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"All mimsy were the borogoves..." avid reader, occasional world traveler, Mastodon/Fediverse acct: @ZhiZhu@newsie.social
Scott Phillips Profile picture Democracy’N’Peace Profile picture 3 subscribed
Oct 6, 2022 11 tweets 7 min read
"A majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 299 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election"

#DemocracyIsOnTheBallot
washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10… "most of the election deniers nominated are likely to win: Of the nearly 300 on the ballot, 173 are running for safely Republican seats. Another 52 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races."

#DemocracyIsOnTheBallot
washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10…
Oct 4, 2022 8 tweets 6 min read
"Donald Trump on Friday issued what can only be described as a threat against Mitch McConnell, declaring that the Senate minority leader’s support for bipartisan bills amounts to a “DEATH WISH.”"

News orgs fail to ask GOP pols about this threat by Trump.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… "Alas, there is little sign that mainstream outlets have dropped their addiction to false equivalence and willful, moral blindness."
~@JRubinBlogger

#Journalism
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… Image
Oct 4, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
"During his 4 years in office, Trump never strictly followed the rules & customs for handling sensitive government documents...

Documents that would ordinarily be kept under lock & key mingled with piles of newspaper articles in Trump’s living quarters"

washingtonpost.com/national-secur… "Aides also found other ways to circumvent Trump’s “sticky fingers,” as one put it."

Donald "sticky fingers" Trump

washingtonpost.com/national-secur… Image
Aug 21, 2022 17 tweets 15 min read
"Russian paratrooper Pavel Filatyev spent more than a month fighting in Ukraine after his poorly equipped unit was ordered to march from its base in Crimea for what commanders called a routine exercise."

#RussianArmy
#RussiaInvadedUkraine
washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/… "Filatyev was evacuated after being wounded.

Over the next 5 weeks, deeply troubled by the devastation caused by ... Putin’s bloody invasion, he wrote down his recollections in hopes that telling his country the truth about the war could help stop it."

washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/… Image
Aug 20, 2022 5 tweets 5 min read
"The searing takeaway was not [KKK klansman David] Duke himself, but nearly 700,000 Louisianans who, knowing what he stood for, voted for him anyway."

#Racism #USA
#elections
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… "On Election Day 2016, nearly 63 million Americans voted for Trump, giving him more than 300 electoral votes and the White House.
The takeaway?
They, too, knew where he stood and voted for him anyway."

#Racism #USA
#elections
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Jul 29, 2022 15 tweets 11 min read
SCOTUS "agreement to hear Moore v. Harper... isn’t just bad news for efforts to control gerrymandering.

The Court’s right-wing supermajority is poised to let state lawmakers overturn voters’ choice in presidential elections."

#SCOTUSIsCorrupt
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… "Trump then tried and failed, lawlessly, to muscle the GOP state legislators into discarding Biden’s victory and appointing Trump electors instead.

The Moore case... could give Republicans legal cover in 2024 to do as Trump demanded in 2020."

#ISLtheory
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Jul 29, 2022 8 tweets 5 min read
"The OIG Joseph V. Cuffari did not press the dept leadership at that time to explain why they did not preserve these records...

Cuffari also failed to alert Congress to the potential destruction of government records."

#Jan6
#TrumpCoupAttempt
washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07… "In a nearly identical scenario to that of the DHS leaders’ texts, the Secret Service alerted Cuffari’s office seven months ago, in December 2021, that the agency had deleted thousands of agents’ and employees’ text messages."

#Jan6
#TrumpCoupAttempt
washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07…
Jul 28, 2022 5 tweets 4 min read
"The charging document cited a speech that Kara-Murza... had given weeks earlier...

His remarks accused Russian forces of dropping cluster bombs on residential areas in Ukraine & staging airstrikes on maternity wards, hospitals & schools."

#WarCrimes
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… "The atrocities Kara-Murza described have been verified ...

But Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin couldn’t bear the spectacle of a Russian citizen airing these uncomfortable facts — so it locked him up for telling the truth."

#RussianWarCrimesInUkraine
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Jul 28, 2022 14 tweets 10 min read
"one lawyer involved in the detailed discussions repeatedly used the word “fake” to refer to the so-called electors, who were intended to provide ... a rationale for derailing the congressional process of certifying the outcome."

#TrumpCoupAttempt
nytimes.com/2022/07/26/us/… “We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted”

#TrumpCoupAttempt
nytimes.com/2022/07/26/us/…
Jul 28, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
"an update to that study with 2020 data, which shows even worse numbers:

A national [abortion] ban would result in a 24% increase in deaths for all women and a 39% for non-Hispanic Black women."

#AbortionIsHealthcare
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… "Moreover, the states that seek to ban abortion are the same that rank among the worst in a slew of health indicators...

In other words, states looking to force women to have birth have the sickest women and worst health outcomes."

#AbortionIsHealthcare
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Jul 27, 2022 17 tweets 12 min read
"The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results"

#Jan6
#TrumpCoupAttempt
washingtonpost.com/national-secur… "Prosecutors who are questioning witnesses... have asked in recent days about conversations w/ Trump, his lawyers, & others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won"

#TrumpCoupAttempt
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
Jul 27, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
"the right-wing editorial pages of the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, both Rupert Murdoch publications, have broken sharply with Trump.

Trump of all people should understand how the aura of being a “loser” turns people off."

#TrumpCoupAttempt
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… "emails that show one lawyer involved in the scheme “repeatedly used the word ‘fake’ to refer to the so-called electors, who were intended to provide VP Mike Pence & Trump’s allies in Congress a rationale for derailing the congressional process of certifying the outcome.”"
Jul 2, 2022 5 tweets 4 min read
"By “threats to democracy,” they mean ... the spread of baseless claims about rampant election fraud to state legislatures’ efforts to make it more difficult to vote & easier for partisans to overturn legitimate voting results."
~@Sulliview

#Journalism
washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/… The result is a 28-page publication called “The Authoritarian Playbook: A Media Guide,” an effort to give reporters and editors some tools in recognizing what’s happening and in covering it effectively.

#journalism
#DemocracyNotAutocracy
protectdemocracy.org/project/the-au…
Jul 1, 2022 9 tweets 7 min read
"Hutchinson testified to hearing Trump order the magnetometers (metal detectors) used to keep armed people away from the president be removed:

“I don’t fucking care that they have weapons, they’re not here to hurt me... Let my people in."

#IndictTrump
lawfareblog.com/cassidy-hutchi… The car thing is not as important as the fact that:

TRUMP WAS TOLD THE CROWD HAD WEAPONS
and said:

"I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons.
They're not here to hurt ME.
Take the f-ing mags [magnetometers] away.
Let MY people in…"

#TrumpCoupAttempt
Jul 1, 2022 5 tweets 4 min read
"Creating a false equivalence between detailed testimony under oath and an anonymous source vouching for Trump is misleading at best and at worse serves the Trump camp’s disinformation machine."
~@JRubinBlogger

#journalism
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… "as the mainstream media fall back into bad habits — repeating Trump’s lies...

and treating statements from known Republican dissemblers as equally credible as those with no motive to lie & no history of disinformation."

#FalseEquivalence #FalseBalance
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Jun 24, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
Kavanaugh: "the Constitution is neither pro-life nor pro-choice"

Might as well argue that the Constitution was neither pro-slavery nor anti-slavery.

Both have to do with bodily autonomy - the FREEDOM to decide what happens to your own body.

Are they going to overturn the 14th? As for Kavanaugh's "neutrality"

"Neutrality helps the oppressor,
never the victim."
~Elie Wiesel, about Nazi Germany

SCOTUS is helping GOP states to oppress a woman's right to bodily autonomy - the FREEDOM to choose what happens to your own body.
Jun 19, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
"The clear and present danger to our democracy now is that former President Donald Trump & his political allies appear prepared to... seize the presidency in 2024 if Trump or his anointed candidate is not elected by the American people."
~@judgeluttig

nytimes.com/2022/02/14/opi… "Republican senators like Ted Cruz of Texas & Josh Hawley of Missouri tried to capitalize on those ambiguities in the law to do Trump’s bidding, mounting a case for overturning the results in some Biden-won states on little more than a wish."

#Jan6th
nytimes.com/2022/02/14/opi…
Jun 18, 2022 4 tweets 4 min read
"he told Eastman that the plan violated the Electoral Count Act and that “Mr. Eastman acknowledged that that was the case.”
...
Knowledge of the plot being illegal is significant when it comes to whether the Jan. 6 plotters committed a crime."

#Jan6
washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/… "Eastman told Giuliani: “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”

This is big — and not just because Eastman sought a pardon, thereby acknowledging his own legal liability."

#Jan6th
#TrumpCoupAttempt
washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…
Jun 18, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
Proud Boys Led Major Breaches of Capitol on Jan. 6, Video Investigation Finds

A months long Times investigation using court documents, text messages and videos reveals how teams of Proud Boys instigated critical breaches of the Capitol on Jan. 6.

#Jan6
nytimes.com/2022/06/17/us/… "More than 40 members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, have been indicted in connection with the assault, among them several of its leaders who are now facing charges of seditious conspiracy."

nytimes.com/2022/06/17/us/…
Jun 6, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
"Never mind that the same factions who have argued that mask-wearing and books about Tommy’s two mommies are unacceptably traumatizing for young children are now implying that kindergartners should be kitted out with makeshift body armor."
~@crampell

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… "Perhaps, with unlimited funds and an indifference to child psychology, every school could be converted to something akin to a maximum-security prison.

Perhaps a moat and a round-the-clock occupying army ..."

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Jun 6, 2022 7 tweets 6 min read
What does GOP policy protect: Our kids or the guns?

GOP policy protects the guns.

At the expense of our children's lives. The GOP LOOSENS gun laws after shootings:

“Seven of the deadliest mass shootings in the history of the US happened in the past decade.

And four of those shootings, including the Uvalde shooting, happened in Texas."

#Uvalde
#TexasSchoolMassacre