Trump-Vance Intentionally Blurs The Line Between Illegal And Legal Immigrants

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

No One Is Safe

The Trump-Vance ticket’s unbridled racist attacks on Haitian immigrants in Ohio – as a proxy for attacking immigrants and people of color everywhere – continue unabated deep into the second week of serving as a centerpiece of a campaign that was searching for a way to gain traction against Kamala Harris.

In a troubling sign of how the xenophobia at play here may be yoked to the powers of the federal government in a Trump II presidency, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH, ironically) insisted on continuing to call the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio “illegal aliens” even though they are legal immigrants.

When confronted by a questioner about the Haitians being in the country legally, Vance played to the crowd and, with stubborn grandiosity, stuck to his false claim denying them their legal status:

As NPR noted, Vance’s remarks had the additional effect of calling into question whether a not insignificant portion of the immigrant community would lose their legal statuses if Trump wins. Combined with the specter of Trump’s threat of mass deportations if he wins, the rhetoric that the Republican campaign is staking the race on continues to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration in a way that puts immigrants of all statuses at risk.

In other developments:

  • TPM’s Nicole Lafond: Ohio Republican Leaders Gently Beg Trump To Please Not Visit Springfield
  • Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and his wife have traveled to Haiti at least 25 times and helped found a school there named after their late daughter.
  • Adam Serwer: The Real Reason Trump and Vance Are Spreading Lies About Haitians
  • WSJ: How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants—After Being Told They Weren’t True

By The Numbers: Pennsylvania

2024 Ephemera

  • The national Teamsters union is declining to issue an endorsement in the presidential race for the first time in almost three decades.
  • More than 100 former GOP national security officials and members of Congress endorsed Kamala Harris, calling Donald Trump “unfit to serve again as president.”
  • The Guardian: “Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.”

‘Unwelcome and Unacceptable Malicious Activity’

AP: Iranian hackers tried but failed to interest Biden’s campaign in stolen Trump info, FBI says

TPM Exclusive

A trio of Democratic senators on the relevant committees – Judiciary and Intel – have told TPM they favor a Senate investigation into murky claims surfaced last month by the WaPo that Egypt allegedly funneled $10 million to Donald Trump to boost his 2016 campaign – an allegation that was being probed by federal investigators until they were reportedly stymied by the Trump DOJ.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have moved to unseal court documents related to the story.

Oh …

ProPublica: “Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.”

House GOP Is Doing House GOP Things

Punchbowl, with the punchy lede:

At the outset of September, House Republican leaders told us they were going to spend the weeks before the election dividing Democrats and uniting the GOP.

But in forcing a vote on a six-month CR with the SAVE Act — a move that failed badly on the House floor Wednesday night — Speaker Mike Johnson succeeded in spending a week dividing his party and lessening his already minuscule leverage with the Senate.

Sign Of The Times

A bipartisan group of four members of Congress are proposing a constitutional amendment to ensure continuity of government in the event of a mass casualty attack on the national legislature.

For The Record

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) issued an executive order banning “conversion therapy” for minors.

Riveting

The NYT has the best rundown of Israel’s staggering one-two punch against Hezbollah using exploding pagers Tuesday then exploding walkie-talkies Wednesday.

Ghosts Of Joe McCarthy

This may be the most outrageous conduct I’ve ever seen from a member of Congress in a committee hearing.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) has patented his country bumpkin schtick – and believe me when I tell you it’s pure schtick – but it wore thin a long time ago. His atrocious behavior Wednesday in relentlessly and falsely besmirching the leader of an Arab American group was neither home-spun nor folksy.

It was racist, inflammatory, intellectually dishonest, and put Maya Berry and Arab Americans everywhere at personal risk of physical harm by labeling them as terrorist sympathizers on the basis of their religion and ethnicity:

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Immigrants Are Unsung Heroes Of Global Trade And Value Creation, Research Finds

Posted on by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

In nearly every country that hosts foreign-born citizens, immigration emerges as a lightning rod for controversy. The economic realities of immigration, however, are far more complex than the negative sound bites suggest.

Far from being a burden, as critics claim, immigrants play pivotal roles in driving innovation, enhancing productivity and fostering economic growth in their adopted countries. They also elevate their adopted and origin countries’ standings in global value chains, contributing to economic resilience.

We are economists who study global trade and migration, and our recent work reveals that immigrants contribute far more to the economic fabric of nations than previously understood.

By facilitating what’s known as “trade in value added,” or TiVA, immigrants play a crucial role in helping countries specialize their production, move up the value chain and significantly enhance trade sophistication.

Moving up the value chain means progressing from producing basic, low-value goods to more complex, higher-value products. This shift involves improving skills, technology and production techniques, allowing a country to capture more economic value and develop advanced industries.

So, what exactly is trade in value added, and why is it important?

In today’s global economy, products are rarely made entirely in one country. Instead, different stages of production occur across multiple nations. TiVA measures each country’s contribution to a final product, providing clearer insight into global value chains. For instance, while an iPhone may be assembled in China, its components come from various countries, each adding value.

Measuring the effect on global value chains

Our study found that a 10% increase in immigrants from a particular country residing in one of the 38 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member states leads to a 2.08% increase in the value added from their home country that becomes embedded in their host country’s exports to the world.

This effect was strongest in the services sector, followed closely by agriculture and manufacturing.

To understand how this works, consider Indian software engineers in Silicon Valley. Their understanding of the U.S. tech industry and India’s IT sector can lead to partnerships. These partnerships lead to Indian firms providing specialized coding services for American tech giants. The result? Higher-value U.S. tech exports that incorporate Indian expertise. This perfectly illustrates how immigrants boost trade in value added.

Or take Chinese immigrants in Italy’s fashion industry. Their cultural knowledge might help Italian luxury brands tailor products for the Chinese market and connect Italian designers with highly skilled textile workers in China. The result? Italian fashion exports incorporate Chinese craftsmanship, elevating both countries’ global fashion value chain positions.

Our findings show that immigrants are pivotal bridges in global trade networks. They leverage their unique knowledge, skills and connections to strengthen economic bonds between nations. That’s in line with previous research showing the significant role immigrants play in fostering bilateral trade.

Why immigration matters in the global economy

In an era of increasing skepticism toward globalization and migration, understanding the positive economic impacts of immigration is crucial. Our current and previous research, and the findings from related studies, indicate that rather than “stealing jobs,” immigrants often create value and new economic opportunities that might not otherwise exist.

Immigrants bring diverse skills, knowledge and networks to their host countries that can enhance innovation, fill labor shortages and open new market opportunities. They often possess unique insights into their home country markets, helping host country firms navigate cultural nuances and business practices that might otherwise pose trade barriers.

For home countries, emigrants can serve as cultural ambassadors, creating awareness, showcasing products and services, and helping to integrate their homeland into global value chains. They may also contribute to knowledge transfer, investment flows and business connections that boost their home and host countries’ economic development.

Moreover, immigrants’ ability to enhance trade in value added suggests they play a role in moving countries up the economic value chain. Rather than simply facilitating trade in raw materials or essential manufactured goods, immigrants appear to boost trade in more sophisticated, higher-value products and services. This is crucial for economic development, as countries that position themselves higher in global value chains tend to see bigger benefits.

Rethinking immigration and trade policies

Our observations have important implications for both immigration and trade. For one, they suggest that restrictive immigration policies might have unintended consequences, hindering a country’s trade performance and position in global value chains. Countries that want to become more economically competitive might consider more open immigration policies.

What’s more, our research indicates that immigrants’ economic benefits extend beyond the often-cited labor-market and fiscal impacts — in other words, having more workers who pay more taxes.

The evidence suggests policymakers should take a more holistic view of immigration’s economic effects, considering its role in facilitating sophisticated international trade and value creation.

Our results also align with previous research highlighting the potential value of workforce diversity for businesses, particularly for firms engaged in international trade. Employees from diverse national backgrounds can bring valuable insights and connections that help their companies navigate global markets and value chains.

It’s worth noting that immigrants’ impact on trade in value added varies across countries and sectors. This suggests that rather than one-size-fits-all approaches, targeted policies might most effectively leverage immigration for economic benefit.

Maximizing immigration’s positive impacts on trade and value chains also requires supportive policies and institutions that allow immigrants to use their skills and networks fully. These might include programs to assist with economic integration, language training, credential recognition and support for immigrant entrepreneurship.

A new perspective on immigration

As the global economy continues to evolve, with value chains becoming ever more complex and interconnected, the role of immigrants as facilitators of trade and value creation is likely to grow even more significant. Countries that recognize and leverage this potential stand to gain a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

Our research paints a picture of immigrants not as economic burdens but as valuable assets who enhance their host and home countries’ positions in the global economy. By making sophisticated trade linkages possible, and by boosting participation in global value chains, immigrants contribute to economic growth and development in ways that go far beyond conventional understanding.

As debates around immigration continue, it’s crucial to move beyond simplistic narratives and recognize the complex and often subtle ways that immigrants contribute to prosperity. In an interconnected world, immigrants aren’t just crossing borders — they are helping to weave the fabric of global trade and value creation.

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

The Conversation

Newsom Takes Significant Stab At Reining In Social Media Disinfo, Prompting Ire From Musk

Posted on by Emine Yücel

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed three artificial intelligence bills into law on Tuesday in an attempt to require social media companies to moderate the spread of disinfo and deepfakes — deceptive images, videos or audio clips resembling actual people — during elections. 

The trio, including a first-of-its-kind-law, largely aims to ban, remove or label AI-generated deepfakes and other intentionally misleading content related to elections during specific periods. 

While disinformation has played a growing role in American elections for decades, deepfake technology has in recent years advanced at a ferocious speed. 

Deepfakes Ahead Of 2024 Elections

The 2024 cycle has seen an explosion of faked videos, prompting high-profile controversies. 

In August, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social a deceptive, AI-generated image in which Taylor Swift appeared to endorse his candidacy — a move which backfired when the very popular singer instead endorsed Kamala Harris for president while warning of the dangers of deepfakes and misinformation.

In July, Elon Musk shared a faked Harris campaign video in which a manipulated version of Harris’ voice taking digs at her gender, race, her record as vice president and President Joe Biden. “This is amazing,” the tech CEO wrote with a laughing-crying emoji. 

That episode prompted Newsom to preview the California legislation. “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” he tweeted at the time. “I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Musk took to social media to mock the new California laws over several posts, suggesting they were violations of the First Amendment and would “make parody illegal.” The laws contain exemptions for parody, but one of the three requires parodies to feature a disclaimer in the run-up to an election.

The newly minted California laws come as lawmakers across the country have been contemplating how to regulate AI-generated political content to contain the spread of misinformation and disinformation aimed at confusing voters.

Over the last two years, Capitol Hill has shown sporadic interest in the ramifications of AI, specifically political deepfakes, as well as how to regulate them without undermining freedom of speech rights. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced bills to try and address a complicated set of issues without success. State legislatures have also sought to address the problem: Over the past two years, 18 states have passed some form of laws to limit deepfakes in elections, according to Public Citizen’s tracker.

The California Bills

The California bills are “game changers,” said Oren Etzioni, the founder and CEO of TrueMedia.org — a non-profit dedicated to fighting political deepfakes — and the founding director of the Allen Institute for AI. If successfully enacted, the laws will force social media companies to react by building restrictions into their platforms, he told TPM.

The first bill signed by Newsom, which takes effect immediately and aims to limit the circulation of deepfakes, prohibits people or groups “from knowingly distributing an advertisement or other election material containing deceptive AI-generated or manipulated content” within 120 days of a California election.

The second, set to go into effect in January, requires AI generated audio, video or images in political advertisements to be labeled.

And the third one, also set to go into effect in the new year, requires social media platforms and other websites with more than one million users in California to label or remove AI generated deepfakes within 72 hours following a complaint. The bill also empowers “candidates, elected officials, elections officials, the Attorney General, and a district attorney or city attorney to seek injunctive relief against a large online platform for noncompliance with the act.”

“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation — especially in today’s fraught political climate,” Newsom said in a Tuesday statement detailing the three bills.

The laws will almost certainly face extensive challenges in court from social media companies and First Amendment rights groups. The creator of the video Musk tweeted filed a suit in federal court on Wednesday.

Etonzi expressed concern about how California regulators will enforce the bills, and about the provisions of the bills that require social media companies to identify and take action against deepfakes on their own. 

“Self regulation is a little bit like asking the fox to regulate himself outside the hen house,” Etzioni said. “Not likely to be effective, and has actually proven to not be effective by and large.”

But if California prevails, Etzioni said, the state, as home to many leading social media and AI companies, could offer a roadmap for regulators across the country — or at the federal level — who are hoping to successfully curb the use of deepfakes. 

In fact, Newsom signed the bills the same week that a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including California’s U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Adam Schiff (D), introduced a House bill that would federally prohibit political campaigns and other political groups from using AI to create deepfakes to misrepresent their rivals or their views. That bill would also give the Federal Election Commission the power to regulate the use of AI in elections.

Ohio Republican Leaders Gently Beg Trump To Please Not Visit Springfield

Posted on by Nicole Lafond

Republican officials in Ohio are politely pleading with the Trump campaign to not visit Springfield after it spent weeks stoking false claims about Haitian immigrants eating residents’ pets, plunging the city into chaos.

Continue reading “Ohio Republican Leaders Gently Beg Trump To Please Not Visit Springfield” → 

A Look at the Race 48 Days Out

Posted on by Josh Marshall

We are now 48 days until the 2024 general election. And with the date speeding toward us, I wanted to check in on the state of the race and the latest polls. Kate and I recorded this week’s podcast this morning. And the theme was sort of trying to make sense of just what is happening right now in the aftermath of the build up to the debate and the debate itself. We have another assassination attempt which seems like an oddly secondary story. We have the ongoing grotesquery of Trump’s and Vance’s assault on Springfield, Ohio. The Trump campaign has been rather candid with reporters, telling them that they’re willing to take the hit on now admitting they were lying about the initial Fido and Felix barbecue allegations since it puts immigration at the forefront of the campaign. In other words, it might seem like a bad story for them — they’re revealed as cynical and destructive liars. But it’s a great theme for them. Because if the topic of the day is immigration, they win.

Continue reading “A Look at the Race 48 Days Out” → 

Judge Aileen Cannon Failed to Disclose a Right-Wing Junket

Posted on by John Light

This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.

Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”

A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.

It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize.

Current rates for standard rooms at Sage Lodge can exceed $1,000 per night, depending on the season. With both Montana trips, Cannon’s required seminar disclosures were not posted until NPR reporters asked about the omissions this year as part of a broader national investigation of gaps in judicial disclosures.

Cannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the clerk in the Southern District of Florida wrote in an email that Cannon had filed the Sage Lodge trips with the federal judiciary’s administrative office but had “inadvertently” not taken the second step of posting them on the court’s website. She explained that “Judges often do not realize they must input the information twice.”

The clerk said she had no information about the May 2023 banquet.

“Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Cannon’s husband, Joshua Lorence, a restaurant executive, accompanied her to the 2021 and 2022 colloquiums, which featured noted conservative jurists, lawyers and professors as well as lengthy “afternoon study breaks,” according to records obtained by ProPublica. Cannon emailed university staff to submit airport parking expenses and inquire about rental car reimbursement.

The rule for paid seminars is among the policies set by the Judicial Conference. Federal judges are also required by law to file annual financial disclosures, listing items such as assets, outside income and gifts.

Cannon’s annual disclosure form for 2023, which was due in May and offers another chance to report gifts and reimbursements from outside parties, has yet to be posted. (Cannon reported the two Montana trips on her annual disclosure forms, but the required 30-day privately funded seminar reports had not been posted. In 2021, Cannon incorrectly listed the school as “George Madison University.”)

The court’s administrative office declined to say if she requested a one-time extension to give her until Aug. 13 to file. A spokesperson would not discuss whether she met the deadline or the status of her disclosure, which must be reviewed internally.

Cannon’s performance during almost four years of a lifetime appointment has drawn criticism from lawyers, former federal judges and courtroom observers who told ProPublica that she doesn’t render timely decisions and has made unpredictable rulings in both civil and criminal matters. On July 15, she threw out the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that alleges Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence; Cannon called Smith’s appointment unconstitutional since he was not nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.

Smith is appealing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked the court to remand her decision and replace her.

By contrast, Trump, who appointed Cannon in 2020 to the Fort Pierce courthouse, has praised her brilliance, and Federalist Society founder Steven Calabresi called her a heroine for throwing out the criminal case against Trump.

For decades, judicial education programs sponsored by George Mason’s Law and Economics Center have drawn in 5,000 state and federal judges and four current Supreme Court justices, according to its website. The school says its programs strive for balance and intellectual rigor. But conference agendas and speaker lists that the university must file with the courts detail lectures and panel discussions built around Federalist Society principles that are associated with conservative legal movements.

Ken Turchi, associate dean for external affairs, said the law school plays no role in judicial disclosures. “Judges’ decisions to submit (or not submit) disclosure forms are theirs alone — it’s a self-reporting process,” he said.

The guest list for the May 2023 Scalia Forum included William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit, which is now hearing Smith’s appeal. Pryor and dinner speaker Kyle Duncan, a 5th Circuit judge, did file their required disclosures for the Scalia dinner.

Pryor’s court has overruled Cannon twice in the Trump case. It sided with the government in September 2022 on a motion for a stay and found that it “had established a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” In December 2022, it ruled that she erred in naming a special master to examine classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. After that decision, Cannon had to dismantle an expensive operation set up by her special master, a senior federal judge in New York.

Gabe Roth, who directs Fix the Court, a nonprofit judicial reform group, said compliance with the privately funded seminar rule has improved in some circuits since his group pressed for compliance with the Administrative Office of the Courts.

“They’re a more effective way for litigants and the public to get a sense of what types of individuals and groups a judge might be hanging out with and learning from,” he said.

Records show that Cannon submitted minor reimbursement requests related to the Scalia Forum trip after she returned, including the 158 miles she drove round trip to the airport. She inquired with George Mason staff about details for an Alaska excursion recommended by a former lawyer in the Trump-era White House Counsel’s Office.

Cannon registered for George Mason’s Hill Country Colloquium at a Texas resort in December 2023 but had to back out for scheduling reasons.

“I hope to join that event, and others, in future years,” she wrote.

If you have information about Judge Aileen M. Cannon, please contact Marilyn W. Thompson at marilyn.thompson@propublica.org.

The More Desperate Trump Gets, The More Toxic His Rhetoric Becomes

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Of Course It Came To This

We’ve moved into the endgame stage of the 2024 campaign, and it’s now obvious that the pivot Donald Trump made when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden was away from the bizarre, new-fangled Biden Crime Family conspiracies to the old tried and true racist and xenophobic attacks that have animated Trump’s national political presence since 2015.

The media coverage of the sustained Trump-Vance attacks on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, has been remarkably clear-headed that the underlying claims around “eating pets” are baseless, fabricated, and continue to be disseminated in full knowledge of their falsity.

What remains a challenge to the media coverage and the national conversation is that Trump’s point isn’t about “eating pets,” or Haitian immigrants, or Springfield. It’s about othering entire segments of the population, largely based on skin color and national origin. It’s about stoking fear in white people about these “others.” And it all reverberates and echoes in the context of othering Harris herself, whose bi-racial identity Trump hasn’t hesitated to highlight in a disparaging way.

Debunking the underlying supposed factual basis for the claims, while important, doesn’t debunk the racism, the xenophobia, or the corrosive effects on American civic life. Those explicit racist messages – not dog whistles, not coded, not euphemized – come through loud and clear to all who are listening, from white nationalists on one extreme to Republican voters to immigrant communities now feeling isolated and under siege.

We’ve seen Trump play this game before with much-easier-to-substantiate claims of undocumented immigrants committing violent crimes, which was a consistent focus of his last two campaigns. The fact that that he picked a more outrageous falsehood to parade around is perhaps a sign of his growing desperation. His lead over Biden slipped away after Harris entered the race, and we should never let it drift too far from our awareness that Trump’s own personal liberty is dependent upon winning this election.

Down The Memory Hole!

CNN: JD Vance got a former professor to delete a blog post Vance wrote in 2012 attacking GOP over anti-immigrant rhetoric

More Incitement

JD Vance’s apparent logic – that the GOP ticket can only be blamed for actual bombs not bomb scares, and that any reporting on bomb threats is a lie and fake news – serves merely as pretext for attacking the messengers:

‘You Can’t Have That Microphone Again’

In an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered this remarkable extended answer on the virulent racist attacks that have become the central theme of the Trump-Vance campaign:

What Laura Loomer Represents To White Nationalists

Laura Loomer’s suddenly higher visibility with Donald Trump just happened to coincide with Trump-Vance unleashing their attacks on Haitian immigrants. It’s not a signal that’s lost on the extreme right:

It’s Not Just Trump-Vance

Your occasional reminder that the entire GOP has made xenophobic attacks on immigrants the centerpiece of the general election campaign, most comprehensively with its fixation on the fake problem of non-citizen voting in federal elections.

As TPM’s Khaya Himmelman reports, in addition to its racist appeal, the non-citizen voting canard also serves the GOP purposes of delegitimizing any election that Democrats wins. And it started months in advance of a single vote being counted.

Important Read

Mother Jones:

Over the last several years, the field [of disinformation research] has undergone a broadscale attack from politicians, right-wing media, and tech industry giants. As a result, research has been curtailed, people have been laid off, and academics working in the space even fear talking to one another, lest it leave them open to charges of “conspiring” by their adversaries.

Election Threat Watch

  • A series of suspicious mailings, some including unknown foreign substances, were sent to election officials in at least 14 states: Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Indiana, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut.
  • Russia has retooled its election interference efforts to target the new Harris-Walz ticket, according to a new threat assessment report from Microsoft.
  • Federal judge warns the judiciary that foreign actors could try to interfere in election-related cases.

Trying To Flip The Script

Since Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt against him, Donald Trump has been trying to leverage it into a political cudgel against Democrats, claiming that by calling him a threat to democracy they are inciting violence against him.

CNN queued up clips of Trump using similar (although baseless) language against Democrats:

GOP Still Targeting Childless Americans

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, at a Trump town hall event in Michigan yesterday, engaged in another pernicious way of othering Kamala Harris:

The Grifting Never Stops

CNN: “Donald Trump and his children unveiled a new cryptocurrency business Monday in a virtual address from his Mar-a-Lago estate, the latest venture that stands to benefit the former president as he seeks another four years in the Oval Office.”

Senate Republicans Again Block Bill To Protect IVF

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) forced another election-year vote on a bill to protect IVF nationally, and again Senate Republicans blocked it.

Schumer’s maneuvering indirectly set up this bit of nationally televised screw-turning that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) had to endure:

GOP Gov’t Shutdown Watch

I’ve been reluctant to put House Speaker Mike Johnson’s flailing efforts to avoid a government shutdown on your radar, largely because it seems like such an insane self-own by Republicans to force the issue right before the election. Alas, insane self-owns remain a House GOP speciality.

Editor’s Note

Today’s news happens to be a little more video heavy than usual, and that often prompts complaints about Morning Memo’s use of video embeds from X/Twitter. Your concerns are noted and largely shared. It continues to be a challenge to survey the news for you in this fragmented media ecosystem. Between cartoon villain owners turning their platforms into right-wing propaganda machines, dubious privacy practices, paywalls, and other barriers, it’s a jungle out there. There are no easy answers or perfect solutions to navigating this complicated terrain. As the media ecosystem evolves, Morning Memo continues to look for new and innovative ways to bring you the news without making you go “Ick!” about the sources of the news (can’t promise how you’ll react to the news itself though). It’s a imperfect work in progress, but your concerns are heard.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Key Dem Senators Call For Probe Into Allegations That Egypt Funneled $10M To Trump For 2016 Campaign 

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Democratic senators on two relevant committees are calling for their panels to investigate allegations last month in the Washington Post about a now-closed government probe into whether Egypt funneled $10 million to Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign for president. 

Continue reading “Key Dem Senators Call For Probe Into Allegations That Egypt Funneled $10M To Trump For 2016 Campaign “ → 

Trump Campaign Would Love A Government Shutdown

Posted on by Nicole Lafond

Once it became clear to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) last week that he didn’t have the votes to attach a bill that would require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote to a must-pass stopgap spending bill to keep the government open, he said he would spend the weekend having “family conversations” to build a “consensus.”

It’s unclear if Johnson was able to do that. But he did spend some time with Donald Trump this weekend.

Continue reading “Trump Campaign Would Love A Government Shutdown” →