Disney

If they can tell you what to say, what to think – there is nothing they can’t do

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

September 17, 2025

This evening, John Koblin, Michael M. Grynbaum, and Brooks Barnes of the New York Times reported that ABC was pulling the television show of comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air. The suspension is allegedly over his comments Monday about the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, although Chris Hayes of All In pointed out that after CBS pulled Stephen Colbert, another political comedian, off the air in July, President Donald Trump told reporters that comedians Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel would be “next. They’re going to be going. I hear they’re going to be going.”

Kimmel has one of the top late-night television shows, attracting younger viewers in the 18-49 year old demographic. He delivers monologues that skewer President Donald J. Trump and the administration. His YouTube channel, which replays his show, has more than twenty million subscribers.

During his monologue on Monday’s show, Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff which got some criticism but on a human level you can see how hard the president is taking this.”

Kimmel then played a clip of Trump’s response to a reporter who asked how the president was holding up after Kirk’s death. Trump answered: “I think very good. And by the way right there you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House which is something they’ve been trying to get as you know for about for 150 years and it’s gonna be a beauty.”

On the podcast of right-wing influencer Benny Johnson on Wednesday, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr said that Kimmel’s words were part of a “concerted effort to try to lie to the American people” and that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.” “Frankly, when you see stuff like this,” he said, “I mean look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr explained: “There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say…’We’re not gonna run Kimmel anymore…because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.'”

The largest operator of ABC affiliates, Nexstar—which needs FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger—said it would stop airing Kimmel’s show from its stations. Then ABC suspended Kimmel’s show.

Benny Johnson, the podcaster on whose show Carr threatened Kimmel, was one of the influencers Russian state media funded to spread propaganda before the 2024 election. After Kimmel’s suspension, Johnson posted on social media: “We did it for you, Charlie. And we’re just getting started.”

Exactly two hundred and thirty-eight years ago today, on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the men we know now as the Framers signed their final draft of a new constitution for the United States, hoping it would fix the problems of the first attempt to create a new nation. During the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress had hammered out a plan for a confederation of states, but with fears of government tyranny still uppermost in delegates’ minds, they centered power in the states rather than in a national government.

The result—the Articles of Confederation—was a “firm league of friendship” among the thirteen new states, overseen by a congress of men chosen by the state legislatures and in which each state had one vote. The new pact gave the federal government few duties and even fewer ways to meet them. Indicating their inclinations, in the first substantive paragraph the authors of the agreement said: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

Within a decade, the states were refusing to contribute money to the new government and were starting to contemplate their own trade agreements with other countries. An economic recession in 1786 threatened farmers in western Massachusetts with the loss of their farms when the state government in the eastern part of the state refused relief; in turn, when farmers led by Revolutionary War captain Daniel Shays marched on Boston, propertied men were so terrified their own property would be seized that they raised their own army for protection.

The new system clearly could not protect property of either the poor or the rich and thus faced the threat of landless mobs. The nation seemed on the verge of tearing itself apart, and the new Americans were all too aware that both England and Spain were standing by, waiting to make the most of the opportunities such chaos would create.

And so, in 1786, leaders called for a reworking of the new government centered not on the states, but on the people of the nation represented by a national government. The document began, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….”

The Constitution established a representative democracy, a republic, in which three branches of government would balance each other to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Congress would write all “necessary and proper” laws, levy taxes, borrow money, pay the nation’s debts, establish a postal service, establish courts, declare war, support an army and navy, organize and call forth “the militia to execute the Laws of the Union,” and “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

The president would execute the laws, but if Congress overstepped, the president could veto proposed legislation. In turn, Congress could override a presidential veto. Congress could declare war, but the president was the commander in chief of the army and had the power to make treaties with foreign powers. It was all quite an elegant system of paths and tripwires, really.

A judicial branch would settle disputes between inhabitants of the different states and guarantee every defendant a right to a jury trial.

In this system, the new national government was uppermost. The Constitution provided that “[t]he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States” and promised that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion….”

Finally, it declared: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

But after their experience throwing off the yoke of what they considered an overly powerful king, those concerned about creating too powerful a national government worried the new government would endanger individual liberty. They demanded that the framers of the new government enumerate the ways in which it could not intrude on the rights of the people.

In 1789 the new Congress passed ten amendments to the Constitution, and the states ratified them the same year. Taken together, the amendments were known as the Bill of Rights.

The first of those amendments prohibits the government from intruding on the basic liberties that enable individuals to challenge it. It prohibits the government from establishing a state religion or infringing on the right of individuals to publish whatever they wish, to assemble peacefully, or to ask the government to remedy unfair situations.

It prohibits the government from infringing on the right of individuals to speak freely, without fear of government retaliation.

Americans take their First Amendment rights seriously. In April 2025, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 92% of Americans thought it was important “that the media can report the news without state/government censorship.”

Kimmel’s suspension has produced an uproar. Comedian Paul Scheer noted that Kimmel is off the air but Brian Kilmeade of the Fox News Channel, who recently called for killing homeless Americans by “involuntary lethal injection,” is still employed. The union that represents the musicians on Kimmel’s show called the suspension “a direct attack on free speech and artistic expression,” adding: “These are fundamental rights that we must protect in a free society.” The Writers Guild of America posted: “The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other—to disturb, even—is at the heart of what it means to be a free people…. If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn’t have bothered to write it into the Constitution…. Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth.”

On CNN, conservative pundit David Frum called it “state repression.” On his show, right-wing activist Tucker Carlson said: “[I]f they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think. There is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human…. A free man has a right to say what he believes.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted: “This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.” He pointed out that in 2023, Brendan Carr himself posted: “Free speech is…the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned of a coming campaign to “use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents.”

From England, where he is on a state visit, Trump posted: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what needed to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT”Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago today, the Framers signed their names to the blueprint for a new government established by “We the People of the United States.” The next day, James McHenry, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, recorded in his diary that a lady had asked delegate Benjamin Franklin whether the convention had established a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”

Give a little whistle: The life and sad death of Cliff Edwards, voice of Disney’s Jiminy Cricket

by
AT THE BARBERSHOP: Cliff Edwards, aka “Ukelele Ike” was the voice of Disney’s beloved character Jiminy Cricket

By Michael Stevenson

The most memorable song from Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, “When You Wish Upon a Star” was the very first Disney song to win an Academy Award in 1940. The song, written by Leigh Harline with lyrics by Ned Washington, is performed in the film by a cute and acutely conscientious top hat-wearing insect named “Jiminy Cricket.” 

“Like a bolt out of the blue

Fate steps in and sees you through

When you wish upon a star

Your dreams come true”

Jiminy’s warm, reassuring voice (with just the hint of Midwestern drawl) was supplied by singer/actor Cliff Edwards. Edwards was the possessor of high natural tenor voice with a three-octave range. The purity of his final note of “When You Wish Upon a Star” (appropriately landing on the word “true”) is nothing short of sublime.

On the record and in the film’s credits, Cliff Edwards isn’t noted as singer, but rather Jiminy Cricket

Cliff Edwards was born June 14, 1895 in Hannibal, Missouri – the birthplace of Mark Twain, whom Edwards remembered once passing on a city street. Edward’s professional life didn’t so much resemble a story of Twain’s, but more a chapter from Nathaniel West’s nightmarish depiction of 1930’s Hollywood “The Day of the Locust.”

Not long after the successes of Pinocchio, Edwards found himself in financial ruin due to unpaid taxes, gambling losses, multiple bankruptcies, cocaine and alcohol addictions, and three failed marriages. Today, a resume like this might belong to a GOP presidential candidate, but the 1940s were not as forgiving a time. “Cliff made millions,” said famed Disney animator Ward Kimball , “and he lost it all.”

When you get in trouble and you don’t know right from wrong,
Give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
When you meet temptation and the urge is very strong,
Give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
– “Give a Little Whistle” (Leigh Harline and Ned Washington)

BEGINNINGS

Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edward’s fans once included both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Decades after his death, both James Taylor and Paul McCartney covered his ukelele songs on their records. According to Van Dyke Parks, the brilliant Harry Nilsson (who knew a little about self-destructive behavior himself), regarded Cliff Edwards as “his favorite singer.” The man and legend had humble beginnings.

Growing up in the Midwest, Cliff Edwards worked as a youngster in a Hannibal, Missouri shoe factory. He ran away from home before finishing school. By age 16, he was singing in St. Louis saloons where he learned to play the ukulele to provide his own accompaniment since many of the bars had no piano.  He acquired the nickname “Ukelele Ike” when a barkeeper couldn’t remember his name.

Moving from St. Louis, to Chicago, and eventually New York, in 1924 he graduated from carnivals and vaudeville shows to Broadway when George Gershwin picked him to join the cast of Lady, Be Good. Sharing the bill were a young Fred and Adele Astaire. Lady, Be Good was a Broadway success and Astaire later recalled it was Cliff Edwards who regularly “stopped the show” with his rendition of Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rythym.”

After his Broadway success, Edwards had his first recording success with “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” The song later was recorded by all the greats, Crosby, Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole, but Cliff Edwards’ record, with his trademark sweetness and vulnerability, remains the gold standard version of the song.

Music critic Imogen Sara Smith observed: “No one has ever sung “Paper Moon” more beautifully . Edwards (backed by the exquisitely spare guitar of Dick McDonough) brings a pitch-perfect blend of wistful longing and rueful world-weariness to this great Yip Harburg-Harold Arlen song about searching for something real amid the phony dazzle of stage scenery, lighting effects, circus ballyhoo, parades, jingles, penny arcades and honky-tonks.” 

Some 40 years after Edward’s recording, director Peter Bogdanovich changed the name of his 1973 film (originally titled Addie Prays) to Paper Moon, while choosing music for his film.

Along with pop songs of the “crooner” variety, Edwards recorded a number of novelty-jazz hits such as “Ja Da,” which included the irresistible lyric I myself sing nearly every time good fortune comes my way:

“Here’s a funny little melody
It’s so soothing and appealing to me
It goes Ja-Da, Ja-Da,
Ja-Da, Ja-Da, Jing, Jing, Jing”

There was also “Hard Headed Hannah,” “I Want to Call You ‘Sweet Mama,” and the delightful “Hang On To Me,” (below) from the 1935 short film Starlit Days at the Lido. In this colorized scene from the film, Cliff plays his uke and mugs alongside “slight of hand artist” Suzy Wandas. If you knew Suzy like I knew Suzy, indeed

Edwards left New York and headed west for The Hollywood Revue of 1929, one of MGM’s earliest sound films. The film marks the debut of the song “Singin’ in the Rain”, performed by Cliff Edwards as “Ukulele Ike.” When not credited as himself, Edward’ gathered over a hundred acting credits; mostly small “character” parts with names such as Froggy, Owly, Pooch, Snipe, Bumpy, Screwy, Sleepy, Shorty, Runty, Speed, Tips, Hogie, Handy, Happy, Minstrel Joe, Banjo Page, Bones Malloy, and (… wait for it …) “Squid Watkins.” In Howard Hawks’ classic His Girl Friday (1940) Edwards plays a reporter named Endicott who delivers snappy one-liners like, “Is there any truth in the report that you’re on Stalin’s payroll?”

On stage and on record, Edwards performed one of the earliest examples of scat singing, or as Edwards called it, his “Effus.” He imitated the wa-wa trumpet with growls and purrs, sounding like a cross between Louis Armstrong and Baby Snooks. No one has ever sounded quite like it, before or since.

BUSTER KEATON AND A BEAR IN A LADIES’ BOUDOIR

Between 1923 and 1933, Edwards recorded more than 120 sides for records, and one account claims that during his career, he sold more than 74 million records, including what was then described as “party” records with suggestive titles such “Bear in a Ladies’ Boudoir” and “I’m Gonna Give It To Mary With Love.” Had he lived long enough to work with the Coen Brothers, I can imagine Ukele Ike singinging “How Ya  Gonna Keep ’em Down Once They’ve Seen Karl Hungus?”

One of my favorite clips of Edwards “efussing” was in the film Doughboys a 1930 talkie-comedy film starring Buster Keaton, who was a close friend of Edwards’ and fellow hell-raiser in the hills of Hollywood. In  Doughboys Edwards beats the strings of a ukelele  with drumsticks while a deadpanned Keaton frets the chords on the song “You Never Did That Before.” It is a hilarious and extraordinary musical performance by both actors, and one can imagine the two pals developing their schtick over a drink or seven.

Keaton recalls in his autobiography, My Wonderful World of Slapstick (1960), “all my weekends were lost weekends. … I had as much fun with my land yacht as a man can whose purpose is to forget his whole private world has fallen apart.”

PINOCCHIO AND DUMBO

Edwards continued partying hard while gambling away his earnings. A case can be made that the success of Pinocchio served only to accelerate Edward’s eventual decline. Along with his drinking and cocaine binges, he was now using heroin.

He managed to stay afloat with his novelty and “party” songs” while taking dozens of small parts in Hollywood films, including his portrayal of a “Reminiscent Soldier” in Gone With the Wind.

In 1941, Edwards again landed a memorable role in a Disney animated classic Dumbo, portraying the regrettably-named “Jim Crow” who sings in ‘hokum’-style, “When I See an Elephant Fly.”

It was Disney animator Ward Kimball cast Edwards as Jim Crow in Dumbo: “We were recording the track for the Black Crows, and we got Hall Johnson’s Black Choir from the Methodist church in Los Angeles for it. Cliff was the only white guy among them. He actually sounded more black than the blacks we had backing him up.” (The tremor you just felt is Hall Johnson rolling in his grave.) But let us remember – this was 1941, when even Left-Wing lion Woody Guthrie was performing Amos n’ Andy-style ebonics on his Pasadena KFVD radio show. (Woody eventually abandoned the hokum and offered an on-air apology.)

MICKEY MOUSE CLUB and UKELELE IKE’S DECLINE

By the 1950s, the Disney Studio used Edwards as the voice of Jiminy Cricket on several animated short segments on the original Mickey Mouse Club show and aging actor appeared in person several times to entertain the Mouseketeers, including Annette Funicello, the teenage actress soon to appear in the idiotic Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) which sadly featured a cameo by Edward’s drinking buddy, Buster Keaton (somebody cue broadcaster Raymond Morrison, “Oh, the humanity!”)

Micky Mouse Club, November 20, 1956 (Guest Star Day) Guest Starring Cliff Edwards (A.K.A. Ukulele Ike) Featuring Lonnie Burr, Margene Storey, Charley Laney, Doreen Tracey, Dennis Day, and Annette Funicello.

As Jimmy Johnson, the man in charge of Disneyland Records remembered:

“Cliff was declining right before our eyes—I made some work for him on records which we really didn’t need. Toward the end, royalties from records were his only source of income. The last time he came into my office, he didn’t seem to know where he was or who I was. It  brought tears to my eyes. He was a warm and wonderful man with never a sour word about anything or anybody. I cherish my memories of him.”

“Ukulele Ike Sings Again” was a 1956 Disneyland record, suggested by Walt himself, to remind the public of Edwards’ musical legacy. I’m one of the proud owners of this album, which I pulled from the bargain bin of my local record shop, along with Procol Harum’s “A Salty Dog,” for a dollar apiece! “Ja-Da, Ja-Da, Jing, Jing, Jing!“

“We recorded the whole album in six straight hours on one night,” remembered Disney producer Jimmy Johnson. “There were no written arrangements. With an assist of ‘John Barleycorn’ (booze), we made one of the most spontaneous and musical albums I have ever been associated with … We cut ‘Singin’ In The Rain’, Darktown Strutters Ball’, ‘Ja Da’ … we had a ball! Unfortunately, the album didn’t sell well and there wasn’t much in the way of royalties for Cliff.”

“I’ll See You In My Dreams” – a favorite of Beatle George Harrison

ONLY CRICKETS HEARD UPON HIS PASSING

Cliff Edwards was no longer officially employed by Disney when he entered a nursing home in Hollywood in 1969 as a charity patient supported by the Actor’s Fund. At the time of his death from a heart attack on July 17, 1971, at the age of 76, Edwards’ passing wasn’t reported to the public for several days because hospital officials didn’t consider it newsworthy since they didn’t know he had ever been famous. 

His body was initially unclaimed and donated to the UCLA medical school. When Walt Disney Productions eventually discovered news of his passing, they offered to pay for the burial. Instead, the Actors Fund of America and the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund paid for the burial.

Thirteen years after Edwards’ death, Disney provided a marker for the performer’s grave when the lack of a proper headstone was reportedly brought to the company’s attention by the Ukulele Society of America. In addition to his name and years of life, the marker simply reads, “In loving memory of Ukulele Ike.”

“It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that are. But it is easy to sigh.”

― Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust

Listen to Cliff Edwards’ music, and more music from Disney’s Golden Era of Animation at WRIU‘ Radio’s Picture This, hosted by friend of The Hobbledehoy, Wayne Cresser.

Judge: “You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country”

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

May 25, 2023

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta today sentenced the leader of the right-wing Oath Keepers organization, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, to 18 years in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release. In November a jury found Rhodes guilty of seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and tampering with documents and proceedings, for his role in organizing people to go to Washington in January 2021 and try to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president.

Rhodes told the court that his only crime was standing against those who are “destroying our country.” He says he believes he is a “political prisoner” and that he hopes Trump will win the presidency in 2024. “You are not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes,” Judge Mehta said. “You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country and to the republic and to the very fabric of this democracy.”

And yet, former president Trump has said he would not only pardon the January 6 offenders, but would apologize to them for their treatment by the government. Today, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who yesterday announced he is running for president, said he, too, would consider pardoning them, promising to be “aggressive in issuing pardons.”

Rhodes struck at our elections. Today in the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency decision, the Supreme Court struck at the government regulations that underpin modern America.

Michael and Chantell Sackett bought land near Priest Lake, Idaho, and backfilled the wetlands on the property to build a home. The EPA found they had violated the Clean Water Act, which prohibits putting pollutants into “the waters of the United States.” Officials told them to restore the site or face penalties of more than $40,000 a day. By a vote of 5–4, the Supreme Court found that “waters” refers only to “‘streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes’ and to adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.”

This decision will remove federal protection from half of the currently protected wetlands in the U.S, an area larger than California. Homeowners, farmers, and developers will have far greater latitude to intrude on wetlands than they did previously, and that intrusion has already wrought damage as wetlands act like a sponge to absorb huge amounts of water during hurricanes. From 1992 to 2010, Houston, for example, lost more than 70% of its wetlands to development, leaving it especially vulnerable to Hurricane Harvey, a category 4 hurricane that in 2017 left 107 people dead and caused $125 billion in damage.

The decision said that the EPA had overreached in its protection of wetlands as part of the Clean Water Act, and that Congress must “enact exceedingly clear language” on any rules that affect private property. This court seems eager to gut federal regulation, suggesting that Congress cannot delegate regulatory rulemaking to the executive branch. As investigative journalist Dave Troy put it, “If [the] EPA can’t enforce its rules, what federal agency can?”

Justice Elena Kagan warned that by destroying the authority of the EPA, both now and in the West Virginia v. EPA decision last June that restricted the agency’s ability to regulate emissions from power plants, the court had appointed itself “as the national decision maker on environmental policy.”

The Clean Water Act passed by an overwhelming bipartisan vote in 1972, during the administration of Republican president Richard M. Nixon. Nixon backed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 after a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, over ten days in January–February 1969 poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals, and then, four months later, in June 1969, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire. In February 1970, Nixon told Congress “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment. The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.”

Nixon called for a 37-point program with 23 legislative proposals and 14 new administrative measures to control water and air pollution, manage solid waste, protect parklands and public recreation, and organize for action. At Nixon’s urging, Congress created the EPA in 1970, and two years later, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, establishing protections for water quality and regulating pollutant discharges into waters of the United States.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tweeted that “[t]oday’s Supreme Court ruling is a win for farmers, businesses, and Americans across the nation by rejecting, yet again, the Biden administration’s costly and burdensome regulatory overreach.” But it sure looks like the story is not about Biden, but rather is about an extremist SCOTUS overturning 50 years of law that gave us clean water because it is determined to slash federal authority to regulate business.

McCarthy is trying to manage his conference while members of the far-right Freedom Caucus strike at our economy. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated today that defaulting on the national debt is not an option. “The President has said that, the Speaker has said that, and we want the American people to understand that as well…. What is up for debate, though, is the budget,” she said. “And that’s what these discussions are about: two very different fiscal visions for our country and our economy.”

Biden’s proposed budget invests in ordinary Americans and over 10 years is projected to reduce the deficit by nearly $3 trillion by “asking the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share and by slashing wasteful spending on special interests.” In contrast, “House Republicans…want to slash programs millions of hardworking Americans count on, while also protecting tax breaks skewed to the wealthy and corporations that will add $3.5 trillion to the debt. That’s where these negotiations began,” she said.

Finally, there is news today about the man that Rhodes is going to prison for, concerning his strike at our national security. Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Spencer S. Hsu, and Perry Stein of the Washington Post reported that on June 2, 2022, the day one of Trump’s lawyers contacted the Justice Department to say that officials were welcome to come to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the classified documents the department had subpoenaed, two of Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers. The next day, when FBI agents arrived, Trump’s lawyers gave them 38 documents, said they had conducted a “diligent search,” and claimed that all the relevant documents had been turned over. Yet, when FBI agents conducted a search two months later, they found more than 100 additional classified documents.

The timing of the moved boxes suggests that Trump was deliberately hiding certain documents. The Washington Post article also says that more than one witness has told prosecutors that Trump sometimes kept classified documents out in the open and showed them to people.

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement: “This is nothing more than a targeted, politically motivated witch hunt against President Trump that is concocted to meddle in an election and prevent the American people from returning him to the White House.”

President Biden calls white supremacy “the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.”

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

May 16, 2023

On Saturday, May 13th, President Joe Biden spoke to the graduating class at Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C. In his speech about “excellence, leadership, and truth and service,” Biden singled out white supremacy “as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.”

Biden called for Americans to reject political extremism and violence, and to protect fundamental rights and freedoms for women to choose and for transgender children to be free. He called for affordable healthcare and housing and the right to raise your family and retire with dignity. He urged the graduates to “stand with leaders of your generation who give voice to the people, demanding action on gun violence,” and to stand “against books being banned and Black history being erased…. To stand up for the best in us.”

While Biden based his remarks on former president Trump’s declaration after the August 2017 Unite the Right Rally that “there are very fine people on both sides,” there were plenty of examples from just this week that he could have used.

Last night, Hunter Walker of Talking Points Memo broke the story that the digital director for right-wing representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) appears to be Wade Searle, a devoted follower of white supremacist leader Nick Fuentes. Fuentes has openly embraced Nazism and Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism, and he is one of those to whom the alt-right Groypers look up.

Although Fuentes calls the Groypers “Christian conservatives,” historian of the far right in the U.S. Nicole Hemmer told Walker: “The Groypers are essentially the equivalent of neo-Nazis…. They are attached to violent events like Jan. 6. Nick Fuentes, as sort of the organizer of the Groypers, expresses Holocaust denialism, white supremacy, white nationalism, pretty strong anti-women bigotry, he calls for a kind of return to Twelfth Century Catholicism. They’re an extremist group that is OK with violence.”

Walker has also identified an intern in Gosar’s office as another Fuentes follower.

A February study by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts independent research on religion, culture, and public policy, found that the so-called Christian nationalism at the heart of those like Fuentes is closely linked with a willingness to commit violence to make the U.S. a white Christian nation. The PRRI poll showed that nearly 20% of those who sympathize with Christian nationalism agreed they were “willing to fight” to take the nation back to what they incorrectly believe it always was.

Maria Cramer of the New York Times noted yesterday that while no one actually knows much about Daniel Penny, a white man who was recently charged with choking Jordan Neely, a homeless Black man, to death on a subway in New York, right-wing politicians and supporters have rallied around Penny. They seem to see him as a symbol of a powerful man who took matters into his own hands to restore order—although the events that led to the choking are still unclear—much as they lionized Kyle Rittenhouse after he killed two people and wounded another at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020. Florida governor Ron DeSantis tweeted: “We must defeat the Soros-Funded DAs, stop the Left’s pro-criminal agenda, and take back the streets for law abiding citizens.”

Historian Thomas Zimmer explained the danger: “All strands of the Right—leading Republicans, the media machine, the reactionary intellectual sphere, the conservative base, the donor class—are openly and aggressively embracing rightwing vigilante violence,” he wrote. “This sends a clear message: It encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to “fight back” against anything and anyone associated with ‘the Left’ by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence—call it the Kyle Rittenhouse dogma.”

In Washington this weekend, about 150 masked members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marched toward the U.S. Capitol, chanting, “life, liberty, victory.”

Professor of journalism at New York University Jay Rosen noted on MSNBC on May 11, the day after CNN gave Trump the space to hold what amounted to a political rally, that journalists could better cover this moment in our history by focusing not on the horse race strategy, but on the consequences for the country if Trump wins again. How will American life change? Who will benefit? Who will suffer? He says the question should be “not the odds, but the stakes” as a principle for better campaign coverage.

A lawsuit filed today in New York by Noelle Dunphy, a woman who says Trump ally Rudy Giuliani hired her in January 2019 to manage his media presence, documents the sordid world she observed in her two years working for Giuliani. He promised her a salary of $1 million a year but said he couldn’t pay her until his divorce was final and, ultimately, paid her only small amounts of cash. In her account, he seemed to become obsessed with her, forcing her into sex and trying to dominate her. She is suing Giuliani, his companies, and 10 unidentified individuals over “unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct” and is asking for $10 million in compensation and damages.

The story of her time with Giuliani, whom she describes as a chronically alcoholic sexual abuser prone to racist and sexist outbursts, is bad enough—and she claims to have recordings—but her other allegations are politically incendiary. She claims to have heard Giuliani say that he was selling presidential pardons for $2 million a pop, splitting the proceeds with Trump, and that Giuliani told her on February 7, 2019, “about a plan that had been prepared for if Trump lost the 2020 election.” Specifically, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that Trump’s team would claim that there was ‘voter fraud’ and that Trump had actually won the election…. That same day, Giuliani had Ms. Dunphy sit in on a speakerphone conversation about a potential business opportunity involving a $72 billion dollar gas deal in China.”

Also of note is her claim that, since part of her job was managing emails, Giuliani gave her access to his email account. The system stored at least 23,000 emails on her own personal computer, including “privileged, confidential, and highly sensitive” emails from, to, or concerning Trump, his children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; Trump’s lawyers and advisors; media figures including Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson; and so on.

There are a number of stories in the news today that wrap up long-standing issues. John Durham, the special counsel picked by Trump loyalist attorney general William Barr to undermine the FBI investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, released a report today finding fault with the categorization of the FBI’s initial investigation into the Russia attempt to swing the 2016 election to Trump.

Representative George Santos (R-NY) has pleaded guilty to charges of theft in Brazil, but insists he is not guilty of the federal charges against him for financial crimes. He says he will not resign from Congress.

As predicted by everyone who correctly attributed the high cost of eggs late last year to the deadly avian flu and price gouging, there are now so many eggs on the market that the wholesale price is $0.94 a dozen, down from $5.46 a dozen six months ago.

The number of migrants at the southern border has dropped 50% since the end of the pandemic restriction known as Title 42 on May 11.

And finally, Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, yesterday told Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo that the committee has lost track of a top witness to alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family. “Well, unfortunately, we can’t track down the informant,” Comer said. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.”