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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.
Stephan: With Donald Trump everything is a grift, and the point of being president is to use that authority to enrich yourself and your family. This must be the 100th story I have done about Trump and his grifts; there is no precedent for this level of presidential criminality in 244 years of American history.
Trump is pictured at his Trump International Golf Links course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, on July 10, 2012. That club is said to be operating at a loss as well as Turnberry and one in Ireland Credit: AFP/Getty
Trump reportedly tried to get the US ambassador to the UK to arrange for the British Open to be held at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland
New York Jets owner Woody Johnson IV reportedly asked the secretary of state for Scotland, David Mundell, in 2018, after pressure from Trump
It was after in 2017 a Scottish Open sponsor said: ‘Politics aside, Trump would be an ideal venue — but you can’t put politics aside’
Under the Constitution, a president is not allowed to benefit from gifts or profit from foreign governments
Experts on ethics say he may have profited from the government having to pay for security at the event
Johnson’s deputy Lewis A. Lukens emailed colleagues about what had happened and says he was forced out of his deputy role a few months later in 2019
The British government told the Times in a statement that Johnson ‘made no request […]
Dan Horn, Sharon Coolidge, and Jessie Balmert, - Cincinnati Enquirer
Stephan: Larry Householder, the Speaker of the House in the Ohio legislature, is a conservative "Christian" (I have to put that in quotes because these people have nothing to do with Jesus' teachings) and a Republican. Do you think when Republicans are looking for someone to run for public office that being a corrupt grifter is one of the secret qualifications? Or does it just work out that way because the pool of people who proclaim themselves conservative "Christians" just run to that orientation?
Ohio Speaker Larry Householder, of course a Republican, charged with racketeering Credit: Wall Street Journal
Federal agents arrested Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others Tuesday as part of a $60 million racketeering and bribery investigation that prosecutors described as one of the largest public corruption cases in Ohio history.
All the charges are tied to what federal prosecutors said was a criminal enterprise dedicated to securing a bailout for two nuclear power plants in northern Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Solutions of Akron. The bailout is expected to cost the state’s utility ratepayers $1 billion.
A criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday described the effort as “Householder’s Enterprise” and stated that he and his associates secretly used money from an energy company to expand their political power, enrich themselves and conceal their criminal conspiracy.
“This is likely the largest bribery, money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio,” said U.S. Attorney David DeVillers, whose office will lead the prosecution of the case. “This was bribery, plain and simple. This was a quid pro quo. This was pay to play.”
Stephan: When you look at the Trumpian Orcs, like Barr, Pompeo, DeVos, Mnuchin, if you are like me, you ask, "How could someone in a democracy agree to serve someone like Trump, or do the kind of things happening in the U.S. today? But when I think that I think back to Hitler, and all the men and women who faithfully served him. Remember Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, Hermann Goring? The truth is there are always humans willing to do horrific things to their fellow citizens, and they always have a rationale to explain what they are doing, as this piece describes. QED.
A leading Trump Orc, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty
Human rights advocates denounced as “dangerous” a draft report released Thursday by the U.S. State Department’s controversial Commission on Unalienable Rights that paints property rights and religious liberty as “foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure” while casting doubt on other liberties, including reproductive freedom.
“Make no mistake: this report was not designed with principles of equality, justice, and rights in mind. Instead, it serves as another stepping stone in the White House’s radical, isolationist, anti-rights, anti-scientific, religious agenda,” Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), said in a statement.
“The Commission on Unalienable Rights is a thinly veiled religious fundamentalist panel, and the people on it should have absolutely no say about the human rights of people all over the world,” Sippel declared, calling the panel “a dangerous distraction from the fact that this administration does not believe that all people are equal and entitled to human rights.”
“This administration has shown time and time again that their concern with human rights […]
ANDY KROLL, Washington Bureau Chief - RollingStone
Stephan: We are watching a concerted effort by the Republican Party, Trump, and his administration, with help from Russia, to fundamentally alter the substance of American democracy. It is a multi-faceted strategy being pursued at the federal, state, and local level, and it is unlike anything ever since in this country before. They seek to maintain the superficial forms of democracy but to sabotage the substance so that the dwindling Republican Party can retain power. These are very scary times.
Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone
In June, President Trump sat in the Oval Office for one of his periodic interviews-turned-airing-of-grievances. When the conversation turned to the 2020 election, Trump singled out what he called the “biggest risk” to his bid for a second term. It was not the mounting death toll from COVID-19, or further economic damage inflicted by the pandemic, or anything else a reality-dwelling president might fret about.
“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump told the Politico reporter he’d invited. He was referring to the series of lawsuits filed by his campaign and the Republican National Committee that fight the expansion of mail-in voting and seek to limit access to the ballot box in November. “We have many lawsuits going all over,” he said. “And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk.”
Going into 2020, Trump had the political winds at his back with a strong economy, roaring stock market, and historically low unemployment. Then came COVID-19. As of this […]
Ryan Goodman and Danielle Schulkin, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Just Security, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law | Junior Fellow at Just Security. JD, New York University School of Law - Just Security
Stephan: In my opinion, William Barr is the most corrupt and worst Attorney General in the history of the United States, worse even than John Mitchell, Nixon's attorney general who went to prison, as I believe Barr should as well. Here is an essay on his role in what is going on in Portland.
William Barr, Attorney General
Attorney General Barr has been building his playbook for using federal forces against an unwilling state for decades. In an interview with the Miller Center in 2001, Barr explained his strategy for deploying federal troops to address unrest in the Virgin Islands after a major hurricane in 1989. At the time of the incident, Barr was an assistant attorney general and head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. He boasted that during this time he found a way to deploy federal forces based on a legal justification that appears to now being played out in Portland:
Barr: We started quickly looking at the legal books. What authority do we have to go in there and start enforcing the law in St. Croix? We looked at some statutes, and we finally decided that without Presidential authority we could send down law enforcement people to defend the federal function. That is, we said, “People are interfering with the operation of our courts” and so on. I […]
Stephan: Just start with this: This is a report appearing in a British newspaper describing the current state of America. Makes you proud, right? No? Me neither.
John Yoo, whose infamous memo was used to justify American torturing people of other nationalities has been pulled out of whatever cesspit, and Trump now wants to use him to justify creating a national storm trooper force.
John Yoo, who wrote an infamous memo used to justify waterboarding Credit: Melissa Golden/Getty
The Trump administration has been consulting the former government lawyer who wrote the legal justification for waterboarding, on how the president might try to rule by decree.
John Yoo told Axios he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders that flout federal law.
In a Fox News Sunday interview, Trump declared he would try to use that interpretation to try to force through decrees on healthcare, immigration and “various other plans” over the coming month.
Constitutional scholars and human rights activists have also pointed to the deployment of paramilitary federal forces against protesters in Portland as a sign that Trump is ready to use this broad interpretation of presidential powers as a means to suppress basic constitutional rights.Advertisement
“This is how it begins,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor, wrote on Twitter. “The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable. If ever there was a time for peaceful civil disobedience, that time is upon us.”
Stephan: I consider what is going on in Portland, Oregon to be a test case being run by the Trump administration to gauge the public's reaction to the introduction of fascist Trumpian storm troopers onto American Streets. It is part of the Republican voter suppression effort, the discrediting of mail-in ballots -- even though Trump, Pence, and most of the cabinet vote by mail, and the invocation of blatant White supremacy.
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oregon sued the Trump administration late Friday over its deployment of federal agents to Portland, where unidentified officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service have been detaining Black Lives Matter protesters without explanation and using indiscriminate force to crush demonstrations.
“This is police escalation on top of police escalation. These federal agents must be stopped and removed from our city.” —Kelly Simon, ACLU of Oregon
“This is a fight to save our democracy,” Kelly Simon, interim legal director with the ACLU of Oregon, said in a statement. “Under the direction of the Trump administration, federal agents are terrorizing the community, risking lives, and brutally attacking protesters demonstrating against police brutality. This is police escalation on top of police escalation.”
“These federal agents must be stopped and removed from our city,” Simon added. “We will continue to bring the full fire power of the ACLU to bear until this lawless policing ends.”
The lawsuit (pdf) against DHS and the U.S. Marshals Service—filed on behalf of legal observers and journalists who were recently assaulted by federal agents in Portland—aims to “block federal law enforcement from dispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, or using physical force against journalists or legal […]
Stephan: Here is another take on what is going on in Portland. I take this very very seriously, and I suggest you do so as well. The only thing that is going to protect our democracy in November is massive citizen push back to what Trump, his administration, and the Republicans in Congress, and the state level, are trying to pull off.
Credit: Shealah Craighead
Last night I wrote about Trump’s use of ICE and Border Patrol stormtroopers under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security to detain and intimidate peaceful protesters. In that piece I speculated that Trump was not only testing the waters of creating his own personal paramilitary domestic security force and attempting to please the most sadistic elements of his base, but also that he was taking the natural actions an executive might take if he actually believed the dystopian propaganda about America’s cities being promulgated every day on Fox News.
But there is another deeply alarming possibility to consider. This November will be the first since the expiration of a 1982 consent decree in which the Republican National Committee will be freed to conduct voter suppression and intimidation en masse. As Andy Kroll recently explained at Rolling Stone:
The result of the suit was a 1982 consent decree between the Democratic and Republican parties. Even though the RNC refused to admit wrong-doing in New Jersey, the […]
