Top Trump donors who funded anti-migrant 'invasion' ad allegedly hiring undocumented migrants

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Carl Gibson

December 20, 2024
ALTERNET

Two of President-elect Donald Trump's biggest campaign donors are now being accused of flouting immigration law to staff their factories in two states.

According to the Guardian, Dick and Liz Uihlein — who own the Uline company — have been depending on undocumented immigrant labor for their billion-dollar office supply and shipping business. The Uihleins are allegedly knowledgeable of a scheme in which their company shuttles migrants from Mexico to their factories in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin using the B1 worker training visa. However, while that visa expressly prohibits migrants from participating in normal wage-earning labor, the Guardian's sources say those Mexican immigrants have been doing labor expected of typical hourly workers.

"They were not able to staff their warehouses, especially in Pennsylvania. So they looked at Mexico for workforce," a source with direct knowledge told the outlet.

READ MORE: 'Doesn't make sense': Business leaders poised for clash with Trump over immigration

One document the Guardian obtained showed that the migrant workers shuttled from Mexico would be "receiving training in warehouse safety, understanding how to use vehicle-mounted unit devices and understanding how to identify warehouse locations." But another unnamed source confided that the migrants were "actually doing work. Not training."

Wisconsin-based immigration attorney Marc Christopher told the outlet that the B1 visa "does not allow [migrant workers] to obtain wages for labor in the United States, it absolutely does not." He added that it was "not a close call" in its legality and was “absolutely 100% not allowed” under current immigration law. Ira Kurzban, another immigration lawyer, also opined that the scheme was "clearly illegal." The Guardian's sources said the Mexican laborers at the Uihleins' factories are paid substantially less than their American counterparts.

OpenSecrets' campaign finance records show that the Uihleins were the second-largest Republican donors in the 2024 campaign cycle, giving more than $137 million to Republican campaigns and super PACs. The Uihleins ranked even higher than billionaire X owner Elon Musk, who ranked at #4 on the list of top GOP backers.

Restoration PAC — a super PAC funded by Dick Uihlein — attacked Vice President Kamala Harris on immigration in one of its ads, accusing her of enabling an "invasion" of migrants at the Southern border. The Guardian reports that the Uline company's "shuttle" program for migrant workers from Mexico has been in place for at least three years.

Click here to read the Guardian's report in full.

Dozens of death row inmates may see sentences commuted by Joe Biden: report

Daniel Hampton
December 20, 2024 

RAW STORY

Joe Biden. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

Dozens of convicted murderers set to be executed by the federal government could see their sentences commuted by President Joe Biden, according to a report.

People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that Biden is mulling over commuting most, if not all, of the 40 men facing execution. If commuted, the men would be resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The move would disrupt President-elect Donald Trump's ability to resume swift executions.

The report comes after Pope Francis earlier this month asked for prayers for federal inmates set to face capital punishment. Biden is a devout Catholic and spoke with Francis on Thursday, according to the report.

“Today, I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for the inmates on death row in the United States,” the Pope said. “Let us pray that their sentences may be commuted or changed. Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.”

Biden could come to a decision by Christmas, the Journal reported. A few high-profile inmates are on death row.

Dylann Roof was condemned to die following the 2015 Charleston church shooting, in which he shot and killed nine Black church-goers during a prayer service.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a co-perpetrator in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, is also on the federal death row list. In that bombing, three people were killed and more than 260 were wounded.

And Robert Bowers, who was convicted last year in the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, is also on the list.

PELTIER ILLEGALY ARRESTED IN VANCOUVER BC BY RCMP
AND HANDED OVER TO THE FBI

How America lost control and just set the stage for another pandemic

Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.

Chicken farm, Shutterstock

Amy Maxmen, 

KFF Health News

December 20, 2024

Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack.

But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They showed videos of systems they built to hydrate hundreds of cattle at once. In 14-hour shifts, dairy workers pumped gallons of electrolyte-rich fluids into ailing cows through metal tubes inserted into the esophagus.

“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.

Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 845 herds across 16 states have tested positive.

Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.

“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”

To understand how the bird flu got out of hand, KFF Health News interviewed nearly 70 government officials, farmers and farmworkers, and researchers with expertise in virology, pandemics, veterinary medicine, and more.

Together with emails obtained from local health departments through public records requests, this investigation revealed key problems, including a deference to the farm industry, eroded public health budgets, neglect for the safety of agriculture workers, and the sluggish pace of federal interventions.

Case in point: The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month announced a federal order to test milk nationwide. Researchers welcomed the news but said it should have happened months ago — before the virus was so entrenched.

“It’s disheartening to see so many of the same failures that emerged during the covid-19 crisis reemerge,” said Tom Bollyky, director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Far more bird flu damage is inevitable, but the extent of it will be left to the Trump administration and Mother Nature. Already, the USDA has funneled more than $1.7 billion into tamping down the bird flu on poultry farms since 2022, which includes reimbursing farmers who’ve had to cull their flocks, and more than $430 million into combating the bird flu on dairy farms. In coming years, the bird flu may cost billions of dollars more in expenses and losses. Dairy industry experts say the virus kills roughly 2 to 5% of infected dairy cows and reduces a herd’s milk production by about 20%.


Worse, the outbreak poses the threat of a pandemic. More than 60 people in the U.S. have been infected, mainly by cows or poultry, but cases could skyrocket if the virus evolves to spread efficiently from person to person. And the recent news of a person critically ill in Louisiana with the bird flu shows that the virus can be dangerous.

Just a few mutations could allow the bird flu to spread between people. Because viruses mutate within human and animal bodies, each infection is like a pull of a slot machine lever.

“Even if there’s only a 5% chance of a bird flu pandemic happening, we’re talking about a pandemic that probably looks like 2020 or worse,” said Tom Peacock, a bird flu researcher at the Pirbright Institute in the United Kingdom, referring to covid-19. “The U.S. knows the risk but hasn’t done anything to slow this down,” he added.

Beyond the bird flu, the federal government’s handling of the outbreak reveals cracks in the U.S. health security system that would allow other risky new pathogens to take root, too. “This virus may not be the one that takes off,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the emerging diseases group at the World Health Organization. “But this is a real fire exercise right now, and it demonstrates what needs to be improved.”


A Slow Start

It may have been a grackle, a goose, or some other wild bird that infected a cow in northern Texas. In February, the state’s dairy farmers took note when cows stopped making milk. They worked alongside veterinarians to figure out why. In less than two months, veterinary researchers identified the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus as the culprit.

Long listed among pathogens with pandemic potential, the bird flu’s unprecedented spread among cows marked a worrying shift. It had evolved to thrive in animals that are more like people biologically than birds.

After the USDA announced the dairy outbreak on March 25, control shifted from farmers, veterinarians, and local officials to state and federal agencies. Collaboration disintegrated almost immediately.


Farmers worried the government might block their milk sales or even demand sick cows be killed, like poultry are, said Kay Russo, a livestock veterinarian in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Instead, Russo and other veterinarians said, they were dismayed by inaction. The USDA didn’t respond to their urgent requests to support studies on dairy farms — and for money and confidentiality policies to protect farmers from financial loss if they agreed to test animals.

The USDA announced that it would conduct studies itself. But researchers grew anxious as weeks passed without results. “Probably the biggest mistake from the USDA was not involving the boots-on-the-ground veterinarians,” Russo said.

Will Clement, a USDA senior adviser for communications, said in an email: “Since first learning of H5N1 in dairy cattle in late March 2024, USDA has worked swiftly and diligently to assess the prevalence of the virus in U.S. dairy herds.” The agency provided research funds to state and national animal health labs beginning in April, he added.


The USDA didn’t require lactating cows to be tested before interstate travel until April 29. By then, the outbreak had spread to eight other states. Farmers often move cattle across great distances, for calving in one place, raising in warm, dry climates, and milking in cooler ones. Analyses of the virus’s genes implied that it spread between cows rather than repeatedly jumping from birds into herds.

Milking equipment was a likely source of infection, and there were hints of other possibilities, such as through the air as cows coughed or in droplets on objects, like work boots. But not enough data had been collected to know how exactly it was happening. Many farmers declined to test their herds, despite an announcement of funds to compensate them for lost milk production.

“There is a fear within the dairy farmer community that if they become officially listed as an affected farm, they may lose their milk market,” said Jamie Jonker, chief science officer at the National Milk Producers Federation, an organization that represents dairy farmers. To his knowledge, he added, this hasn’t happened.

Speculation filled knowledge gaps. Zach Riley, head of the Colorado Livestock Association, said wild birds may be spreading the virus to herds across the country, despite scientific data suggesting otherwise. Riley said farmers were considering whether to install “floppy inflatable men you see outside of car dealerships” to ward off the birds.

Advisories from agriculture departments to farmers were somewhat speculative, too. Officials recommended biosecurity measures such as disinfecting equipment and limiting visitors. As the virus kept spreading throughout the summer, USDA senior official Eric Deeble said at a press briefing, “The response is adequate.”

The USDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration presented a united front at these briefings, calling it a “One Health” approach. In reality, agriculture agencies took the lead.

This was explicit in an email from a local health department in Colorado to the county’s commissioners. “The State is treating this primarily as an agriculture issue (rightly so) and the public health part is secondary,” wrote Jason Chessher, public health director in Weld County, Colorado. The state’s leading agriculture county, Weld’s livestock and poultry industry produces about $1.9 billion in sales each year.

Patchy Surveillance

In July, the bird flu spread from dairies in Colorado to poultry farms. To contain it, two poultry operations employed about 650 temporary workers — Spanish-speaking immigrants as young as 15 — to cull flocks. Inside hot barns, they caught infected birds, gassed them with carbon dioxide, and disposed of the carcasses. Many did the hazardous job without goggles, face masks, and gloves.

By the time Colorado’s health department asked if workers felt sick, five women and four men had been infected. They all had red, swollen eyes — conjunctivitis — and several had such symptoms as fevers, body aches, and nausea.

State health departments posted online notices offering farms protective gear, but dairy workers in several states told KFF Health News that they had none. They also said they hadn’t been asked to get tested.

Studies in Colorado, Michigan, and Texas would later show that bird flu cases had gone under the radar. In one analysis, eight dairy workers who hadn’t been tested — 7% of those studied — had antibodies against the virus, a sign that they had been infected.

Missed cases made it impossible to determine how the virus jumped into people and whether it was growing more infectious or dangerous. “I have been distressed and depressed by the lack of epidemiologic data and the lack of surveillance,” said Nicole Lurie, an executive director at the international organization the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response in the Obama administration.

Citing “insufficient data,” the British government raised its assessment of the risk posed by the U.S. dairy outbreak in July from three to four on a six-tier scale.

Virologists around the world said they were flabbergasted by how poorly the United States was tracking the situation. “You are surrounded by highly pathogenic viruses in the wild and in farm animals,” said Marion Koopmans, head of virology at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands. “If three months from now we are at the start of the pandemic, it is nobody’s surprise.”

Although the bird flu is not yet spreading swiftly between people, a shift in that direction could cause immense suffering. The CDC has repeatedly described the cases among farmworkers this year as mild — they weren’t hospitalized. But that doesn’t mean symptoms are a breeze, or that the virus can’t cause worse.

“It does not look pleasant,” wrote Sean Roberts, an emergency services specialist at the Tulare County, California, health department in an email to colleagues in May. He described photographs of an infected dairy worker in another state: “Apparently, the conjunctivitis that this is causing is not a mild one, but rather ruptured blood vessels and bleeding conjunctiva.”

Over the past 30 years, half of around 900 people diagnosed with bird flu around the world have died. Even if the case fatality rate is much lower for this strain of the bird flu, covid showed how devastating a 1% death rate can be when a virus spreads easily.

Like other cases around the world, the person now hospitalized with the bird flu in Louisiana appears to have gotten the virus directly from birds. After the case was announced, the CDC released a statement saying, “A sporadic case of severe H5N1 bird flu illness in a person is not unexpected.”

‘The Cows Are More Valuable Than Us‘

Local health officials were trying hard to track infections, according to hundreds of emails from county health departments in five states. But their efforts were stymied. Even if farmers reported infected herds to the USDA and agriculture agencies told health departments where the infected cows were, health officials had to rely on farm owners for access.

“The agriculture community has dictated the rules of engagement from the start,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “That was a big mistake.”

Some farmers told health officials not to visit and declined to monitor their employees for signs of sickness. Sending workers to clinics for testing could leave them shorthanded when cattle needed care. “Producer refuses to send workers to Sunrise [clinic] to get tested since they’re too busy. He has pinkeye, too,” said an email from the Weld, Colorado, health department.

“We know of 386 persons exposed – but we know this is far from the total,” said an email from a public health specialist to officials at Tulare’s health department recounting a call with state health officials. “Employers do not want to run this through worker’s compensation. Workers are hesitant to get tested due to cost,” she wrote.

Jennifer Morse, medical director of the Mid-Michigan District Health Department, said local health officials have been hesitant to apply pressure after the backlash many faced at the peak of covid. Describing the 19 rural counties she serves as “very minimal-government-minded,” she said, “if you try to work against them, it will not go well.”

Rural health departments are also stretched thin. Organizations that specialize in outreach to farmworkers offered to assist health officials early in the outbreak, but months passed without contracts or funding. During the first years of covid, lagging government funds for outreach to farmworkers and other historically marginalized groups led to a disproportionate toll of the disease among people of color.

Kevin Griffis, director of communications at the CDC, said the agency worked with the National Center for Farmworker Health throughout the summer “to reach every farmworker impacted by H5N1.” But Bethany Boggess Alcauter, the center’s director of public health programs, said it didn’t receive a CDC grant for bird flu outreach until October, to the tune of $4 million. Before then, she said, the group had very limited funds for the task. “We are certainly not reaching ‘every farmworker,’” she added.

Farmworker advocates also pressed the CDC for money to offset workers’ financial concerns about testing, including paying for medical care, sick leave, and the risk of being fired. This amounted to an offer of $75 each. “Outreach is clearly not a huge priority,” Boggess said. “I hear over and over from workers, ‘The cows are more valuable than us.’”

The USDA has so far put more than $2.1 billion into reimbursing poultry and dairy farmers for losses due to the bird flu and other measures to control the spread on farms. Federal agencies have also put $292 million into developing and stockpiling bird flu vaccines for animals and people. In a controversial decision, the CDC has advised against offering the ones on hand to farmworkers.

“If you want to keep this from becoming a human pandemic, you focus on protecting farmworkers, since that’s the most likely way that this will enter the human population,” said Peg Seminario, an occupational health researcher in Bethesda, Maryland. “The fact that this isn’t happening drives me crazy.”

Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the CDC, said the agency aims to keep workers safe. “Widespread awareness does take time,” he said. “And that’s the work we’re committed to doing.”

As Trump comes into office in January, farmworkers may be even less protected. Trump’s pledge of mass deportations will have repercussions, said Tania Pacheco-Werner, director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute in California, whether they happen or not.

Many dairy and poultry workers are living in the U.S. without authorization or on temporary visas linked to their employers. Such precarity made people less willing to see doctors about covid symptoms or complain about unsafe working conditions in 2020. Pacheco-Werner said, “Mass deportation is an astronomical challenge for public health.”

Not ‘Immaculate Conception’

A switch flipped in September among experts who study pandemics as national security threats. A patient in Missouri had the bird flu, and no one knew why. “Evidence points to this being a one-off case,” Shah said at a briefing with journalists. About a month later, the agency revealed it was not.

Antibody tests found that a person who lived with the patient had been infected, too. The CDC didn’t know how the two had gotten the virus, and the possibility of human transmission couldn’t be ruled out.

Nonetheless, at an October briefing, Shah said the public risk remained low and the USDA’s Deeble said he was optimistic that the dairy outbreak could be eliminated.

Experts were perturbed by such confident statements in the face of uncertainty, especially as California’s outbreak spiked and a child was mysteriously infected by the same strain of virus found on dairy farms.

“This wasn’t just immaculate conception,” said Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It came from somewhere and we don’t know where, but that hasn’t triggered any kind of reset in approach — just the same kind of complacency and low energy.”

Sam Scarpino, a disease surveillance specialist in the Boston area, wondered how many other mysterious infections had gone undetected. Surveillance outside of farms was even patchier than on them, and bird flu tests are hard to get.

Although pandemic experts had identified the CDC’s singular hold on testing for new viruses as a key explanation for why America was hit so hard by covid in 2020, the system remained the same. All bird flu tests must go through the CDC, even though commercial and academic diagnostic laboratories have inquired about running tests themselves since April. The CDC and FDA should have tried to help them along months ago, said Ali Khan, a former top CDC official who now leads the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health.

As winter sets in, the bird flu becomes harder to spot because patient symptoms may be mistaken for the seasonal flu. Flu season also raises a risk that the two flu viruses could swap genes if they infect a person simultaneously. That could form a hybrid bird flu that spreads swiftly through coughs and sneezes.

A sluggish response to emerging outbreaks may simply be a new, unfortunate norm for America, said Bollyky, at the Council on Foreign Relations. If so, the nation has gotten lucky that the bird flu still can’t spread easily between people. Controlling the virus will be much harder and costlier than it would have been when the outbreak was small. But it’s possible.

Agriculture officials could start testing every silo of bulk milk, in every state, monthly, said Poulsen, the livestock veterinarian. “Not one and done,” he added. If they detect the virus, they’d need to determine the affected farm in time to stop sick cows from spreading infections to the rest of the herd — or at least to other farms. Cows can spread the bird flu before they’re sick, he said, so speed is crucial.

Curtailing the virus on farms is the best way to prevent human infections, said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, but human surveillance must be stepped up, too. Every clinic serving communities where farmworkers live should have easy access to bird flu tests — and be encouraged to use them. Funds for farmworker outreach must be boosted. And, she added, the CDC should change its position and offer farmworkers bird flu vaccines to protect them and ward off the chance of a hybrid bird flu that spreads quickly.

The rising number of cases not linked to farms signals a need for more testing in general. When patients are positive on a general flu test — a common diagnostic that indicates human, swine, or bird flu — clinics should probe more deeply, Nuzzo said.

The alternative is a wait-and-see approach in which the nation responds only after enormous damage to lives or businesses. This tack tends to rely on mass vaccination. But an effort analogous to Trump’s Operation Warp Speed is not assured, and neither is rollout like that for the first covid shots, given a rise in vaccine skepticism among Republican lawmakers.

Change may instead need to start from the bottom up — on dairy farms, still the most common source of human infections, said Poulsen. He noticed a shift in attitudes among farmers at the Dairy Expo: “They’re starting to say, ‘How do I save my dairy for the next generation?’ They recognize how severe this is, and that it’s not just going away.”

Healthbeat is a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company and KFF Health News. Sign up for its newsletters here.KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

'Institutions kept failing us': Economist Paul Krugman explains America’s pessimism

Economist Paul Krugman with President Joe Biden on August 14, 2023

(Wikimedia Commons)

Alex Henderson

December 20, 2024

ALTERNET

Liberal economist Paul Krugman surprised many of his readers when, after almost 25 years, he retired as a New York Times columnist. And his final column was published on December 9.

Krugman hasn't retired from work altogether, however. He is still publishing his newsletter and making media appearances.


Krugman has repeatedly praised outgoing President Joe Biden for his economic record, often noting that the United States has enjoyed record-low unemployment under Biden. But the economist has also acknowledged that many Americans are feeling pessimistic and resentful nonetheless. And he discussed that pessimism during an appearance on Christiane Amanpour's "Amanpour & Company" aired on December 19.

READ MORE: Economist Paul Krugman: How America went from 'optimism' to a painfully 'grim place'

Krugman told host Michel Martin, "People's beliefs on many subjects are just not very movable no matter how good your argument is…. I think a large part of it is that the people and institutions that we looked up to just kept failing us."

The former Times columnist cited the "horrific financial crisis" of the late 2000s and the Iraq War as two of the main reasons why Americans have grown so distrustful and have a "feeling" that "the system is rigged."

Krugman told Martin that "elites" have become much more brazen, fueling the anger that so many Americans feel.

"I'm not sure why there was more restraint on the part of the powerful in the past," Krugman argued, "but Watergate would barely register as a scandal these days."

Krugman added that although the U.S. did some "horrible" things in the past — for example, helping to overthrow socialist Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 and install a fascist dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet — it generally "behaved incredibly well for many decades" despite being an "imperial power."

"And now," Krugman lamented, "we have somewhat lost relative power and also just basically lost our own sense of benevolence — and so, stuff breaks out."

Watch the full video below or at this link.

CEOs are funding one of America's most dangerous shifts

Thom Hartmann, 

AlterNet
December 20, 2024 

'Businessman displaying a spread of cash' [Shutterstock]

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”
—Donald Trump Dec. 10, 2024

The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as:

“fascism (făsh'ĩz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

We’re about to be there.

The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted.

When Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.


To the contrary, they would have easily won the case. The judge in Trump’s New York trial came right out and said, in front of God and the whole world:
“The finding Ms. Carroll failed to prove she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the N.Y. Penal Law does not mean she failed to prove Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’. Indeed, as the evidence at trial… makes clear, the jury found Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

It’s also extraordinarily difficult for a public figure to sue for defamation, per the Supreme Court’s 1964 Times v Sullivan case, which requires proof of “actual malice,” a very, very high legal standard.

An article in The New York Times this past weekend added this gem of a paragraph, although ABC insists the meeting wasn’t arranged to discuss the defamation claim:

“Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, dined with Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach last Monday, according to two people briefed on their interaction. The dinner was part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”

Whether OConnell and Wiles discussed the defamation case or not is almost beside the point; the reasonable assumption is that Disney didn’t decide to pay off Trump because they were concerned about the lawsuit but, instead, because they wanted to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the group of corporations that will make up the “friends of Trump” as he takes over the reins of government. Disney has already gotten their nose bloody by trying to stand up to Trump’s Mini-Me, Ron DeSantis; they’ve learned their lesson well.

This is, classically, how fascists work. In fascist states, corporations and wealthy individuals fall all over themselves to gain the favor of the fascist strongman leader or they lose out big.

When Putin took over Russia, he essentially said to the richest of the Russian oligarchs, “You can be with me or against me, but there is no middle ground.” Ditto for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán (who met with Trump in Florida last week), Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who Trump praised this week), and history’s fascist strongmen from Tojo, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini to more recent versions like Pinochet, el-Sisi, and Ceaușescu.


And now America. Soon to be the newest fascist state in the world.

This goes way beyond ignoring fascism’s chronicler Timothy Snyder’s warning not to “obey in advance”: The companies whose CEOs are making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago right now are actively trying to get on the inside with Trump by nakedly supporting him.

They both fear his punishments (he’d called for ABC to lose its broadcast licenses, for example) and hope for his largess when he instructs his federal agencies to start cutting regulations and going easy on corporate mergers and tax evasion.


For over 240 years, America was administered by presidents who adhered to the idea that they should govern, as then-New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs wrote in 1896, “without fear or favor.”

Not only did they not direct the government to help or harm any specific companies or industries, those elected to the White House over the past century or so even put their own personal wealth into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of using government to enrich themselves.

All of that came to a screeching halt when the most corrupt (and richest) president in American history came into office in 2017. Now, empowered by having gotten away with encouraging outright sedition (among other crimes), Trump is doubling down as he accepts million-dollar “donations” from corporate CEOs.


While it’s unlikely oligarchs who refuse to go along with Trump will begin to fall out of 14th floor windows like in Russia, Trump has already made it clear he’ll use regulatory agencies and the courts to punish them like Orbán does.

This is not the American way. It is, instead, how fascist nations that inevitably morph into dictatorships work. It’s a huge warning signal to us and the world.

It also sets a terrible example for other republics around the world that aspire to our (former) ideals of democracy and fair play in business and government. And it sets our country up to become a sleazy tinpot dictatorship, descending to the ethics and credibility standards of Third World caricatures.


History is taking careful note of those CEOs who are energetically brown-nosing Trump, just as it did with Thyssen and Krupp, who were prosecuted for war crimes in the 1940s.

And to compound this evil, these businesses are adding to the power that Trump is rapidly accumulating as, one after another, they, politicians of both parties, and people across the media bow their heads and bend their knees.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all: Going forward, the honesty, reliability, and safety of their products may well be corrupted by their praetorian relationship with Trump’s regulators, rather than responding to the competitive forces of the actual marketplace.

Which is also why, going forward, we’d all do best to avoid their programs, products, and services.

Musk Endorses Neo-Nazi German Party Hours After Sanders Calls Him Authoritarian


Musk is backing a vehemently anti-immigrant, far right party in Germany’s upcoming elections.

By Chris Walker ,

Truthout

December 20, 2024

Elon Musk is seen in the U.S. Capitol after a meeting with Sen. John Thune on December 5, 2024.Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images


Independent journalism like Truthout has been struggling to survive for years – and it’s only going to get harder under Trump’s presidency. If you value progressive media, please make a year-end donation today.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has called out Republicans for acquiescing to billionaire Elon Musk’s demands to thwart a bipartisan spending bill that was needed to fend off a government shutdown this weekend.

In his comments, Sanders derided Musk — who is co-leading president-elect Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency — as an authoritarian oligarchic.

The bipartisan spending bill that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) negotiated with Democrats would have funded the government through March. However, after Musk urged GOP lawmakers to oppose the bill, Johnson, sensing he wouldn’t have enough support from his own party, scrapped the legislation, and put up a new spending bill without Democratic Party input. That bill also failed to pass after Democrats in the House voted against it, with dozens of Republicans opposing the bill, albeit for different ideological reasons.

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Musk’s influence within the Republican Party is so inviolable that some in the GOP have actually called for him to replace Johnson as Speaker of the House. Musk and Trump have said that Republicans who do not support the spending bills they endorse should be primaried out of their seats in the 2026 midterm elections. Musk has also said that he’s not opposed to shutting down the government until Trump is inaugurated in mid-January.

“Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is threatening to unseat elected officials if they do not follow his orders to shut down the government during the holidays,” Sanders noted in a recent social media post. “Are we still a democracy or have we already moved to oligarchy and authoritarianism?”


Sanders Warns Trump Is a Fascist Who May Let Musk Control the Presidency
Sanders’s warning comes the same day as the Tesla CEO is scheduled to headline a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden. By Olivia Rosane , CommonDreamsOctober 27, 2024

In an earlier post, Sanders derided Musk as being an oligarch who Republicans adhered to.

“The US Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government. Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected,” Sanders wrote. “Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk? This is oligarchy at work.”

Hours after Sanders’s comments, Musk signaled his support for a neo-fascist political party in Gemarny’s February elections.

In a post on his social media site X, Musk endorsed Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far right, anti-immigrant and antisemitic party that is gaining popularity among conservative Germans.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” the billionaire wrote.

Musk has previously endorsed other far right figures in Europe, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and United Kingdom Reform party leader Nigel Farage.

Musk has tried to normalize AfD’s views in the past, claiming they “don’t sound extremist” to him and questioning if he was “missing something.”

AfD is vehemently anti-immigration, particularly with regard to Muslims, calling for a “net zero” number of immigrants entering Germany in the coming years. Leaders of the party have repeatedly made racist and antisemitic statements, emphasizing a need to return to a German “identity” and pushing other white nationalist views; AfD leader Alexander Gauland, for example, has described immigration to the country as an “invasion of foreigners” that he and his party intend to fight off.

The party has also called for changes to how Nazi Germany is depicted in historical settings, such as monuments, schools and museums, with Gauland once minimizing the country’s Nazi history as being no more than “just a speck of bird’s muck.” Other AfD members have denied Nazi wrongdoing, including by describing the Holocaust as a “myth.”

Musk’s public support for AfD is just the latest example of the billionaire sharing reactionary viewpoints on X. Musk has, for example, called for the deportation of protesters utilizing the First Amendment to express views he disagrees with. He has also promoted antisemitic, anti-Muslim, transphobic and other bigoted content on his profile, and has shared content denying the Holocaust.

Novelist and political commentator Patrick S. Tomlinson has said that Musk’s support for AfD is illuminating.

“The AfD is Germany’s neo-Nazi party,” Tomlinson wrote on Bluesky. “They are anti-immigration, anti-EU, and unapologetically pro-Putin. The German courts have labeled the entire party extremist. Elon Musk has gone fully mask off.”

Commentator Paul Krugman also weighed in on Musk’s latest endorsement, noting that the billionaire’s statement was “obviously where he was going.”

When it comes to fascist sentiments, Musk “isn’t hiding it at all,” Krugman added.

'Agent of influence': Expert warns Musk's tactics are straight out of ‘Russia’s playbook'

Erik De La Garza
December 20, 2024

Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024

. Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo


Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s increasing influence – not just in the United States as a close ally of the incoming president – but around the world is helping to fuel Russia’s war on democracy and mirrors tactics pulled from Vladimir Putin’s playbook, foreign policy researcher Olga Lautman warned Friday.

Using a “strategy of strategic chaos,” and armed with his “immense wealth” and ownership of the social media platform X, Musk has morphed into “an active agent of influence” that he uses “to undermine Western unity and destabilize democratic institutions,” Lautman wrote on her Substack page.

Lautman told readers on Friday that Musk’s endorsement via X of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is another sign of his growing influence in Europe. She urged Democrats to investigate Musk’s “ties to Moscow, his access to U.S. government contracts, and his security clearance.”

“Musk’s meddling extends beyond tweets, with secretive ties and calls to Putin and full control over Trump as he assumes the role of acting president-elect,” Lautman wrote. “By amplifying nationalist agendas, dismantling democratic norms, and aligning with authoritarian figures, Musk’s actions mirror Russia’s playbook for destabilizing Western democracies and advancing its geopolitical goals."

She continued to sound the alarm in stark detail in her article, writing that the actions of the SpaceX and Tesla owner – who was largely seen as effectively tanking the first negotiated congressional spending bill on Wednesday by way of yet another social media post on his platform – benefits one central player: Russia.

“Moscow stands to gain from the erosion of Western democratic institutions and the global rise of the far-right,” she wrote. The researcher added that Musk’s access to U.S. security clearance and numerous government contracts “only deepens the gravity of his actions, as he exploits his position to weaken the very systems that uphold democracy."

“This is nothing short of insanity,” according to Laudman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a senior investigative researcher at the Institute for European Integrity.

She concluded her piece by warning readers that Musk’s growing influence is “increasingly alarming” and that his agenda aligns with “longstanding Kremlin goals of weakening America’s intelligence and security apparatus, as he runs disinformation and destabilization tactics designed to erode trust in public institutions.

'Butter knife to a gun fight': Disinfo researcher claims nefarious link with Trump and Musk

Elon Musk on November 1, 2024 (Wikimedia Commons)

Alex Henderson

December 20, 2024

ALTERNET

With a Saturday, December 21 deadline just around the corner, the United States' federal government appeared to be heading for a shutdown.

Bills that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) supported failed to pass, and some Democrats believed that President-elect Donald Trump and Tesla/Space-X CEO Elon Musk were causing chaos in the House.

In a December 20 post on X, formerly Twitter, journalist Dave Troy accused "Moscow" of promoting dysfunction on Capitol Hill.

Troy tweeted, "Folks think Musk and Trump are engaged in politics, but this is a military operation being executed out of Moscow. If you are playing politics right now, you literally have brought a butter knife to a gun fight."

In a separate tweet posted the same day, Troy argued that Republicans go out of their way to cause "dysfunction."

The Washington Post's Drew Harwell, on X, slammed Republicans who, he said, "make light" of the hardships a shutdown would cause — including Fox News' Sean Hannity and radio host Ben Shapiro, who said a shutdown is "not that big a deal."

In response, Troy tweeted, "The dysfunction and cruelty are the goal. It's a feature not a bug, etc."

December 20 was not the first time Troy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin of encouraging political instability in the United States.

On December 13, Troy tweeted an article he wrote for America2.News and wrote."

Troy posted, "EXCLUSIVE: The Kremlin's 'Project Russia' poses a potent framework for mobilizing illiberal forces against the United States and its allies — and it's all but unknown to Western analysts. We must act to counter it."

On December 19, Democratic strategist Jon Cooper tweeted, "Wow! One GOP lobbyist just told me he thinks Elon is really the one who’s calling the shots — not Trump." And Troy responded, "lol no s—t.'

Medici secret passageway in Florence reopens after refit


By AFP
December 20, 2024

People walk in the Vasari Corridor gallery, in the center of Florence

 - Copyright AFP Andreas SOLARO

A secret passageway built 500 years ago to allow the Medici family to pass through the Italian city of Florence unhindered reopens to the public Saturday after an 10-million-euro restoration.

The Vasari Corridor, which is more than 700 metres (nearly half a mile) long and runs above the famous Ponte Vecchio, has been closed for eight years.

Designed in 1565 by Giorgio Vasari, a commission by Duke Cosimo I to mark his son’s wedding, the corridor begins at what is now the Uffizi Galleries and ends up in the Pitti Palace across the Arno river.

Its 73 windows offer unrivalled views over the city centre, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and will now finally be accessible to the general public.

It had since the 1970s held the large collection of the Uffizi’s self-portraits, but was closed in 2016 to allow for upgrades to meet modern safety standards.

“Now restored to its original simplicity, the corridor presents itself to visitors as a plain ‘aerial tunnel’,” the Uffizi said in a statement on Friday.

It passes above the heart of the city, “just as it appeared when the Florentine rulers used it for quick, safe, and uninterrupted passage between their residence and the seat of government”.

The works, which began in 2022, include new disability access, emergency exits, toilets, energy-efficient LED lighting and video surveillance.

“After an eight-year wait, the reopening of the Vasari Corridor returns a masterpiece within a masterpiece to Florence and Italy,” Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli said.

Enabling lower cost EVs through electric motor development


By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
December 20, 2024


Renault has big hopes for its little R5 to boost its sales of electric cars, tapping into nostalgia for a popular model of the 1980s and 1990s - Copyright AFP KAREN BLEIER

The electric vehicle (EV) market continues, in general, to grow; however, its growth has slowed significantly in Europe and the U.S. in the first half of 2024. Can the market be reinvigorated?

According to one recent review, growth can be triggered by release of models in a more affordable price range. This is connected to lowering manufacturing costs. Here, the battery rightly takes focus; however, other components such as the electric motor can also contribute to cost reduction.

These factors feature in IDTechEx’s report “Electric Motors for Electric Vehicles 2025-2035: Technologies, Materials, Markets, and Forecasts”. The report analyses the current technology and materials landscape for electric motors in EVs and forecasts the future trends and demands for the next 10 years.

In the study, IDTechEx forecasts that over 160 million electric motors will be required for the EV market in 2035 with approximately 30 percent of the automotive market using rare earth free technologies in the same year.

Improving Performance to Reduce Battery Demands

The first way a motor can reduce vehicle cost is through driving efficiency. Vehicles are generally designed to maximize range on test cycles and in real-world driving scenarios.

The more efficient a motor is, the more range can be obtained from the same battery capacity. For example, if a motor has an efficiency of 96 percent rather than 93 percent, then this could decrease the energy needed for a 75kWh vehicle by around 2.9 percent to achieve the same range.

Materials vs Manufacturing Costs in the Motor

Permanent magnet (motors dominate the EV market with an 85 percent market share in battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars in 2023 according to IDTechEx. The permanent magnets used in these motors contain rare earths and can be very costly.

Magnet free motors, such as wound rotor synchronous motors (WRSM, sometimes called externally excited synchronous motors, EESM), have a lower bill of materials cost due to replacing permanent magnets with copper windings.

Rare earth free magnets are another future solution, these magnetic materials are much less costly, but sacrifice performance. As technology improves, and with the goal of producing a low-cost vehicle, this could be an approach taken.

Could Axial Flux Play a Role?

In the future, axial flux motors could play a larger role in cost reduction. Given their very high power and torque density, the material utilization per kW of power can be significantly reduced. Given most of a motor’s cost is in the bill of materials, this could enable another route to cost reduction. However, axial flux motors have not yet been manufactured at the scale required for the automotive market.

Taiwan lawmakers brawl over bills that would ‘damage democracy’


By AFP
December 20, 2024

Taiwanese lawmakers tackled each other as President Lai Ching-te's party tried to block the passage of bills they say could harm the self-ruled island's 'democratic system' - Copyright AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE/AFP LSIS BRADLEY DARVILL

Taiwanese lawmakers tackled and doused each other with water on Friday as President Lai Ching-te’s party tried to block the passage of bills they say could harm the self-ruled island’s “democratic system”.

Scores of lawmakers from Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party had occupied the podium of the parliament’s main chamber since Thursday night and barricaded themselves inside — piling up chairs to block entrances.

The DPP parliamentarians were attempting to stop three legal amendments proposed by the opposition bloc, which would make it more difficult for voters to oust elected officials who they see as unfit.

“Parliamentary dictatorship,” some DPP lawmakers shouted to criticise the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party and its ally Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) for trying to pass the bills with their majority.

“If the KMT forcefully passes the amendments… Taiwan’s democratic self-checking and self-repairing mechanism will be gone, and it will also cause significant and irreversible damage to Taiwan’s civil society and democratic system,” the ruling party said in a statement.

“At a time when Taiwan’s democracy is being violated and damaged, we must stand up and take action,” it added.

Among the disputed bills was a planned revision to the Public Officials Election and Recall Act pressed ahead by the KMT and TPP to raise the threshold for removing elected officials.

The Beijing-friendly KMT said it would prevent the power of recalls from “being abused” but some DPP lawmakers said they fear the move would revoke voters’ rights to remove unfit officials.

Han Kuo-yu, the current parliament speaker from the KMT, was ousted in 2020 as mayor of southern Kaohsiung city following a failed presidential bid.

Outside the parliament on Friday, thousands of people gathered to protest the bills, shouting “return the evil amendments”, and “Defend Taiwan”.

“I am here to protest the opposition parties for trying to confiscate the people’s rights to recall,” graduate student David Chen told AFP.

Earlier this year, reform bills expanding parliament’s powers pushed by the opposition sparked brawls among lawmakers and massive street demonstrations.

Proponents of the expansion say it is needed to curb corruption, but critics fear the laws could weaken Taiwan’s democracy against the influence of China — which claims the island as part of its territory.

In October, Taiwan’s Consitutional Court struck out the most controversial sections of the law, delivering a partial victory to the DPP which had opposed the reforms.

Google counters bid by US to force sale of Chrome

CAPITALI$T TRANSACTIONALISM

By AFP
December 21, 2024

Google has countered a US call to sell its Chrome browser, suggesting a judge address antitrust concerns by barring the firm from making favorable treatment of its software a condition of licensing - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Brandon Bell

Google late Friday countered a US call to sell its Chrome browser, suggesting a judge address antitrust concerns by barring the firm from making favorable treatment of its software a condition of licensing.

Google filed a 12-page proposed order banning the internet giant from requiring favorable distribution or treatment of its software on mobile devices as a condition of licensing popular apps like Chrome, Play or Gemini.

In contrast, the US government in November asked a judge to order the dismantling of Google by selling its widely used Chrome browser in a major antitrust crackdown on the company.

The US Department of Justice urged a shake-up of Google’s business that includes banning deals for Google to be the default search engine on smartphones and preventing it from exploiting its Android mobile operating system.

Determining how to address Google’s wrongs is the next stage of the landmark antitrust trial that saw the company in August ruled a monopoly by US District Court Judge Amit Mehta.

Google has proposed that Mehta bar it from using the licensing desirability of its applications to compel mobile device makers to pre-install its search software or make it the default offering, a court filing showed.

“Nothing in this Final Judgment shall otherwise prohibit Google from providing consideration to a mobile device manufacturer or wireless carrier with respect to any Google product or service in exchange for such entity’s distribution, placement on any access point, promotion, or licensing of that Google product or service,” the proposed order stipulates.

Calling for the breakup of Google marks a profound change by the US government’s regulators, which have largely left tech giants alone since failing to break up Microsoft two decades ago.

Regardless of Judge Mehta’s eventual decision, Google is expected to appeal the ruling, prolonging the process for years and potentially leaving the final say to the US Supreme Court.

The case could also be upended by the arrival of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House in January.

His administration will likely replace the current team in charge of the Justice Department’s antitrust division.

The newcomers could choose to carry on with the case, ask for a settlement with Google or abandon the case altogether.

The trial, which concluded last year, scrutinized Google’s confidential agreements with smartphone manufacturers, including Apple.

These deals involve substantial payments to secure Google’s search engine as the default option on browsers, iPhones and other devices.

The judge determined that this arrangement provided Google with unparalleled access to user data, enabling it to develop its search engine into a globally dominant platform.