Arizona Republican election official sues Kari Lake for defamation
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said he’s faced "violent vitriol" and death threats because of lies spread by Lake, an election denier who lost the 2022 governor's race.
June 22, 2023, 9:49 PM CDT / Source: Associated Press
By The Associated Press
PHOENIX — A top Republican election official in Arizona filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday against Kari Lake, who falsely claims she lost the 2022 race for governor because of fraud.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said he’s faced “violent vitriol and other dire consequences” because of lies spread by Lake, including death threats and the loss of friendships.
“Rather than accept political defeat, rather than get a new job, she has sought to undermine confidence in our elections and has mobilized millions of her followers against me,” Richer wrote in an op-ed in The Arizona Republic.
Lake is a former Phoenix television news anchor who quickly built an enthusiastic political following as a loyal supporter of former President Donald Trump and his lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. She went on to narrowly lose her own race for Arizona governor last year along with a lawsuit challenging the results.
Despite her losses in court, she continues to claim that Richer and other Maricopa County officials interfered in the election to prevent her from winning.
A spokesperson for Lake did not immediately respond to a request for comment. She is openly considering a run for U.S. Senate and is a leading contender to be Trump’s running mate in his 2024 presidential campaign.
The suit, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, names Lake, her campaign and her political fundraising group as defendants. In addition to unspecified monetary damages, Richer is seeking a court order declaring Lake’s statements false and requiring her to delete them from social media.
U.S. Supreme Court precedent sets a high bar for defamation cases brought by public officials like Richer. But Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News Channel over false claims about its vote-counting equipment resulted in damaging disclosures of internal Fox messages and a $787.5 billion settlement.
Richer’s lawyers wrote in their complaint that Lake has the right to criticize Richer but not to spread lies that bring him harm.
The suit takes issue with two claims in particular — that Richer intentionally had 19-inch ballot images printed on 20-inch paper, causing counting problems, and that he injected 300,000 bogus ballots. It details nearly three dozen times she made the claims publicly on social media or at rallies and news conferences.
The suit says Richer has faced death threats, including one that was prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department, and has spent thousands of dollars on home security. He said he and his wife have altered their routines and law enforcement has stepped up patrols around their home and workplaces.
“She has gone far outside of the bounds of protected free speech as guaranteed under the First Amendment and the Arizona Constitution,” Richer wrote in The Republic.
Delaware town seeks to give businesses right to vote
A rural Delaware town is seeking to allow local businesses the right to vote, causing concern that corporate interests could sway local elections.
Seaford, Del., with a population of about 7,000 in the state’s rural west, changed its charter in April to allow each business in the town one vote in local elections. For that measure to go into effect, it would have to be approved by the state legislature.
There are 234 businesses registered in the town. Only 340 people turned out to vote in the last municipal election on April 15, according to state records, raising questions about corporate influence on election results.
“‘One person, one vote’ is a long agreed upon principle that governs our elections. Proponents of this bill have tried to frame this as an innocuous way to give business owners more power, but in reality, this legislation has the power to transform our elections for the worse,” Common Cause Delaware Director Claire Snyder-Hall said in a statement.
The law would not allow a Seaford business owner to vote twice, but would allow a non-town resident to vote multiple times: once where they live and once in Seaford on behalf of their business.
Any business that wants a vote must own property in the town, allaying concerns related to the state’s lax business registration law.
Delaware is a hotspot for shell companies due to limited registration and tax requirements. The state has more registered businesses — more than 1.8 million, according to state records — than residents.
Seaford wouldn’t be the first town in Delaware to adopt such a measure, but the idea has come under criticism from voting rights advocates and progressives in the state legislature. Earlier this year, Delaware progressives proposed a law banning corporate voting in the state.
“People who snowbird in Florida do not get to vote in both Delaware and Florida. It does not work that way,” Snyder-Hall said in a legislature hearing in May.
Rehoboth Beach, Del., home to President Biden’s oceanfront estate, voted down a corporate voting measure in 2017, following protests from residents.
The measure is expected to be voted on before the legislative session ends June 30.
State Rep. Danny Short (R), the legislation’s sponsor, did not respond to a request for comment.
Corporations are people... Mitt Romney.. and SCOTUS.
There will be no playoffs. Can’t play with who we have out there and compounding it with garbage playcalling and worse execution. We don’t have good skill players on offense period. Browns 20 - Bears 17.
For the republicans and the republican party to continue to support a career criminal says all there needs to be said about what the republican party has become.
Evangelicals support a guy convicted of assaulting a woman along with stealing government documents. effing hypocrites.
I actually am not a member of any party. I try to pick the best person to lead the country.
There has never been a person more unfit than trump. If republicans continue to support the traitor. They will continue to lose.
This op-ed was penned by conservative judge Michael Luttig. Judge Luttig was appointed by George H.W. Bush, and served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. He was the person upon whom Mike Pence called for advice on how to handle his role in the Jan 6 transfer of power. Luttig advised Pence to perform as history now records he did on Jan 6. Luttig has worked for and in Republican administrations dating all the way back to the Ronald Reagan years. His curriculum vitae and professional bona fides are well-known and respected among the legal world's heavy hitters. In short- he's a serious man who has spent his entire career dealing with serious issues.
And today, The New York Times released this op-ed he sent to them.
Without further editorializing on the part of this poster, I'll simply drop this here- for your consideration.
______________________
It’s Not Too Late for the Republican Party By J. Michael Luttig June 25, 2023, 6:00 a.m. ET
Donald Trump this month became the first former or incumbent American president to be charged with crimes against the nation that he once led and wishes to lead again. He cynically calculated that his indictment would ensure that a riled-up Republican Party base would nominate him as its standard-bearer in 2024, and the last few weeks have proved that his political calculation was probably right.
The former president’s behavior may have invited charges, but the Republicans’ spineless support for the past two years convinced Mr. Trump of his political immortality, giving him the assurance that he could purloin some of the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets upon leaving the White House — and preposterously insist that they were his to do with as he wished — all without facing political consequences. Indeed, their fawning support since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol has given Mr. Trump every reason to believe that he can ride these charges and any others not just to the Republican nomination, but also to the White House in 2024.
In a word, the Republicans are as responsible as Mr. Trump for this month’s indictment — and will be as responsible for any indictment and prosecution of him for Jan. 6. One would think that, for a party that has prided itself for caring about the Constitution and the rule of law, this would stir some measure of self-reflection among party officials and even voters about their abiding support for the former president. Surely before barreling headlong into the 2024 presidential election season, more Republicans would realize it is time to come to the reckoning with Mr. Trump that they have vainly hoped and naïvely believed would never be necessary.
But by all appearances, it certainly hasn’t occurred to them yet that any reckoning is needed. As only the Republicans can do, they are already turning this ignominious moment into an even more ignominious moment — and a self-immolating one at that — by rushing to crown Mr. Trump their nominee before the primary season even begins. Building the Republican campaign around the newly indicted front-runner is a colossal political miscalculation, as comedic as it is tragic for the country. No assemblage of politicians except the Republicans would ever conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law. But that’s exactly what they’re planning.
The stewards of the Republican Party have become so inured to their putative leader, they have managed to convince themselves that an indicted and perhaps even convicted Donald Trump is their party’s best hope for the future. But rushing to model their campaign on Mr. Trump’s breathtakingly inane template is as absurd as it is ill fated. They will be defending the indefensible.
On cue, the Republicans kicked their self-defeating political apparatus into high gear this month. Almost as soon as the indictment in the documents case was unsealed, Mr. Trump jump-started his up-to-then languishing campaign, predictably declaring himself an “innocent man” victimized in “the greatest witch hunt of all time” by his “totally corrupt” political nemesis, the Biden administration. On Thursday, he added that it was all part of a plot, hatched at the Justice Department and the F.B.I., to “rig” the 2024 election against him.
From his distant second place, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida denounced the Biden administration’s “weaponization of federal law enforcement” against Mr. Trump and the Republicans. Mike Pence dutifully pronounced the indictment political. And both Governor DeSantis and Mr. Pence pledged — in a new Republican litmus test — that on their first day in office they would fire the director of the F.B.I., the Trump appointee Christopher Wray, obviously for his turpitude in investigating Mr. Trump. It fell to Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, to articulate the treacherous overarching Republican strategy: “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
There’s no stopping Republicans now, until they have succeeded in completely politicizing the rule of law in service to their partisan political ends.
If the indictment of Mr. Trump on Espionage Act charges — not to mention his now almost certain indictment for conspiring to obstruct Congress from certifying Mr. Biden as the president on Jan. 6 — fails to shake the Republican Party from its moribund political senses, then it is beyond saving itself. Nor ought it be saved.
There is no path to the White House for Republicans with Mr. Trump. He would need every single Republican and independent vote, and there are untold numbers of Republicans and independents who will never vote for him, if for no other perfectly legitimate reason than that he has corrupted America’s democracy and is now attempting to corrupt the country’s rule of law. No sane Democrat will vote for Mr. Trump — even over the aging Mr. Biden — when there are so many sane Republicans who will refuse to vote for Mr. Trump. This is all plain to see, which makes it all the more mystifying why more Republicans don’t see it.
When Republicans faced an 11th-hour reckoning with another of their presidents over far less serious offenses almost 50 years ago, the elder statesmen of the party marched into the Oval Office and told Richard Nixon the truth. He had lost his Republican support and he would be impeached if he did not resign. The beleaguered Nixon resigned the next day and left the White House the day following.
Such is what it means to put country over party. History tends to look favorably upon a party that writes its own history, as Winston Churchill might have said.
Republicans have waited in vain for political absolution. It’s finally time for them to put the country before their party and pull back from the brink — for the good of the party, as well as the nation.
If not now, then they must forever hold their peace.
This kinda thing is going on all over.. Look at Ohio for instance. In Ohio the rule for a majority is 50% + 1. Republicans want to change it to 60%.
When cornered a republican state rep said, yeah,we doing it to stop the potential of the Abortion issue being put before the people to vote.. For me this is just another way of saying we don't care what the majority says, we want it our way.
So basically in order to get something on the ballot, it's gotta have 60% of the vote to even be considered. Instead of 50% + 1. 59.99999% won't cut it anymore.
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
This op-ed was penned by conservative judge Michael Luttig.
Judge Luttig was appointed by George H.W. Bush, and served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006.
He was the person upon whom Mike Pence called for advice on how to handle his role in the Jan 6 transfer of power. Luttig advised Pence to perform as history now records he did on Jan 6.
Luttig has worked for and in Republican administrations dating all the way back to the Ronald Reagan years. His curriculum vitae and professional bona fides are well-known and respected among the legal world's heavy hitters. In short- he's a serious man who has spent his entire career dealing with serious issues.
This op-ed was penned by conservative judge Michael Luttig.
Judge Luttig was appointed by George H.W. Bush, and served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006.
He was the person upon whom Mike Pence called for advice on how to handle his role in the Jan 6 transfer of power. Luttig advised Pence to perform as history now records he did on Jan 6.
Luttig has worked for and in Republican administrations dating all the way back to the Ronald Reagan years. His curriculum vitae and professional bona fides are well-known and respected among the legal world's heavy hitters. In short- he's a serious man who has spent his entire career dealing with serious issues.
Those of you who claim to be Republicans or conservatives.. what kind of Republican ARE YOU...?... ...Christian conservatives..? ...or fiscal conservatives..? ...or Tea Party conservatives..? ...or Neo-conservatives..? ...are you Russian/communist conservatives..? ... MAGA Republican..? ...OR, are you Republicans/conservatives who are SIMPLY..."ANTI-AMERICAN REPUBLICANS"...? The truth is, Republicans change their beliefs and change their colors whenever it suites their "AGENDA". Defining what a Republican/conservative is today is nearly impossible..! ...
It's nice to see a true Republican and patriot say what needs to be said. Sadly when you look at the polls, Trump is leading in the Republican nomination race by more than a 2 to 1 margin over his closest rival, DeSantis. And in actuality when listening to his rhetoric, how much better would DeSantis be than trump? It's sad what the Republican party has turned into. Unfortunately for Judge Luttig, and for the country as far as that goes, I think he and the rest of us know it's already too late.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Much like yourself I'm not a fan of extremism on either side. My main issue with your comment is this part... "I think it is good for the country to go back and forth between conservative and progressive agendas."
There shouldn't be "conservative and liberal agendas". I understand there will be some differences in policies between the parties. That's always been the case. But as it is now, each side spends more time undoing what the previous administration has done because the agendas and ideologies outweigh everything else. No more is it about what's actually best for America. No longer is it about caring for each other. As of now it's more about attacking and labeling the other side than trying to put the country first. It's time I think for politicians as a whole to care more about America than acting like children on the playground.
Our nation can never move forward in any meaningful way when those in power spend the vast majority of their time and effort attacking each other instead of trying to run the country.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Luttig is a dinosaur republican. The party has evolved into his worst nightmare.
There will be no playoffs. Can’t play with who we have out there and compounding it with garbage playcalling and worse execution. We don’t have good skill players on offense period. Browns 20 - Bears 17.
I posted the same news story down under "Rino or Libtard" -- in another era when people might have longer attention spans and didn't get their view points from FaceBook, this would have been a huge story. It's a shockingindictment of what the GOP is. Half the party chasing the extreme fringe voters that Trump courted and played to - an element that previously no party 'had in it's pocket' - the other half wanting to move on from the worst and most unsavory 'would be King' POTUS we've ever had but not having the stones to do so publicly.
In lots of ways - people like Luttig and Liz Cheney and any Republican who wants to publicly stand up for integrity and speak openly of the nightmare that is Trump are currently outliers. I think there's probably quite a few more that share the same thoughts but are trying to work the machine so as to not have to publicly admit what a cluster flock Trump's presidency was and how royally he's contaminated the party.
Last edited by mgh888; 06/26/2306:26 PM.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
He's right. Republicans won't admit they have a problem. There was a new republican chairman in Colorado this year. First thing he says is Republicans don't have a brand problem. Meanwhile, Republicans are irrelevant in Colorado. Democrats have a super majority. While republicans keep on losing and refusing to admit they have a problem, we move towards single party rule. Democrats in Colorado are now free to move to the extreme left and there is nothing to stop them.
It's supposed to be hard! If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great!
What happens is power to the party. If one party gains power and say increases debt. And then loses it allows the next party to address the debt. Going back and forth is almost inevitable.
My hope is consensus on some things especially clean air and water. I am an environmentalist because long term that is what we leave behind for future generations.
Some laws that get passed should remain forever when it comes to areas of the country that have been set aside as wildlife sanctuaries.
We should leave behind a better place than what we inherited.
Boston.com Logo Boston.com New Hampshire Republican state senator charged with assaulting an employee at his restaurant Sen. Keith Murphy, of Manchester, turned himself in Monday and was charged with two counts of simple assault and one count of criminal threatening. By The Associated Press June 21, 2023 MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — A Republican state senator in New Hampshire has been charged with assault after an employee at a restaurant he owns said he slapped and spit on him during an argument.
Advertisement:
Keith Murphy, 47, of Manchester, N.H. a member of the New Hampshire Senate, is accused of spitting on and slapping an employee of Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester, which Murphy owns. – Manchester Police Department Sen. Keith Murphy, of Manchester, turned himself in Monday and was charged with two counts of simple assault and one count of criminal threatening. The employee told police in April that the argument happened at Murphy’s Taproom. According to a Manchester police news release, surveillance video also shows Murphy picking up a chair “in an aggressive manner.”
Murphy, who was released on personal recognizance bail, said Tuesday he is innocent of the charges and looks forward to his day in court.
“When the facts are known it will be clear that the police have charged the victim in this case,” he said in an email. “I will be defending my name, reputation, and business through the legal process.”
Murphy opened the Manchester restaurant in 2007 and another in Bedford in 2017. He is serving his first term in the Senate after several terms in the House.
1. According to a Manchester police news release, surveillance video also shows Murphy picking up a chair “in an aggressive manner.” 2. Murphy, who was released on personal recognizance bail, said Tuesday he is innocent of the charges and looks forward to his day in court.
This is the level of st00pid that amazes me. They got you on tape, fool. Old guy here: there was once a time when people actually felt shame when confronted with their misdeeds. Caught. Busted. Witnesses. Police blotter. Shame. Not so much any more.
and damn... spitting on someone- it just doesn't get any more low-class than that, I don't care who you are or what politics you represent.
This post could just as easily gone in the "WTH?" thread.
Former GOP Ohio House speaker sentenced to 20 years for role in $60M bribery scheme
CINCINNATI (AP) — Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for his role in the largest corruption scandal in state history.
The 64-year-old Republican appeared before U.S. District Judge Timothy Black, who meted out the punishment, about an hour after he and his wife Taundra arrived at the federal courthouse.
Householder had pleaded for mercy ahead of the sentencing — not on behalf of himself, but his wife of 40 years, sons and friends. His son Nathan and other friends and family were present in the courtroom.
Black instead delivered a blistering rebuke, accusing Householder of abusing voters’ trust.
“You were a bully with a lust for power who thought he was better than everyone else,” he said.
Householder also received one year of probation and showed little emotion before being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs as he was remanded into the custody of U.S. Marshals.
Householder and lobbyist Matt Borges, a former chair of the Ohio Republican Party, were both convicted in April of a single racketeering charge each, after a six-week trial. Borges is set to be sentenced Friday.
Jurors found that Householder orchestrated and Borges participated in a $60 million bribery scheme secretly funded by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. to secure Householder’s power, elect his allies, pass legislation containing a $1 billion bailout for two aging nuclear power plants owned by a FirstEnergy affiliate and then to use a dirty tricks campaign to stifle a ballot effort to overturn the bill.
Federal prosecutors had recommended Householder receive 16 to 20 years, holding in a sentencing memo that he “acted as the quintessential mob boss, directing the criminal enterprise from the shadows and using his casket carriers to execute the scheme.” That strategy, they said, gave Householder ”plausible deniability.”
His own attorneys had recommended just 12 to 18 months, reporting to the judge that he is “a broken man” who has been “humiliated and disgraced” by the ordeal of his widely reported arrest, high-profile prosecution and seven-week trial by jury.
Householder was one of Ohio’s most powerful politicians, a historically twice-elected speaker, before his indictment. After Householder’s arrest in July 2020, the Republican-controlled House ousted him from his leadership post, but he refused to resign for nearly a year on grounds he was innocent until proven guilty. In a bipartisan vote, representatives ultimately ousted him from the chamber in 2021 — the first such expulsion in Ohio in 150 years.
All told, five people and a dark money group have been charged so far for their roles in the scheme. A federal investigation remains ongoing.
During the trial, the prosecution called two of the people arrested — Juan Cespedes and Jeff Longstreth, who both pleaded guilty and are cooperating — to testify about political contributions they said were not ordinary, but rather bribes intended to secure passage of the bailout legislation. Generation Now, the 501(c) nonprofit through which much of the money flowed, also has pleaded guilty to racketeering.
Cespedes and Longstreth face up to six months in prison each under their plea deals. Neither has been sentenced.
The last person arrested, the late Statehouse superlobbyist Neil Clark, was heard on tape in the courtroom. Clark had pleaded not guilty before dying by suicide in March 2021.
All the alleged members of the conspiracy benefited personally from the scheme, using sums that an FBI agent described colloquially as “bags of cash” from FirstEnergy. Householder spent around $500,000 of FirstEnergy money to settle a business lawsuit, pay attorneys, deal with expenses at his Florida home and pay off credit card debt. Another $97,000 was used to pay staff and expenses for his 2018 reelection campaign.
Ex-Arizona House Speaker says he’s spoken to FBI in 2020 election probe
Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) revealed Wednesday that he has been interviewed by the FBI in connection with the 2020 election probe.
“I am hesitant to talk about any subpoenas, et cetera. But I have been interviewed by the FBI,” he told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins when asked whether he had been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating efforts to overturn the election results.
Bowers testified before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot last year, when he refuted former President Trump’s description of a phone call between them during the 2020 election and said he was pressured by the former president and his former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to overturn President Biden’s victory in Arizona.
Ahead of Bowers’s public testimony, Trump said that Bowers “told me that the election was rigged and that I won Arizona.”
Bowers said Wednesday that the interview with the FBI was held a couple of months ago and lasted four hours. When asked what new information he told the FBI, Bowers said there was “nothing new” that was not in the testimony.
“They seem to have a good grasp on all of the testimony that I’ve given and all of the interviews that I had given to the Arizona Republic and The Washington Post,” he said.
“They were very aware of the Jan. 6th committee testimony that I gave,” he added. “There may have been something that I said that was of interest. But I don’t remember anything standing out that had not been mentioned before.”
Bowers faced backlash after giving his public testimony, including being censured by the Arizona GOP and being called a traitor by members of his party. He lost his reelection bid to a Trump-backed challenger last August, just a couple of months after he gave his testimony.
If you are a GOP politician who wishes to be labeled a traitor and lose your job, all you have to do is tell the truth. Don't believe it? Just ask Rusty Bowers or Liz Cheney.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Aye these Moms For Liberty crazies are out of control. Imma need all the rugged white conservative male individuals to get their women in line like a real Alpha. Supposed to keep that day drinking nonsense in the house during the school year.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
Aye these Moms For Liberty crazies are out of control. Imma need all the rugged white conservative male individuals to get their women in line like a real Alpha. Supposed to keep that day drinking nonsense in the house during the school year.
This post above just won the internet.
Go home. Turn off your phones. Disconnect your interlink.
Republican attorneys general issue warning letter to Target about Pride merchandise
Seven U.S. state attorneys general sent a letter to Target on Wednesday warning that clothes and merchandise sold as part of the company's Pride month campaigns might violate their state's child protection laws.
Republican attorneys general from Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina signed the letter, writing that they were "concerned by recent events involving the company's 'Pride' campaign."
The attorneys said that they believed the campaign was a "comprehensive effort to promote gender and sexual identity among children," criticizing items like T-shirts that advertised popular drag queens and a T-shirt that said 'Girls Gays Theys.' They also highlighted merchandise with "anti Christian designs such as pentagrams, horned skulls and other Satanic products."
The letter also criticized Target for donating to GLSEN, an LGBTQ+ organization that works to end bullying in schools based on sexual and gender identity. The company stated in a 2020 guide that school staff should not tell parents about a child's gender or sexual orientation without consulting the child first, something the attorneys general said undermines "parents' constitutional and statutory rights."
The letter did not include any specific demands nor did it outline how they believe the campaign could violate child protection laws, but the attorneys general did suggest that Target might find it "more profitable to sell the type of Pride that enshrines the love of the United States."
The attorneys general also said they believed Target's Pride campaign threatened their financial interests, writing that Target leadership has a "fiduciary duty to our States as shareholders in the company" and suggesting that company officials "may be negligent" in promoting the campaign since it has negatively affected Target's stock prices and led to some backlash among customers.
Target shares have declined 12% this year, but the company is facing issues far beyond the backlash to its Pride collection, which included onesies, bibs, and T-shirts for babies and children. Like many retailers, the company is struggling with a pullback in consumer spending because of high inflation, which has weighed on its profits.
But Target is also facing scrutiny for its merchandise selection, including its Pride line, with its stores removing some of the items in May after facing threats. At the time, the company didn't specify which products were being removed, although Target has faced criticism online over swimsuits advertised as "tuck-friendly" with "extra crotch coverage" in its Pride collection.
"Target's management has no duty to fill stores with objectionable goods, let alone endorse or feature them in attention-grabbing displays at the behest of radical activists," the attorneys general wrote. "However, Target management does have fiduciary duties to its shareholders to prudently manage the company and act loyally in the company's best interests."
Backlash to the Pride campaign did involve threats of violence to Target stores and workers. Some merchandise was relocated to less popular areas of the store, and other pieces, including the swimsuits criticized by the attorneys general, were removed.
"Since introducing this year's collection, we've experienced threats impacting our team members' sense of safety and well-being while at work," Target said in a statement earlier in June. "Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior."
These guys are so screwed up in the head they make McCarthyism look like a balanced and thoughtful movement. And what's worse is there'll be many folks that think this is legit. 🤮🤮🤮
The more things change the more they stay the same.
A mob storms Tbilisi Pride Fest site, forcing the event’s cancellation
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Hundreds of opponents of gay rights on Saturday swarmed the site of an LGBT festival in the capital of the country of Georgia, vandalizing the stage, setting fires and looting the event’s bar.
Deputy Georgian Interior Minister Aleksandre Darakhvelidze said participants in the Tbilisi Pride Fest were safely evacuated from the scene. Festival organizers called on people not to come to the lakeside park where the event was to be held.
Georgian news media estimated about 5,000 people marched toward the site. Many of them waved Georgian flags and carried religious icons.
Animosity toward sexual minorities is strong in Georgia, which is predominantly Orthodox Christian, and some previous LGBT events have met violent disruptions.
Darakhvelidze said police tried to obstruct the protesters but could not hold all of them back.
But the event organizers criticized police as ineffectual, saying in a statement: “The police did not block the access road to the festival site in order to prevent an aggressive group. The police did not use proportional force against the attackers.”
Yeah, I guess I should have started an entire new thread about the ultra right from a global perspective and what they've become. Just like what just happened in Germany. It all just sounds so familiar......
A German county elected a far-right candidate for the first time since the Nazi era, raising concern
SONNEBERG, Germany (AP) — Mike Knoth is more than thrilled that a far-right populist party’s candidate recently won the county administration in his hometown in rural eastern Germany for the first time since the Nazi era.
The gardener despises the country’s established parties, he doesn’t trust the media and he feels there are too many migrants in the country. The far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, he hopes, will improve everything that’s not going well in his eyes in Sonneberg, which is in the southeastern state of Thuringia.
“I think the fact that so many people voted for Alternative for Germany has already given it legitimacy,” Knoth, 50, said during an interview this week as he walked his dog down the town’s deserted main shopping street.
But some in Sonneberg haven’t been won over by the AfD’s nationalist and antidemocratic rhetoric.
Margret Sturm, an optometrist whose family has been selling glasses in Sonneberg for almost 60 years, voiced her concern in an interview with a public television station.
“I told them that I don’t think it’s good to vote for the AfD. And whoever votes for the AfD must know that they have the Nazis in tow,” Sturm told The Associated Press in an interview in her store.
Sturm can barely fathom what happened after the interview was aired last week.
“We got hate mail, threatening phone calls, every minute. We were insulted by people we don’t even know, who don’t know us, who don’t know the business.”
The threats were so relentless that Sturm’s husband installed surveillance cameras inside the store.
But Sturm, 60, said she wouldn’t let anybody silence her.
“People here are afraid to take a stand against the AfD and that makes us even more worried than anything else.”
She said that other residents who oppose the AfD no longer want to voice their criticism openly.
“That’s exactly the kind of intimidation that basically results from the machinery of hatred and incitement and then sadly spreads. And that really worries me,” said Stephan Kramer, the head of Thuringia’s state domestic intelligence agency, told the AP at his office in the state capital, Erfurt.
Kramer has warned for years that the AfD’s Thuringia branch is particularly radical and put it under official surveillance more than two years ago as a “proven right-wing extremist” group.
It doesn’t bother Knoth that the AfD is under surveillance for its ties to far-right extremists.
“It was elected democratically, and I don’t find anything offensive about it,” he said.
Knoth expects the AfD to take a law-and-order approach, curb immigration and make Germany safe.
Tackling migration and fighting crime are hardly topics that belong to the job description of a local county administrator, but the AfD’s Robert Sesselmann campaigned successfully on these themes.
The runoff election in Sonneberg county last month pitted Sesselmann against center-right rival Jürgen Köpper. Official figures showed that Sesselmann won by 52.8% to 47.2%.
Sonneberg has a relatively small population of 56,800, but the win was a symbolic milestone for the AfD.
The unemployed Radoslaw Schneider, 39, also expects things to improve now that Sesselmann is in charge. He said that AfD “believes that something needs to be done also for the Germans,” and foreigners should no longer get preferential treatment — which will happen now with AfD in power, he thinks.
Alternative for Germany first entered the national parliament in 2017 following an anti-migrant campaign in response to a mass arrival of refugees in Europe.
Now a decade old, the party has been polling at record levels nationally with between 18% and 20% of support.
Center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition with the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, meanwhile, faces strong headwinds over high immigration, a plan to replace millions of home heating systems, and a reputation for infighting, while inflation remains high.
AfD’s Thuringia leader, Björn Höcke, has espoused revisionist views of Germany’s Nazi past. In 2018, he called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame” and called for Germany to perform a “180-degree turn” when it comes to the way it remembers its past.
In the early 1930s, Thuringia was one of the first power bases of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party.
Nowadays, the AfD appeals especially to people in the formerly communist and less prosperous eastern states, such as Thuringia.
The coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the influx of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees to Germany have also contributed to AfD’s success, Katharina König-Preuss, a state lawmaker with The Left party in Thuringia, said during an interview in the state parliament in Erfurt.
The AfD has been putting the blame for many problems squarely on immigrants or the national government, she said.
“I would say that a great deal of these racist narratives, which don’t match reality at all, have now caught on with a larger part of the East German population,” said König-Preuss, who is one of the most outspoken critics of the AfD and has received several death threats.
Scholz tried to play down the recent rise of the far-right populists.
“Germany has been a strong democracy for a long time now, since World War II,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin last week after being asked what he’s doing to prevent a resurgence of fascism 77 years since Hitler’s demise.
It was Germany’s Nazi rule, which led to the murder of 6 million European Jews and others, and more than 60 million dead in World War II, that gives Kramer sleepless nights.
“When I look at this development in Germany, the country where industrial mass murder was driven to perfection, then this is different from all other countries,” he said.
In autumn 2024, there will be state elections in Thuringia. The AfD leads in the polls with more than 30%.
If the AfD, which is currently still shunned by all other mainstream parties in Germany, becomes part of the state government, then Kramer, who is Jewish, will leave the country with his family.
“We’ve seen before in history where that can lead,” he said. “And I must honestly confess, I have no desire to wait for it to occur again.”
Yeah because it becomes political when republican leaders call for violent insurrection against our government over a fair election which trumps trespassing and petty burglaries every time.
A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. – Jackie Robinson
He acts like there isn't already a thread for that. After all these years you would think he would have figured out how this is supposed to work by now. And just think, it's the right who calls out whatabouts.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Mike Lindell Reveals MyPillow Has Lost $100M as He Auctions Off Equipment
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has claimed the company "lost $100 million" after major retailers stopped stocking its products in response to his vocal support for the discredited conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Due to its difficult financial situation, the company is currently selling hundreds of pieces of surplus equipment on the online auction site K-Bid, and subleasing manufacturing space.
Trump is continuing to insist the 2020 presidential contest was rigged against him, despite the claim being repeatedly rejected in court and by independent and even Republican-leaning legal experts. Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether Trump broke the law in his bid to overturn the election, including his role in the January 6, 2021, storming of Congress by Trump supporters.
Speaking to the Minnesota-based newspaper Star Tribune, Lindell said MyPillow was hit with a "massive, massive cancellation" after his election fraud claims.
"We lost $100 million from attacks by the box stores, the shopping networks, the shopping channels, all of them did cancel culture on us," he said.
Newsweek reached out to MyPillow and Mike Lindell via the contact form on the official MyPillow website for comment.
Lindell provided financial backing for legal efforts to reverse the 2020 election outcome and the MyPillow logo was included on TrumpMarch.com, a website promoting the January 6 rally that led to the riot at the U.S. Capitol.
MyPillow was later dropped by a number of major retailers, including Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl's.
In response, Lindell told Star Tribune that MyPillow had shifted its focus to direct sales via television and email marketing and is subleasing some of its former manufacturing space in Shakopee, Minnesota.
"We kind of needed a building and a half, but now with these moves we're making, we can get it down to our one building," he said.
Some 854 pieces of equipment are currently being sold by MyPillow on K-Bid, ranging from vans and forklifts to sewing machines and flat boxes. Lindell told the newspaper that the equipment will need to be replaced if the major retailers "ever come back."
Dominion Voting Systems is suing Lindell and a number of other Trump allies for $1.3 billion in response to unfounded claims that polling machines produced by the company were involved in rigging the 2020 election. Lindell has denied any wrongdoing.
In April, Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit caused by Fox News hosts and guests baselessly accusing the company of working to rig the election against Trump.
Responding to the verdict, Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said: "People across the political spectrum can and should disagree on issues, even of the most profound importance. But for our democracy to endure another 250 years and hopefully much longer, we must share a commitment to facts."
