Obama and Russiagate: The Untold Story
Part 2 of our series on how Barack Obama undermined U.S. democracy
By Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke | TRUTH OVER NEWS | November 15, 2024
One of the least known aspects of the Russiagate affair is the central role that Barack Obama played in it. For years, the focus has been on individuals such as James Comey, Peter Strzok, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. And those names are indeed central to the plot, with Clinton being the one who devised the nefarious scheme to portray her opponent as a Russian agent. However, there was someone in the background, pulling many strings, who was even more crucial to the entire scheme: the then-sitting president, Barack Obama.
In this installment of our series on how Obama undermined U.S. democracy, we take a closer look at his role in both promoting and weaponizing the Russiagate hoax, which fraudulently linked Trump to Russia.
July 28 disclosure
We know from emails released by WikiLeaks that early discussions regarding the Clinton campaign’s dirty trick to associate Trump with Russia—what Clinton called the Swiftboat plan—were in full swing by February 2016. Over the following months, various components of this nefarious project came together. These included the hiring of campaign operatives Fusion GPS, commissioning the dirty dossier from Christopher Steele, and enlisting a group of IT specialists tasked with creating a false data trail linking Putin and Trump. We do not know whether Obama was privy to these early efforts. The earliest documented date we have for Obama’s involvement in the scheme is July 28, 2016. On this day, Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, came to the Oval Office and briefed Obama on Clinton’s Swiftboat project. Thus, we can say with certainty that, at the very latest, it was on this day that Obama became aware that the allegations of Russian collusion were nothing more than a fraudulent scheme concocted by Hillary Clinton.
As president, voters had entrusted Obama with the solemn responsibility of keeping the United States safe and secure. For this reason, Obama had a critical duty on July 28, 2016, to promptly put an end to the fraudulent allegations of collusion with Russia. The nominee of a major political party for president being falsely portrayed as a Russian agent posed numerous national security concerns. The fact that the entire scheme had been orchestrated by his opponent, arguably constituted an even more significant national security threat. In simple terms, of the two individuals who could become president, one was falsely accused of being a Russian agent while the other was the one who had cooked up the scam.
However, consistent with the theme throughout our series on Obama, he opted for treachery instead of truth. He wanted the country to tear itself apart, which is why, instead of telling Clinton to put an end to her devious scheme or, better yet, asking his Justice Department officials to investigate her campaign for creating a national security nightmare, Obama went full steam ahead in helping to perpetuate the hoax. Within 72 hours of the Oval Office meeting, the FBI launched its fraudulent Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump.
No peaceful transfer of power
It was a terrible betrayal of the American public who voted Obama into office, and the situation would only worsen. Over the coming months, the fraudulent Russia collusion investigation intensified. Numerous members of Trump’s campaign team were surveilled and monitored by the FBI. When an FBI analyst raised alarm bells about the fabricated Alfa Bank story—a tale concocted by Clinton’s IT operatives to link Putin to Trump—the analyst was promptly sidelined, and the matter was handed over to more pliant agents. However, it was all to no avail. Clinton lost, and Trump was suddenly the president-elect. At this point, it was once again Obama who intervened to undermine Trump and, consequently, American democracy.
The media incessantly discusses the so-called peaceful transfer of power, lamenting that Trump refused to hand over the reins in January 2021. Leaving aside that this assertion is demonstrably false—he did transfer power and retreated to his Mar-a-Lago estate—it is often overlooked in the debate about the peaceful handover of power that it was Obama who did not peacefully hand over power in 2017. Instead, he weaponized the Russia collusion hoax to undermine the incoming Trump administration. He did so fully aware that it would jeopardize Trump’s presidency, and in many ways, it indeed did. It is remarkable how much Trump accomplished despite the persistent cloud of Russia collusion allegations that loomed over him daily.
The specifics of Obama’s actions are relatively straightforward, yet they are seldom discussed. Immediately after Trump won the election, Obama, in collaboration with the intelligence community, initiated an effort to publish an official report, the Intelligence Community Assessment, that would claim that Trump had only won because of Putin’s help. This strategy served two purposes. First, it absolved Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party of accountability for a humiliating defeat. Second, and far more significantly, it created a huge roadblock for the incoming Trump administration. In addition to the persistent inquiries regarding Trump’s alleged connections to Putin, which hindered the administration’s ability to focus on other matters, Obama understood that his plan would effectively criminalize diplomatic relations with Russia. It was sabotage.
Trump’s hands were tied. He could not engage with Russia without provoking an immediate and loud outcry from Democrats, the intelligence community, and the media. Even something as mundane as meeting the Russian ambassador—an event that would ordinarily never make the news—was immediately portrayed as an act of treason. When Trump met Putin in person, the media had a massive meltdown, even accusing Putin of secretly bugging a soccer ball that had been gifted to Trump’s son, Barron. The hysteria knew no bounds, and this was catastrophic, especially given that all of this was occurring against the backdrop of escalating hostilities in Ukraine and the warming of relations between Russia and China—something that the United States should have done everything possible to prevent.
Secret meeting with journalists
And if all of that wasn’t enough, on January 17, 2017, Obama invited a group of journalists to a secret White House meeting. A 21-page transcript, which was only recently released, reveals that Obama used this meeting to carefully plant the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative in the minds of the attending journalists. He did this despite knowing that the entire situation was a hoax. But Obama ensured that the media perceived things otherwise, providing not only the presidential seal of approval to the Russia collusion hoax but also the impression of confirmation from someone with access to all the relevant secret intelligence. In other words, Obama abused the presidency to ensure that his successor would be burdened with the incessant Russia collusion narrative.
Obama’s central role in promoting the Russia collusion hoax was partially revealed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who in 2020 disclosed details of the July 2016 meeting between Obama and Brennan. Other intelligence officials within the Trump administration, including his first Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, had access to the same information as Ratcliffe. However, instead of speaking out, they actively sought to undermine the president they were supposed to serve. Ratcliffe’s recent nomination as CIA Director represents not only a significant step toward reforming the intelligence community but also suggests that accountability for Obama may finally be on the horizon.
The Democratic Party Faces Its Day of Reckoning
By Leonard C. Goodman | Scheer Post | November 19, 2024
Following its crushing defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party might finally face its day of reckoning. The party markets itself as the champion of the working class and a bulwark against the party of the plutocrats. But this has been a lie for at least three decades.
The Democratic Party has partnered with Wall Street donors since at least the 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, the party overturned Glass Steagall and other New Deal programs that had effectively restrained Wall Street greed for 60 years. It also sold out American workers with so-called trade deals that freed their bosses to ship American jobs overseas. It ended welfare “as we know it” and passed draconian crime bills that destroyed mostly black and brown communities, sending mothers and fathers to prison for decades in the name of a cruel and senseless war on drugs.
Into the 21st century, the Democrats continued pushing the lie that they were fighting for working people. After September 11, 2001, the party put up a token resistance to the Bush/Cheney regime of illegal regime-change wars, black sites, indefinite detention and torture. All the while, it continued soliciting campaign contributions from the arms dealers profiting from Bush’s wars.
In 2008, the party found a Black face to carry on its Wall Street-friendly agenda. Gullible Americans, myself included, were taken in by Barack Obama’s promises to end “dumb wars” and to institute a single payer healthcare system. We ignored the red flags, like the fact that Obama’s campaign broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. It was later revealed by Wikileaks that nearly every member of Obama’s cabinet had been selected by the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup.
It didn’t take long for President Obama to crush our hopes that he was a different kind of Democrat. One of his first acts as president was to funnel trillions of dollars to the big banks that, newly freed by Clinton from FDR-era regulations, had embarked on an orgy of unbridled greed, swindling millions of Americans out of their homes and retirement savings with a scheme to sell worthless mortgage-backed securities.
Adding insult to injury, Obama saw to it that the bailed-out bank executives faced no criminal prosecutions and received their year-end bonuses. In their place, the Obama Justice Department brought federal mortgage fraud charges against thousands of poor people — I represented a half dozen of these folks — who had signed their names to the phony mortgage loans that the Wall Street bankers encouraged, packaged and sold to pension funds and other unwitting investors.
The pipe dream that Obama would be an anti-war president was also quickly dispatched. During his two terms, Obama ushered in a new era of continuous war, envisioned by George Orwell and favored by Wall Street. Obama expanded Bush’s bombing campaigns into Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. Today’s Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Republicans in its ties to war profiteers and trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.
Obama also effectively ended the Democrats’ promise to fight for a true national health care system in which all Americans would be able to go to the doctor when sick without fear of bankrupting their families. In its place, Obama pushed through a health care plan developed in right-wing think tanks, that guaranteed profits (and taxpayer subsidies) for the private insurance industry and did little to contain costs.
By 2012, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report was describing the Democratic Party as the “more effective evil” for using its reputation as protector of the working class to neutralize effective opposition and push through right-wing policies that the Republicans could not get passed.
In 2016, the Democrats received a wake-up call when their chosen successor to Obama lost the White House to a crude-talking New York City real estate developer and game show host with no prior political experience. But with the help of its partners in corporate media, the party managed to limp along for another eight years, first by telling the American people that President Trump was an agent of Russia, and then by claiming that Trump was Hitler who was planning concentration camps and firing squads for his political enemies.
Now after the November 2024 elections in which Trump won every swing state and the popular vote, the Democratic party is finally being forced to face some uncomfortable truths. The party’s partners in the corporate media initially tried blaming the election result on the voters for being too misogynist, too racist, or too dumb to vote correctly. But there is little trust that remains in corporate media.
The party’s corporate consultants have put the blame on the party’s excessive focus on identity politics. But the issues for the Democrats run much deeper than bad messaging. The real problem is that the party takes direction from plutocrats whose interests are antagonistic to the needs of the working people it pretends to represent. Both Democrats and Republicans are financed by the same corporate interests. Thus, there is general agreement and support for policies that guarantee high rates of return on investment capital, policies like continuous war, for-profit health care, and outsourcing jobs. This leaves few issues for the parties to fight about other than abortion and identity politics.
Fifty years ago, American capitalists still relied on American workers to build everything from cars and televisions to sneakers and light bulbs. These titans of industry had to care about things such as functioning schools, decent wages, cities and public transportation. But the times have changed. Today’s plutocrats support outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and have little concern for the condition of American workers. And while ordinary Americans want the country’s resources to be spent at home, plutocrats are heavily invested in foreign wars, and they shun diplomacy.
These contradictions could only be covered up for so long. Even with reliable partners in the corporate press, the internet has given Americans alternative sources for their news. During the last few years, in a desperate effort to keep its scheme afloat, the Democrats embraced censorship and a regime of corporate “fact checkers” to police social media and remove or punish unsanctioned speech. In so doing, the party abandoned the last of its core principles: standing up for free speech and the right to dissent.
Many Democrats argue that they had to go after Wall Street money to compete with the Republicans. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explained the strategy: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” But for this plan to work, the party still needed an actual message to take to the voters.
Forbes Magazine reports that during the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris’s campaign raised a billion dollars while Trump’s campaign raised $388 million. Harris’s substantial edge in fundraising allowed her to flood the airwaves with commercials. But she had nothing of substance to say to voters.
The Atlantic Magazine reports that early in her campaign, Harris gained ground by attacking Trump as a stooge of corporate interests—and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business. But then, suddenly, Harris abandoned her attacks on big business at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.
Many Democrats, especially in swing states, opposed the Biden Administration’s unfailing support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million residents. Harris could have gained the support of many of these voters by promising to stop arming Israel during the genocide. But her Party’s donors wouldn’t allow her to even hint at such a change in policy. Two days before the election, while campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, Harris stated, “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” But as Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada pointed out on election night, this promise carried no weight because Harris had also promised that she would never do the one thing within her power to stop the slaughter: cut off the flow of bombs to Israel.
After decades of malfeasance and deception, it has become evident that the corporate Democratic Party cannot serve as the lone opposition party to the corporate Republicans. The American people need a viable political party that represents the interests of ordinary working people.
A true workers party will not raise as much money as the corporate Democrats. But it will have an honest message with the potential to appeal to large numbers of Americans. Further, a political party that actually represents workers will press for reforms that begin to even the playing field between the haves and the have nots.
For example, one the most effective ways plutocrats game the political system is by flooding campaign contributions to the lawmakers who sit on the key committees that oversee their businesses. Members of Congress covet these committee chairs because they guarantee high fundraising numbers. Lawmakers who sit on the House Financial Services Committee have jurisdiction over banks and insurance companies and are targeted by those firms with campaign contributions. Lawmakers who sit on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees provide funding for lucrative government contracts and are flooded with war industry cash.
These practices are corrupt and deprive American citizens of their right to be governed by representatives free from conflicts of interest. A judge who has received political contributions from a litigant must be removed from the case. Similarly, the most important functions of government, such as determining tax and how our tax revenue will be spent, should be performed by lawmakers who have not been bribed.
In 2017, the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party, proposed a “Committee Contribution Ban” for Congress. It asserted: “Congress should enact a law to make it unlawful for members of Congress to accept campaign contributions from entities that fall within the jurisdiction of their committees.” Unsurprisingly, this proposal never reached the floor of Congress, that I could find.
Some states have enacted similar conflict of interest rules. And Congress could certainly pass such a law, if it chose. Of course, this will never happen as long as we are ruled by two corporate parties that benefit from the corruption. But if we had a political party that represented ordinary people, countless opportunities for positive change would soon emerge.
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense lawyer and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at DePaul University.
EU will continue to block €19.2 billion in funds for Hungary
Remix News | November 20, 2024
In a new report from the EU Observer entitled, “Billions of EU funds to remain frozen as Hungary fails to reform,” top EU officials stated that Hungary will continue to be blocked from the €19.2 billion in EU funds owed to the country.
The outgoing European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, while speaking to the outlet, confirmed that Hungary’s funds will remain frozen. He stated that concerns about Hungary still exist because the draft texts submitted by Budapest do not address what he vaguely refers to as “conflicts of interest.”
“The current state of play of relevant developments in Hungary demonstrate that important concerns still persist,” he said.
The EU Observer report also notes that the Child Protection Act from Hungary is a factor in blocking funds. The act stops LGBT topics from being taught in public schools and blocks gender reassignment surgeries to safeguard children.
The outlet notes that on Tuesday, “a hearing at the Court of Justice in Luxembourg saw 16 member states and the European Commission confront Hungary over its anti-LGBTQ law.”
“This is a frontal and serious attack on the rule of law, and more generally on European society,” a lawyer representing the European Commission told the court, according to AFP.
As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined in a speech in January of this year, Hungary’s €20 billion would remain frozen until the country opens its borders. It was one of the clearest references to the fact that Hungary’s strict border policy, which is now increasingly mainstream in Europe, is one of the sole reasons behind the frozen money. However, other issues such as LGBT also remain at the top of the agenda for the EU.
Once the government in Poland was changed and the left-liberal Donald Tusk became prime minister, the country’s money was quickly unfrozen. The EU is now wielding EU funds as a powerful tool to attack governments Brussels deems to be political enemies.
Von der Leyen stated once Tusk came to power, that she was “impressed” by his efforts to “restore the rule of law.”
Tusk has taken over public television stations in violation of Polish law, imprisoned political opponents, and completely ignored court orders.
“Shutting Down CISA” Senator Rand Paul’s Crusade Against Online Censorship
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | November 19, 2024
Senator Paul Rand, who is about to take over as chair of the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has spoken in favor of shutting down the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
CISA, a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was established in 2018 to do just what its name says – but has in the meanwhile become weaponized to suppress free speech, opponents believe, citing a number of programs where CISA was involved in monitoring and flagging online posts for removal.
Senator Paul refers to the agency’s behavior – which he says included the ability to censor content and thus influence what information is available to people – as “intrusions into the First Amendment.”
“The First Amendment is important, that’s why we listed it as the First Amendment. I’d like to, at the very least, eliminate their ability to censor content online,” Paul said in a post on X.
The senator was referencing his previous statements made for Politico, when he revealed he is in favor of shuttering CISA completely, while at the same time conceding that this is “unlikely” to happen – but also promising there will be hearings, as the incoming committee starts probing this government entity “working” with social media.
According to Politico, Democrats in Congress would react “fiercely” against any attempt not only to dismantle but also to limit CISA’s powers.
CISA representatives, like senior adviser Ron Eckstein, continue to claim that the agency is merely doing its job, without ever overstepping the mandate and engaging in censorship. Quite the contrary, Eckstein told the press – according to him, CISA is in fact protecting Americans’ “freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy.”
Taking into account what has come to light regarding CISA’s activities over the past four years in particular, that is an extraordinary claim, and one Senator Paul clearly disagrees with.
Even though established under President Trump’s first administration, CISA assumed an active role around the highly contentious 2020 election, allegedly to suppress those voicing their concerns online about the legitimacy of the vote.
CISA and legacy media supporting the policies the agency is executing – or has been until now – describe this as “countering domestic disinformation,” and suggest that CISA is these days more focused on fighting back adversaries from abroad.
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Former Biden Press Sec. Psaki Demands New Laws to Curb Online “Disinformation” After Harris Loss
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 18, 2024
Former White House press secretary, notorious for saying that the Biden administration had been flagging social media posts for “misinformation” recently voiced concerns on the Next Question podcast with Katie Couric about the pervasive spread of “disinformation” on social media, attributing it as a significant factor in Vice President Kamala Harris’s electoral defeat to President-elect Donald Trump. Psaki called for legislative changes to enhance accountability for social media platforms.
“One of the things that’s changed even since I got involved in politics is just the rise of the percentage of people who get their information off of platforms that have no fact-checking mechanism and no accountability for having disinformation spread,” Psaki said.
During their discussion, Psaki lamented the evolution of information dissemination, noting the increasing reliance on platforms free of legacy control. She highlighted the discrepancy in standards between local TV and social media, stating, “Local TV is held to a higher standard of accountability than social media platforms in terms of accurate information on their platforms. That is crazy!”
Psaki added, “Laws have to change. I don’t even know the entire answer to it but that seems to me to be a core issue.”
Psaki didn’t mention the First Amendment.
German Man is Raided By Police For Calling Pro-Censorship Vice Chancellor an “Idiot”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 18, 2024
Yet another event in Germany has raised major concerns about freedom of speech. A 64-year-old pensioner from the Bavarian town of Bamberg found himself at the center of a legal storm after he posted a meme on social media that depicted pro-censorship Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck as a “Schwachkopf Professional” or “professional idiot.” This action prompted a police raid on his home where his computer and phone were seized.
The offending image
The prosecutors statement said: “At a time that cannot currently be specified in more detail in the days or weeks before June 20, 2024, the accused published an image file using the account that shows a portrait of Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck with the title ‘Schwachkopf PROFESSIONAL’, based on the advertising campaign of the Schwarzkopf company, in order to generally defame Robert Habeck and to make it more difficult for him to work as a member of the federal government.”
The raid occurred in August, early in the morning when police officers entered the home of Stefan Niehoff, waking him and his family, which includes his wife and daughter. Niehoff, who had simply shared a meme that humorously altered a beauty care brand’s logo to feature Habeck, expressed his disbelief over the raid. He likened the aggressive enforcement to tactics used during the Communist era in East Germany.
This police action stemmed from a criminal complaint filed by Habeck himself, reacting to what he considered defamation that hindered his governmental duties. German law, refined during the tenure of the former Chancellor Angela Merkel, allows public officials to pursue criminal charges against perceived slanders relating to their official roles. Violations could result in fines or up to three years in prison.
The Vice Chancellor, along with other members of the Green party, has been an active participant in utilizing this law. Reports from the news outlet Junge Freiheit indicate that Habeck’s legal team continuously monitors social media for similar offenses, having filed 805 criminal complaints to date. His colleague, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, has filed 453 such complaints.
Habeck, who wishes to become Germany’s leader, recently called for more online censorship, also calling for “the regulation of algorithms, of X or TikTok, through the application of European legal norms.”
New York’s New Equal Rights Act Will Weaken Parental Rights, Critics Say
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 12, 2024
New York voters last week approved Proposition 1, a ballot measure that adds abortion rights to the state constitution and bars discrimination based on pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes.
The measure, passed with 61.9% of the vote, also protects against discrimination based on age, gender identity or sexual orientation, according to CBS News, which said, “Opponents say the vague language opens up a can of worms that could cause more harm than good.”
Indeed, some legal experts argue that instead of promoting equality, the Equal Rights Act, as the measure is officially known, enshrines discrimination and strips away parental rights.
Opponents of the amendment argue it would “open the door to men using women’s bathrooms and transgender athletes to compete on sports teams that match their gender identities” and “allow minors to get abortions without parental consent.”
New York attorney Bobbie Ann Cox campaigned against Proposition 1. She said the amendment was “unnecessary” because “anti-discrimination laws are already in place.”
Cox told The Defender :
“No new rights were endowed by Proposition 1. In fact, it is the opposite, because Proposition 1 actually restricts our rights. The language is clear: It says we (the people) are not allowed to ‘discriminate’ against the named classes, nor are our firms, corporations or organizations.
“This gives the government license to control us, our firms, corporations and organizations — because who do you think will determine what is deemed ‘discrimination’ or ‘hate speech?’ The government will.”
Michael Kane, founder of Teachers for Choice, told The Defender that Proposition 1 is state lawmakers’ response to grassroots efforts supporting medical freedom and parental rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the state needed this law because “Teachers for Choice and our coalition partners have stopped all assaults on medical freedom and parental rights in Albany for the past five years.”
Kane added:
“Because of that, a group of Democrats from New York City put forth this ‘Equal Rights Amendment’ and rolled their wishlist of legislation into it, to go straight to the New York Constitution — because they knew they couldn’t get any of these crazy pieces of legislation passed in a real democratic process.”
Cox said the amendment “will result in complete totalitarian control” over New Yorkers. “It will flip our norms upside down, and give the government license to abolish our freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, family units and so on,” she said. “It is a Trojan Horse of the most epic kind.”
Kane said that despite the many protections the amendment promises, there are “no protections in Proposition 1 for health freedom, religious freedom or parental rights.”
Instead, the amendment “can and will be used to get parents out of the picture of all medical decisions for children,” Kane said. “This is why Proposition 1 says ‘you can’t discriminate’ against anyone based on ‘age.’”
Amendment gives government ‘power to discriminate against anyone’
The measure amends Article 1, Section 11 of the New York State Constitution on the equal protection of laws, which bans discrimination on the basis of “race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, creed, religion, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”
The second paragraph of the amendment adds:
“Nothing in this section shall invalidate or prevent the adoption of any law, regulation, program, or practice that is designed to prevent or dismantle discrimination on the basis of a characteristic listed in this section, nor shall any characteristic listed in this section be interpreted to interfere with, limit, or deny the civil rights of any person based upon any other characteristic identified in this section.”
According to Cox, this language enshrines reverse discrimination, giving the government “the power to discriminate against anyone they want, at any time, for any reason.” She also criticized the measure’s “vague” language.
“The language of Proposition 1 is vague and extremely broad,” Cox said. “It’s unconstitutional to have overly broad laws for this very reason — the true intent cannot be known, which then leads to courts making the decisions piecemeal, which causes inconsistencies and massive confusion.”
Cox said the ballot did not provide voters with the full text of the amendment. Voters saw only a summary that described the measure as an amendment that “would protect against unequal treatment.”
Writing on Substack last month, Cox called the summary “a total sham, as it doesn’t even give the whole story.” She said the amendment “will unleash a massive tidal wave of chaos upon our citizenry, upon normalcy, and upon all that we hold dear in our society,”
She said she believes the amendment will weaken parental rights, abolish girls’ sports and single-sex spaces, legalize reverse discrimination and result in the “chilling of free speech.”
Cox said claims that the amendment protects the right to an abortion were a “lie.” She said the word “abortion” did not appear on the ballot and that the measure differs from laws passed in other states that explicitly make clear what the state’s laws are regarding abortion.
New amendment to face constitutional challenges
According to CBS News, New York joined seven other states that have “passed measures protecting abortion rights” after the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
Organizations including the New York Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters of New York supported the measure.
Opponents of the amendment had difficulty overcoming support from these groups and key state officials, including Attorney General Letitia James.
Cox told The Defender she has formed a task force to explore legal avenues for challenging the amendment. She said policies the new administration may introduce might facilitate legal actions challenging the amendment.
“It’ll depend on what is done by Trump’s administration and how it is done,” Cox said.
Kane said the amendment “can and will be challenged as being a violation of the federal Constitution.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Democrat Prosecutors Vow to Continue Trying to Jail Trump Allies as Party Floats Shadow Cabinet Idea
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 17.11.2024
Republicans defeated Democratic candidates across the spectrum of electoral contests on November 5, winning the presidency, the House and the Senate. Federal and state lawmakers and governors have drawn up ‘resistance’ plans, while strategists debate the pros and cons of fighting Trump “to the death” versus “playing nice.”
Democratic prosecutors pursuing Donald Trump in his four federal criminal cases reportedly plan to ease off the pressure on the president-elect, but have vowed to continue fiercely pursuing his surrogates and allies, both at the federal and state levels.
“In all likelihood, the state criminal cases will be put on hold during Trump’s presidency. If they try to continue with the prosecutions, or even to impose a stayed sentence, I suspect the decisions will be reversed on appeal. It is even possible that the cases will be dismissed,” Syracuse University law professor Gregory Germain wrote in a post-election analysis of Trump’s legal status.
Citing the election interference case, Germain pointed to the Supreme Court’s July ruling that former presidents enjoy “absolute” immunity with respect to their “core constitutional powers,” which includes some protection against criminal prosecution, and said he’s confident that the Supreme Court would “uphold a self-pardon” for Trump, although such pardoning power doesn’t extend to state prosecutions.
For Trump’s allies, however, among them former chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney Rudy Giuliani, and other lawyers and aides, the situation is not as rosy, Washington beltway outlet The Hill said in an analysis.
“In fact, with Trump effectively out of the picture, any limitations the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision would have put on the prosecution – barring certain evidence and causing further delays – are now gone,” the outlet said, paraphrasing Georgia State University law professor Michael Kreis.
Georgia Democrat and District Attorney Fani Willis, pursuing Trump in the Georgia election interference case, has vowed publicly to continue pursuing the president-elect, notwithstanding the election outcome.
“If someone has an indictment in this office, no matter who they are, we continue to pursue those charges,” Willis told local media this week. “I’m here for eight more years, is my plan. So if that’s what it takes for us to get some justice in some cases, we come to work every day, we’ll come to work and look for justice.”
Willis’s status in the Trump case is precarious and presently being decided by a Georgia appeals court after the discovery of her secret romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the top special prosecutor in the case, which a judge earlier ruled to be a sign of “impropriety.”
Arizona AG Kris Mayes has similarly signaled that her office will not be dropping charges in the “fake electors” prosecution against Trump’s allies.
“I have no intention of dropping that case,” she said. “We won’t be cowed. We won’t be intimidated. And patriots across the country must stand up for our Constitution, for what is lawful.”
The judge in that case quit after the discovery of a controversial email which defendants said showed “utter contempt” for Trump, signaling intolerable bias.
Similar charges are facing Trump surrogates in Michigan, having been previously dismissed or challenged in Nevada, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.
Resistance’s New Idea: Shadow Cabinet
Trump’s imminent return to the White House with GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress has prompted Democrats to brainstorm strategies on what to do over the next 2-4 years, from “resistance” to his agenda at the state level by governors and local legislatures, to fighting his cabinet picks in the Senate by dividing Republicans against one another. Some strategists, pundits and politicians have also called for selective cooperation with the incoming administration, including picking their battles carefully and looking for “common ground when… circumstances dictate.”
Another idea – floated by Democratic-leaning media and North Carolina Democratic Congressman Wiley Nickel last week, is setting up a “shadow cabinet” – a British political tradition of appointing ‘shadow ministers’ (or in the US case ‘shadow cabinet heads’ for executive branch departments, like the Departments of Defense or Justice), to scrutinize government policy.
The shadow cabinet system presently exists in Commonwealth countries, and a handful of other nations, including Denmark, Italy, Japan, and occasionally, France (where the practice is uncommon).
“We need new ideas,” Nickel said of the initiative. “Democrats have to stop playing defense and start going on offense. It’s not enough to say we’re against Trump and his Project 2025 agenda. We have to say what we’re for, and that’s what’s really behind this idea, to get folks there to counter every cabinet agency, every position that Trump appoints.”
Nickel has called his idea “democracy’s insurance policy,” and indicated that the 26-member shadow cabinet could be appointed by Democratic House and Senate leaders.
“It’s really easy,” the lawmaker assured, floating Senator Adam Schiff as Shadow Attorney General, Representative Adam Smith as Shadow Pentagon chief, Representative Suzan Delbene as Shadow Commerce Secretary, and Representative Rosa Delauro as Shadow Health and Human Service Secretary, to name a few.
In the British tradition, shadow cabinets have no executive power. This means that even if the Democrats manage to set up an American version, they will not be able to implement their own agenda.
Ukrainian MP calling for dialogue with Russia jailed
RT | November 17, 2024
A court in Kiev has placed Ukrainian MP Evgeny Shevchenko in custody for two months after the authorities charged him with treason. Earlier this month, he urged Vladimir Zelensky to engage in dialogue with Russia.
Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, Kiev outlawed a number of opposition parties, including Opposition Platform – For Life, the second biggest party in terms of seats in parliament. The authorities cited the opposition’s presumed involvement in subversive activities.
Several individual MPs have similarly been prosecuted.
On Friday, the judge in Shevchenko’s case ruled that the lawmaker would remain behind bars until January 11, 2025. The day before, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) charged him with treason, accusing him of “systematically” spreading pro-Russian narratives in his speeches and online content. The authorities cited Shevchenko’s publications on Telegram and YouTube, describing them as “harming Ukraine’s defense capabilities and information security.”
The prosecutor also noted that since late 2020, the lawmaker traveled dozens of times to neighboring Belarus and met with President Alexander Lukashenko. Kiev does not recognize Lukashenko as the legitimate leader of the country, which is a key ally of Russia.
One visit in April 2021 resulted in Shevchenko being expelled from the ruling Servant of the People parliamentary faction.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Shevchenko suggested that he was being targeted for political reasons. His defense lawyers called the case a hastily prepared concoction of materials.
In a post on Telegram last Thursday, Shevchenko called on Zelensky to “begin dialogue” with Russia. “I understand that you will have to go after that. But the country is more important than personal ambitions,” the lawmakers wrote.
He also offered to travel to Belarus and help mediate the process. The MP warned the Ukrainian leader that if he refuses to negotiate, “you will be forced to go… by those who applauded you yesterday in Western countries.”
Commenting on the suggestion, Andrey Yermak, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that some lawmakers “seem to be confused about issues of national security, national interests, and the future of the country.”
Shevchenko responded by urging Yermak to stop “eliminating” dissenting lawmakers, as “this won’t do Ukraine any good.” In a separate post on Telegram, he called for an end to the “political persecution” of these MPs.
“I wrote a letter to [US President-elect] Donald Trump and [VP-elect] J.D. Vance asking for assistance in putting an end to further authoritarianism, dictatorship, and lawlessness” in Ukraine, he added.
Rationality Triumphs over Fear in Federal Court
By Harvey Risch | Brownstone Institue | November 17, 2024
In a landmark decision in federal court, after a hung jury in the first hearing, the second jury found in favor of fired BART workers who had sued their employer after termination for filing vaccine mandate religious exemption applications. Each of the six plaintiffs in the case was awarded more than $1 million by the jury.
During the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments and employers both private and public across the country instituted vaccine mandates requiring employees to have completed “full vaccination,” typically two doses of the mRNA vaccines, by set dates in fall 2021. Similar vaccine mandates were ordered for military personnel as well as college and university students.
In general, these mandates allowed that mandated individuals could file exemptions based on sincere religious objections or medical necessity, and if these exemptions were granted, employers were then required to seek, in good faith, accommodation positions where the exempted personnel could still work but would pose less of an infection risk to other employees, patients, customers, students etc. This process of exemption and accommodation was covered by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) rules.
According to the EEOC rules, as interpreted after the Groff v. DeJoy Supreme Court case which was decided in June 2023, employers have been required to establish that employees not satisfying vaccination mandates would create “undue hardship” in order for the employer to terminate the employee. The EEOC rules specify that infection risk, such as that occurring during the Covid-19 pandemic, constitutes a valid hardship risk, but what is in question is whether such risks constitute “undue” hardship as stated in Groff v. DeJoy.
In a sound and rational analysis, the EEOC rules (section L.3) attempt to quantify the degree of infection hardship risk:
“An employer will need to assess undue hardship by considering the particular facts of each situation and will need to demonstrate how much cost or disruption the employee’s proposed accommodation would involve. An employer cannot rely on speculative or hypothetical hardship when faced with an employee’s religious objection but, rather, should rely on objective information. Certain common and relevant considerations during the COVID-19 pandemic include, for example, whether the employee requesting a religious accommodation to a COVID-19 vaccination requirement works outdoors or indoors, works in a solitary or group work setting, or has close contact with other employees or members of the public (especially medically vulnerable individuals). Another relevant consideration is the number of employees who are seeking a similar accommodation, i.e., the cumulative cost or burden on the employer.”
These rules provide a framework for evaluating the degree of infection transmission risk posed by employees, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, in a workplace. What is remarkable here is that EEOC used the “does,” not the “can,” criterion. “Does” is rationality; “can” is fear.
In legal cases at deposition or testimony, science and medical experts are frequently asked questions such as “Doctor, can drug X cause bad event Y?” Medical and science experts live in a mental universe of science theories, and of course, there might be some possible circumstance where drug X could cause bad outcome Y. We were taught in medical school, “Never say never.”
The question however is not really asking whether, in theory, drug X could cause bad outcome Y, but rather whether here on planet Earth, such outcomes actually do happen. The opposing attorney is trying to get a sound bite from the expert that the drug is potentially harmful. So while the question as posed asks “could” (or “can”) the drug do damage, the correct answer from the expert is, “In theory, the drug could do this, but in real-life applications, the drug does not do this.” “Does” conveys a quantitative estimate of how often things actually happen, whereas “can” is a theoretical question with major fear potential.
In 2021, it was not just the general public that had been propagandized to excessive fear of Covid-19, but companies and governments were also made to be afraid. Thus, many company decisions were based on fear, on supposed “worst-case scenarios,” that disregarded the range of effects of the decisions in favor of supposed benefits for reduced risks of Covid infection transmission.
Compounding this problem, the vaccines did appear to reduce risks of Covid transmission during the first half of 2021, giving employers empirical evidence to support their thinking about vaccine mandates.
However, by the time the vaccine mandates were implemented in the fall of 2021, the widespread Delta strain of Covid-19 infection had largely escaped vaccine immunity (remember the first booster campaign?) and thus the evidence of Covid-19 transmission risk reduction for “full vaccination” required by the mandates was virtually gone—except that medical experts for the defendants in the BART and other cases were still using the earlier stale evidence to support their scientific assertions. This also violates EEOC rules which require the use of the latest scientific evidence.
Thus in retrospect, as I had discussed in my testimony as an epidemiology expert for plaintiffs in the BART case, the jury appears to have eventually apprised the circumstances accurately: the small numbers of religiously exempt employees did not pose a major infection transmission risk in comparison to the large BART workforce or to the even larger BART ridership—patrons who themselves were not required to be vaccinated in order to ride the BART trains. In the case’s initial verdict form, the jury unanimously concluded, for each of the six plaintiffs, in response to the question, “Has BART proven that the plaintiff could not be reasonably accommodated without undue hardship?” they wrote, “NO, not proven by BART.”
That is, the fact that such individuals “could” pose infection transmission risks, did not establish an undue hazard that they “would” pose inordinate infection transmission risks. According to the rules laid out by the EEOC, rationality prevailed over fear in this case. One hopes that this legal precedent informs the many similar cases pending, of employees, students, and service members irrationally and unjustly terminated because of fear, not evidence.
Harvey Risch, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a physician and a Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His main research interests are in cancer etiology, prevention and early diagnosis, and in epidemiologic methods.
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An Expert Military Analysis of War with China
Actually, None is Necessary
By Fred Reed • Unz Review • December 13, 2020
The Correlation of Armed Forces: U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled an estimated $634.8 billion in 2019. Exports were $163.0 billion; imports were $471.8 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with China was $308.8 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $76.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were $56.5 billion; services imports were $20.1 billion. The U.S. services trade surplus with China was $36.4 billion in 2019.
There is talk within the Washingtoniat of a possible war with China. Steve Bannon, who apparently was dropped on his head as a child, actually favors such a war. We hear the usual shoo-the-boobs alarm about how the Chinese are doing something terrible and we must gird our loins and American values and show them what for, bow wow, woof. The danger is that the current game of who-blinks-first in Asian waters might actually provoke a shooting war. You know the kind of thing: One warship refuses to get out of the way of another, a collision ensues, some retard lieutenant who signed up on waivers opens fire, and we’re off and running. It is not a good idea to let children play with matches.
The said war is discussed either in emotional terms by idiots or in purely naval terms by those familiar with such things, so we hear of the First Island Chain and the Second Island Chain and whose missiles against the other’s missiles and so on. This would be appropriate if we were fighting World War Two again. Which we aren’t. Let’s take a quick-and-dirty look at how such a war might go.
To begin the war, America would overestimate itself and underestimate China. This is doctrine in the Pentagon. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Rethinking America’s greatest threat: Iran vs. Israel-Firsters
- Iran accuses adversaries of false flags to strain Turkey ties
- Poland rules out sending Patriot missiles to US/Israel amid war on Iran
- Tehran approves new Hormuz plan with major restrictions
- No Threat Can Force Iran’s Surrender /Trita Parsi & Lt Cl Daniel Davis
- UK’s New Pandemic Plan Would Turn Big Tech Into a Mass Location Tracking Network
- Growing insecurity, soaring prices fuel protests in north as regime bans evacuation: Sources
- Iran denies responsibility for ‘depraved’ attack on Kuwait desalination plant
- Bring The Troops Back. End This War Now!
- Can we please stop calling Israel the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ now?
- If Americans Knew
- The Line Between Affinity and Conspiracy
- As Iran targets US military bases, will they be relocated to Israel? Not a ceasefire Day 171
- Will Trump Go Kamikaze?
- Is the University of Florida Shutting Down College Republicans over Israel Criticism?
- Jewish extremist arrested over alleged plot to firebomb Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani’s home
- More than half of Palestinian child detainees have no charges
- The More Murderous Israel Gets, The More We Hear About “Antisemitism”
- Land Day and the Palestinian struggle after 30 months of genocide
- The Iran War Is About Palestine
- Israeli soldiers echo settler ideology, talk of revenge after targeting Palestinians and detaining CNN crew in the West Bank
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
- Storing Green Energy To Last Germany 10 Days Would Require A 60-Million Tonne Battery
- New Studies: UK Sea Levels Were 4 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Destructive Green New Deal: German Energy And Metal Group Warns Of Drastic Crisis
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