August 2024 – The Tarbabys Blog

Trump’s getting desperate: Now he turns to failing Moms for Liberty

Salon – Opinion

Trump’s getting desperate: Now he turns to failing Moms for Liberty

Amanda Marcotte – August 30, 2024

Donald Trump Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Donald Trump has a woman problem — and it’s not just his pending court cases regarding his sexual assault of journalist E. Jean Carroll. Polling shows a growing divergence between male and female voters that could become the largest election gender gap in history. A new CBS poll found that 56% of women say they plan to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, while 54% of men say they’re backing Trump. The problem for Trump is that women historically vote more than men, and the percentage of the electorate that is female grows more each presidential election cycle.

It’s not hard to see why most women despise Trump, a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women on tape. On the policy front, of course, Trump is the single person most responsible for the overturn of Roe v. Wade. The published agenda for his second term, Project 2025, includes plans for a national abortion ban and restrictions on contraception. Not only does Trump not try to hide his misogyny, but his campaign makes it a selling point in a bid to win over bitter male voters. On Wednesday, Trump posted a sexually explicit comment about Harris to Truth Social, accusing her of selling sex because she dated other men before she met her husband. As Anderson Cooper noted on CNN, this is not “out of character” for Trump, who usually calls women “pigs,” “dogs” and “nasty” for showing anything but submission to him.

Trump’s campaign is in danger if he can’t get at least a few skeptical women to vote for him. So on Friday, Trump is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the third annual Moms for Liberty summit in Washington, D.C. It’s another sign that his campaign has run out of ideas to appeal to women. Moms for Liberty’s fall from political grace has been as rapid as their rise to prominence. Associating with the group is more likely to hurt Trump with female voters than to help him.

Moms for Liberty was founded in January 2021. Initially, the group found success in helping Republicans claw back support from suburban women that had been lost during the Trump presidency. By channeling the frustrations parents felt over pandemic school closures, Moms for Liberty positioned itself as a moderate-seeming “parental rights” organization. In reality, the group was controlled by far-right activists with deep ties to Christian nationalism. When Moms for Liberty-linked school board members started taking actions like banning books and vilifying LGBTQ teachers, it provoked a nationwide backlash, with parents in affected communities coming together to kick Moms for Liberty members off their school boards.

It’s safe to say the “Moms for Liberty” brand is toxic now. One of its founders, Bridget Ziegler, got caught up in a sex scandal when a woman she and her husband were meeting for threesomes accused her husband, Christian Ziegler, of rape. (The case was eventually dropped after police claimed insufficient evidence.) With the pandemic over, all the group had left, issue-wise, was their zeal for book banning, which is a wildly unpopular position. In addition, they’re closely associated with Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who has become something of a punchline after spending $160 million in the GOP presidential primary only to be handed a humiliating defeat by Trump.

“DeSantis and MfL appear to have lost their juice,” journalist Kelly Weill wrote in her recent MomLeft newsletter. “In 2022, the group claimed to have elected approximately half of its 500-plus school board candidates,” reaching an 80% success rate in Florida. In 2023, however, the group only won 35% of its races, and that’s after dramatically scaling back the number of candidates they were running. This month, Moms for Liberty got another shellacking, as only 6 out of 23 candidates backed by DeSantis and Moms for Liberty in Florida even won a primary.

“Big losses across the state for candidates who advanced the group’s agenda, including efforts to ban library books and restrict lessons about race, sex and gender, pointed to mounting dissatisfaction with an organization that had quickly gained sway with powerful Republicans amid the anti-mask, parental rights politics of the pandemic,” reports the Tampa Bay Times.

Despite this, Politico reports, “Republicans show no signs of changing their strategy.” Last year, Trump’s speech before Moms for Liberty drew heavily on plans outlined in Project 2025 to gut public education altogether, starting with abolishing the Department of Education. This year, Moms for Liberty head Tiffany Justice said she hopes “to hear some more plans” regarding this, because “it’s a little more complicated than just waving a magic wand and making it go away.” Democrats no doubt agree they’d like to hear more about Trump’s plan to end the Department of Education, as 64% of Americans oppose the idea.

That Trump and Republicans are sticking with Moms of Liberty suggests they’re desperate. Polling shows that since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the nominee, there’s been a major uptick in female support for the Democratic ticket. On Tuesday, Democratic research firm TargetSmart published a new report chronicling the surge of voter registrations since Harris joined the race, including a whopping 175% spike in registrations from Black women under 30.

Harris’ appeal is a huge part of this, but it’s also driven by women’s outrage over Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. Vance can’t seem to pull his nose out of women’s uteruses. New quotes of Vance painting childless women as “miserable cat ladies” and “sociopathic” are released practically every day. Like Trump, he has a special zeal for attacking hardworking schoolteachers, claiming teachers who do not have biological children “disorient and really disturb” him.

In response, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said, “It sure seems like Vance lacks an empathy gene—thank goodness he’s not a teacher.”

This rhetoric seems like it will only further alienate female voters, especially mothers who tend to have close relationships with local teachers and know they don’t need to be parents to be skilled professionals. (For one thing, most start teaching full-time at age 22. That’s five years younger than the average age of a first-time parent, and 12 years younger than when Vance had his first child.) It just reinforces the accusation of the Harris campaign that Vance is “weird” and out of touch with how normal Americans live.

But it’s not like Trump and Vance have a lot of options for reaching out to female voters. Moms for Liberty’s brand is failing and their views are unpopular, but they do have “Moms” in their name and female leaders for Trump to be photographed with. If you squint hard enough, that could look like Trump playing nice with women. Moms for Liberty doesn’t offer much, but it’s the best the Trump campaign can do.

How California Became a New Center of Political Corruption

The New York Times

How California Became a New Center of Political Corruption

Ralph Vartabedian – August 29, 2024

Over the last 10 years, 576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges, according to Justice Department reports, exceeding the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois. (Getty Images)More

LOS ANGELES — Jose Huizar’s downfall at Los Angeles City Hall was as stunning as his rise to success, a political tragedy that, like many in the land of dreams, has become a familiar one.

Born to a large family in rural Mexico and raised in poverty near the towering high-rises of downtown Los Angeles, he overcame enormous odds to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University and UCLA law school.

He returned to his old neighborhood in East Los Angeles to run for the school board and eventually the City Council, where he gained control of the influential committee that approves multimillion-dollar commercial development projects across the city.

His spectacular fall — after FBI agents caught him accepting $1.8 million worth of casino chips, luxury hotel stays, a liquor box full of cash and prostitutes from Chinese developers — was cast by federal prosecutors as an epic Hollywood tale. They persuaded a judge in January to sentence him to 13 years in prison on charges of tax evasion and racketeering.

“He was the King Kong of LA City Hall for many, many years,” Mack E. Jenkins, chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, told the court. “And with his fall, a lot of devastation was left in his wake.”

This week, when Huizar is scheduled to report to prison, he will become the third recent Los Angeles City Council member to go down on charges of corruption, part of a much larger circle of staff aides, fundraisers, political consultants and real estate developers who have been charged in what federal authorities called an “extraordinary” recent wave of bribery and influence-peddling across California.

Two other members of the City Council, Mitchell Englander and Mark Ridley-Thomas, were convicted earlier on various corruption charges, as was the former head of the city’s Department of Water and Power. A fourth City Council member, Curren Price, is facing charges of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest.

Over the last 10 years, 576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges, according to Justice Department reports, exceeding the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

California has a larger population than those states, but the recent wave of cases is attributable to much more than that, federal prosecutors say.

A heavy concentration of power at Los Angeles City Hall, the receding presence of local news media, a population that often tunes out local politics and a growing Democratic supermajority in state government have all helped insulate officeholders from damage, political analysts said.

In Los Angeles, Huizar’s influence was even greater than that of most other council members: Not only did his district include downtown Los Angeles, where billions of dollars of foreign investment was transforming the skyline, but he also controlled the Planning and Land Use Management Committee that approves major developments all over the city.

“When you have that kind of power, pay-to play schemes run amok,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, whose office has led many of the recent prosecutions in Los Angeles. “I wouldn’t call it ordinary what these folks did. It is extraordinary.”

Huizar, 55, pleaded guilty to racketeering, a charge often used in prosecuting organized crime or street-gang cases. The $1.8 million in bribes he received was twice the amount that recently convicted Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey was charged with accepting.

In March, a jury convicted Raymond Chan, a former Los Angeles deputy mayor whom prosecutors called the “architect” of the Huizar conspiracy, also on racketeering charges. In all, more than 50 key political figures and executives in Los Angeles and San Francisco have been convicted since 2019. Many more were investigated or resigned after allegations surfaced.

California also had cases of corruption in the days, now in the distant past, when Republicans held statewide office.

But political analysts say the Democrats’ present lock on political power leaves little opportunity for Republicans to effectively raise the issue of corruption as a campaign issue.

“When a political party enjoys that much uncontested power, there’s no penalty for stepping over ethical or legal lines,” said Dan Schnur, a former head of the state Fair Political Practices Commission and a former Republican who is now an independent.

A two-year-old reform effort to curb some of the extraordinary power conferred to individual council members in Los Angeles has foundered.

“When you talk about reducing individual council member discretion over land use, there is real pushback,” said Nithya Raman, a council member who sits on the city’s charter reform committee.

What happened in Los Angeles had been playing out on a smaller scale for years in the small industrial cities of Los Angeles County that have been described as a “corridor of corruption”: South Gate, Bell, Lynwood and Vernon, among others, where civic leaders were prosecuted for taking bribes or tapping into city funds.

“You have large immigrant populations, largely marginalized communities that do not have the resources to watch their politicians closely,” said Estrada, whose parents emigrated from Guatemala. “I think you have a pretty unique cauldron of factors in Los Angeles and the greater Los Angeles area that allow for these things to happen.”

The arrival of large-scale investments from China starting in 2011 heightened the risks.

Over the next half-dozen years, about $26 billion of direct investment from Chinese firms and their billionaire owners arrived in the state.

Downtown Los Angeles underwent a dramatic revival. New high-rise condos and hotels went up, abandoned warehouses were converted into loft apartments and galleries and expensive restaurants opened.

The 40-year-old Grand Hotel, a rundown eyesore used until recently by the city as a homeless shelter, was at the center of one investor’s grandiose plan.

The investor, Wei Huang, a billionaire owner of the development company Shen Zhen New World, bought the hotel in 2010 with plans to convert it into a 77-story tower, the highest in the western United States.

What he needed was help managing the byzantine political approval process. He found it, federal prosecutors said, with Huizar, who had been elected to the council in 2005.

Starting in 2013, federal prosecutors said, Huizar took the first of 20 all-expenses paid trips to Las Vegas with Huang, during which he was supplied with about $10,000 worth of casino chips each time.

Their involvement deepened just before a 2015 election, when Huizar faced allegations from his deputy chief of staff that he had sexually harassed her. Huang, prosecutors said, provided him with $600,000 of collateral for a loan to settle out of court.

But it was the free casino chips in Las Vegas that would ultimately unravel the arrangement. During one trip to the Cosmopolitan casino in 2016, its security chief, a former FBI agent, spotted Huizar playing a $16,000 pile of chips at a card table. When he asked his identity, he became flustered and walked away, leaving the chips.

“Who walks away from $16,000 of casino chips?” said Carlos Narro, who was then the chief of the FBI’s public corruption section in Los Angeles, who got a call from the security chief.

In short order, Narro had the casino’s video of the scene at the card table and flight records. With those, the FBI got court approval for wire taps and searches of Huizar’s text messages and emails.

Ultimately, the investigation found that Huang had paid roughly $1.8 million to Huizar, but that was only part of a much wider network of corruption, investigators found. The wide-ranging racketeering indictment to which Huizar pleaded guilty also targeted a City Hall aide, a deputy mayor, a lobbyist and a political fundraiser, all of whom were also convicted.

Huang was also indicted and is now a fugitive, believed to be in China. His company was fined $4 million.

Also included in the indictment were three other large development projects whose backers, prosecutors said, obtained Huizar’s help in exchange for bribes.

The scandal was almost inevitable, said Miguel Santana, the former top administrative officer of Los Angeles.

“The depth of power that a council member has around development in their own districts almost facilitates the level of corruption that took place,” Santana, now president of the California Community Foundation. “That level of power still exists today.”

San Francisco has had its own round of corruption cases, many of the recent ones surrounding the former Department of Public Works chief, Mohammed Nuru, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to accepting gifts, including a tractor for his ranch outside the city, a Rolex watch and millions of dollars, from various people with business before the city.

Florence Kong, the owner of a recycling company, pleaded guilty to offering some of the bribes in exchange for city contracts. Zhang Li, a Chinese developer also accused of offering bribes, signed a deferred prosecution agreement.

Now scheduled to surrender to prison by Saturday, Huizar made a public apology at his sentencing hearing, saying he had long been dedicated to his community. “Shiny things were dangled in front of me, and I could not resist the temptation,” he said in a letter to the judge asking for leniency. “The money, the fancy dinners, luxury flights. It was there for the taking, and I could not say no.”

Estrada, the U.S. attorney, said that Huizar’s corruption offended him as a Latino.

“It feels like a real betrayal,” Estrada said. “Because for those of us whose families came from Latin America, and know that system, there’s just rampant corruption there. You come to this country, you have more opportunities, you are offered to be part of a system that is theoretically supposed to operate cleanly.”

Where Does Biden’s Student Loan Debt Plan Stand? Here’s What to Know.

The New York Times

Where Does Biden’s Student Loan Debt Plan Stand? Here’s What to Know.

Zach Montague – August 29, 2024

President Joe Biden discusses his administration’s actions to cancel or reduce student loan debts, at the Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., Feb. 21, 2024. (Al Drago/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s latest effort to wipe out student loan debt for millions of Americans is in jeopardy.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to allow a key component of the policy, known as the SAVE plan, to move forward after an emergency application by the Biden administration.

Until Republican-led states sued to block the plan over the summer, SAVE had been the main way for borrowers to apply for loan forgiveness. The program allowed people to make payments based on income and family size; some borrowers ended up having their remaining debt canceled altogether.

Other elements of Biden’s loan forgiveness plan remain in effect for now. And over the course of Biden’s presidency, his administration has canceled about $167 billion in loans for 4.75 million people, or roughly 1 in 10 federal loan holders.National & World NewsLatest U.S. and global stories

But Wednesday’s decision leaves millions of Americans in limbo.

Here is a look at what the ruling means for borrowers and what happens next:

Who was eligible for SAVE?

Most people with federal undergraduate or graduate loans could apply for forgiveness under SAVE, which stands for Saving on a Valuable Education.

But the amount of relief it provided varied depending on factors such as income and family size. More than 8 million people enrolled in the program during the roughly 10 months that it was available, and about 400,000 of them got some amount of debt canceled.

The plan has been on hold since July, when a federal appellate court issued a ruling temporarily blocking the program. The Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request by the Biden administration to lift that injunction.

What happens next?

SAVE is on hold and interest on loans will not accrue while lower courts consider the merits of the legal challenges.

If those challenges succeed, millions of students will most likely be forced to revert to other plans with significantly higher monthly payments.

The Supreme Court said it expected a lower court to move quickly on the case and “render its decision with appropriate dispatch.” The Education Department has said it will provide regular updates for borrowers on its website.

Who can still apply for debt relief?

There are still pathways for people who want to apply for debt relief, including those who borrowed money to attend schools that misled or took advantage of them financially.

Another program is aimed at people working in public service — including teachers, firefighters and members of the military — who had been paying down loans for at least 10 years.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program was established in 2007, but it had been plagued by years of bureaucratic delays and other problems.

A report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2017 found that federal loan servicers routinely failed to inform borrowers about their eligibility for the program and systematically miscounted payments that could count toward forgiveness.

The Biden administration revived the program, which has led to debt relief for nearly 1 million people.

The administration has also approved $14.1 billion in forgiveness for about 548,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability that prevents them from working, a group that includes many military veterans.

Why is this issue tangled up in the courts?

Surveys have consistently found that a majority of Americans support some form of debt relief. But Republican attorneys general and conservative groups have tried to block Biden’s plans in court, saying he is overstepping his authority.

Critics of the debt relief plan characterize it as a taxpayer-funded giveaway.

The legal challenges have steadily chipped away at Biden’s ambitions.

At the beginning of his presidency, Biden promised to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt for more than 40 million borrowers. The Supreme Court struck that down in June 2023, ruling that his administration did not have the authority to do so.

Opinion – Russians are waking up to Putin’s Ukraine folly

The Hill – Opinion

Opinion – Russians are waking up to Putin’s Ukraine folly

Ilan Berman, opinion contributor – August 28, 2024

Since the start of its war of aggression against Ukraine some two-and-a-half years ago, the Kremlin has worked diligently to shape the domestic narrative surrounding the conflict. Among other things, it has done so by promoting a vision of a patriotic struggle against fascism, deploying extensive domestic censorship measures, obscuring damning figures about battlefield casualties and passing new laws that effectively criminalize any critical coverage of the conflict.

Cumulatively, this campaign has succeeded in maintaining a comparatively high level of support from ordinary Russians for a fight that has lasted much longer and exacted a much heavier toll than authorities in Moscow originally advertised. But since mid-July, Ukraine’s unexpected incursion into Russia’s Kursk region — and Moscow’s inability to marshal a serious response to it — has shaken public sentiment within Russia.

By just how much? This is documented in a new study by OpenMinds, a Ukrainian data analytics and communications firm. By extensively parsing Russian social media and news outlets, it chronicles that the events in Kursk have impacted popular support for the war among ordinary Russians, as well as increased their dissatisfaction with the Kremlin.

Specifically, it notes a surge of content relating to the war as a result of Ukraine’s raid, as well as a significant decline in positive sentiment in posts, broadcasts and messages regarding the broader conflict. This, the study attributes to two causes.

First, it notes, “there have been fewer cheerful publications about the war” by Russia’s extensive state propaganda organs. Second, “there were more grievances compared to the previous two months … [both] blaming the Russian authorities and general panic regarding the incursion.”

Local fears are indeed rising. Russia’s September 2022 “partial mobilization,” as Vladimir Putin’s domestic conscription effort was euphemistically known, proved to be profoundly unpopular at home, sparking a mass exodus of citizens eager to avoid the draft. Now, worries are rising anew that Moscow’s ongoing struggles on the Ukrainian front could prompt the Kremlin to launch a new effort to beef up its military ranks.

The study documents “a growing concern” for renewed mobilization to respond to Ukraine’s incursion. During the first week of Ukraine’s offensive, it notes, “approximately 39 percent of the publications about mobilization mentioned the Kursk incursion” as a potential precipitating factor. So significant was the furor that Russian lawmakers were forced to speak out publicly to refute rumors that plans for a new conscription drive were in the works.

All this has profoundly constrained the Kremlin’s options. Ordinarily, Moscow would be quick to rally the country around Kyiv’s incursion, which it would invariably depict as an “existential threat” to its sovereignty. However, it hasn’t yet done so — something the OpenMinds study suggests is because “the Russian government understands the sociopolitical risks of a new wave of mobilization and fears the potential consequences related to it.”

What all this might mean for Russia is still too early to tell. Policymakers in Moscow have initiated an array of measures in response to the Ukrainian incursion, ranging from declaring a state of emergency in Kursk as well as the neighboring Belgorod region, surging troops into the area, and creating new administrative units to manage the crisis). Still, as NATO officials have noted, Russia’s official response has been “slow and scattered” — at least so far.

Whether it stays that way is still an open question. It’s already clear, however, that Ukraine has accomplished one of the principal aims of its daring military raid: to bring the conflict home to ordinary Russians and underscore that the war of choice embarked upon by their president carries potentially dire consequences for them personally.

Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.

‘Morning Joe’ Shames Trump’s Arlington Cemetery Photo Op: ‘Beyond Condemnation’

Daily Beast

‘Morning Joe’ Shames Trump’s Arlington Cemetery Photo Op: ‘Beyond Condemnation’

Michael Boyle – August 28, 2024

MSNBC’s Morning Joe tore into former President Donald Trump following visit to Arlington National Cemetery that has sparked outrage among veterans. In addition to Trump’s awkward thumbs up photo on Monday it was later reported that two Trump campaign staffers got in a physical altercation with cemetery workers who tried to stop the candidate from using the occasion to attack his political rivals, arguing that it violates federal law.

“I know a lot of military veterans were very uncomfortable with the idea that Trump was there at all,” correspondent Jonathan Lemire, who was filling in for Joe Scarborough said Wednesday morning. “Some of these veterans were sort of just aghast that even in any way, shape, or form, our Arlington National Cemetery, arguably the most sacred place in our country, was being used as a backdrop for political purposes.”

“Is nothing sacred?” added contributor Mike Barnicle about Trump’s behavior at the ceremony. “That is sacred ground. And the idea that any candidate of any party would, intentionally or unintentionally, use that sacred ground as a prop for a political campaign is beyond condemnation.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/hPdWaNanrrw

Barnicle continued, “It’s terribly upsetting, obviously, to people who have buried loved ones in Arlington National Cemetery. It’s terribly upsetting to many veterans. It’s terribly upsetting to people who view it as a spectacle.”

Most importantly, Barnicle argued, “It ought to be terribly upsetting to any American who values what the military does for this country worldwide, and has done for this country for centuries, and will continue to do for this country.”

Trump Staff Accused of Getting Physical With Arlington National Cemetery Official

Lemire also noted that this scandal “comes just days after Trump suggested that a civilian medal, the Medal of Freedom, was better than the Medal of Honor, because the army soldiers who receive the Medal of Honor are often either killed or wounded.”

“And of course,” he continued, “we’ve been reminded of late how Trump used to refer to veterans, even deceased soldiers, as ‘suckers and losers,’ a comment confirmed by his own chief of staff.”

Amidst the backlash, Trump released a statement of support from family members of the Marines whose grave he was photographed smiling and giving the thumbs up this week. Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told The Daily Beast on Wednesday, “There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.” He did not reply to requests for the footage.

“Sick and tragic”: Veterans, Democrats criticize Trump for “incident” at Arlington National Cemetery

Salon

“Sick and tragic”: Veterans, Democrats criticize Trump for “incident” at Arlington National Cemetery

Nicholas Liu – August 28, 2024

Donald Trump Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Two members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff pushed and verbally abused an official at Arlington Memorial Cemetery while the former president was participating in a wreath-laying ceremony on Monday, NPR first reported.

A source with knowledge of the incident told NPR that the official tried to prevent staffers from filming and photographing in Section 60, a restricted area where recent U.S. military casualties are buried. According to the source, officials had already made clear that only cemetery staff were permitted to film and photograph in that area, and when one of the officials tried to prevent Trump campaign staffers from entering, the staffers verbally abused and pushed the official aside.

Arlington National Cemetery, in a statement to NPR, said it “can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed.”

“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” the statement continued. “Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”

Trump was in Arlington to mark the third anniversary of a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate at Kabul Airport in 2021 during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in an attack, which Trump has cited to criticize President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over the administration’s handling of the evacuation.

On Tuesday, Trump posted a statement from relatives of two service members killed in the bombing. “We would like to express our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to president Donald J. Trump for his presence at the recent Section 60 gathering, honoring our children and their fallen brothers and sisters,” the Truth Social post read. “On the three-year anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing, the president and his team conducted themselves with nothing but the utmost respect and dignity for all of our service members, especially our beloved children.”

The statement also said that the family members accepted the presence of an official videographer and photographer at the event, though their approval does not override existing rules by the cemetery that regulate behavior near the grave sites of many other veterans. In the end, Trump got his photo, which depicts the former president smiling widely and giving a thumbs-up behind the graves of the two Marines.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung pushed back on the altercation story in a statement to NPR, saying that “we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.” (As of Wednesday morning, no such footage has been released.)

“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung claimed.

Predictably, reports of an altercation on hallowed ground sparked outrage from veterans and veterans’ groups. Liberal veterans organization VoteVets demanded that Trump take action against the staffers who took part in the incident. “If Donald Trump respects the fallen (he doesn’t) he will fire the people who fought with Arlington National Cemetery staff,” the group said in a statement on social media. “The fact is, Trump staff did this because he wanted them to do it. He sees Section 60 as Suckers and Losers too,” the group said, referring to Trump’s past alleged comments about veterans.

Former Rep. Max Rose, D-N.Y., who fought in Afghanistan, called the photograph and the alleged altercation that made it possible a “sick and tragic” affair. “Trump and his team care only about using the military as a prop,” he wrote on X. “No respect for our nation’s fallen heroes. Trump only cares about himself.”

Rep. Mickie Sherrill, D-N.J., a former Navy lieutenant, said that the former president using Arlington National Cemetery as a “photo-op” was to be expected from Trump, as “disrespecting veterans is par for course.”

Criticism over Trump’s comments about veterans exploded in 2020 after multiple Trump White House sources provided examples of him disparaging veterans for a report by The Atlantic. According to one story, he resisted visiting the grave sites of American World War I veterans in Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France because “it’s filled with losers” who were “suckers” for getting killed. At a briefing given by then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joe Dunford, Trump reportedly turned to aides and said: “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”

Trump has denied those claims, but some public statements he’s made are more difficult to dismiss: In 2015, he described former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as “not a war hero” because he was shot down and captured by North Vietnamese forces.

It’s not just words that have put a spotlight on Trump’s record with veterans. During his administration, Trump gave authority over Department of Veterans’ Affairs policy to a trio of business executives with memberships at his Mar-a-Lago club and personal ties to him, sparking a 2021 investigation by congressional Democrats that found the arrangement “violated the law and sought to exert improper influence over government officials to further their own personal interest.” Investigations by ProPublica also found that Trump’s Veterans Affairs officials enriched large companies while imposing longer waits for benefits on veterans, weakened the department by cutting its staff and retaliated against whistleblowers over reported abuse and malpractice at VA facilities.

If Trump was sometimes reluctant to visit military cemeteries during his presidency, some commentators observe that he now sees the political benefits of putting it in his schedule.

“The idea that any candidate of any party would use, intentionally or unintentionally, use that sacred ground as a prop for a political campaign is beyond condemnation,” journalist Mike Barnicle said on MSNBC. “It’s terribly upsetting, obviously, to people who have buried loved ones in Arlington National Cemetery.”

Trump team involved in ‘incident’ with staff at Arlington cemetery

Politico

Trump team involved in ‘incident’ with staff at Arlington cemetery

Paul McLeary – August 28, 2024

Members of the Trump campaign were involved in a confrontation with Army staff at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday while the former president took part in a photo session in a section for troops who have died in recent conflicts.

The incident, which reportedly involved pushing an employee and verbal abuse, came as former President Donald Trump visited the cemetery to mark the three-year anniversary of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, where 13 service members were killed in a bombing at the Kabul airport.

NPR first reported that families of two of the Marines killed at the airport invited Trump to Section 60 of the cemetery, where federal law prohibits political or campaign-related photography. NPR, citing a person with knowledge of the incident, said Trump’s team verbally abused and pushed a staffer when that person attempted to block the photographer who was with the campaign.

The photos came after Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The cemetery released a statement confirming there was an “incident,” and added that “federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities” at any military cemetery, including photography “in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign. Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”

Trump adviser Chris LaCivita said in a statement to POLITICO that “for a despicable individual to physically prevent President Trump’s team from accompanying him to this solemn event is a disgrace.”

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, confirmed that an incident occurred but denied there was any altercation.

Cheung posted on X Wednesday what appeared to be communicationbetween the campaign and Arlington staff that recommended against bringing additional photographers “outside the main media pool,” but allowed a Trump photographer to accompany him. The communication does not specify the photographer can follow Trump to the gravesite. Staff at the cemetery had worked for days to coordinate the visit with the Trump campaign.

Appearing on CNN Wednesday, former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the incident “should be investigated” and that the cemetery “has a lot of rules” for what people can or cannot do there. The “principle is that no person or party [on] either side should ever use Arlington National Cemetery or any of our cemeteries or battlefields for partisan political purposes, or break the so-called rules.”

The incident is the latest in a string of controversies involving Trump and veterans. On Aug. 15, he said the civilian President Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the military’s Medal of Honor because recipients of the military’s highest award for valor are “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”

The Veterans of Foreign Wars, which has 1.5 million members, called the comments “asinine” and said they not “only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.”

Trump Team Clashed With Official at Arlington National Cemetery

The New York Times

Trump Team Clashed With Official at Arlington National Cemetery

Chris Cameron – August 28, 2024

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is joined by U.S. Marine Cpl. Kelsee Lainhart for a wreath-laying ceremony on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)More

ARLINGTON, Va. — Members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and an official at Arlington National Cemetery confronted each other during the former president’s visit to the cemetery Monday, the military cemetery said in a statement Tuesday.

The altercation was prompted, according to Trump campaign officials, by the presence of a photographer in a section of the cemetery where U.S. troops who were killed in recent wars are buried. The cemetery released a statement saying that federal law prohibits political campaigning or “election-related” activities within Army cemeteries, including by photographers.

An official with the cemetery tried to “physically block” members of Trump’s team, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. Cheung added that the cemetery official was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode” and that the campaign was prepared to release footage of the confrontation to support its account of the clash. The campaign did not provide that footage after several requests.

Chris LaCivita, a top Trump campaign adviser, added in a separate statement that the cemetery official was “a disgrace and does not deserve to represent the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.”

Cemetery officials did not provide their own account of the encounter, saying instead that “there was an incident, and a report was filed.” In an additional statement Wednesday, a spokesperson for the cemetery said that “to protect the identity of the individual involved, no further information about the incident is being released at this time.”

The cemetery added that it had “reinforced and widely shared” to the Trump campaign the federal laws prohibiting campaign activities by photographers “or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign.”

News of the altercation was first reported by NPR.

VoteVets, the liberal veterans group, called on Trump to fire the members of his team involved in the confrontation.

Trump had visited the cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony honoring 13 U.S. troops who were killed in a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the United States’ withdrawal from that country three years ago. Trump has blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the bombing and America’s chaotic withdrawal, and repeated his attacks on the subject in campaign events after his visit to the cemetery.

Trump had laid three wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery on Monday morning, the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing. Two of the wreaths were for Marines killed: Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover and Sgt. Nicole Gee. A third was dedicated to all 13 troops killed.

Trump was accompanied for the laying of the wreaths by family members of the slain troops, as well as Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews and Cpl. Kelsee Lainhart, two Marines who were injured in the Abbey Gate attack. Vargas-Andrews lost his right arm and left leg in the attack, and Lainhart was paralyzed in the attack and now uses a wheelchair.

Trump then accompanied the families and Marine veterans to Section 60 of the cemetery, reserved for those recently killed in America’s wars abroad, including at Abbey Gate.

That part of Trump’s visit was private and closed to the press. Cheung, the Trump campaign spokesperson, pointed to a screenshot of an email that he argued gave the campaign photo access to Section 60. That excerpt, however, says that “former President Trump may have an official photographer and/or videographer outside of the main media pool,” but it does not suggest Trump’s photographer was given special access.

The campaign also shared text messages from family members of the veterans consenting to having Trump’s campaign media attend the event at Section 60. The campaign did not provide evidence that the cemetery gave it permission to have a photographer at Section 60 — which the cemetery said in its statement would be a violation of federal law.

Trump will do anything, including disrespecting our military, for a political stunt: Trump staff had physical altercation with Arlington cemetery official

Reuters

Trump staff had physical altercation with Arlington cemetery official, NPR reports

Reuters – August 28, 2024

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Trump holds rally in Glendale, Arizona

Flags-in ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia

(This Aug. 27 story has been refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 3)

(Reuters) – Two members of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign staff had a “verbal and physical altercation” with an Arlington National Cemetery official during a visit by Trump this week, NPR reported on Tuesday.

Trump on Monday participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery honoring the 13 servicemembers killed during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Later in Detroit, Trump blamed Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival for the White House, and President Joe Biden for what he termed a “catastrophic” withdrawal.

Citing an unnamed source, NPR reported that when a cemetery official tried to prevent Trump campaign staffers from filming and photographing in an area where servicemembers are buried, the Trump staff “verbally abused and pushed the official aside.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung disputed the report. “There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,” Cheung said.

Arlington National Cemetery confirmed in a statement that an incident had occurred and that a report was filed.

It did not respond to requests for a copy of the report or an explanation of why the Trump campaign was allowed to visit the cemetery as part of his campaign.

(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Michael Perry)

How the Federal Cases Against Trump Came Sputtering Back to Life

The New York Times

How the Federal Cases Against Trump Came Sputtering Back to Life

Alan Feuer – August 28, 2024

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures at a campaign rally at the Desert Diamond Arena, Friday, Aug. 23, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The two federal criminal cases against former President Donald Trump sputtered back to life this week after periods of delay and major legal setbacks.

With 10 weeks left until Election Day, prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith filed an appeal Monday of Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling last month dismissing the indictment that accused Trump of mishandling classified documents after leaving office and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.

Then on Tuesday, Smith took action in a second case, in which Trump stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Prosecutors filed a pared-down version of their original indictment that sought to maintain the bulk of the election charges against Trump while also bringing them into line with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting broad immunity to former presidents for official acts they took in office.

Neither of the cases the special counsel is overseeing will go to trial before Election Day, and if Trump regains the White House in November, he will have the power to fire Smith and have both of the proceedings put to rest altogether. Still, Smith appears intent on aggressively pursuing the cases even as the campaign enters its homestretch, and has signaled that he will keep pushing them forward even up to Inauguration Day if Trump wins the election.

Here is how the two prosecutions have gotten to this point of remaining alive but still being mired in legal and political uncertainty.

Election Interference Case

Until a few weeks ago, Trump’s election case had been on hold for nearly eight months, with all proceedings frozen, as a series of federal courts — including the Supreme Court — considered his claims to be immune from prosecution on any charges arising from his official acts as president.

After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump in July, granting him — and all other future former presidents — broad protections against criminal prosecution, the case was sent back to the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan.

As part of their decision, the justices gave Chutkan a daunting and complicated task: She was ordered to sort through Trump’s indictment line by line and make decisions on which of its many allegations would have to be thrown out under the immunity decision and which could survive and go to trial.

Wasting no time, Chutkan set a schedule to decide next steps and eventually settled on a deadline of Friday for Trump’s lawyers and Smith’s prosecutors to send her proposals for how to proceed.

Smith got ahead of that schedule by filing his revised indictment Tuesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Washington.

The new indictment kept the basic structure of the old one, retaining all four of the original charges against Trump. Prosecutors are still accusing him of overlapping plots to defraud the United States, to obstruct the certification of the election at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and to deprive millions of Americans of their rights to have their votes counted.

Perhaps the most significant change in the new indictment was that Smith removed all of the allegations that touched on Trump’s attempts to strong-arm the Justice Department into supporting his false claims that the election had been rigged against him.

In its ruling on immunity, the Supreme Court had struck those charges from the case, finding that Trump could not face prosecution for any of his interactions with Justice Department officials. The court decided that a president’s dealings with the department were part of the core official duties of his office and were thus immune from prosecution.

Smith’s deputies also made many other subtle changes, reframing the charges in a way that couched them as acts Trump had taken in his private role as a candidate for office, not in his official capacity as president.

The tone of the new indictment was apparent in its first paragraph, which described Trump as “a candidate for president of the United States in 2020.” The original charging document had referred to him as “the 45th President of the United States and a candidate for reelection in 2020.”

Chutkan, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, still has the authority to determine how much of the new indictment can survive under the immunity ruling. In that sense, Smith was setting out his opening position in the coming courtroom battle.

Whatever Chutkan decides, Trump’s lawyers — or Smith, for that matter — will be able to appeal any decisions she makes to higher courts, including the Supreme Court. She is likely to offer her vision of how things will unfold at a hearing scheduled to take place in Washington on Sept. 5.

Classified Documents Case

In a stunning decision last month, Cannon threw out the classified documents case in its entirety, ruling that Smith had been illegally appointed to his post as special counsel.

The ruling shocked many legal experts for the way that it upended a quarter-century of Justice Department practice and flew in the face of previous court decisions about the appointments of special prosecutors reaching back to the Watergate era.

Issued on the first day of the Republican National Convention, the decision also gave Trump a major legal victory at an auspicious political moment.

Cannon based her dismissal of the case on the appointments clause of the Constitution. The clause requires presidents to nominate and the Senate to confirm all principal officers of the government, but allows “inferior officers” to be put in place by leaders of federal departments, including the attorney general, under the guidance of specific laws.

In her ruling, Cannon found that there were no specific laws that authorized Attorney General Merrick Garland to name Smith to the post of special counsel in November 2022. She also found that Smith’s appointment was illegal because he had not been named by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

But in their challenge to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Smith’s deputies pointed to four current statutes that they believe give the attorney general the authority to name special counsels.

They also argued that independent prosecutors have long been used to conduct sensitive political investigations, reminding the appeals court that the practice reached back to the days when Jefferson Davis, the Confederate leader, was charged with seditious conspiracy after the Civil War.

The same appeals court that will now consider whether to uphold or overrule Cannon reversed her in a related proceeding last year.

In that instance, Cannon had intervened in a civil case tied to the documents investigation. She barred the Justice Department from using any documents that FBI agents had seized in the search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida club and residence, until an independent arbiter had sorted through them for any that were privileged.

The decision was quickly reversed in a stinging ruling by the appeals court, which said she never had legal authority to get involved in the first place.

There will not be any quick resolution of the current appeal. Smith’s appellate brief Monday was merely the start of a legal battle that may ultimately end up in front of the Supreme Court and is likely to drag on until well after the election in November.

Trump’s lawyers are scheduled to file their own brief to a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit in late September, after which the court is likely to schedule a hearing for oral arguments.