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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
David Corn and Dan Friedman, Washington Bureau Chief | Senior Reporter - Mother Jones
Stephan:
The coup continues and becomes more and more blatant. Here is the latest on Kash Patel, who last year it has been revealed was a Russian propagandist against the FBI. The same FBI that “emperor” Trump has now nominated him to head. There are so many stories of the corruption and criminality of “emperor” Trump’s administration that collectively his appointees/nominees are unlike any previous administration in American history over the past two centuries.
Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 30. Credit: Scott Applewhite/AP
Last year, Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur whom Donald Trump has nominated to head the FBI, received $25,000 from a Russia-linked production company to participate in a documentary in which he assailed the FBI and called for closing its headquarters.
In November, Tucker Carlson’s online network released a six-part series called All the President’s Men: The Conspiracy Against Trump that purported to chronicle the familiar MAGA conspiracy theory that a Deep State plotted against Donald Trump while he was a presidential candidate in 2016 and when he was president. The fourth episode focused on Patel and his years-long crusade to depict the Trump-Russia scandal—Moscow’s attack on the 2016 election and Donald Trump’s efforts to cover up its existence—as nothing but a total hoax orchestrated by nefarious Democrats and rogue government operatives.
In this film—which credits Patel as an executive producer—he offers a blistering attack on the FBI. He calls it a “corrupt” enterprise and claims it […]
Brendan Ballou, Former Federal Prosecutor and Contributing Writer - Politico
Stephan:
The only thing that is going to stop the authoritarian MAGAt coup which is underway is we ourselves. Please call or write your representative and both Senators and tell them your feelings about the coup, and ask them outright: What are you doing to stop the dismantlement of our democracy and government? When appropriate get out and demonstrate. It is going to take millions of us making our views clear to stop what is happening. It is the same non-violent strategy that Gandhi used to get independence for India without a war. That Nelson Mandela used to end apartheid in South Africa, and that Martin Luther King used to get the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts passed and signed by President Johnson. Get my book The 8 Laws of Change It will tell you exactly how to do it, and organize to do it.
Demonstrators gather for the Women’s March on Nov. 2, 2024. Former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou writes that “advocacy on the outside made advocacy on the inside possible” during the first Trump administration. Credit: Kent Nishimura / Getty
I’ve seen firsthand how resistance to Donald Trump — both inside and out of government — can stop his illegal plans.
In 2017, I was a young lawyer in the National Security Division of the Justice Department. Trump had just been elected, in part on his promise to impose “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” In his first week in office, Trump tried to do exactly that, largely halting travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. That ham-handed order was quickly blocked by a federal court, but by bad luck, my office in the Justice Department became deeply involved in crafting a workable version of this “travel ban.”
Militarily armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are going into apartments in the Denver area to drag possible illegal immigrants out of their homes. Texas is warning parents, as this report describes, that agents may board school buses to check children for their citizenship. If all of this sounds like Nazis bursting into homes and schools in Germany in the early 1930s to drag out Jews and others that Hitler did not like, it should because it is.
A group of young children getting on the school bus. Credit: Shutterstock)
A Texas school district has sent a warning to parents that border patrol agents could be boarding school buses to check the citizenship status of students.
In a letter to parents on Wednesday, Alice ISD Superintendent Anysia Trevino said the checks could occur during “student travel for extracurricular activities, including sports, band, and other co-curricular events.”
“We have received information that U.S. Border Patrol agents may be boarding school buses at highway checkpoints in and out of the Valley to question students about their citizenship status,” Trevino warned. “We strongly encourage families to be aware of the potential implications of these encounters. If a student is found to be without proper documentation, they may be removed from the bus, detained, and possibly deported.”
A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection in the Rio Grande Valley told NBC News 4 that the agency was working on a response to the letter.
The district’s Facebook page indicated that Trevino was considering […]
Did you know that almost all your personal data was made available to an openly racist sexist bully boy who was one of Elon Musk’s lieutenants until he was outed by journalists? The hallmark of the men and women committing the Republican coup is their objectively verifiable racism, sexism, dishonesty, and marginal competence. These are exactly the kind of people Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin used after they came to power. What stands out for me is how absolutely predictable this coup is to anyone with any knowledge of history.
A statue of Alexander Hamilton is seen outside the U.S. Department of Treasury building Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty
A staffer connected to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency resigned on Thursday after now-deleted racist social media posts were resurfaced.
The resignation was confirmed by a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Marko Elez, a 25-year-old software engineer, was working inside the Treasury Department to cut costs and root out fraud, as part of Musk’s DOGE effort. Elez was one of two temporary appointees at Treasury connected to DOGE who have been granted access to a highly sensitive Treasury system that processes trillions of dollars in payments every year.
The Wall Street Journalreported on a number of 2024 posts from an account connected to Elez on Musk’s X platform and noted that White House officials confirmed his resignation after the paper pointed out Elez’s activity on the social media site.
“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” […]
Andrew Kaczynski, Jennifer Hansler and Em Steck, Staff Writers - CNN
Stephan:
Just to prove the point I made in my previous comment, here is another fascist racist “emperor” Trump appointment. And please notice not a single “Republican” member of Congress has spoken out about any of this. They are completely complicit in the coup that is being carried out. It is worth noting that the states that are going to be most severely impacted by all this chaos are the Red States, as will become evident over the weeks that come.
Darren Beattie Credit: John Rudoff / Sipa USA
Darren Beattie, a former Donald Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after CNN revealed he spoke at a conference attended by White nationalists, has been elevated to a top job at the State Department, multiple sources familiar with the move told CNN.
Beattie was appointed to serve as the acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, a key role that is responsible for helping shape US messaging abroad related to counterterrorism and violent extremism, according to the State Department website.
CNN’s KFile first reported in 2018 that Beattie, a former Duke University visiting instructor, spoke in 2016 to the H.L. Mencken Club – a gathering that has included White nationalist figures such as Richard Spencer and Peter Brimelow. Beattie, who was then working as a speechwriter in the Trump White House, defended his speech, claiming it was academic in nature. The Washington Post later reported he was fired after CNN’s article.
After being ousted from the Trump White House, Beattie founded the right-wing media outlet Revolver News. […]
The coup continues. We are just 17 days into the destruction of our democracy, our economy, and poised to become involved in wars. And the effect of the coup is not just affecting Americans. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of women, children, and men in poor countries around the world have had their already meager lives ripped apart.. Tens of thousands of children in those countries are predicted to die as a result of this. Rather than commit another day’s SR to detail the further trends on our national destruction, I have decided to give you an interview I did a few days ago with a young man in Australia, Paul Philipson, that he has just posted. In it, I discuss my 47-year-long remote viewing project describing the future. Here is the YouTube link:
Léonie Chao-Fong, Christy Cooney and Yohannes Lowe, Staff Writers - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
As you have probably already heard, Benjamin Netanyahu, an international war criminal and Donald Trump, a convicted sex offender and multiple felon just stood at a press conference in the White House and committed to the ethnic cleansing of 2 million Palestinians and the takeover of their Gaza homeland by the United States, which will own it and turn it into a “Riviera.” It is essentially the same thing Putin did to Ukraine, but actually even worse because Putin was not going to force all Ukrainians out of Ukraine. Trump as of today, in my opinion, should be designated, as that term is defined, as an international war criminal. The man to whom he has turned over the government, Elon Musk, and his half-dozen of recent post-high school and just graduated from college (19-24 year-old) servants are at the same time dismantling the government. It is basically a kind of oligarch hostile takeover coup. Oh, and by the way, did I mention, this little team of nouveau-nazis, now has access to all your most private financial and medical data on file with the government? My prediction is that we will now see violence against Americans throughout the Muslim world, and very possibly not one but several 9/11s here in the United States. Perhaps an attack on the White House itself, Mar-a-Lago, and the Trump Tower in New York City.
President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference. Credit: Leah Millis / Reuters
Key takeaways from Trump-Netanyahu press conference
The US president, Donald Trump, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed reporters following talks at the White House. Here are the main takeaways from the joint press conference:
In a shock announcement, Trump said the US will “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip. “We will own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site,” he said, adding that the US will “level” destroyed buildings in the Palestinian territory and “create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”
Trump said he envisioned a “long-term” US ownership of Gaza after Palestinians are moved elsewhere. “This is not a decision made lightly,” he said, adding that “everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land.” He went on to say that Gaza could become “the Riviera of the Middle East” where “the world’s people” could live […]
War criminal Trump and his servants care nothing for climate change, don’t believe it is a real threat, and are doing everything they can to promote the interests of the petroleum oligarchs who bought Trump’s election for him, as well as the seats of the MAGAt Republicans in Congress. But as Los Angeles, California and Asheville, North Carolina have demonstrated the United States — as well as other nations of course — in the coming years is going to experience additional devastating events and, as this article describes, the impact on American society is going to be vast and severe. So while we are in the midst of a coup to end our democracy, so we are facing the earth itself threatening our wellbeing because of the greed and stupidity of a tiny group of people who have successfully bought America’s government because the American people didn’t pay attention when they were told what was going to happen to them.
The recent Eaton Fire in Los Angeles County destroyed thousands of homes. Credit:David McNew / Getty
Houses in the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods were still ablaze when talk turned to the cost of the Los Angeles firestorms and who would pay for it. Now it appears that the total damage and economic loss could be more than $250 billion. This, after a year in which hurricanes Milton and Helene and other extreme weather events had already exacted tens of billions of dollars in American disaster losses.
As the compounding impacts of climate-driven disasters take effect, we are seeing home insurance prices spike around the country, pushing up the costs of owning a home. In some cases, insurance companies are pulling out of towns altogether. And in others, people are beginning to move away.
One little-discussed result is that soaring home prices in the United States may have peaked in the places most at risk, leaving the nation on the precipice of […]
