U$ Tax prep companies that spent over $90 million lobbying against free tax-filing system face new scrutiny

Anna Massoglia,

 OpenSecrets
September 3, 2023, 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA, center) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA, right) have pressed tax prep special interests for additional information about their lobbying activities and revenue. Scott Olson/Getty Images

This article originally appeared in OpenSecrets. 

Leading tax prep companies have poured $90 million into lobbying on the Free File Program and other issues since the program’s inception in 2003, a new OpenSecrets analysis found.

Now the lobbying juggernauts are facing mounting scrutiny from members of Congress over their deployment of “revolving door” lobbyists in alleged attempts to undermine the federal government’s adoption of a government-run system that would allow taxpayers to file for free.

After years of lobbying and negotiations, a coalition of tax prep companies called the Free File Alliance reached a deal with the IRS to offer free tax prep services to a larger portion of taxpayers starting in 2003. The agreement, spearheaded by Intuit lobbyists, required companies to provide some tax filing services at no cost to certain individuals, those same companies could still charge for ancillary services and other tax-filing products.

ALSO READ: Busted: Vivek Ramaswamy campaign took money from a notorious Islamophobe

As a part of the public-private partnership, the IRS promised not to develop its own tax prep software or e-filing services. However, a December 2019 addendum to the alliance’s original memorandum of understanding lifted that restriction, despite tax prep companies spending heavily on lobbying to bar the government from creating its own e-filing software.

The December 2019 addendum also barred tax prep companies in the alliance from blocking Free File Internet search results. The change came shortly after ProPublica reported that tax prep companies in the alliance lured tax filers away from free tax filing options by hiding their Free File options from Google results and instead directing users to paid products – including products marketed as “free” that allegedly tricked clients into paying.

Since then, multiple companies have pulled out of the agreement with the IRS, including H&R Block in 2020 and Intuit in 2021.

While both leading tax prep companies have continued to spend heavily on lobbying, federal government efforts to roll out a government-run free tax filing system are moving forward – albeit not without some pushback.

ALSO READ: 'Why do we do this?': Unused government fund gets $3M cash influx from taxpayers

After President Joe Biden’s December 2021 Executive Order instructed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to consider “expanded electronic filing options,” Yellen testified before the Senate Finance Committee that building a free direct filing service is “definitely a priority.” The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allotted $15 million for the IRS to explore the creation of a free federal tax filing service.

In May, the IRS released a report announcing plans to launch the pilot program for the 2024 tax filing season and indicating that most U.S. taxpayers are interested in filing their taxes directly to the IRS for free.

But in June, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee proposed a budget rider that would bar the IRS from using federal government funds to create a government-run tax preparation software, unless approved by the House and Senate’s appropriations committees.

The IRS report and pilot program have also faced fierce opposition from tax prep companies.

“An IRS Direct File system is redundant and will not be free — not free to build, not free to operate, and not free for taxpayers,” Intuit spokesperson Derrick Plummer told ABC News.

The Intuit spokesperson further told AP that the report “cherry-picks data to support its flawed conclusion,” noting the study found that only 12% of taxpayers said they would use a government-run system if state tax returns are not included in the program.

On Aug. 23, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) sent letters to Intuit, H&R Block, the Free File Alliance and the American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights, a tax prep, software and financial services trade association whose members include Intuit, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, TaxSlayer and Liberty Tax Services.

Warren and Porter gave the organizations until Sept. 6 to provide additional information about the tax prep industry’s lobbying activities and revenue.

The American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights spent $150,000 on federal lobbying during the first half of this year, a smaller sum than the leading tax prep companies but outpacing any of its prior years and putting it on track for another record-setting year. The coalition spent $80,000 of that on federal lobbying in the second quarter of 2023 with $50,000 of that going to Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which started lobbying for the coalition May 1.

In 2022, the coalition spent $260,000 on federal lobbying — the most it has spent any year other than the $265,000 it spent the year it launched.

There is no record of federal lobbying by the Free File Alliance and its executive director, Tim Hugo, told AP that his organization “does not lobby, does not hire lobbyists, has not hired lobbyists in the past, and has never had a PAC.”

This is not the first time congressional Democrats have scrutinized the tax prep industry’s lobbying activities.

In 2022, several members of Congress called for probes into the company’s deployment of revolving-door lobbyists who previously held government positions, citing investigative reporting by OpenSecrets and ProPublica.

After OpenSecrets’ March 2022 reporting on Intuit’s lobbying in Washington, Warren sent another letterto Intuit’s CEO accusing the company of “extensive lobbying and adroit influence peddling.”

In a June letter, Warren, Porter and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) further called on federal inspector general offices to investigate Intuit’s “use of the revolving door to influence policy decisions” and the “extent to which Intuit — and other Free File Alliance members — have used the revolving door to exert undue influence on department and agency policies, particularly Free File.”

Intuit has also taken heat from the Federal Trade Commission, which filed a complaint in 2022 accusing Intuit of deceptively advertising their paid tax preparation services as free filing.

On Wednesday, an administrative judge inside the agency ruled against Intuit but the ruling will remained sealed until Sept. 6, pending redactions, Politico reported.

“We expect to appeal this decision to the FTC Commissioners and, if necessary, then to a federal court of appeals. We intend to continue to defend our position on the merits of this case,” Intuit wrote in its annual SEC filing filed Friday.

Even amid the scrutiny, tax companies continue to reap the profits of the current system.

On Aug. 23, Intuit announced its total revenue was $12.7 billion for the 12-month fiscal year ending June 31, up 32% from the prior year. H&R Block reported $3.5 billion in revenue during its own 12-month fiscal year ending June 30, a more modest increase of about $9 million — or 0.3% — from the prior year.

Over the two decades since Free File launched, Intuit has poured over $43.3 million into federal lobbying while H&R Block spent nearly $42 million.

Intuit, the company that owns TurboTax, has spent more than $1.8 million on federal lobbying in the first half of 2023, outpacing any prior year. H&R Block spent more than $1.5 million on federal lobbying during the same period.

Editor's note: This article was updated to reflect information Intuit’s annual SEC filing, which was posted after publication.

OpenSecrets is a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research and news organization tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.

A Biden-Voting Pro-Choice Republican Could Pull Off A Shock Special Election Win In Utah

Winning would put Becky Edwards on a glide path to becoming the only Republican in the House who says she didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2020.

By Liz Skalka

DESERET  NEWS
|Updated Sep 1, 2023

Becky Edwards, a Republican, could pull of a victory in Utah's special election Tuesday.
(AP PHOTO/RICK BOWMER, FILE)


A Utah Republican who says she voted for President Joe Biden and doesn’t toe the party line on abortion is competing to represent Utah’s 2nd Congressional District in a little-noticed special election happening Tuesday — opening up the possibility of a wildcard member of the House GOP caucus.

The race could put former U.S. Senate candidate Becky Edwards on a glide path to becoming the only House Republican who says they didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2020. Edwards would be an extreme outlier in the GOP-controlled House, where Republicans are strongly aligned with the former president.

Edwards topped an early August poll of the three-person GOP primary field conducted by the Mormon Church-affiliated Deseret News and the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics and released Monday, creating some national buzz around her campaign. It’s the only public survey of the race so far and showed nearly half of the respondents were undecided on whether to support Edwards, RNC committeeman Bruce Hough or attorney Celeste Maloy. The winner advances to a general election against Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe.

Edwards is running to replace Republican Chris Stewart, who is leaving office this month in the middle of his sixth term due to his wife’s health issues. His resignation announcement in May set into motion a special election for a House seat extending from the southwestern corner of Utah north to Salt Lake City.

Since GOP gerrymandering eliminated Utah’s only competitive House seat in 2022, the contest to replace Stewart’s safe Republican seat had gone largely under the radar.

But Utah’s second district could end up electing one of the lower chamber’s most interesting new members: A Republican who expressed concerns about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and who openly urged Republicans to vote for someone besides Trump — although neither are issues Edwards is putting front and center to voters in a district that includes a broad swath of ultra-conservative rural Utah.

During her 2022 primary against hardline conservative Sen. Mike Lee, Edwards said she saw “no compelling reason why we need to revisit Roe v. Wade.” Edwards was also secretly recorded expressing concerns about a trigger law banning nearly all abortions. Edwards told the Salt Lake City Tribune’s editorial board she believes in the “sanctity of life.”

The paper also reported that Edwards encouraged Republicans to ditch Trump in 2020 and said that, unlike her opponent, Lee, she believed Trump deserved to be impeached for his role in spurring the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol. She later told Bloomberg that Utah voters just “want to move forward” from Trump.

Her opponents and political observers cautioned against reading too much into the single poll that showed Edwards up 20 points on the rest of the field, chalking it up to her name recognition and the survey’s poor timing. A representative for Hough, the RNC member, called it a “garbage poll” with stale results, while Maloy, a former attorney in Stewart’s congressional office who won the support of Utah Republican Party delegates, said her own support is “real and growing.”

A whopping 47% of respondents were undecided, a sign that many hadn’t started paying attention to the race. The survey ended Aug. 14, the day before voters received their ballots. Utah is one of the only states that mail every active voter a ballot.

Hough, whose own campaign says it has him leading in an internal poll, has attacked each of his opponent’s voting records, writing on social media that he’s the “only candidate in this race who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.” Maloy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about her voting record and the race in general.

“I think there may be a bit of a misunderstanding of the type of Republican that Becky [Edwards] is.”

- Chelsea Robarge Fife, Edwards' campaign communications director

Edwards’ campaign brushed off the implication that she’s not solidly conservative because she doesn’t back Trump, citing her decade in the Utah House, where she led the economic development committee and helped balance the state budget during the last recession.

“I think there may be a bit of a misunderstanding of the type of Republican that Becky is,” Chelsea Robarge Fife, the campaign’s communications director, told HuffPost. “Because she has 10 years of service in the Utah House, she has a record that shows where she is and how she votes, and that’s very conservative.”

Her campaign lists a host of priorities — none of which are MAGA-coded. They include approaching immigration “as a challenging issue that deserves sensitivity and nuance” and realizing that climate change “poses both opportunities and challenges for our state.”

Robarge Fife said voters they hear from are most concerned about the economy and inflation. “People are really worried about the cost of everything. That’s something we’re hearing everywhere,” she said.

Matthew Burbank, a political science professor at the University of Utah, said Edwards likely beat her opponents in the poll due to her legislative career and name recognition from her Senate campaign, in which she garnered 30% of the vote against Lee. Maloy likely had more traction with Utah GOP delegates because of her connection to Stewart, who endorsed her as his successor.

“Becky Edwards is clearly a better-known politician, even though she wasn’t that well-loved by the delegates because they didn’t see her as conservative enough,” he said.

Even so, Utah is not necessarily a MAGA state, Burbank said. He called Utah Republicans — who elected both Lee, a Trump antagonist-turned-ally and Romney, the only Republican in the Senate who didn’t vote for Trump — “conservative, in the older sense of what that meant.” He also noted the influence of former CIA agent Evan McMullin, a protest candidate who mounted an independent presidential campaign in 2016 and another for the U.S. Senate in 2022 to siphon votes from Trump and Lee, respectively.

“Trump did not do well in the 2016 primary … and he didn’t do particularly well in the general election,” Burbank said. “Trump did better in 2020, but he also didn’t carry the state with the kind of numbers that we would expect from an incumbent Republican.”

Sahara space rock 4.5 billion years old upends assumptions about the early Solar System

The Conversation
September 2, 2023

Sahara space rock (Steve Jurvetson / Wikimedia, CC BY-SA)

In May 2020, some unusual rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals were found in the Erg Chech sand sea, a dune-filled region of the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria.

On close inspection, the rocks turned out to be from outer space: lumps of rubble billions of years old, left over from the dawn of the Solar System.

They were all pieces of a meteorite known as Erg Chech 002, which is the oldest volcanic rock ever found, having melted long ago in the fires of some now-vanished ancient protoplanet.

In new research published in Nature Communications, we analysed lead and uranium isotopes in Erg Chech 002 and calculated it is some 4.56556 billion years old, give or take 120,000 years. This is one of the most precise ages ever calculated for an object from space – and our results also cast doubt on some common assumptions about the early Solar System.

The secret life of aluminium

Around 4.567 billion years ago, our Solar System formed from a vast cloud of gas and dust. Among the many elements in this cloud was aluminum, which came in two forms.

First is the stable form, aluminium-27. Second is aluminum-26, a radioactive isotope mainly produced by exploding stars, which decays over time into magnesium-26.

Aluminium-26 is very useful stuff for scientists who want to understand how the Solar System formed and developed. Because it decays over time, we can use it to date events – particularly within the first four or five million years of the Solar System’s life.

The decay of aluminum-26 is also important for another reason: we think it was the main source of heat in the early Solar System. This decay influenced the melting of the small, primitive rocks that later clumped together to form the planets.

Uranium, lead and age

However, to use aluminum-26 to understand the past, we need to know whether it was spread around evenly or clumped together more densely in some places than in others.

To figure that out, we will need to calculate the absolute ages of some ancient space rocks more precisely.

Looking at aluminum-26 alone won’t let us do that, because it decays relatively quickly (after around 705,000 years, half of a sample of aluminum-26 will have decayed into magnesium-26). It’s useful for determining the relative ages of different objects, but not their absolute age in years.

But if we combine aluminum-26 data with data about uranium and lead, we can make some headway.

There are two important isotopes of uranium (uranium-235 and uranium-238), which decay into different isotopes of lead (lead-207 and lead-206, respectively).

The uranium isotopes have much longer half-lives (710 million years and 4.47 billion years, respectively), which means we can use them to directly figure out how long ago an event happened.

Meteorite groups

Erg Chech 002 is what is known as an “ungrouped achondrite”.

Achondrites are rocks formed from melted planetesimals, which is what we call solid lumps in the cloud of gas and debris that formed the Solar System. The sources of many achondrites found on Earth have been identified.


A chondrite meteorites like Erg Chech 002 offer clues about the early years of the Solar System. Yuri Amelin, 

Most belong to the so-called Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite clan, which are believed to have originated from Vesta 4, one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System. Another group of achondrites is called angrites, which all share an unidentified parent body.

Still other achondrites, including Erg Chech 002, are “ungrouped”: their parent bodies and family relationships are unknown.

A clumpy spread of aluminium

In our study of Erg Chech 002, we found it contains a high abundance of lead-206 and lead-207, as well as relatively large amounts of undecayed uranium-238 and uranium-235.

Measuring the ratios of all the lead and uranium isotopes was what helped us to estimate the age of the rock with such unprecedented accuracy.

We also compared our calculated age with previously published aluminum-26 data for Erg Chech 002, as well as data for various other achondrites.

The comparison with a group of achondrites called volcanic angrites was particularly interesting. We found that the parent body of Erg Chech 002 must have formed from material containing three or four times as much aluminum-26 as the source of the angrites’ parent body.

This shows aluminum-26 was indeed distributed quite unevenly throughout the cloud of dust and gas which formed the solar system.

Our results contribute to a better understanding of the Solar System’s earliest developmental stages, and the geological history of burgeoning planets. Further studies of diverse achondrite groups will undoubtedly continue to refine our understanding and enhance our ability to reconstruct the early history of our Solar System.

Evgenii Krestianinov, PhD candidate, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University


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

Guatemala's president-elect Bernardo Arevalo denounced an"ongoing coup" to block him from taking power

Guatemala's president-elect Bernardo Arevalo has vowed to crack down on corruption in the country 

Johan ORDONEZ/AFP

Guatemala's president-elect Bernardo Arevalo on Friday denounced an "ongoing coup" by the country's institutions to block him from taking power, after his political party was suspended

Arevalo, a 64-year-old sociologist, swept from obscurity to win an August 20 election with his vow to crack down on graft, which observers say has alarmed a corrupt elite.

After a campaign marked by concerns of meddling, Arevalo was on Monday declared the winner of the poll with 58 percent of votes, but the electoral tribunal suspended his Semilla (Seed) Movement.

"There is a group of corrupt politicians and officials who refuse to accept this result and have launched a plan to break the constitutional order and violate democracy," Arevalo told a press conference.

"These actions constitute a coup d'état that is promoted by the institutions that should guarantee justice in our country."

Arevalo pulled off a massive upset by advancing to the runoff after a first round marked by apathy among voters tired of the poverty, violence, and corruption that pushes thousands abroad every year in search of a better life, many to the United States.

After the first round of voting on June 25, Guatemalan judge Fredy Orellana, at the request of prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, ordered the electoral tribunal to suspend Semilla pending an investigation into alleged anomalies in its registration as a party.

Orellana and Curruchiche are both on a US list of "corrupt actors" and foreign allies slammed meddling in the election process.

At the time, the court said a party could not be suspended in the middle of an election campaign.

But with voting over, the suspension was confirmed.

"We are seeing an ongoing coup, in which the justice apparatus is used to violate justice itself, mocking the popular will freely expressed at the polls," said Arevalo.

- Death threats -

Analysts told AFP the suspension would not prevent Arevalo taking up the presidential reins in January, but would impede his Semilla party's work in Congress.

The party also cannot issue statements or collect money.

"They are weakening and denying the resources, authority and legitimacy that the people of Guatemala have legally conferred upon us," Arevalo said.

The head of the electoral mission to Guatemala for the Organization of American States (OAS), Eladio Loizaga, also warned about a possible "break in the constitutional order in Guatemala."

Speaking at an extraordinary meeting in Washington on Guatemala, Loaiza said the mission "considers that the abuse of legal instruments ... continues to cause a high degree of uncertainty in the process and puts the country's democratic stability at risk."

Last week, the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said Arevalo and his deputy Karin Herrera "are being subjected to stigmatization, harassment, hounding, public disclosure of personal details on social media, and threats including two specific plans to hurt them and even kill them."

The government said in a statement that "necessary measures" had been taken in coordination with police to boost their protection.

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

Matthew Chapman
September 1, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the video below or at the link here.

 

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

David McAfee
September 2, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

Watch below or click the link here.

DEATH THREATS

Conspiracy Theory Kingpin Calls for Hunter Biden’s Execution

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

NOBODY SAID THIS ABOUT JARED


BY TIM DICKINSON
ROLLING STONE
SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RELATED
‘Alex Jones Did Nothing Wrong’: Meet the Christian Nationalist Behind ‘Pastors For Trump’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRENDING

Videos Show Angry Neo-Nazis Cursing and Screaming Slurs During March in Florida

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

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

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

2023/09/01

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America/TNS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© New York Daily News

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

Travis Gettys
September 1, 2023

(Photo by Mandel Ngan for AFP)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

President Joe Biden (Shutterstock)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sky Palma
September 1, 2023

(John Kittelsrud/Flickr)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full report at The Daily Beast.