Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell bluntly warned Republican senators in a private meeting not to sign on to a bill from Sen. Josh Hawley aimed at limiting corporate money bankrolling high-powered outside groups, telling them that many of them won their seats thanks to the powerful super PAC the Kentucky Republican has long controlled.

According to multiple sources familiar with the Tuesday lunch meeting, McConnell warned GOP senators that they could face “incoming” from the “center-right” if they signed onto Hawley’s bill. He also read off a list of Senators who won their races amid heavy financial support from the Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group tied to the GOP leader that spends big on TV ads in battleground Senate races. On that list of senators: Hawley himself, according to sources familiar with the matter.

McConnell has long been a chief opponent of tighter campaign finance restrictions. But there’s also no love lost between McConnell and Hawley, who has long criticized the GOP leader and has repeatedly called for new leadership atop their conference. Just on Tuesday, Hawley told CNN that it was “mistake” for McConnell to be “standing with” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, in their push to tie Ukraine aid to an Israel funding package.

Hawley’s new bill, called the Ending Corporate Influence on Elections Act, is aimed at reversing the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that loosened campaign finance laws – an effort that aligns the conservative Missouri Republican with many Democrats. Hawley’s bill would ban publicly traded corporations from making independent expenditures and political advertisements – and ban those publicly traded companies from giving money to super PACs.

In an interview, Hawley defended his bill and said that corporate influence should be limited in elections.

“I think that’s wrong,” Hawley told CNN. “I think it’s wrong as an original matter. I think it’s warping our politics, and I see no reason for conservatives to defend it. It’s wrong as a matter of the original meaning of the Constitution. It is bad for our elections. It’s bad for our voters. And I just think on principle, we ought to be concerned.”

According to a list of Senators obtained by CNN, McConnell singled out a number of lawmakers who benefited from his outside group over the last three cycles: Mike Braun of Indiana, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Susan Collins of Maine, Steve Daines of Montana, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Katie Britt of Alabama, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Ted Budd of North Carolina, JD Vance of Ohio and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

In 2018, Hawley benefited from more than $20 million from McConnell’s group.

McConnell’s office declined to comment.

WITHIN STRIKING DISTANCE “Things are looking good for Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters in Arizona. The race is tightening. Masters has gained ground and is within striking distance of Democrat incumbent Mark Kelly. Their recent debate may have had something to do with this, as Kelly looked unprepared.”

Do You Love TuneIn Radio?

If you listen to TuneIn and you live in the Western states you probably heard all of the political attack ads targeting the U.S. Senator from Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto. They are non-stop, all day, day after day. They are filled with misrepresentations, disinformation and outright lies with the intention of misleading voters. They are coming from a radical right wing independent PAC called Senate Leadership Fund. Who funds them? Dark money from deep pocket corporate donors and elitists who belong to the Republican Party? If you use and love TuneIn Radio as I do, your listening experience has been polluted by these Republican propaganda and deceit ads. I have heard no ads whatsoever from any Democratic sources, just the corrupt and dishonest Republicans.

If you love TuneIn Radio, or even if you don't love them, please ask them to stop ruining your listening experience by running deceitful ads from dishonest propagandists.

(sorry this is from a week ago but) Wait, what's going on right now that's complicated with Amazonian farmers' land rights?

Not farmers, indigenous people

See, recently they put a new law through congress that severely reduces indigenous land to the borders established during the late dictatorship, or immediately post-dictatorship, in 1988. An absolute joke of a border that was dreamed up by some military assholes. People in america may recognize this type of society from the times of westward expansion and think this is a thing of the past because for you guys it is. But here it is a reality. Murder is rampant. The reach of the law is incredibly limited. Government is just too weak and landowners basically run things. THAT'S WHY it's so important to donate directly to the native peoples instead of random NGOs because native people are fucking there and the more power they hold in the land the safer the land will be from agroindustrial expansion.

Well the law was vetoed by the the president and the Supremo Tribunal Federal, aka supreme federal court, labeled it as unconstitutional. Which it is, because our 1988 constitution describes native american land rights in some of its first articles. We thought this would be it for the law

But then the senate (that already overrepresents landowners in rural states) just went along and approved it anyway. I had no idea they could approve something unconstitutional. The progressives and particularly the socialists are fighting this in court. But it happens that for now the legal border is the severely reduced version.

Doesn't mean they'll just give up, because as it happens we don't have any stand your ground laws so even if you own a piece of land, you cannot legally speaking just shoot everyone there. Or attack or threaten them in any way. They'll just have long legal battles individually for the rights to occupy land based on use. Also the Xingu national park, the largest preserved land of the Amazon described as 'larger than Belgium', is being encroached by huge farms that are poisoning their water supply. The border is Visible. I'll try to find video of it but essentially you have a forest and a desert separated by a strict line.

Just last week in the south of Bahia (not the Amazon, let me explain more about the Amazon situation in a bit) Hãhãhãe leadership Nega Muniz Pataxó was shot and killed by an armed militia group that invaded and occupied the Caramuru territory.

The situation in the Amazon, specifically the yanomami territory in Roraima our northernmost state, aka deep forest, is more dire than average given difficulty of access, sheer size, and government abandonment. It's a place that depends on government aid for medicine. It's land that is being systematically invaded by gold miners, pandemic, toxins from nearby farmlands, wood extraction etc. (wood extration is rampant everywhere tho). Early 2023 saw a massive federal government operation by now president Lula to empty the mines and try to look for where funding comes from. Yanomami land is still being invaded to this day, the struggle is ongoing.

The yanomamis need support right now more than any other. Last year saw a massive heat wave that (well, one, caused a girl named Ana Clara Machado to die during the Taylor Swift concert. This is unrelated but I feel like not enough foreign media covered this, Taylor even lied about it as well.) dried up a lot of rivers, killed a LOT of fresh water animals including an unprecedented amount of pink dolphins. Access that was already hard became damn near impossible without boats. I cannot overstate how many pink dolphins were found dead.

Another technique that landowners use to clear space for farms is to just set things on fire and then occupy the empty land, which they legally can do to land that was naturally burned in a forest fire. It happened that Pantanal, another national park of swampland, was massively devastated by fires last year too

this article is from 2020, the year that the worst fire happened, but in 2023 there was another one. It's been happening yearly now due to a) deliberate action and b) climate change aggravation.

And this is not nearly all. Just off the top of my head. If you speak portuguese I recommend following the APIB or the COIAB on instagram to keep up with the news. The FUNAI is the government branch of indigenous organization, but it's not generally that well liked. Still.

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week. #6

Feb 16-23 2024

The EPA announced 5.8 billion dollars in funding upgrade America's water systems. 2.6 billion will go to wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, while the remaining $3.2 billion will go to drinking water infrastructure. $1 billion will go toward the first major effort to remove PFASs, forever chemicals, from American drinking water. The Administration all reiterated its plans to remove all lead pipes from America's drinking water systems, its spent 6 billion on lead pipe replacement so far.

The Department of Education announced the cancellation of $1.2 billion in student loan debt reliving 153,000 borrowers. This is the first debt cancellation through the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, which erases federal student loan balances for those who originally borrowed $12,000 or less and have been making payments for at least 10 years. Since the Biden Administration's more wide ranging student loan cancellation plan was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2023 the Administration has used a patchwork of different plans and authorities to cancel $138 billion in student debt and relieve nearly 4 million borrowers, so far.

First Lady Jill Biden announced $100 million in federal funding for women’s health research. This is part of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research the First Lady launched last year. The First Lady outlined ways women get worse treatment outcomes because common health problems like heart attacks and cancer are often less understood in female patients.

The Biden Administration announced 500 new sanctions against Russian targets in response to the murder of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. The sanctions will target people involved in Navalny's imprisonment as well as sanctions evaders. President Biden met with Navalny's widow Yulia and their daughter Dasha in San Francisco

The White House and Department of Agriculture announced $700 Million in new investments to benefit people in rural America. The projects will help up to a million people living in 45 states, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands. It includes $51.7 million to expand access to high-speed internet, and $644.2 million to help 158 rural cooperatives and utilities provide clean drinking water and sanitary wastewater systems for 578,000 people in rural areas.

The Department of Commerce signed a deal to provide $1.5 billion in upgrades and expand chip factories in New York and Vermont to boost American semiconductor manufacturing. This is the biggest investment so far under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act

the Department of Transportation announced $1.25 billion in  funding for local projects that improve roadway safety. This is part of the administration's Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program launched in 2022. So far SS4A has spent 1.7 billion dollars in 1,000 communities impacting 70% of America's population.

The EPA announced $19 million to help New Jersey buy electric school buses. Together with New Jersey's own $45 million dollar investment the state hopes to replace all its diesel buses over the next three years. The Biden Administration's investment will help electrify 5 school districts in the state. This is part of the The Clean School Bus Program which so far has replaced 2,366 buses at 372 school districts since it was enacted in 2022.

Bonus: NASA in partnership with Intuitive Machines landed a space craft, named Odysseus, on the moon, representing the first time in 50 years America has gone to the moon. NASA is preparing for astronauts to return to the moon by the end of the decade as part of the Artemis program. All under the leadership of NASA Administrator, former Democratic Senator and astronaut Bill Nelson.

So it looks like Sinema, having gotten her requisite pound of flesh for her billionaire hedge fund buddies (basically, they agreed to keep the carried-interest tax loophole and replace it with an excise tax on stock buybacks), has finally agreed to support the Inflation Reduction Act, otherwise known as the $740 billion "pretty much Build Back Better but we are calling it something different" bill that Manchin and Schumer came out with. If/when it passes, which could be as soon as this weekend, the Democrats will have achieved -- with a 50-50 Senate with two habitual Manchurian candidates, a four-seat House majority, a rampantly fascist opposing party, a Supreme Court openly bent on destroying democracy and personal liberty, and an active criminal investigation into the previous administration -- at least the following:

The American Rescue Plan, aka the first post-inauguration $1.9 trillion Covid relief package, which was the largest investment in the working class since the New Deal;

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is the first major structural and transportation modernization and systemic overhaul for the country since the 1970s;

The first significant gun safety legislation in 30 years and since at least the Clinton administration;

Multiple executive orders now signed on protecting abortion rights and access to reproductive care, including travel out of state if necessary;

A bill in the works to officially codify same-sex marriage and thus protect it from SCOTUS;

Reauthorization and improvement of the Violence Against Women Act, including strong new protections for LGBTQ+ and Native American victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault, including the ability for Native courts to prosecute non-Native offenders for sex crimes for the first time in history;

Finally (FINALLY) making lynching a federal hate crime;

The largest climate legislation ever passed in America (this bill), which also establishes a federal minimum 15% corporate tax rate and lowers healthcare costs, including for essential medications like insulin, by, like, a lot;

Passage of the PACT Act, aka expanding healthcare for disabled veterans exposed to burn pits, also the biggest expansion in this field for a generation despite Republicans briefly killing it in an outburst of pettiness;

Consistent big packages of support for Ukraine, rebuilding of foreign alliances, huge bipartisan support for including Sweden and Finland in NATO (hahahaha fuck you Josh Hawley);

The CHIPS act, which creates tech and manufacturing jobs in America and was made even sweeter by how thoroughly they fucked over McTurtle to do it (since oh boy does he deserve a taste of his own medicine);

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on SCOTUS, and not an awful white supremacist stand-in like Clarence Thomas, but a genuinely progressive and thoughtful jurist;

Cancellation of almost $6 billion in student loans for the poorest and most defrauded borrowers, such as those who attended scam for-profit "colleges";

And so on and so forth!!!

So like. Please tell me more about how the Democrats are incompetent, their leadership is bad, they are in Disarray TM, you are a terrible person if you support Biden or give them any credit at all, and you're just not excited to vote because they haven't done anything. Like yes! There is a lot more to do! Despite them suddenly deciding to play ball on this particular occasion, Manchin and Sinema still need to be made irrelevant as soon as possible! But as I said, this is happening with the thinnest of imaginable Congressional control, as the other party is literally trying to destroy democracy in real time before our faces. That is not irrelevant.

Also: ruby-red Kansas curb-stomped an attempt to outlaw abortion rights, and approximately 77% of the entire country supports this current bill. The generic Congressional ballots have all shown major movement toward Democrats, and frankly, I have a feeling that we have only just started to see the full impact of post-Roe fallout. So if you get off your asses, quit whining, and put the work in, we could actually win the midterms and then do EVEN MORE!

So yeah. Uh. Food for thought.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday pressed lawmakers to urgently pass the Biden administration’s $105 billion national security funding request which includes significant funding for Israel and Ukraine’s war efforts, arguing that the two conflicts are connected and failing to pass the aid together will embolden US adversaries around the world.[...]

Blinken, Austin and a number of other lawmakers noted the links between the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, with Iran providing Russia with weapons for its war.

“Allowing Russia to prevail with Iran’s support will embolden both Moscow and Tehran,” Blinken said. “To put it succinctly, for our adversaries, be they states or non-states, this is all one fight and we have to respond in a way that recognizes that. If we start to peel off pieces of this package, they’ll see that, they’ll understand that we are playing whack-a-mole while they cooperate increasingly and pose an ever-greater threat to our security as well as to that of allies and partners,” he added. “In both Israel and Ukraine, democracies are fighting ruthless foes who are out to annihilate them,” he said. “We will not let Hamas or Putin win. Today’s battles against aggression and terrorism will define global security for years to come. And only firm American leadership can ensure that tyrants, thugs, and terrorists worldwide are not emboldened to commit more aggression and more atrocities,” Austin echoed.[...]

The administration’s request includes $61.4 billion in aid for Ukraine and $14.3 billion in aid for Israel, $9.15 billion in funding for humanitarian aid, $7.4 billion in funding for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region and $13.6 billion to address security at the US-Mexico border. In the Senate, the leaders of both parties have pressed to have any funding for Israel combined with Ukraine and border security funding.[...]

Blinken’s opening remarks at the hearing were quickly interrupted by a series of protesters who shouted for an immediate ceasefire.[...]

Much needed aid to civilians in Gaza has only trickled in, with “almost 60” trucks entering daily via the Rafah crossing from Egypt. Prior to the war, 500 to 800 trucks a day with assistance were entering the strip, Blinken said.

31 Oct 23

by Haley Cohen

The president of a new Columbia Law School group formed to combat rising antisemitism on campus told Jewish Insider that its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism played a role in the Law School Student Senate’s vote to reject it as a recognized university group.

“A group of students were strongly opposed to our formation from the very beginning,” Marie-Alice Legrand, president of the Law Students Against Antisemitism, recalled, noting that some condemned its use of the State Department-adopted IHRA definition.

“They have accused us of using that definition to silence free speech. We have assured them that is not our mission, we want to educate,” she continued.

Twenty-three of approximately 33 senators voted against the Law Students Against Antisemitism group in an anonymous vote on Jan. 23, the Columbia Spectator reported, noting that nine organizations have requested recognition this year, and Law Students Against Antisemitism is the only group that has not been approved.

Before the senate meeting, where LSAA presented, individuals referring to themselves as “Concerned Jewish Students at CLS,” who identify as “Jewish pro-Palestine students,” signed a letter to the senators.

According to Legrand, the individuals printed out copies of the letter and brought them to the meeting to “urge the Senate to decline to charter,” raising their concern that “LSAA has adopted a pernicious and insidious definition of antisemitism.”

In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by JI, the students wrote that the IHRA definition is one “that conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. In doing so, the IHRA definition effectively labels as antisemitic large groups of pro-Palestine Jewish and non-Jewish students on campus.”

The letter went on to say that, “Many individuals accurately believe that the creation of a State of Israel was a racist endeavor because doing so involved killing more than 15,000 Palestinians, expelling more than 700,000 Palestinians, and creating a refugee crisis that has resulted in over 2 million Palestinian refugees worldwide.”

Legrand said that during the group’s presentation, they faced more than an hour of “hostile questions accusing us of all kinds of things [like that we] want to police our fellow students… other groups got approved within five minutes. The same principles and rules don’t apply to every person at the university.”

Without university recognition, LSAA cannot host events on campus, reserve rooms or receive funds or a university email address, according to Legrand, who is not Jewish and grew up in Germany in a house that belonged to a Jewish family killed at Auschwitz.

A spokesperson for Columbia Law School did not immediately respond to JI’s request for comment.

Legrand noted that the denial of LSAA signals a larger antisemitism problem at Columbia. “The administration’s lack of leadership has only emboldened the antisemitism that is on campus,” she said.

A few things you should know about shitty US electoral politics (long post)

Neither party gives a fuck about you, and the leadership of BOTH parties support the genocide in Gaza, but you already knew that.

HOWEVER, various prominent GOP figures ALSO supported a right-wing domestic coup attempt, want to ban abortion nationwide (overturning Roe v Wade was a step along the way to that), want draconian restrictions on birth control, to ban same-sex marriage, ban sex education, ban any and all queer-positive literature, want to "phase out" social security and medicare, to completely rewrite US history textbooks nationwide with a nationalist agenda that erases US crimes against non-white peoples (already done in some states), allow US law enforcement to stop anyone darker than mayonnaise and demand to see their papers, start a nuclear war, abolish the minimum wage, outlaw their political rivals, weaponize the justice department, FBI, and other federal agencies against their political rivals, outlaw dissent of any kind, and remove restrictions against using US troops against US citizens (see Tuberville's blocking of top military appointees so that a future GOP president can appoint GOP/Trump loyalists to those positions, the way they blocked judicial/SCOTUS nominees in order to get Roe v Wade overturned).

The GOP openly states that they know the only way they win elections is by keeping non-right-wing voters away from the polls, and they invest heavily in, among other things, online psyops to convince people not to vote. And it works, because right wing voters ALWAYS show up to the polls.

Every time a right wing candidate wins, Dem leadership goes, "Huh, I guess we need to field more conservative candidates if we want to win elections." The idea being that if they can somehow "meet in the middle," they'll get the conservative vote. (Hint: They won't.)

So what convinces the Dems to run more progressive candidates? Overwhelming support at the ballot box for leftist candidates on the local and primary levels--school board elections, senators and representatives at the state and federal level, sheriffs, judges, mayoral and city council races, and various other local and regional elected positions. That's it. The only two things they understand are money and winning.

Whomever wins the presidency and gets enough congressional support gets to appoint federal and supreme court judges, top military officials, and various other decision-makers. THIS IS HOW THE GOP WAS ABLE TO OVERTURN ROE V WADE.

The US can't be fixed in a single election cycle. Every cycle in which the GOP wins, however, pushes the Dems further to the right AND allows the GOP more power to enact their vision.

Yes, we need viable third parties. Unfortunately, barring a miracle, third parties and independents are right now viable only in some local, and possibly a few congressional races.

In order for third parties to be viable for things like presidential elections, we're most likely going to need ranked choice voting--which, again, we may eventually get by pushing progressive candidates at the state and local level--publicly-funded elections, the abolition of the electoral college (both Bush and Trump lost the popular vote, and were only awarded victory because of the electoral college), and the repeal of Citizens United (which essentially legalized large-scale corporate bribery of candidates).

Look, we all hate Biden, and refusing to vote for him (or whatever other shitbag candidate the Dems run) might feel good, but it is also likely to result in a GOP win--which means MORE support for genocide the world over, and the GOP gaining more power to enact their wish list, which I partially enumerated above.

How many people do you think will die under a nationwide abortion ban? How do you think it's going to work out if a far-right president has the authority to unleash US troops on protesters? How many seniors and disabled folks do you think will suffer and die if Social Security and Medicare are abolished? How many will suffer and die if Trump gets his wet dream of a nuclear war?

I mean, the US has already bombed its own people for not toeing the capitalist/white supremacist line, sponsored coups against foreign leaders and replaced them with dictators, and invaded or threatened to invade foreign countries for not bowing to US corporate interests (look up the origins of the term "banana republic," "overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom," and "1953 Iran coup," for just a few examples), experimented on US citizens without their knowledge (look up "tuskegee syphilus study," among many other things) and so on, and so on.

And if the GOP gains control of all three branches of government, it's going to get even worse.

Today's GOP is more rabidly extremist than at any other time in my life. And as I said, I'm OLD, dude. I was born the year Kennedy was assassinated. Among my early memories are watching the first lunar landing, watching Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech, and seeing news footage of the US withdrawal from Vietnam. And I'm telling you, today's GOP makes the GOP of my youth look practically benign in comparison.

I used to roll my eyes at the refrain of, "this is the most important election of your life," and the "blue no matter who" folks, but man... The 2016 election really WAS the most important, but only SO FAR.

Because the GOP--due to the facts that GOP/Trump supporters voted, and many others didn't--will most likely control the Supreme Court for DECADES to come, and currently control the Senate. If they gain the presidency, retain control of the Senate, and take control of the House, all may be lost.

Again, the far right openly states that keeping non-conservatives from voting is how they win, and they invest a lot in gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and online psyops to make that happen. Doing exactly what the fash want "but for leftist/progressive reasons" isn't the own you think it is. Funny--I hear the same folks who mock far right voters for voting against their own best interests say they're "protesting" by refusing to vote--when that's exactly how the far right wins.

Look, I'm old. I was planning to live my final years outside the US, eventually immigrating to the Republic of Ireland or Uruguay or somewhere like that, but now that I have a child, I'm being forced to return to the US for at least a few years so I can use my medical benefits to live long enough to see her grow up. If she ever needs an abortion, or birth control, or to fight a discrimination or sexual harassment case, or simply to speak her mind without fear of being arrested or killed for it, or needs social security or Medicare because of a disability, I want her to have those things.

Another argument I've heard is that, "Voting doesn't change anything." Well, when I was a kid, mixed-race marriages were FINALLY legalized across the US, and schools became multiracial. More recently, same-sex marriage was made the law of the land. Conservatives fought all of those things, but voting made them happen.

On the flip side, thanks to the far right takeover of SCOTUS, Roe v Wade was overturned as an end result of the far right winning elections. (And again, this is just part one of their plan for a nationwide abortion ban.)

So don't look at it as voting FOR whatever shitbag the Dems run; look at it as voting AGAINST a full-on right-wing takeover of the US and buying time to make some fundamental changes. Voting doesn't mean you can't ALSO march, etc.

Or I mean, if you want a nationwide abortion ban, a nuclear war, MORE genocide, and all the other stuff of right-wing wet dreams, and want a far right takeover of the US while you tell yourself, "Yeah, but I maintained my moral purity," then by all means withhold your vote. Just don't delude yourself about the outcome.

"... despite Democrats’ repeated suggestion that Netanyahu is the impetus for Israel’s war, political analysts say that in reality the prime minister’s actions are in step with Israel’s political mainstream. “Schumer is operating in this fantasy that if you get rid of Netanyahu, you might be able to get somebody else who’s more moderate who could then save the relationship between the US and Israel under the pretense of support for progressive values and democracy,” said Omar Baddar, a Palestinian American political analyst. But this narrative ignores how Israeli politicians almost across the board agree with Israel’s conduct in Gaza, as do the majority of Israelis. Yair Lapid, the former prime minister and head of the Israeli opposition, supports the ongoing assault, as does war cabinet member Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival and the man who, according to polling, would become prime minister if Israel held elections today. Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, noted that many Democrats might welcome Gantz replacing Netanyahu, but the change of guard would alter little about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. “There is a danger to the idea that replacing Netanyahu will fix everything. It will not,” Duss said. “It could create a grace period where bad things continue to happen, but the US feels better about it. We need to oppose that.”

Instead of constituting a substantive shift in US support for Israel, experts say, Democrats’ emboldened critique of Netanyahu should be understood as an attempt to respond to growing voter frustration without changing policy, as the Biden administration remains unwilling to use US aid and arms exports to Israel as leverage to demand a change in behavior. In this context, the choice to focus on Netanyahu “is a political decision to avoid outright criticism of Israel’s war conduct,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. For Schumer, in particular, blaming Netanyahu as an individual was a way “to avoid the implication that he is lessening his support for the Israeli state or the Israeli people,” she said. “Instead, Schumer is focusing on a man who is unpopular among Democrats to say, ‘See, we are standing up for our values, so voters should stop being mad at us.’”

...

But ultimately, the Democratic narrative about “Netanyahu’s war” doesn’t reflect reality—not only because the assault on Gaza enjoys broad support in Israel, but also because Israel could not continue its assault without a constant supply of US arms and military funding. Senior Democrats’ fixation on the Israeli prime minister thus serves to sideline debate about US policies that could actually bring the war to an end. “Refusing to condition aid or impose sanctions—or do anything that would actually have a chance of influencing Netanyahu—shows that the Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership are not interested in ending the Gaza assault. They’re just interested in managing it,” said Tariq Kenney-Shawa, US policy fellow at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. While anonymous US officials have repeatedly told news outlets that the Biden administration is considering conditioning aid to Israel or slowing down weapons shipments, no such move has occurred; indeed, on Monday, the State Department said that Israel had complied with the requirement that countries receiving US weapons follow international law, despite a wide range of flagrant violations documented by numerous human rights organizations."

A super PAC funded by conservative megadonor Jeff Yass has spent more than half a million dollars in recent weeks urging Pennsylvania Democrats to support a primary challenger running against progressive House Democrat Summer Lee.

The Moderate PAC, which was formed in 2021, is airing ads in Pennsylvania’s 12th District that attack Lee for what it calls her “extreme socialist agenda,” and calling on Democratic primary voters to choose Lee’s challenger Bhavini Patel. The ads go after Lee for criticizing President Biden and the Democratic Party, and for voting against the debt ceiling bill negotiated between Biden and former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Lee is a member of the so-called “Squad” of progressive House Democrats that has stood apart from Democratic Party leaders on numerous policy issues, including most recently on U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

The super PAC has spent at least $586,000 on running the ads since the middle of March, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The only donation that The Moderate PAC has ever reported receiving is $1 million from Yass that was given to the group in July 2022.

Yass is a billionaire investor who former President Trump recently said was “fantastic” after the pair connected at a donor retreat in Florida.

Yass has donated more than $62 million to conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action, and $18 million to School Freedom Fund, a Club for Growth PAC that supports candidates who believe parents should receive taxpayer dollars to spend with private education companies of their choosing. Yass lives in Pennsylvania and has a net worth of about $27 billion, according to Forbes.

Yass has also donated heavily to congressional Republicans. Last year he gave $10 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership, and in 2018 he gave $200,000 to its upper chamber equivalent the Senate Leadership Fund.

(continue reading)

🔅 After Shabbat - ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

PASSOVER is Monday night!

▪️CRAZY ISRAELI POLITICS.. (1) Former Prime Minister Olmert does not rule out a return to politics at the end of the seven-year no-politics-allowed period from the day of his conviction for bribery.

(2) Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "If other countries did not cooperate with us, we would have only intercepted 75% of the missiles from Iran.” (( One, likely not true, two, what kind of former prime minister shares information that strengthens your enemies? ))

▪️HAMAS LEAVING QATAR.. Following Qatar leadership's incessant anger and pressure on the leaders of Hamas regarding negotiations on the hostage deal, the Wall Street Journal reports the Hamas leadership is leaving its political headquarters in Qatar, for an unknown destination. One of the destinations that the group is considering is Oman. Another possibility is Turkey as the Hamas leader met with Turkey’s president today.

▪️AIR TRAVEL.. Polish Airline LOT restores flights to Israel.

▪️US TO SANCTION IDF NETZACH YEHUDA BATTALION???  The US Secretary of State will announce within days the imposition of sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda Battalion because of allegations of violence against Palestinians. The American sanctions will prohibit the transfer of American military aid to the battalion, prevent its soldiers and officers from taking part in training with the United States Army, or participating in activities that receive American funding.  (Reporter Barak Ravid)

(( This is more bizarre “we show balance” activity from the administration - Netzach Yehuda’s normal duty station is Judea-Samaria, and right wing Israelis are screaming about the IDF treating the Palestinians with kid gloves. ))

▪️US FUNDING.. combined Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan funding bill passes US House, moving to US Senate but supported by president.

Some people interpret Mon Mothma’s shock and disapproval of Luthen’s Aldhani heist as her rejecting violent rebellion and still hoping for a peaceful political resolution. To me, that’s a fundamental misread of her ideology.

Mon Mothma knows that she’s funding armed rebels via Luthen, she’s just more cautious than him on a timeline of how the rebellion should proceed. She doesn’t believe the rebellion is ready for open war, and in her mind, Aldhani is an unnecessary risk that exposes the fragile network of rebels to the Empire before it’s grown large enough to survive.

Mon Mothma is literally committing treason as a sitting Senator, she’s no pacifist or centrist. Why would she risk her life like that? Because she’s come to the conclusion that Emperor Palpatine will never voluntarily give up power, and the Senate will never ask him to. He and his regime must be overthrown by force.

The most preferable outcome is a relatively bloodless coup. However, that requires strategically positioned assets both within and outside the regime to coordinate a surgical operation that quickly kills or imprisons Imperial leadership before it can activate its superior military forces. The nascent and fractured rebel alliance is nowhere near that capability.

This aligns with a huge theme of Andor, namely its focus on bureaucratic capacity and military operations. Ideology and belief are not enough to maintain a government (or to overthrow it). Actual people on the ground, communication and organizational structures, and ability to secure funding are crucial. We see this when Dedra emphasizes the importance of cross-sector data analysis and every time Andor shows us lowly desk workers or foot soldiers.

If a coup is impossible, plunging the galaxy into civil war could radicalize more into supporting the rebel cause, but at the cost of trillions of deaths and untold suffering. Luthen is an accelerationist who believes Imperial oppression should be provoked into intensifying to destabilize and ultimately abolish it. Mon Mothma calculates differently and wishes to minimize harm caused by the rebellion, even if it takes longer, via a coup or at least a shorter war. However, both agree that violent force is necessary.

The Case for Ending the “Global Gag Rule” and the Helms Amendment | Guttmacher Institute

The global gag rule prevents foreign nongovernmental organizations from using their own, non-U.S. funds to provide abortion services, information, counseling, referrals or advocacy. Since it was first created in 1984, the policy has historically been put in place by Republican presidents and rescinded by Democratic ones. The Trump administration put the global gag rule on steroids, massively expanding it multiple times and making additional attempts to do so even as it was leaving office.

Although President Biden has rescinded the global gag rule, that is only a short-term solution to the long-term problem of this devastating policy. The new administration and Congress have a unique opportunity to end the global gag rule permanently by supporting and passing the Global Health, Empowerment and Rights (Global HER) Act, which was reintroduced in the House and Senate on the same day as President’s Biden executive action. The bill would prevent future presidents from unilaterally reinstating the global gag rule via executive action and end the policy’s intermittent use. With 177 cosponsors in the House of Representatives and 46 in the Senate just two weeks after reintroduction, passing the Global HER Act is politically feasible, if leadership makes it a priority. Enacting the bill would end U.S. interference in what organizations do with their own money, but would not address restrictions on whether U.S. money can be used to fund global abortion services.