Mike Lindell pushes election fantasies at CPAC — and accuses reporter of destroying the country

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MyPillow CEO turned 2020 election truther Mike Lindell, whom I have interviewed many times by phone, got his first chance to meet me in person on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering here. He did not waste the opportunity, accusing me of being “evil” and “destroying the country” 

While taking in the carnivalesque sights and of CPAC early on Sunday afternoon, I noticed Lindell by his booth on the conference floor. I approached and introduced myself, beginning to ask some of the questions he has avoided answering during our multiple phone conversations.

Much of the following exchange was captured on video and later posted by Raw Story. “I’m going to tell you something, and I’m going to tell everybody,” Lindell began. “In our country’s history, every single election official, if there’s fraud involved, there’s not a statute of limitations. They take the guy that won, and they put him back in office, and it’s just never happened at the presidential level.” (In fact, cases of courts overturning certified elections at any level are vanishingly rare. At the federal level, it is likely a legal and constitutional impossibility.) Continue reading.

US to evacuate Afghans who assisted US military

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The United States is formally launching “Operation Allies Refuge” to evacuate Afghans who helped U.S. troops during the 20-year war and are facing threats to their lives from the Taliban, the Biden administration announced Wednesday.

Flights out of Afghanistan for those who are already in the process of obtaining special immigrant visas (SIVs) will start in the last week of July, a senior administration official said in a statement.

No further details on when the evacuations will start will be released, the statement said, citing “operational security.” Officials also did not say where the Afghans would be sent. Continue reading.

Conservative legal expert explains why Trump’s latest ‘frivolous lawsuits’ show his ‘appalling constitutional ignorance’

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Last week in a federal court in his adopted state of Florida, former President Donald Trump filed a civil lawsuit against three major tech companies: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, claiming that all them of them have violated the 1st Amendment rights he enjoys under the United States Constitution. Law professor Kimberly Wehle, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on July 14, explains why Trump’s “frivolous lawsuits” have absolutely no merit.

Following the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building — an insurrectionist attack that Trump incited, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, arch-conservative Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and others who voted to impeach him — Trump’s Twitter and Facebook accounts were suspended. And his YouTube channel was suspended as well.

Wehle, who teaches law at the University of Baltimore and is a former assistant federal prosecutor, explains, “Given his utter ignorance about the U.S. Constitution, it remains shocking that Donald Trump was — as recently as half a year ago! — charged with preserving, protecting and defending it. The latest evidence of his appalling constitutional ignorance comes in the form of a series of frivolous lawsuits that reveal an embarrassingly distorted understanding of our national charter. At least this legal mess has one silver lining: It’s an opportunity for another mini-lesson in basic civics.” Continue reading.

Top credit rating agency warns Trump’s ‘failure to concede’ and GOP voter suppression could tank US AAA status

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One of the “Big Three” credit reporting agencies that rate government bonds and securities on Tuesday issued a warning that the U.S. could lose its coveted AAA status over issues currently hanging over American democracy.

In a “rating action commentary” published just minutes after markets closed Fitch Ratings said it “has affirmed the United States’ Long-Term Foreign Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at ‘AAA,'” but warned: “The Rating Outlook is Negative.”

Why? Continue reading.

Biden takes big break from habit of avoiding Trump talk

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President Biden has made a habit of not talking too much about his predecessor, former President Trump.  

That changed big time on Tuesday, when Biden gave a spirited voting rights speech in Philadelphia. Biden didn’t mention Trump by name but repeatedly criticized the man he unseated as president, slamming him for “the big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. 

“We continue to see an example of human nature at its worst. Something darker and more sinister,” Biden said in remarks from the Philadelphia speech directed toward Trump and his allies.  Continue reading.

REVEALED: Cops blame Antifa for Oregon wildfires — and approvingly share Proud Boys propaganda

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Emails revealed police continued blaming wildfires last year in Oregon on anti-fascist activists after the FBI knocked down those rumors.

Messages obtained by the watchdog group Property of the People show a Washington sheriff and other law enforcement officials pushed those rumors last summer to pin the blame for those wildfires on Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrators, although federal investigators found no evidence that was true, reported The Daily Beast.

“One of the methods Antifa is using to start fire’s, is to take a mason jar with tinder placed inside the jar, put it in brush with the lid open, so the hot sun light will create a slow start which allows them to be out of the area before the smoke appears [sic],” wrote Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer to officials throughout Washington state. Continue reading.

Top Tennessee health official says she was fired after efforts to get teens vaccinated

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“I am not a political operative, I am a physician who was, until today, charged with protecting the people of Tennessee … against preventable diseases,” Dr. Michelle Fiscus wrote.

Tennessee officials have fired the state’s top vaccination official, who had been facing scrutiny from Republican state lawmakers over her department’s outreach efforts to vaccinate teenagers against Covid-19.

Dr. Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician, was fired Monday as the medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health.

In an interview with MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Tuesday, Fiscus said her job was to roll out the Covid-19 vaccine “across the state and to make sure that that was done equitably and in a way that any Tennessean who wanted to access that vaccine would be able to get one.” Continue reading.

How Tucker Carlson became the voice of White grievance

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Tucker Carlson huddled in a low-ceilinged dungeon that had served as a holding pen for Africans bound for enslavement in the United States. It was a July day in 2003 in Ghana, and Carlson stood alongside some of America’s most prominent civil rights leaders.

The conservative commentator, who at the time co-hosted the CNN show “Crossfire,” walked through the memorial, where a guide told how the shackled Africans who did not perish during the voyage were sold as human chattel in America.

The civil rights leaders prayed, cried and sang “We Shall Overcome.” They peered toward the sea from the Door of No Return. But Carlson seemed strangely detached, according to two of the civil rights leaders who were present. Continue reading.

Harris emerges as main GOP foil on campaign trail

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Republicans on the campaign trail are zeroing in on Vice President Harris as their political target of choice as the midterm battle draws closer.

The attacks against Harris come as Republicans have struggled to define President Biden, who enjoys higher approval ratings than his vice president and who has largely managed to sidestep any major controversies so far.

Harris, on the other hand, has drawn intense and persistent criticism over everything from her handling of the surge of migrants from Central America to her recent suggestion that voter ID laws make voting “almost impossible” for people in rural areas. Continue reading.