#American interference

[alwaysbewoke]

this zionist cuck is always getting bodied on his own show lmaooo

#Lebanon's economic struggles #American politics #Middle East turmoil #geopolitical interference #Lebanon #impoverished #struggling country #American invasion #interference #Taliban #Middle East #American interference

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dennis Draughon, CBC

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 2, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 03, 2024

Almost six months have passed since President Joe Biden asked Congress to appropriate money for Ukraine in a national security supplemental bill. At first, House Republicans said they would not pass such a bill without border security. Then, when a bipartisan group of senators actually produced a border security provision for the national security bill, they killed it, under orders from former president Trump. 

In February the Senate passed the national security supplemental bill with aid for Ukraine without the border measures by a strong bipartisan vote of 70 to 29. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) cheered its passage, saying: “The national security bill passed by the Senate is of profound importance to America’s security.”

The measure would pass in the House by a bipartisan vote, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has refused to take it up, acting in concert with Trump. 

On March 24, on Washington Week, foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum said: “Trump has decided that he doesn’t want money to go to Ukraine… It's really an extraordinary moment; we have an out-of-power ex-president who is in effect dictating American foreign policy on behalf of a foreign dictator or with the interests of a foreign dictator in mind.” 

On Thursday, March 28, Beth Reinhard, Jon Swaine, and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post reported that Richard Grenell, an extremist who served as Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, has been traveling around the world to meet with far-right foreign leaders, “acting as a kind of shadow secretary of state, meeting with far-right leaders and movements, pledging Trump’s support and, at times, working against the current administration’s policies.”

Grenell, the authors say, is openly laying the groundwork for a president who will make common cause with authoritarian leaders and destroy partnerships with democratic allies. Trump has referred to Grenell as “my envoy,” and the Trump camp has suggested he is a frontrunner to become secretary of state if Trump is reelected in 2024. 

Applebaum was right: it is extraordinary that we have a former president who is now out of power running his own foreign policy. 

For most of U.S. history, there was an understanding that factionalism stopped at the water’s edge. Partisans might fight tooth and nail within the U.S., but they presented a united front to the rest of the world. That understanding was strong enough that it was not for nearly a half century that we had definitive proof that in 1968 Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon had launched a secret effort to thwart incumbent president Lyndon Baines Johnson’s peace initiative to end the Vietnam War; Nixon had tried very hard to hide it. 

But the era of hiding attempts to undermine foreign policy ended in 2015, when 47 Republican senators openly warned Iranian officials that they would destroy any agreement Iran made with then-president Barack Obama, a Democrat, over nuclear weapons as soon as a Republican regained the White House. At the time it sparked a firestorm, although the senators involved could argue that they, too, should be considered the voice of the government.

It was apparently a short step from the idea that it was acceptable to undermine foreign policy decisions made by a Democratic president to the idea that it was acceptable to work with foreign operatives to change foreign policy. In late 2016, Trump’s then national security advisor Michael Flynn talked to Russian foreign minister Sergey Kislyak about relieving Russia of U.S. sanctions. Now, eight years later, Trump is conducting his own foreign policy, and it runs dead against what the administration, the Pentagon, and a majority of senators and representatives think is best for the nation.  

Likely expecting help from foreign countries, Trump is weakening the nation internationally to gain power at home. In that, he is retracing the steps of George Logan, who in 1798 as a private citizen set off for France to urge French officials to court popular American opinion in order to help throw George Washington’s party out of power and put Thomas Jefferson’s party in. 

Congress recognized that inviting foreign countries to interfere on behalf of one candidate or another would turn the United States into a vassal state, and when Logan arrived back on U.S. shores, he discovered that Congress had passed a 1799 law we now know as the Logan Act, making his actions a crime. 

The law reads: “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Trump’s interference in our foreign policy is weakening Ukraine, which desperately needs equipment to fight off Russia’s invasion. It is also warning partners and allies that they cannot rely on the United States, thus serving Russian president Vladimir Putin’s goal of fracturing the alliance standing against Russian aggression.  

Today, Lara Seligman, Stuart Lau, and Paul McLeary of Politico reported that officials at the meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) foreign ministers in Brussels on Thursday are expected to discuss moving the Ukraine Defense Contact Group from U.S. to NATO control. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group is an organization of 56 nations brought together in the early days of the conflict by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and then–Joint Chiefs chair General Mark Milley to coordinate supplying Ukraine. 

Members are concerned about maintaining aid to Ukraine in case of a second Trump presidency. 

Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon and NATO official, told the Politico reporters: “There’s a feeling among, not the whole group but a part of the NATO group, that thinks it is better to institutionalize the process just in case of a Trump re-election. And that’s something that the U.S. is going to have to get used to hearing, because that is a fear, and a legitimate one.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richarson #NATO #foreign policy #history #MAGA Republican #authoritarianism #war in Ukraine #Putin #Russian aggression #trump interference in foreign policy #trump undermining us foreign policy #Logan Act

[jareckiworld]

Linda Besemer — Wave Interference (acrylic on canvas panel, 2019)

#Linda Besemer #american art #optical art #queer art #wave interference

[the-halfling-prince]

✨Lindsey Bergman✨

#Idk what scooters look like #Lindsey as a concept is low key so funny to me #Listen. Listen #Pleasant Company really went: Let's make a modern character. Like the girl of today dolls but with like her own character #Oh what's her story gonna be about? Is it going to feature modern issues? Since it won't be about historical events? #Nah she's just gonna be a menace to society #Local girl destroys elementary school pet parade; vandalizes private property; interferes with the private lives of teachers #and ruins her brother's bar mitzvah. More at 6. #my posts #my art #american girl

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

House Republicans are working on new legislation to prevent foreign nationals from influencing America’s political process, Axios has learned.

Why It Matters: The last two presidential elections have been colored by allegations that foreign influence helped the GOP.

• Now House Republicans are trying to flip to script and draw attention to foreign donations to Democrat-aligned and progressive nonprofit organizations.

• Non-U.S. citizens can’t contribute to candidates, campaigns, or super PACs, but they can give to 501(c)(4) organizations, which are tax-exempt groups that can engage in general issue advocacy, and support state ballot initiatives.

Driving The News: Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) chair of the House Administration Committee, is introducing legislation to ban such groups from contributing to political committees for four years if they accept foreign donations. He also wants to bar foreign nationals from giving to state ballot initiatives.

• “American elections are for American citizens,” Steil told Axios, ahead of a hearing his committee is holding in Atlanta today on election integrity. “Yet foreign nationals still find ways to influence American elections.”

• “The American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act will close loopholes that foreign nationals are exploiting to funnel money to super PACs or ballot initiatives,” he said.

• His hearing will draw on a new report from a conservative group, the Americans for Public Trust, which tries to show how Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire, has influenced U.S. elections and policy through two nonprofits he controls: The Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund.

• “It’s time for Congress to close the foreign influence loophole that allows foreign dark money to flood the American electoral and political system," said Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust.

The Other Side: "The Berger Action Fund does not support or oppose political candidates or parties, or otherwise engage in political campaigns," said Marneé Banks, a spokesperson for the Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund.

• "Berger complies with all rules governing its activities and has established strict policies prohibiting funding from being used for get-out-the-vote or voter registration," she said.

• "We also support increasing transparency and accountability in our campaign finance system through the DISCLOSE Act."

The Big Picture: The combination of artificial intelligence, social media and unregulated spending will make the 2024 presidential election vulnerable to foreign interference on behalf of both parties.

• Malicious foreign actors, including Russia’s Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, have boasted about how they ran influence campaigns in America during the last presidential campaign — and plan to do it again.

• Meanwhile, big tech companies are relaxing some of their policies designed to curb misinformation around COVID-19 and the 2020 election, making 2024 more of a free-for-all on social media.

• State and local election officials can work to safeguard the voting process, but in a free and open society it’s close to impossible to prevent foreign actors from trying to persuade Americans via open — or clandestine — influence campaigns.

Zoom In: Conservative groups are zeroing in on Wyss as a poster child for how wealthy foreign billionaires can influence U.S. elections, alleging that he has pumped $475 million into the U.S. political system.

• In 2021 alone, his Berger Action Fund gave some $72 million to a dozen different nonprofit organizations, including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which advocates for progressive causes, according to the Associated Press and tax filings.

• Those 501(c)(4) nonprofits, like the Sixteen Thirty Fund, can give directly to superPACs that support the Democratic agenda, the New York Times has reported.

• "The problem is that c4's are a bit of a black box when it comes to campaign finance laws," said Saurav Ghosh, the director of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based nonpartisan watchdog group.

Flashback: Republicans and Democrats have been hit with big fines for accepting foreign money.

• Last year the Federal Election Commission fined Barry Zekelman, a Canadian billionaire, $975,000 for steering some $1.75 million to a pro-Trump super PAC in 2018.

• In 2019, the FEC issued $940,000 in fines to the super PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential bid and a Chinese-owned corporation that made illegal donations to it.

• In 2002, the FEC imposed $719,000 in fines in response to a 1996 Democratic Party fundraising scandal involving donations from China, Korea and other foreign sources.

#us politics #news #Axios #2023 #foreign lobbying #foreign election interference #us house of representatives #republicans #conservatives #super pacs #Rep. Bryan Steil #House Administration Committee #American Confidence in Elections Act #ballot initiatives #Americans for Public Trust #Hansjörg Wyss #The Wyss Foundation #Berger Action Fund #Sixteen Thirty Fund #the new york times #federal election commission

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

The hits keep coming🤦‍♂️

#election interference #eric holder #trump is innocent #free trump #jack smith #get trump #american politics #political persecution #David Archer #biden crime family #banana republic #byron donalds #larry kudlow #Youtube

[earthdoves]

if no one got me then my philosophy classmate has got my back but only for very specific things that align w his own belief system

#he and i are like girlmutuals the way he always turns up to like my 1am ✝ ig stories and 7am hateful story on american interference

[usergrantaire]

i don’t know how to explain to americans that they should also care about foreign policy

#like it or not. they have their grubby hands in global south countries #why do you think they have so many military bases worldwide #the cia is personally responsible for a clusterfuck of political issues in my own country #begging. BEGGING the vote blue no matter who cult to understand #that you’re not going to enact any meaningful change by voting blue every time #in fact they’ll have no incentive to change #because your vote is guaranteed every time anyway right? #you have to make them feel legitimately threatened by threatening to withhold your vote #maybe then they’d actually feel compelled to make better changes #idk. just my two cents as someone whose country is still feeling the aftermath of american interference even now #so anyway. fuck biden <3 #cutting off funding to the unrwa at this crucial moment is complicity in genocide. #if you think this is about you… it probably is. please reflect on your personal politics #kei.txt

[wren-der]

Oh Yeah! About time.

#Trump #MAGA #Election Interference #American Politics #FAFO

[lasdelaintuicion]

americans need to go extinct for real

#YOU armed the cartels and gave them a demand for drugs #and AMERICANS are the ones distributing and trafficking once they get to the border #not even getting into the fact that the corrupt alt right politicians that have been in cohoots with the cartels have always been backed #by the US lol #they act like there's never been any interference at all lmfao when they're STILL keeping them in power #but 1 slightly less corrupt gov gets elected to the suffering of western corporations and now they're worried about corrupt politicians lol #the war on drugs is another american invasion<3 #and if cartel leaders are finally getting jailed then follow up with the people who armed them #and funded them #aka rich americans and your government<3 #who made drug culture the fucking norm for all social classes in america #and whose still putting so much money into keeping corrupt alt right politicians in LATAM

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Daniel Boris, Vladimir Putin's Nesting Dolls

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 8, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 09, 2024

On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.” 

Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”

Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected. 

Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.” 

Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.

Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.

Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”

Trump’s MAGA loyalists in the House of Representatives have held up funding for Ukraine for six months. Although a national security supplemental bill that would fund Ukraine has passed the Senate and would pass the House if it were brought to the floor, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. The House returns to work tomorrow after a two-week recess but is so backed up on work that Johnson is not expected to bring up the Ukraine measure this week.  

Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, told the Washington Post’s Belton and Menn: “The impact of the Russian program over the last decade…is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid…. They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.” 

The Trump loyalists echoing Russia who have taken control of the Republican Party appear to be hardening into a phalanx around the former president, but even as they do so, Trump himself appears to be crumbling. 

In the week since Trump posted a $175 million appeals bond, halting the seizure of his properties to satisfy the $454 million judgment against him and the Trump Organization, multiple problems with that bond have come to light. It is possible the bond isn’t worth anything at all, and New York attorney general Letitia James has filed papers to require Trump’s lawyers or the bond underwriter to show that it’s good within ten days. A hearing is set for April 22.

Meanwhile, Trump’s trial for election interference in 2016, when he paid people with damaging information to keep quiet before the election and falsified business records to hide those payments, is set to begin on April 15. Evidently very worried about this trial, Trump has already tried eight times to delay it until after November’s election, and today his lawyers tried yet again by requesting a delay so he could fight to get the trial moved to a different venue, but an appeals judge rejected the attempt.

Aside from Trump’s personal problems as a presidential candidate, the Republicans face strong headwinds because of their deeply unpopular opposition to abortion rights. Trump has openly bragged about being the instrument for ending the rights recognized in the United States since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Since then, abortion bans are galvanizing opposition, and the Republicans are trying to find a message that can bring back angry voters without antagonizing the antiabortion white evangelicals who make up their base. 

After months of waffling on the issue, Trump today released a video trying to thread that needle by echoing the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump said in the video that states will decide the issue for themselves, a statement that simply reflects the Dobbs decision. 

This was a dodge. In the video, Trump appealed to the antiabortion loyalists by telling the ghoulish lie that women are “executing” their babies even after birth. He also ignored that Republicans are already calling for a national ban, extremist antiabortion Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has tried to take the common abortion drug mifepristone off the national market by challenging its FDA approval, and legislatures in many Republican-dominated states are refusing to implement the will of the people to protect abortion rights even after they have voted for such protections. 

Still, antiabortion leaders, including Mike Pence, immediately slammed Trump’s statement.

The video did, though, make an enormously interesting and unintended point: Trump is communicating with voters outside his carefully curated bubble almost exclusively through videos, even on a topic as important as abortion. At rallies, his speeches have become erratic and wandering, with occasional slurred words, and observers have wondered how he would present to more general audiences. It appears that his team has concluded that he will not present well and that general audiences must see him in carefully curated settings, like this apparently heavily edited video.

The Trump takeover of the Republican National Committee (RNC) also appears to be in trouble. This weekend, Trump claimed to have raised $50 million in a single night from billionaires, but that number is conveniently a little more than double the new record of what President Joe Biden raised at an event last week with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and it is long past time for everyone to stop believing anything Trump says about money. 

More to the point, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported today that the RNC’s aggressive purge of the staff to guarantee that positions are held only by Trump loyalists means that “the RNC has been left without people with deep knowledge of election operations at the Republican party’s central committee.” Lowell notes this lack is especially apparent on the RNC’s data team, which is being moved from Washington, D.C., to Palm Beach, Florida, near Mar-a-Lago.

And yet Trump loyalists continue to block aid to Ukraine, threatening the existence of the rules-based international order that has helped to prevent war since World War II. Last week, even Trump’s former secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned Speaker Johnson against “abandoning our Allies at this time of great need, when they are staring down enemies of the free world.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political cartoons #Daniel Boris #nesting dolls #Putin #russia #collusion #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Ukraine #war in Ukraine #House Republicans #Russian Propaganda #election 2024 #election interference #funding for Ukraine

[bestial4ngel]

Gotdamn, my younger sister moves to the US and all it took was a grand total of FOUR MONTHS living there for her to decide she wants to JOIN THE MILITARY?????

#AND THE FBI ????????? #GIRL…. #the amount of really fucking pointed killing civilians/children in other countries and shooting black ppl comments that I wanted to make #like okay so let me get this straight…. 4 years ago you were blm and now you want to join the POLICE? #IN THE US?!?!? #she just wants to join up for funzies too like she goes ‘I’d want to do it so I’d have experience for my job in the fbi’ and I’m like ?? so #you wanna do policing then? and she says ‘well like behind the scenes stuff’ so I’m like ‘so…. forensics?’ and she says yes so I point out- #that forensics requires university WAY more than military experience and she’s like ‘yeah but I’d want to anyway’ like girl wdym?! #lmfao they just had veterans day in the US too like hello?? you saw the traumatized vets and was like ‘yep I want that to be me’?? #not to mention how the american military does fucked up shit overseas -_- #like bffrrr !!!?!? #also gotdamn I was thinking she’ll just realize how fucked up it is when she learns about colonization & US interference in other countries- #BUT THEN ​I remembered she probably won’t even learn about the messed up stuff they do cuz she lives in the US now !! 💀 #me talking

[criptochecca]

Get on our level

#watch me link this back to american interference

[solitarelee]

Yesterday I learned the reason why I can never get any medication at hospitals in America even though I'm (1) an extremely sick person, it's in my chart doctor you can check, and (2) maybe the opposite of an opioid chaser. I hate opioids they make me feel like SHIT, is that the written guidelines for spotting """opioid use disorder""" include presenting symptoms atypical for their age bracket. So, yknow. Me. And other disabled/chronically ill people. They've just got the guidelines written to automatically exclude anyone who's sick in an unusual way, which you might notice is probably a massive portion of people who need pain killers.

I've been prescribed opioids maybe four times in my entire life, btw, which is also in my records, but that doesn't matter. I've got kidney stones which is weird for someone my age (but not WEIRD if you look at my fucking CHART i have a HISTORY of them) so I come in with kidney stones and they're automatically sus and nervous about prescribing anything for pain, which is how I wind up spending six hours alone in an ER screaming in pain.

#solitaretalk #i was thinking abt it bc the last time I went to the ER all my pain pills (otc) wore off while I was in there #and i started uhhhhhhhhhh trying to claw the insides of my ears out #and THAT was the point where the dr was willing to give me something for pain #but the thing is!!!!!! #i did need pain meds but they didn't have to be opioids!!! even just throwing me 600mg of ibuprofen would have HELPED #but they don't do that in case you wind up needing more severe meds that the ibuprofen would interfere with #BUT ALSO they DON'T WANT to GIVE YOU THOSE and it's just!!! #it's a clusterfuck and at the end of the day we all get to be in pain and fentanyl gets to be the leading cause of death in young americans

[thetourguidebarbie]

Feel free to watch the sentencing hearing of Sidney Powell.

#sidney powell #us politics #american politics #politics #election interference #angie talks politics #Youtube

[commonsensecommentary]

“Although our nation’s elites and insiders are convinced we are stupid sheep who must be manipulated and lied to for our own good, our citizens are surprisingly sophisticated and sound of mind and judgment.”

#democracy #biden #american history #democrats #donald trump #election fraud #election integrity #election interference #election 2016 #election 2020 #election 2024 #department of justice #joe biden #politics #voter anger #voting