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      Deluge of ‘pink slime’ websites threaten to drown out truth with fake news in US election

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      Political groups on the right and left are using fake news websites designed to look like reliable sources of information to fill the void left by the demise of local newspapers, raising fears of the impact that they might have during the United States’ bitterly fought 2024 election.Some media experts are concerned that the so-called pink slime websites, often funded domestically, could prove at least as harmful to political discourse and voters’ faith in media and democracy as foreign disinformation efforts in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.According to a recent report from NewsGuard, a company that aims to counter misinformation by studying and rating news websites, the websites are so prolific that “the odds are now better than 50-50 that if you see a news website purporting to cover local news, it’s fake.”NewsGuard estimates that there are a staggering 1,265 such fake local news websites in the US – 4% more than the websites of 1,213 daily newspapers left operating in the country.“Actors on both sides of the political spectrum” feel “that what they are doing isn’t bad because all media is really biased against their side or that that they know actors on the other side are using these tactics and so they feel they need to,” said Matt Skibinski, general manager of NewsGuard, which determined that such sites now outnumber legitimate local news organizations. “It’s definitely contributed to partisanship and the erosion of trust in media; it’s also a symptom of those things.”Pink slime websites, named after a meat byproduct, started at least as early as 2004 when Brian Timpone, a former television reporter who described himself as a “biased guy” and a Republican, started funding websites featuring names of cities, towns and regions like the Philly Leader and the South Alabama Times.Timpone’s company, Metric Media, now operates more than 1,000 such websites and his private equity company receives funding from conservative political action committees, according to NewsGuard.The Leader recently ran a story with the headline, “Rep Evans votes to count illegal aliens towards seats in Congress.”In actuality, Representative Dwight Evans, a Democrat, did not vote to start counting undocumented immigrants in the 2030 census but rather against legislation that would have changed the way the country has conducted apportionment since 1790.That sort of story is “standard practice for these outlets”, according to Tim Franklin, who leads Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative, which researches the industry.“They will take something that maybe has just a morsel of truth to it and then twist it with their own partisan or ideological spin,” Franklin said. “They also tend to do it on issues like immigration or hot-button topics that they think will elicit an emotional response.”A story published this month on the NW Arkansas News site had a headline on the front page that reported that the unemployment rate in 2021 in Madison county was 5.1% – even though there is much more recent data available. In April 2024, the local unemployment rate was 2.5%.“Another tactic that we have seen across many of this category of sites is taking a news story that happened at some point and presenting it as if it just happened now, in a way that is misleading,” Skibinski said.The left has also created websites designed to look like legitimate news organizations but actually shaped by Democratic supporters.The liberal Courier Newsroom network operates websites in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Michigan and Nevada, among other states, that – like the conservative pink slime sites – have innocuous sounding names like the Copper Courier and Up North News. The Courier has runs stories like “Gov Ducey Is Now the Most Unpopular Governor in America,” referring to Doug Ducy, the former Republican Arizona governor.“In contrast, coverage of Democrats, including US President Joe Biden, Democratic Arizona Gov Katie Hobbs, and US Sen Mark Kelly of Arizona, is nearly always laudatory,” NewsGuard stated in a report about Courier coverage.Tara McGowan, a Democratic strategist who founded the Courier Newsroom has received funding from liberal donors like Reid Hoffman and George Soros, as well as groups associated with political action committees, according to NewsGuard.“There are pink slime operations on both the right and the left. To me, the key is disclosure and transparency about ownership,” said Franklin.In a statement, a spokesperson for the Courier said comparisons between its operations and rightwing pink slime groups were unfair and criticized NewsGuard’s methodology in comparing the two.“Courier publishes award-winning, factual local news by talented journalists who live in the communities we cover, and our reporting is often cited by legacy media outlets. This is in stark contrast to the pink slime networks that pretend to have a local presence but crank out low-quality fake news with no bylines and no accountability. Courier is proudly transparent about our pro-democracy values, and we carry on the respected American tradition of advocacy journalism,” the spokesperson said.While both the left and the right have invested in the pink slime websites, there are differences in the owners’ approaches, according to Skibinski.The right-wing networks have created more sites “that are probably getting less attention per site, and on the left, there is a smaller number of sites, but they are more strategic about getting attention to those sites on Facebook and elsewhere”, Skibinski said. “I don’t know that we can quantify whether one is more impactful than the other.”Artificial intelligence could also help site operators quickly generate stories and create fake images.“The technology underlying artificial intelligence is now becoming more accessible to malign actors,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which publishes Factcheck.org. “The capacity to create false images is very high, but also there is a capacity to detect the images that is emerging very rapidly. The question is, will it emerge rapidly with enough capacity?”Still, it’s not clear whether these websites are effective. Stanford University reported in a 2023 study that engagement with pink slime websites was “relatively low” and little evidence that living “in a news desert made people more likely to consume pink slime”.The Philly Leader and the NW Arkansas News both only have links to Facebook accounts on their websites and have less than 450 followers on each. Meanwhile, the Copper Courier and Up North News have accounts on all the major platforms and a total of about 150,000 followers on Facebook.Franklin said he thinks that a lot of people don’t actually click links on social media posts to visit the website.“The goal of some of these operators is not to get traffic directly to their site, but it’s to go viral on social media,” he said.Republican lawmakers and leaders of the conservative news sites the Daily Wire and the Federalist have also filed a lawsuit and launched investigations accusing NewsGuard of helping the federal government censor right-leaning media. The defense department hired the company strictly to counter “disinformation efforts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian government-linked operations targeting Americans and our allies”, Gordon Crovitz, the former Wall Street Journal publisher who co-founded NewsGuard, told the Hill in response to a House oversight committee investigation. “We look forward to clarifying the misunderstanding by the committee about our work for the Defense Department.”To counter the flood of misinformation, social media companies must take a more active role in monitoring such content, according to Franklin and Skibinski.“The biggest solution to this kind of site would be for the social media platforms to take more responsibility in terms of showing context to the user about sources that could be their own context. It could be data from third parties, like what we do,” said Skibinski.Franklin would like to see a national media literacy campaign. States around the country have passed laws requiring such education in schools.Franklin also hopes that legitimate local news could rebound. The MacArthur Foundation and other donors last year pledged $500m to help local outlets.“I actually have more optimism now than I had a few years ago,” Franklin said. “We’re in the midst of historic changes in how people consume news and how it’s produced and how it’s distributed and how it’s paid for, but I think there’s still demand for local news, and that’s kind of where it all starts.” More

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      The ‘weirdo progressive’ son of the Oath Keepers founder running for office in Montana

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      With his thick eyeliner, long blond hair and leather jacket, Dakota Adams does not look like a typical politician.The 27-year-old, who is running as a progressive Democrat in a deep-red, rural corner of Montana, doesn’t have a typical politician backstory either.Adams is the son of Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group who last year was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the January 6 insurrection. Adams grew up in what he describes as an environment of “extreme isolation and paranoia” – a situation he and his siblings escaped in 2018, when their mother left Rhodes.In the last few years, Adams has been focusing on building his life. He was educated at home while his father led the Oath Keepers, and while he was a voracious reader, other subjects were neglected – Adams was never taught his times tables until he studied for his GED as an adult.After six years out of the movement, he works in construction, takes college courses and rents space in an apartment in Eureka, a town of 1,400 people eight and a half miles from the Canadian border.He first took an active role in politics in 2022, when he began canvassing for other candidates. He noticed that in many county-level elections – as with the seat he’s running for in Lincoln county – there wasn’t even a Democratic candidate on the ballot.“The lack of candidates stepping up, especially in recent years, reinforces that perception that the Democratic party has turned away from rural America and given up the fight completely,” he says.Still, despite his unorthodox appearance, Adams has been well received when he goes door to door.“Montana elections happen at doorstep,” he said. “So far, my reception has been surprisingly positive at doors, [despite] canvassing dressed like Alice Cooper and openly admitting to being a progressive Democrat, or self-identifying even as a Democratic socialist when asked.“I attribute that to there being a Republican supermajority that’s been running the state – it leaves very little room for excuses.”Adams has come a long way from the days when he and his siblings lived with the Oath Keepers movement. His father, whom Adams refers to now as Stewart, founded the organization in 2009 in the wake of Barack Obama’s election.Under Rhodes’ leadership, the Oath Keepers pushed various anti-government conspiracy theories, and Rhodes was committed to the American redoubt movement: a proposal that thousands of conservative Americans and militia members relocate to Montana, Idaho and Wyoming to be free from government tyranny.Rhodes moved his own family to Montana in 2010, but even living 2,000 miles from Washington DC he was paranoid about the federal government, Adams says – a paranoia he passed on to the family. Adams and his family perpetually drilled for end-of-days events, and, he says, his family suffered due to Rhodes’ focus on survivalism and fear of government inspired by conspiracy theories.“Anybody could be a secret government informant, including other people inside the movement or inside Oath Keepers. Child Protective Services was the tool of the new world order that would be used to retaliate against Stewart for defying them, so we had to conceal educational and medical neglect,” Adams says.Adams visited a dentist once in his childhood, when he had “a ton of work done”. Rhodes had bartered the visit to the dentist, who was part of the movement, by offering “infantry tactical training” in return.That upbringing took its toll. Adams has spent time in therapy but still has anxiety, caused by a childhood spent living “in looming dread”, he says.“It’s something that still interferes with my daily life and holds me back. I wouldn’t have the mental bandwidth to attend school, or run for office, or anything if it were not for years of pretty extensive work,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans dominate Montana politics. The GOP controls the state legislature and state senate, and the governor, Greg Gianforte, is a Republican. But Adams believes that could be a positive.“Because they have such a strong majority and a trifecta in power, they really don’t have any excuse for the state of things,” he said.Adams says that if he is elected, he wants to actually do things, rather than engage in posturing; he says some state legislatures “have been spending all their time waging performative crusades, especially against queer people and environmental causes”.He discusses how taxes have increased for working-class and middle-class Montanans as wealthy people have moved into the state, driving up the cost of housing. He wants to diversify an economy that has become more and more reliant on tourism.“In recent years, more and more tourism dollars are not turning over multiple times inside the community and changing hands as they circulate,” he said.“[Tourists] are increasingly going to exclusive resorts and to properties and businesses owned by out-of-state corporations. So the profits are extracted directly back out of the state, without going through the local economy whatsoever.”Adams is realistic about his chances: Lincoln county voted for Trump over Biden by 74% to 24% in 2020. But his reception gives him hope.“I am in a long-shot race here. I’m in maybe the second-most-conservative voting area in the state, running as a weirdo progressive,” he said.“And if I’m getting shockingly positive feedback going door to door in the poorest parts of town and in the trailer parks, then I feel like the Republican supermajority in the state is in serious trouble.” More

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      Ethics committee investigating Matt Gaetz over alleged sexual misconduct

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      A bipartisan Capitol Hill committee is investigating Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican congressman and vocal Donald Trump supporter, over longstanding allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other alleged ethical breaches, it said on Tuesday.The announcement by the House ethics committee – which contains an equal number of Democrats and Republicans – reignited a swirl of scandal surrounding the outspoken Trump ally that had abated somewhat after an earlier criminal investigation into allegations against him was dropped.In a statement, the committee said it had spoken to dozens of witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas, and reviewed thousands of pages of documents as part of its long-running investigation into Gaetz’s conduct, which was initially opened in April 2021.As a result of that review, the committee said, certain allegations deserved further examination.“The committee is reviewing allegations … that Representative Gaetz may have: engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favours to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct,” it said.The committee said other allegations made against Gaetz – specifically those of sharing inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misusing state identification records, improper personal use of campaign funds and accepting a bribe – were no longer being investigated.The committee’s statement came a day after Gaetz issued what appeared to be a pre-emptive post on X in which he accused it of pursuing “frivolous investigations” into him and compared its tactics to the Soviet Union.“The House ethics committee has closed four probes into me, which emerged from lies intended solely to smear me,” he wrote. “Instead of working with me to ban congressional stock trading, the ethics committee is now opening new frivolous investigations. They are doing this to avoid the obvious fact that every investigation into me ends the same way: my exoneration.”He added: “This is Soviet. Kevin McCarthy showed them the man, and they are now trying to find the crime. I work for north-west Floridians who won’t be swayed by this nonsense, and McCarthy and his goons know it.”The latter comment referred to his antagonistic relationship with McCarthy, the former Republican House speaker who was toppled last October in an internal party coup that Gaetz spearheaded.McCarthy said Gaetz’s enmity towards him was fuelled by his refusal to shut down the House ethics committee inquiry. However, the inquiry has continued under McCarthy’s successor, Mike Johnson, who has forged a close alliance with Trump.In its statement, the committee acknowledged Gaetz’s denial of the allegations against him but suggested he had given less full cooperation, complaining of “difficulty in obtaining relevant information” from him and others.It added: “The committee notes that the mere fact of an investigation into these allegations does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.”The committee’s investigation was opened after the New York Times reported in March 2021 Gaetz was being investigated by the Department of Justice over whether he had sex with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, thus violating federal sex-trafficking laws. The investigation had been opened in the latter stages of Trump’s presidency, under the then attorney general William Barr.It was eventually closed in 2023 without any charges being brought, enabling the committee – which had earlier stalled its inquiry in response to a request the DoJ – to reauthorise its investigation. More

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      Vermont Republican secretly poured water into colleague’s bag over months

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      A Vermont lawmaker was compelled to apologize publicly after being caught on video pouring water into her colleague’s work bag multiple times across several months.The bizarre behavior is allegedly a part of a campaign of harassment that one legislator aimed at another who represents the same district in the Green Mountain state, independent outlet Seven Days first reported.The Republican representative, Mary Morrissey, 67, confessed to dumping water in the bag of the Democratic legislator Jim Carroll, 62. She later apologized during a Vermont state house session on Monday, Boston.com reported.“I am truly ashamed of my actions,” Morrissey said.Morrissey did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.She and Carroll both represent the city of Bennington, about 25 miles outside of Manchester. Morrissey has served 13 terms in the Vermont legislature while Carroll has served two.Carroll told the Guardian that Morrissey had poured cups of water into his bag since January.Carroll says he first suspected Morrissey as she had been “nasty” to him for several months despite the two knowing each other since childhood and even attending the same church.“[She] would say demeaning things in front of other legislators,” Carroll said.But Carroll had no evidence, so he decided to launch his own investigation. For weeks, Carroll secretly recorded footage of his backpack to catch the person in the act.In two videos Carroll captured, Morrissey is seen dumping a cup of liquid into Carroll’s green tote bag. Morrissey’s face was not captured in the video, but fellow lawmakers were able to identify her by her gray hair.Seven Days later used a public records request to obtain footage of Morrissey dumping water into Carroll’s bag. That was after the outlet initially reported on Morrissey’s behavior and an ethics investigation into her.Carroll initially refused to release the videos to Seven Days but ultimately changed his mind.“I have been very reluctant to disclose the video because I believe it will deeply embarrass Representative Morrissey,” Carroll wrote in a statement to the outlet. “However, it has become clear to me that the media are aware of the details of Representative Morrissey’s behavior and likely will continue to report on that behavior in the near future.”Carroll said when he first saw the video of Morrissey, he felt “sad”. “There was no good that was going to come out of this,” he said.Morrissey later apologized to Carroll during a subsequent meeting and claimed that she didn’t know the bag belonged to him.According to Carroll, Morrissey initially said that she “flicked” water on the bag because she saw a bug on it. But she later added that she didn’t know why she decided to dump water on Carroll’s bag for months on end.“At the end of the meeting, I looked at her and said, ‘You know, this has really fucked me up.’ There were weeks when I didn’t know who was doing this or why,” Carroll said.“I walked around this place, paranoid of my fellow legislators, racking my brain trying to think, ‘What could I have possibly said or done?’”Carroll said that he was still weighing whether he should pursue charges against Morrissey for the harassment.As for whether he forgives Morrissey, Carroll said: “I guess I would have to say yes in the spirit of forgiveness, reluctantly. But if I had to be a smartass, I’d say her apology holds about as much water as my canvas bag.” More

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      JD Vance ‘disrespecting the dead’ with bump stock remarks, Nevada senator says

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      Political ripples from the supreme court’s decision to overturn a Trump White House-era ban on sales of “bump stocks” – a spring-loaded stock that uses recoil to in effect turn a semi-automatic firearm into a machine gun – continued to radiate on Monday when Jacky Rosen took exception to comments on the issue made by his Republican colleague JD Vance.Vance, the Ohio senator and potential vice-presidential pick as Trump seeks a second presidency in November had dismissed efforts by senior Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, to pass legislation banning the devices as “a huge distraction”.Vance went further. “What is the real gun violence problem in this country, and are we legislating in a way that solves fake problems? Or solves real problems?” Vance said, before adding: “My very strong suspicion is that the Schumer legislation is aimed at a PR problem, not something that’s going to meaningfully reduce gun violence in this country.”Rosen, the Democratic senator, hit back, facing re-election this year in politically purple Nevada, the site of the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting that killed 58 and prompted Trump to ban the rapid-fire device.“This is not a fake problem,” she told reporters. “Let him come to Las Vegas. Let him see the memorial for those people who died. Let him talk to those families. It’s not a fake problem. Those families are dead.”Rosen said Las Vegas, the gambling mecca and major source of Nevada’s revenue, had been “changed forever because of what the shooter did, and the bump stocks helped him”. She invited Vance to visit memorials to the victims as well as to talk to first responders. “Shame on him,” Rosen added, visibly enraged. “Shame on him for disrespecting the dead.”In its ruling last week, the conservative majority on the supreme court ruled that the executive branch of government did not have the power to use existing firearms laws to prohibit bump stocks. But the justices allowed legislators to pass new laws banning the accessory.Schumer and other senior Democrats have since said they would quickly move to do so.Outcry from Democrats mounted after Vance reasoned that a bill to ban bump stocks would “end up just inhibiting the rights of law-abiding Americans” and mused about how many people would still have been killed if the heavily armed video poker player Stephen Paddock had not outfitted his armory with the contested devices.“How many people would have been shot alternatively? And you have to ask yourself the question: will anyone actually not choose a bump stock because Chuck Schumer passes a piece of legislation?” Vance said.After Vance made his comments, Schumer retorted: “Talk to the people in Las Vegas who lost loved ones.”The supreme court ruling gives both sides of the gun issue red meat for the election campaign, though it is complicated by the initial ban coming from the Trump White House. Lindsey Graham, the Republican South Carolina senator, told NBC News he will block the Democrats’ measure. And Vance questioned Democrats’ legislative priorities.Chris Murphy, the Democratic Connecticut senator who has championed tougher gun laws after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, said Republicans in his chamber should have no problem voting for the measure banning bump stocks.“Is it good politics to make it easier for potential mass killers to get their hands on machine guns? Probably not,” Murphy said. “The idea is to try to make this attractive to Republicans. And we would be a lot better off if psychopaths couldn’t get their hands on machine guns.”Between Friday – when the supreme court’s ruling on bump stocks returned gun control to the top of the national discourse – and Monday, there were 17 mass shootings reported across the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive.Among those was a shooting Saturday in Rochester Hills, Michigan, in which nine people – including two children – were wounded at a city-run splash pad that families frequent to cool off in the summer. Police said the attack was carried out at random by a gunman who later died by suicide.Another shooting on Saturday in Round Rock, Texas, saw 14 people wounded and two killed. There, the shooting erupted after an altercation between two groups of people – the victims were uninvolved bystanders, police said.The non-partisan Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.There have been at least 230 such shootings reported in the US so far this year, a high rate which has fueled public calls for more substantial gun control but which Congress for the most part has not heeded.
      Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed reporting More

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      Trump’s enablers in Congress are a fascinating case study of political amnesia | Sidney Blumenthal

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      After 40 months and two weeks Donald Trump succeeded in being driven by car to the Capitol. The last time he attempted to get there was 6 January 2021. The mob was rampaging, ransacking offices and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” Trump was “irate”, according to the account of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide, because he was not among the mob. “The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now.’” Hutchinson stands by her story of being told he had tried to grab the steering wheel and lunged at his driver.If the US supreme court had not intervened to postpone Trump’s January 6 trial it would likely be proceeding today or perhaps even have already reached a verdict on his conspiracy, according to the indictment of the United States of America v Donald J Trump, “to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government”.But on Thursday, in this universe, under the shadow of the insurrectionist banners displayed by Samuel Alito, the associate justice, and Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, a key player in Trump’s January 6 scheme, Trump arrived as a conquering hero before the Republicans of the Congress, key members of whom were his confederates in his plot while others on that day raced to safe rooms, yet all now desperately rallying for party unity around their nominee against the rule of law.Trump’s conviction a week earlier on 34 felonies in New York for business fraud to deceive the voters in the 2016 election excited Republican hysteria to embrace him to a frantic level. Johnson assembled the Republican members into an impromptu J6 Choir, after the imprisoned members of the Capitol mob whose violent crimes Trump has pledged to pardon, to serenade the beaming felon with a rendition of “Happy Birthday, Mr President.”Lindsey Graham unsteadily took his Marilyn Monroe turn. He tweeted on X: “Happy Birthday to @realDonaldTrump. Your golf game has never been stronger, and America needs you now more than ever. Your best present will come in November when the American people elect you as our next President and Commander in Chief.” Then prodded by the Trump Stasi that he had neglected a crucial word, he sent a revised tweet: “Happy Birthday to President @realDonaldTrump.”Unlike Graham, Monroe got it right from the start, and JFK was in fact the president. Unlike Monroe, a Georgia grand jury recommended Graham’s criminal indictment as a co-conspirator in Trump’s election fraud in the state, though he escaped when the prosecutor decided not to charge him. He’s been freed to genuflect another day.One after another the Republicans came to bend the knee and offer tribute to their overlord. “No real Republican with any credibility in the party is still blaming him for January 6,” said JD Vance, a senator from Ohio, desperately seeking the vice-presidential nod. Vance, whose career has advanced by assuming multiple identities, now worships at the shrine of the one and only cult of personality.Of course, inevitably and naturally,Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, stood cheering behind Trump, despite the testimony in Trump’s trial of David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer, about the deal he made with Trump not only for the “catch and kill” payoffs but also to print scurrilous falsehoods about his opponents, pointedly Cruz, whose father was smeared as an associate of JFK’s assassin. Trump once went out of his way to demean Cruz’s wife as unattractive. And there was Cruz furiously clapping as if his life depended on it and if he stopped he would be taken to the Lubyanka prison basement.The Old Crow, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, performed a literally incredible act of willful amnesia, forgetting and forgiving everything. In a tone of barely restrained anger after January 6, he had called for Trump’s prosecution for his responsibility for the attack on the Capitol. Trump called him a “dumb son of a bitch”, a “stone cold loser”, and his wife, Elaine Chao, a member of Trump’s cabinet as Secretary of Transportation, who quit in protest on January 6, his “China loving wife, Coco Chow!”Now, walking out of his meeting with Trump, McConnell eked out a rigid semblance of a smile, as he said: “We shook hands a few times. He got a lot of standing ovations. It was an entirely positive meeting. I can’t think of anything to tell you out of it that was negative.” He did not even recall Trump disparaging Milwaukee, the host city for the Republican National Convention, as “horrible”. Thus spake the institutionalist, the adult in the room.Loss of memory about Trump, down to his coldly calculated refusal to acknowledge the Covid crisis because it would affect the stock market in the election year and his utter incompetence in handling the pandemic, is essential to his current poll standing. It is a form of mass aphasia masked as nostalgia that is at the core of Republican politics. Trump nostalgia is the political equivalent of long Covid, with similar symptoms of lack of mental focus and fatigue. McConnell, for his part, emerged from his meeting with Trump to act as though he had instantly suffered short-term memory loss about Trump’s weird meandering and perverse maundering in the room. He may reason that the greater Trump’s buffoonery, the more space for him to be the true hidden power, his immovable illusion.In the entire history of the Congress, there has never been such a scene of wholesale self-abasement, humiliation and degradation. The Congress has been the site of countless indignities since its beginning. In the early 19th century there was a deadly duel. There was a shocking caning by a South Carolina congressman of the abolitionist Charles Sumner, a senator, in 1856 on the floor of the Senate as he sat at his desk. There were other scuffles before the Civil War. Even the Confederacy, while it existed, made no effort to build a cult of personality around Jefferson Davis.This recent disgraceful and shameful episode glaringly stands as the diametric opposite example from the Republican congressional leaders who 50 years ago decided in the Watergate scandal that they must pressure Richard Nixon to resign. Until now, there has never been a more dishonorable spectacle than of members prostrating themselves before the cult of a criminal who has attempted to overthrow democracy and subvert the constitution – and who promises to complete his “retribution”.Since Trump’s conviction he has been obsessed with retribution and revenge, with crime and punishment. He intersperses his vindictive projections about the injuries he will inflict on his enemies with paranoid projections about the fate that awaits him. “Look, when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” Trump told Dr Phil on his Fox News show.At the same time, Trump wondered aloud at a Nevada rally about whether he would choose to be electrocuted on a sinking electric boat or eaten by a shark. Trump’s Thanatos fantasies are a Freudian field day. He ruminates about his impending death by the most violent and bloody means. Which will it be?Contemplating his death by electrocution, he has substituted an electric boat for the electric chair, Old Sparky, which was in use to execute prisoners at Sing Sing prison in New York until 1963, and whose most famous victims were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were condemned as espionage agents stealing nuclear secrets for the Russians, and railroaded to the chair by the prosecutor, Roy Cohn, who became Trump’s lawyer and tutor in malice.Now, Trump has been indicted for “felony violations of our national security laws”, including unlawful possession of nuclear secrets, and “participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice”. The case may be bottled up by a Trump-appointed judge, Aileen Cannon, but Trump surely knows that the sentence for espionage in the past was a death sentence. Perhaps the Rosenbergs are the Rosebud of his electrocution-inspired night sweats. Through the ghost of Roy Cohn, he has entered a new phantasmagorical scene in Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s play in which Cohn, dying of Aids, is visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. In Trump’s nightmare, he’s the one walking the lonely mile to Old Sparky, except it’s an electric boat.Imagining his death by sharks, Trump has returned to his long recurrent terror. “He is obsessed with sharks. Terrified of sharks,” Stormy Daniels told an interviewer. When she entered his hotel suite for their tryst, he had the television set tuned to a series called Shark Week. “He was like, ‘I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.’ He was like riveted. It’s so strange.” Now, the sharks are circling him. If he needs a bigger boat he must hope it will not be electric.Before the Republicans in the Congress, Trump momentarily set aside his fear of death, perhaps in order not to dampen their adulation. The warm atmosphere instead stirred his sexual fantasies. In the meeting he spoke about his objects of desire, his previously undisclosed lust for Nancy Pelosi and abiding longing for Taylor Swift.Basking in the idolization of the House Republicans, Trump, according to some people present, suddenly blurted, “Nancy Pelosi’s daughter is a whacko, her daughter told me if things were different Nancy and I would be perfect together, there’s an age difference though.” Then he reportedly expressed his wish for Taylor Swift to come to his side: “Why would she endorse this dope?” Trump wondered about his presumption that the liberal Swift would support Biden as she did in 2020.His daydream about Pelosi was quickly smacked down by her daughter Christine Pelosi, who tweeted, “Speaking for all 4 Pelosi daughters – this is a LIE. His deceitful, deranged obsession with our mother is yet another reason Donald Trump is unwell, unhinged and unfit to step foot anywhere near her – or the White House.”Pelosi’s relationship to Trump is one of unrelenting contempt and domination. He is the one dominated. At a meeting with Pelosi and other congressional leaders in October 2019 in the White House Cabinet Room, he had what she described as “a meltdown”, and she stood, pointed her finger at him, and the Democrats walked out. Trump tweeted back at her, “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!”After Trump delivered his State of the Union address months later, she stood at the podium ripping it into pieces and proclaiming she felt “liberated”. On January 6, during the mob attack, sequestered in her office, when she was told Trump wanted to come to the Capitol, she said, “If he comes, I’m going to punch him out. I’ve been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds, I’m going to punch him out. And I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”But, as Stormy Daniels testified, Trump likes a stern hand; she has said he asked her to spank him with a rolled copy of Forbes magazine with his picture on it. Apart from the kinky spanking, she described his sexual technique as “textbook generic”. Now, he fantasizes about a romance with Pelosi, an older woman – “perfect together”.His fantasy for a younger woman has fixated on Swift. Here he is his younger self, the leering creep whispering in the ear of Jeffrey Epstein as he points out this one or that one in a roomful of women dancing. Here he is, the proprietor of the Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe Pageant, walking in on naked contestants in the dressing room. “Well, I’ll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show,” Trump told Howard Stern on his radio show in 2005, “and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it … You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that.”Here was the earliest statement of his seductive technique he elaborated in the Access Hollywood tape that precipitated his “catch and kill” payoffs: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”“I think she’s beautiful – very beautiful!” Trump says about Swift. “I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump,” he told a reporter. He wondered if Swift is “legitimately liberal” or it’s “just an act”. Worried she would choose Biden over him, he has sworn to wage a “holy war” against her. He is, he says about the most popular pop singer in the world, “more popular”. He anticipates rejection and plots revenge.The giddy Republicans in the room, listening to the unfiltered sexual reveries of the adjudicated rapist in their midst, said nothing. They burst into song: “Happy Birthday, Mr President!”The tableau of the authoritarian leader surrounded by his fawning followers had a distinctly foreign flavor, reminiscent of Soviet totalitarian art. The Republican members staged themselves like the commissars of the Politburo, smiling faces upturned to the Leader, in unison sustaining “stormy applause”, as the Soviet newspapers always interjected in transcripts of Stalin’s speeches.“He was extremely gracious by the way. There was no score settling,” said Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri, who had signaled his support to the mob on January 6 with a raised fist and later in the day was filmed running for cover inside the building.It is fitting that the most apt commentary on the nature of the Republican meeting at the Capitol was written by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in his Memoirs about life in the bizarre court of Joseph Stalin: “Stalin found it interesting to watch the people around him get themselves into embarrassing and even disgraceful situations,” wrote Khrushchev. “Once Stalin made me dance the gopak before some top Party officers. I had to squat down on my haunches and kick out my heels. Later, I told Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan ‘when Stalin says dance, wise man dances.’”After Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev became the first secretary of the Communist party and premier of the Soviet Union. At the 20th Party Congress, on 25 February 1956, he exposed and denounced Stalin’s crimes, which he attributed to a cult of personality. “Comrades, the cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because Stalin himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the glorification of his own person,” Khrushchev stated to the stunned presidium.He spoke of “the most dissolute flattery, an example of making a man into a godhead, of transforming him into an infallible sage, ‘the greatest leader’, ‘sublime strategist of all times and nations’. Finally no other words could be found with which to lift Stalin up to the heavens. We need not give here examples of the loathsome adulation … ”Khrushchev asked his fellow Communists, “How could it be?” He blamed “those who are blinded and hopelessly hypnotized by the cult of the individual” for covering up Stalin’s crimes. “Comrades,” he announced, “in order not to repeat errors of the past, the central committee has declared itself resolutely against the cult of the individual. Comrades, we must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all … ”
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Iowa presidential poll may contain warning for Biden’s re-election – but it’s still early – as it happened

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      Donald Trump has a big lead over Joe Biden in Iowa, according to a survey of the state conducted by authoritative pollster Ann Selzer for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom.Fifty percent of Iowa voters who responded to the survey say they will vote for Trump, against 32% who say they’ll support Biden, the poll finds, which is not much of a surprise, since Iowa has become increasingly Republican in recent cycles.The former president’s big lead could nonetheless be a bad sign for Biden’s support in other midwestern states he must win in order to secure a second term. While Iowa is not considered a swing state, there has in the past been some correlation between Trump’s lead there, and his support in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – all states that Biden is targeting to win.Trump’s 18-point lead in Iowa could signal a significant loss in support for Biden elsewhere in the midwest, but there is a big caveat: we are still a ways away from the November election, and though Selzer is considered the best pollster in the Hawkeye state, there’s plenty of time for voters’ sentiments to change.Are the voters who could matter most in determining the November election souring on Donald Trump over his felony convictions? A newly released poll showed a drop off in support for the former president among independents, who may prove crucial in tipping a race that other polls indicate is currently too close to call. However, the same survey shows a sizable segment of voters wondering whether Trump’s conviction was politically motivated, while a poll of red state Iowa indicates Trump has an 18-point lead, potentially a sign of low support for Biden elsewhere in the midwest. The big caveat with all these polls is that it’s still early, and a lot could change between now and the 5 November vote.Here’s what else happened today:
      Senate Democrats will on Tuesday attempt to pass a bill banning “bump stocks”, which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly. Majority leader Chuck Schumer pleaded with Republicans not to block the legislation.
      The Biden campaign is spending big to remind voters of Trump’s felony conviction ahead of next week’s presidential debate.
      Tim Scott, the Republican senator and potential vice-presidential pick for Trump, said he stood behind his decision to certify Biden’s 2020 election win.
      The Mountain Valley Pipeline is in operation, after overcoming years of protests and lawsuits by activists concerned about the natural gas conduit’s effect on the climate and environment.
      Joe Biden may on Tuesday announce a new program to shield from deportation undocumented spouses of US citizens.
      Immigration advocates are cautiously optimistic Joe Biden will unveil a new program on Tuesday that would shield from deportation the undocumented spouses of US citizens in what some say will be the largest relief program since Daca.Biden is expected to make the announcement on Tuesday during an event marking the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, which shields from deportation nearly 530,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.On a call with reporters, advocates said they were still waiting for the formal announcement, but felt confident Biden would deliver the relief many have sought for so many years.Among those who will be listening closely on Tuesday is Ashley de Azevedo, the president of American Families United. She met her husband, Sergio, an immigrant from Brazil, on a train to New York City. When they married in 2012, she assumed he would be eligible for a green card. But under US law, he would have to return to Brazil for 10 years before he could apply for permanent residency because he had entered the US illegally.“The system doesn’t work like it does in the movies,” Azevedo told reporters. “You don’t marry an American and automatically get a green card. There are laws in place that make it impossible for so many.”The expected announcement will come after Biden moved forward with an aggressive asylum crackdown that infuriated immigration advocacy groups and some Latino leaders, who compared the action to Trump-era border policies.“A positive, effective announcement like the one we expect tomorrow can be a game changer for many of the voters in our communities who need to see the bright line, clear contract between the parties on immigration,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of the pro-immigration group, America’s Voice.It could also help Biden win back support among Hispanic voters, as polling shows Trump making significant inroads with this key constituency.“We anticipate that immigrants and Latino voters will express their gratitude at the ballot box in November, rewarding the president,” said Gustavo Torres, president of CASA in Action.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would attempt to pass legislation to ban “bump stocks”, the device that allows semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly which the supreme court last week allowed to remain available to the public.Schumer said Martin Heinrich, the Democratic senator of New Mexico, will propose the ban, and urged Republicans not to block it.“This week, the Senate will step in to try and fix the chaos the Maga court just unleashed,” Schumer said. “As soon as tomorrow, Democrats will seek passage of a federal ban on bump stocks, and I urge my Republican colleagues not to block Senator Heinrich when he comes to the floor.”Schumer continued:
      Passing a bill banning bump stocks should be the work of five minutes. Most Americans support this step. Poll after poll show that a majority of people, including independents, support restrictions on AR-15 style rifles, which is what ‘bump stocks’ are designed to emulate.
      I understand that the issue of gun safety provokes intense disagreement in Congress, but shouldn’t we all agree that preventing another tragedy like Las Vegas is just plain common sense and a good thing. Banning bump stocks will go a long way to making it harder for murderers to carry out large shootings. So I hope our Republican colleagues join us.
      At her briefing to reporters today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration disagreed with the supreme court’s ruling last week allowing “bump stocks” to remain available, and urged Congress to ban the modifications, as well as assault weapons.The devices allow semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly, and one was used in the 2017 shooting in Las Vegas that killed 60 people.“Weapons of war have no place in our streets,” Jean-Pierre said. “Unfortunately, the court’s ruling strikes down an important, common-sense regulation on devices that convert semiautomatic rifles into weapons that can fire hundreds of bullets per minute, also known as bump stocks.”She reiterated that Joe Biden would sign legislation banning bump stocks and assault weapons if Congress passes it. Left unsaid was the fact that Republicans mostly oppose such efforts.“We want to see that happen. And so, this is a legislative priority for this president,” Jean-Pierre said.Here’s more from last week, on the ruling by the supreme court’s conservative supermajority:Donald Trump and Joe Biden are right now scheduled to debate twice before the November election, with their first encounter scheduled for 27 June. Over the weekend, CNN, the host of the first debate, made public their rules for the parlay, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:The first US presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump on 27 June will include two commercial breaks, no props and muted microphones except when recognized to speak, CNN said on Saturday.The rules, agreed outside the Commission on Presidential Debates, are designed to reduce fractious interruptions and cross-talk that have often marred TV encounters in recent presidential election cycles.CNN, a division of Warner Bros Discovery, said debate moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion” during the 90-minute broadcast from Atlanta.Another Biden-Trump face-off will be hosted by ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis in September. The traditional October debate will not take place as part of the agreement between the two campaigns and television networks that cut out the commission following years of complaints and perceived slights.A big change is coming to the way Oklahoma courts handle the sentencing for domestic violence survivors found guilty of crimes, the Guardian’s Olivia Empson reports:Oklahoma’s governor, Kevin Stitt, signed Senate Bill 1835 at the end of last month – marking a radical change for incarcerated domestic violence survivors in the state.Also known as Oklahoma’s Survivors Act, the law will be signed into effect on 1 September and will grant hundreds of people who experienced abuse the opportunity to be resentenced with more leniency in what is one of the most extensive reforms to the state’s justice system following years of advocacy.Incarcerated people in Oklahoma, like Shari McDonald and April Wilkens, whose crimes were motivated by domestic violence, can file for resentencing when the law is signed. Going forward, courts can impose lesser sentences under certain circumstances if abuse is substantiated, and survivors can be considered for a lesser prison range than they were initially eligible for.Crucially, the legislation will also ensure that future survivors are not judged so harshly by the justice system for acting in self-defense.Wilkins was 25 years old when she killed her fiance. She alleged he raped, threatened and abused her for years, and that behavior had been happening on the night of the murder. She claims that pulling the trigger had been an act of retaliatory self-defense and never imagined it would be repudiated by the police who arrested her. Over the years, Wilkens had three past protective orders against her fiance and had filed 14 police reports.“What use is a piece of paper, though,” she said, “if you’re dead.”Norcross attended the press conference announcing his own indictment, according to several outlets.Norcross sat front row as the New Jersey attorney general gave additional insight into the corruption charges Norcross and five other defendants face.A powerful Democratic broker from New Jersey has been charged with racketeering, the New Jersey attorney general announced on Monday.George E Norcross III, a former member of the Democratic National Committee, along with five defendants face several corruption charges, according to a 13-count indictment that was unsealed on Monday.Norcross and others allegedly obtained properties throughout the city of Camden, unlawfully collecting millions in tax credits and influencing New Jersey politicians to continue their scheme, NJ.com reported.New Jersey attorney general Matthew J Platkin alleged that Norcross and others had been “running [the] criminal enterprise in this state for at least the last 12 years,” the New York Times reported.“On full display in this indictment is how a group of unelected, private businessmen used their power and influence to get government to aid their criminal enterprise and further its interests,” Platkin added.Read the full NJ.com article here.Read the full Times article here (paywall).Maryland governor Wes Moore signed an executive order Monday morning that pardons more than 175,000 people with marijuana-related convictions.The pardon by Moore is the largest state pardon to date. Moore told the Washington Post that he signed the pardon to coincide with the Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.Historically, Black people are more than three times more likely than white people to be arrested on marijuana-related charges despite similar rates of drug use.“I’m ecstatic that we have a real opportunity with what I’m signing to right a lot of historical wrongs,” Moore said to the Post. “If you want to be able to create inclusive economic growth, it means you have to start removing these barriers that continue to disproportionately sit on communities of colour.”The pardon will not release anyone from prison, the Post reported, but will forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for some 100,000 people.Are the voters who could matter most in determining the November election souring on Donald Trump over his felony convictions? A newly released poll showed a drop off in support for Trump among independents, who may prove crucial in tipping a race that other polls indicate is currently too close to call. However, the same survey shows a sizable segment of voters wondering whether Trump’s conviction was politically motivated, while a poll of Iowa indicates the former president has an 18-point lead in the red state, which could be a sign of low support for Biden elsewhere in the midwest. The big caveat with all these polls is that it’s still early, and lots could change between now and the 5 November election.Here’s what else has happened so far today:
      The Biden campaign is spending big to remind voters of Trump’s felony conviction ahead of next week’s presidential debate.
      Tim Scott, the Republican senator and potential vice-presidential pick for Trump, said he stood behind his decision to certify Biden’s 2020 election win.
      The Mountain Valley Pipeline is in operation, after overcoming years of protests and lawsuits by activists concerned about the natural gas conduit’s effect on the climate and environment.
      Reuters reports that lawyers for the president’s son, Hunter Biden, withdrew a motion requesting a new trial after he was convicted on federal gun charges last week.Biden is considering whether to appeal his conviction, and is also scheduled to face trial in September on federal tax charges.Here’s more from last week, when a jury in Delaware returned guilty verdicts on the gun charges:Donald Trump has a big lead over Joe Biden in Iowa, according to a survey of the state conducted by authoritative pollster Ann Selzer for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom.Fifty percent of Iowa voters who responded to the survey say they will vote for Trump, against 32% who say they’ll support Biden, the poll finds, which is not much of a surprise, since Iowa has become increasingly Republican in recent cycles.The former president’s big lead could nonetheless be a bad sign for Biden’s support in other midwestern states he must win in order to secure a second term. While Iowa is not considered a swing state, there has in the past been some correlation between Trump’s lead there, and his support in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – all states that Biden is targeting to win.Trump’s 18-point lead in Iowa could signal a significant loss in support for Biden elsewhere in the midwest, but there is a big caveat: we are still a ways away from the November election, and though Selzer is considered the best pollster in the Hawkeye state, there’s plenty of time for voters’ sentiments to change. More

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      Biden ad blitz targets Trump’s criminal conviction in pitch to swing voters

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      Joe Biden is seeking to exploit Donald Trump’s recent felony conviction in a television advertising blitz, amid polling evidence that the presumptive Republican nominee’s criminal status is hurting him with independent voters.A new 30-second advert released on Monday homes in on Trump’s 31 May conviction in a Manhattan court on 34 counts of falsifying documents to conceal the payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels, an adult actor, who testified that the pair had sex.The ad – featuring black-and-white courtroom images of Trump – also highlights his losses in two civil court cases, one from the writer E Jean Carroll, who said the former president raped and defamed her, and a $355m fraud ruling against his businesses.“We see Donald Trump for who he is,” the ad’s narrator says. “He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault and he committed financial fraud.“Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s been working,” the narrative continues in a calculated comparison between Trump and his successor in the Oval Office. “This election is between a convicted criminal who is only out for himself and a president who is fighting for you and your family.”The ad will run in key battleground states and is the Biden campaign’s most aggressive commentary yet on Trump’s criminal status after a muted initial response.It is part of a $50m advertising onslaught as the Biden election machine seeks to make Trump’s character a central issue in the run-up to the first scheduled televised debate between the pair on CNN on 27 June.In the immediate aftermath of the verdict – which Trump has appealed – the president appeared to play it down, saying: “There’s only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box.”The apparent change of course follows polling indicators that the conviction may sway potential swing voters, widely deemed crucial in a close race. A fresh poll for Politico shows 21% of independent voters saying it makes them less likely to vote for him in November – a potentially decisive factor in a contest in which opinion surveys have shown the two candidates running neck-and-neck, with Trump leading narrowly in many instances.The poll also recorded 43% of voters as believing that the verdict was intended to help Biden.One of Trump’s leading surrogates, the Florida congressman Byron Donalds, who has been tipped as a potential vice-presidential contender, called on the US supreme court – which has a six-to-three conservative majority, largely because of Trump’s nomination of conservative justices while he was president – to reverse the conviction, despite it having no jurisdiction over state cases.“In New York, the only ability for this to be overturned … is going to be happening two or three years from now,” he told NBC’s Meet The Press.“That’s why what happened in lower Manhattan was to interfere with an election, which is why Speaker [Mike] Johnson, myself included, and many Americans believe the supreme court should step in to this matter.”At a fundraising event in Los Angeles, attended by former president Barack Obama, and actors George Clooney and Julia Roberts, Biden told the comedian Jimmy Kimmel that a Trump victory would result in at least two more conservative justices being appointed to the supreme court, which he said would be “very negative in terms of the rights of individuals”. More