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The Court That Let Democracy Bleed
The Court That Let Democracy Bleed MeidasTouch Network and Michael Cohen Jul 15, 2025 Guest article by Michael Cohen In a chilling, unsigne...
Interactive City Guide AI
interactive city guide
Interactive city guides can be incredibly helpful when planning a trip or exploring a new city! They offer features like searching for restaurants, hotels, historical sites, and activities with just a few clicks. Some popular options include:
Toronto Interactive City Guide: Available in multiple languages, this guide offers preset searches for various categories like restaurants, hotels, and historical sites.
Montreal Interactive City Guide: Similar to the Toronto guide, it provides preset searches and is also available in multiple languages.
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WordPress’s CEO is spooking the internet
NYT FINALLY Calls Trump UNFIT in BRUTAL TAKEDOWN
The New York Times ’s editorial board has issued a strongly-worded denunciation of Donald Trump as the presidential election looms, telling readers the Republican nominee “is unfit…
McConnell defends calling Trump ‘despicable human being,' throws Vance under the bus
The New York Times’s issued denunciation of Donald Trump as “is unfit to lead”
The New York Times’s editorial board has issued a strongly-worded denunciation of Donald Trumpas the presidential election looms, telling readers the Republican nominee “is unfit to lead” and a serial liar whose policies are “cruel” and will only “wreak havoc” on the nation.
Without explicitly endorsing his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in the piece, the board wrote a searing 112-word op-ed warning of a possible Trump second term.
“You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best,” it reads. Read More
.
Please Advise! Is the Bad Man Going to Win?
Please Advise! Is the Bad Man Going to Win?
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Anyone who isn’t in a nervous sweat right now is either comatose, chuckle-headed, sinister or just working on a really, really difficult jigsaw puzzle. Canadians are especially worried. At least Americans get a vote. We are like hostages locked in the trunk of a car driven by a drunken badger.
The campaign’s home stretch has been shocking. Donald Trump is trying his damnedest to lose the election. The question is, will Americans let him?
Trump’s entire campaign has been a remake of The Producers, that Mel Brooks film/musical about a stage show designed to be a commercial disaster that somehow fails to fail. Trump has piled up gaffes and outrages faster than a rat can procreate. He’s like a serial killer who has figured out that if you just keep murdering people, the cops won’t be able to keep up. Voltaire once said, “God is a comedian playing for an audience that is too afraid to laugh.” The same, we have lately discovered, is true of the devil. You want to snicker, but it’s all too frightening.
Trump said his Madison Square Garden rally, where Puerto Rico was described as an island of floating garbage, was “a lovefest.” In Green Bay, he said, “I want to protect the women of our country.... I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.” The man who recently rambled on about golfer Arnold Palmer’s tremendous penis, the candidate favoured by a majority of American evangelicals, followed up this weekend by simulating fellatio on a microphone. He also told Tucker Carlson that Liz Cheney should have “guns trained on her face.” (Carlson made his own news this week when it emerged that he once claimed he was attacked and clawed by a demon. Well, OK. But shouldn’t we hear the demon’s side first?)
A Soldier's Journey
'A Soldier's Journey'
The long-awaited centerpiece of the National World War I Memorial was unveiled Friday, a 25-ton, nearly 60-foot-long relief capturing the human toll of the war. Located just east of the White House in Pershing Park, the relief panel is the largest freestanding bronze sculpture in the Western Hemisphere.
The piece depicts more than three dozen figures used to tell the story of a single soldier, or "doughboy"—from leaving America for the war, witnessing death and destruction, and returning home. The sculptor, Sabin Howard, described the piece as emphasizing the process of being human as seen through the lens of war. Watch an interview with Howard and others discussing its creation here.
Roughly 118,000 Americans died in the war, with more than 200,000 soldiers wounded (the global death toll is estimated to be as high as 22 million). Read about the decadelong effort to make the larger National World War I Memorial a reality.
JD Vance Campaign Event With Christian Right Leaders May Have Violated Tax and Election Laws, Experts Say
JD Vance Campaign Event With Christian Right Leaders May Have Violated Tax and Election Laws, Experts Say
JD Vance Campaign Event With Christian Right Leaders May Have Violated Tax and Election Laws, Experts Say
by Andy Kroll, ProPublica; Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch; and Nick Surgey, Documented
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s appearance at a far-right Christian revival tour last month may have broken tax and election laws, experts say.
On Sept. 28, Vance held an official campaign event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in partnership with the Courage Tour, a series of swing-state rallies hosted by a pro-Trump Christian influencer that combine prayer, public speakers, tutorials on how to become a poll worker and get-out-the-vote programming.
Ziklag, a secretive organization of wealthy Christians, funds the Courage Tour, according to previously unreported documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented. A private donor video produced by Ziklag said the group intended to spend $700,000 in 2024 to mobilize Christian voters by funding “targeted rallies in swing states” led by Lance Wallnau, the pro-Trump influencer.
Even before the Vance event, ProPublica previously reported that tax experts believed Ziklag’s 2024 election-related efforts could be in violation of tax law. The Vance event, they said, raised even more red flags about whether a tax-exempt charity had improperly benefited the Trump-Vance campaign.
According to Texas corporation records, the Courage Tour is a project of Lance Wallnau Ministries Inc., a 501(c)(3) charity led by Wallnau. There have been five Courage Tour events this year, and Vance is the only top-of-the-ticket candidate to appear at any of them.
Wallnau has said that Vice President Kamala Harris is possessed by “the spirit of Jezebel” and practices “witchcraft.” As ProPublica reported, Wallnau is also an adviser to Ziklag, whose long-term goal is to help conservative Christians “take dominion” over the most important areas of American society, such as education, government and entertainment.
The Vance campaign portion was tucked in between Courage Tour events, and organizers took pains to say that Wallnau’s podcast hosted the hourlong segment, not the Courage Tour. Two signs near the stage said Wallnau’s podcast was hosting Vance. And during Vance’s conversation with a local pastor, the Courage Tour’s logo was replaced by the Trump-Vance logo on the screen.
An email sent by the Courage Tour to prospective attendees promoted the rally and Vance’s appearance as distinct events but advertised them side by side:
But the lines between those events blurred in a way that tax-law experts said could create legal problems for Wallnau, the Courage Tour and Ziklag. The appearance took place at the same venue, on the same stage and with the same audience as the rest of the Courage Tour. That email to people who might attend assured them that they could remain in their same seats to watch Vance and that afterward, “We will seamlessly return to the Courage Tour programming.”
The Trump-Vance campaign promoted the event as “part of the Courage Tour” and said Vance’s remarks would take place “during the Courage Tour.” And although the appearance included a discussion of addiction and homelessness, Vance criticized President Joe Biden in his remarks and urged audience members to vote and get others to vote as well in November.
Later in the day, Wallnau took the stage and asked for donations from the crowd. As he did, he spoke of Vance’s appearance as if it were part of the Courage Tour. “People have been coming up to us, my staff, and saying we want to help you out, what can we do, how do we do this? I want you to know when we do a Courage Tour, which will be back in the area, when we’re in different parts of the country,” he said. Asking for a show of hands, Wallnau added: “How many of you would like to at least be knowing when we’re there? Who’s with us on the team? If we have another JD Vance or Donald Trump or somebody?”
An employee of Wallnau’s, Mercedes Sparks, peeked out from behind a curtain. “I just wanted to clarify: You said they came to the Courage Tour,” Sparks said. “They didn’t. For legal reasons, the podcast hosted that. It was very separate. I don’t need the IRS coming my way.”
Despite the disclaimers, Vance’s campaign appearance at the Courage Tour raises legal red flags for several reasons, according to experts in tax and election law.
Both Lance Wallnau Ministries and Ziklag are 501(c)(3) charities, the same legal designation as the Boys & Girls Club or the United Way. People who donate to charities like these can deduct their gift on their annual taxes. But under the law, such charities are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.
Internal Ziklag records lay out how the Courage Tour could influence the 2024 election. “Our plan,” one private video states, “is to mobilize grassroots support in seven key swing states through large-scale rallies, each anticipated to attract between 5,000 and 15,000 participants. These ‘Fire and Glory’ rallies will primarily target counties critical to the 2024 election outcome.” Wallnau said he later changed the name of his swing-state tour from Fire and Glory to the Courage Tour, saying the original name “sounds like a Pentecostal rally.”
Four nonpartisan tax experts told ProPublica and Documented that a political campaign event hosted by one charitable group, which is in turn funded by another charitable group, could run afoul of the ban on direct or indirect campaign intervention by a charitable organization. They added that Wallnau’s attempt to carve out Vance’s appearance may not, in the eyes of the IRS, be sufficient to avoid creating tax-law problems.
“Here, the [Trump] campaign is getting the people in their seats, who have come to the c-3’s event,” Ellen Aprill, an expert on political activities by charitable groups and a retired law professor at Loyola Law School, wrote in an email. “I would say this is over the line into campaign intervention but that it is a close call — and that exempt organization lawyers generally advise clients NOT to get too close to the line!”
Roger Colinvaux, a professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, said that regulators consider whether a consumer would be able to distinguish the charitable event from the political activity. Does the public know these are clearly separate entities, or is it difficult to distinguish whether it’s a charity or a for-profit company that’s hosting a political event?
“If it looks like the (c)(3) is creating the audience, then that again is potentially an issue,” he said.
Ziklag, Wallnau and the Vance campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division, said there were past examples of the agency cracking down on religious associations for political activity similar in nature to Vance’s Courage Tour appearance.
In the 1980s, the Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart used his personal column in his ministry’s magazine to endorse evangelist Pat Robertson’s campaign for president. Even though the regular column, titled “From Me to You,” was billed as Swaggart’s personal opinion, the IRS said that it still crossed the line into illegal political campaign intervention. Swaggart had also endorsed Robertson’s campaign for president during a religious service.
In that case, the IRS audited Swaggart’s organization and, as a result, the organization publicly admitted that it had violated tax law.
Phil Hackney, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh who spent five years in the IRS’ Office of Chief Counsel, said the fundamental question with Vance’s Courage Tour event is whether the 501(c)(3) charity that hosted the event covered the cost of Vance’s appearance.
“If the (c)(3) bore the cost, they’re in trouble,” Hackney said. “If they didn’t, they should be fine.” The whole arrangement, he added, has “got its problems. It’s really dicey.”
And even though Ziklag did not directly host the Vance event, tax experts say that its funding of the Courage Tour — as described in the group’s internal documents — could be seen as indirect campaign intervention, which federal tax law prohibits.
“The regulations make it clear that 501(c)(3) organizations cannot intervene in campaigns directly or indirectly,” Samuel Brunson, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago, said. “So the fact that it’s not Ziklag putting on the event doesn’t insulate Ziklag.”
Potential tax-law violations aren’t the only legal issue raised by Vance’s appearance.
Federal election law prohibits corporations from donating directly to political campaigns. For example, General Motors, as a company, cannot give money to a presidential campaign. That ban also applies to nonprofits that are legally organized as corporations.
Election experts said that if the funding for the Vance appearance did come from a corporation, whether for-profit or nonprofit, that could be viewed as an in-kind contribution to the Trump-Vance campaign.
Do you have any information about Ziklag or the Christian right’s plans for 2024 that we should know? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.
Conservatives aimed at reducing access to abortion
OTTAWA — The NDP is looking to push back against what it calls a "creep" of legislation, petitions and threats from the 
.
Leader Jagmeet Singh says his party will use its next opposition day to force the House of Commons to debate and vote on a motion that calls for urgent action to improve abortion access.
Speaking in Montreal, Singh also called out the governing Liberals, saying they haven't done enough to improve abortion access in Canada.
The NDP in its press release cited several examples of what it called "anti-choice" moves from the Tories, including a petition presented earlier this year by a Conservative MP that claimed more than 98 per cent of abortions "are for reasons of social or personal convenience."
Elon Musk's secret talks with Putin ramped up during his Twitter takeover: WSJ report
Elon Musk's secret talks with Putin ramped up during his Twitter takeover: WSJ report I guess Elon is above the law too. You can't give out checks to vote!
BP Scraps Target of Reducing Oil Production by 2030
BP Scraps Target of Reducing Oil Production by 2030Oil major BP has scrapped its goal of reducing oil and gas production by the end of the decade, angering environmental groups who say the company is prioritizing profits over the planet.
According to three sources who have knowledge on the matter, BP CEO Murray Auchincloss scaled back the company’s energy transition plans in order to regain investor confidence, reported Reuters.
“As Murray said at the start of the year in our fourth-quarter results, the direction is the same but we are going to deliver as a simpler, more focused and higher-value company,” a spokesperson for BP said, as The Times reported.
In 2020, BP unveiled an ambitious strategy to reduce its production by 40 percent, while quickly ramping up renewables by 2030, reported Reuters. In February of 2023, the London-based company pared back the reduction goal to 25 percent, as investors concentrated on near-term profits instead of the energy transition.
Greg Abbott Boasted That Texas Removed 6,500 Noncitizens From Its Voter Rolls. That Number Was Likely Inflated.
Greg Abbott Boasted That Texas Removed 6,500 Noncitizens From Its Voter Rolls. That Number Was Likely Inflated.
by Vianna Davila and Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, James Barragán, The Texas Tribune, and Natalia Contreras, Votebeat
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Reporting Highlights
- Mistaken Identities: Reporters found at least nine people incorrectly labeled as noncitizens or removed from Texas voter rolls because they did not respond to letters about their citizenship.
- Election Misinformation: Texas state officials, including the attorney general, are pushing the claim that noncitizens plan to vote in U.S. elections.
- Fuzzy Math: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said 6,500 potential noncitizens were cut from the state’s voter rolls. But most simply didn’t respond to mailed queries about their citizenship.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
In late August, with a hotly contested presidential election less than three months away, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott boasted that the state had removed more than 1 million ineligible voters from its rolls, including more than 6,500 noncitizens.
The Republican governor said the Texas secretary of state’s office was turning over nearly 2,000 of those characterized as noncitizens to Attorney General Ken Paxton for investigation because records showed they had a voting history.
“Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated,” Abbott said in a press release.
The former registered voters whom Abbott called noncitizens, and the other people removed from the rolls since September 2021, were taken off through a routine practice local election officials conduct that includes culling the names of people who have moved or died. Election experts have urged caution in using the numbers to make definitive statements about registered noncitizens.
But Abbott did just that, initially stating in his news release that thousands of noncitizens had been stripped from the rolls.
His office then edited the press release after publication, softening it by adding the word “potential” before noncitizens.
Abbott’s claims helped to fan ongoing unsubstantiated Republican allegations that noncitizens plan to cast ballots en masse to sway elections for Democrats, assertions that former President Donald Trump and his party are using to cast doubt on the integrity of the upcoming November election.
An investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Votebeat, however, found that the governor’s claims about noncitizens on the rolls appear inflated and, in some cases, wrong.
The secretary of state’s office identified 581 people, not 6,500, as noncitizens, according to a report it gave Abbott in late August that the newsrooms obtained through a public information request.
In response to questions about the basis for Abbott’s larger number, the secretary of state’s office told the news organizations that it had “verbally” provided the governor’s office with a separate number of people removed from the rolls who failed to respond to letters alerting them that there were questions about their citizenship.
The governor’s news release combined the two figures.
That means U.S. citizens who simply never received or responded to such letters are almost certainly included in Abbott’s 6,500 number. Abbott did not respond to requests for comment, and Secretary of State Jane Nelson declined to be interviewed.
After attempting to contact more than 70 people across both categories, the news organizations have so far found at least nine U.S. citizens in three Texas counties who were incorrectly labeled as noncitizens or removed from the rolls because they did not respond to the letters about their citizenship. In each case, they showed reporters copies of their birth certificates to confirm their citizenship, or reporters verified their citizenship using state records.
One of them is 21-year-old Jakylah Ockleberry.
Ockleberry, a native Texan who provided the news organizations with a copy of her birth certificate, had only left the state twice in her life, including a recent trip to California.
She had no idea Travis County had mislabeled her as a noncitizen until the news organizations contacted her. “How would something like that happen?”
When the governor’s press release came out, election experts and local officials were worried about cases such as Ockleberry’s, saying the press release implied officials had confirmed the noncitizen status of 6,500 people when they had not.
Five years ago, Texas officials suggested that nearly 100,000 noncitizens were registered to vote and that nearly half of them had cast ballots. Those claims quickly unraveled under scrutiny and spurred a lawsuit and settlement that now governs how Texas can flag someone as a potential noncitizen.
Asked whether the nine people the news organizations identified as U.S. citizens were included in Abbott’s latest figure, the secretary of state’s office said it could not confirm or deny the inclusion of any specific people. Local election officials said they don’t know which voters were included in Abbott’s tally, but emphasized the data originates at the county level.
The discrepancies show the pitfalls inherent in using this data to make assertions about noncitizens.
In Ockleberry’s case, as well as those of four others the newsrooms identified in Travis County, election workers should have selected a code that indicated the voters had moved. Instead, they mistakenly selected a code for noncitizens.
Bruce Elfant, the Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, acknowledged the errors made by his office. But he also said the numbers suggested that noncitizen voting “is an infinitesimal, small issue.”
Routine maintenance of voter rolls is important, and if noncitizens are registered, they should be removed, said Marc Meredith, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on election administration.
But Meredith said Abbott’s decision to announce without explanation that 6,500 noncitizens were removed from the rolls, and to initially do so without qualifying that these were only potential noncitizens, “reduces trust in the Texas voter registration process in an unnecessary way.”
Routine Maintenance, Political Purpose
Voter rolls are naturally fluid. People move, die, become citizens and turn 18. Election officials across the country are constantly adding and removing people for legitimate reasons.
“So long as we have requirements about keeping lists clean, and so long as we don’t have a police state that has a single database with all of our names in it, like in much of the rest of the world, including democratic nations, we’re going to come across these sorts of problems,” said Charles Stewart III, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
Elfant, for one, said he was frustrated by Abbott’s public promotion of voter removal data. He said the governor’s press release created confusion among residents who feared they might have been wrongly removed and would not be able to cast ballots in the upcoming presidential election.
“It scared a lot of people. We’ve received a lot of phone calls and emails from people who are concerned that they’re not on the voter rolls,” Elfant said.
Any number of things can trigger a question about a voter’s eligibility.
For example, county registrars contact anyone who has marked on a jury summons that they’re not a citizen. The registrars need to confirm if that’s true, because it would mean the person is also ineligible to vote. The secretary of state’s office also gets information weekly from the Texas Department of Public Safety about people who have signed up for licenses and state identification and identified themselves as noncitizens. That information is then sent to counties.
In such cases, county election officials must follow up. They are required by law to notify voters and give them 30 days to respond before they’re removed from the rolls.
But election officials know those safeguards don’t always work.
“The post office messes up. We get a lot of cards back or mail back that says ‘undeliverable’ and the person will be like, ‘I’ve lived at this address for 20 years and I’ve never moved,’” said Trudy Hancock, elections administrator in Republican-leaning Brazos County, home to Texas A&M University. “So you have to consider that there are outside circumstances that can affect our efforts to reach them.”
Failure to respond to a letter questioning someone’s citizenship is not a confirmation that they are not a citizen, election officials said.
The 2019 episode, when the secretary of state’s office announced that it had identified 95,000 registered voters as potential noncitizens and said that more than half of them had previously cast ballots, highlighted failures in the process.
Paxton, the attorney general, immediately turned to social media, posting “VOTER FRAUD ALERT.” Abbott thanked Paxton and the secretary of state’s office on Twitter for “uncovering and investigating this illegal vote registration.” Trump also piled on with a tweet calling the state’s numbers “just the tip of the iceberg.”
Voting rights groups sued, decrying the state’s efforts as deliberate attempts to suppress the votes of actual citizens. Texas’ assertions didn’t hold up. Many of the flagged registered voters turned out to be naturalized citizens whom the state incorrectly identified as ineligible because it was using outdated DPS data from driver’s license and state identification card applications. (DPS did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)
The state settled the case and agreed to only flag people with the secretary of state’s office if they identify as noncitizens when applying for a new ID with DPS and if they previously registered to vote.
State officials should be transparent about how they arrived at the latest assertions, said David Becker, executive director and founder of The Center for Election Innovation & Research.
The state appears to have presented a figure without fully explaining its methodology or double-checking the information, said Becker, who is a former senior trial attorney in the voting section of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
If the governor presented this data in a court of law without evidence, Becker believes it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny.
“Their claims would likely be dismissed until they could come up with something that actually documents how they got to those numbers,” he said.
Labeled Noncitizens
When Justin Comer, 29, heard that the state had removed thousands of noncitizens from the voter rolls, it never occurred to him that he might be one of them. Comer was born in Harris County, the home of Houston, and grew up in conservative Montgomery County just outside the city. He said he’d been registered to vote there since he was 18 and had cast ballots in presidential elections since then.
“I’ve always been interested in especially local politics, and just making sure I stay up to date with that,” Comer said in a phone interview. “I’m always pushing my wife now, I’m like, ‘Hey, we need to stay active in that respect and do our part.’”
It wasn’t until the news organizations contacted him that he made the connection between a peculiar voter registration issue he encountered last year and the Republican leaders’ sweeping noncitizen voting claims.
In 2023, he received a notice from the county elections office that he’d been flagged as a potential noncitizen. He needed to show proof of his citizenship in the next 30 days or his registration would be canceled. The letter Comer received indicated he’d said he wasn’t a citizen in a response to a jury summons. Comer assumes he clicked the wrong button when responding to the notice online; he had meant to reply that he had moved. He’s now registered to vote in Collin County, where he lives.
“I was more just confused,” Comer said. “I’ve lived in Texas my whole life. It was never a question for me.”
In some cases, it’s unclear what happened. Diana Colon spent much of her life in the mountains of Puerto Rico, in the town of Aibonito, but moved to El Paso County on the far western edge of Texas in 2018 to be closer to her daughter.
She was surprised when she learned the county had kicked her off its voter rolls after she apparently failed to respond to a question about her citizenship. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, and she is an American citizen. She showed a copy of her birth certificate to a reporter.
“That’s crazy,” she said.
Colon does not recall registering to vote, though the county said it received an application from her at some point in which she did not answer a question about her citizenship. Public information the county provided the news organizations indicated she was flagged as a potential noncitizen in DPS data.
Colon has since moved to California but would like to return to the El Paso area and would register to vote, if only to clear up the fact that she can. “I wouldn’t like people saying I’m not a U.S. citizen,” she said in an interview.
There are almost certainly additional U.S. citizens among the thousands of removed voters Abbott characterized as noncitizens. For example, reporters identified Texas birth certificates for another two voters whose registrations in Montgomery County were canceled for not responding to questions about their citizenship. The news organizations could not reach those voters for comment.
Noncitizens have occasionally voted, but experts say these cases are rare and there is no evidence that they affect election outcomes. Noncitizens who vote face criminal penalties, including the loss of their residency status and deportation. In 2017, Rosa Ortega, a U.S. permanent resident living in North Texas, said she believed her green card authorized her to vote and cast five ballots over a decade. A Tarrant County jury convicted her of voter fraud and sentenced her to eight years in prison.
Meredith, the University of Pennsylvania elections expert, said he wouldn’t be surprised if some people removed from the Texas rolls are indeed noncitizens who had cast ballots in a previous election. But that doesn’t mean the problem is widespread. “You shouldn’t use the fact there may be a few as evidence that it happens all the time,” Meredith said.
Reporters also found some noncitizens, including two who said they had inadvertently registered after receiving what they said were unsolicited voter registration applications, an ongoing concern for Republicans who believe this kind of outreach will result in large numbers of noncitizens signing up to cast a ballot. One got the application from a voting advocacy group. But the other got it while filling out other state paperwork.
In both cases, they had truthfully filled out the form and said they were noncitizens. Neither voted. Election workers in the two counties involved, Collin and Travis, said those voter registration applications should not have been processed because the applicants identified themselves as noncitizens and both people were added to the rolls through clerical error.
One of them, Austin resident Son Mai, had no idea he had ever been on the rolls until a reporter contacted him.
The news organizations viewed three voter registration applications from Mai in which he checked a box saying he was not a U.S. citizen. They interviewed Mai, who is originally from Vietnam and speaks limited English, through an interpreter.
Mai, who has been a permanent resident and green card holder for over 40 years, receives Social Security disability benefits and food stamps. Voter registration applications are included with that paperwork, which he believes is how he was mistakenly signed up.
However, Mai always marked that he is not a U.S. citizen on the forms, the county confirmed. As a result, Travis County should have automatically rejected his application, but elections officials said he was accidentally added to the rolls instead. The county confirmed Mai has never voted, though he said he hopes to become a naturalized citizen.
“I told them I couldn’t vote,” he told the reporters. “I never vote.”
Building a Case
With the election less than a month away, claims about noncitizen voting have continued to ratchet up despite numerous elections experts saying such instances are very rare. These efforts can have significant consequences.
The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit last month in Nevada alleging that nearly 4,000 noncitizens may have cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election and that thousands could vote in the coming election. (Nevada’s former secretary of state, who is Republican, did not find evidence to substantiate the 2020 claims during an investigation at the time).
Last month, the Justice Department filed suit against Alabama after its secretary of state flagged more than 3,000 alleged noncitizens and instructed county officials to remove any noncitizens from their voter rolls, although systemic voter roll cleaning is illegal so close to a federal election. In a statement, the Justice Department said its review found that naturalized and native-born American citizens had been caught up in the effort.
In Texas, both Abbott and Paxton have promoted claims of noncitizens seeking to vote in the November election.
On a single day in August, Paxton said his office would investigate an allegation that nonprofits were setting up booths outside state driver’s license offices and signing up noncitizens to vote, which followed an unfounded claim peddled by a Fox News host, and announced his agency had raided homes in three South Texas counties to investigate allegations of voter fraud. The next day, the attorney general appeared on the radio show of conservative personality Glenn Beck pushing debunked claims that President Joe Biden is allowing immigrants to enter the country illegally so they can vote for Democrats in elections.
In recent weeks, Paxton put out a flurry of news releases, continuing the hunt for noncitizen voters.
Paxton, who did not respond to a request for comment, sent a public letter to Nelson, the secretary of state, last month urging her to demand the federal government’s assistance in identifying potential noncitizens on the rolls.
But Nelson, a Republican and an Abbott appointee, apparently didn’t move aggressively enough for Paxton. In an Oct. 2 news release, the attorney general expressed frustration with Nelson, saying she had not provided the federal government any information about the possible noncitizens. He then asked Nelson’s office to provide him with the list of names so he could send it on to the government himself.
Hours later, Nelson provided Paxton the voter records for anyone who does not have a Texas driver’s license or identification card number on file in its statewide voter registration system. The list was accompanied by an explicit warning.
“The records do not reflect, and are in no way indicative of, a list of potential non-United States citizens on the State’s voter rolls,” Nelson wrote.
Dan Keemahill of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, Alejandra Martinez of The Texas Tribune and Thomas Wilburn of Votebeat contributed data research and reporting.
Bible mandate to enrich former President Donald Trump
Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters is being sued by dozens of Oklahomans over his classroom 
.
Local news station KOCO reports that 32 state residents, including teachers, parents, and even faith leaders, are asking the Oklahoma State Supreme Court to block Walters' initiative, which it describes as an "extremist agenda that imposes his personal religious beliefs on other people’s children." Read More
U.S. Infant Deaths Rose After Fall of Roe v. Wade
MONDAY, Oct. 21, 2024 -- The United States experienced a small but significant rise in infant deaths
in the months following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision overturned Roe v. Wade, a new study shows.
The Dobbs ruling, handed down in July of 2022, led to outright bans on abortion in 14 states and tighter restrictions in eight others.
According to researchers, forcing women to carry "frail fetuses" to term -- for example, fetuses with known congenital abnormalities -- might lead to more deaths in infancy.
That appears to be the case.
Looking at U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on infant deaths for the years 2018 through 2023, the researchers observed a 7% rise in infant deaths in the months following the Dobbs decision, compared to the years before.
There was an even higher 10% rise in deaths for infants who died from congenital abnormalities.
The study, published Oct. 21 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, was co-authored by Maria Gallo and Parvati Singh, a professor and an assistant professor of epidemiology, respectively, at Ohio State University.
The new data shouldn't come as a surprise, the researchers said, since it echoes findings from a study published earlier this year. That research revealed a rise in infant deaths in Texas after that state passed legislation in 2021 that essentially banned abortion.
Following that legislation, the rate of infant deaths in Texas rose by almost 13%, the study found.
Trump Media Whistleblower Blasts Company for Outsourcing Jobs Abroad as Betrayal of “America First”
Trump Media Whistleblower Blasts Company for Outsourcing Jobs Abroad as Betrayal of “America First”
by Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
An internal whistleblower complaint at Trump Media calls for CEO Devin Nunes to be fired, alleging he has “severely” mismanaged the company and opened it to “substantial risk of legal action” from regulators, according to a copy reviewed by ProPublica.
The letter also says that former President Donald Trump’s company is hiring “America Last” — alleging that Nunes imposed a directive to hire only foreign contractors at the expense of “American workers who are deeply committed to our mission.”
“This approach not only contradicts the America First principles we stand for but also raises concerns about the quality, dedication, and alignment of our workforce with our core values,” the letter says.
Trump’s promise to “stop outsourcing” and “punish” companies that send jobs abroad has been a centerpiece of his political career, including his current campaign for president.
The letter also accuses Nunes, a former Republican congressman, of hiring unqualified members of his inner circle and being dishonest with employees at the company, which runs the social media platform Truth Social.
ProPublica reported this month that several executives and staffers had been forced out of the company, and people involved with Trump Media believed the ousters were retaliation in the wake of a whistleblower complaint. The complaint has been the subject of intense interest among former employees, according to interviews and records of communications among former employees. Several people with knowledge of the company had told ProPublica the concerns revolve around alleged mismanagement by Nunes.
No specific employee signed the letter that was reviewed by ProPublica. It claims to represent “over half” of the company’s staff, including “multiple department heads and C-level officers.” The copy reviewed by ProPublica has been circulating among people connected to the company, and it’s unclear whether there are any differences between it and the version recently submitted to Trump Media’s board.
The copy reviewed by ProPublica is addressed to the audit committee of the board and says it was submitted through the company’s anonymous whistleblower channel.
Trump Media declined to answer detailed questions about the whistleblower complaint or provide comment from the board. But the company’s lawyer in a letter accused ProPublica of writing another in a “series of hit pieces” and “once again basing it upon unreliable sources, attempting to paint a picture of internal turmoil.”
In a previous statement, the company’s lawyer said in a letter that Trump Media “strictly adheres to all laws and applicable regulations.”
Nunes and the Trump campaign did not respond to questions.
The whistleblower complaint paints a picture of turmoil and profound problems in the company at a time when Trump Media’s stock has soared nearly 150% in less than a month, pushing the company’s market value to roughly $6 billion. Even though Truth Social generates virtually no revenue, the company’s stock has attracted enormous interest from Trump fans and speculators.
The stock’s rally has generated a windfall, at least on paper, for Trump, whose majority ownership stake in the company is now worth more than $3 billion. (He recently said he has no plans to sell.)
Among the company’s board members are Trump’s son Don Jr. and two of his former cabinet members: Robert Lighthizer, the former U.S. trade representative, and Linda McMahon, who headed the Small Business Administration and is a major donor and current co-chair of Trump’s transition planning committee.
After the ProPublica story was published this month, an attorney representing Trump Media, Jason Greaves of Binnall Law Group, sent ProPublica a letter demanding an “immediate retraction.” The letter described the article as “false and defamatory” but provided no evidence showing anything in the story was inaccurate.
Following the whistleblower complaint to the board, the company enlisted an outside lawyer to investigate and interview staffers, a person with knowledge of the company had told ProPublica. It’s not clear what the result of that review was or whether it’s ongoing. Governance experts told ProPublica that company boards have a duty to address red flags that suggest corporate wrongdoing.
In perhaps the most serious charge, the letter alleges that Nunes’ “missteps have put us at substantial risk of legal action with our regulators, vendors, shareholders, and employees, and have already resulted in litigation.”
The letter does not give examples of what Nunes has done that could risk action by regulators.
The letter says that not only is Trump Media understaffed — with just “20 technical employees” — but that Nunes has blocked the hiring of Americans. LinkedIn profiles and an invoice obtained by ProPublica show about half a dozen people listed as based in the Balkans doing work for Trump Media, in tasks including software engineering and customer support.
The front page of Truth Social contains the tagline: “Proudly made in the United States of America. 🇺🇸”
The whistleblower letter portrays Nunes, who left a two-decade career as a California congressman in 2022 to become CEO of Trump Media, as ill-equipped to run a tech company.
“Mr. Nunes has consistently lied, targeted employees, and mishandled company resources by placing critical functions in the hands of unqualified members of his inner circle,” it says.
The letter doesn’t give examples of Nunes’ alleged lies or identify the members of his inner circle.
The tone of the letter is more in sorrow than in anger.
“We have approached this with patience, kindness, and grace, hoping for improvement, but the situation has only deteriorated,” the letter states, adding, “We remain fully committed to the mission of restoring and defending free speech on social media.”
Another concern in the letter is about money. Employees were pressured to sell their shares of the company at $20 before it went public, leaving them without a stake in the enterprise and costing them financially, according to the letter. The company’s stock was briefly trading at more than three times that price after it went public in March. After dipping as low as $12 in September, it closed this week above $29.
The letter includes a warning: If the board does not act, the problems could spill into public view and Trump Media could be gravely damaged.
“The more these internal failures — ranging from leadership mismanagement and broken promises to legal vulnerabilities — remain unaddressed, the more likely they are to leak out, likely triggering a PR crisis,” the letter says. “If these issues become public, they will severely tarnish Truth Social’s reputation, erode public trust, and draw negative media attention.”
Do you have any information about Trump Media that we should know? Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at robert.faturechi@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217.
Battle Over Ballot Drop Boxes
Battle Over Ballot Drop Boxes Rages On in Wisconsin as Officials Put Them at Center of Election Integrity Debate
by Megan O’Matz
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
They are squat, stationary and seemingly innocuous. But ever since the high drama of the 2020 presidential election, humble drop boxes have been more than a receptacle of absentee ballots; they’ve morphed into a vessel for emotion, suspicion and even conspiracy theories.
In the battleground state of Wisconsin, especially, the mere presence of these sidewalk containers has inspired political activists and community leaders to plot against them, to call on people to watch them around the clock and even to hijack them.
They’ve been the subject of two state Supreme Court decisions, as well as legal memos, local council deliberations, press conferences and much hand-wringing.
Wausau Mayor Doug Diny was so leery of the box outside City Hall that he absconded with it on a Sunday in September, isolating it in his office. It had not yet been secured to the ground, he said, and so he wanted to keep it safe. The escapade was met with a backlash but also won the mayor some admirers online before he returned it.
“COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS! WELL DONE SIR!” one person wrote on the conservative social media site Gettr.
As early voting for the November election begins and Wisconsinites receive their absentee ballots, they have choices on how to return them. Mail them. Deliver them in person to the municipal clerk. Or, in some communities, deposit them in a drop box, typically located outside a municipal building, library, community center or fire station.
Though election experts say the choices are designed to make voting a simple act, the use of drop boxes has been anything but uncomplicated since the 2020 election, when receptacles in Wisconsin and around the country became flash points for baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud. A discredited, but popular, documentary — “2000 Mules” — linked them to ballot stuffing, while a backlash grew over nonprofit funding that helped clerks make voting easier through a variety of measures, including drop boxes.
The movie’s distributor, Salem Media Group Inc., removed it from circulation in May and, in response to a lawsuit, issued a public apology to a Georgia voter for falsely depicting him as having voted illegally. A federal judge dismissed Salem Media Group as a defendant, but the litigation is proceeding against the filmmaker and others.
With all that fuss in the background, Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court outlawed the boxes in 2022. But then this summer, with the court now controlled by liberals, justices ruled them lawful, determining that municipal clerks could offer secure drop boxes in their communities if they wished.
The court’s latest ruling made clear it’s up to each municipal clerk’s discretion whether to offer drop boxes for voters. But the decision has done little to change minds about the boxes or end any confusion about whether they’re a boon to democracy or a tool for chicanery.
This year, four of Wisconsin’s largest cities are using drop boxes — Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay and Racine. But numerous locales that offered drop boxes in 2020, including Kenosha, the fourth-largest city in the state, have determined they will not this year.
Voters have been getting mixed messages from right-wing activists and politicians about whether to use drop boxes, as the GOP continues to sow distrust in elections while, at the same time, urging supporters to vote early — by any means.
“Look, I’m not a fan of drop boxes, as is no great surprise, but if you have to have them, this is not a bad situation,” Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, which has fostered doubt about election integrity and helped inspire “2000 Mules,” said on a video posted to social media on Sept. 30. It showed her giving a brief tour of a drop box in Madison, Wisconsin’s capital and a bastion of Democrats.
With the camera trained on one of the boxes, Engelbrecht extolled that “the slot is really small, so that’s a good thing,” and that “most of these drop boxes appear to be close to fire stations,” which she also declared a good thing. About a week later, she wrote in a newsletter that True the Vote had collected exact drop box locations statewide and was working to arrange livestream video feeds of them.
Unlike in 2020 when Trump warned against the use of absentee ballots, this year he is urging supporters to “swamp the vote.” And the Wisconsin Republican Party is not discouraging voters from using ballot drop boxes if they are available in their community and are secure.
Still, Wisconsin’s GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, Eric Hovde, has urged citizen surveillance brigades to watch the boxes. “Who’s watching to see how many illegal ballots are being stuffed?” Hovde told supporters in July, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by The Washington Post. “Look, we’re probably going to have to have — make sure that there’s somebody standing by a drop box everywhere.”
Most boxes have security cameras trained on them. Those surveillance tapes could be used as purported evidence in legal cases if Trump loses on Nov. 5.
Already, Engelbrecht has filed a public records request with the Dane County Clerk’s Office for “copies of video recordings from security cameras used to surveil all exterior and interior ballot drop boxes in Dane County for the November 2024 Election.” The county, whose seat is Madison, does not have access to camera footage, which is kept by municipalities, the county clerk told ProPublica.
After this year’s state Supreme Court ruling allowing the drop boxes, the Wisconsin Elections Commission issued guidance to the state’s roughly 1,800 municipal clerks recommending more than a dozen security practices related to the boxes.
The instructions include that they be “affixed to the ground or the side of the building,” “sturdy enough to withstand the elements,” “located in a well-lit area,” “equipped with unique locks or seals” and “emptied often.”
The commission recommended that clerks keep a record of the times and dates of retrieval, number of ballots retrieved and the names of the people doing the retrieving.
It also referred clerks to federal guidelines.
But even with updated guidelines in place and ballot harvesting prohibited in Wisconsin (individuals can only submit their own ballot, unless helping a disabled person), concerns persist.
In August in Dodge County, some 60 miles northwest of Milwaukee, the sheriff, Dale Schmidt, emailed three town clerks, telling them he had “serious concerns” about drop boxes, according to records obtained by the news site WisPolitics. “I strongly encourage you to avoid using a drop box,” he wrote. The sheriff asked the clerks numerous questions about the boxes, explaining that: “Even if set up the best way possible to avoid the potential for fraudulent activity, criminal activity many times finds ways to subvert even the best plans.”
Two of the clerks — from the towns of Ashippun and Beaver Dam — replied to the sheriff that they would not use them and the clerk from Hustisford told Wisconsin Public Radio that, while she received Schmidt’s email, the town board had already decided against using a drop box out of security concerns. In an email to ProPublica, Schmidt said, “No one was intimidated into choosing not to use the boxes and none of them had heartburn over not using them.”
Brittany Vulich, Wisconsin campaign manager for the nonpartisan voting rights group All Voting is Local, is bothered by how mayors, council members and other officials are seeking to influence these decisions. She notes that municipal clerks — the vast majority of whom are women — are the top election officials in each municipality.
“It’s the undermining of their authority. It’s the undermining of their office,” she said. “It’s the undermining of their autonomy to do their job and to make that decision on whether to use drop boxes or not. And that is what is very alarming.”
Other towns have also balked.
In the city of Brookfield, the Common Council took up a resolution Aug. 20 and voted 10-4 not to have a drop box after reviewing a memo by City Attorney Jenna Merten who found the recommended precautions burdensome.
“The guidance states that for unstaffed 24-hour ballot drop boxes, the City would need a video surveillance camera and storage of the video footage, as well as decals, extra keys and security seals,” she wrote. “Removing the ballots from the drop box would require at least two people and the completion of chain of custody logs.”
During the debate, Alderman Gary Mahkorn, an opponent of drop boxes, argued that they served a purpose during the COVID-19 pandemic but then “became a hugely political issue, and that’s what makes me want to, you know, puke in a way.” He worried that “the further we get away from people trusting our elections, the more our democracy is at stake.”
Instead of having drop boxes, the city will have extended voting hours, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., most weekdays during in-person absentee voting for the two weeks prior to the election.
In Wausau, the box that Diny took to his office is back, bolted to the ground and being used for early voting.
At first, Diny resisted pressure from the city clerk and members of the City Council to return it. The clerk, Kaitlyn Bernarde, reported the matter to the Marathon County District Attorney’s Office and the state elections commission. And Diny arranged to have the clerk reclaim it.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating. There have been no charges. Diny told ProPublica he believes he did nothing wrong, saying: “None of this was done in a nefarious, secret way.”
At a City Council meeting on Tuesday night, Diny attempted to force a vote on allocating additional funds for drop-box security. But the council showed no interest.
During the public comment period, residents both praised and lambasted the mayor. One local resident rose to say, “Arguing about a box is dumb.”
Milei's austerity seen pushing half of Argentina into poverty
Milei's austerity seen pushing half of Argentina into povertyBUENOS AIRES - Irma Casal, a 53-year-old in Buenos Aires, works three shifts as a garbage recycler, cardboard collector and bricklayer, but, like many Argentines at a time of rising poverty, she still struggles to make ends meet.
Interactive Economic Terms and Definitions
Let's face it. Economics is filled with terms that don't always make sense to the average person. Terms that sometimes mean what you think they mean, but sometimes not at all. Not even close.Let's face it.Let's face it. Economics is filled with terms that don't always make sense to the average person. Terms that sometimes mean what you think they mean, but sometimes not at all. Not even close. RG Richardson Interactive Economic eBook More ebooks at RG Richardson City Guide.com
Rafael Nadal, winner of 22 Grand Slam titles
Rafael Nadal, winner of 22 Grand Slam titles, to retire from tennis
Nadal won Olympic gold and all 4 tennis Grand Slams, including 14 French Open championships
Chris Iorfida · CBC News · Posted: Oct 10, 2024 3:05 AM PDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago
A cleanshaven man in athletic gear embraces a trophy while smiling widely.
Spain's Rafael Nadal poses with the winning trophy after a victory in the men's singles final match against Austria's Dominic Thiem at the 2018 French Open tennis tournament in Paris in June 2018. Nadal announced Thursday he will retire from the sport at season's end. (Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images)
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Rafael Nadal, one of tennis's greatest champions and the unquestioned clay court specialist of all time, announced Thursday he will retire from the sport at season's end.
In an Instagram post, Nadal said he will bow out after representing Spain, the host of next month's Davis Cup finals.
"It is a tough decision, one that has taken me time to make, but in this life, everything has a beginning and an end," Nadal said in the video post. "I believe it is the right time to put an end to a career that has been long and much more successful than I could have ever imagined."
Nadal won 22 Grand Slam titles between 2005 and 2022, as well as an Olympic gold medal in singles at the 2008 Beijing Games and gold in doubles at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The indefatigable player from Mallorca with the formidable forehand won two Australian Open titles, two Wimbledon titles from the all-England Club, four U.S. Open wins and a whopping 14 championships on the clay courts of the French Open.
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Nadal's dominance in Paris is celebrated by a statue of him that stands near the main entrance to the grounds of Roland Garros and in the shadow of its main stadium, Court Philippe Chatrier.
Nadal's career ledger includes 92 tournament wins on the men's tour, including five on Canadian hard courts between 2005 and 2019.
Nadal, 38, thanked his wife Mery, extended family, coaches and tream throughout the years.
The veteran player referenced a difficult past two seasons, which have been marred by injury. He underwent hip surgery, missed four consecutive major tournaments, and was eliminated in the first round at the French Open this year.
Nadal expressed frustration with the questions about his future after that loss.
"Every day I come here to answer whether it's my last game or not," he told reporters. "I can't spend every day analyzing whether it could be my last game or not. What can I say? It's not easy to play in this situation."
WATCH l Highlights from Nadal's last Grand Slam win, in Paris:
Nadal dominates Ruud in straight sets to win 14th title at Roland Garros
2 years ago
Duration3:43
Spaniard Rafael Nadal defeated Norwegian Casper Ruud 6-3, 6-3, 6-0 in Paris to win his record-extending 22nd Grand Slam title.
With Nadal's retirement, only Novak Djokovic will remain from the sport's so-called Big 4 on the men's circuit. Nadal, Djokovic, Roger Federer and Andy Murray accounted for all but two of the 40 Grand Slam championships played between 2004 and 2013.
Djokovic has won a record 24 majors on the men's side, followed by Nadal and Switzerland's Federer with 20. There is a yawning gap before the next highest on the list, American Pete Sampras with 14 Grand Slam wins.
Nod to his 'great rivals'
The Nadal-Federer rivalry in particular has been hailed as one of the greatest in sport's history, with the players meeting 40 times, including in 24 tournament finals.
Nadal thanked "my great rivals" in his retirement announcement.
"I have spent many hours with them and lived many moments that I will remember for the rest of my life," he said.
Two cleanshaven tennis players in headbands gather closely on the court, with one putting his arm around the other.
Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, usually rivals, paired up as part of Team Europe at the Laver Cup at The O2 Arena on Sept. 23, 2022 in London. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images for Laver Cup)
Nadal came from a sporting family, and took up tennis under the tutelage of his uncle, Toni Nadal.
"There was no let-up from Toni. No mercy," Nadal wrote in the 2011 autobiography Rafa, written with John Carlin. "I look back at the teenage Rafael and I am proud of him. He set a benchmark of endurance that served me as an example and as a reminder ... if you want something badly enough, no sacrifice is too great."
While Nadal's career was filled with uncommon accolades and glory, he wrote in the same book that he contemplated pursuing a career in professional golf after a 2005 foot injury.
Nadal made his first pro tennis tour appearance at 15. He struggled to communicate in English, working just as hard off the court to eventually learn the language.
Spain will take to the courts in Malaga on Nov. 19 against Netherlands to begin the Davis Cup knockout stage, with Canada meeting Germany. Nadal has been part of four Davis Cup title wins for Spain, including in 2019 when they beat Canada in the final and he was named the top player of the tournament.
Nadal's overall singles record in Davis Cup play is 29-1.
Trump Staffers support Harris
More than 100 former staffers and national security leaders from past Republican administrations endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday—adding to the growing list of Republicans speaking out against former President Donald Trump.The letter—released by the group Reagan, Bush, McCain & Romney Alumni for Harris—is signed by 111 former officials from those administrations as well as ex-Trump staffers like Miles Taylor, along with some former Republican members of Congress like former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
In addition to criticizing Trump’s national security record and “demonstrated chaotic and unethical behavior,” the letter condemned Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
The letter comes after other notable members of George W. Bush’s administration—including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez—endorsed Harris over Trump in recent weeks.
Forbes has reached out to Trump’s campaign for comment.
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Nature and wildlife: where B.C.’s political parties stand on key issues
Nature and wildlife: where B.C.’s political parties stand on key issuesA primitive rodent, with small eyes and ears and large front claws, makes its home in the Cascade mountains of southwestern B.C. Mountain beavers, which aren’t really beavers, spend most of their time underground — and their survival is at risk. Heavy forestry machinery compacts the deep soils where they burrow, presenting a key threat, along with urban development in the Fraser Valley.
Just this year, the mountain beaver was added to the provincial “blue list.” B.C.’s blue list includes species particularly vulnerable to human impacts. If known threats are not addressed, blue-listed species could one day become red-listed, meaning they are endangered, threatened or no longer found in the province.
B.C.’s red list includes spotted owls, southern mountain caribou and southern resident killer whales.
Altogether, 1,952 species and ecosystems are officially at some risk of extinction in the province, according to the B.C. government’s conservation data centre.
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