opportunity, not “sportswashing,” the effort to soften a country’s reputation via association with a pleasant, apolitical pastime. Either way, as the two sides spent big on D.C. communications pros and legal stars, the conversation inevitably morphed from golf into refrains about terrorism, national sovereignty and foreign meddling.

Which has been consistently bad news for the Saudis, whatever their goal may have been.

The immediate aftermath of the merger, in fact, made the spotlight worse. Atop the references to 9/11 and the murder of a journalist, this week’s stories also include a new theme: betrayal. An endlessly wealthy foreign entity enticed an American institution to abruptly reverse itself, letting down the golfers who had nobly refused the Saudi money while making a liar of the commissioner who begged them to stick with PGA in the name of all that is decent and true.

White House: ‘No comment’ on PGA merger with Saudi-backed LIV

Is it short-term thinking to assume it’ll always be thus — that, now that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund has taken a huge stake in PGA, all golf stories, not just stories about LIV, will contain references to the most troubling parts of the Saudi reputation? Probably. Memories are short and, who knows, perhaps the ruling Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will turn out like one of those American robber barons who buys the local football team, wins a Super Bowl and turns himself into a man of the people.

But before that, it’s worth noting that the golf contretemps was also a huge Washington story — one that shows both the promise and the pitfalls of using a real-life commercial battle in order to push non-financial things like human rights, transparency and national pride.

Ever since LIV’s launch, the face-off with PGA has felt a bit like an economic-stimulus program for Washington’s power influencers. The muscle engaged on LIV’s behalf has included the PR giant Edelman, former GOP Rep. Benjamin Quayle’s lobbying firm, Bush-era White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and McKenna & Associates, the consulting firm that previously worked with the National Rifle Association. A New York Times report from December said that McKinsey & Co., which had worked on the Vision 2030 plan to diversify the Saudi economy, did a lengthy study on the golf scheme, too. According to a 2021 FARA filing, the consulting firm Teneo also contracted that year with the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund for early work on Project Wedge.

Last week, the communications firm Gitcho Goodwin registered as foreign agents for their work representing LIV, something that contradicted the league’s claim that they weren’t part of an overseas government. The firm’s relationship with the league ended soon after.

The PGA spent big, too. It bumped up its lobbying outlays, via the firm DLA Piper, by 50 percent. It also brought in Jeff Miller, the Republican power broker and close associate of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The ironic upshot: For critics of Saudi Arabia, the golf war of the last 18 months was like a surfer catching the perfect wave. All of a sudden, there was an entire industry propelling the sorts of stories they’d long struggled to highlight.

The handiwork of the various pros and activists involved was impressive. When LIV golfers made the rounds on Capitol Hill, they were trailed by 9/11 families. A member of Congress demanded a federal investigation of whether the new league was in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. As the legal battle became more convoluted, the PGA side made a habit of referencing Saudi Arabia’s autocratic regime and human-rights record in their filings.

In ordinary times, absent a horrific story like the cold-blooded murder of a Washington Post contributor in a foreign consulate, it’s difficult for a human-rights campaigner to seed the U.S. media with stories about repression in a distant country. But when those stories advance the commercial interests of a multibillion-dollar sports behemoth, allies seem to come out of the woodwork, directing reporters and members of Congress and other troublemakers to just the right source or the deliciously newsy legal filing.

Anyone who’s covered the capital knows that stories about craven FARA violations or appalling foreign governments often come not from the plucky human-rights type or good-government activist quoted in the piece, but via the much more handsomely compensated comms person who made the connection or suggested someone look up the potentially incriminating legal brief.

The funding for that essential, off-camera work typically materializes when someone stands to make money off the news.

Until those funders’ calculations change and the backstage actors vanish.

This week, the perfect wave turned into a riptide — and Saudi Arabia’s critics saw the flip side of what happens when you advance a high-minded cause like human rights via a real-world business battle involving the profit motive. Instead of hyping attention to the kingdom’s flaws, the merged company that succeeds PGA will be chaired by the chair of the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan. You can bet he won’t be paying for PR folks and lobbyists to slime Saudi Arabia in the media and Congress.

It turns out that a lot of that PR effort may have just been about helping the PGA to get a better price.

“So weird,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tweeted. “PGA officials were in my office just months ago talking about how the Saudis’ human rights record should disqualify them from having a stake in a major American sport. I guess maybe their concerns weren’t really about human rights?”

That was also the question on the mind of Brett Eagleson, who leads 9/11 Justice, which represents survivors of the September 11 terrorist attacks as well as family members of those who died. A year ago this week, when PGA and LIV were facing off, Eagleson reached out to the established golf tour.

“I wrote the initial outreach email and said we have a lot to talk about,” he told me this week. “We have some experience with your enemy. We have some information to share with you.” Eagleson said his email led to a phone call and a meeting. “They listened with a sympathetic ear,” he said. “But I think that everybody in the room knew that what was good for us was good for them.”

Among other things, he said, he looked up Clout, the Washington PR firm that represented the PGA, and hired them to represent 9/11 Justice, too. “We consciously injected ourselves into PGA and LIV,” he said.

For a year, an organization struggling to keep alive the legacy of a 2001 event suddenly had a bunch of allies who were focused on ongoing, right-now news. The LIV-PGA battle enabled Eagleson to get his group’s story out to folks who might otherwise not listen.

Now the biggest of those allies has gone to ground, having merged with the very folks they’d criticized alongside Eagleson.

In good Washington fashion, it’s not just the PGA side that has rubbished the talking points of its Beltway operatives. One of LIV’s notable arguments was a David-and-Goliath claim that the established golf tour was a monopoly trying to quash the new alternative. But the merger means the creation of a bigger behemoth than existed before. So much for antitrust.

“Was it all, for lack of a better term, BS?” Eagleson asked this week. “I don’t think they actually gave two shits about Khashoggi or the carpet bombing of Yemen or women or 9/11. As soon as they were offered a deal, they folded like a beach chair.” One bit of news that pleased him: Clout announced that they’re dropping PGA and keeping 9/11 Justice — a somewhat surprising move given the depth of the two parties’ respective pockets. But he’s not under any illusion that a lot of the PGA-aligned folks who so energetically excoriated the Saudis will keep it up.

Whoever his allies are, they’ll have their work cut out for them. The end of the LIV-PGA battle is like turning off a music box that everyone has been dancing to. With no big-money battle to be waged in the court of public opinion, there’s less reason to push or chase stories about LIV’s ownership situation, which in theory could mean less attention to things the Saudi government would rather not talk about.

That’s why Eagleson hopes Congress will investigate the merger and provide new opportunities to make a stink. Within a day, there was legislation to take away the PGA’s tax-exempt status. An effort to somehow block the merger could keep the story in the news longer still. Golf enthusiasts would be transfixed by the hearings — and, as a fringe benefit, Eagleson’s group would have a new opportunity to get their own story out.

It’s just going to be a lot harder when no one on his side stands to profit from muddying up the sportswashing.

Moderna, Pfizer sued over technology developed by Scripps researchers that made COVID-19 vaccine possible

2023/06/07

A syringe containing the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at the Jewish Federation/ JARC's offices in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan - Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

SAN DIEGO — Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech were named in lawsuits Tuesday that accuse them of stealing a patented method developed by researchers from The Scripps Research Institute that made the COVID-19 vaccine possible.

The two separate patent infringement lawsuits — one against Moderna for its Spikevax vaccine and one against Pfizer and its partner BioNTech for its Comirnaty vaccine — were filed in federal court in San Diego by Promosome. The firm, which has offices in San Diego and New York City, develops and commercializes discoveries from the late Nobel Prize laureate Gerald Edelman and Vincent Mauro both of whom conducted research at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla.

As of late Tuesday, Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit.

The patent at the center of the complaints is a novel method for modifying messenger RNA, or mRNA — which delivers instructions to a cell for protein production. The modification from researchers ultimately made mRNA vaccines safer and significantly more effective by helping the immune system produce sufficient proteins to fight the virus with small doses of mRNA. The technique was developed by Scripps scientists Edelman, Mauro, Stephen Chappell and Wei Zhou in 2009, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit against Moderna contends that in 2013, under a confidential disclosure agreement, the patented method was shared with the biopharmaceutical company's highest leadership, including CEO Stéphane Bancel and President Stephen Hoge. However, Moderna did not license the technology.

The lawsuit filed against Pfizer and BioNTech alleges that in 2015, Promosome shared the technology with BioNTech scientist, Dr. Katalin Karikó, but neither company licensed the technology.

In each complaint Promosome seeks "to receive its rightful share of the tens-of-billions in revenues," each company "already has earned and countless billions it will earn by willfully infringing the '179 Patent."

Moderna netted $18.4 billion in sales for its coronavirus vaccine last year, according to SEC filings. Pfizer and BioNTech brought in $37.8 billion from sales of its COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty, last year.

"Our client's cutting-edge technology has helped spare hundreds of millions of people from the harmful effects of COVID-19," said Bill Carmody, lead lawyer on the matter and partner at the firm Susman Godfrey. "Unfortunately, these big pharma companies have failed to give Promosome what it deserves."

Patent infringement lawsuits are not uncommon in the realm of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

Multiple lawsuits have previously been filed related to the coronavirus vaccines and the technology that made it possible.

For example, in February Moderna paid the federal government $400 million for a chemical technique it employed in its COVID-19 vaccine. In August, Moderna sued Pfizer and BioNTech for patent infringement related to the mRNA technology used in its COVID-19 vaccine.

© The San Diego Union-Tribune

Experiment halted in Norway after whale drowns
Agence France-Presse
June 7, 2023,


Under the project, run by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) each summer since 2021 minke whales are captured in the Lofoten archipelago and submitted to hearing tests before they are released into the wild again.

They are run in cooperation with the US National Marine Mammal Foundation.

The experiments, aimed at gathering knowledge in order to set limits on how much noise humans should be allowed to make in the ocean, have been criticised by animal rights defenders and scientists who consider the project dangerous.

In the night between June 2 and 3, bad weather damaged the project testing site, causing a barrier line to break free. A whale became entangled in it and died, the FFI said.

The incident occurred before the official start of this year's experiments.

The project has been put on hold indefinitely while the incident is reviewed and the site repaired.

"Our aim is to protect Minke whales and other baleens, and to protect them from harmful human-made noise," Petter Kvadsheim, chief researcher at FFI, said.

"We will continue our work on this. The health of the animals is our main priority in this experiment."

The project had been due to continue until the summer of 2024.

In an interview with AFP, Kvadsheim blamed the incident on bad weather rather than the experiment, and said he hoped the project could resume "in the next few days".

"It's never been done before and unexpected things can happen," he said, adding that it was unfolding "step by step" and "on schedule".

He said only "a handful" of whales were needed to complete the project.

One whale entered the testing site the first year, in 2021, but it quickly escaped.

In 2022, another minke was captured but it was released immediately because it showed signs of stress.

"We have warned that these cruel and pointless experiments would lead to whales being killed and it is sadly ironic that this poor minke has died even before the experiments have got underway," said a spokesman for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Danny Groves.

"No whales should have to face being bundled into a cage and have electrodes implanted under his or her skin. These experiments should be halted permanently," he added.


In 2021, 50 international scientists had written to the Norwegian government to protest against the experiments.

© 2023 AFP

Nearly 20% of the cultural differences between societies boil down to ecological factors – new research

The Conversation
June 7, 2023

Chinese farmers harvest rice crops using combines in Xinghua in China's eastern Jiangsu province on October 23, 2017. © AFP

In some parts of the world, the rules are strict; in others they are far more lax. In some places, people are likely to plan for the future, while in others people are more likely to live in the moment. In some societies people prefer more personal space; in others they are comfortable being in close quarters with strangers.

Why do these kinds of differences exist?

There are a number of theories about where cultural differences come from. Some social scientists point to the role of specific institutions, like the Catholic Church. Others focus on historical differences in philosophical traditions across societies, or on the kinds of crops that were historically grown in different regions.

But there’s another possible answer. In a growing number of cases, researchers have found that human culture can be shaped by key features of the environments in which people live.

Just how strong is this ecology-culture connection overall? In a new study, ourlab, the Culture and Ecology Lab at Arizona State University, set out to answer this question.
How does ecology shape culture?

Ecology includes basic physical and social characteristics of the environment – such factors as how abundant resources are, how common infectious diseases are, how densely populated a place is, and how much threat there is to human safety. Variables like temperature and the availability of water can be key ecological features.


What impact does a dry climate have on the culture of the people who live in it? 

Peter Adams/Stone via Getty Images

The three examples of cultural differences we started with illustrate how this can work. It turns out that the strength of social norms in a given culture is linked to the amount of threat, from such factors as war and disasters, a society faces. Stronger rules may help members of a society stick together and cooperate in the face of these dangers.


Places with less access to water tend to be more future-oriented. When fresh water is scarce, the thinking goes, there is more need to plan so that it doesn’t run out.

And in places with colder temperatures people feel less need for lots of personal space in public, perhaps because there tend to be fewer germs, or maybe from an impulse, on some basic level, to keep warm.

All of these examples show that cultures are shaped, at least in part, by the basic features of the environments people live in. And in fact, there are many other examples in which researchers have linked particular cultural differences to particular differences in ecology.

Quantifying the connection

For over 200 societies, we gathered comprehensive data on nine key features of ecology – such as rainfall, temperature, infectious disease and population density – and dozens of aspects of human cultural variation – including values, strength of norms, personality, motivation and institutional characteristics. With this information, we created the open-access EcoCultural Dataset.

Using this data set, we were able to generate a range of estimates for just how much of human cultural variation can be explained by ecology.

We ran a series of statistical models looking at the relationship between our ecological variables and each of the 66 cultural outcomes we tracked. For each of the cultural outcomes, we calculated the average amount of the cultural diversity across societies that was explained by this combination of nine different ecological factors. We found that nearly 20% of cultural variation was explained by the combination of these ecological features.

Importantly, our statistical estimates take into account common issues in cross-cultural research. One complicating factor is that societies that are close to each other in space will be similar in ways beyond the variables measured in any particular study. In the same way, there will likely be unmeasured similarities between societies with shared historical roots. For example, cultural similarities between southern Germany and Austria may be accounted for by their shared cultural and linguistic heritage, as well as similar climates and levels of wealth.

Twenty percent may not sound impressive, but in fact this is several times larger than the average effect in our field of social psychology, in which typically up to around 4% or 5% of the variation in an outcome is explained.

Population density is one factor that can leave its mark on a place’s culture.

  Photo Patrick Altmann/Moment via Getty Images

More left to discover

In testing over 600 relationships among features of ecology and culture, we identified a number of intriguing new relationships. For example, we found that the amount of variation over time in levels of infectious disease was linked to the strength of social norms. This link suggests that it’s not just places with high levels of threat from germs, but also places where that threat varies more over time, such as India, that have stricter social rules.

There’s also a growing body of research suggesting that as the ecology of a place changes, so too does the culture. For example, a general decline in rates of infectious disease in the U.S., up until the current pandemic, is correlated with a loosening of social norms over the past century. Similarly, increases in population density appear to be linked to declines in birth rates around the world in the past several decades.

Because the EcoCultural Dataset contains not only contemporary measures of ecology, but also information about their variability and predictability over time, we believe it will be a rich resource for other scholars to mine. We’ve made all of this data free for anyone to accessand explore.

Ecology isn’t the only reason people around the world think and behave differently. But our work suggests that, at least in part, our environments shape our cultures.

Alexandra Wormley, Ph.D. Student in Social Psychology, Arizona State University and Michael Varnum, Associate Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

World's first vaccine against deadly swine fever nears approval in Vietnam

Reuters
June 7, 2023


By Francesco Guarascio

HANOI (Reuters) - Vaccines against African swine fever being tested in Vietnam are close to approval, global and U.S. veterinary officials said, in what would be a major breakthrough to tackle the deadly animal disease that regularly ravages pig farms worldwide.

African swine fever has for years disrupted the $250 billion global pork market. In the worst outbreak in 2018-19, about half the domestic pig population died in China, the world's biggest producer, causing losses estimated at over $100 billion.

After decades of failed attempts due to the complexity of the virus, two vaccines co-developed by U.S. scientists being tested in large pilot schemes by Vietnamese companies are showing "very promising" results, Gregorio Torres, head of the science department at the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"We have never been so close to get a vaccine that may work," Torres said, noting the two shots had "probably the highest chances to succeed" and be authorised for sale worldwide.

Both vaccines have received approval in Vietnam for pilot commercial use, now completed. The next step will be nationwide authorisation, the first ever for an African swine fever vaccine, and possible sales overseas.

U.S. agriculture secretary Thomas Vilsack said there was likely to be interest in precautionary purchases in the United States, despite the country having so far been spared from the virus.

"There will be a specific interest obviously," Vilsack said in an interview with Reuters in April, speaking about possible purchases of the Vietnamese vaccines.

The vaccines were tested in Vietnam, where swine fever is a constant threat, because they could not be developed in the U.S. as the virus is not present there.

Since 2021, swine fever, which is not deadly to humans, has been reported in nearly 50 countries and caused about 1.3 million pig deaths, WOAH said in a regular report last week.

Currently there are no major outbreaks, but agribusiness lender Rabobank warned in April that the possible spread of the disease, especially in China, remained among the top risks to the global pork industry.

NO SAFETY ISSUES

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers have reviewed the results of one of the vaccines, NAVET-ASFVAC, which they co-developed with Vietnamese company NAVETCO, a USDA spokesperson said.

After the vaccine showed a high level of efficacy and no safety risks in trials, 600,000 doses were approved for initial sales to pig farmers in Vietnam, of which the first 40,000 "have been delivered without any safety problems," USDA said.

That followed an initial hiccup when use of the vaccine was suspended after dozens of pigs died last summer following inoculations in farms that used the vaccine off-label, USDA said, administering it to hogs that were not supposed to be inoculated, such as pregnant sows.

No problems emerged after deliveries resumed with adequate veterinary monitoring, USDA said.

NAVET-ASFVAC is an attenuated live-virus vaccine, like those used in childrens' routine vaccinations around the world. Use of unlicensed live-virus vaccines in China in past years raised concerns they caused the emergence of new strains of swine fever.

Only limited data are available from China's trials on a live-virus vaccine against swine fever.

The second vaccine tested in Vietnam, AVAC ASF LIVE, which was discovered by U.S. researchers and commercialized by Vietnamese firm AVAC, has been delivered to more pigs than NAVET-ASFVAC under its pilot deployment, but USDA said it had not yet reviewed the data.

NAVETCO, AVAC and Vietnam's agriculture ministry, which is responsible for approval of veterinary vaccines, did not respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; additional reporting by Phuong Nguyen and Khanh Vu in Hanoi and Dominique Patton in Beijing; editing by Sonali Paul)


Read More

'Disturbing': 12 million Americans think violence is justified to put Trump back in the White House

Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams
June 9, 2023

Screengrab from Just Another Channel

More than two years after the deadly January 6 insurrection, 12 million people in the United States, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe the use of violence is justified to restore former President Donald Trump to power, The Guardian reported Friday.

This percentage has declined from nearly 10% in 2021, when the Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPOST) first began conducting its Dangers to Democracy surveys of U.S. adults. But April data the University of Chicago research center shared exclusively with The Guardian reveals that a treacherous amount of support for political violence and conspiracy theories persists nationwide.

In the two and a half years since Trump's bid to overturn his 2020 loss fell short, Republican state lawmakers have launched a full-fledged assault on the franchise, enacting dozens of voter suppression and election subversion laws meant to increase their control over electoral outcomes. Due to obstruction from Republicans and corporate Democrats, Congress has failed to pass federal voting rights protections and other safeguards designed to prevent another coup attempt ahead of November 2024.

"We're heading into an extremely tumultuous election season," Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor and CPOST director, told The Guardian. "What's happening in the United States is political violence is going from the fringe to the mainstream."

Several right-wing candidates who echoed Trump's relentless lies about President Joe Biden's 2020 victory lost in last year's midterms. But more than 210 others—including at least two who participated in the January 6 rally that escalated into an attack on the U.S. Capitol—won congressional seats and races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, underscoring the extent to which election denialism is now entrenched in the GOP and jeopardizes U.S. democracy for the foreseeable future.

The CPOST survey conducted in April found that 20% of U.S. adults still believe "the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president," down only slightly from the 26% who said so in 2021.

"What you're seeing is really disturbing levels of distrust in American democracy, support for dangerous conspiracy theories, and support for political violence itself," Pape told The Guardian.

According to the newspaper, Pape compared "sentiments about political violence" to "the kindling for a wildfire." While "many were unaware that the events on January 6 would turn violent, research shows that public support for violence was widespread, so the attacks themselves should not have come as a surprise."

"Once you have support for violence in the mainstream, those are the raw ingredients or the raw combustible material and then speeches, typically by politicians, can set them off," said Pape. "Or if they get going, speeches can encourage them to go further."

Pape pointed out that there was chatter among far-right groups and on online forums about potentially using force to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden's win, but Trump's January 6 address at the White House Ellipse was the spark that ignited the mob to storm the halls of Congress.

CPOST's latest findings are based on polling completed before Trump was federally indicted Thursday night on seven criminal counts in the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents. The charges, including willful retention of national defense secrets, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy, could carry years in prison for the GOP's leading 2024 presidential candidate.

In response to the indictment, several Republican lawmakers rallied to Trump's defense, parroting his dismissal of the probe as a "witch hunt." Fox News personalities also denounced what they called the "weaponization" of the U.S. justice system, while commenters on Breibart opined that "this is how revolution begins."

The menacing language mirrored what was said after the FBI in early August 2022 searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and removed boxes of documents as part of the federal probe into his handling of classified materials.

At the time, many anonymous and some well-known reactionaries called for "civil war" on Twitter, patriots.win, and elsewhere. Soon after, Ricky Shiffer, a Trump loyalist with suspected ties to a far-right group and an unspecified connection to the January 6 insurrection, was shot and killed by police following an hourslong standoff. Shiffer, wielding an AR-15 and a nail gun, allegedly attempted to break into the FBI's Cincinnati office and fled to a nearby field when he was unsuccessful.

Afterward, Trump continued to lie about the Mar-a-Lago search on Truth Social, sparking an "unprecedented" surge in threats against FBI personnel and facilities. In March, just before he was hit with a 34-count felony indictment in the Manhattan district attorney's investigation into alleged hush money payments made during the run-up to the 2016 election, Trump called on his supporters to "protest" and "take our nation back," though right-wing violence did not materialize in that instance.

The Guardian on Friday observed that "it's important to track public sentiment about political violence regularly," noting that CPOST plans to release data from its Dangers to Democracy survey every three months from now until the 2024 election. "The instigating event, usually a speech or comment by a person in power, is unpredictable and can set people off at any moment, but the underlying support for violence is more predictable and trackable."

The research center's most recent survey found that "almost 14%—a minority of Americans, but still a significant number—believe the use of force is justified to 'achieve political goals that I support,'" the newspaper reported. "More specifically, 12.4% believe it's justified to restore the federal right to abortion, 8.4% believe it's justified to ensure members of Congress and other government officials do the right thing, 6.3% think it's justified to preserve the rights of white Americans, and 6.1% believe it's justified to prevent the prosecution of Trump."

Citing Duke University political science professor Peter Feaver, The Guardian noted that "while public support for political violence might seem extreme, a confluence of factors is necessary for actual violence to occur—which is still rare. On January 6, there was a time-sensitive action, an already existing rally, and inciters including Trump who encouraged others to commit violence."

According to Feaver, "You needed all of that at the same time to turn what would have been latent sentiment of the sort that this survey captures into actual violence."

On top of broad support for Trump's "Big Lie," the survey found that one in ten U.S. adults think "a secret group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is ruling the U.S. government," meaning QAnon had roughly the same percentage of adherents in April as it did in 2021. The survey also found that a quarter of U.S. adults agree that "the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World," revealing an alarming amount of ongoing support for the white nationalist "great replacement" theory.

More optimistically, the survey found that over 77% of U.S. adults want Republicans and Democrats in Congress to issue a joint statement condemning any political violence.

"There's a tremendous amount of opposition to political violence in the United States," Pape remarked, "but it is not mobilized."

Queens of the desert: drag show is oasis of glamour in rural South Africa

Agence France-Presse
June 9, 2023

Dame Leyla Lamborghini, alter ego of hotel owner Jacques Rabie, performs at South Africa's Karoo Theatrical Hotel© Michele Spatari / AFP

Deep in South Africa's semi-desert Karoo region, a glittery drag show in an old hilltop hotel brings a burst of weekly excitement to a sleepy conservative town.

Every Saturday night, Mark Hinds and Jacques Rabie, the owners of the Karoo Theatrical Hotel, amaze their guests with a night-long cabaret and drag show in the small town of Steytlerville in the Eastern Cape.

The show, called "The Steytlerville Follies", stars the couple in their flamboyant stage alter egos -- the desert diva Dame Leyla Lamborghini and the piano maestro Freddy Ferrari.

"If you tell somebody that there is a drag show happening in the middle of absolutely nowhere... every single Saturday night, that creates curiosity," Hinds told AFP as he added the final touches to the set.

A grand piano sat on the stage against the backdrop of bright pink party foil curtains, feathers and disco lights as around 20 guests took their seats in the dimly candle-lit hotel restaurant.

In his dressing room, minutes before the show began, Rabie recalled how "it was difficult" to begin with to put on the show in the region of mountains and wild expanses best known for ostrich farming.

"But after a while more people like us, more gay people... moved in and it became more acceptable in town," he said as he put on his make-up.

Welcomed by his partner on stage, Rabie, wearing a blonde bob wig, high heels and a glittery pink corset dress ripped off his pink feather tutu skirt as he broke into song and dance.

For show-goer Lara Engelbrecht-Wilbraham, the performance was "classy and beautiful". Celebrating her birthday, it was only the second time in her life that she had attended a drag show.

The 44-year-old who sells solar energy products brought her partner and two friends.

The show, which the organizers described as a rollercoaster of emotions, from outrageously funny to nostalgic, is "packed out every Saturday night", said Hinds.

"One of the biggest things that draws people here is curiosity, having heard about something that they have never heard before, that they would have never thought possible," he added.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert Official Trailer #1 - Terence Stamp Movie (1994) HD

With bows and spears, Indigenous 'warriors' defend the Amazon

Agence France-Presse
June 9, 2023,

Members of the "Warriors of the Forest," a vigilante group from the Kanamari ethnic group, patrol along the Javari river in the northwest Amazonas state of Brazil

© Siegfried / AFP

In a remote pocket of the Brazilian Amazon under siege from illegal fishermen, poachers, loggers and drug traffickers, Indigenous people have taken it upon themselves to defend the land and its resources.

With bows, arrows and spears, young men of the Sao Luis village patrol the Javari River by motorboat in the valley of the same name.

They call themselves the "Warriors of the Forest," the self-styled heirs of Indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira, who was murdered in the Javari Valley one year ago along with British journalist Dom Phillips.

"We must always be prepared for the worst. But we do not want violence," said Lucinho Kanamari, his face painted red, insisting the traditional weapons are merely a "precaution."

"When we spot intruders, one of us will talk to them. The others stay back, ready to react if things go wrong," he told AFP.

"We are there to teach, to act as a peaceful deterrent. We talk, we explain."

Lucinho is a member of the Kanamari Indigenous group, one of six in the Javari Valley which holds Brazil's second largest protected Indigenous reservation.

Like many others who live here, he takes his surname from his tribe which lives in a part of the rainforest the size of Portugal that contains many of the world's last uncontacted Indigenous groups.

- 'Invasions exploded' -

The patrolling warriors particularly fear the illegal fishermen in search of pirarucu -- one of the world's largest freshwater fish, its flesh considered a delicacy worth a small fortune.

Such poachers are believed to have killed Pereira and Phillips on June 5, 2022, hacking up their bodies and hiding the remains in the jungle.

For a while, the crime brought international attention to this threatened corner of the planet long-abandoned under former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his pro-industrial agenda.

"With Bolsonaro, and then Covid, the invasions exploded," said Varney Todah da Silva Kanamari, vice president of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja).

"As the state abandoned us, we had to assume our responsibilities... We defend what belongs to us: our lakes and forests," he said.

It is not only fishermen the watchmen fear.

There are also narco groups growing coca crops on the Peruvian side of the river, and in April, loggers threatened to kill a Kanamari chief, forcing him into exile.

The warriors have built two floating wooden observation posts on the river near their village of Sao Luis. One of the structures has come under fire.

Their task is immense and dangerous, their means lacking. The team has only two motorboats and little fuel.

The "warriors" avoid violent conflict, and in tense situations, withdraw back into the forest.

- 'Under threat of death' –

With government forces absent from the area, the Sao Luis warriors work with another Indigenous group known by its acronym EVU -- a sort of commando unit attached to Univaja.

Pereira helped set up the EVU before his death.


EVU members -- about 30 in total -- are equipped with motorized barges, GPS, drones, phones and satellite internet, much of it made possible by private donors. They carry no weapons.

EVU volunteers from different Javari Valley communities undergo training by NGOs and security specialists in "how to intervene, make surveys, confiscate equipment or boats," explained EVU co-founder Cristobal Negredo Espisango, known as Tatako.

According to Univaja coordinator Bushe Matis, the EVU does not "replace the state."

"We monitor, we collect information and evidence, and we pass it on to the relevant authorities. Then let the state do its job."

EVU leader Orlando de Moraes Possuelo said a key goal is "to occupy terrain" in areas with an abundance of sought-after fish and animals.

"We arrive as soon as possible to catch the intruders in the act, before they disappear or return to Peru." Legally, they cannot detain anyone.

Many of the group's members have received threats.

"I am under threat of death. I am afraid of course, but there is no other option," said Tatako.

"The EVU is the only organization that really fights organized crime in the Javari Valley," he added.

With the return of leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to the presidency, many in the Amazon hope help will soon be coming.

This week, as Brazil marked the anniversary of the murders of Pereira and Phillips, Lula vowed that "we will not abandon this struggle for the planet."

"We are fighting to revive policies to protect Indigenous peoples and the Amazon," he said in a statement to The Guardian newspaper, to which Phillips was a contributor.

But just last week, Brazil's Congress passed bills cutting the powers of Lula's environment and Indigenous affairs ministries and dramatically curbing the protection of Indigenous lands.

Univaja's Matis fears for the future.

"There can be a tragedy at any moment. The invaders will never back down: they will always want to lay claim to the Javari," he said.

'The fight has only just begun': Greta Thunberg pledges more protests after final school strike

Common Dreams
June 9, 2023

Greta Thunberg © INA FASSBENDER / AFP

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg—who launched a global movement when she began skipping school to protest in front of the Swedish parliament nearly five years ago–carried out her last school strike on Friday.



"School strike week 251," Thunberg tweeted. "Today, I graduate from school, which means I'll no longer be able to school strike for the climate."

Thunberg, who is now 20, first made headlines at the age of 15 when she refused to attend school during the three-week lead-up to September Swedish elections in an effort to persuade politicians to take action on the climate crisis.

Instead, she sat outside the Swedish parliament with a sign reading, "School strike for climate," in Swedish.

"We young people don't have the vote, but school is obligatory," Thunberg toldThe Local at the time. "So this [is] a way to get our voices heard."

"There are probably many of us who graduate who now wonder what kind of future it is that we are stepping into, even though we did not cause this crisis."

On the day of her final school strike, Thunberg took the opportunity to reflect on the movement she helped galvanize.

"When I started striking in 2018 I could never have expected that it would lead to anything," she tweeted. "After striking every day for three weeks, we were a small group of children who decided to continue doing this every Friday. And we did, which is how Fridays For Future was formed."

The movement went global "quite suddenly," Thunberg recalled.

"During 2019, millions of youth striked from school for the climate, flooding the streets in over 180 countries," she said.

Fridays For Future found a different way to protest during the coronavirus lockdowns by launching a #digitalclimatestrike.

"In a crisis we change our behavior and adapt to the new circumstances for the greater good of society," Thunberg wrote at the time.

However, one group that hasn't changed their behavior are the world leaders Thunberg has famously excoriated in a number of high-profile speeches. A study released Thursday found that greenhouse gas emissions rose to record levels in the last decade despite the promises of the Paris agreement.

"Much has changed since we started, and yet we have much further to go," Thunberg tweeted Friday. "We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalized and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit, and economic growth."

Thunberg has spoken up for frontline communities recently. In January, she was detained while protesting the destruction of a German village to pave the way for a coal mine expansion, and in February, she joined with Norwegian Sami activists in opposing the placement of wind turbines on Indigenous land.

While graduation is typically a joyful occasion, Thunberg reflected on how the climate crisis has altered her generation's vision of the future.

"There are probably many of us who graduate who now wonder what kind of future it is that we are stepping into, even though we did not cause this crisis," she wrote.

Whatever Thunberg's future contains, climate activism will continue to be part of it.


"We who can speak up have a duty to do so. In order to change everything, we need everyone. I'll continue to protest on Fridays, even though it's not technically 'school striking,'" she promised.

"We simply have no other option than to do everything we possibly can," Thunberg concluded. "The fight has only just begun."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

OLIVIA ROSANE is a staff writer for Common Dreams.