IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
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.
I have a personal and strong dislike for Louis DeJoy because I live on a rural island and DeJoy’s sabotage of the Postal Service has caused all kinds of problems. I pay a bill but it takes two weeks to get to the recipient so there is a late fee I have call to get excused. Someone sends me a time sensitive mailing and I don’t get it in time to respond properly. The postal work on the island complain about staff cuts, or policy changes. DeJoy, who is invested in a company that competes with the USPS, has been a disaster. He is also an MAGAt ideologue and is using the post office to make voting by mail more difficult. It now looks like President Biden may be able to get rid of this cretin. I certainly hope so.
U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testifies during a House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations and Federal Workforce hearing on Capitol Hill. Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty
Ever since Postmaster General Louis DeJoy — a major Republican donor — was selected to head the United States Postal Service (USPS) in 2020, he’s been enacting massively unpopular policies criticized by postal workers and Democrats alike. Now, President Joe Biden may soon be able to replace him.
On Thursday, Politico congressional correspondent Anthony Adragna reported that Biden was nominating former Rep. Val Demings (D-Florida) to fill the last remaining vacancy on the USPS Board of Governors. She, along with former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, are now awaiting confirmation by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan).
Should both Demings and Walsh be confirmed, that would give Biden seven appointees on the nine-member board overseeing USPS. And because the Postmaster General’s hiring and firing is up to the board and […]
Brett Wilkinsand, Staff Writer - AlterNet / Common Dreams
Stephan:
The MAGAt cult is getting scared because of the sudden change in the polls, the Harris fundraising success, and the tens of thousands of men and women who have volunteered work to get Harris elected. In response, they are doing everything they can to make it more difficult for people to register and vote. Trump and his cultists are not interested in fostering the wellbeing of a healthy democracy.
Christofascist Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been making voting. more difficult one of his main political efforts. Credit: Gage Skidmore
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it’s registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group’s CEO, said that “since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history,” with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and
ELLA LEE and SARAKSHI RAI , Staff Writers - The Hill
Stephan:
Almost every day I get emails from SR readers sending a story link and asking whether I know about it, or did I know I was wrong about something, and the great majority of these links lead to social media misinformation. Since a large percentage of Americans, particularly young people, get their news from social media I think we, as a country, are facing an important crisis and virtually nothing is being done about it. It is my fervent hope that Harris wins, and the Democrats win a strong majority in both houses of Congress, and then pass legislation about the spewing of. misinformation, particularly AI generated crap. It would make me very happy if Biden could do something between now and January, but it is not clear what he can do by just Executive Order.
Credit: iStock
A weeks-long, breakneck news cycle has set off a parallel explosion of misinformation online, which experts warn could make it harder to parse out what is real versus what is fake as the 2024 election gets underway.
In the span of just two weeks, the political landscape has been transformed, starting with the attempted assassination of former President Trump. The shooting, coupled with the dismissal of one of his most serious federal indictments, led straight into a jubilant Republican National Convention where he was officially selected as the next GOP nominee. Shortly after, the Secret Service director resigned over the security failure surrounding the attempt on Trump’s life.
That was followed just days later by President Biden’s announcement that he was withdrawing from the race, itself a fervent news cycle weeks in the making as Biden faced mounting pressure from Democrats to drop out after an abysmal […]
America’s gun psychosis has far greater negative effects than just the victims of gun violence and their families and friends. It is causing social destruction throughout American society, and here is the data confirming what I am saying. We as a culture have a desperate need to get this obsession about guns under control. No other developed nation in the world experiences this kind of damage.
Credit: MedPage Today
The psychological harm from mass shootings spills beyond direct survivors and into their communities, a cross-sectional study found.
Among survey participants — residents of six U.S. communities affected by recent mass violence incidents (MVIs) — 23.7% met criteria for presumptive past-year post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 8.9% met criteria for current PTSD, based on their survey responses.
And these were not just people who said either they or a close friend or family member were on site at the shooting: though most PTSD cases occurred in those with this high exposure to the MVI, respondents with no direct exposure still met the criteria for past-year and current PTSD in 21.0% and 8.9% of cases, according to researchers led by Angela Moreland, PhD, a psychologist at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, reporting in JAMA Network Openopens in a new tab or window.
Moreland’s group at MUSC has been responding to various mass shootings in the U.S. by disseminating Read the Full Article
Just as Hitler was brought to power by the support of a large percentage of the German people, so Viktor Orban was voted into office in Hungary, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey. This is how authoritarians come into power, not by military violence but through elections. So about a third of American voters, overwhelming White and with low education, are preparing to vote in November for criminal Trump and his Frankenstein Vance. And Trump is very clear, he intends this to be the last time Americans will vote. He says it explicitly, as this report reccounts. You would think this would be the lead story in every media outlet, print or video. But it is not.
Washington, DC – January 6, 2021: Police detonated pepper-spray ball fired by gun during Pro-Trump rally around Capitol building before they breached it and overrun it Credit: lev Radin / Shutterstock
Former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump raised eyebrows — alarm — when he told MAGA supporters on Friday evening they will only have to vote in the 2024 election — and won’t have to do so again.
“You won’t have to do it anymore. Four years, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore. In four years, you won’t have to vote again.”
Trump, who helped incite the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, already faces questions that he could abuse the Supreme Court’s recent […]
The American media, both print and electronic is failing the American public in a major way. They have not spent any significant time talking about what is in Project 2025, the christofascist textbook the villain Trump and his varlet Vance plan to follow. But that will not be said of SR. Here are some specific details, and their page number, describing the horrifying details of what the MAGAts have in mind.
Sunrise on the Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake, White River National Forest near Aspen, Colo. Credit Adobe
Written by former members of the Trump administration and other conservative leaders, “Mandate for Leadership” exhorts its readers to “go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative state.” Among many other measures, it calls for radical reductions in the federal workforce and in federal environmental protections and for advancing a “Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda.”
Excerpts from “Mandate for Leadership” are below, preceded by an agency-by-agency overview of the proposals that could have the greatest […]
Sean O'Driscoll, Senior Crime and Courts Reporter - Newsweek
Stephan:
I have seen a number of media sources reporting that on Monday Biden is going to put forward a proposal to significantly alter the Supreme Court to make it 13 justices, and an 18 year tenure. No other developed democracy in the world has a court with lifetime tenure and, as this report describes the court structure has been altered seven times in the last 200 years, so there is nothing novel about this. I absolutely suport a 13 justice court with 18 year tenure. The MAGAts in Congress will, of course oppose these changes. But I think Harris will get strongly behind what Biden proposes, and if she wins and the Democrats get a majority in the House and Senate it will happen. It is going to be up to you and me and those we know to vote only for Democrats. This election is not about partisan politics, it is about continuing democracy, or becoming a country like Hungary.
Supreme Court justices posing for their official photo in Washington, D.C., on October 7, 2022. Democrats want to expand the number of judges by four. Credit: Olivier Douliery / Getty
Democrats have renewed calls to add four more seats to the Supreme Court as a way of diluting its conservative majority.
On Thursday, Massachusetts Senator Edward J. Markey and Georgia Representative Hank Johnson, a member of the Judiciary Subcommittee, held a news conference to call for an expansion of the court and highlight the Judiciary Act, which would create a 13-justice Supreme Court.
Markey, the lead author of the legislation, told reporters in Washington, D.C., that the bill is intended to overcome the court’s swing to “extremist” far-right politics.
“The court’s recent decisions on presidential immunity, Chevron deference and overturning Roe v. Wade laid bare that a far-right, extremist majority has been fully captured and plunged the court into a crisis of confidence and legitimacy,” he said.
The Supreme Court has become so corrupted that even the ethical justices are calling for change. Here is what Associate Justice Elena Kagan has just publicly said.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan participates in a discussion at the George Washington University Law School, in Washington, D.C. Credit: Mark Wilson / Getty
On Thursday, Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan signaled support for the creation of an independent body to oversee the High Court’s ethics rules.
Despite clear conflicts of interest, neither of the two justices have agreed to recuse themselves from key cases where their biases could influence them.
