A member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents has asked if the university system’s Morris campus has become “too diverse.”
Steve Sviggum, a former GOP Speaker of the House, asked the school’s acting Chancellor Janet Schrunk if the school, which had 58% white enrollment pre-pandemic and 54% now, had become too diverse “from a marketing standpoint.”
Continue reading “Annals of University Governance”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
New FEC filings reveal that Sen. Ron Johnson’s reelection campaign (R-WI) paid more than $20,000 this past summer to Troupis Law, the legal firm headed by Trump campaign lawyer James Troupis–a key plotter in the MAGA sham elector scheme.
The Biden administration officially unrolled its student debt forgiveness program on Monday, which will wipe out up to $20,000 in federal student loans for eligible borrowers.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams (and Libertarian nominee Shane Hazel) squared off in their first debate in the high-stakes gubernatorial race on Monday night.
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Hillbilly elegist J.D. Vance had a second debate last night as they battle over a key Ohio Senate seat.
“Kari Lake’s sugarcoated Trumpism is scarier than the original” – Greg Sargent at the Washington Post
Lake is making similar gestures, while casting them as an effort to appeal to people’s better instincts. That’s a departure from Trump, whose innovation was to communicate to voters they should not be ashamed of their xenophobic, antidemocratic — even cruel and malevolent instincts — but should wear them proudly.
In an escalation of recent tensions with the U.S., Saudi Arabia has arrested and sentenced an American citizen to 16 years in prison over tweets that criticized the regime for corruption and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Fox News host Sean Hannity hosted a town hall in Georgia last night for embattled Georgia GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker, with Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as backup. Hannity made virtually no effort to disguise the event as anything more than an opportunity to clean up Walker’s campaign amid unceasing scandals over fake cop badges, a paid abortion, and domestic abuse.
Welp, we might have another reason why rapper Ye (formerly Kanye) West went off the rails with rants about The Jews (besides blatant anti-Semitism): He’s planning on buying Parler, one of the “free speech” social media platforms that Twitter-banned conservatives flock to, and what’s a better marketing ploy for that particular market than posting screeds about going “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” and getting yourself locked out of Twitter?
British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s six-week-old leadership is going very poorly.
Larry the cat, who serves as Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office at Number 10, knows what Truss’ deal is:
Anyway,
“More U.S. companies charging employees for job training if they quit” – Reuters
Kyle Rittenhouse, aka the guy who became a right-wing darling after fatally shooting two people at an anti-police brutality protest and being acquitted of murder, is apparently launching a new career on YouTube to talk about guns or … something? Rittenhouse’s intro video doesn’t have a lot of details beyond showing random footage of him firing at targets.
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The Associated Press has a new piece out today as part of an investigative series it’s producing with PBS’ “Frontline” focused on former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his ongoing descent into extremism and Christian nationalism. The investigative series will roll out alongside a documentary tomorrow night called “Michael Flynn’s Holy War.”
The new AP piece is a fascinating look at The Hollow, a bunker-like, Christian nationalist, far-right community site in Sarasota County, Florida that has become a MAGAworld meeting center and incubator for some of Flynn’s efforts to weave Trump grievances into politics at a hyper-local level. The Hollow has all the markings of a militia-community — even though the founder maintains it’s anything but that — that hosts events sponsored by Proud Boys family members, offers “Biblical citizenship” classes and is home to a gun range that offers classes to children as young as six. Flynn reportedly has visited the site multiple times this past year and financially supports the organization.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Flynn Recruits Poll Workers At Proud Boys Event Inside Bunker Community”On Sunday, former president Donald Trump used his Truth Social account to assure his audience that he would not be outdone in the current alarming escalation in antisemitic rhetoric on the American right. “No President has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump wrote, his use of present tense falsely suggesting he retains power. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.” These Jews, Trump went on, even more menacingly, “have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!”
Continue reading “How Many Forms Of Antisemitism Can Trump Cram Into One Truth Social Post? Let’s Count.”“I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” Arizona Republican Kari Lake said this weekend when repeatedly asked whether she’d accept the results of her election if she lost.
Continue reading “As Expected, 2020 Election Deniers Lay Groundwork To Deny Results In 2022”The Republican National Committee and other major campaign organs of the party on Monday seized on a recent Supreme Court order in an attempt to get undated and incorrectly dated Pennsylvania absentee ballots invalidated for the upcoming elections.
Continue reading “RNC Seizes On Supreme Court’s Order In Attempt To Toss Some Pennsylvania Ballots”Steve Bannon displayed such intentional contempt for the rule of law in defying a subpoena from the January 6 Committee that he deserves a near-maximum sentence behind bars, the DOJ argued to a federal judge on Monday.
Continue reading “DOJ: Bannon Deserves 6 Months In Prison For Contempt”A woman’s allegation that Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker, the father of her child, paid for her to have an abortion in 2009 is a lie, the ex-NFL player insists. In fact, he doesn’t even know her!
…..Okay yes, he knows her. But that $700 check she’s provided with his signature on it is fake!
…..Okay yes, that’s a real check that he gave her. But he doesn’t know what it was for!
Continue reading “Walker Admits Abortion Check Is His, But Insists He Doesn’t Know What It Was For”The Miami Herald has another richly reported article on the migrant bamboozling operation Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ran in San Antonio, Texas — the one that left 50 Venezuelan migrants in Martha’s Vineyard and spawned an on-going criminal investigation in Bexar County, Texas. The article is paywalled. So if you’re a subscriber give it a read. If not I want to summarize a few key new pieces of information, drawn mainly from public documents the DeSantis administration has been compelled to divulged under Florida’s sunshine law as well as on-the-ground reporting from the Herald.
Continue reading “More Details on the ‘Perla’ Crew”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Georgia GOP Senate nominee/abortion funder Herschel Walker will have you know that the “not a prop” police badge that he whipped out during his debate with incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) on Friday is a real “honorary” badge and absolutely not a prop, okay?
Far-right Arizona gubernatorial nominee and hardcore 2020 election denier Kari Lake made it crystal clear during a CNN appearance on Sunday that the election denialism that fuels her entire campaign very much extends to her own race.
Russia struck the central area of Ukraine’s capital with kamikaze drone strikes on Monday, according to Ukrainian officials.
The Justice Department requested on Friday that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturn U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s mind-bogglingly MAGA order that granted Trump’s request for a special master to sift through the government records the FBI had seized from Mar-a-Lago, an order that also barred federal investigators from accessing those records.
The office of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced on Friday evening that the senator had been discharged from the hospital that day after an “uneventful night” of observation. He had been admitted the day before due to feeling “unwell,” according to his office.
“On the Alex Jones Verdict: The Very, Very Lucrative World of Lying” – Insight writer Zeynep Tufekci
But we should recognize that a constant barrage of lies and dehumanizing propaganda are often part and parcel of the road to mayhem and even large-scale violence, and each societal transition renews the challenge of finding better, updated ways to face this reality.
This is one big reason why every new communication milieu brought about by technological and political changes has to be grappled with, but without nostalgia — as the past is rarely perfect, but in any case it’s not coming back — or without sloganeering. Oft-repeated formulations like “let more speech counter bad speech” or “technology can be good or bad” don’t even begin to get at the current problems partly because they don’t even describe the current problems.
Tudor Dixon (R), the anti-abortion extremist challenging Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), told her supporters during a campaign event on Friday that “last time I checked,” a working woman who’s single has a “lonely life.”
For a lot of them, not much!
(Seriously, you’re not gonna guess who it is.)
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