• Vivek Ramaswamy’s Campaign Slogan Is a Reverse “In This House, We Believe” Yard Sign

    Mother Jones illustration; Win McNamee/Getty; Kirby Lee/AP

    In his closing statement at last night’s GOP presidential debate, Vivek Ramaswamy rattled off a list of his “10 campaign commandments”:

    1. God is real.
    2. There are two genders.
    3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.
    4. Reverse racism is racism.
    5. An open border is no border.
    6. Parents determine the education of their children.
    7. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.
    8. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty.
    9. There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.
    10. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.

    Sound familiar?

    It appears, at least to me, that Ramaswamy decided to proclaim the opposite of each of the statements that are displayed on the most common “In This House, We Believe” yard signs commonly found in Democratic neighborhoods. “I just wrote down things that are true,” Ramaswamy told the Atlantic. “It took me about 15 minutes.” Maybe. But I’m convinced that this was a deliberate mockery. (I tried calling Ramaswamy’s press secretary for comment, but her voicemail was full.)

    Some of these are stretches, but bear with me. In Ramaswamy’s world, “Science is real” becomes “God is real.” Commandment number 4 is the inverse of “Black Lives Matter”; number 5 is the response to “No human is illegal”; the supremacy of the nuclear family counters “Love is love”; “There are two genders” responds to “women’s rights are human rights”; “Human flourishing requires fossil fuels” answers “Water is life”; and the Constitution’s protection of freedoms negates the assertion that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Commandments 6, 8, and 9 round out the list to a healthy 10.

    Even if they don’t all fit perfectly, the overall tone matches too well to be a coincidence, right?

    Kirby Lee/AP

    The Biblical bent of Ramaswamy’s commandments is interesting, given that he is a monotheistic Hindu attempting to court Christian voters. But Ramaswamy’s make him seem less like Moses than like a suburban homeowner—and no less cringe. 


    For ease, here are the two lists beside one another, lined up to show the pairings:

    We Believe poster: Science is real. Ramaswamy commandment: God is real. 

     We Believe poster: Black Lives Matter. Ramaswamy commandment: Reverse racism is racism.

    We Believe posterNo human is illegal. Ramaswamy commandment: An open border is no border. 

    We Believe posterWater is life. Ramaswamy commandment: Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.

    We Believe posterWomen’s rights are human rights. Ramaswamy commandment: There are two genders.

    We Believe posterLove is love. Ramaswamy commandment: The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind. 

    We Believe poster: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Ramaswamy commandment: The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.

  • Trump’s Co-Defendants Kick Off the Surrender Parade in Georgia

    Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP

    Another Trump arrest is upon us this week. For those just tuning in, here’s a rundown of some key updates.

    Two of Donald Trump’s 18 co-defendants kicked off the surrender parade on Tuesday, with Scott Hall and John Eastman appearing before Fulton County authorities to get booked on charges related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s results in the 2020 presidential election. The bail bondsman and former attorney for Trump, respectively, face a combined total of sixteen charges.

    “My legal team and I will vigorously contest every count of the indictment in which I am named, and also every count in which others are named, for which my knowledge of the relevant facts, law, and constitutional provisions may prove helpful,” Eastman wrote in a statement posted on his legal team’s website. “I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated.”

    Eastman, according to the indictment, was allegedly behind the plan to appoint fake Trump-supporting electors and faces racketeering and conspiracy charges. Eastman was also allegedly involved in the pressure campaign to convince former Vice President Mike Pence not to certify Georgia’s election results. Meanwhile, Fulton County prosecutors have accused Hall, an Atlanta-area bondsman, of participating in the Coffee County voting systems breach. Both men had their bails set at $100,000 and $10,000, respectively. 

    The remaining defendants are expected to surrender before noon on Friday, August 25. As for the main defendant, Donald J. Trump, the former president announced shortly before his bail was set to $200,000 that he would be turning himself in on Thursday. The bail terms include the provision prohibiting Trump from contacting the case’s witnesses and co-defendants, including on social media.

    Trump on Monday predictably took his complaints straight to the internet, attacking prosecutor Fani Willis as a part of the “radical left.” He then appeared to mock the seriousness of the bail terms by joking that he would flee for “Russia, Russia, Russia,” to hang out in a “gold domed suite” with Vladimir Putin.

  • “What Have You Been Doing?” and the Brutal Adultification of Black Girls

    ClassicStock/ Getty

    The devastating impacts on reproductive rights and individual lives after the fall of Roe continue apace.

    The latest high-profile account to detail the gut-wrenching effects arrived in Time this week. The story—”She Wasn’t Able to Get an Abortion. Now She’s a Mom. Soon She’ll Start 7th Grade”—centers on Ashley, a 13-year-old girl from Mississippi who in the fall of 2022, according to her mother, was raped by a stranger in her yard. The assault resulted in a pregnancy that she was unable to terminate because of the strict abortion bans in Mississippi and its bordering states, each enacted after the overturning of Roe. Ashley’s mother, Regina, told Time that she didn’t have the resources to take her daughter to the nearest clinic hundreds of miles away in Chicago.

    This story, recounting Ashley’s trauma and highlighting the many systems that failed her, is an incredibly difficult read. But one line has especially stayed with me:

    “One nurse came in and asked Ashley, “What have you been doing?” Regina recalls. That’s when they found out Ashley was pregnant.”

    This is the question a nurse chose to ask when confronted with a Black child in clear distress, who had shown up to the emergency room unable to stop vomiting.  Not “What happened to you?” or “Are you okay?” The nurse reportedly asked a 13-year-old child, “What have you been doing?” It’s hard not to see the suspicion and implicit blame in the question. That culpability, deployed with equal amounts of derision and judgment, is something that I and many other Black women and girls are all too familiar with. 

    Victim blaming reaches people of all races. But Black girls stand at a uniquely horrifying intersection where both gender and skin color are weaponized against them. One study showed that as early as five years old, society perceives Black girls as “less innocent” and “more adult-like” than their non-Black counterparts, placing an unfair expectation on them to act more maturely. In 2017, Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality reported that participants in a study perceived Black girls as needing less nurturing, protection, and comfort than white girls. These virulent misconceptions, of course, can be traced back to historically racist stereotypes about Black femininity. GLCPI wrote:

    “These images and historical stereotypes of Black women have real-life consequences for Black girls today. According to [Jamila] Blake and colleagues, “these stereotypes underlie the implicit bias that shapes many [adult’s] view of Black females [as] … sexually promiscuous, hedonistic, and in need of socialization.”

    The results of this adultification are pervasive. Black girls are often punished more severely in schools and the criminal justice system than their white peers. The ripple effects can be found all over popular culture. Huff Post’s Taryn Finley attributed this societal perception as a key reason why R. Kelly, whose accusers were primarily Black women and girls, was able to remain successful despite allegations of child sexual abuse surrounding him for several decades. And they can be found in questions like, “What have you been doing?”

    Girlhood is a delicate period. It should be a time for crushes and school dances, not confronting the dark realities of misogyny and racism. It’s time for society to allow young Black girls to be girls, instead of forcing them into becoming women. Not ask, like the nurse in this story, “What have you been doing?”

  • The Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg Cage Match Is Not Happening

    Jakub Porzycki/AP

    The summer of 2023 could be remembered in several ways. Taylor Swift,  apocalyptic smoke, record-shattering heat, Trump indictments. But it was also a time when, for a few short weeks starting in July, the world was forced to consider the possibility of a literal cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. 

    It began after the latter billionaire boy suggested that he wanted to create a competitor to Twitter. (We know it’s called X or something now. But for the sake of sanity and clarity, I will refer to the company by its original name.) Musk, replying to a random user who brought up Zuckerberg’s newfound ju-jitsu hobbies, then tweeted, “I’m up for a cage match if he is,” kicking off weeks of back-and-forth, ever-escalating taunts. Somewhere in between, Zuckerberg followed up and created Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads. Musk promised to donate any money generated by the fight to veterans. Zuckerberg trained with MMA fighters.

    Now, the cage fight news cycle appears to have landed at its only inevitable conclusion: It’s not happening.

    Post from "Zuck" that says, "I think we can all agree Elon isn't serious and it's time to move on. I offered a real date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity. Elon won't confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead. If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise, time to move on. I'm going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously."

     

    Zuckerberg’s acknowledgment that it’s “time to move on,” fortunately puts an end to the speculation. It’s particularly funny that it comes only days after Musk appeared to tease that the Colosseum was being seriously considered to host this mess. But why couldn’t the Meta CEO have moved on instead of engaging with the chaos of a man who had just paid billions to destroy a company? No, that would have required the self-knowledge to accept the fact that you’re even less popular than Donald Trump.

    In any case,  as summer draws to a close, I’m happy to report that the possibility of a cage fight between two billionaires is definitely—maybe— not happening. For now.

  • Report: Georgia Prosecutors Have Texts Directly Connecting Trump to Voting Breach

    Katelyn Myrick/ZUMA

    As Fulton County DA Fani Willis prepares to present the findings of the investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election this week, CNN reports on text messages directly connecting the former president’s lawyers to a January 2021 voting systems breach. From CNN:

    Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County—a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation.

    The breach came as the Trump campaign aggressively hunted for nonexistent election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The effort, which laid the groundwork for the violence on January 6, featured Trump calling Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding that he find nonexistent votes to back the unfounded claims. The former president appeared to refer to that very phone call, which he previously referred to as “perfect,” in his response to the CNN report on Sunday:

    Last month, a Georgia state judge rejected Trump’s request to throw out the grand jury report and disqualify Willis from investigating him. As I wrote at the time, the nine-page order demonstrated the judge had little patience for Trump’s efforts to “perplexingly, prematurely, and with the standard pugnacity”—derail the justice system.

  • Ron DeSantis Did Not Have a Good Weekend

    Jeff Roberson/AP

    I did not attend the Iowa State Fair this weekend. But even a thousand miles away from pig pens and Republican presidential candidates, I could feel the utter humiliation of a certain Florida man.

    That’s the big takeaway from the fairgrounds where Ron DeSantis was repeatedly heckled with pro-Trump chants as he attempted to play the role of an everyday, just-one-of-the-guys Republican. How does a notoriously charmless presidential hopeful achieve this? Flipping burgers and mutilating fresh farm eggs with sticks:

    I would never eat an egg on a stick, and the sight of a man offering one would genuinely shock me. But participating in traditions like “food on a stick” while engaging in requisite small talk with “real people,” something DeSantis reportedly finds painful, is apparently what a candidate whose campaign is in free fall must endure. Were Iowans seduced? Did Iowans succumb to acts of forced intimacy: 

    It appears not.

    In fact, those attending the fair were reportedly rapt with excitement over Donald Trump. As the New York Times reports, Trump’s appearance this weekend was a rare moment in the 2024 campaign that featured the two men in the same place—and Trump did not waste the opportunity to make DeSantis’ life hell. Here’s Matt Gaetz, one of several Florida congressmen Trump brought to taunt DeSantis, at the fair: 

    I’ll admit to enjoying these clips of odious grown men psychologically pummeling each other. But any small joy in watching a humiliating weekend for Ron DeSantis vanishes when you remember that a twice-impeached former president facing criminal charges is now all but certain to win the Republican presidential nomination. 

  • DeSantis and Newsom: A Debate No One Asked For Is Happening

    AP

    For nearly a year, Gavin Newsom, the California governor who swears he has “subzero interest” in running for president, has asked to debate Ron DeSantis. Finally, the struggling Republican presidential candidate has accepted.

    “Absolutely, I’m game,” DeSantis told Sean Hannity on Thursday. “Let’s get this done. Just tell me when and where.”

    Newsom, through a spokesperson, responded, “Nov. 8 or 10,” before quickly returning to a fighting performance: “DeSantis should put up or shut up. Anything else is just games.”

    No one wants this debate. Well, except for Dan Rather, but he said that a year ago. Now, it’s even less needed.

    One man is a stand-in for the party’s steady autocratic drift and represents a clear extension of Trump-era policies; the other is the product of hair gel, Resistance Twitter (at best), and a demonstrated inability to sit still. Both share a common affliction: a white-hot ambition that compels them to force their personalities onto civilians now left wondering why we’d want to watch a man whose presidential campaign is in freefall argue on stage with a man who literally has to explain his actions in an email titled, “I am writing today to explain why I am debating Ron DeSantis.” (The same email included Newsom’s claim that he is selfless, a mere servant of Joe Biden seeking to defend the president’s agenda.) Each has an unmistakable thirst for the White House, and for very different reasons, neither is likely to get there, at least in 2024. 

    It’s far from coincidence that DeSantis has surrendered to Newsom’s taunting as his presidential campaign is very publicly collapsing. And with Donald Trump essentially ignoring his calls to debate, DeSantis isn’t left with many options. Yet one has to wonder how the image of DeSantis debating a man who is neither Trump nor Biden helps him here. I imagine it’ll only add to his awkward, rizz-less reputation. As for Newsom, it looks like he’s really leaning into that refusal to sit still. 

  • Somehow Being Named a Co-Conspirator in the Trump Indictment Was Not the Worst Part of Giuliani’s Week

    Matias J. Ocner/TNS/Zuma

    For the third time this year, former President Trump has been indicted, this time on federal charges related to his attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election. He faces three different conspiracy counts. And he didn’t act alone.

    Prosecutors say that Trump worked with at least six co-conspirators, five of whom are attorneys. My colleague Dan Friedman pieced together the presumptive identities of the lawyers based on information in the charging documents. The alleged co-conspirators include “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, and Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference host Rudy Giuliani.

    And yet, somehow, Giuliani’s attempts to subvert American democracy may not be the most damning thing he’s in the news for this week. Transcripts of Giuliani’s private comments have come to light as part of a lawsuit from a woman accusing the Trump lawyer of rape and sexual abuse. They include him making lewd comments about the size of Jewish men’s genitalia and telling a woman he wants to “claim” her breasts.

    Some of the comments seem too absurd to be true. They’re real. At one point, he says that Jews need to “get over” Passover. “OK, the Red Sea parted,” he says. “Big deal. Not the first time that happened.” At another point, Giuliani calls Matt Damon a homophobic slur and then launches into song: “Matt Damon is also 5’2. Eyes are blue. Coochie-coochie-coochie-coo.

    “It’s disappointing to see some so-called ‘journalists’ stoop so low with these smears and attacks against a man who has dedicated his life to serving others,” a spokesperson for the former mayor told Rolling Stone. “Mayor Giuliani cleaned up the streets of New York City, took down the Mafia and comforted the nation following September 11th.”

    But you know the old question. What have you done for me lately?

    This article first appeared in the Mother Jones Daily, our newsletter that cuts through the noise to help you make sense of the most important stories of the day. Sign up for free here!

  • The US’s Credit Rating Just Got Downgraded. You Can Thank Trump’s Coup Attempt.

    Sue Ogrocki/ AP

    On Tuesday, the credit agency Fitch Ratings downgraded its debt rating for the United States from the highest AAA rating to AA+.

    The demotion, as some economists including Paul Krugman have argued, is strange and ultimately a bit meaningless. But the apparent reasons behind the decision are worth reviewing. Here’s Richard Francis, Fitch’s senior director, telling Reuters: 

    “It was something that we highlighted because it just is a reflection of the deterioration in governance, it’s one of many,” he said.

    “You have the debt ceiling, you have Jan. 6. Clearly, if you look at polarization with both parties … the Democrats have gone further left and Republicans further right, so the middle is kind of falling apart basically,” Francis said, adding “we don’t fault one party or the other for the fiscal situation.”

    Francis may believe he sounds fair, even smart with that analysis. But lumping debt ceiling negotiations—in which Biden successfully averted a government default—with a violent attack on the US Capitol as examples of politicization feels unserious, an entry into the absurd whataboutism of these times. Economists and White House officials have since responded with disappointment.

    “Arbitrary and based on outdated data.” is how US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen put it. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the move “defies reality,” claiming in a statement that President Joe Biden has delivered “the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world.” 

    “It’s clear that extremism by Republican officials—from cheerleading default, to undermining governance and democracy, to seeking to extend deficit-busting tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations—is a continued threat to our economy,” she added.

    On the same day that Fitch downgraded its US rating, Donald Trump was handed his third indictment of the year for his starring role on January 6. 

  • Read the Trump Jan. 6 Indictment

    Mother Jones; Chip Somodevilla/Getty

    For the third time this year, former President Trump has been indicted. Potentially the most serious case, this federal indictment deals with Trump’s alleged role in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

    The four new charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted.

    “Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to stay in power,” prosecutors wrote in the charging document. “So for more than two months following Election Day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

    Read the charges here:

    This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

  • Not Everyone Is Happy About E-Bikes in National Parks

    Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

    Touring Yellowstone on an e-bike seems preferable to using a car. But can e-bikes actually hurt the environments they allow us to explore?

    In 2019, near the end of the Trump administration, then–Interior Secretary David Bernhardt instructed national parks to allow e-bikes wherever traditional bikes were allowed. The nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) sued, arguing that NPS needed to undertake an environmental assessment before it finalized its e-bike policy, and a US district judge agreed. In June of this year, the NPS finally came out with its assessment, and it has people on both sides of the debate riled up.

    The gist of the assessment is that riding an e-bike on a trail isn’t much more harmful to soil, vegetation, and wildlife than hiking, horseback riding, or traditional bicycle riding. National cycling advocacy group People for Bikes agrees.

    But PEER, the organization that brought the lawsuit, has found fault with the NPS’s assessment. PEER says that the NPS has not adequately addressed the potential for e-bikes to disturb wildlife and that the vehicles create conflicts between e-bike riders and other people on the trail.

    Balancing climate goals and local conservation can be complex. As we’ve written before, e-bikes, and subsidies to purchase them, could limit car dependence—an important step for staving off climate change. But local environments, especially in national parks, need to be protected, too. We’ve written before about idiots who deface our most precious wilderness areas, and the NPS assessment raises the question of whether to rank e-bike riders among them.

    You can read the full review here.

  • UPS and Teamsters Reach Deal to Avert Strike

    John Arthur Brown/Zuma

    After weeks of intense negotiations and practice picket lines, the Teamsters union has reached a preliminary five-year contract agreement with UPS, averting a potentially economically devastating work stoppage at the world’s largest package courier company.

    The tentative contract includes wage increases, the end of mandatory overtime on drivers’ days off, and the elimination of a two-tier wage system that had certain part-time employees making much less than full-timers doing the same work. The contract raises all workers’ wages by $2.75 per hour in 2023 and by $7.50 over the next five years.

    Both the union and the company seem pleased with the outcome. “The overwhelmingly lucrative contract raises wages for all workers, creates more fulltime jobs, and includes dozens of workplace protections and improvements,” the Teamsters said in a statement.

    “Together we reached a win-win-win agreement on the issues that are important to Teamsters leadership, our employees and to UPS and our customers,” UPS CEO Carol Tomé said in a statement. “This agreement continues to reward UPS’s full- and part-time employees with industry-leading pay and benefits while retaining the flexibility we need to stay competitive, serve our customers and keep our business strong.”

    The union will begin voting on the contract on August 3.

  • Massive Crowds of Israelis Are Protesting Netanyahu’s Supreme Court Power Play, Again

    Israelis march to Jerusalem in protest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned overhaul of the judicial system.Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

    Tens of thousands of Israelis marched into Jerusalem on Saturday, completing a four-day hike from Tel Aviv to the ancient capital city to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s renewed effort to increase his control over Israel’s Supreme Court.

    The demonstrators assembled around the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, ahead of a vote scheduled for Monday on a bill from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government that would strip the Supreme Court of its power to declare government decisions “unreasonable.” That is one of few checks on Israeli prime ministers in a country without a written constitution or bill of rights. 

    Protesters also gathered in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and elsewhere in Israel to try to head off the judicial takeover. Israeli military reservists, including hundreds of pilots, have pledged to suspend their volunteer service if Netanyahu moves ahead with his power grab. Israeli health care workers also have begun striking.

    President Joe Biden has warned Netanyahu against ramming through his proposal, through emissaries and recent remarks to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, warning it will damage US support for Israel. 

    Netanyahu previously delayed his overhaul efforts in March in the face of massive protests. But he renewed his efforts, and vowed Thursday to press ahead despite the protests and polls showing two-thirds of Israelis want him to leave the courts alone.

    Though the size of Saturday’s protest was not immediately clear, the protest have been massive relevant to Israel’s population of barely 9 million. More than 20 percent of Israelis have reportedly taken part in protests. As a percentage of population, that’s more than double the top estimates of the 15 to 26 million Americans who took part in Black Lives Matters protests, estimated to be largest in US history.

  • A New Settlement Spared Trump From One of the Zillion Trials He Faces

    Donald Trump speaking in West Palm Beach Florida on July 15.Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/Zuma

    Donald Trump’s daunting court schedule just a little bit lighter. Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer turned antagonist, settled a lawsuit accusing the Trump Organization of reneging on promises to pay legal bills that Cohen incurred working as a fixer for Trump.

    Lawyers for Cohen and Trump disclosed the settlement at a hearing in a New York state court in Manhattan on Friday, averting a trial that was set to start Monday. The terms of the deal are not public. Both sides said in the statements only that the suit “has been resolved in a manner satisfactory to all parties.”

    But Trump, of course, still faces a slew of legal issues, including trials where he will have to show up in person. Here is a rundown:

    • A lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James accusing Trump of “staggering fraud” by misrepresenting the value of his assets is set to go to trial in Manhattan on October 2.
    • A new trial on allegations that Trump defamed writer E. Jean Carroll—including in statements he made after a jury found he had sexually assaulted and defaming Carroll—is set for January 15. (In a July 19 ruling, US District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Trump lawyers’ request for a new trial based on their contention that the jury did not find that Trump raped Carroll, under New York’s definition. “The jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that,” Kaplan wrote.)
    • Also in January, Trump, his company, and three of his children are set to face trial in a lawsuit alleging they fraudulently enticed investments in sham business ventures.

    Trump won’t have to attend those civil matters. And he probably won’t, since they will conflict with vital early GOP primaries. So far, Trump is not scheduled to have any legal action on Tuesday, March 5, or Super Tuesday, when 15 presidential primaries may well determine if Trump will be the GOP nominee in 2024.

    If Trump wins, he will probably have to leave the campaign trail in late March. His New York trial, scheduled on charges that he falsified business records, is set for March 25 and expected to last several weeks. That case results from Trump’s alleged hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Cohen has said he arranged the payments to stop Daniels from going public just before the 2016  election with her claim she had sex with Trump in 2006. The former fixer is expected to testify against Trump.

    On Friday, US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled for May 2024 Trump’s trial on 37 counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents he removed from the White House. Cannon rejected Justice Department efforts to try Trump in December and also Trump’s request to put off the trial until after Election Day. Cannon may yet delay the trial, which is slated to take at least two weeks.

    Last week, Trump disclosed that he had received a target letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith suggesting the former president will likely be indicted for actions that were part of his effort to subvert his 2020 election defeat. According to the New York Times, Smith’s letter indicated Trump may be charged with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the government, and violating a civil rights law enacted to outlaw efforts to conspire to deprive anyone “the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” If Trump is charged, prosecutors will surely seek a trial before the 2024 election, but it remains to be seen if they will succeed.

    Trump’s lawyers have also said that they expect the former president to be hit with criminal charges, along with former advisers, in a case by prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta. Fulton Country District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly preparing charges under a state racketeering statute that take aim at Trump’s effort to interfere with Georgia’s vote count in the 2020 election. The charges are expected to reference the infamous recorded call in which Trump urged to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to “find” 11,780 votes, the precise number Trump needed to overcome Joe Biden’s margin in the state. 

    Trump denies all the accusations against him. He has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the criminal charges he faces result from a conspiracy orchestrated by Biden to hinder Trump’s presidential campaign.

  • Oath Keepers’ Alleged January 6 “Operations Leader” Avoids Prison

    Micheal Greene with Roger Stone on January 5 near the US Supreme Court.Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call/AP

    A man designated by the head of the Oath Keepers militia group as their leader of operations on January 6 will avoid prison for his alleged role in the attack on Congress that day.

    US District Judge Amit Mehta on Friday sentenced Michael Greene to two years of probation and 60 hours of community service. Mehta rejected federal prosecutors’ request that Greene face a year of incarceration following his conviction for a misdemeanor trespassing offense.

    Greene initially appeared in federal indictments of Oath Keepers involved in January 6 as “Person Ten,” an unindicted co-conspirator who prosecutors said Oath Keepers’ founder, Stewart Rhodes, had named as the far-right group’s leader of operations that day. Greene was not accused of entering the Capitol himself.

    Greene’s light sentence marks one of a few recent defeats for the Justice Department in January 6 prosecutions. Earlier this month, Mehta, in a bench trial, acquitted James Beeks, a Oath Keeper known for his work as a Broadway actor—which included starring in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar—of conspiracy charges. Federal prosecutors have convicted more than 1,000 people of taking part in the insurrection, and around 30 members of extremist groups involved in the attack have received prison sentences. Rhodes was sentenced in May to an 18-year term following his conviction for seditious conspiracy.

    Mother Jones first identified Greene as Person Ten. In interviews then, and statements since, including testimony during his trial, Greene maintained that he went to Washington as a paid security employee, contracted to help the Oath Keepers’ provide security for speakers at pro-Trump rallies on January 5 and 6, among them Roger Stone, the longtime Donald Trump adviser.

    Greene, an Iraq War veteran and security contractor, who has said he worked for the Oath Keepers only as “a job” and does not vote, was unusual in the Oath Keepers, an organization made up mostly of far-right ideologues who worked as volunteers. Greene was also one of a few Black people in the largely white organization. Rhodes previously boasted of Greene’s role with the group to rebut allegations of racism.

    Prosecutors have argued that Greene knew of Oath Keepers’ plans on January 6. They have cited phone records that showed Rhodes and another senior Oath Keeper, Kelly Meggs, had a joint call just before Meggs led a group of Oath Keepers into the Capitol. And Greene later texted a friend: “We’re storming the Capitol.” In their sentencing memo, prosecutors said Greene should be viewed as part of Oath Keepers’ conspiracy. Greene “summoned his co-conspirators to the Capitol and greenlighted their participation in the attack,” the memo said.

    But Greene consistently denied instructing or even knowing that Oath Keepers supposedly under his command entered the Capitol. The ones who did, he told me, “did that shit on their own.” 

    Mehta said Friday that prosecutors’ evidence against Greene was “far too circumstantial” to warrant a prison time. “The jury did not find Mr. Greene guilty of the most serious offenses with which he was charged,” Mehta said. “That was their verdict, and we have to respect that, just as we ask the public to accept the guilty verdicts of others.”

    “I was paid to do a job,” Greene told reporters outside the courthouse Friday. “I came to do a job and I went home.”

  • QAnon’s Favorite Movie Had a Big Week at the Box Office—and Beyond

    A QAnon and Trump supporter at a protest

    A protester holds a QAnon sign during a 2020 demonstration against Washington state's stay-home order.Elaine Thompson/AP

    It’s been a great week for the summer’s surprise box office hit, Sound of Freedom. The independent, faith-based film finished No. 2 at the box office last weekend behind the latest Mission: Impossible movie, on its way to passing $100 million in revenues since its July 4 opening.

    Based on “real events,” the conservative-political thriller follows Passion of the Christ star Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard, a former federal agent who embarks on a mission to rescue victims of child sex trafficking in Colombia. The film has especially resonated with conservative audiences, thanks in part to rave reviews from right-wing influencers as well as Angel Studios’ unconventional “pay it forward” plan, where people can buy a ticket for complete strangers to watch the film for free. According to IndieWire, on its opening weekend, $2.6 million of the film’s $14 million came from people buying “Pay it Forward” tickets.

    Meanwhile, Sound of Freedom has been criticized for its “glamorized depiction” of human trafficking and its connections to the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose supporters have argued that Sound of Freedom exposes the “truth” about child sex trafficking. Despite the film itself making no direct mention of QAnon—or its claim that former President Donald Trump has been waging war against a secret cabal of satanic pedophiles and sex traffickers (i.e., Democrats) who control world governments, major corporations, and the media—it’s been embraced by Q supporters and by those involved in its production.

    Caviezel has promoted these conspiracy theories for years now, speaking at a QAnon convention in 2021 and saying on Steve Bannon’s podcast before the movie’s release that “There is a big storm coming”—a not-so-subtle reference to the day Q followers believed the Trump administration would lead a mass arrest and execution of members of the supposed global cabal and usher in a new golden age. (The real-life Tim Ballard, the founder and former CEO of Operation Underground Railroad, has also promoted QAnon theories in the past, and reporters have called into question his work at O.U.R. and whether the events in the movie actually happened.)

    And speaking of Trump, Sound of Freedom scored its biggest victory of the week on Wednesday night when the former president hosted a private screening of the film at his New Jersey club. Afterward, he took the time to thank Caviezel, Eduardo Verastegui, and Ballard for making the movie, calling the film “something very special” and an “incredible inspiration.”

    Despite the film’s box office bonanza, conspiracy theorists continue theorizing: Fans have asserted a conspiracy that movie theater giant AMC is actively trying to keep people from watching the movie by turning off the air conditioning—a victim narrative propelled by the belief that a nebulous “they” don’t want “us” to know about the “truth” about child sex trafficking (or at least QAnon’s notion of it).

     

  • House Democrats Prepare to Censure George Santos

    J. Scott Applewhite/ AP

    Three months after Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y) was indicted on 13 criminal counts, House Democrats plan to introduce legislation to formally censure the scandal-ridden New York Republican on Monday.

    The measure, which follows an unsuccessful effort to expel Santos, is unlikely to pass the GOP-majority House. But a censure would force individual Republicans to go on the record with their stances on Santos and add yet another stain to the congressman’s stain-filled, brief political career.  

    Shortly after getting elected to the House in November, Santos came under fire for a long list of lies he told about his life, including his educational background and job experience, as well as attracting allegations of financial fraud. Some of Santos’ alleged campaign donors, as my colleague Noah Lanard reported, don’t even seem to exist. The real possibility of jail time is now on the table after he was indicted on 13 felony counts for charges related to wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements to Congress.

    Santos made headlines once again last week after a recently filed campaign finance report revealed that some of his donors appear to include supporters of Miles Guo, the exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon associate. Here’s a snippet from our scoop:

    Of about 50 total contributors, the document listed about three dozen contributors spread across the country who mostly have Chinese names and who had each maxed out to Santos by donating $3,300, the legal maximum for the primary election. Together, this group pumped roughly $130,000 into Santos’ political bank account. This was hardly a coincidence. This band of financial backers appear to include supporters of Miles Guo, the exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon associate who was arrested in March for allegedly running a $1 billion fraud scheme.

    This roster of donors represents almost all of the money Santos pulled in in the second quarter of this year. 

  • RFK Jr. Airs Antisemitic COVID Conspiracies at New York City Fundraiser

    Josh Reynolds/AP

    The conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, and longshot Democratic presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed at an Upper East Side press event this week that COVID-19 may be a genetically engineered bioweapon that was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, reports the New York Post.

    The same press dinner had already gone viral for a flatulence-punctuated argument between two attendees about climate change. (“It seems fitting that it landed during an event intended to raise Kennedy’s stature with the media,” my colleague Inae Oh wryly noted.)

    At the event, Kennedy reportedly said, “COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.” He added, “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

    There is, of course, no evidence to support RFK Jr’s claims about COVID-19, but they do touch on well-worn antisemitic tropes. As the Post notes, a 2020 study by psychologists at Oxford University study found that 20 percent of British adults agreed with the statement, “Jews have created the virus to collapse the economy for financial gain.”

    It’s tricky to know if, and how, to cover the Kennedy candidacy, my colleague David Corn recently wrote in his newsletter. “Obviously, Bobby Jr. is exploiting—and abusing—his DNA. He certainly knows that anything Kennedy has long been catnip for the media and the public.” Corn even warned, before news of his fundraiser comments broke, that the candidate will no doubt “make common cause with antisemites and extremists to get attention.”

    He added, “Robert Kennedy once said of Lyndon Johnson, ‘He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he’s telling the truth. He just doesn’t recognize truth or falsehood.’ It is disturbing that this observation can be applied to his son.”

  • A Thunderous Fart Wrecked an RFK Jr. Event

    Josh Reynolds/AP

    In the three months since announcing his bid to become the next president of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has largely stayed in his lane of conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine nonsense. But we have also seen some stranger moments, including a video of a shirtless Kennedy working out in jeans and a belt that activated a certain segment of very online bros.

    Yet even for a political era defined by demented characters and strange shit, nothing could have prepared me for this story in the New York Post:

    The headline is not hyperbole. In fact, it manages to undersell the sheer chaos that erupted Tuesday night at an event showcasing Kennedy, where “two boisterous old men” barreled into a shouting match over climate change. Things like “the climate hoax” and “miserable slob” were reportedly shouted when suddenly one of the men, a columnist called Doug Dechert, pierced the night with an extended fart. “I’m farting!” he declared.

    Was this a stunt? No, Dechert later told the Post: “I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence.”

    Kennedy reportedly remained stoic during the fracas, which might be the first time I can admit to admiring the guy. As for the stunning weaponization of flatulence—a tactic made famous by lefty organizer Saul Alinsky—it seems fitting that it landed during an event intended to raise Kennedy’s stature with the media.