Calmes: The little-known Senate race that could make a big difference for Democrats

Jackie Calmes
Fri, August 19, 2022 

Cheri Beasley, North Carolina's former Supreme Court chief justice, is now the state's Democratic nominee for Senate. (Ben McKeown / Associated Press)

If Democrats can keep control of just one chamber of Congress in November’s midterm elections, as many analysts have long predicted, it’s best that the house they’re favored to hold is the Senate.

The Senate has the power over a president’s judicial nominees. God forbid that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell gets another turn at blocking a Democratic president’s picks for the federal bench, and thus ends President Biden’s effort to offset the right-wing tilt to that third branch of government.

All year Democrats have despaired of keeping their House majority, though a few politicos in and out of the party are starting to sound optimistic, given a spate of positive breaks and the backlash against the Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion rights. The Senate, however, has been another story all along: Democrats have been cautiously confident — and Republicans fretful — that they could hold their 50 seats and perhaps even add to them.

To that end, it’s fitting that one of the candidates who could help keep Democrats in power to confirm judges is herself the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Cheri Beasley.

Beasley is running against North Carolina Rep. Ted Budd, a gun store owner who won former President Trump’s endorsement last year. “A lot of you don’t know him well,” Trump said of Budd when he conferred his blessing. “He will fight like hell.”

Fight like hell — just what Trump told the crowd on Jan. 6, 2021. Indeed, after that day’s Capitol rampage, Budd voted against certifying Biden’s election. He said the insurrectionists were “just patriots standing up.”

Trump was right about Budd’s low profile. Beasley, too, isn’t well known. She’s, well, judicious rather than provocative, and he’s been merely a backbench belligerent for Trump in Congress, overshadowed by blowhards like his fellow North Carolinian Madison Cawthorn. That’s one reason this contest hasn’t gotten more national attention.

That should change. If Beasley wins, it would be a Democratic pickup: She and Budd are vying to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard M. Burr.

Beasley, who would be the only Black woman in the Senate if elected, is a proven vote-getter. She was first appointed to the state judiciary in 1999 by a Democratic governor and then twice elected to the district court seat. In 2008 she won election to the state Court of Appeals, defeating an incumbent judge.

Another Democratic governor named Beasley to a vacancy on the state’s Supreme Court in 2012, and two years later she won statewide election to the seat. In 2019, the current Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, appointed her as chief justice. While she lost reelection by just 401 votes in 2020, Beasley still got about 11,000 more votes than Biden received in North Carolina.

The bigger Senate attention-getters have been races in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and, to a lesser extent, New Hampshire, where incumbent Democrats — Mark Kelly, Catherine Cortez Masto, Raphael Warnock and Maggie Hassan, respectively — are fighting to keep their seats. Kelly, Cortez Masto and Warnock all lead in the polls over their weak Trumpist rivals.

Then there’s Wisconsin, where MAGAt conspiracist Sen. Ron Johnson is one of the few Republican incumbents who’s endangered.

Also higher-profile than North Carolina’s Senate contest are the open-seat races in Ohio and Pennsylvania, which feature Democrats with records as populist champions of the working class — Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman — against celebrity converts to Trumpism, bestselling author J.D. Vance in Ohio and TV personality and crudite fancier Mehmet Oz.

As Politico reported Thursday, “Republicans’ hopes of retaking the Senate rest on a slate of Donald Trump's hand-picked nominees. And, across the board, they appear to be struggling.”

Budd has struggled less than the other Trumpian Republicans, yet he still has just a slight lead in the few public polls on the race; Beasley led in a June poll. Analysts call the contest a toss-up. North Carolina is no red state; the governor has been a Democrat for 26 of the last 30 years.

As usual, however, Democrats in North Carolina and elsewhere have a bigger challenge than Republicans in getting their voters out for non-presidential elections, especially those who are young and Black. The party's recent gains may help send more Democrats to the polls — enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act, with its healthcare benefits for lower drug costs, insulin price caps for Medicare recipients and Obamacare subsidies; as well as new laws providing care to veterans exposed to toxins and making unprecedented, job-creating investments in the computer chip industry.

As crucial as what Democrats have done is what Republicans are doing to themselves: opposing those popular measures, taking extreme antiabortion positions and keeping the unpopular Trump front and center.

The bombshells from the Jan. 6 House select committee’s hearings have contributed to the party’s stench of antidemocratic extremism. The year’s shooting massacres have turned many voters against pro-gun politicians; Budd voted against the bipartisan gun control law, even as both sitting Republican senators from North Carolina backed it.

Still, inflation remains high and Democrats know an onslaught of well-financed Republican attacks are coming. Beasley, for example, already has weathered false, racially tinged assaults much like those Senate Republicans leveled against Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her confirmation hearing; in each case, Republicans distorted the Black jurists’ records and prior careers as public defenders to paint them as soft on criminals.

But here’s the thing: Jackson won confirmation. And Beasley can win election. It’s indicative of the improved climate for Democrats that they can, in fact, look to a place like North Carolina for a possible Senate win. The state deserves better in the Senate, and so do we.

@jackiekcalmes

Mandela Barnes has a seven-point lead over Sen. Ron Johnson in the Wisconsin Senate race, while Tony Evers and Tim Michels are in a tight contest for governor: poll

John L. Dorman
Sat, August 20, 2022 

Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, left, appears at a rally outside the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on July 23, 2022.AP Photo/Scott Bauer

Barnes has a 51%-44% lead over Johnson in the Wisconsin Senate race, per a new Marquette Law poll.


Johnson is running for reelection to a third term, while Barnes hopes to topple the GOP incumbent.


The Wisconsin Senate race remains one of the best Democratic pickup opportunities this year.

Wisconsin Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has a seven-point lead over two-term Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in one of this year's marquee Senate races, according to a new poll conducted by Marquette University Law School.

The survey showed Barnes with 51% support among registered voters in the Badger State, while Johnson received 44% support; three percent of respondents were unsure of which candidate they would support in November.

Among likely voters, Barnes led Johnson 52%-45%.

(A Fox News poll released on Thursday showed Barnes leading Johnson 50%-46% among registered voters.)

In Wisconsin, both Barnes and Johnson are performing well among their respective bases. But the swing state, which has backed Democratic nominees in seven of the last eight presidential contests, has become sharply polarized in other statewide races.

Among the pool of registered voters, Barnes received the support of 95% of Democrats, with 4% of party voters crossing over to back Johnson.

Johnson earned the support of 92% of Republicans, with 7% of GOP voters indicating they would vote for Barnes.

Independents gave a clear edge to Barnes in the latest survey, with the Democratic challenger ahead of Johnson 52%-38%, a significant shift from June, when both men were tied at 41% support among this pivotal voting group.

Voter enthusiasm is quite high among members of both parties. Eighty-three percent of Republicans indicated they will vote with absolute certainty this fall, compared to 82% of Democrats, per the poll. Sixty-six percent of Independents said they are certain to cast a ballot in the upcoming election.

Last week, both Barnes and Johnson performed strongly in their respective Senate primaries.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Johnson has long enjoyed strong support among grassroots conservatives and remains a political ally of former President Donald Trump — making his renomination as the Republican Senate nominee a no-brainer. But Barnes has spent most of the year locked in a competitive primary.

Until last month, Barnes' top challengers were state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, and Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry, but all three left the race within the span of two weeks and threw their support behind the lieutenant governor — who since 2019 has been the governing partner of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in a state with a GOP-controlled legislature.

Evers, who is running for reelection to a second term, leads GOP gubernatorial nominee Tim Michels 45%-43% among registered voters and 46%-44% among likely voters.

Barnes, a former state lawmaker, has gained a high level of visibility crisscrossing the state to visit localities from his native Milwaukee to rural Bayfield County in his capacity as lieutenant governor.

But despite the polling lead, it won't be easy to topple Johnson, who despite having a 38% favorability rating in the survey, was able to defeat former three-term Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold in both 2010 and 2016 and is running for reelection is what could be a strong Republican midterm cycle.

While Barnes has emphasized his plan to expand the Child Tax Credit and touted his support of federal voting rights legislation, Johnson has continually criticized President Joe Biden over the economy and immigration, among other issues.

The race presents a major opportunity for both parties. Trump won the state in 2016, but Biden flipped it back to the Democrats in 2020 — highlighting its political competitiveness.

And in the evenly-divided Senate, where Democrats control the upper chamber by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris' tiebreaking vote, a net gain in seats for the party would give them the breathing room to pass bills without having to receive mandatory buy-in from moderate Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

While Manchin played a key role in crafting the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes record funding for climate initiatives, the lawmaker also single-handedly dismantled the more expansive Build Back Better Act, the now-defunct social-spending package that was backed by most Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Marquette Law School polled 811 registered voters from August 10 through August 15; the survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Biden’s chief of staff says president is comparable to historic predecessors

Martin Pengelly
Fri, August 19, 2022 

Photograph: Caroline Brehman/EPA

In a bullish interview, the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, compared Joe Biden’s achievements in his first two years in office to historic successes under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson.

Related: ‘Biggest step forward on climate ever’: Biden signs Democrats’ landmark bill

Speaking to Politico, Klain said: “The president has delivered the largest economic recovery plan since Roosevelt, the largest infrastructure plan since [Dwight D] Eisenhower, the most judges confirmed since Kennedy, the second-largest healthcare bill since Johnson, and the largest climate change bill in history.”

Klain’s comments, aimed at voters contemplating the midterm elections, are an indication that Democrats plan to campaign heavily on their accomplishments in the less than two years they have been in power. He also pointed to “the first time we’ve done gun control since President Clinton was here, the first time ever an African American woman [Ketanji Brown Jackson] has been put on the US supreme court.

“I think it’s a record to take to the American people.”

Klain’s references to historical figures chimes with Biden’s own interests. The president has regularly consulted historians, among them Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss and Eddie Glaude Jr, while Jon Meacham, a biographer of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and George HW Bush, has been a close adviser in shaping Biden’s effort to restore “the soul of the nation” after the presidency of Donald Trump.

Democrats control Congress by narrow margins. Opposition parties commonly do well in the first elections of a presidential term, and Republicans remain favoured to take control of one or both chambers. But legislative successes, most recently the passage of a major domestic and climate crisis spending plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, have given Democrats hope.

One senator, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, pointed to the need to communicate better, writing: “I feel like the media is having a hard time metabolising the fact that this Congress has been historically productive. And acknowledging the size of these accomplishments, and the degree of difficultly – it’s just hard to do accurately without sounding a bit left-leaning.”

There is some indication that Democrats are becoming more popular. They have established polling leads in key Senate races including Arizona, Pennsylvania and Ohio, against Trump-endorsed Republicans who are struggling to attract moderates and independents.

In Kentucky on Thursday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, seemed to downplay expectations. McConnell said: “I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different – they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.

“Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly.”

In his Politico interview, Klain said: “Elections are choices, and the choice just couldn’t be any clearer right now.

“Democrats have stood up to the big special interests. They stood up to the big corporations and insisted that all corporations pay minimum taxes, stood up to the big oil companies and passed climate change legislation. They stood up to Big Pharma and passed prescription drug legislation. They stood up to the gun industry and passed gun control legislation.

“Things that [Washington DC was] unable to deliver on for decades because the special interests had things locked down, Joe Biden and his allies in Congress have been able to deliver on.”

Asked about the Republican counter-offer, he cited issues Democrats hope can galvanise voters, prominently including attacks on abortion access after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the ruling which protected the right.

“We have an extreme Maga group in the Republican party that has no real plan to bring down inflation,” Klain said, referring to Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again. “They obviously want to pass a nationwide ban on abortion. They sided with big pharma. They sided with the climate deniers … most of them sided with the gun lobby.

“And so I think that choice [is] between a party that’s standing up to the special interests and delivering change and … an extreme party, a party that’s talking about … abolishing social security and Medicare every five years.

“The extreme nature of our opponents, whether it’s with regard to democracy or social security, are all part of a movement that is just very different than we’ve seen in recent years in this country.”

Klain said the worst day of the presidency was 26 August 2021, when 13 US service members were killed by a suicide bomb during the evacuation of Kabul.

That, he said, was “just a terrible tragedy and certainly the darkest day”.

Questions have been raised, including by Democrats, about whether Biden is too old to run for a second term. Klain said Biden’s experience – he will turn 80 in November – helped make him an effective leader.

Related: Judge orders DoJ to prepare redacted Trump search affidavit for possible release

Biden, he said, has “a personal history of tremendous, joyous successes and devastating tragedies. And I think that helps moderate his spirit at all times.

“There is nothing I can ever walk into the Oval Office and tell him that’s any bigger than the bigger things he’s already experienced in life. And nothing I could ever tell him is any sadder than the saddest things he’s already experienced in life. And I think that gives him a very level temperament as president.”

Klain was also asked about complaints, particularly from Republicans, that Biden does not maintain a high public profile.

“I don’t think it’s true he’s out there less than his predecessors,” Klain said. “I just think Donald Trump created an expectation of a president creating a shitstorm every single day.”

Russia probe memo wrongly withheld under Barr, court rules


FILE - Attorney General William Barr appears before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 9, 2019. The Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr improperly withheld portions of an internal memorandum Barr cited in publicly announcing that then-President Donald Trump had not committed obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation. That's the ruling by a federal appeals court Friday. 

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

MEG KINNARD
Fri, August 19, 2022 at 10:38 AM·3 min read

The Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr improperly withheld portions of an internal memo Barr cited in announcing that then-President Donald Trump had not obstructed justice in the Russia investigation, a federal appeals panel said Friday.

The department had argued that the 2019 memo represented private deliberations of its lawyers before any decision was formalized, and was thus exempt from disclosure. A federal judge previously disagreed, ordering the Justice Department to provide it to a government transparency group that had sued for it.

At issue in the case is a March 24, 2019, memorandum from the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and another senior department official that was prepared for Barr to evaluate whether evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation could support prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.

Barr has said he looked to that opinion in concluding that Trump did not illegally obstruct the Russia probe, which was an investigation of whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election.

A year later, a federal judge sharply rebuked Barr’s handling of Mueller's report, saying Barr had made “misleading public statements” to spin the investigation’s findings in favor of Trump and had shown a “lack of candor.”

Friday's appeals court decision said the internal Justice Department memo noted that “Mueller had declined to accuse President Trump of obstructing justice but also had declined to exonerate him.” The internal memo said “the Report’s failure to take a definitive position could be read to imply an accusation against President Trump” if released to the public, the court wrote.

The Justice Department turned over other documents to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as part of the group’s lawsuit, but declined to give it the memo. Government lawyers said they were entitled under public records law to withhold the memo because it reflected internal deliberations before any formal decision had been reached on what Mueller’s evidence showed.

Sitting presidents are generally protected from criminal charges on grounds it would undermine their ability to perform the office's constitutional duties. The Justice Department, like Mueller, “took as a given that the Constitution would bar the prosecution of a sitting President,” the appeals court wrote, which meant the decision that Trump wouldn't be charged had already been made and couldn't be shielded from public release.

Had Justice Department officials made clear to the court that the memo related to Barr's decision on making a public statement about the report, the appellate panel wrote, rulings in the case might have been different.

“Because the Department did not tie the memorandum to deliberations about the relevant decision, the Department failed to justify its reliance on the deliberative-process privilege,” wrote the panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Appellate judges also noted that their ruling was “narrow,” saying that it should not be interpreted to “call into question any of our precedents permitting agencies to withhold draft documents related to public messaging."

Attorneys for the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to an email message seeking comment. The department can appeal the ruling to the full appeals court.

___

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

I Taught My 4th Grade Class About White Privilege And Their Response Was Eye-Opening


Justin Mazzola
Sat, August 20, 2022 

One of the author's students taking the Louisiana Literacy Test from the 1960s. 

(Photo: Courtesy of Justin Mazzola)

Take a look at a photo of the 46 U.S. presidents. What do you notice?

When I’d ask my students this at the beginning of each school year, someone always said they look old. Another would point out that most of them aren’t smiling, and I’ll never forget the boy who said matter-of-factly that a lot of them are not handsome.

Students would also realize they’re all men, and, except for President Barack Obama, they’re all white. I’d then ask the natural follow-up questions: Why do you think that is and how do you think it’s affected our country? After discussing with a partner, they’d suggest that only white men were allowed to vote (previously true), while another would theorize the elected leaders made laws that favored white men (mostly true, specifically the wealthy). Like our presidents, almost every student in my class was white.

To be clear, this is not critical race theory, despite what many conservatives will have you believe. They argue that teaching kids about race sows segregation and shame, even if the history lesson involves events long before they were born. Some critics go so far as to claim we live in a colorblind society where racism no longer exists, citing Oprah and Obama as proof everyone has a fair shot at success. Many of those critics also have children who are likely to adopt their views, unless professional educators teach them to think for themselves.

I was one of those kids, a Xennial growing up lower-middle class in a small New Hampshire city with my parents and younger brother. In 1990, the state was 98% white. In my high school graduating class of 264, only three students were nonwhite. Needless to say, I was not exposed to meaningful discussions about race. Instead, my family was indoctrinated by Rush Limbaugh, whose radio show provided a soundtrack for our home. My Republican father criticized affirmative action because it gave minority groups an unfair advantage in a country where, he claimed, everyone has an equal opportunity “as long as they work hard.” My mother, a French immigrant, adopted his views by osmosis. I did too, and held on to them throughout my 20s, until one professor changed everything.

While obtaining my master’s degree in education in 2009, I was required to take a course called “Language, Power and Democracy.” The monthlong class explored white privilege and America’s ongoing racial divide, and was taught mostly through documentaries and discussions. Redlining and Reconstruction were just some of the topics covered. My belief that class outweighed race in determining opportunities began to erode. After a month of evidence-based lectures and thoughtful conversations with my racially diverse classmates, I began to see America’s institutional racism.

Upon graduating, I taught at an independent school in San Francisco for nearly a decade. Autonomy over the curriculum allowed me to incorporate current events and marginalized voices into developmentally appropriate fourth grade content. Drawing inspiration from my graduate course, as well as authors Howard Zinn and James Loewen, I provided various perspectives while teaching social studies.

Each October, my students reviewed what they learned in third grade about Christopher Columbus. Then I would read “Encounter” to provide them with a different point of view. The children’s book is told through the eyes of a young Taino boy recounting the Italian explorer’s arrival, and the ensuing enslavement and brutality he unleashed on the native people. My students were simultaneously fascinated and shocked, leading most to write essays about why Columbus Day should no longer be celebrated.

During our World War II unit, students questioned a U.S. propaganda video, then analyzed photos of Japanese Americans being forcibly removed from the West Coast and images from the camps where they were incarcerated. They asked how Japanese Americans could be imprisoned based on their ethnicity, and why German Americans were spared the same treatment. This is not critical race theory, but students certainly raised critical questions about race in American history.

Artistic representations of various constitutional amendments created by students in the author's class. (Photo: Courtesy of Justin Mazzola)

Artistic representations of various constitutional amendments created by students in the author's class. (Photo: Courtesy of Justin Mazzola)

Students learned about the Greensboro Four, Bloody Sunday and the Birmingham Children’s March during our study of the civil rights movement. They empathized with Ruby Bridges and drew inspiration from the Little Rock Nine. They compared old photos of segregated Black and white schools, wondering how anyone could claim they were “separate, but equal.” Students even tackled the Louisiana literacy test, which was given to would-be Black voters in the 1960s. Every student failed. The ensuing conversation led them to draw parallels between past and present, comparing literacy tests and poll taxes to current voter-ID laws and the disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies in certain states.

The unit’s summative assessment was an essay in which students responded to this prompt: Did the civil rights movement lead to equality for African Americans? They then defended their position during a class debate, and were given the choice to switch sides if they were swayed by an opposing argument. Perhaps Congress would be more effective, and popular, if its members approached debates with the open mind of a 10-year-old.

As disinformation and “alternative facts” divide our country, teaching children how to think for themselves has never been more crucial — even if their conclusions run counter to their parents’ beliefs. Showing kids America’s complete history allows them to see how fear and greed can draw our leaders down dark paths, and how those choices impact people and the planet. If we ignore these missteps to instead focus solely on American exceptionalism, we face future generations of nationalistic leaders preying on voters’ ignorance and xenophobia.

Whitewashing American history lessons parallels Holocaust denialism, and poses a similar threat to the threads of our union. Pushing historical negationism to perpetuate the antiquated goal of a colorblind society only silences the continued macro- and microaggressions and injustices that people of color have endured since our nation’s founding. Kids can handle the truths of history — even if their parents can’t — and benefit from the lesson that criticizing their country doesn’t mean they don’t still love it.

Occasionally, I hear from parents who thank me for teaching their kids America’s history through various lenses. In a recent email, a father wrote that I taught his daughter “history is not black and white, but a wide range of grays, [which] sets a valuable perspective for life and learning.”

This mindset enabled their family to have a nuanced discussion about Afghanistan last year. “It allowed us … to feel OK that we don’t have clear winners and losers, or right and wrong,” he wrote.

Another former student recently said her biggest takeaway was realizing how mistakes by past American leaders helped shape current systemic inequities. Learning about the concept of privilege isn’t about blaming students for actions in the past, she said, but more about understanding how hundreds of years of history have contributed to modern society.

Our nation’s best chance at progress is for professional teachers to shed light on its complicated past while empowering students to formulate their own fact-based opinions ― and politicians shouldn’t be standing in the way. Teaching our youth all of America’s triumphs and failures will empower them as adults to strive toward a more perfect union. A few of those kids may even end up with their photos alongside our past presidents. And if they ascend to leadership, they’ll be far more prepared than their predecessors to ensure our country is working for everyone.

Justin Mazzola incorporated diversity and social justice into his curriculum for nearly a decade before leaving the classroom to seek new challenges. He now works as a freelance writer focusing on creative nonfiction and children’s books. He holds degrees in education and journalism, and is proud of his years serving the country with AmeriCorps. He lives in San Francisco. You can read more of his work at www.justinmazzola.com.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
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Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo spoke at a 'Moonies'-affiliated event, despite Japan controversy


Alia Shoaib
Sat, August 20, 2022 

Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich.

John Raoux/AP, Allison Joyce/Getty Images, AP

Trump and Pompeo were US politicians who appeared at a Unification Church-affiliated event in Seoul.


The Japanese government is currently examining its ties to the group following the assassination of Shinzo Abe.


The group has been described as a cult by former members and has ties to right-wing politicians.

Former President Donald Trump and ex-CIA chief Mike Pompeo spoke at an event affiliated with the Unification Church in Seoul, South Korea.

The Unification Church, formed in South Korea in the 1950s by self-declared messiah Sun Myung Moon, is known to have deep-rooted ties with conservative politicians worldwide. Its followers are often colloquially referred to as "Moonies."

Former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke in person at a conference affiliated with the church in Seoul on August 12 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the death of Sun Myung Moon.

Pompeo and Gingrich's speeches spoke about the value of religious freedom and the dangers of communism – a view they share with the church.

The controversial religious organization – formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification – has been in the spotlight following the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The assassin told police that he was motivated by anger towards Abe and his links to the church. It is widely described as a cult by former members.

Former President Donald Trump recorded a video message played during the meeting, per Japanese outlet NTV News 24. During his speech, Trump said that Abe was a "good friend and a great man" and praised Reverend Moon's widow Hak Ja Han, who now heads up the church.

Other billed speakers included former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former US ambassadors and generals.

According to Dr. Steven Hassan, an expert on cults and a former Moonie, the ties between right-wing politicians and the church are due to a shared hatred of communism and the group's vast wealth and influence.

The Moon empire has been estimated to be worth billions of dollars and includes ownership of the conservative newspaper The Washington Times.

"It doesn't shock me that Pompeo, the former head of the CIA and the State Department, spoke for them. I'm sure he got a lot of money. I'm sure Trump got a lot of money," Hassan told Insider, speculating about their speaker's fees. "I'm sure they don't believe Moon was the Messiah."

Rev. Moon and his wife perform a Blessing at New York City's 

Madison Square Garden on July 1, 1982.Bettmann/Getty Images

Former President George H.W. Bush donated his speaking fee after being scrutinized for appearing at a church-sponsored event in the 1990s, which was around $80,000, according to The Washington Post.

Representatives for Trump, Pompeo, and Gingrich did not respond to Insider's queries about why they appeared at the conference and what compensation they received.

Hassan describes the church as a "dangerous, destructive cult," citing allegations and lawsuits by former members claiming they were brainwashed. The church has denied the allegations and says members joined of their own free will.

The group gained notoriety for hosting mass weddings, and the church currently claims to have hundreds of thousands of members worldwide.

The Moonies-affiliated Network organizing last week's Seoul conference, the Universal Peace Federation, did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Shinzo Abe's assassination shines a light on Japan's ruling party's links to the church

Trump virtually spoke at one of their events last year, and other GOP politicians have appeared at their events for decades). This conference comes when the church is facing a reckoning in Japan.

Tetsuya Yamagami, Abe's assassin, told police that he believed his mother's donations to the church had caused her to become bankrupt and had ruined their family.

A candlelight vigil to pay tribute to the late former prime minister of Japan Shinzo Abe.

Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images

He blamed Abe for promoting the group, whose family had ties to the church and just last year delivered a speech at an event affiliated with them.

The church confirmed that Yamagami's mother was a member of its Japanese branch but declined to comment on her donations.

In response to Abe's killing, Japan's ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), began re-examining its longstanding ties to the church. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has reshuffled the cabinet to remove ministers associated with it.

Japanese media have been actively shining a light on the LDP's relationship with the church, and the church has responded by accusing coverage of being biased.

Hassan told Insider that the Japanese government's moves to re-examine its ties with the group are positive but queries why US politicians are not doing the same.

"It's an authoritarian cult. There's behavior, information, thought, and emotional control. And there are a lot of people born into the Moonies from these mass weddings that are now exiting and talking about it. And it's horrible."

The Classified-Files Scandal Is the Most Trumpy Scandal of All

Quinta Jurecic - The Atlantic

The iron law of scandals involving Donald Trump is that they will always be stupid, and there will always be more of them. Trump scandals—the Russia investigation; Trump’s first impeachment, over his efforts to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the insurrection on January 6—have something else in common: All these catastrophes result from Trump’s refusal to divorce the office of the presidency and the good of the country from his personal desires.


© James Devaney / GC Images / Getty; The Atlantic

Now Trump’s apparent squirreling away of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and his outrage over the Justice Department’s investigation of that conduct, speaks once more to his vision of his own absolute authority—even after he has departed the presidency. It’s a vision that places Trump himself, rather than the Constitution and the rule of law, as the one true source of legitimate political power.

A great deal remains unclear about the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago—among other things, why and how the material arrived at the estate in the first place instead of remaining in the custody of the National Archives, where it belonged. Reporting, though, suggests that Trump may have understood those documents—material that, under the Presidential Records Act, belongs to the American people—to be his own, to do whatever he liked with. “It’s not theirs; it’s mine,” Trump reportedly told several advisers about the misplaced documents. One “Trump adviser” told The Washington Post that “the former president’s reluctance to relinquish the records stems from his belief that many items created during his term … are now his personal property.” Another adviser to the former president said to the Post, “He didn’t give them the documents because he didn’t want to.”

[Graeme Wood: Not even the president can declassify nuclear secrets]

This childlike logic reflects Trump’s long-running inability to distinguish between the individual president and the institutional presidency, a structure that existed before him and that persists even after he unwillingly departed the White House. In his view, he is the presidency (which … is not what legal scholars typically mean when they talk about the “unitary executive.”) The same logic surfaces in the bizarre arguments made by Trump’s defenders that Trump somehow declassified all the sensitive documents held at Mar-a-Lago before he left office. Under the Constitution, the president does have broad authority over the classification system. But as experts have noted, it makes little sense to imagine a president declassifying information without communicating that decision across the executive branch so that everyone else would know to treat the material in question as no longer classified—unless, that is, you understand presidential power not as an institution of government, but as the projection of a single person’s all-powerful consciousness onto the world.

The approach of separating the presidency from the individual president evolved for a good reason: The vision of the man inextricable from the office he holds tips quickly into monarchy. Again and again during his presidency, Trump did his best to transform executive power into a resource from which to extract personal benefit. He likewise sought to use that power to extend his own time in office—either by seeking damaging information to harm the political chances of an opponent, as in the Ukraine scandal that led to his first impeachment, or by attempting to overturn an election outright on January 6. That tendency to collapse the institutional presidency into a reflection of his own desires often took the form of clashes between Trump and federal law enforcement, as officials tried with varying success to resist Trump’s efforts to turn the Justice Department and the FBI into a Praetorian Guard tasked with going after the president’s political enemies and protecting his friends.

The idea that law enforcement cannot and should not be the tool of the leader’s individual whims is central to the divide between the president and the institutional presidency, and therefore to the idea of “rule of law.” The concept’s roots trace back to the origins of liberal political theory: As John Locke wrote, governmental power “ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws, that both the people may know their duty, and be safe and secure within the limits of the law, and the rulers, too, kept within their due bounds.” Authority, in this view, stems not from the person of the ruler but from the broader structure of law and the consent of the people.

In his terse public comments about the Mar-a-Lago search, Attorney General Merrick Garland has emphasized this understanding of law and power, which runs so counter to Trump’s. “Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy,” Garland said in his August 11 press conference announcing that the department would move to unseal the warrant for Trump’s estate. “Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor.”

Trump, obviously, disagrees with this characterization. In posts on his social-media platform, Truth Social, he has returned to familiar tropes, calling the search warrant and related investigation a “hoax,” a “scam,” and a “witch hunt.” During his presidency, attacks such as these on the Russia investigation followed naturally from his own understanding of absolute presidential power. After all, if the president’s authority is total and unbound by law, then how can the DOJ investigate him? As Trump liked to say during his time in office, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

[David Frum: Stuck with Trump]

The additional twist of the Mar-a-Lago scandal, though, is that Trump is now implicitly claiming that total authority even out of office. If, before, Trump was furious that Special Counsel Robert Mueller could investigate him even when he was the president, now he is outraged that the DOJ would investigate him even though he is Trump. Supporters of Trump incensed by the search of Mar-a-Lago, Adam Serwer writes, “simply believe that Trump should not be subject to the law at all.”

Following the Mar-a-Lago search, Trump’s Republican supporters in Congress have called to “defund the FBI.” Meanwhile, the former president’s aggressive denunciation of the agency and the Justice Department has coincided with a flood of threats against law enforcement, including the magistrate judge who approved the Mar-a-Lago warrant. A bulletin from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security announced that, following the Mar-a-Lago search, the agencies “have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities.” Last week, a man attacked the FBI field office in Cincinnati; recent posts on Truth Social under the name of the attacker, Ricky Shiffer, had called for people to “get whatever you need to be ready for combat” following the FBI’s arrival at Mar-a-Lago. On Monday, prosecutors brought a case against another man, Adam Bies, who had posted threats against federal agents days after the search of Trump’s estate.

Such threats reveal the disturbing logic behind the GOP calls to defund the agency. The goal is not to critique law-enforcement overreach, but rather, as Zeeshan Aleem argues in MSNBC, to make the bureau “completely subordinate to the authoritarian political project.” And this project is authoritarian, because it locates total power in one person—even, it seems, when he has been voted out of office. This vision of Trump’s authority sets up a parallel structure of political legitimacy that competes with the Constitution.

This is the logic of insurrection. “HEY FEDS,” Bies apparently wrote on the social-media platform Gab two days after the Mar-a-Lago search. “We the people cannot WAIT to water the trees of liberty with your blood.” Meanwhile, Representative Bennie Thompson—the chair of the House committee investigating the insurrection—warned that such apocalyptic comments “are frighteningly similar to those we saw in the run-up to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

After all, if power flows not from structures of law and consent but from the will of a single person, then the measure of whether violence is justified and legitimate no longer turns on whether force is channeled through the proper processes of state authority. Rather, it boils down to a single question: Is that violence wielded on behalf of Trump? Or against him?

Newly unsealed documents from the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago put Trump in even worse legal peril, experts say

Tom Porter

Fri, August 19, 2022 

Trump supporters waved flags outside a legal hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida, on August 18, 2022, which considered the unsealing of documents from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images

• New legal documents were unsealed Thursday by a federal judge in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid.

• They show new details about the possible crimes the FBI was investigating with the search.

• They hinted at ways of prosecuting Trump that do not rest on whether documents he kept are classified.

Former President Donald Trump has offered a shifting array of defenses in response to the August 8 FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which uncovered a trove of secret documents.

Among them is the claim that he declassified all of the documents while in office under the president's sweeping powers over national secrets.

But procedural documents unsealed Thursday by federal judge Bruce Reinhart, including the cover sheet of the warrant used in the search, revealed that this defense may not be as effective as Trump hoped, legal experts say.

One implication of the new information is that even if Trump is right about the documents being declassified, he still could have broken the law, Lawrence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law scholar, tweeted.

Prior to Thursday, the only information about the laws agents believed Trump may have broken came from the warrant itself, which was unsealed last Friday.

It listed broad federal statutes Trump may have violated, including the Espionage Act. More specific information was found in Thursday's documents.

They showed that the FBI believes that Trump may be guilty of the willful retention of national defense information, concealment or removal of government records, and obstruction of federal investigation.

Bradley P. Moss, a national security attorney, told Insider that the new documents "clarify but ultimately do not change much" of what we previously knew.

A striking detail, he said, is that the FBI believes Trump has obstructed its probe.

"Clearly, the FBI currently believes Mr. Trump not only took properly marked classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, but he kept them and resisted turning them over when confronted by the government," Moss said.

The FBI could theoretically use a charge of obstruction to pursue Trump, he said, even if the information does turn out to have been declassified.

Moss did suggest, though, that it is unlikely that prosecutors would choose to make that case, even if they technically could.

"I have no reason to suspect the government would pursue a charge if they concluded there was sufficient evidence the records were in fact declassified, as Trump keeps claiming," he said. "Even if the Espionage Act charge falls through, the government could pursue an obstruction charge.

"It is unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility, they would do so on its own. After all, our jails are filled with people who were caught up in charges lesser than the original aim of what law enforcement was investigating."

The affidavit underpinning the warrant would likely detail the grounds the FBI used in pursuing the warrant.

Reinhart said Thursday that he is leaning toward releasing the affidavit in a redacted form, because it contains sensitive information relating to the ongoing investigation. This could come as soon as August 25, the date of the next hearing.

Insider contacted Trump's office for comment.

His attorney, Alina Habba, in an interview on Newsmax, pushed back on the charges described in the sheet, saying Trump had cooperated with investigators and again said that he declassified the information.

Several figures from the Trump administration have described that claim as implausible or even "a lie."

US Military families' housing benefits lag as rents explode






yRep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., center, walks down the steps with other members of the House during an event on steps of the House of Representatives on the East Front of the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Basic allowance for housing is like an “algorithm that needs updating on a regular basis,” said Strickland, whose district includes the massive Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, where many military families struggle to find affordable homes. Her proposal is part of the national defense bill that passed the House in July and is awaiting Senate approval. 

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)More

R.J. RICO
Sat, August 20, 2022 

Associated Press (AP) — When Kristin Martin found out her husband was being transferred to Naval Base San Diego, securing housing for their family of five quickly took over her life.

On-base housing wasn’t an option — the waitlist for a four-bedroom home in the neighborhoods they qualified for was 14 to 16 months.

Neither were the military-only hotels near base where new arrivals can pay low rates as they get their bearings — those were full, too.

So Martin, whose husband is a lieutenant, cast a wide net across San Diego and started applying for rental homes, all sight unseen.

“I was waking up and the first thing I was doing was looking at properties,” Martin said. “I was looking at it mid-day, before I went to bed. I had alerts set. It became a full-time job.”

More than 30 rental applications later and hundreds of dollars in application fees down the drain, the Martins finally found a home.

But there were caveats. They’d have to start paying rent a month before they actually moved. And, at $4,200 per month, their rent was nearly $700 more than the monthly basic allowance for housing, known as the BAH, that her husband receives.

“We’ll probably be here two or three years, so that could be $20,000 that we’re paying out of pocket above BAH just for rent,” Martin said last month.

“It’s affecting us personally but then I think about how we were a junior enlisted family at one point. I cannot imagine the struggles (they) are going through.”

Housing has long been a major benefit for service members, a subsidy to salaries that trail the private sector. But amid record-breaking spikes in rent, the Department of Defense has neglected its commitment to help military families find affordable places to live, service members and housing activists say.

That’s forced many to settle for substandard homes, deal with extremely long commutes or pay thousands out of pocket they hadn’t budgeted for.

“We have families coming to us that are on exorbitantly lengthy waiting lists and sitting in homes that they can’t afford, like an Airbnb rental, or they’re at a hotel or camping in tents or living in RVs,” said Kate Needham, a veteran who co-founded the nonprofit Armed Forces Housing Advocates in May 2021.

“I don’t think civilians really understand — they might think we’re living in free housing and just having a great time, making lots of money. And that’s not the case at all.”

Reports of the housing squeeze that military families are feeling has alarmed members of Congress who are pushing legislation that would force the Department of Defense to rethink how it handles housing.

A common complaint is that with rents soaring nationwide, housing allowances, which vary by rank and are recalculated annually, haven’t kept pace with rental markets, even though they're supposed to cover 95% of rental costs for the approximately two-thirds of active-duty personnel who live off base.

According to a data analysis by The Associated Press of five of the most populous military bases in the U.S., housing allowances across all ranks have risen an average of 18.7% since January 2018. In that span, according to real estate company Zillow, rents have skyrocketed 43.9% in those markets: Carlsbad, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; El Paso, Texas; Killeen, Texas, and Tacoma, Washington.

And because of how tough off-base markets are, on-base housing has become a hot commodity, with many bases having long waitlists.

Needham argues the discrepancy between military housing allowances and the current market should alarm officials who are already struggling to recruit the next generation.

“If you can’t afford your job, why the hell would you stay in the job?” Needham said.

The Department of Defense did not comment on whether housing issues have become a retention concern. But defense officials said military housing offices monitor markets and offer tools to help families find “suitable, affordable housing, whether on or off-base.”

“The Department of Defense is committed to ensuring that service members and their families have access to affordable, quality housing within a reasonable commute of their assigned duty station,” it said.

At MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, housing allowances used to be in line with the local market. In January 2020, a senior airman without dependents received a monthly housing stipend of $1,560, compared to the typical Tampa-area rent price of $1,457, according to Zillow. But since then rent prices have exploded to $2,118 per month on average in July, while a senior airman’s housing allowance is currently $1,647.

With such a discrepancy and those living off-base facing notoriously long commutes, it’s no wonder that nearly all of MacDill’s 572 homes are full.

Tampa real estate agent Renee Thompson said it’s common for service members to rent homes that are an hour’s drive away from base.

“No homes in today’s market will even come close to the service member’s BAH,” said Thompson, who served in the Army. “It’s really disheartening.”

Frustrated by what she called the Defense Department’s lack of transparency into housing allowance calculations, U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., has introduced a measure that would give the department one year to reexamine its process and report on how accurate the current system is.

BAH is like an “algorithm that needs updating on a regular basis,” said Strickland, whose district includes the massive Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, where many military families struggle to find affordable homes.

“The vast majority of people live off post, so this is incredibly urgent,” she said.

As threats of far-right violence rise, New Hampshire Free Staters shared list of 'woke' churches


Haven Orecchio-Egresitz,Kenneth Niemeyer
Fri, August 19, 2022

A New Hampshire church urged worshippers to wash their hands amid a Covid outbreak.

AP Photo/Charles Krupa

A New Hampshire libertarian group tweeted a list of churches, classifying them by how "woke" they are.


Being LGBTQ-friendly, COVID-cautious, or having a Ukraine flag displayed is considered "woke."


The list was posted amid a spike in far-right threats of violence.

The Free State Project — a New Hampshire-based libertarian movement — tweeted a list of Christian churches in the state, identifying those that are considered "woke."

The list, which was published on a wiki called "LibertyWins.org," largely measures "wokeness" by whether the church is LGBTQ-friendly, has advocated for racial or social justice, or had implemented COVID precautions.

It was distributed by The Free State Twitter account, which has over 80,000 followers.

The list on "LibertyWins.org" titled "Christianity in New Hampshire," doesn't detail the intention of the list, but some critics on Twitter are calling the "wokeness" classification a "racist dog whistle" and worry that it will prompt attacks on the places of worship.

State Democratic Rep. Lucy Weber has previously protested against The Free State Project and described them as anti-LGBTQ. Weber told Insider that she didn't want to speculate about the group's motivations for compiling the list, but found it "distasteful."

"It's not an issue I have a lot to say on except that they've gotten the right to say it," Weber told Insider. "They're not government actors, so I find it distasteful, but I'm allowed to have my opinions too."

There are nearly 900 churches named, and they are identified by their location and denomination.




In a column called "wokeness" there are notes.

While displaying a Pride flag, or requiring masks was a sure-fire way to land churches on the list, there were other reasons cited for the classification.

An Episcopal church made its way on the woke list by donating to the NAACP. Another displayed a Ukraine flag on its website. A third included a blurb on its website about how they are located on "unceded native American land."

Eight Episcopal churches on the list were included for either supporting the LGBTQ. community on their websites or for generally being LGBTQ affirming churches. The Episcopal Church is generally more accepting of the LGBTQ community, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the former Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, was the first openly gay priest to become a bishop of a major Christian denomination.

A representative for the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire told Insider in a statement that the church was aware of the list.

"The Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire supports gay marriage, as do Episcopal bishops and churches across the nation, as does The Episcopal Church as a governing body," the statement read. "We are all seeking to be disciples of our savior Jesus Christ."

Founded by Jason Sorens, the Free State Project is a movement that since the early 2000s has encouraged the migration of "liberty activists" to New Hampshire, where they hope to live in a libertarian limited-government utopia.

The group's website explicitly says it is not tied to "any political party or organization," though many of its members who do run or serve in political office are registered as Republicans.

The Free State Project didn't return Insider's messages for comment.

At a recent protest against the movement, Weber told The Keene Sentinel that the group may preach freedom, but that liberty doesn't extend to people in the LGBTQ community. Members of the group, she said, have pushed to make it harder to register to vote and want to restrict abortions.

"They go, 'we're for liberty, we're for freedom.' Who isn't?" Weber told the Sentinel in July. "Their freedom is only for people who are just like them and they don't seem to have a concept of the public good."

Extremist threats of violence are at a high

The Free State Project says on its website — in bold — that "it does not welcome anyone who promotes violence, racial hatred, or bigotry" and in 2013 it kicked out infamous neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell after he wrote about killing government agents and violently overthrowing the government.

And while the group says it doesn't welcome those who promote violence, the list, which singles out places of worship due to ideology, was shared on Twitter as threats of extremist far-right violence are at a high.

References to "civil war" doubled on online extremist platforms in the week following the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Insider previously reported.

Extremists have taken to both niche social media platforms and mainstream sites like TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube to preach pro-Trump violence.

Antisemitic threats against the Jewish Florida judge who signed the search warrant became so specific and credible that his temple canceled Shabbat services.

Judge Bruce Reinhart and Attorney General Merrick Garland have been subjected to "an enormous amount of threats and vitriol online," Alex Friedfeld, who monitors online extremism for the Anti Defamation League's Center On Extremism, told Insider.

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