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Overnight News Digest for Wednesday, August 2, 2023 (Third Time's the Charm Edition) [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-08-02
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, and JeremyBloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
1. ‘That’s Why There’s An Insurrection Act’ Three days before January 6, Trump DOJ flunkie Jeff Clark met with Pat Philbin, the deputy White House Counsel. Per the indictment, Philbin told Clark during the Jan. 3 meeting that if Clark succeeded with his plot — if Trump managed to stay in office — there would be riots in every major American city. “Well,” Clark purportedly replied, “that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.” 3. Jeff Clark Turns Up The Volume ...Jeff Clark also tried to circulate a letter which would have the DOJ advise state legislatures to debate whether to throw out Biden electors. Per Smith, in the days before January 6, when the DOJ had found no evidence to suggest fraud, Clark strengthened a draft of the letter: rather than saying that the DOJ has “concerns” about the election, it would say that it had “evidence of significant irregularities.” 8. ‘Conspiracy Shit Beamed Down From The Mothership’ ...One senior Trump campaign advisor allegedly complained in a Dec. 8 email that the former President’s claims about fraud in Georgia — particularly about two election workers at State Farm Arena — were completely false, but that he would fight for them anyway. “When our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0-32 on our cases. I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership,” the email, cited by Smith, reads. x Bill Barr makes interesting point on CNN: if Trump wants to argue he was simply following the advice of counsel, he would have to take the stand. (Which he almost certainly would not do.) — Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) August 3, 2023
Trump's minor, short-term polling bumps are actually the result of something much more boring and technical: It's called differential non-response bias, and it basically means his super-supporters might get more fired up to answer calls from pollsters for just a few days. It fits the pattern here pretty well. The indictments aren't helping Trump and they aren't the reason he's increasing his lead. For that, you can thank the fact that Ron DeSantis is a historically terrible candidate. As the second place contender, he's widely viewed as the most likely Trump alternative, and as he has gotten more exposed in the national press, he's dropped half of his support. From March 10 through August 1, DeSantis went from 31.4 percent to 15.6 percent. x My new piece in newsweek. I've seen a lot of lazy punditry that indictments, have strengthened Trump. Wrong. There's a much simpler explanation for why Trump continues to dominate the polls. 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼
https://t.co/wUPDPtL2dD — Matt Robison (@MattLRobison) August 2, 2023 ...even if a cowed Republican electorate dominated by Trump die-hards hands him their nomination for a third straight time, are any of these legal disasters getting him any new votes in the 2024 general election from independents, Democrats, or Republicans who have already forsaken him? Maybe Trump's primary polling will continue to rise in the months ahead. Maybe he'll keep cake-walking through these primaries. But don't get sucked into motivated reasoning spin or lazy math that it's because his legal woes are some kind of boon.
Twenty-four hours before he is slated to appear before a federal judge in Washington, D.C. to be arraigned on four felony charges related to his alleged efforts to remain in office despite the results of the 2020 election, Donald Trump alleged his then-Vice President, Mike Pence, had the power to help him overturn that election. As The New York Times notes, special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment accuses Trump of “three conspiracies: one to defraud the United States; a second to obstruct an official government proceeding, the certification of the Electoral College vote; and a third to deprive people of a civil right, the right to have their votes counted. Mr. Trump was also charged with a fourth count of obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.” x Pence: Let’s be clear on this point. It wasn't that they asked for a pause. The president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes which would have resulted in the issue of being turned over to the house of representatives pic.twitter.com/QTyw99l8sc — Acyn (@Acyn) August 2, 2023 “I feel badly for Mike Pence, who is attracting no crowds, enthusiasm, or loyalty from people who, as a member of the Trump Administration, should be loving him,” the ex-president wrote on his social media platform. “He didn’t fight against Election Fraud, which we will now be easily able to prove based on the most recent Fake Indictment & information which will have to be made available to us, finally – a really BIG deal,” he continues...
..A “co-conspirator” who matches John Eastman’s description purportedly spoke with RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Dec. 6, where she was falsely told that the votes “would be used only if ongoing litigation” changed the results in one of the states. From there, the scheme continued, but not as a way of “preserving” the legal option of Trump’s victory, but rather as a means to force it through. On Dec. 11, Chesebro allegedly spoke with an Arizona attorney on behalf of Rudy Giuliani. Chesebro allegedly told the lawyer to, in the indictment’s words, “file a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court as a pretext to claim that litigation was pending in the state, to provide cover for the convening and voting of the Defendant’s fraudulent electors there.” At the core of this is whether there was any real dispute over the election’s outcome. By December 2020, it was long clear that Biden had won. But per Smith, Chesebro kept the efforts to create the appearance of a “dispute” going — in a Dec. 13 email to Giuliani, Chesebro purportedly wrote that the plan was not only to preserve the electors in case they won a lawsuit, but rather to, in the indictment’s words, “falsely present the fraudulent slates” before Congress on January 6. x Bill Barr on CNN: "As the indictment says, they're not attacking his First Amendment right. He can say whatever he wants. He can even lie. He can tell people that the election was stolen when he knew better. But that does not protect you from entering into a conspiracy." pic.twitter.com/YqK1g4alaK — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 3, 2023 … Trump had lost [New Mexico] by more than ten percent. But on Dec. 13, one day before the deadline, Chesebro allegedly drafted and sent fake elector certificates to Trump electors in the state. There was a problem: the Trump campaign had filed no lawsuits contesting the result in the state. Per Smith, the campaign decided to sue, thereby creating a “pretext” so the fake electors could vote.
On Tuesday, at roughly the same time that Donald Trump was indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election, liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in as a new member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, giving progressives their first majority on the court since 2008. The new composition of the court has major ramifications for American democracy—the previous conservative majority came one vote shy of ruling in favor of Trump’s effort to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin and upheld the gerrymandered maps that locked in huge GOP legislative majorities and a series of laws that made it harder to vote. The new liberal majority could now unwind that, restoring democracy and majority rule in the state. On Wednesday, voting rights groups filed a new lawsuit challenging the GOP’s gerrymandered maps. The suit claims that the state legislative maps violate the Wisconsin constitution by retaliating against some voters based on their viewpoints and free speech; treating some voters worse than others because of their political views and where they live; and defying the promise of a free government enshrined in the state constitution. (Separate litigation could also be filed challenging the state’s congressional maps, where Republicans hold six of eight US House seats despite the evenly divided political makeup of the state.) By taking their challenge directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, state and national voting rights groups hope that new maps will be put in place before the 2024 election. Law Forward, a progressive legal group based in Madison, filed the lawsuit alongside organizations that included the Campaign Legal Center and the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School. ...In 2022, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was reelected with 51 percent of the vote and Democrats won 4 of 6 statewide elections, but Republicans retained 67 percent of state Senate seats and 65 percent of Assembly seats. They attained a supermajority in the senate and came just two seats short of gaining a supermajority in the assembly, which would have allowed Republicans to overrule the governor’s vetoes and make him functionally irrelevant. ...Extreme gerrymandering has given Republicans in the legislature a green light to entrench their own power— such as when they passed a series of lame-duck laws stripping power from Evers after he won election in 2018 —while allowing them to block popular policies on issues like abortion, guns, and education with little accountability.
Michigan’s Republican party is broke. Minnesota’s was, until recently, down to $53.81 in the bank. And in Colorado, the GOP is facing eviction from its office this month because it can’t make rent. Around the nation, state Republican party apparatuses — once bastions of competency that helped produce statehouse takeovers — have become shells of their former machines amid infighting and a lack of organization. Current and former officials at the heart of the matter blame twin forces for it: The rise of insurgent pro-Donald Trump activists capturing party leadership posts, combined with the ever-rising influence of super PACs. “It shouldn’t surprise anybody that real people with real money — the big donors who have historically funded the party apparatus — don’t want to invest in these clowns who have taken over and subsumed the Republican Party,” said Jeff Timmer, the former executive director of the once-vaunted Michigan GOP and a senior adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.
Oh Lord, there are TAPES
Rudy Giuliani was sued for sexual harassment earlier this year by Noelle Dunphy, a former staffer at his firm. The lawsuit included a wide array of disturbing allegations against the Trump-loving lawyer — from behaving erratically while drunk, to exposing himself non-consensually, to demanding sexual favors, to making various sexist and racist remarks. Giuliani denied everything, smearing Dunphy and asking the court to strike portions of the lawsuit and sanction her and her lawyer. Dunphy and her lawyer responded on Monday by asking for Giuliani and his lawyer to be sanctioned. They included audio transcripts of Giuliani saying exactly the kind of things he denied saying, and folks … it’s not great. The transcripts include a host of truly vile, bigoted remarks, as well as some of the creepiest come-ons the mind can imagine. x Good stuff by @ryanbort.
https://t.co/oekgKTQX0h pic.twitter.com/r8kN7Z3XQM — Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 2, 2023 ...Then there are the lewd comments directed toward Dunphy. “Come here, big tits,” Giuliani says on one occasion, according to the transcript. “Come here, big tits. Your tits belong to me. Give them to me [indiscernable]. I want to claim my tits. I want to claim my tits. I want to claim my tits. These are my tits.”
Good news for those MAGA folks in Central Florida who survived COVID: There’s a new disease for you to enjoy!
On the heels of the release of the film Barbie™, Mattel, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAT), the global leader in play and entertainment, announced a groundbreaking commitment to stop using plastic entirely by 2030. This initiative aims to tackle the problem of plastic waste and its impact on children and the environment. Mattel further pledges to support a federal ban on nonessential plastic use in the USA. “We have made more than a billion plastic Barbies, and enough is enough,” said Ynon Kreiz, CEO of Mattel. “With our plastic-free commitment, we denounce the empty promises of plastic recycling and take a bold step towards real ecological sustainability. Only sustainably produced toys can provide sustainable joy.” “As a responsible company, we realized that Mattel’s previous commitment to the use of 100% recycled plastic by 2030 would only serve to delay the release of plastic into the environment,” said Pamela Gill-Alabaster, Head of Sustainability, Mattel. “But the new plan to eliminate plastic altogether actually solves the problem by cutting down on current production, as well as focusing on only compostable natural materials like mushroom mycelium, algae, seaweed, clays, wood cellulose, and bamboo. It will revolutionize the industry and set new standards for conscientious play.” Renowned actor Daryl Hannah’s passionate advocacy for environmental causes makes her the perfect ambassador for Mattel’s sustainability mission. x x YouTube Video
..Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn't its cars, it's Tesla's business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex. ...Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can't attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded. But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you'd immediately figure something was up. So your Tesla tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles. ...So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren't getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue. ...Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively – think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn't merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being – but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren't just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed – they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds. x Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).
Inside: Tesla's Dieselgate; and more!
Archived at:
https://t.co/DMo39EAOHj#Pluralistic
1/ pic.twitter.com/PSXEerJZfy — Cory Doctorow @
[email protected] (@doctorow) July 28, 2023
The story of Tesla and Elon Musk can be traced back to the early 2000s, when Musk was ousted as CEO of his first company, PayPal. That incident taught Musk a crucial lesson about the importance of being in control, even when it wasn’t your own company. In episode two of Land of the Giants: The Tesla Shock Wave, we talk to Tesla’s original co-founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, as well as several of the company’s earliest employees, to tell what is essentially an origin of the electric automaker — but also of Musk himself. We learn how Musk was brought on as a crucial early investor but soon used his clout, money, and even a few strong-arm tactics to oust Eberhard and Tarpenning and eventually install himself as CEO of Tesla. ...But those feels soon soured after Musk began to exert his authority as board chairman, pressuring Eberhard to fire people, make wildly difficult design fixes to the company’s early lineup of EVs, and then step aside as Musk positioned himself at the forefront of Tesla’s public introduction to the world. Soon enough, Eberhard was out, and Musk was in. “It felt like a brick on the side of my head,” Eberhard said. “It’s totally unexpected.”
x On the island of Newfoundland, Canada, people saw a colossal iceberg approaching the mainland. pic.twitter.com/AlzUaBZSNv — Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 2, 2023
Want to ACT on climate change this week? There’s a climate hawk running in the primary for the Special Election in RI01 September 5 — YOU could make calls to help get him across the finish line!
x there's a special election Sept 5 in Rhode Island's deep blue 1st Cong district, and a dozen Dem candidates running. @ClimateHawkVote has endorsed @AaronRegunberg as the climate hawk in the race. — RL Miller (@RL_Miller) August 2, 2023
Anything else going on tonight? Tell us in the comments!
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