Archive for category: MOTHER JONES

A political force propelled by irrationality and a dangerous lie, led by a man who tried to overturn a national election, who incited violence to block the peaceful transfer of power, and who has promoted the lunatic QAnon conspiracy theory and engaged in antisemitism, is poised to take control of the House of Representatives.

Though Republicans failed to crush Democrats across the land in the midterm elections—they lost most of the key gubernatorial and secretary-of-state battles and were defeated in critical Senate races—they appear likely to end up with a narrow majority in the House. (It may be days before the dust fully settles.) Democrats have cheered the overall election results; the widespread predictions of a GOP romp that included a massive win in the House did not come true. Yet even though many Trumpist challengers running in statewide elections lost, the House returns, as of now, suggest that a party fueled by anti-democratic election denialism and extremism can fare well in congressional districts and, with the help of gerrymandering, amass a slim majority of seats in the lower chamber. This means the Trumper extremists in the House are close to achieving a form of minority rule.

While Democrats are crowing about beating back a red wave, these election results indicate that millions of Americans do reside in a post-truth environment, in which fake plots are real, real news is fake, and Big Lie proponents and reality-deniers are afforded power. In this slice of America, there are no consequences for waging war on democracy and spreading conspiracy theories untethered to reality. House Republicans, in cahoots with their Dear Leader, tried to subvert the constitutional order with skullduggery that led to violence. They not only escaped punishment; they have been rewarded. This is the opposite of accountability. The enemies of American democracy—the election deniers who lost their baseless battle and who were disgraced by the mob on January 6, 2021—have gained control of a large part of the US government.

Pushing perilous conspiracy theories, spreading lies about elections, attempting a coup, fomenting violence, allying with extremists, and destabilizing the political system, all in service to a narcissistic and bigoted demagogue who yearns to rule as an autocrat—House Republicans seem to have gotten away with it. In the first congressional elections since Trump’s brownshirts attacked Congress, the House GOP, if the current numbers hold, will pay no price for the attack on the Capitol or for the Big Lie—or for continuing their embrace of Donald Trump, who has vowed he will pardon the domestic terrorists who brutally assaulted Capitol law enforcement officers if he regains the White House. In fact, they will be empowered to cause more damage.

House Republicans did underperform in the election, given historical trends and the present worries about the economy, but their apparent narrow victory is still a crisis for the nation. A group committed to not accepting the legitimacy of elections it loses—and one that is also trying to rig the rules and laws governing the voting system in its favor—will be in charge. In the horror show ahead, the call will be coming from inside the House.

There is, of course, nothing new about Republicans sweeping into power in the House in the first midterm elections of a Democratic presidency. That’s the pattern. In 1994, Rep. Newt Gingrich, exploiting a tide of angry conservative voters pumped up by the hateful rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh, led a successful and vicious assault on the Democrats and won the House for the GOP. Sixteen years later, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) harnessed the vitriol-spewing and batcrap-crazy tea party to fuel a Republican takeover of the chamber.

In each of these episodes, the public discourse was debased. Gingrich’s winning strategy included demonizing and dehumanizing Democrats. His political action committee disseminated a list of words and terms that GOP candidates should use “to define our opponents,” including traitors, radical, sick, anti-child, anti-flag, betray, bizarre, pathetic, lie, steal, disgrace, and they/them. The tea partiers went further, claiming that President Barack Obama was a secret Kenya-born Muslim socialist who had a devious plan to destroy the American economy so he could impose a totalitarian regime. (Death panels! Concentration camps!) And yet, each of these extremist political projects wrapped their demented accusations in the veneer of policy and ideological aims. Gingrich maintained he was a visionary bent on transforming the welfare state into a dynamic “opportunity society.” Many commentators depicted the tea party as being part of a long populist tradition driven by resentment of Washington and the desire for less intrusive government.

Those Republican victories caused devastation. The GOP’s Limbaugh caucus in the House forced a costly and unprecedented government shutdown, sliced social programs, and embarked on an unpopular impeachment crusade against President Bill Clinton. The House tea partiers sparked a debt ceiling crisis, blocked climate change action, and mounted multiple Benghazi hearings targeting then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In each of these eras, Republicans engaged in their usual efforts to limit or suppress voting.

But what’s different now—and it’s a critical difference—is that the triumphant Republicans have directly assaulted the foundation of American democracy with their baseless contention that Trump was robbed and Joe Biden is not the real president. This rejection of democracy, this refusal to accept reality, has become the party’s raison d’etre.

For many voters, a GOP win in the House will legitimize Trump’s phony claim to the throne and the underhanded Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the violence of January 6. Not every House Republican candidate explicitly championed the Big Lie or dismissed the significance of the seditious raid on the Capitol. But the party as an entity has accepted this falsehood, and it treats Trump, who incited and who continues to encourage political violence, as its de facto leader. What once seemed the Lost Cause of the Republican Party is no longer lost. It is winning—at least, it appears, in the House.

What once seemed the Lost Cause of the Republican Party is no longer lost. It is winning—at least, it appears, in the House.

What will it mean to have this tribe of democracy deniers in power? The impact on future elections could be profound. On the morning after Election Day, GOP secretary of state candidates in crucial swing states who were QAnonish election deniers were losing or had lost. Ditto for GOP gubernatorial contenders in that camp, most notably Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. (The contest in Arizona between denialist Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs was too close to call.) Yet House Republicans who had schemed with Trump to try to upend the results of the 2020 election or supported his effort to negate the popular will and toss aside the votes of millions of Americans now are heading toward controlling half of Congress. What constitutional chaos might these Trumpists wreak in 2024?

Beyond undermining democracy, House Republicans have promised other disruptions in addition to the inevitable scuffles over such policy issues as climate change, taxes, gun safety, and immigration. They have signaled their intention to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and provoke another debt ceiling battle that could trigger a global financial meltdown. The imposition of further restrictions on reproductive rights is part of their agenda. They will shut down the January 6 committee and launch multiple impeachments (of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas) and a long line of combative investigations. Probable targets: Hunter Biden, the 2020 election, Hunter Biden, the Mar-a-Lago raid, Hunter Biden, the National Archives, Hunter Biden, the January 6 committee and its members (watch out Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Jamie Raskin!), Hunter Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Hunter Biden, the Russia investigation, and much more— including possibly the much-cherished golden oldies of Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s emails. And government shutdowns, anyone?

Revenge and spite are two of Trump’s primary motivations. In recent weeks, he has savagely assailed judges who have ruled against him, New York state Attorney General Letitia James, and political reporters, even sharing a fantasy of imprisoning reporters and subjecting journalists to jailhouse rapes. Trump has reportedly called Republicans and asked them how many times they will impeach Biden. (Trump presumably wants Biden impeached more than the two times he was impeached.) His thirst for vengeance will push House Republicans to extreme and unprecedented lengths. The lower chamber under GOP control will become Trump’s very own weapon of retribution.

Some of these probes likely will be led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the bellicose Trump toady and Trump-Russia denier who is expected to chair the Judiciary Committee. (Jordan was one of Trump’s co-conspirators in the clandestine plots to capsize the 2020 election.) Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy has said that in a GOP Congress Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the QAnoner and white nationalist ally who was kicked off House committees for spreading loony conspiracy theories and boosting a social media post calling for the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will be allowed to sit on committees. She has been pushing for a spot on the Oversight Committee, which will be in charge of various anti-Biden investigations. Imagine a gavel in her hands. (As election results came in, the New York Times tweeted, “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories put her on the fringes of the Republican Party when she was first elected two years ago, was re-elected on Tuesday and is poised to play a more central role in the next Congress.”)

With Republicans ruling the roost in the House, deniers of reality—QAnonish crackpots—will be wielding subpoenas, holding hearings, and hurling allegations, all the while providing red meat for the Trump-loving right-wing media machine. It will be an orgy for Fox. Democracy and sanity will be at risk. Some Democrats have chortled that McCarthy, with such a thin majority, will face a mess of trouble becoming the speaker and then corralling the caucus. (With a tiny majority, a couple of insurgent extremists can easily issue demands that cause problems for McCarthy or whoever becomes speaker.) Yet within a chaotic caucus, extremist members could be further emboldened and more dangerous for democracy. Crazy will rule.

It’s not tough to predict the turmoil ahead—and the day after Election Day, there was a slight chance the Republicans could fall short of grabbing the House. Sure, Republicans have wreaked havoc in the past, and the nation survived. What’s more troubling now is that (once again) House Republicans may have successfully exploited fear, grievance, tribalism, resentment, and paranoia but this time to aggressively pursue an anti-democratic agenda and to support and bolster a thuggish leader whose goal is to return to power and attain some degree of authoritarian rule. Worse, despite Democratic gains elsewhere, their win in the House would convey an ugly and terrible lesson with dire consequences: Lying, cheating, sabotaging elections, whipping up groundless conspiracy theories, and arousing hatred and violence—these actions, individually and collectively, are not automatically disqualifying in American politics. If the party of January 6 has prevailed in what’s long been called the People’s House, American democracy will remain just as under assault as it was on that horrific and bloody day in 2021—perhaps even more so.

In the final weeks before the 2022 midterms, faced with multiple government investigations, Donald Trump has tripled down on a disturbing pattern of incitement. He continues to stoke grievance and fear and use inflammatory rhetoric that is likely to instigate random followers to violence, a technique experts call stochastic terrorism. In recent speeches, Trump has denounced “vicious” political adversaries as “thugs,” “zealots,” and “tyrants” and has warned supporters of a domestic menace: “Despite great outside dangers from other countries, our biggest threat remains the sick, sinister and evil people from within our own country.”

The ex-president has long used demonizing language to put targets on institutions and individuals, from the Justice Department and FBI to the New York attorney general and the GOP Senate minority leader; recently Trump declared that Mitch McConnell’s supposed defiance of him amounted to a “DEATH WISH.” The subsequent backtracking by a Trump spokesman, who implied Trump merely meant a “political death wish,” is part of the incitement technique—an effort to establish deniability, as I’ve detailed in a series of articles since 2020 on Trump’s use of such rhetoric. An especially troubling component is Trump’s dehumanization of his purported enemies, a tactic that researchers have found escalates the risk for political violence.

Trump knows he is not stoking this peril in a vacuum. Violent threats have soared around racial, gender, and various other political issues, and national media often highlight acute partisan polarization and debate about prospects for a coming “civil war.” Now, a new study published by the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis reveals a growing acceptance in the United States of political violence, particularly among Americans who identify as partisan Republicans. The UC-Davis team conducted the most detailed study to date on the phenomenon. What their broad national survey reveals is troubling to say the least.

Approximately one-third of 8,620 respondents surveyed in early summer said that they considered violence to be “usually or always justified” to advance at least one among a list of 17 specific political objectives. This justification of violence was significantly more common among people who self-identified as “strong” Republicans than among those who identified as “strong” Democrats. Half of those strong Republicans endorsed such violence, compared with roughly a quarter of like Democrats. (The “strong” label denotes the far ends of the partisan spectrum in the survey.)

Partisan Republicans were also more likely to agree that “armed citizens should patrol polling places at election time.”

The survey specifics reveal the ex-president’s influence: 12 percent of strong Republicans indicated support for violence as a means to “return Donald Trump to the presidency this year,” and 17 percent indicated the same to “stop an election from being stolen.” Strong Republicans were also more likely than strong Democrats to agree that “armed citizens should patrol polling places at election time” (14 percent versus 4 percent) and that violence may well be needed to “stop voter fraud” (17 percent versus 7 percent). Significant voter fraud is extremely rare in US elections and was in no way a factor in the 2020 presidential election.

The researchers also asked about the future role of firearms “in a situation where you think force or violence is justified to advance an important political objective.” Nearly 15 percent of strong Republicans said it was “very or extremely likely” that they will be armed with a gun in such a situation, while only 5 percent of strong Democrats said the same. Personal willingness to threaten or shoot someone with a gun was uncommon, the survey found, with no statistically significant variation by party affiliation. However, the small percentages of people who indicated they would personally engage in such violence represent—in absolute terms—disturbingly large numbers of American adults, the researchers observed.

Several veteran threat assessment experts I spoke with this month told me that they continue to see alarming levels of political extremism in threat cases, foremost driven by Trump’s rhetoric and the so-called ultra MAGA movement. “What we’re seeing is very concerning,” said a source who is also knowledgeable about ongoing Justice Department investigations of the January 6 insurrection. “The QAnon [conspiracy theory] garbage is all over the place, lots of talk about Trump taking back power, the need to fight the enemy and save the country—all that stuff.”

The experts noted that the violent threats on their radar, while heavily skewed to the far right, have become more broad-based. (The new research also reflects that spread.)

“I don’t get into the politics because that’s not my job,” one federal law enforcement agent told me, “but I remember a time when most members of Congress would never go after each other in such nasty or personal ways. They would reject that and say it’s wrong. I think the effect of that going away has been serious.”

Since the January 6 insurrection, multiple GOP leaders have adopted Trump’s style of potentially dangerous rhetoric.

The prospects for escalating violence are not difficult to imagine. Shortly after Trump and his allies went ballistic over the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in August, a pro-Trump extremist in Ohio set out to attack an FBI field office and died in a shootout with police. Violent threats against members of Congress have risen to harrowing levels, particularly against women and lawmakers of color. The country saw the danger on a mass scale with the assault on Congress, which federal prosecutions later showed to be driven in large part by Trump’s incessantly rendered lie that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. In the nearly two years since the insurrection, multiple GOP leaders have adopted Trump’s style of potentially dangerous rhetoric, as I documented recently.

With midterm voting imminent, Trump keeps hammering away. This week, he shared a meme with his millions of followers on his Truth Social platform that depicted the Democratic Party as disgusting, evil, and degenerate. He included a thinly veiled call to arms: “It was during the Trump Administration that the ‘Deep State’ corruption, and pure hatred of our Country, was fully EXPOSED,” he wrote, adding, “something must now be done to rid us of this Cancer that is purposely destroying our Nation. There is far more danger from within than anything coming from the outside.”

“You don’t need books!” shouts Pennsylvania state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, waving a battered Bible. “This is the only book that’s alive and living!” Applause and cries of “amen” float up from the crowd around me.

I’m with about 60 others at a conference staged by Christians Engaged, a three-year-old, Texas-based outfit aiming to salt local government with “biblical” politicians. They’re part of a sprawling constellation of Christian nationalist organizations, operatives, officeholders, militias, lawyers, and fundraisers, whose tangled connections and hyper-local focus obscure a powerful, well-coordinated operation—perhaps the most tactically effective political project, left or right, in today’s United States. Christian nationalism, the movement to unite church and state, is hitting a new post-Roe stride.

Christians Engaged is an ostensibly non-partisan advocacy group, launched in 2020 by former GOP consultant and unsuccessful House candidate Bunni Pounds. But there’s its stated agenda—encouraging Christians to pray for elected officials, vote in every race, and engage with local civic life—and there’s the fact that every politician present is a MAGA election denier. From its Texas base, the group hosts regular podcasts and conferences featuring C- and D-list conservative celebrities like former Rep. Michelle Bachman and Rev. Rafael Cruz, Sen. Ted Cruz’s dad. They’re the “awakening church”, as opposed to the “woke liberal mob.” Now, Pounds says, they’re fighting for “hearts and minds” in battleground states like Pennsylvania.

That’s where the Christian nationalist emphasis on small-scale networking, coordination, and political education pays off. The conference is a chance for Christians Engaged, an out-of-state organization, to link up with area activists like Tabitha Valleau, an ally of viciously antisemitic Putin propagandist Charles Bausman. Valleau is a leader of Free PA, a local band of anti-vaccine election denialists. Her movement started out by organizing anti-mask protests—but, like similar groups, it’s grown in power and scope. Now, Free PA members have secured spots on local school boards and GOP committees, and they’re working to bring an immediate end to the state’s mail-in voting.

Central to the heart of the conference is a claim made by nearly every speaker: there is “no separation of church and state.” Speakers like Rick Green, “America’s Constitution Coach,” teach us how to sell that argument, using the writings of an evangelist whose work was pulled from shelves over historical inaccuracies—in other words, how to quietly rewrite the Constitution by blending fake news with the language of the Bible.

They, Borowicz says, hate the Bible: Democrats, COVID-conscious governors, librarians letting “pornography”—read: queer-friendly literature—into schools, trans people, pastors who didn’t fight lockdown orders, and Barack Obama, “the opposite of light.” (COVID, by the way, is “punishment for our sins.”)

Borowicz herself, of course, is part of the Christian nationalist renaissance—she took office in 2019, just before Pennsylvania swore in its first Muslim woman legislator. Borowicz wasn’t crazy about that. She shares the story with the crowd: “I saw all of those Muslims sitting there,” she says, “I got scared, and I just started praying.”

She delivered that day’s opening prayer, a headline-grabber that slid Trump, Israel, “God forgive us,” and thirteen invocations of Christ into two minutes. Even fellow Republicans gaped. The Council on American Islamic Relations offered one summary: a “mean-spirited, Islamophobic, anti-semitic, and xenophobic benediction.”

Borowicz and Valleau are here with a small crowd, but small is the point. The resources of groups like Christians United and Free PA aim for the most local kinds of power: school boards and county commissions, neighbors’ associations and PTAs, training would-be politicos—town-and-country politics, repeated in as many of our 3,000-odd counties as possible. It seems to be going great at the conference, where attendees in a mix of camo and Trump gear are fired up and networking.

It’s working even better from a bird’s-eye view: The network’s impact is nowhere more evident than in the gubernatorial campaign of state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who secured the Republican nomination solely through galvanizing these small but connected far-right groups. He was, not coincidentally, another 2019 arrival to the legislature. (Mastriano, whose platform makes Ron DeSantis look like Bob Dole, “used campaign funds to take busloads of Pennsylvanians to Washington” on Jan. 6, 2021, when he “personally and illegally crossed police barricades.” It’s downhill from there.)

The end result: More politicians in the mold of House Rep. Scott Perry, who kicked off the morning’s events. “Our country is in desperate trouble,” he tells the crowd. Well, no shit: that’s in no small part due to House Rep. Scott Perry, a key player in GOP attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss. Perry was using his position of power to spread election conspiracies even before it was cool. When dozens more of him show up in local office—alongside more Mastrianos and more Borowiczes—the folks banning books and birth control will be running elections, too.

As the day winds down, we’re dismissed with a last message: “The Lord is coming.” They don’t say whether He’ll make it to their next conference.

The congressional committee investigating January 6 on Thursday revealed new evidence that Donald Trump had a preexisting plan to falsely declare victory on election night in 2020—part of a plot to use made-up voting fraud claims in an attempt to retain power.

For the second time, the committee played leaked audio first reported by Mother Jones in which Trump adviser Steve Bannon, during an October 31, 2020, meeting, said that Trump had a “strategy” to prematurely assert he had won on Election Day. Explaining the so-called “red mirage,” in which Trump would show early leads in key states before mail-in ballots favoring Joe Biden were counted, Bannon said: “Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”

“He’s gonna declare victory,” Bannon said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”

On November 1, 2020, before Election Day, Axios first reported Trump’s plan. But Trump denied it at the time. And he and his supporters have since claimed that he was not lying when he announced—just hours after the polls had closed—that he had won. He legitimately believed election fraud cost him victory, they claim.

The committee, however, presented new evidence Thursday that Trump actually knew he had lost—he admitted it to aides—and that his victory declaration was part of plan to rally his supporters to help him stay in office anyway.

“This Big Lie—President Trump’s effort to convince Americans that he had won the 2020 election—began before the election results even came in,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said during Thursday’s hearing. “It was intentional. It was premeditated. It was not based on election results, or any evidence of actual fraud affecting the results, or any actual problems with voting machines. It was a plan concocted in advance, to convince his supporters that he won. And the people who seemingly knew about that plan in advance would ultimately play a significant role in the events of January 6.”

The committee on Thursday played video, shot by a Danish documentarian, in which longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told Trump supporters on November 1, 2020, that the election would likely remain too close to call on election night. “The key thing to do is to claim victory,” Stone added. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

The committee also revealed a pre-election memo that Tom Fitton, an occasional Trump adviser who runs of the right-wing nonprofit Judicial Watch, emailed to White House aides on October 31, 2020. In it, Fitton proposed victory remarks for Trump. “We had an election today—and I won,” Fitton’s suggested remarks said. Fitton resent the memo on Nov. 3, 2020—Election Day—and said that he had discussed it with Trump.

Thursday’s hearing also included newly aired testimony from Greg Jacob, who was Vice President Mike Pence’s counsel. Jacob said that he learned days before Election Day from Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, that Trump planned to prematurely announce that he had won. Short and Jacob reacted by working to distance Pence from Trump’s declaration.

“It is essential that the Vice President not be perceived by the public as having decided questions concerning disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts,” Jacob wrote in a November 3, 2020, memo to Short, which Lofgren said the panel had obtained from the National Archives.

Bannon, Stone, Short, Fitton, and others were all talking around this time about Trump’s plan to falsely declare victory because, it seems clear, Trump had recently informed aides that he was firmly committed to that course of action.

CBS News reporter Robert Costa tweeted Thursday he had seen “texts from that night from some aides” indicating that they realized “declaring victory was Trump’s plan” and that White House lawyers were alarmed.

This is important because it shows that Trump was not simply deluded about the election results. He executed a strategy to lie to Americans about the outcome, to motivate his supporters to help him subvert democracy. The January 6 attack was the culmination of that effort.

A new report suggests that despite the statements of outrage and promises to reevaluate PAC donations, corporate donors have continued to support members of Congress who objected to certifying the 2020 election.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an liberal-leaning watchdog group, said on Friday that a new analysis shows that the 147 members of what it dubs the Sedition Caucus—lawmakers who voted against certifying Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss following the January 6 insurrection—have since raked in at least $44 million in corporate PAC donations to their campaigns. CREW says the donations came from 1,283 different corporate and industry trade group PACs.

Immediately after January 6, some of the biggest companies and trade associations involved with lobbying in Washington said they would stop donations to election objectors, or even stop making donations altogether. Despite these pledges, CREW found that of the $44 million donated from corporate PACs to election deniers, at least $12 million came from sources that had pledged to suspend donations to members who sought to overturn the election.

CREW found that the five biggest sources of donations to the Sedition Caucus were PACs associated with Koch Industries ($625,000), American Crystal Sugar ($530,000), Home Depot ($350,000), Boeing ($488,000), and UPS ($479,500). Boeing, Home Depot, and Koch had all paused donations or promised to reevaluate their donations after January 6.

This is not entirely surprising. Despite the companies’ pledges in the wake of January 6 to stop donating—or, as a Koch Industries spokesperson put it at the time, reevaluate donations based on the “the civility of candidates”—contributions never really seemed to be paused. Within the first six months after the insurrection, members of the Sedition Caucus had already raised $3.8 million from corporate PACs.

On Friday, investigators working for the United Nations delivered a sobering statement to the UN Human Rights Council detailing evidence of Russian war crimes committed as part of the nation’s ongoing occupation of Ukraine, including the rape of children, torture, beatings, electric shocks, forced nudity, and the disappearance of people taken into Russian detention.

These findings came as part of the first official update from three experts who were asked to investigate allegations of war crimes that first arose this spring, soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Their investigation focused on four areas of Ukraine—Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy—where horrific reports of alleged war crimes, including the rape of civilians and summary executions, began to emerge between late February and March of this year as Russia began its war. Friday’s report is the first from the UN to bring forth extensive evidence backing up these allegations, including through interviews with dozens of victims and witnesses.

“We are concerned by the suffering that the armed conflict in Ukraine has imposed on the civilian population,” Erik Mose, chairman of the investigative commission, told the UN.

Mose’s team told the UN they’d interviewed 150 victims and witnesses across 27 towns and settlements, studied documents, and inspected graves, weapon remnants, and places where detention and torture occurred. Across all this research, they found:

Russia engaged in attacks, including air strikes and rocket-launches, where the country made no effort to distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Evidence of widespread executions: “We were struck by the large number of executions in the areas that we visited,” the investigators said in their report. The group said it is investigating executions in 16 of the locations it visited, and has collected evidence of such acts that include: “hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats.”
Widespread sexual violence towards adults and children: “In the cases we have investigated, the age of victims of sexual and gendered-based violence ranged from four to 82 years,” investigators noted. They said that they’d found cases where relatives were forced to watch Russian soldiers commit these crimes. They’ve also documented situations where children were raped and tortured.
Evidence of torture and unlawful confinement: Investigators said that they’d heard from victims who were tortured after their detention by Russian forces in Ukraine. Some said they were then forcibly taken over national lines to Russia and detained in prisons there—backing up allegations of forced migrations that came out as early as March. Witnesses spoke of beatings, electrical shocks, and forced nudity that occurred in detention.

This UN report came out the day before the seven-month anniversary of Russia instigating the war in Ukraine, and at a moment when the conflict is at yet another inflection point. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a partial mobilization for men of military age in Russia—what effectively amounts to a military draft of 300,000 people to replenish the manpower Putin needs to continue fighting against Ukrainians. His announcement spurred attempts by swaths of men and families to flee Russia.

Lines to cross into the neighboring countries of Finland, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Georgia stretched for miles this week, while flights to nearby countries quickly sold out. Videos circulated on social media that appeared to show hours-long traffic jams of cars waiting to cross land borders out of Russia.

This is what is happening now on the border between #Russia and #Georgia.

Video: Ekho Kavkaza pic.twitter.com/3eFznx3dvf

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) September 21, 2022

Long lines of vehicles have formed at a border crossing between Russia’s North Ossetia region and Georgia after Moscow announced a partial military mobilization. Report by @RTavisupleba pic.twitter.com/LyhxLUYRv3

— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) September 22, 2022

Several Russian news sources, including Lenta and RBK, reported that flights to countries that allow visa-free travel from Russia, including Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, had sold out within minutes of Putin’s mobilization announcement on Wednesday. The few remaining tickets that reporters at RBK could find online, for example, were for dates in late September, and cost upwards of $1,300.

“I am strongly against this war,” a male software engineer told CNN after successfully making it to Turkey from Russia. “Everyone I know is against it. My friends, my family, nobody wants this war. Only politics want this war.”

He added: “The only plan is to survive. I’m just scared”

For years, conventional wisdom has held that Donald Trump could wriggle his way out of any personal jeopardy, no matter how evident his alleged malfeasance. But now there are signs he may finally be on the brink of a legal reckoning. Those signs are coming from Trump himself.

As the ex-president faces advancing federal and state investigations ranging from Mar-a-Lago to New York to Georgia, he has escalated an insidious form of political incitement, behavior that seems to signal a growing desperation over his legal predicaments. As I first reported beginning two years ago, Trump has long honed a rhetorical method that security experts call “stochastic terrorism”: By continually demonizing his “enemies,” he stirs random violence from extremist supporters as a means to exert and try to maintain political power.

Investigation of the January 6 insurrection showed the consequences of this technique on a mass scale—and further revealed Trump’s explicit willingness to resort to it after attempts to overturn the 2020 election via Congress and the courts had failed. According to sworn testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide in the White House, Trump knowingly urged armed supporters to descend on the Capitol that day and had wanted to lead them there. Ever since, Trump has successfully spread the use of incitement among GOP leaders, as I documented recently.

Repetition across various media is key to the technique and increases the likelihood of violence, according to recently published research from threat assessment experts. Trump has delivered on that in recent weeks: He has continued to target various agencies and individuals using his Truth Social platform, speeches at political rallies, and interviews on Fox News and other more fringe media outlets.

And he has used particularly grim rhetoric. At a Sept. 3 rally in Pennsylvania, Trump called the FBI and Justice Department “vicious monsters” and President Biden an “enemy of the state.” During an interview on a right-wing radio show on Sept. 15, he predicted there would be “big problems” in the country if he were to be charged by the Justice Department. “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it,” he told host Hugh Hewitt. On Truth Social, Trump promoted a QAnon meme featuring him as a heroic icon of the lunatic conspiracy-theory movement regarded by the FBI as a domestic terrorism threat. Soon thereafter, Trump gave an apocalyptic speech at an Ohio rally where he used music evoking a QAnon theme song, prompting fascistic salutes from the crowd.

“I really believe they hate our country,” Trump told Hannity.

Trump hammered home similar messages again on Wednesday in a lengthy sit-down at Mar-a-Lago with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity. Asked by Hannity to comment on a new lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James over alleged financial fraud by Trump, the ex-president laid into the state’s top lawyer and her staff: “They were demeaning me constantly, these people,” he said. “There’s something wrong with them. I really believe they hate our country.”

His effort specifically to provoke feelings of contempt among his supporters is no accident and furthers the risk for violence. Elsewhere in the interview, Trump declared that the federal judge who approved the search warrant to seize highly classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago “took the case” because he “hated Trump.” The ex-president also demonized leaders at the National Archives and Records Administration—which has been targeted with vitriol since the Mar-a-Lago news broke—telling Hannity that the agency is run by “a radical left group of people.” Regarding the federal agents who entered his residence, Trump said the FBI has “attacked” and been “so horrible to so many people” he knows, and further claimed the agents showed up for the “raid” armed with AK-47s.

“There is a fervor in this country,” Trump emphasized to Hannity. “This country is so tired of this stuff.” (Sen. Lindsey Graham hit on a similar theme recently on Fox, forecasting riots in the streets if Trump is prosecuted.)

Earlier this week, January 6 committee vice chair Liz Cheney warned that Trump’s rhetoric about possible charges against him represents a “direct” and “credible” threat of violence to come. What form that might take and when is inherently unpredictable, a feature of the incitement method, not a bug.

Contra another truism about Trump—that there will never be a nadir with him—national security expert Juliette Kayyem wrote this week in the Atlantic that he may in fact be reaching rock bottom: “His overt adoption of QAnon shows that he has few alternative political strategies left to play… All he has left is violence, or the threat of it.”

If Trump’s options for protecting himself and preserving his political influence are indeed narrowing, that bodes well in that it suggests the rule of law eventually will prevail. But the further incitement to be expected from Trump as that process plays out, and the bloodshed and mayhem that could result, are another matter.

Editor’s note: This column by David Corn first appeared in his newsletter, Our Land. But we wanted to make sure as many readers as possible have a chance to see it. Our Land is written by David twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the day; film, book, television, podcast, and music recommendations; interactive audience features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. Please check it out. And please also check out David’s new New York Times bestseller: American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.

Those of us paying attention the past few years know that the answer to the oft-repeated question— have we reached the bottom of Trumpism?—is, there’s no bottom. Donald Trump and the Republican Party proved that once again in recent days, as Trump merged MAGA extremism with the conspiratorial lunacy of QAnon, and nary a Republican batted an eye.

In retrospect, the melding of MAGAism with QAnon—and toss in a helping of Christian nationalism—seemed inevitable. The QAnon conspiracy theory holds that the world is controlled by a cabal of satanic, baby-eating, sex-trafficking pedophiles—which includes, of course, top Democrats, assorted elites, Hollywood celebrities, and the Pope—and that Trump is engaged in titanic combat behind the scenes to crush this evil power and save humanity (and lots of babies). Under assorted variants of this nuttery, Trump is being aided by John F. Kennedy Jr. (who did not die in a 1999 plane crash), and he will be restored to power in a final cataclysmic battle that involves mass arrests of Lucifer’s allies (lock ’em up in Gitmo!) and televised executions. Trump fully embraced the QAnon insanity last week, and this means that the Republican Party now supports a man who advances a dangerous derangement that exceeds his Big Lie about the 2020 election and that further delegitimizes American democracy and debases political discourse. And this party has a good shot at gaining control of Congress in seven weeks.

For years, Trump had played footsie with QAnon, claiming he didn’t know much about it but praising its adherents’ supposed patriotism, their opposition to pedophilia and, naturally, their cultish love of him. Offered the chance to denounce this perverse craziness, he bobbed and weaved, sending the signal to QAnoners—who are always looking for signals—that they did indeed possess the hidden truth. With nods and winks, he validated their paranoia and detachment from reality, as QAnon conspiracism led to numerous acts of violence.

QAnon flags and symbols blossomed at Trump’s 2020 campaign rallies, and they were present at the insurrectionist January 6 assault on the US Capitol. In the way previous Republicans over the years had encouraged and exploited right-wing extremism—a story I tell in my new book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy—Trump capitalized on this bizarre and bonkers internet phenomenon without endorsing it. His plan looked obvious: take advantage of this brainsickness and boost his base of supporters without being tarred as a champion of this looniness.

No more. He went full QAnon the other day when he posted online a photoshopped image of him wearing a Q pin. To make the message clear, this picture proclaimed, “The Storm Is Coming”—a QAnon catchphrase referring to that ultimate showdown between Trump and the evildoers. And it contained the abbreviation for the QAnon slogan, “where we go one, we go all.”

Trump again going mask off with the QAnon stuff on TruthSocial today. He “retruthed” a photoshop of himself wearing a Q pin plus a couple of Q catchphrases from a Q account.

Trump’s not flirting with QAnon anymore, he’s moving in. pic.twitter.com/I0FFCAZNZp

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) September 13, 2022

The insanity of a former (and possibly future) president bear-hugging QAnon cannot be overstated. And this was no one-off, late-in-the-night shitposting from the former guy. He zapped out other posts with QAnon references. Then four days later, at a rally in Ohio, he delivered an apocalyptic speech against the backdrop of music resembling the QAnon theme song. It was here that Trump supporters raised their hands and pointed a finger—possibly signaling “one,” in an allusion to that QAnon slogan.

The supposed purpose of the event was to whip up support for GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance. But the gathering demonstrated the fusion of MAGA extremism with QAnon and Christian nationalism. The crowd cheered as Trump proclaimed the country had become a hellhole with a crumbling economy, rampant crime, and no freedom of speech. It was all lies. But the fervor of the crowd and the arm waving were reminiscent of a religious revival meeting. Trump’s movement has morphed into QMaga. The irrationality has spread from the evidence-free belief that sinister players (China, Venezuela, the CIA, the media, Democrats, voting machine companies) conspired to steal the election from Trump to the conviction that American politics has become a clash between patriotic Christians and cannibalistic Satan-worshipping pedophiles.

The Ohio arena was not full, and the empty seats indicated that Trump’s mix of conspiracism, cult of personality, end-times ravings, and fundamentalism may not be a bestseller. But many of the GOP election denialists running in state elections this year—including gubernatorial candidates Doug Mastriano (Pennsylvania) and Kari Lake (Arizona)—have ties to QAnon. Both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were QAnoners before they were elected to Congress in the last election. But perhaps of greater concern is that the entire GOP, which has supported Trump’s authoritarian Big Lie crusade, is now willing to follow Trump further into the depths of fearmongering and madness.

Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School, bestselling author, and venture capitalist (who once referred to Trump as “America’s Hitler”) certainly knows QAnon is crap. But he eagerly lapped up Trump’s support at the rally. No prominent GOP official has come out and declared that Trump is guiding the party into the land of crazy. With their silence, they are legitimizing Trump’s promotion of an absurd delusion. Just as their silence regarding Trump’s recent vow to pardon the domestic terrorists who attacked Congress legitimizes political violence and likely will encourage more of it.

A few weeks ago, President Joe Biden excoriated MAGA extremism and election denialism as “semi-fascism” and warned the nation of the threat they pose. Republicans and conservatives turned snowflakes and cried foul. Since then, the danger has grown. As every pundit will tell you, the Republicans remain poised to win the House in the November elections and possibly the Senate. That will place in power a party that accepts and supports QMaga (and that backs as its leader a man who now excuses political violence). Without more media attention and more warnings from Biden and the Democrats, QMaga will spread into the halls of Congress not by mob violence but by the ballot box. A storm is indeed coming.

Fans and non-fans alike were angered by the recent advertisement for pet food that Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness and Antoni Porowski posted on their social media accounts on Thursday. Or more accurately, people were upset that the pair had pretended to be in a relationship in order to announce the launch of their new dog food brand.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jonathan Van Ness (@jvn)

The reaction was intense, with one tweet even accusing them of queerbaiting, which is impossible for openly queer people to do: The definition of queerbaiting includes that the person doing it has no intention of “ever actually depicting such relationships or sexual interactions.” Ness and Porowski have long been upfront about being in the queer community and both are in relationships with men.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Antoni Porowski (@antoni)

Perhaps the issue with Ness and Porowski’s posts is the queer community’s gag reflex when it comes to anything too corporate. But two things are true: People are becoming brands and queerness is becoming more normalized. It makes sense that queer people are going to use their queerness as part of brand deals and endorsements. Many are already doing so, as seen in last Pride Month’s Ugg collaboration with the Trevor Project. So, yeah, some queers are going to be capitalists.

Straight celebrities do brand deals all the time and often use their relationships and personal lives as part of the ad. They get criticized if they partner with a problematic brand, but otherwise it seems to be accepted as a fact of life; a reality so present that many of us have come to expect that contestants on popular reality dating TV shows might just be there to make money from future ads posted on their newly booming Instagrams. Former Bachelorette lead JoJo Fletcher and her husband, for example, had a discount code with The Knot, a wedding website, as part of the lead-up to their wedding.

Sure, I don’t love brand deals. But doing them is not evidence of some moral failing. JVN wants to be a capitalist, that’s clear from their multiple commercial ventures and brand partnerships. Does that make me love them more? No. Does it make me want to attack their queerness on social media? Also no. Queer people are expansive in their wants and desires and an ad is typically not reason enough to feed into the anger of the social media machine.

Maybe a stupid ad is just that, a stupid ad.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, having dominated the past several news cycles by flying Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard without notice—a move his critics depict as a particularly cruel attempt to “own the libs” for political gain—has announced that he’s doubling down.

“We’ve got an infrastructure in place now. There’s going to be a lot more that’s happening,” DeSantis said Friday, according to CNN.

He noted that he plans to use “every penny” of the $12 million that Florida legislators had allocated to relocate migrants. Further flights are “likely,” and he is considering sending migrant buses like those Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey have used to shuttle thousands of asylum seekers to DC, New York City, and other urban Democratic strongholds, leaving officials and nonprofit workers scrambling to accommodate the newcomers.

He might even try and collaborate with Abbott, DeSantis said.

He denied reports, however, that some migrants had been misled about where they were headed and/or what awaited them on the other end—reports that have sparked Twitter accusations of “human trafficking.”

Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott belong in prison for human trafficking.

— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) September 17, 2022

It is unclear, as yet, whether the governors have violated any laws, but their behavior certainly has a sordid history. My colleague Isabela Dias posted a new article today detailing how southern white supremacists used remarkably similar tactics 60 years ago in an attempt to flummox northern liberals. Under false pretenses, they recruited and bused Black southerners and their families north. In that case, the stunt backfired.

To embarrass Northern liberals and humiliate Black people, southern White Citizens Councils started their so-called “Reverse Freedom Rides,” giving Black people one-way tickets to northern cities with false promises of jobs, housing, and better lives.https://t.co/xLpTjxG0PD pic.twitter.com/voiPBbwRuN

— JFK Library (@JFKLibrary) September 15, 2022

The use of low-status groups as political pawns and scapegoats to drum up regionalist and nationalist sentiment has an even longer history, of course, here in the United States and elsewhere. Black Americans have been used as political scapegoats since well before Emancipation. Anti-immigrant scapegoating has fueled the rise of right-wing and authoritarian leaders in Europe in recent decades, and it also was a key ingredient of European fascism between the world wars.

In his new book “Slouching Towards Utopia,” which covers this history, economist Brad DeLong identifies six elements common to regimes that have self-identified as fascist: “a leadership commanding rather than representing; a unified community based on ties of blood and soil (and rejecting and degrading those who are not of the community); coordination and propaganda; support for at least some traditional hierarchies; hatred of socialists and liberals and—almost always—hatred of ‘rootless cosmopolites’ which, in their antisemitic worldview, meant Jews and people who acted like Jews, in some form or another.”

Sound familiar?

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