Author: Data and Research Manager

Trump’s bizarre theory of how he’ll be reinstated as president is ‘very, very hard’ to explain: NYT reporter

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New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Tuesday told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that former President Donald Trump is still obsessed with being “reinstated” as president, although she struggled in explaining how Trump thinks it’s going to happen.

Haberman started off by saying Trump was “laser-focused” on the widely criticized “audits” that his supporters are conducting in numerous swing states.

Once the results of these “audits” are released, Haberman claims, Trump believes that America will have no choice but to let him back into the White House. Continue reading.

Unearthed video reveals GOP’s Ron Johnson’s profane and conspiratorial rant at GOP lunch

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On Tuesday, CNN’s KFILE unearthed comments made by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) at a meeting with the Republican Women of Greater Wisconsin luncheon in Wauwatosa, in which he spun profanity-laced conspiracy theories denying climate science.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change is — as Lord Monckton said — bullsh*t,” the Wisconsin Republican said, referring to British conservative climate change denier Lord Christopher Monckton. “By the way, it is!”

Johnson went onto lament that “we’re killing ourselves” with measures to address climate change, and went on to call them “a self-inflicted wound.” Continue reading.

Ex-Florida county tax collector Joel Greenberg asks judge to delay sentencing for 90 days

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ORLANDO, Fla. — Former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg has asked a judge to delay his sentencing on six federal charges, citing his ongoing cooperation with authorities as part of a plea deal he struck in May.

Greenberg’s sentencing is currently slated for Aug. 19. But in a motion filed Tuesday, his attorney, Fritz Scheller, asked to delay the hearing for 90 days.

Scheller said his client has been cooperating with the government on an ongoing basis, having already participated in “a series of” interviews, known as proffers, with federal authorities. Continue reading.

Minnesota halts school lunch shaming over student debts

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Federal program covers free meals to June 2022. 

State leaders hope to put a halt once and for all to incidents of lunch shaming in Minnesota schools by making clear which actions will not be tolerated when students fall behind on lunch payments.

No pulling back of meals, no affixing of stickers or pins, and certainly no in-your-face throwaways.

The details are part of a new state education finance bill passed last week that put a finer point on 2014 legislation saying schools could not “demean or stigmatize” students over unpaid lunch debts. Continue reading.

Trump friend and golfing partner charged with misdemeanor indecent assault

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A friend and golfing partner of former president Donald Trump — who gained notoriety for using that friendship to lobby Trump’s administration — was charged with indecent assault last week in Pennsylvania on allegations he groped one of his dental patients, according to court documents.

Albert Hazzouri Jr., a 65-year-old dentist from Scranton, Pa., is best known for a 2017 note he wrote Trump, using stationery from Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago Club, to push a proposal for an oversight committee on dental spending.

The note, which addressed Trump as “Dear King,” came to symbolize the way that Trump blended business with government, giving his customers and friends an audience to lobby for their private causes. Continue reading.

Russia ‘Cozy Bear’ Breached GOP as Ransomware Attack Hit

Russian government hackers breached the computer systems of the Republican National Committee last week, around the time a Russia-linked criminal group unleashed a massive ransomware attack, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The government hackers were part of a group known as APT 29 or Cozy Bear, according to the people. That group has been tied to Russia’s foreign intelligence service and has previously been accused of breaching the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and of carrying out a supply-chain cyberattack involving SolarWinds Corp., which infiltrated nine U.S. government agencies and was disclosed in December.

It’s not known what data the hackers viewed or stole, if anything. The RNC has repeatedly denied that it was hacked. “There is no indication the RNC was hacked or any RNC information was stolen,” spokesman Mike Reed said. Continue reading.

Virginia ‘Bible study’ group was cover for violent militia plans, prosecutors say

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After storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, a Northern Virginia man began forming his own militia-like group in the D.C. suburbs and building up a supply of explosives under the guise of a Bible study group, according to federal prosecutors.

Fi Duong, 27, appeared in court Friday and was released to home confinement pending trial, over the objections of prosecutors who sought stricter terms. According to the court record, at the time of his arrest he had several guns, including an AK-47, and the material to make 50 molotov cocktails. Details of the case — one of the first if not the first in which the government publicly disclosed it had someone undercover to continue monitoring a Jan. 6 defendant — were made public Tuesday.

An attorney for Duong declined to comment. Continue reading.

Six months after the Capitol riot, Biden says U.S. survived ‘an existential crisis.’

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President Biden issued a statement on Tuesday recognizing the six-month mark of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, declaring that even after the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries, the tenets of democratic society remained secure.

“Not even during the Civil War did insurrectionists breach our Capitol, the citadel of our democracy,” Mr. Biden said in his statement. “But six months ago today, insurrectionists did.”

The president said the riot had “posed an existential crisis and a test of whether our democracy could survive.” Continue reading.

Risks rise as vaccination gap with Trump counties grows wider

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A stark divide in the vaccination rates of blue and red states has grown more prominent in recent months, imperiling a full national recovery.

While a partisan divide fueled in large part by former President Trump has been a defining characteristic of COVID-19 in the United States, the gap is becoming more worrisome once again with the deadly delta variant.

According to data across 2,415 counties analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the vaccination gap between counties that voted for Trump in the 2020 election and those that voted for President Biden has nearly doubled in less than two months.  Continue reading.

Republicans weigh ‘cracking’ cities to doom Democrats

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GOP officials from D.C. and the states are debating how aggressively to break up red-state cities to maximize the party’s advantage in redistricting.

Kentucky’s GOP congressional delegation entered the redistricting cycle with an unusual request for their state legislative counterparts: leave Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth alone.

The group, which includes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, wants the state’s Republican supermajority to refrain from cracking Yarmuth’s Louisville-based district into three, even if that might deliver them control of all of Kentucky’s six House seats.

“It’s been my experience in studying history that when you get real cute, you end up in a lawsuit — and you lose it. And then the courts redraw the lines,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.). “So my advice would be to keep Louisville blue.” Continue reading.