Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump. After last week’s assassination attempt on Trump, he attempted to whitewash his radicalism by blaming the shooting on Democrats’ rhetoric about democracy without an iota of evidence.

2016 Vance was also an ardent Trump foe. He wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nation’s Highest Office,” and wrote a text to his law school roommate warning that Trump might be “America’s Hitler.”

Smith told the Inquirer about a mock debate in which the history professor asked students to signal their support or opposition for government policy proposals.

“The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”

“I feel like this is one of those things that you wouldn’t expect from him … No one that I know said they ever found him to be a creepy, loner kind of guy.”

The Trump-appointed Florida judge had recently indefinitely postponed the federal classified documents trial, saying there were significant questions over trial evidence.

Mr Smith will now be able to appeal Monday's ruling and ask for a new judge to be assigned to the case.

He has yet to publicly commented on Judge Cannon's ruling.

Fedcap has received dozens of contracts worth more than $110 million from 10 New York City and state agencies since 2018. That’s despite the fact that the company has committed millions of dollars in wage theft against hundreds of its workers in recent years. Get Our Top Investigations

Under New York City and state procurement laws, contracting agencies are required to check vendors’ backgrounds, including for labor law violations, and award contracts only to those deemed “responsible.”

But who is a “responsible vendor” is vaguely defined. And New York state’s contracting rules are more lenient than some other places when it comes to approving wage theft violators for contracts. Advocates and officials in those places say tighter rules have been an effective deterrent against wage theft.

“They’re going to put our grid at risk because of the power they’re drawing,” said state Sen. José Menéndez (D-San Antonio) at a public hearing on June 12.

For more than six hours, senators on the Business and Commerce Committee pressed grid operators, public utility commissioners and representatives from industries, including manufacturing, oil and gas and cryptocurrency. Chief among legislators’ concerns was the massive growth in energy demand on the state’s main electrical grid, which is estimated to go from a peak demand of about 85,000 megawatts last year to 150,000 megawatts in 2030, according to estimates from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

In this role, I’ll tell you what happened. As I showed up in October of 2022 for this job, ChatGPT showed up in November of 2022. Not surprisingly, I would say largely my first year got hijacked by AI but in the best possible way. First, because I think it’s an important moment for society to contend with all the implications of AI, and secondly, because, as I’ve been doing this work, I think a lot of the reason AI is such an important technology in our lives today is because of its breadth. Part of what that means is that it is definitely a disruptor for every other major national ambition that we have. If we get it right, I think it can be a huge accelerator for better health outcomes, for meeting the climate crisis, for everything that we really have to get done.

The machines don’t have to make huge advances in capability for that to happen. That’s a today problem, and we need to get after it right now. We’re not philosophers; we’re trying to make policies that get this right for the country. For our work, I think it’s really important to be clear about the specific applications, the risks, the potential, and then take actions now on things that are problems now and then lay the ground so that we can avoid problems to the greatest degree possible going forward.

At least 41 Iowa hospitals have shuttered their labor and delivery units since 2000. Those facilities, representing about a third of Iowa hospitals, are located mostly in rural areas where birth numbers have plummeted. In some Iowa counties, annual numbers of births have fallen by three-quarters since the height of the baby boom in the 1950s and '60s, when many rural hospitals were built or expanded, state and federal records show.

Similar trends are playing out nationwide, as hospitals struggle to maintain staff and facilities to safely handle dwindling numbers of births. More than half of rural U.S. hospitals now lack labor and delivery services.

Rivera, who’s charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s government, has a decades-long personal and political relationship with Rubio. The two men have known one another for decades, and even owned a home together in Tallahassee at one point. They served alongside one another in the Florida state House and Rivera won his U.S. House seat the same year Rubio was elected to the Senate.

But their paths have diverged wildly since then. Rivera lost reelection after a single term in Congress and went on to face a litany of legal troubles. Rubio, now in his third term in the U.S. Senate, is a top contender to serve as former President Donald Trump’s running mate.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17518823

A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.

These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.

UIhlein Family

August Uihlein emigrated to the United States around 1850 to work at the Krug Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Founded by his uncle August Krug, the brewery later became the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, when after Krug's death, his widow Anna Maria married fellow German-American Joseph Schlitz. In 1875, Schlitz died in the sinking of the SS Schiller. Per Schlitz's wishes, management was passed to the four Uihlein brothers, August, Henry, Alfred, and Edward. When Anna Maria Schlitz died in 1887, the Uihleins acquired full ownership of the firm and the Uihlein family continued to run the brewery for the next century. The Uihleins kept the name Schlitz for the brewery because Americans had difficulty pronouncing their surname.

David Green

David Green (born November 13, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman and the founder of Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores. He is a major financial supporter of Evangelical organizations in the United States and funded the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

Eventually, Green bought out Pico and the growing business staffed a small factory with cerebral palsy patients, paying them ten cents per frame.

Waller Family (Debra S Waller) (No Wikipedia page at all?)

A year later Jockey said it was moving overseas. “It was a very big shock,” Herrington said.

Now Waller is launching Jockey Person to Person, a home party business (Ed note: that's an MLM) that sells higher-priced intimate and active apparel through independent salespeople. Last month 120 “comfort specialists,” as they are called, gathered for a convention in suburban Chicago.

Ziklag Definition:

1 Samuel 30 claims that by the time of David, the town was under the control of Philistines, but subsequently was given by their king – Achish – to David, who at that time was seemingly acting as a vassal of the Philistines. David requested "a place in one of the country towns" and was awarded Ziklag, which he used as a base for raids against the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites, which he conducted away from the oversight of Achish. David's reports to Achish state that he had been conducting raids on Saul's lands in southern Judah and on the Jerahmeelites.

Noting that the former president and convicted felon has now become the Republican nominee three times in eight years, the board said: “A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great.”

And then we heard concerns that students were being mistreated at one of those schools: Shrub Oak International School in Mohegan Lake, New York. Black eyes and bruises. Insufficient staffing. Medical neglect. No kitchen.

At least 15 Illinois students were enrolled there this past school year using state and local taxpayer dollars at $573,200 each. No state outside of New York sends more students to Shrub Oak than Illinois.

The race for the presidency remains statistically tied despite President Biden’s dismal debate performance two weeks ago, a new national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds.

Biden actually gained a point since last month’s survey, which was taken before the debate. In this poll, he leads Trump 50% to 48% in a head-to-head matchup. But Biden slips when third-party options are introduced, with Trump holding the slightest advantage with 43% to 42%.

“We hear a lot from our constituents on different issues, but something I’ve heard that doesn’t seem to be getting covered are the Epstein files. These files were released. And, like, Donald Trump is sort of all over this,” Lieu said. “Y’all might want to look at that, because that’s highly disturbing. And again, it shows that Donald Trump is unfit for office.” Lieu also pointed to Trump’s felony conviction for falsifying business records and the finding of civil liability for sexual abuse as indicators he is unfit for the presidency.

Edit: PDF warning! Here is the link to the files: https://sa15.org/wp-content/uploads/epstein-files/JEFFREY_EPSTEIN_PART_20_REDACTED.pdf

Source (it was hard to find)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17450095

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240711125807/https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/private-prison-behemoth-is-first-corporation-to-max-out-to-trump/

The IRS said Thursday that its plan to crack down on wealthy tax cheats is paying off, with the agency collecting more than $1 billion since targeting high-income earners who owe the government money.

The joint announcement with the U.S. Treasury Department is meant to highlight that the IRS' $80 billion in funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is helping to recoup revenue for the nation's coffers.

In early June, DeSantis vetoed a bill that could have put large swaths of the hemp industry out of business, in part, by making key cannabinoids illegal. And now, the industry is contributing both to DeSantis’ political committee and to the Republican Party of Florida to work against the recreational marijuana proposal that is largely backed by the state and nation’s largest marijuana company, Trulieve.

But the alliance is less of a coordinated effort and more of a natural occurrence, said J.D. McCormick, president of one of the state’s largest hemp groups, Florida Healthy Alternatives Association.

“Without Governor DeSantis, the hemp industry right now would be illegal in Florida. And then Trulieve would go on to develop a monopoly” should the marijuana amendment pass, McCormick said. “It’s just the natural course of events. Now that we’re alive and still here, we’re going to try to fight them” on the amendment.

"We worked with the secretary of state's office during every step of the process to ensure that we followed all rules and regulations," ALG said in a statement responding to Thurston's letter to the group on Wednesday. "At multiple junctures—including on July 5 inside of the Capitol Building—we discussed signature submission requirements with the secretary of state's staff. In fact, the secretary of state's office supplied us with the affidavit paperwork, which we used. Until today, we had no reason not to trust that the paperwork they supplied us was correct and complete."

"The secretary of state, and the public, knows that we provided the state with a list of our paid canvassers and all of the required information associated with their employment," ALG added. "They know this because the list we provided to the secretary of state was FOIA'd and released by our opposition in an attempt to intimidate our supporters. Asserting now that we didn't provide required documentation regarding paid canvassers is absurd and demonstrably, undeniably incorrect."

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on federal courts, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon sent a letter last week asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to examine whether Thomas violated federal ethics and tax laws when he didn't disclose as income more than $267,000 of a loan that was allegedly forgiven in 2008.

"We do not make this request lightly," the senators wrote. "The evidence assembled thus far plainly suggests that Justice Thomas has committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws and raises significant questions about whether he and his wealthy benefactors have complied with their federal tax obligations."

The report, released on July 11, documents how the American Petroleum Institute and two of its European counterparts recycled the same arguments over more than 50 years to oppose, weaken or delay action on climate change, even as our understanding of fossil fuels’ role in global warming evolved. .

In the first three months of 2024, the group spent $1.8 million on federal lobbying. The next filing deadline is July 22.

In 2016, the American Petroleum Institute also started to spend millions on federal elections — largely to the benefit of Republicans. As of June 21, it has steered $2.5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund and $1 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund during the 2023-2024 election cycle. The two groups work to elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate and House, respectively.

A Republican congresswoman’s effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in inherent contempt for refusing to turn over audio tapes of special counsel Robert Hur's interview with President Joe Biden failed on Thursday.

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s measure was rejected in a 204 to 210 vote.

Four Republicans -- Reps. John Duarte, David Joyce, Michael Turner and Tom McClintock -- voted with Democrats to take down the measure. There were a number of Republicans absent from the vote.

The defense’s last witness was George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy to make false statements to a bank. Higginbotham did that as part of an illegal lobbying conspiracy that included efforts to pressure the Trump administration to extradite Guo to China, where the mogul faces various criminal charges, including fraud, bribery and rape.

Higginbotham testified that he and his conspirators—including Elliott Broidy, a former top fundraiser for Donald Trump, and Pras Michel, a former member of the Fugees for whom Higginbotham was moonlighting as a lawyer—received around $100 million for their illicit influence efforts and said that he once met with the Chinese ambassador about Guo in an effort to advance the scheme.

But today, the world has changed. He has been invited to speak by local Republican parties and other groups across the country. He gave a prayer breakfast sermon to one of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement associations. And a prolific booster of election conspiracy theories has used his work as the basis for a campaign to disrupt elections.

“When you see sodomy running rampant, when you see women in government, when you see men behaving like effeminate little squirrels, judgment is in the land,” Trewhella said during a 2020 sermon.

Last year, he said homosexuality should be treated as a crime, noting that the Bible called for the death penalty for “the filth of sodomy.”