The Month of Unprecedented U.S. Politics Keeps on Unprecedenting
How Dark Brandon altered the course of the Presidential Election and what to expect
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The Month of Unprecedented U.S. Politics Keeps on Unprecedenting
For a second consecutive summer weekend, the United States experienced a political upheaval involving presidential candidates. The first nearly altered the course and dynamics of the election; the second succeeded in it. And it crashed CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer’s Sunday Funday.
On Sunday, after nearly a month of unrepentant harassment by wealthy Democratic donors and their corporate news hounds, President Joe Biden acquiesced to the pressure campaign to drop out of the race.
But he went Dark Brandon and made one condition: The party would unite around Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Within 1 hour of his announcement, POTUS endorsed his VP and advised Democrats to “come together and beat Trump.”
This one-two punch of an announcement on Donald Trump’s former preferred bully pulpit, X (aka Twitter) put Washington, D.C. on its back foot. For one, the move denied the press access to the President after their continued bad faith “journalism.”
It also was a thumbing of the nose at his former opponent who primarily used Twitter to bloviate. By announcing on X, POTUS sucked all the attention away from Donald Trump and put the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, under a hardcore microscope for turning it into a disinformation network.
Lastly, it was a subtweet to certain Democrats and a big middle finger to party mega donors who put U.S. Democracy at risk. And it appears that Democrats are no longer in disarray as the MAGA party scrambles to clean up on aisle 5 and the wealthy lick their wounded egos on their mega yachts parked in the Mediterranean.
The Presidential Election has officially changed course
Within hours, Democrats and delegates in all 50 states publicly endorsed VP Kamala Harris and Democratic voters rallied to support the campaign. As of this posting, Harris has secured more than half the delegates needed to win the nomination and raised $81M. The party just has to push her through the finish line at the Democratic National Convention on August 19.
Unfortunately for the Trump/Vance campaign, they must go back to the drawing board. Donald Trump built his entire campaign on defeating President Joe Biden. And the only 2 messages they could come up with was that Biden was old and also a criminal mastermind.
Being met with an opponent who is a former prosecutor and a woman of color isn’t just throwing a wrench in the MAGA party’s plans. It’s sending them into a full on meltdown. The far-right media echo chamber has been on one today. And it’s ugly.
As MAGA coalesces around its messaging strategy, one thing is certain: The deep underbelly of American racism and misogyny will be on full display through Election Day. And it won’t only be coming from the far-right. Expect nothing short of the Obama birtherism conspiracy theories and Clinton is shrill and ambitious, but on steroids.
Right now, far-right personalities, pundits, and propaganda outlets are throwing spaghetti at the wall. On X and other far-right preferred social media platforms, there has been rapid, erratic posting about Harris and POTUS. The mania echoes the MAGA leader’s style, but it is also a tried and true information warfare method, which Trump shadow advisor Steve Bannon calls “flooding the zone with shit.”
In this case, it’s an apt description. The far-right is already making accusations that Harris slept around to get where she is, which is an insinuation that she hasn’t earned her candidacy. They are also claiming that she is incompetent and ambitious, but have nothing to back up those opinions.
They are also putting up goal posts claiming that only individuals who are married with children OR who have served in the military can be POTUS. At the same time, they’re floating the Project 2025 idea that those who are not married with children should not have the right to vote. You see where this is going, don’t you?
There are also claims that Harris has no birthright to the Presidency because of her ancestry. This is straight from MAGA leader’s conspiracy theory about chain migration. As for me, I didn’t realize Oakland, California wasn’t a city in the United States or that being born there does not make one a U.S. Citizen.
Aside from the overt discrimination, the far-right is also attempting to portray Harris as a “coastal elite” who is soft on crime. And they are linking this with the false notion that she is Biden’s “border czar.” The big lie here is that Harris has no authority to oversee the U.S.-Mexico border. The agency that oversees the border is the Department of Homeland Security, which Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas leads. Harris was tapped for U.S. diplomacy in Central America. She has been advocating for private sector investment in the region to boost economies and reduce violence, which is driving migrants out of their countries.
And because she is part of the Biden administration, MAGA is trying to link her to the “Biden crime family” label that the cult has bought into. There have been multiple posts accusing her of covering up Biden’s health status as they demand Biden step down and/or stand before trial. For what, they haven’t said.
As you can see, MAGA is working OT to malign VP Kamala Harris. Before July 21, the attention was on President Biden’s age, but now the attention is on a woman whom is everything Donald Trump is not.
More importantly, the symbolism of a skilled prosecutor facing a convicted felon and sex abuser who directed the January 6, 2021 coup to usurp power is powerful.
What’s next?
The one question that remains is who will Harris pick as her VP running mate?
As the Trump/Vance campaign and the MAGA party work on discrediting Harris in the most uncouth ways, they are also doing the same for those on the rumored Veep list. It’s so on brand that the only tool they have is playing the schoolyard bully.
News Updates
On Friday, Disneyland’s union coalition voted 99% in favor of authorizing a strike. Negotiators with Walt Disney Company will meet with union officials on Monday and Tuesday to come to a resolution. If a deal is not made, Disneyland cast members, including ride operators, store clerks, custodians, candy makers, ticket takers, parking attendants, tram drivers, and others will walk off the job to picket.
The contract for Disneyland employees expired in June while the Disney California Adventure and Downtown Disney worker contracts expire on September 30.
It turns out there was a lot more to last week’s phone call between antivaxx conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for president as an Independent, and GOP nominee Donald Trump. In an unshocking twist, unnamed sources told the Washington Post that that call was brokered by Russian propagandist Tucker Carlson and centered around a quid-pro-quo. The since-deleted video of Kennedy listening to Trump stream of consciousness made it appear as if Trump asked for an endorsement while Kennedy remained uninterested. But it turns out Kennedy discussed potential positions within the Trump administration, including overseeing healthcare policy.
Congress was out for blood on Monday as U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle sat before the House oversight committee to testify about the agency’s failure to protect GOP nominee Donald Trump at his Pennsylvania rally. Cheatle accepted responsibility for the security failure, but evaded answering questions about the investigation into the assassination attempt. She told the committee, “I’m not going to get into specifics of the day” until the investigation is completed, adding, “There was a plan in place to provide overwatch, and we are still looking into responsibilities.”
When asked how many agents were assigned to Trump that day, as well as how many times the agency denied Trump’s requests for additional security, she only stated that “there was a sufficient number” and provided no specifics. At one point, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) stated that the shooter should have been identified as a “threat” and the rally delayed after attendees alerted them to an armed man on the roof. Cheatle replied that the gunman was “identified as suspicious,” but was only considered a threat “seconds” before he fired the weapon. She added that the reason for the delay in identifying him as a threat was because the agency was “still combing through communications and when communications were passed.” She did confirm that counter-snipers do not “have to ask for permission” to shoot threats and that there was no order to hold fire.
But it wasn’t good enough for committee members. There were bipartisan calls for her to resign, but Cheatle declined, stating, “I have led with integrity.” She said that a complete report will be ready within 60 days, and she would provide answers then, but the committee made it clear the timeline was unacceptable.
Cybersecurity software update crashes systems worldwide
All it took to cause a global outage of public infrastructure was a software update with faulty code. On Friday, public services worldwide, including banking, transportation, healthcare, and governments were disrupted when an Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, pushed a routine antivirus software update to its 29,000 enterprise customers. That update, meant for CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor software, crashed 8.5M Microsoft Windows devices by installing faulty software onto the operating system that caused them to get stuck in a reboot loop. While businesses resorted to old-school operations and airlines and railways experienced cancellations and delays, Reuters reported on Saturday that CrowdStrike did not complete quality checks before pushing the update.
The company has issued a fix; however, customers will have to apply it manually one-by-one to each device. This means that IT departments around the globe have their work cut out for them. Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity researcher, told The Verge it could take “days to weeks” to resolve because IT administrators may have to have physical access to a device to get them working again. Microsoft is also advising customers to “turn it off and on again” and to delete a certain file.
Donald Trump admits that Russia is holding WSJ journalist hostage for campaign
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin continues to hold The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich hostage on trumped-up charges in retaliation for the United States’ steadfast support of Ukraine. In April, Putin’s useful idiot Donald Trump told Time Magazine that it was unlikely Gershkovich would be released before the November election, suggesting that he is coordinating with the Kremlin on a PR stunt if he were to re-occupy the White House. Following the news of Gershkovich’s 16-year sentencing by Russia’s banana republic court, Trump admitted it. He “Truthed” that he will free the hostage “for no compensation following our victory on November 5th” and added that the Murdoch-owned paper should “stop being stupid.” The leader of the Republican Party has repeatedly made it clear which country he works for, and it’s not the United States.
Colorado judge dismisses case against Trump’s “election integrity” group
On Thursday, a Colorado judge dismissed the lawsuit against the Leonard Leo-backed group U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), ruling that the plaintiffs failed to provide evidence that the group illegally intimidated voters. After three days of a bench trial, U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney voiced her frustration with both parties, accusing each of wanting to litigate matters beyond the narrow question befor the court. She claimed, “Those are sideshows and I was trying to reel those sideshows in."
The case stems from a March 2022 lawsuit brought by 3 civil rights organizations-the League of Women Voters of Colorado, the regional chapter of the NAACP and Mi Familia Vota—alleging that USEIP violated Section 11(b) of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the Ku Klux Klan Act. The coalition argued that the group’s 2021 canvassing effort intimidated voters when it tapped volunteers for a door-knocking mission in minority neighborhoods where they took photos of voters’ homes and questioned 9,400 home owners about their voter registration status and voting records. The coalition plans to appeal the decision.
Confronting Nazis is excellent journalism
Local Nashville, Tennessee broadcast journalist Phil Williams (a national treasure) bravely confronted a group of out-of-state neo-Nazis who were bussed in to Music City last week to terrorize residents and tourists. The white supremacists paid to harass Tennesseans are members of the Goyim Defense League, an antisemitic terrorist group that was created by Jon Minadeo III in Sonoma County, California. The group has operations in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, New York, South Carolina, and Texas, and primarily operates online to spread conspiracy theories against Jews. But last week, the group’s deeply disturbed members descended on Nashville to personally spew their hate. Despite the ugliness of the scene, this is the type of journalism we need in this moment. Countering bad faith actors with inconvenient truths may not work, but shedding light on their destructiveness while calling these losers out as the losers they are is important. As Williams writes, “These are really pathetic human beings. They are the only ones who seem not to know it.” He is right.
DOJ sues Texas-based organization for rampant child abuse and harassment
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice sued the largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children in the U.S. for child sex abuse and harassment. The Justice Department alleges that the Texas-based nonprofit Southwest Key Programs Inc. amassed more than $3B dollars in government contracts as its employees raped, touched, or solicited sex and nude images of children in their care for at least the past 8 years. The 26-page complaint describes that “In some cases, Southwest Key employees threatened children to maintain their silence. In harassing these children, these Southwest Key employees exploited the children’s vulnerabilities, language barriers, and distance from family and loved ones.” It also reveals that authorities had received more than 100 reports of sexual abuse or harassment at the provider’s shelters since 2015 and that victims provided testimony that staff was aware about the misconduct and failed to report it or willfully concealed it.
The organization receives federal grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and operates 29 child migrant shelters—17 in Texas, 10 in Arizona, and 2 in California. The agency reported on June 17 that 6,228 children were being housed across Southwest Key’s facilities. Since 2020, at least two employees have been indicted on criminal charges related to these allegations. In 2018, 2 facilities in Arizona lost their licences after videos showed staffers physically abusing children.
Rest in Power Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) died Friday evening after a battle with Pancreatic cancer. The 74-year-old representative of Houston who served in Congress for 30 years announced in early June that she was diagnosed with the third-leading cause of cancer death. Despite the deadly diagnosis, Lee continued to campaign for re-election, which would have been her 16th term in office. She was one of the two longest-serving members of the Texas congressional delegation. Lee led the effort that established Juneteenth as a federal holiday and was a fierce advocate for progressive reform and civil rights. She was outspoken against police brutality and pushed for legislation to prosecute police misconduct; she sponsored the Sentencing Reform Act of 2015 and the George Floyd Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act; she led the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act; and she was also one of the few Democrats who voiced opposition to the Iraq War.
The Biden Administration takes on Climate Action
On Friday, the Biden administration announced a federal strategy to phase out governmental use of single-use plastics to reduce the impact of plastic pollution. The U.S. government is the largest buyer of consumer goods in the world and President Biden has been working to implement more sustainable operations across the board. A key component of the strategy is coordinating with state, local, Tribal, and Territorial governments, as well as with the private sector on shifting away from single-use plastics by 2035. The administration is also advocating for regulating plastics manufacturers, which is a sector of the oil industry—more than 90 percent of plastic is a fossil fuel product and approximately 460M metric tons are produced every year, which breaks down into microplastics and pollutes all natural resources.
Stem cell transplants show promise for HIV remission
A 7th patient living with HIV remains in remission 10 years after receiving a groundbreaking stem cell transplant to treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The stem cells for 5 of these patients came from donors who have rare defects in one or both copies of a gene called CCR5, a protein found on immune cells. Researchers found that most HIV strains attach to the protein to infect cells and that the defective ones make them HIV-resistant. The 7th patient showing no viable HIV received stem cells from a donor who had only 1 copy of CCR5 and doctors found only 1 copy of the gene in the patient as well, which they believe boosted his chances of remission. Only 16% of individuals carry only 1 copy of the CCR5 defect while an even more rare 1% of individuals carry 2 copies.