Former President Donald Trump is reportedly using President Biden’s alleged derogatory remarks about him as a means to raise funds.
What Happened: Trump is capitalizing on claims that Biden referred to him as a “sick f**k” during a private conversation. In a recent fundraising email to his followers, Trump suggested that Biden’s alleged remarks were not just targeted at him, but at all his supporters, reported The Hill.
The fundraising email also drew attention to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” comment, implying that Biden “will spit on us” and use every curse word to describe his supporters.
Trump urged his followers to demonstrate their patriotism and support him, assuring them that they would be “the ones laughing on Election Day.”
This fundraising effort comes after reports that Trump’s fundraising committees spent nearly $30 million in legal fees for the former president in the second half of 2023.
This is another instance in a series of Trump’s fundraising attempts, which have also included capitalizing off his criminal indictments and state efforts to remove him from primary ballots.
Why It Matters: Biden had reportedly described Trump as a “sick f**k” who takes pleasure in others’ misfortunes in private conversations. Later that day, former National Security Adviser John Bolton affirmed Biden’s remarks, stating that Biden had accurately captured Trump’s personality.
Earlier, Biden mocked Trump for his incorrect prediction of a stock market collapse if Biden won the 2020 election.
Trump currently leads Biden in the 2024 presidential election race – a RealClearPolitics poll shows Trump with 46.6% support, while Biden has 44.8% support.
The piece quoted an array of former high-ranking officials, all insisting Trump will misuse the Department of Defense to execute civilian political aims. Since Joe Biden’s team “leaked” a strategy memo in late December listing “Trump is an existential threat to democracy” as Campaign 2024’s central talking point, surrogates have worked overtime to insert existential or democracy in quotes. This was no different:
“We’re about 30 seconds away from the Armageddon clock when it comes to democracy,” said Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, adding that Trump is “a clear and present danger to our democracy.” Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, one of the advocacy groups organizing the “loose” coalition, said, “We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy.” Declared former CIA and defense chief Leon Panetta: “Like any good dictator, he’s going to try to use the military to basically perform his will.”
Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice and current visiting Georgetown law professor Mary McCord was one of the few coalition participants quoted by name. She said:
We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to.
The group was formed by at least two organizations that have been hyperactive in filing lawsuits against Trump and Trump-related figures over the years: the aforementioned Democracy Forward, chaired by former Perkins Coie and Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias, and Protect Democracy, a ubiquitous non-profit run by a phalanx of former Obama administration lawyers like Ian Bassin, and funded at least in part by LinkedIn magnate Reid Hoffman.
The article implied a future Trump presidency will necessitate new forms of external control over the military. It cited Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal’s bill to “clarify” the Insurrection Act, a 1792 law that empowers the president to deploy the military to quell domestic rebellion. Blumenthal’s act would add a requirement that Congress or courts ratify presidential decisions to deploy the military at home, seeking essentially to attach a congressional breathalyzer to the presidential steering wheel.
NBC’s quotes from former high-ranking defense and intelligence officials about possible preemptive mutiny were interesting on their own. However, the really striking twist was that we’d read the story before.
For over a year, the Biden administration and its surrogates have dropped hint after hint that the plan for winning in 2024 — against Donald Trump or anyone else — might involve something other than voting. Lawsuits in multiple states have been filed to remove Trump from the ballot; primaries have been canceled or invalidated; an ominous Washington Post editorial by Robert Kagan, husband to senior State official Victoria Nuland, read like an APB to assassins to head off an “inevitable” Trump dictatorship; and on January 11th of this year, leaders of a third party group called “No Labels” sent an amazing letter to the Department of Justice, complaining of a “conspiracy” to stop alternative votes.
Authored by former NAACP director Ben Chavis, former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, and former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Iran-Contra Special Counsel Dan Webb, the No Labels letter described a meeting of multiple advocacy groups aligned with the Democratic party. In the 80-minute confab, audio of which was obtained by Semafor, a dire warning was issued to anyone considering a third-party run:
Through every channel we have, to their donors, their friends, the press, everyone — everyone — should send the message: If you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it… If you think you were vetted when you ran for governor, you’re insane. That was nothing. We are going to come at you with every gun we can possibly find. We did not do that with Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, we should have, and we will not make that mistake again.
The Semafor piece offered a rare glimpse into the Zoom-politics culture that’s dominated Washington since the arrival of Covid-19. If this is how Beltway insiders talk about how to keep Joe Lieberman or Ben Chavis out of politics, imagine what they say about Trump?
We don’t have to imagine. Three and a half years ago, in June and July of 2020, an almost exactly similar series of features to the recent NBC story began appearing in media, describing another “loose network” of “bipartisan officials,” also meeting “quietly” to war-game scenarios in case “Trump loses and insists he won,” as the Washington Post put it.
That group, which called itself the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), involved roughly 100 former officials, think-tankers, and journalists who gathered to “wargame” contested election scenarios. The “loose” network included big names like former Michigan governor and current Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and former Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, who in his current role as special advisor to President Joe Biden overseeing the handout of roughly $370 billion in “clean energy” investments is one of the most powerful people in Washington.
The TIP was hyped like the rollout of a blockbuster horror flick: In a second Trump Term, No One Will Hear You Scream… Stories in NPR, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Postand over a dozen other major outlets outlined apocalyptic predictions about Trump’s unwillingness to leave office, and how this would likely result in mass unrest, even bloodshed. A typical quote was from TIP co-founder, Georgetown law professor, and former Pentagon official Rosa Brooks, who told the Boston Globe that every one of the group’s simulations ended in chaos and violence, because “the law is… almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.”
Podesta played Joe Biden in one TIP simulation, and in one round refused to accede to a “clear Trump win,” threatening instead to seize a bloc of West Coast states including California (absurdly dubbed “Cascadia”) and secede. Podesta’s “frankly ridiculous move,” as one TIP participant described it, was so over the top that a player leaked it to media writer Ben Smith of the New York Times.
A group of former top government officials called the Transition Integrity Project actually gamed four possible scenarios, including one that doesn’t look that different from 2016: a big popular win for Mr. Biden, and a narrow electoral defeat… They cast John Podesta, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, in the role of Mr. Biden. They expected him, when the votes came in, to concede…
But Mr. Podesta… shocked the organizers… he persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College. In that scenario, California, Oregon, and Washington then threatened to secede from the United States if Mr. Trump took office…
News that Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief rejected a legal election result, even in a hypothetical simulation, was obvious catnip to conservative media, which took about ten minutes to repackage Smith’s story using the same alarmist headline format marking earlier TIP write-ups. Breitbart published “Democrats’ ‘War Game’ for Election Includes West Coast Secession, Possible Civil War,” and a cascade of further red-state freakouts seemed inevitable.
“At that point,” says Nils Gilman, COO and EVP of Programs at the Berggruen Institute think tank, who served alongside Brooks as TIP’s other co-founder, “we decided we needed to be out about having run this exercise, to prevent the allegation that this was a ‘shadowy cabal’ — not that that narrative didn’t take hold anyways.”
The Podesta episode was worse than reported, with the secession proposal coming on “advice from President Obama,” used as leverage to a) secure statehood for Washington, DC and Puerto Rico b) divide California into five states to increase its Senate representation, and c) “eliminate the Electoral College,” among other things. TIP authors also warned Trump’s behavior could “push other actors, including, potentially, some in the Democratic Party, to similarly engage in practices that depart from traditional rule of law norms, out of perceived self-defense.”
More tellingly, there were multiple passages on the subject of abiding by and/or trusting in the law, and how this can be a weakness. TIP authors concluded that “as an incumbent unbounded by norms, President Trump has a huge advantage” in the upcoming election, and chided participants that “planners need to take seriously the notion that this may well be a street fight, not a legal battle.” They added the key observation that “a reliance on elites observing norms are [sic] not the answer here.”
Asked about that passage, Gilman replied that it was “the right question,” i.e. “Why can’t we just rely on elites to observe/enforce norms?” Noting that two-thirds of the GOP caucus voted not to certify the 2020 election, he went on: “If I had had total confidence in the solidity of the institutions, I wouldn’t have felt the need to run the exercises.”
This answer makes some sense in the abstract, but ignores the years-long campaign of norm-breaking in the other direction leading up to the TIP simulation. In the eight-plus years since Donald Trump entered the national political scene, we’ve seen the same cast of characters appear and reappear in dirty tricks schemes, many of which began before he was even elected (more on that below). The last time we encountered this “loose-knit group” story, the usual suspects were all there, and the public by lucky accident of the Smith leak gained detailed access to Democratic Party thinking about how to steal an election — if necessary, of course, to “protect the democratic process.”
That incident acquires new significance now in light not only of this NBC story, but also the dismal 2024 poll numbers for Biden, a host of unusually candidcalls for preemptive action to prevent Trump from taking office, the bold efforts to remove Trump from the ballot in states like Colorado and Maine, and those lesser-publicized, but equally important campaign to keep third party challengers like No Labels or Robert F. Kennedy from gaining ballot access in key states.
The grim reality of Campaign 2024 is that both sides appear convinced the other will violate “norms” first, with Democrats in particular seeming to believe extreme advance action is needed to head off a Trump dictatorship. Such elevated levels of paranoia virtually guarantee that someone is going to cheat before Election Day in November, at which point the court of public opinion will come into play. The key question will be, who abandoned democracy first?
The TIP report provided an answer. It contained long lists of theoretical Trump abuses that sounded suspiciously more like the extralegal maneuvers already deployed againstTrump dating back to mid-2016, particularly during the failed effort to prosecute him for collusion with Russia. Interpreted by some as a literal plan to overturn a legal Trump victory, its greater significance was as a historical document, since it read like a year-by-year synopsis of all the home team rule-breaking. In other words, the TIP read like a Team Clinton playbook, only with hero and villain reversed.
Bearing in mind that many of the people involved were also Russiagate actors, here’s a abbreviated list of abuses the TIP authors supposedly feared Trump would commit:
“The President’s ability… to launch investigations into opponents; and his ability to use Department of Justice and/or the intelligence agencies to cast doubt on election results or discredit his opponents.”
It’s true a president so inclined can do these things, and possible a re-elected Trump might, but they were clearly done first to Trump in this case. The FBI’s road-to-nowhere Crossfire Hurricane probe of Russian collusion, which made use of illegally obtained FISA surveillance authority, began on July 31, 2016. Trump opponents have been “launching investigations” really without interruption ever since, with many (including especially the recent Frankensteinian hush-money prosecution) obviously politicized.
Likewise, the office of the Director of National Intelligence published an Intelligence Community Assessment in early January 2017, again before Trump’s inauguration, that used information from the bogus Steele dossier to conclude that “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” If that isn’t using intelligence agencies to “cast doubt on election results,” what is? Worse, the trick would be repeated, over and over:
“The President and key members of his administration can also reference classified documents without releasing them, manipulate classified information, or selectively release classified documents for political purposes, fueling manufactured rumors.”
This phenomenon also began before Trump’s election, notably with the story leaked on January 10, 2017, about four “intel chiefs,” including FBI Director James Comey, who presented then-President-elect Trump with “claims of Russian efforts to compromise him,” including the infamous pee tape. “Selective” release of “classified documents” then continued through the Trump presidency. Other incidents involved the “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence” story (February 2017), a Washington Post story about Jeff Sessions speaking to the Russian ambassador (March 2017), the (incorrect) story about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen being in Prague (April 2018), the infamous “Russian bounty” story (June 2020), and many, many, others.
Podesta himself participated in one of the first and most damaging “manufactured rumor” episodes, beginning in late 2016, involving the use of the Elias-commissioned Steele dossier to illegally obtain a FISA warrant on former Trump aide Carter Page. Podesta, who of course knew the real source of the story, reacted to it as if it was news generated by government investigators and publicly derided Page as a Russian cutout, before adding that the 2016 election “was distorted by the Russian intervention.” This was a textbook example of using “manufactured rumors” from intelligence agencies to “cast doubt” on election results as you’ll find.
“Additional presidential powers subject to misuse include… his ability to restrict internet communications in the name of national security.”
As for restricting internet communications “in the name of national security,” Racket pauses to laugh. The growth of state-aided censorship initiatives like the ones we studied all last year in the Twitter Files began well before Trump’s election, for instance with the creation in Barack Obama’s last year of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which later worked with Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership to focus heavily on posts deemed to be attempts at “delegitimization” in the 2020 election. Stanford’s group even flagged a story about the TIP in its final report as “conspiracy theory.”
Not to say that these bureaucracies couldn’t be abused by a second Trump administration, but so far they’ve been a near-exclusive fixation of Democratic politicians and security officials. There’s a reason Joe Biden is the only candidate slated to enjoy a censorship-free campaign season, while Trump and third-party challenger Robert F. Kennedy have been repeatedly removed or de-amplified from various platforms.
“There is considerable room to use foreign interference, real or invented, as a pretext to cast doubt on the election results or more generally to create uncertainty about the legitimacy of the election.”
This brings us to the last and most controversial angle on the TIP report. When the original TIP text came out, Michael Brendan Daugherty in National Review wrote in an offhand tone that he got the feeling “some progressives are steeling themselves for a Color Revolution in the United States,” because winning a normal election “just isn’t cathartic enough.”
To this day, the color revolution idea makes TIP organizers laugh.
“The idea that some rando in Los Angeles,” Gilman says, referring to himself, “was secretly planning a color revolution (which he published a report about months in advance, which you gotta admit is a pretty weird move for a guy allegedly plotting a revolution) is a textbook example of Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style.”
Brooks is also incredulous, saying the color revolution thesis is a “profound misunderstanding” of the TIP report. “They aren’t plans or predictions, they’re efforts to understand how things might play out,” she wrote, adding that the TIP participants were merely asking, “What could go wrong?”
They may have asked that. Still, the group’s final report contained a string of references to “plans and predictions,” with entries like “Plan for a contested election,” “Plan for large-scale protests,” and “Make plans now for how to respond in the event of a crisis.” As for the “profound misunderstanding,” Brooks gave a friendly interview to a New York Times writer who was apparently laboring under the same “profound” delusion.
Weeks after the National Review piece, Michelle Goldberg in the Times wrote of Daugherty: “He’s right, but not in the way he thinks.” She explained that Democrats don’t relish the thought of an uprising, but look upon it as something to be dreaded, that “must nonetheless be considered.”
She then quoted Brooks. The Georgetown professor, who in her most recent book about life in the Defense Department described getting “a coveted intelligence community ‘blue badge’” to pass into “the sacred precincts of the CIA,” told Goldberg that in the event of a Trump power grab, “the only thing left is what pro-democracy movements and human rights movements around the world have always done, which is sustained, mass peaceful demonstrations.”
That did sound like a description of the Eastern European color revolutions, which generally involved mass street actions, sustained negative press pressure, and calls by NGOs and outside countries for the disfavored leader to step down. A major reason the “color revolution” theme struck commentators in connection with TIP had to do with the presence in the TIP simulation of Barack Obama’s former chief ethics lawyer, Norm Eisen. Eisen wrote a manual called The Democracy Playbookfor the Brookings Institution that is often referred to as the unofficial how-to guide for America-backed regime-change operations abroad. Anyone who’s been forced to read a lot of “democracy promotion” literature, as I had to in Russia, will recognize familiar themes in the TIP report.
One of the controversial features of “color revolution” episodes is that the U.S. has at times supported ousters of perhaps unsavory, but legally elected, leaders. Was the TIP group contemplating the “sustained” protest scenario only in the event of Trump stealing an election, or if he merely won in an unpleasant way, i.e. via the Electoral College with a popular vote deficit? Brooks at first indicated she didn’t understand the reference.
“I am not sure what the question is?” she wrote. “Peaceful protests, mass or otherwise, are constitutionally protected.”
I referred back to the Times piece and the “movements around the world” quote, noting that while those outcomes might arguably have been desirable, it’d be hard to call them strictly democratic.
“I am not an expert on the color revolutions,” she replied. “It is certainly true that on both left and right, in both the US and abroad, there are nearly always… I guess I’d say spoilers, or violence entrepreneurs — who try to hijack peaceful protest movements.”
Lastly: one TIP simulation also predicted, with something like remarkable anti-clairvoyance, that Trump would contrive to label Biden supporters guilty of “insurrection” for protesting a “clear Trump win”:
The Trump Campaign planted agent provocateurs into the protests throughout the country to ensure these protests turned violent and helped further the narrative of a violent insurrection against a lawfully elected president.
That passage was published on August 3, 2020, long before most Americans knew or cared that the word “insurrection” had political significance. We’d be instructed in its use within hours of the riots, when Joe Biden said, “It’s not protest. It’s insurrection,” and everyone from Mitt Romney to Mitch McConnell to media talking heads to the authors of the articles of impeachment like Jamie Raskin fixated on the word. Still, not until December 2021 did a public figure explain how the 14th Amendment might be deployed strategically in the post-January 6th world. The insight came from Elias, who has since deleted the tweet:
We’re of course now seeing that litigation, notably in the form of a Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Trump from the ballot, which was handed down after complaints filed citing the 14th Amendment provision alluded to by Elias.
All this is laid out as background for the coming nine months of campaign chaos, if we even end up having a traditional campaign season. Revolt of the Public author and former CIA analyst Martin Gurri summed up the situation in a piece for The Free Press titled “Trump. Again. The Question is Why?” The money quotes:
The malady now exposed is this: the elites have lost faith in representative democracy. To smash the nightmare image of themselves that Trump evokes, they are willing to twist and force our system until it breaks…The implications are clear. Not only Trump, but the nearly 75 million Americans who voted for him, must be silenced and crushed. To save democracy, it must be modified by a possessive: “our democracy.”
The Biden campaign, stuck in a seemingly irreversible poll freefall, has put all its rhetorical chips on the theme of “protecting democracy.” Biden mentions Trump’s “assault on democracy” at every opportunity, and even recently resorted to Apollo Creed-style imagery, campaigning at Valley Forge flanked by a dozen American flags and red, white, and blue lights. (Red-and-white striped trunks can’t be far off.) The DNC’s daily “talkers” memos for months have asked blue-party pols and friendly reporters to stress “the existential threat to freedom and democracy that Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans represent,” while pointing to stories like Vanity Fair’s, “There Is No ‘Both Sides’ to Donald Trump’s Threat to Democracy,” in its CONTENT TO AMPLIFY section.
Many who couldn’t stand Trump, would never vote for him, and have been willing consumers of the awesome amount of propaganda published on the Trump subject, now need to face the fact that they’ve been had. Transformed into the avatar of all bad things — a crude domestic combo platter of Saddam, Milosevic, Assad, and Putin — this vision of the über-villain, Trump, has been used to distract mass audiences from the erosion of “norms” at home. “Protecting democracy” in the Trump context will be remembered as having served the same purpose as Saddam’s mythical WMDs, the shots fired in the Gulf of Tonkin, or Gaddafi’s fictionalViagra-enhanced army. Those were carefully crafted political lies, used to rally the public behind illegal campaigns of preemption.
Voters, by voting, “protect democracy.” A politician who claims to be doing the job for us is up to something. The group in the current White House is trying to steal for themselves a word that belongs to you. Don’t let them.
Electric vehicles (EVs) have undeniably entered the mainstream in the United States. According to estimates from Kelley Blue Book, more EVs were sold last year than were sold between 2011 and 2018. The roughly 1.2 million new EVs put into service in 2023 represented 7.6% of the total U.S. car market. Cox Automotive’s Economics and Industry Insights team boldly predicted that this share will climb to 10% in 2024.
EVs’ impressive growth has played out even though they remain significantly more expensive to purchase than gasoline-powered cars, with only a handful of options priced below $40,000. EV proponents counter this drawback by claiming that EVs are actually cheaper to own over the long term, with lower fuel and maintenance costs making up for the higher sticker price. Studies examining cars’ total cost of ownership back their assertions.
However, these studies (and there are many) are only as reliable as their completeness. After all, a wide variety of expenses factor into a vehicle’s lifetime cost, and excluding or miscalculating one could drastically skew the calculation. That’s why researchers at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems reviewed the dozens of “total cost of ownership” studies to craft their own. Published on January 3rd in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, their analysis aimed to correct for the shortcomings of previous research.
A closer look at EV costs
Maxwell Woody, a research assistant pursuing Ph.Ds in resource policy and behavior and mechanical engineering, led the effort. He and his colleagues accounted for all the usual costs, such as purchase price, fuel, maintenance, repairs, insurance, annual fees, and financing. Unlike prior analyses, however, they also:
accounted for different EV charging behaviors, and explored the cost of ownership in 14 cities from across the U.S.
The findings broadly challenge the optimistic cost-of-ownership assessments frequently touted by EV enthusiasts. The researchers found that while small and low-range EVs capable of traveling around 200 miles are indeed less expensive to own than their gas-powered counterparts, larger, long-range EVs that can cover 400 miles are more expensive. Midsize SUV EVs — currently the top-selling models by far — only reach cost parity if government incentives are applied.
“EVs are more competitive in cities with high gasoline prices, low electricity prices, moderate climates, and direct purchase incentives, and for users with home charging access, time-of-use electricity pricing, and high annual mileage,” the researchers summarized.
Since EVs are broadly more expensive to purchase upfront than comparable gas vehicles, the best way to assess whether an EV will ultimately be cheaper to own over the long term is by looking at its break-even time: when its lower recurring costs make up for its higher upfront cost. Woody and his team found that 200-mile range compact and midsize electric sedans reach this point in 3 to 7 years, while 300-mile range variants take nine to 20 years to break even. Electric SUVs and trucks with 300 miles of range generally take more than 20 years, while 400-mile range EVs will never break even over their lifetimes.
Keep in mind, however, that this assessment did not include the Federal EV tax credit, which reduces the purchase price of certain EVs by $3,750 or $7,500. When included, the affordability scale tips decidedly toward EVs.
“For 200-mile range BEVs, the breakeven time is under 2 years for compact vehicles and sedans, and under 5 years for small and midsize SUVs in each city,” the researchers reported. “Small 300-mile range vehicles break even in under 10 years in each city, and larger 300-mile range vehicles break even in under 10 years in many cities…there are a few cities in which 400-mile BEV compact and midsize sedans will break even with [gas-powered] counterparts after 15−20 years.”
Cost parity down the road
Still, there are numerous unknowns in the assessment, such as whether a substantial number of EVs will require battery replacements outside of their warranties, mandated to be a minimum of 8 years and 100,000 miles. Also unknown is how the costs of gasoline and electricity will change in the future. The study also didn’t compare vehicle costs in rural areas.
Overall, the greatest factor in determining whether an EV will be cheaper to own than a gas vehicle is the ability to charge at home, where electricity is cheapest. (In their analysis, the researchers assumed that EV owners charge at home 80% of the time and at public charging stations 20% of the time.) Without home charging, an EV will likely never be cheaper over its lifetime.
“Home charging access reduces the lifetime cost by approximately $10,000 on average, and up to $26,000,” Woody and his team reported.
The study is just a snapshot in time, the researchers noted. An EV’s battery constitutes a significant portion of its upfront cost. With battery prices predicted to continue steadily declining in the coming years, the math is likely to shift more in favor of EVs.
Thousands attended the 51st National March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Friday in protest of legalized abortion.
Details: The annual march marks the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision that enshrined abortion access as a constitutional right. This court decision was overturned in the summer of 2022. The organization’s website states the annual march continues because “the necessary work to build a culture of life in the United States of America is not finished.”
Key Quotes: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) spoke at the rally, stating, “We can stand with every woman for every child, and we can truly build a culture that cherishes and protects life.”
Political Fight: The overturning of Roe in the summer of 2022 placed abortion at the center of elections across the country, with many Democratic candidates positioning themselves as defenders of abortion access, and many Republican candidates positioning themselves as champions of the pro-life cause. From congressional races to state supreme court races, the issue of abortion has repeatedly been credited as benefitting Democratic candidates at the ballot box, and is expected to be a key issue in 2024 elections.
Thousands of opponents of abortion rights rallied under falling snow on Friday at the annual March for Life, as speakers urged the impassioned crowd to capitalize on the movement’s major victory in the Supreme Court and keep fighting until abortion is eliminated.
Months before a presidential election that could be heavily influenced by abortion politics, anti-abortion activists packed the National Mall carrying signs with messages such as “Life is precious” and “I am the pro-life generation.” After listening to speeches, the crowd, braving frigid temperatures, marched past the U.S. Capitol…
Thousands of opponents of abortion rights gathered on a snow-covered National Mall Friday to participate in the 51st annual March for Life, headlined by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
The participants gathered for the largest anti-abortion event in the country under the theme “With every woman, for every child.”
Johnson and House Pro-Life Caucus Chair Chris Smith (R-N.J.) focused their speeches on
two anti-abortion bills that passed the House Thursday, focused on funding and protecting “pregnancy centers,” which aim to help mothers and prevent abortions.
Thousands of pro-life activists braved snow and below-freezing temperatures to protest legalized abortion in the nation’s capital on Friday, walking to the Capitol and Supreme Court.
Protesters at the 51st National March for Life, which is held every year around the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned in June 2022, called for legal restrictions on the procedure with exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother.
But they also expressed a renewed desire to support pregnant women with resources, exhibiting softer rhetoric in…
This debate is very important for the whole nation. Republicans have a very good chance of capturing this Senate seat. You have three far left extremists on the Democrat side running against a very good Republican candidate Steve Garvey.
The USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, FOX 11 Los Angeles, and POLITICO will co-host this year’s first debate for California’s Senate race at 6 p.m. PST, Monday, Jan. 22, at USC’s Bovard Auditorium.
The four California candidates invited to participate in the debate include Democratic U.S. Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, as well as Republican businessman Steve Garvey. The four were determined as qualified for the debate based on the results of the mid-December POLITICO/Morning Consult poll of likely primary voters. The candidates are competing to fill the seat once held by the late U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. California voters will determine the top two candidates in the state’s primary election on March 5. The top two, regardless of party, will advance to the general election, which voters will decide on Nov. 5. The debate will be co-moderated by Elex Michaelson, Fox 11 News co-anchor and host of California’s statewide political talk show, “The Issue Is,” as well as by Melanie Mason, senior political reporter covering California politics for POLITICO. Other collaborators for the debate include: California Environmental Voters Education Fund, Courage California Institute, East Bay Community Legal Center, Natural Resources Defense Council, and several student organizations at USC.
HOW TO WATCH
The debate, scheduled from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. PST, will be broadcast live, commercial-free on FOX 11 (KTTV) in Los Angeles and on Fox 2 (KTVU) in the Bay Area. It also will be livestreamed on FOXLA.com, POLITICO.com, and the Facebook page of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future. In addition to the television broadcast, the debate will air on KFI-AM 640 radio in Southern California and on the iHeart Radio app.
In-person tickets are not publicly available. For those few privately invited guests who are coming in person, a clear bag policy will be enforced. Valid photo ID is required. Any disruption during the event will result in immediate removal from the facility.
For conservatives, the definition of “racism” encompasses a narrower range of thought and behavior than it does for leftists or progressives. Conservatives see racism as an endorsement of one’s own racial group’s superiority, a belief about another racial group’s inferiority, or harmful behavior directed at someone specifically because of their race. Conservatives often require a higher standard of proof, relying on explicit evidence rather than implicit assumptions to charge someone with racist behavior.On the other hand, progressives define racism as not necessarily being limited to conscious intent, but as encompassing unconscious bias fundamental to everyone’s cultural upbringing and reaffirmed through systemic structures designed to support white people. They perceive racism as built into people’s way of being or seeing in the world. Therefore, progressives may charge someone with racism without explicit evidence the behavior or remarks of the accused were based on race, due to their belief that racism can operate as unconscious bias. Because progressives perceive many fundamental societal structures as built on systemic racism — meaning certain groups have more power than others — they view racism as linked to power, holding the belief that disadvantaged groups cannot be racist toward groups that have power.In the case of Trump’s tweets, the right sees a lack of explicit proof that Trump views the Squad as inferior due to their race, or denies that he criticized them based solely on their race and not their ideas. Progressives, on the other hand, perceive Trumps’s attempts to curb illegal immigration and the “go back” remarks as evidence of unconscious bias against immigrants and people of color.
Julie Mastrine is the Director of Marketing at AllSides. She has a Center bias.
This piece was reviewed by Samantha Shireman, Information Architect at AllSides, who has a Lean Left bias. It was also reviewed by AllSides Daily News Editor Henry Brechter, who has a Center bias.
News Headlines you may have missed. Below are articles you may have missed. Feel free to comment on them or any other article that made the news.
Inflation Ticks Up
Annual inflation in the US rose 3.4% in December, a 0.3% rise from November and slightly higher than analysts’ expectations, according to new government data released yesterday. Inflation peaked in June 2022 at 9.1% and has remained under 4% since May.
The consumer price index, which measures price changes for a basket of goods and services, rose 3.9% year-over-year when excluding volatile food and energy prices. Over half of the increase stemmed from rising shelter costs, which rose 0.5% from November and 6.2% year-over-year. Analysts claim elevated mortgage rates have reduced supply and pushed up housing prices. See a detailed breakout of prices for various commodities here.
The Federal Reserve, responsible for maintaining inflation at 2%, has held the federal funds rate between 5.25% and 5.5% three times after 11 raises since March 2022. The Fed is expected to reduce rates this year, possibly as soon as March.
A Weekend Blizzard
A winter storm is sweeping across the country today and is poised to become a bomb cyclone, bringing blizzard conditions and flooding across much of the country’s eastern half. The storm will be followed by a blast of arctic cold air, with as much as 88% of the contiguous US expected to experience temperatures dropping below freezing by Monday.
Dubbed Winter Storm Gerri, it comes days after a separate winter storm hit the central US and parts of the Plains (Why so many?). Gerri is forecast to make its way from the Four Corners region toward the central and eastern US, with 1-2 feet of snow projected in portions of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Meteorologists say temperatures in Wyoming and Montana could reach between 20 and 30 degrees below zero and potentially below 50 degrees in the Northern Plains. The Southern Plains and Midwest could see temperatures dip into the minus 20s, while the South could see temperatures in the 20s.
The cold air pattern is projected to stay until at least the week of Jan. 22; see detailed forecasts for regions across the US here (w/clickable map).
Lost Cities Revealed
Archaeologists have discovered a constellation of ancient Amazonian structures in what is now modern-day Ecuador, according to new research published yesterday. Flourishing for roughly 1,000 years about two millennia ago, the settlements are believed to have been populated by 30,000 residents at their peak—roughly equal to London under the Roman Empire at the same time.
The complex was discovered using LiDAR (light detection and ranging), a technique in which variations in surface height are measured using airborne laser mapping. The approach allows researchers to penetrate dense forest canopies or layers of Earth, revealing what lies underneath without labor-intensive fieldwork and digs. Learn more about how LiDAR—also used in many self-driving vehicles to “see” the road—has revolutionized archaeology.
The find follows a number of similar discoveries in recent years, including a sprawling urban network in the Bolivian Amazon two years ago.
In partnership with Autonomix
Countdown to A New Age of Medical Treatment
Autonomix is on a mission to treat medical disorders at their root in the nervous system, and the deadline for their private investment opportunity is just a few days away. Electrophysiology represents the cutting-edge of medicine, with companies being acquired for $900M+ even before receiving FDA approval. With Autonomix’s planned Nasdaq listing ahead, they’re providing a unique opportunity to invest before a potential exit.
The startup also joins an all-star list of names like Elon Musk and Google in studying how a variety of health issues can be traced to the nervous system. Their patented microchip-based technology is being developed to detect neuronal signals to find nerve bundles that cause pain and other ailments. With $100B+ in potential treatment markets worldwide and 100+ patents issued and pending, the company is attempting to take the world by storm.
>New England Patriots’ Bill Belichick to depart after 24 seasons and six Super Bowl titles with the Patriots; Belichick has racked up 333 wins across his 29 seasons as an NFL head coach (More)
>ESPN reportedly forced to return 37 Emmy Awards for using fake names to win awards for “College Gameday” program (More) | Michael Jackson biopic film set for April 2025 release (More)
>NFL postseason begins tomorrow with the Wild Card round; see preview and predictions (More) | NFL’s 2024 four International Games to include Chicago Bears, Minnesota Vikings, and Jacksonville Jaguars in London, and the Carolina Panthers in Munich; opponents to be named (More)
>Researchers release open source program to model the increasing density of space debris orbiting the Earth (More) | The emerging problem of space trash (More)
>Study suggests the largest ape to ever live died off around 250,000 years ago because it failed to adapt its diet as the landscape shifted from dense forest to grasslands (More) | Meet Gigantopithecus blacki (More)
>Paleontologists discover oldest-known fossilized reptile skin; 289-million-year-old specimen predates dinosaurs, was from a now-extinct iguana-like lizard (More)
>Markets close roughly flat Thursday (S&P 500 -0.1%, Dow 0%, Nasdaq 0%) following higher-than-expected inflation data (More) | Spot bitcoin ETFs begin trading, see $4.6B in trading volume on first day (More)
>Chesapeake Energy to buy Southwestern Energy for $7.4B in all-stock deal; acquisition would make Chesapeake the largest US natural gas producer (More)
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Politics & World Affairs
>Israel defends against charges of genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice; claims introduced by South Africa (More) | US, UK lead airstrikes against Houthi rebel sites in Yemen (More) | Jewish students sue Harvard, claiming antisemitism on campus violates civil rights (More)
>Closing arguments held in civil fraud trial against former President Donald Trump; proceedings held despite early morning bomb threat made at the home of Judge Arthur Engoron (More)
>Federal Aviation Officials launch probe into whether Boeing followed safety protocols when securing door plugs on 737 MAX-9 models (More) | Everything you need to know about Boeing’s blown-out door plugs, visualized (More)
In-Depth
> A Knife Forged in Fire
Chicago Magazine | Laurence Gonzales. The technical process of forging steel knives by hand opens a spectator to mystical reflections on danger, beauty, and transformation. (Read)
> The Bab-el-Mandeb Strait
WSJ | Staff. A look at one of the world’s most dangerous shipping lanes where Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched drone attacks against commercial vessels. (Watch)
> Baby Brokers
Guardian | Rachel Nolan. Amid ballooning adoptions in Guatemala during its civil war in the 1980s, a shadowy role arose: the jaladora, a supplier of babies hired by adoption lawyers. (Read)
> How Cranes Work
Stuff You Should Know | Josh Clark, Chuck Bryant. (Podcast) Everything you didn’t know about construction cranes, the massive tools towering over cityscapes piecing together commercial buildings. (Listen)
Historybook: Author Jack London born (1876); Hattie Caraway becomes first woman elected to US Senate (1932); Howard Stern born (1954); Mystery novelist Agatha Christie dies (1976); Earthquake in Haiti kills more than 100,000 (2010).
“We never know the whole man, though sometimes, in quick flashes, we know the true man.”
Term “conspiracy theory” was initially used by the CIA to shut down those who doubted the official line about the murder of John F. Kennedy. But it turns out that what authorities deem to be “conspiracy theories” actually end up being true more often than they would like to admit.
Articles below all have links. Here are 15 such examples in the COVID era alone.
The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual confab in Davos, Switzerland is set to kick off next week, and the program is rife with all of the usual suspects. Our aspiring global rulers are set to have a grand time once more calling for our collective enslavement, which of course is necessary for the “greater good.”
The 2024 program is one for the ages. Attendees will watch Pfizer’s Albert Bourla and Open AI’s Sam Altman talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI). They’ll see depopulation advocate Bill “Bugman” Gates advancing the climate hoax. John Kerry will appear on four different stages to discuss the “energy transition.” We will also see Klaus Schwab sit down for a 1 on 1with the second highest ranking Chinese government official.
But one panel in particular sticks out: Preparing for Disease X. The topic is both incredibly vague and incredibly disturbing.
The description for the discussion reads: “With fresh warnings from the World Health Organization that an unknown ‘Disease X’ could result in 20 times more fatalities than the coronavirus pandemic, what novel efforts are needed to prepare healthcare systems for the multiple challenges ahead?”
The panel will feature a high-profile lineup that includes WHO director “Dr” Tedros and the chairman of AstraZeneca.
The concept of a Disease X was adopted by the World Health Organization in 2018. Tedros, Dr Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar of the eugenicist Wellcome Trust, and many high profile individuals on the forefront of Covid hysteria policy have been involved in advancing the Disease X hypothesis over the years.
Now, it’s easy for normal people to dismiss this lunacy. But given the powerful, maniacal minds populating the Davos gathering, it’s worth maintaining a level of situational awareness surrounding these events, as they can often offer some insight into the unguarded mindset of these technocratic tyrants.
“No possibility of a vaccine being available in the first year”
On this topic, it’s worth recalling that another infamous predictive panel was announced at the 2019 WEF Davos conference. That panel concluded with the launch announcement of Event 201.
Event 201 was an amazingly predictive “war game” simulation in which a fictional coronavirus passed from an animal reservoir to humans.
Just weeks before the onset of COVID Mania, some of the most maniacal, power-hungry forces on the planet got together to war-game a “fictional” coronavirus with “no possibility of a vaccine being available in the first year,” warning of a “similar pandemic in the future.”
Event 201 became known for its impeccable timing. Just weeks after the simulation occurred, full-blown pandemic hysteria broke out.
The 15 participants in the Event 201 simulation included an interesting bunch:
George Gao, the director of the Chinese CDC
Hasti Taghi, a vice president for NBC
Avril Haines, the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Chris Elias, a director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Timothy Grant Evans, a former World Health Organization and Rockefeller Foundation official
Lavan Thiru, the director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore
Adrian Thomas, VP at Johnson & Johnson
Brad Connett, the president of Henry Schein, Inc., a major distributor of health care products
Jane Halton, an executive with Australia’s second largest bank
Stephen Redd, a top CDC official
Sofia Borges, a top official at the UN Foundation
Eduardo Martinez, a senior executive at UPS
Matthew Harrington, the COO of Edelman, a marketing and PR firm
Martin Knuchel, a senior director at Lufthansa
Latoya D. Abbott, a senior employee for Marriott International
Of those 15 players, 13 worked in the upper echelons of private organizations or government agencies that would almost immediately witness an exponential monetary benefit or the tremendous absorption of political power.
Will the global ruling class attempt to foment another worldwide hysteria at Davos 2024?
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