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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), like Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the man he hopes to replace as House speaker, lies a lot. Jordan’s rapid-style monologues—on topics such as Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s 2019 effort to extort Ukraine, Hunter Biden, and internet censorship—are often loaded with allegations that are demonstrably false. He has made pushing pro-Trump disinformation a priority for the GOP caucus. As the House Judiciary Committee chairman, he presides over a subcommittee on the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government that is mostly devoted to furthering Trump’s claim that the former president is a victim of the Deep State and facing four indictments only because of a vast conspiracy. Jordan uses that post to promote the belief system of the Fox News bubble. And though he may stand out from his colleagues on brazenness, on most topics, his fibs align with his fellow House Republicans.

But Jordan, a leading contender for the speakership, does differ from his GOP colleagues in an important way: his unique role in helping Trump try to steal the 2020 election and launch the January 6 riot.

.@Jim_Jordan claims he never said the election was stolen. That’s not what the video shows. Let’s roll the tape, shall we? pic.twitter.com/wOLI9l3TQW

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 12, 2021

Many Republicans endorsed Trump’s Big Lie about the election. But Jordan was one of only a handful of congressional Republicans who actively conspired with Trump to overturn the election results. As he runs for House speaker, Republicans appear eager to ignore that. Yet by embracing Jordan they tie themselves further to that attack on democracy and the Constitution.

Jordan was an early and enthusiastic recruit in Trump’s war on the republic and reality—in public and in private.

Days after the November election, he spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in front of the Pennsylvania state capitol. He spread election conspiracy theories within right-wing media. He endorsed Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell’s bogus claims that Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic had robbed Trump of electoral victory. He called for a congressional investigation of electoral fraud for which there was no evidence and demanded a special counsel be appointed. He endorsed state legislatures canceling vote tallies and selecting their own presidential electors. He urged Trump not to concede. He demanded Congress not certify Joe Biden’s victory in the ceremony scheduled for January 6, 2021.

Behind the scenes, he schemed with Trump. The final report of the House select committee on January 6 lays out in damning detail Jordan’s participation in Trump’s eletion-thwarting machinations. “Representative Jordan was a significant player in President Trump’s efforts,” the committee said. “He participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior White House officials, Rudolph Giuliani, and others, discussed strategies for challenging the election, chief among them claims that the election had been tainted by fraud.”

As early as November, Jordan was “involved in discussions with White House officials about Vice President Pence’s role on January 6th,” the report noted—conversations that focused on whether Pence could block the certification of Biden’s win. Jordan was one of 10 Republican members of Congress who attended a White House meeting on December 21 where the topic was how to pressure Pence to undo the election.

What understanding, if any, did Trump have with Jordan? The January 6 committee did not find out. And Jordan has never fully explained his role in Trump’s scheming, let alone apologized. He refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee’s investigation. And now he is close to becoming House speaker—second-in-line to the presidency—without accounting for his participation in Trump’s attempt to overturn an election.

But the committee did uncover evidence that Jordan was hatching some plan with Trump to mount a coup.

On December 27, 2020, the defeated president held a phone call with Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue. Trump insisted that there had been widespread fraud in the election and raised numerous allegations that had been debunked. Rosen and Donoghue repeatedly told Trump there was no evidence of significant wrongdoing. Trump pushed the pair to publicly state that this had been an “illegal” election. He cited three Republican politicians who were supporting his claim of a stolen election: Representative Scott Perry (R-Penn.), Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator, and Jordan, whom he praised as a “fighter.”

When Rosen said to Trump that the Justice Department couldn’t “snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election,” Trump responded, “I don’t expect you to do that. Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.” Trump did not explain what he meant or what the GOP House members—presumably including Jordan—intended to do if the Justice Department falsely declared the election fraudulent. Rosen and Donoghue refused to issue such a statement.

On January 2, 2021, Jordan led a conference call in which he, Trump, and other members of Congress discussed strategies for delaying the January 6 joint session of Congress, where the election results would be certified. “During that call,” according to the January 6 committee, “the group also discussed issuing social media posts encouraging President Trump’s supporters to ‘march to the Capitol’ on the 6th. An hour and a half later, President Trump and Representative Jordan spoke by phone for 18 minutes.” It is not publicly known what the two discussed.

Three days later, Jordan texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to pass along advice that Pence should “call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”

On January 6—a day of violent chaos and insurrection—Jordan spoke with Trump by phone at least twice. As the committee noted, Jordan “has provided inconsistent public statements about how many times they spoke and what they discussed.” That day Jordan also received five calls from Rudolph Giuliani, and the two connected at least twice in the evening, as Giuliani was attempting to encourage members of Congress to continue objecting to Biden’s electoral votes. In the days after January 6, Jordan spoke with Trump White House staff about the prospect of presidential pardons for members of Congress.

It is obvious that Jordan knows a lot about Trump’s attempt to sabotage the constitutional order and the run-up to the January 6 riot. But he has refused to share any of this with the public. On May 12, 2022, the January 6 committee subpoenaed several Republican members of Congress—including Jordan, McCarthy, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.), and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)—to obtain information related to its investigation. Jordan and the others refused to cooperate.

The committee referred Jordan, McCarthy, Perry, and Biggs to the House Ethics Committee for sanction for failing to comply with subpoenas. The committee noted that Jordan and the others “should be questioned in a public forum about their advance knowledge of and role in President Trump’s plan to prevent the peaceful transition of power.” It also stated that the Justice Department ought to seek testimony from Jordan regarding his “materially relevant communications with Donald Trump or others in the White House.”

Jordan was a key advocate of Trump’s election falsehood and co-conspirator in Trump’s bid to steal power. (Trump faces 17 felony charges for this effort.) He was one of the GOP’s chief crusaders pushing falsehoods that threatened the constitutional order. If his fellow Republicans elevate Jordan to speaker, they will be fully embracing Trump’s attack on the republic, and a profound threat to democracy will now be coming from inside the House.

It’s the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week, a tradition that started in 1982. This year, the theme is “Let Freedom Read!” in honor of record-breaking efforts to censor books now sweeping the nation’s libraries and schools. Yesterday, I published a story about Wyoming’s Cambell County Public Library, which, after a controversy over sex-ed books, last year became the first library system in the country to officially break ties with the venerable American Library Association, leaving its staff without opportunities to apply for grants, attend conferences, and fulfill their profession’s continuing education requirements.

Not to be outdone, Moms for Liberty, the crusading parents’ rights group whose annual conferences I’ve covered for the last two years, has declared this is “Teach Kids to Read Week.“ Here’s how the group’s founders explained it in a statement to the conservative website Post Millennial:

“When…those pushing for so-called ‘Banned Book Week’ continue to try to keep porn in schools we must fight back. America’s kids no longer know how to read and rather than highlighting that issue, these groups want to allow kids to access pornographic materials and other inappropriate materials. This is unacceptable, and we are proud to continue to fight for America’s children and encourage kids to learn how to read.”

Moms for Liberty’s attempt to connect literacy instruction to “pornographic materials” is part of a relatively new campaign to capitalize on the failure of a progressive movement in the teaching of reading. A spate of recent reporting has revealed that a popular approach called “balanced literacy,” which encouraged children to use context clues and guess when they couldn’t decode a word, didn’t actually help many kids learn to read. Moms for Liberty claims now that teachers are focused on in LGBTQ and anti-racist lessons instead of teaching kids how to decode words. I explained in a piece a few months back:

[Moms for Liberty] charges that schools have overstepped their bounds by teaching students progressive values—acceptance of all sexual and gender identities, for instance, or how to fight against racism—instead of focusing solely on academics. Now, these groups have taken up the failure of balanced-literacy instruction as further evidence of the utter failure of progressive education in perhaps the most important skill a child learns in school. In the process, they’ve launched the latest version of an age-old political fight over reading. Basically, the argument from parents’ rights groups can be boiled down to this: Don’t believe us that public schools have sacrificed education at the altar of progressive educational schemes? Just look at how miserably they’ve failed in teaching our kids to read.

“There is a lot of time being spent on ‘social-emotional learning’ and not so much time being spent on effective reading instruction in the classroom,” the Moms for Liberty account tweeted on May 21. “Why is literacy not being prioritized like sexual education is currently? Why does a 5yo need to learn about gender identity?”

What is the exact scenario in which an inclusive curriculum somehow replaces phonics-based reading instruction? Moms for Liberty has yet to explain exactly how this happens. Meanwhile, if you’d like to celebrate Banned Books Week by reading a few of the most censored, there’s a list here.

President Trump won several more weeks to file some motions in his D.C. election interference case, but the March 2024 trial date will remain the same, a federal judge ruled on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for the District of Columbia gave Trump one more month to file motions concerning subpoenas, and two more weeks to file motions to dismiss and other pre-trial motions. Those were initially due by Monday; now they must be filed by Oct. 23.

It’s a moderate win for Trump, who had asked for a 60-day delay. But it does nothing to postpone the trial date — a goal he has sought both in his D.C. and Florida prosecutions. Trump moved to dismiss the case on Thursday on the basis of one claim: that he’s immune from prosecution because the allegations in the indictment all took place while he was president.

Separately, Chutkan mostly shut down an attempt from the former President to ask for delays around classified information.

There isn’t a lot of it in the D.C. case, but Trump’s attorneys had suggested that their lack of access — and lack of security clearances — should be cause to further delay proceedings.

Chutkan called their bluff earlier this week by ordering the Trump attorneys who had not yet applied for a security clearance to do so.

But the lawyers had also asked Chutkan for the opportunity to review a motion that prosecutors make in national security cases, which involves describing to the judge what classified information they believe should be allowed to make it to the defense. The defense is not allowed to review this motion because it contains information that, the judge may rule, they’re not allowed to see.

Trump’s attorneys asked to be able to review a redacted version of that motion and to file “procedural objections.” Chutkan denied the first part of that request, but approved the second half, noting that both the law governing the use of classified material in criminal trials and precedent from the D.C. circuit bars the defense from being able to see the document.

“Still, the court will allow the defense an opportunity to explain why it believes that CIPA’s statutory text and Circuit precedent do not govern this case,” Chutkan wrote.

The debate over classified information in the Trump case appears to touch on a vanishingly small amount of documents. Prosecutors said in a filing this week that they don’t plan on introducing classified documents at trial, and that the overall amount is relatively limited by the standards of federal criminal cases: 975 pages in total.

Anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to the events leading up to the historic ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker of the House knows exactly who is to blame here: McCarthy and his fellow Republicans. For years, they've rolled out the welcome mat to Donald Trump and his wrecking crew of MAGA camera hogs, foolishly believing that they could harness the chaotic villainy without getting burned in the process. They refused to listen to former Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen when he warned Republicans in 2019 that those who "follow Mr. Trump as I did, blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I'm suffering."

Granted, McCarthy didn't get hauled off to prison like Cohen. But he still faced a tasty comeuppance this week when the sadistic bullies he empowered in his caucus, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, vacated his seat for no other reason than the sheer satisfaction of taking out their leader. Now shellshocked Republicans know who they want to blame for everything that has happened, and — surprise! — it's not themselves. Oh no, they're mad at Democrats for refusing to swoop in and save McCarthy from his fate.

As soon as he was booted, McCarthy laid out his views clearly: Republicans should get to act like drunk bulls savaging china shops, and it's the duty of Democrats to come in quietly after to clean up the mess. "I think today was a political decision by the Democrats," he whined in a press conference after the vote, complaining that the opposition party owed him their votes to protect "the institution."

Reality check: This whole thing only happened because McCarthy, in his desperation to rally Gaetz's arson squad to his side at the beginning of this term, foolishly gave in to their demands to make it easy to vote to vacate the Speaker's seat. It was a Republican, Gaetz, who used that power. There is no reason to expect Democrats to vote for an opposition party's leader, especially when he refuses to offer any concessions in exchange. Yet Republicans were suddenly unified in their echoes of McCarthy's claim that Democrats are obligated to bail Republicans out of problems of the GOP's own making.

Republicans claim to be the party of "personal responsibility," yet they can never take responsibility for themselves.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who has taken over as acting Speaker, complained that Democrats "can't be counted on in a moment like this." Freshman Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., one of 18 GOP lawmakers in districts that President Joe Biden won, claimed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Democrats should have saved McCarthy to "put the country first." Former George W. Bush official Ari Fleischer griped that "foolish" Democrats were supposedly responsible for the fiasco. Brendan Buck, an aide to former GOP Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner, both of whom resigned after threats to their leadership from within their own caucuses, tweeted that Democrats can't "see past their hatred of McCarthy to recognize how bad a precedent this would be." On Fox News, hosts bellyached, "that's what you get for trusting Democrats." Former Trump aide Stephen Miller blamed Democrats, ignoring that his old boss couldn't be bothered to make a single phone call on McCarthy's behalf. At the Daily Beast, never-Trump Republican Matt Lewis wrote that Democrats "failed to do the right thing on behalf of the American people" by not stopping Republicans from self-destruction. Almost immediately after Tuesday's vote, Republicans in House leadership lashed out at Democrats, threatening to abandon bipartisan working groups and stripping Democrats of office space.

Remember: Democrats actually offered to fish McCarthy out of this situation he'd caught himself in. They just expected a few things in exchange, such as rules changes to prevent this level of chaos. McCarthy offered them nothing but fart noises — and thus got nothing in return. Republicans claim to be the party of "personal responsibility," yet they can never take responsibility for themselves.

But on one level, it's not a surprise that Republicans are acting like spoiled children. The reason they expect Democrats to fix the problems Republicans cause is that, well, Democrats have been doing just that forever. Over the past couple of decades, Republicans have acted with reckless abandon, wrecking the economy, health care systems, foreign policy, and every other aspect of government, safe in the assumption that when they break things too badly, they can count on Democrats to swoop in and fix things for them.

As Philip Bump in the Washington Post writes, "Why, particularly for the past decade or so, has it consistently been up to Democrats to be the line of defense?" Republicans get to go buck wild with a baseball bat, and it's always assumed Democrats will come in with a broom. President Barack Obama's time in office was largely dedicated to cleaning up the economic and military damage from Bush's failed presidency. It is now the same story with President Biden, who stabilized the country after Trump's presidency left us with economic catastrophe, an out-of-control pandemic and even an attempted coup.

The reason they expect Democrats to fix the problems Republicans cause is that, well, Democrats have been doing just that forever.

This cavalier "Democrats will save us from ourselves" attitude permeates everything Republicans do. It's why Republicans are constantly threatening to default on the national debt and/or shut down the government. They never expect to face consequences for it, because Democrats, who actually care about the American people, will do whatever it takes to mitigate the economic damage.

We even saw how this works with the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Republicans are trying to evade the political fallout by saying they "left it to the states." This is a tacit admission that they expect doctors in blue states to step up and handle all those abortion patients now deprived of medical care at home.

Unfortunately, Democrats often have little choice but to fix problems Republicans caused and then ran away from. Obama couldn't just let the banking system collapse. Biden wouldn't follow in Trump's footsteps of letting COVID-19 have its way with the public. Blue states aren't going to turn away needy abortion patients. Democrats in Congress won't allow the U.S. to default on its debt, causing worldwide economic catastrophe.

Because Democrats are generally decent people who don't want others to suffer, Republicans can bully them into solving problems Republicans cause. Republicans can skate away, consequence-free. The issue for McCarthy, however, is there's no real appeal to the greater good Republicans can use to foist responsibility onto Democrats. "What if he's replaced with someone worse?" is a hard sell. McCarthy caters to Trump, has started an impeachment inquiry of Biden based on lies, and constantly negotiates in bad faith — it really doesn't get worse than that. "What about institutional norms?" is also not going to fly, when it's McCarthy who torched those norms. This isn't the fate of the American economy at stake, but the career of a soulless MAGA sell-out. Of course, Democrats don't care.

Democrats are setting a boundary with Republicans, and by god, it's fun to watch. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has been dunking on the entitled whiners and it's glorious.

She's right, of course, to see the gender dynamics in this. There's a long and dumb tradition in the Beltway of treating Democrats like the Mommy Party and Republicans like the Daddy Party. But like many families, it turns out that Daddy plays the big boss while never doing anything useful, while it's actually Mommy who makes sure dinner is made and kids are put to bed on time. That is until Mommy gets sick of it all and files for divorce — which is why women are far more likely to initiate divorce than men.

Republicans can put their big boy pants on, instead of acting like toddlers careening around with their Democratic mommies chasing after to keep them from hurting themselves. Republicans have been able to avoid the political costs of their feckless behavior for decades, in no small part because Democrats have been effective at stemming the bleeding from bad GOP choices. Hell, Republicans elected Trump, secure in the belief that however badly he broke things, a Democrat would eventually step in to repair it. It's good Democrats are finally setting a boundary. If Republicans don't learn about consequences, how will they ever grow up?

On Wednesday, an estimated 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers across five states and Washington DC walked out in the largest health care workers strike in US history. After several days of negotiations over fair labor practices and higher wages, company and union members failed to reach a compromise.

Both groups “are still at the bargaining table, having worked through the night in an effort to reach an agreement,” the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions said in a statement, noting there “has been a lot of progress.”

Last month, health care workers threatened to go on strike if Kaiser didn’t agree to increased pay and solutions to the ongoing staff shortage, among other demands, before the union contract’s expiration on Saturday. While the strike is set to last for three days, union members say that they’re prepared to extend it to November if necessary.

“This is a difficult decision, and we know it will require sacrifices of us all,” wrote the Coalition. “but Kaiser executives continue to bargain in bad faith over the solutions we urgently need to the Kaiser short staffing crisis and the safety and well being of our patients and workers is on the line.”

As my colleague, Ruth Murai reported, the hospitals have a contingency plan in place to ensure continued operation.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a swanky fundraiser for his presidential campaign last month in the upscale Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, much of the news focused on the anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist‘s celebrity guest: musician Eric Clapton. The legendary guitarist—who has promoted vaccine disinformation and who has a history of racist remarks—played for a crowd that raised a whopping $2.2 million for the Kennedy scion, who has been politically disowned by much of his family and who appears to be on the verge of shifting his Democratic presidential bid to an independent run. Also present was Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, who subsequently released a statement noting he still backs President Joe Biden and attended only to support Clapton. Less attention was paid to the hosts of the event who helped Kennedy Jr. haul in this pile of cash at their gated compound: Aubrey and Joyce Chernick.

In recent years, the Chernicks have been generous donors to Republicans and pro-Trump political action committees. They also in the past have financed Democratic candidates, conservative outfits, and groups cited as Islamophobic.

Aubrey, who in March donated $3,300 to Kennedy Jr., is a Canadian-born billionaire tech entrepreneur and philanthropist. He sold his first venture, a software firm, to IBM for $641 million in 2004. He now runs a cybersecurity firm called Celerium.

According to the Federal Election Commission, in June he he gave the maximum contribution of $6,600 to the presidential campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.). Last year, he maxed out to Dr. Oz when the Republican TV doctor ran for Senate in Pennsylvania. He donated $2,900 to Harriet Hageman, who successfully challenged Rep. Liz Cheney in the Republican primary for Wyoming’s lone House seat. He donated $5,800 to the reelection campaign of Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and kicked in another $17,500 to political action committees associated with Scott.

His wife Joyce has been a more prolific political donor. She, too, has backed the presidential bids of DeSantis and Kennedy Jr.. Last year, she contributed $2,900 to the New Journey PAC, a conservative group founded by an associate of Rush Limbaugh that focuses on Black voters and that endorsed Trump in 2020, and she gave $5,000 to Make America Great Again, Again, which was set up in 2021 as the primary super PAC for Trump. (It has been folded into a new PAC called Make America Great Again Inc.)

For the recent midterm elections, she donated $2,900 to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and another $2,900 to his Take Back the House 2022 PAC. She also poured $10,000 into Right Women PAC, a group run by Debra Meadows, the wife of Mark Meadows, the former GOP congressman and onetime chief of staff who was indicted in Georgia on election interference charges. Right Women PAC helped fund the campaigns of pro-Trump women candidates, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. It employed Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who aided Trump in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Like her husband, Joyce donated $23,300 to Tim Scott’s campaign and PACs.

Aubrey and Joyce have not always been GOP-only donors. In the 1990s and 2000s, they supported Democrats (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, congresswoman Jane Harman) and Republicans (Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and Newt Gingrich). After 2014, they stopped making donations to federal candidates. They resumed in 2021, now supporting just Republicans and conservative candidates and PACs.

The Chernicks have supported on-the-right operations outside of electoral politics. In 2005, Aubrey was a key investor in Pajamas Media, a website that started off with an ideologically eclectic jumble of bloggers but that soon became a right-wing outlet that featured a hawkish stance on Israel. (I was on the original editorial advisory board for Pajamas Media but departed as it lurched toward the right.) In its conservative iteration, Pajamas Media, which became known as PJ Media, featured a host of far-right conservatives, such as Tammy Bruce, and dispatched Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher as a war correspondent to Israel. As one of its founders, Charles F. Johnson, a blogger and web designer, told the Daily Beast, within years it had become “one of those cookie-cutter right-wing websites.” In 2019, Salem Media acquired PJ Media and added it to the company’s stable of conservative sites, including Townhall, HotAir, and RedState.

Aubrey and Joyce Chernick have been, respectively, president and vice chair of the Fairbrook Foundation. In a 2011 report titled Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, the Center for American Progress, a liberal group, noted that between 2004 and 2009 the Chernicks’ foundation contributed $1.5 million to what CAP termed Islamophobic organizations. It reported, “Among the recipients: ACT! For America, receiving $125,000; the Center for Security Policy ($66,700); the David Horowitz Freedom Center ($618,500); the Investigative Project on Terrorism, ($25,000); Jihad Watch ($253,250); and the Middle East Forum ($410,000).”

Jihad Watch is a website run by Robert Spencer, a leading anti-Islam activist who has claimed that Islam is an inherently violent religion and that radical Islam is subverting the United States. In 2009, Politico reported that Joyce Chernick provided a majority of the $920,000 the right-wing David Horowitz Freedom Center gave to Jihad Watch.

In an interview with Mother Jones, Aubrey Chernick would not comment on the fundraiser for Kennedy Jr. or even confirm that he and his wife hosted it at their home. But he did discuss the couple’s support of RFK Jr. He first explained it by blasting the Democratic establishment for “going after Bobby” and saying that “the country needs some alternatives.” Asked if he and Joyce were drawn to Kennedy Jr. due to the candidate’s opposition to vaccination, he replied, “Yeah, we’re a little bit—we didn’t like the cancelation elements [regarding anti-vaccination material during the Covid pandemic].” He added, “There wasn’t good information about the side effects of vaccination.” He remarked that he was “not happy about” Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, the public–private partnership that facilitated and accelerated the development, manufacturing, and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. (A source who knows the Chernicks says that the couple have said they are opposed to mask-wearing and being vaccinated for Covid.)

Is it odd that DeSantis supporters would give money to Kennedy Jr.? “In their own way, both are courageous for freedom,” Chernick insisted. Citing DeSantis’ response to Covid in Florida, he praised the governor for doing “his own research into vaccinations” and becoming “his own person” on this issue. DeSantis, Chernick said, “was criticized but he had the courage to go ahead. Isn’t that a commonality with Bobby Kennedy?”

In an email to Mother Jones, a spokesperson for Kennedy Jr. declined to say how the fundraiser at the Chernick residence came about. Instead, the spokesperson commented, “Team Kennedy is very grateful for the support of Joyce and Aubrey… We are grateful to all our contributors, be they Democrats, Republicans, or Independents.”

Kennedy Jr.’s run against President Joe Biden has received other Republican big-money support. Of the $16 million raised (through July) by a super PAC backing his campaign, at least $5 million came from Timothy Mellon, a longtime GOP donor. (Mellon donated $1.5 million to a Trump-aligned organization in 2022.) Another $500,000 was donated to this pro-Kennedy super PAC last year by a tech entrepreneur and vaccination opponent named Mark Gorton, a onetime supporter of progressive causes who recently contributed to DeSantis and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.). Whether it’s because of Kennedy’s war on vaccination or his potential to discomfort Biden and the Democratic Party—or perhaps both—the Chernicks and other GOP donors have fueled the long-shot campaign of a candidate with the most hallowed name in Democratic politics.

If Kennedy decides to flee the Democratic race and run as an independent—or perhaps as a Libertarian Party candidate—his appeal to pro-Trump Republicans could lessen. Recent polling gives no clear indication of whether his presence on the general election ballot (which might not occur in every state) would be advantageous for either Trump or Biden. But he will likely retain the ability to pull in significant campaign cash, even though he’s an antivax propagandist and conspiracy theorist—or because of it.

Reddit rolled out some changes this week as its continues its push for revenue and profitability jumpstarted by its API rule changes in July. Among the most controversial, the company will no longer allow users to opt out of ad personalization based on their Reddit activity and started a program that lets users exchange virtual rewards for their posts for real money.

On Wednesday, Reddit announced plans to "improve ad performance," including by preventing users from opting out of personalized ads except for in "select countries." Reddit didn't specify which countries are excluded, but the exceptions could include countries falling under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Reddit spokesperson Sierra Gamelgaard declined to provide further clarification when reached by Ars Technica for comment.

Reddit's announcement, authored by Reddit's head of privacy, going by "snoo-tuh" on the platform (Reddit has refused to confirm the identity of admins representing Reddit on the site), said that its advertisers look at "what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals" to gauge your interests.

Snoo-tuh wrote:

For users who previously opted out of personalization based on Reddit activity, this change will not result in seeing more ads or sharing on-platform activity with advertisers. It does enable our models to better predict which ad may be most relevant to you.

Still, Reddit users have expressed concern over suddenly losing a privacy control they've long had. Meanwhile, Reddit's policy update aligns with its outspoken goals to become profitable and its plans to eventually go public. Reddit has already sacrificed other aspects of the user experience, as well as some community trust, in an effort to drive revenue. Reddit declined to provide comment regarding privacy concerns related to this latest update.

Other privacy policy changes announced Wednesday include allowing users to choose to see "fewer" ads regarding alcohol, dating, gambling, pregnancy and parenting, and weight loss. Reddit didn't commit to all ads being removed initially since its system of "manual tagging and machine learning to classify the ads" may not be totally accurate at first. Snoo-tuh said things should get more accurate "over time," though. Reddit’s Contributor Program

Also this week, Reddit announced its Contributor Program, launching in the US only for now. Reddit users with 100–4,999 karma can earn $0.90 per gold received. Users with over 5,000 karma can get $1 per gold received. Users can pay for gold to award to other users.

The scheme is reminiscent of the Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program by X, formerly Twitter, where premium subscription members can get a portion of ad revenue generated from their posts. Elon Musk announced the program in February, and it launched in July.

X's program has been criticized for potentially encouraging spam-y, bait-y posts and posts that are controversial and offensive, just for the sake of generating reactions and comments that will lead to the user making money. But that hasn't stopped Reddit from enacting a user payment scheme of its own (after all, Huffman has said Musk's X is an example for Reddit.)

However, clickbait and shock value posts are a strong deviation from what people tend to treasure most about Reddit: real human advice, discussions, and insight.

In an interview with BBC, social media analyst and consultant Matt Navarra noted that Reddit was incentivizing and providing opportunity for its top users but that it could also jeopardize Reddit's content quality.

Navarra told BBC:

[X's ad sharing program] incentives X users to post content that sparks the most replies, and the characteristics of content that typically generates the most replies is content that is divisive, polarizing, provocative, and controversial... exactly the sort of content that brands do not want to have their ads placed amongst. This has been problematic for Elon Musk, and it could become a new problem for Reddit's founders too.

When I reached out to Reddit about these concerns, spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt pointed me to Reddit's blog post about the program. It says that users have to be at least 18 years old and verified by Reddit to participate and that:

All monetizable contributions are subject to Reddit’s User Agreement and Content Policy. In addition, Reddit will take the same enforcement actions against contributions breaking Reddit’s rules and withhold any earnings on content that violates the Content Policy or the new Contributor Monetization Policy and Contributor Terms for the program.

A support page says Reddit's Contributor Program will avoid "fraud, spam, bad actors, and illegal activities" by putting users through Persona's Know Your Customer screening. It also points to "Reddit internal safety signals," "new monetization policies with enforcement and repercussions," "daily gold purchase limits," "automated detection and monitoring via Reddit’s safety tools and systems," "user reporting," and "admin auditing."

"Sometimes, it's who you most suspect." That's what a friend of mine texted to a group chat after the Sunday Times, the Times and Channel 4 Dispatches released a disturbing investigative report documenting rape and other sexual allegations against British comedian Russell Brand. The actor denies the allegations, but unsurprisingly, most of the public does not seem to believe his denials. In part, it's because the evidence against Brand is overwhelming: five separate accusers, digital documentation, and a litany of witnesses ready to corroborate how Brand's behavior was an "open secret in radio and TV production." In part, it's because being a skeeze was always central to Brand's persona. And in part, it's because there have been comments over the years, from celebrities like Katy Perry and Kristen Bell, about Brand's predatory behavior.

The Onion, as they often do, said it best, with the headline, "Nation Could Have Sworn Russell Brand Was Already Convicted Sex Offender."

And yet, like clockwork, the MAGA masses are rallying to Brand's side, treating these allegations like they are evidence that the "deep state" is trying to take Brand out for some vague reason.

As Joy Saha documented at Salon, the usual suspects — Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson — defended Brand this week and floated conspiracy theories to distract from the serious allegations. Elon Musk, of course, got involved, writing on the platform he rebranded X, "They don't like competition." Greg Gutfeld elevated the conspiracy theory to Fox News.

History shows the quickest way to be a hero to the MAGA crowd is to be credibly accused of rape, ideally by a large number of women.

Do any of these conspiracy theorists believe their own B.S.? I'm skeptical that any of these men actually mean a single word they say. They are, after all, arguing that Brand is such an all-powerful threat to the mysterious "They" that "They" organized a conspiracy of dozens of people — reporters, editors, fact-checkers, witnesses, and accusers — for the purpose of smearing an innocent man with allegations such as he "forced his penis down her throat" so hard she had to punch him to escape. That's a lot of work for the mighty "They" to take out one dude. Keeping that many conspirators quiet is nearly impossible. You'd think "They" would have simpler methods of dealing with people "They" want to get rid of.

Nah, the more likely explanation is that Brand's defenders believe he did it. They're just angry that anyone would deny a man his patriarchy-given right to rape as many high school girls as he pleases. After all, this is the same crowd that supports Donald Trump, a man whose history of sexual assault has been put beyond dispute both in a court of law and by his own infamous tape bragging about how he likes to "grab them by the pussy." History shows the quickest way to be a hero to the MAGA crowd is to be credibly accused of rape, ideally by a large number of women.

We see this in the same rally-round-the-pig response MAGA had to Andrew Tate, a man whose total worthlessness as a human being was evident long before he was arrested for rape and human trafficking in Romania. Tate, an "influencer" who preyed on school kids too young to know better, wasn't exactly coy about his misogyny or violent impulses before his arrest. He openly bragged about hitting women and trapping them in the house and even offered to teach his followers how to get into sex trafficking.

Despite — or really because — of all this, the MAGA reaction to Tate's arrest was to treat the guy like a hero. Tucker Carlson interviewed him for Twitter and Elon Musk heavily hyped the video. Needless to say, it wasn't a hard-hitting interview exploring the evils of sexual violence. It was a softball meant to portray Tate, who is accused of choking women so hard he broke blood vessels in their faces, as the real victim.

One could argue, I suppose, that this stampede of support for the worst possible men isn't meant as a celebration of rape per se. There's always the "just trolling" defense. In this case, the argument would be that it's just that MAGA types just really love to "trigger" the feminists. Throwing a pity party for an accused rapist is a virtual form of ponytail-pulling, in this rendering. But even if that were true, it's ultimately a distinction without difference. Once you're throwing ticker tape parades for sexual predators, it really stops mattering if it's just out of anti-feminist spite.

The new allegations against Rudy Giuliani are a grotesque reminder that, for much of MAGA, Trump's appeal was due in large part to the perception that he created an atmosphere where open predation towards women was acceptable. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who has since spoken out about the coup plotting she witnessed under Trump, has a new book out. In it, she accuses Giuliani of groping her on January 6, 2021, seemingly because he was excited by the unspooling Capitol insurrection. To add insult to injury, she describes John Eastman, another coup plotter, as flashing a "leering grin" while Giuliani manhandled her.

Giuliani, for his part, is denying the allegations, and his denials are being greeted with a great deal of scoffing. After all, he's currently tied up in litigation with a former aide accusing him of bullying her into unwanted sexual intercourse. His accuser, Noelle Dunphy, has produced grotesque receipts, including a tape of Giuliani declaring, "Come here, big tits. Your tits belong to me."

Even without the Dunphy lawsuit, Hutchinson's claims were believable simply because she was working under Donald Trump. We've all heard the "Access Hollywood" tape in which Trump brags, at length, about how he enjoys sexually assaulting women. It makes perfect sense that he would attract compatriots who craved an environment where men can just grope whatever woman they wished. The least surprising thing in the world is if these men saw young and pretty aides like Hutchinson as party favors Trump was offering up to these co-conspirators.

There's a tendency in the mainstream press to talk about rape and sexual abuse as something "everybody" disapproves of. When a credibly accused assailant gets a surge of support, the assumption is these folks believe the accused is innocent. When it's impossible to imagine they believe that — no one can think Trump is innocent — then the assumption is that the sexual predation is a flaw that supporters are reluctantly accepting because they like other traits of the accused.

But there is a third possibility, one that this evidence shows is the likeliest one: sexual abuse as a vice signal.

Being seen as a sexual abuser makes a person more popular with some on the right, especially the extremely online MAGA set. It's a subculture of people who valorize bullying and hate women, especially women who they think are uppity. Sexual violence has been a primary outlet for that urge to humiliate women and put them "in their place." This isn't about a sincere belief that every accused rapist is a victim of a "deep state" conspiracy. It's just that MAGA's knee-jerk urge when they hear these allegations of sexual violence is to side with the perpetrator.

The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to remove medical bills from Americans' credit reports in a push to end what it called coercive debt collection tactics that affect millions of consumers.

Proposals under consideration would help families financially recover from medical crises, stop debt collectors from coercing people into paying bills they may not even owe, and ensure that creditors are not relying on data that is often plagued with inaccuracies and mistakes, Vice President Kamala Harris and Rohit Chopra, the top consumer finance watchdog, announced.

Harris told reporters that more than 100 million Americans had unpaid medical debt.

"Many of the debts people have accrued are due to medical emergencies," she said. "We know credit scores determine whether a person can have economic health and wellbeing, much less the ability to grow their wealth."

Chopra's agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reported last year that roughly 20% of Americans have medical debt, but CFPB said its data also showed medical billing data is a poor indicator of whether consumers' are likely to pay down traditional debts.

The Brookings Institution think tank also found big gaps in medical debt statistics, with some 80% of debt held by households with zero or negative net worth, and communities of color hit especially hard. For instance, 27% of Black households hold medical debt compared with 16.8% of non-Black households.

According to the CFPB, the Fair Credit Reporting Act restricts the use of medical information in credit decisions and credit reports. The agency on Thursday announced policy outlines that could give rise to new regulations.

Working as Donald Trump’s lawyer, or just being his lawyer’s lawyer, is a tough gig. The former president’s tight-fisted ways, not to mention his legal problems, are trickling down through Trumpworld’s legal ecosystem.

On Tuesday, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, sued the former New York mayor for more than $1.3 million in allegedly unpaid legal fees dating back to 2019. That lawsuit, Costello says, is a consequence of Trump’s own refusal to pay Giuliani for years of work as Trump’s personal attorney.

Lawyers for Trump have landed in legal jeopardy due to his lies. They’ve been forced to testify against him, sanctioned, fined, stripped of law licenses, sued, and indicted. But none are in as much trouble as Rudy.

Giuliani has pleaded not guilty to 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia for alleged interference in that state’s election. He was also found liable for defaming two Georgia election workers and will likely be ordered to pay them damages. He’s an unindicted co-conspirator in the US Justice Department’s criminal case against Trump related to January 6. His law license is suspended in New York, and he could be disbarred in DC. A former assistant says in a lawsuit that Giuliani raped her. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, in a new book, claims he groped her on January 6. An FBI agent says a bureau investigation found Giuliani “may have been compromised” by Russian intelligence while he assisted Trump’s 2020 campaign.

Giuliani denies any wrongdoing related to each of these allegations. A spokesperson for him called Hutchinson’s claims “a disgusting lie.”

Giuliani encountered many of those problems while he was working for Trump—apparently with a hope, but not an enforceable promise, of remuneration. The former president not only contributed to Giuliani’s fall from famed prosecutor to defendant, but has mostly declined to pay his legal fees. Costello’s suit against Giuliani—his former client—came after he personally accompanied Giuliani to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago headquarters in an attempt to get the president to pay up. Trump, who has previously used a PAC he controls to pay some of what he owes Giuliani, along with others, reportedly recently raised around $1 million at a fundraiser aimed at helping Giuliani.

It’s not clear if Giuliani has received any of that money. But he clearly has not paid Costello. Giuliani complained in a statement Tuesday that Costello’s bill “is way in excess to anything approaching legitimate fees.” Still, Costello said in an interview that the reason his former client hasn’t paid him is “because he hasn’t been paid by Donald Trump.”

Giuliani is the second high-profile client Costello has sued this year. The other is Steve Bannon. Costello’s firm, Davidoff, Hutcher & Citron, in February sued Bannon—who was convicted last year of contempt of Congress (he’s appealing) and indicted in New York for defrauding a nonprofit (he pleaded not guilty)—for more than $480,000 in unpaid fees. Costello also represented Bannon in 2020 following his federal indictment on similar fraud charges, prior to Trump pardoning Bannon. A federal judge in July ordered Bannon to pay up. So far Bannon has apparently not done so.

“We’ll get it, but not yet,” Costello said Tuesday.

Costello, whose biography touts his 40-plus year of litigation experience, told me Tuesday that Bannon was the first client “I’ve ever had to sue for fees.” Giuliani was the second.

Bannon and a Trump spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Costello, like Giuliani, has participated in some of his client’ legally risky activities. In 2020, Costello received a copy of Hunter Biden’s hard drive from John Paul Mac Issac, the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop where Hunter reputedly left his laptop and failed to pick it up. Costello passed it on to Giuliani, who worked with Bannon to publicize much of the material. Hunter Biden, represented by high-powered lawyer Abbe Lowell, has threatened to sue Costello, along with others involved in revealing contents of the device. Lowell recently followed up on some of those threats, suing a former Trump aide involved in distributing laptop material. He also sued the IRS over two agents’ revelations about Hunter’s alleged nonpayment of taxes.

Costello said he is not concerned by the lawsuit threat. And he said he does not regret his work for Giuliani and Bannon, even though they stiffed him. He said he believed in that work, maintaining that his former clients are being persecuted for their politics.

“The whole idea here is to bleed people associated with Donald Trump dry financially,” he said. “That is a way to cancel them.”

Someone in the congressional office of Rep. Angie Craig is having fun with acronyms.

On Wednesday, the Minnesota Democrat unveiled a bill taking aim at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the federal government nears a shutdown at the end of the month. Party in-fighting has left the Republican leader struggling to pass a spending plan to fund government services.

Craig’s bill would block members of Congress from receiving their scheduled pay if the government shuts down and federal workers are furloughed. She is calling the legislation the My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your Shutdown Act, or the MCCARTHY Shutdown Act for short.

The Democrat said her tribute to the House speaker, if passed, would make sure lawmakers experience the same lost paychecks as regular Americans.

“Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans are ready to shut down the federal government and put the livelihoods of working families at risk — while still collecting a paycheck,” Craig said in a statement. “[I]t’s ridiculous that we still get paid while folks like TSA workers are asked to work without a paycheck.”

According to the bill text, lawmakers’ pay during the shutdown period would be held in escrow until the final day of the session, when it would be released for payment so as not to violate the law prescribing congressional salaries.

Federal workers who are furloughed generally do not receive pay while the government is shut down. In the past, Congress has stepped in and passed legislation retroactively to make workers whole for the wages they lost, but the missing pay can lead to financial anxieties and hardships while the shutdown persists.

The last shutdown — dubbed a partial shutdown, since certain agencies remained open — was the longest in U.S. history, lasting 35 days from late 2018 into early 2019. The impasse stemmed from then-President Donald Trump’s demand for federal money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

During that saga, more than 100 lawmakers pledged to refuse their paychecks since the shutdown was the fault of Congress and the White House. Such proposals stretch back to at least to 2013, when some members moved to cut off Congressional salaries during a spending impasse.

This time, right-wing lawmakers are trying to pressure McCarthy into demanding spending cuts that would run counter to an agreement he made with President Joe Biden. They have threatened to oust McCarthy as speak if he doesn’t follow through.

“[I]t’s ridiculous that we still get paid while folks like TSA workers are asked to work without a paycheck.”

• Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.)

Hardliners even managed to torpedo a bill to fund the Pentagon, which is typically among the easiest to get GOP members behind.

McCarthy can lose no more than four Republican votes to get legislation passed, and it would need to be something that can clear the Senate, where Democrats hold a threadbare majority.

“I want to make sure we don’t shut down,” McCarthy told Fox News over the weekend. “I don’t think that is a win for the American public and I definitely believe it’ll make our hand weaker if we shut down.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that both chambers were being pushed around by “a small band of hard-right Republicans.”

America is in the midst of the biggest surge in labor activity in a quarter-century.

The United Auto Workers (UAW), the Writers Guild of America, the actors’ union known as Sag-Aftra, Starbucks workers, Amazon workers, the Teamsters and UPS, flight attendants. The list goes on.

More than 4.1m workdays were lost to stoppages last month, according to the labor department. That’s the most since 2000. And this was before the UAW struck the big three.

Some worry about the effect of all this labor activism on the US economy, and view organized labor as a “special interest” demanding more than it deserves.

Rubbish. Labor activism is good for the economy in the long run. And organized labor isn’t a special interest. It’s the leading edge of the American workforce.

What accounts for this extraordinary moment of labor activity?

Not that workers enjoy striking. Even where unions have funds to help striking workers offset lost wages, they rarely make up even half of what’s forgone. Large corporations whose operations are hobbled by strikes often lay off other workers, as the big three and their suppliers are now threatening to do.

The reason workers go on strike is their expectation that the longer-term gains will be worth the sacrifices.

Today’s labor market continues to be tight, despite efforts by the Fed to slow the economy and make it harder for workers to get raises. So employers (like UPS) are more inclined to give ground to avoid a prolonged strike.

But something far more basic is going on here. As I travel around the country, I hear from average working people an anger and bitterness I haven’t heard for decades. It centers on several things.

The first is that wages have barely increased while corporate profits are in the stratosphere.

Average weekly non-supervisory wages, a measure of blue-collar earnings, were higher in 1969 (adjusted for inflation) than they are now.

The American dream of upward mobility has turned into a nightmare of falling behind. Whereas 90% of American adults born in the early 1940s were earning more than their parents by the time they reached their prime earning years, this has steadily declined. Only half of adults born in the mid-1980s are now earning more than their parents by their prime earning years.

Nearly one out of every five American workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck.

Meanwhile, executive compensation has gone through the roof. In 1965, CEOs of America’s largest corporations were paid, on average, 20 times the pay of average workers. Today, the ratio is over 398 to 1.

Not only has CEO pay exploded. So has the pay of top executives just below them. The share of corporate income devoted to compensating the five highest-paid executives of large corporations ballooned from an average of 5% in 1993 to more than 15% today.

Corporate apologists claim CEOs and other top executives are worth these staggering sums because their corporations have performed so well. They compare star CEOs to star baseball players or movie stars.

But most CEOs have simply ridden the stock market wave. Even if a company’s CEO had done nothing but play online solitaire, the company’s stock price would have soared.

Stock buybacks have also soared – a huge subsidy to investors that further tips the scales against working people. The richest 1% of Americans owns about half the value of all shares of stock. The richest 10%, over 90%.

Why don’t corporations devote more of their income to research and development, or to higher wages and benefits for average workers? In a word, greed.

Small wonder that unions are more popular than they’ve been in a generation. A Gallup poll published in August found that 67% of Americans approve of unions, the fifth straight year such support has exceeded the long-term polling average of 62%.

Joe Biden has pitched himself as the most pro-union president in recent history. More surprisingly, Republican politicians are trying to curry favor with union workers as well. Both parties know that much of the working class is up for grabs in 2024.

American workers still have little to no countervailing power relative to large American corporations. Unionized workers now comprise only 6% of private-sector workforce – down from over a third in the 1960s.

Which is why the activism of the UAW, the Writers Guild, Sag-Aftra, the Teamsters, flight attendants, Amazon warehouse workers and Starbucks workers is so important.

In a very real sense, these workers are representing all American workers. If they win, they’ll energize other workers, even those who are not unionized. They’ll mobilize some to form or join unions.

They’ll push non-union employers to raise wages and benefits out of a fear of becoming unionized if they don’t. They’ll galvanize other workers to stage wildcat strikes for better pay and working conditions.

For far too long, America’s top executives, Wall Street traders and biggest investors have siphoned off almost all the economic gains. This is unsustainable, economically and politically.

It’s not economically sustainable because the only way businesses can sell the goods and services American workers produce is if workers have enough money to buy them. If most gains continue to go to the top, the economy will become ever more susceptible to downdrafts and crashes.

Today’s mainstream media emphasize the feared negative effects of the current wave of strike on the US economy, forgetting that the wave of strikes in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s helped create the largest middle class the world had ever seen – the key to America’s postwar prosperity.

Stagnant wages and widening inequality are politically unsustainable because they foster anger and bitterness that’s easily channeled by demagogic politicians (re: Donald Trump and his enablers in the Republican party) into bigotry, paranoia, xenophobia and authoritarianism.

The current wave of strikes isn’t bad for America. It’s good for America.

Labor is not a “special interest”. It is, in a real sense, all of us.