#fetusfetishists — Public Fediverse posts

“Felonious trump is angry, the deep state wouldn’t let him use his golf cart..” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

For the first time since moving here, I’ve got a bout of agita that’s gone to my stomach. I’m thankful for my meditation training from doctors, sangha, and teachers. It really helps. However, surfing Samsara has gotten more difficult these days. You may need to sit on a mat after reading some of the things I will share today. I’m going to go dig in the soil once I finish this. There are a lot of weeds to pull. I can visualize who represents which weed.

Public Notice has this headline today, as reported by Lisa Needham. “Mike Johnson says the quiet part on Fox.'”The justices on the court — I know many of them personally … they’ll set this straight.”

It was a given, of course, that Trump backers would spring to his defense following his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Trump’s supporters are trying to dox the jurors, a sheriff is saying that it’s time we put a felon in the White House, and a bunch of MAGAs are flying the American flag upside down (though we have no update from the Alitos on the status of their flagpole). One of Trump’s lawyers and his legal spokesperson have both gone on Fox News and called on the Supreme Court to get their client off the hook. (More on that later.)

But one statement stands out in all this sound and furor: GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson’s call for SCOTUS to “step in.”

The morning after the conviction, Johnson went on Fox & Friends to reassure Trump supporters that he has the ear of the justices.

“I think that the justices on the court — I know many of them personally — I think they’re deeply concerned about [Trump’s conviction], as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight, but it’s going to take awhile.”

Johnson went on to say “this will be overturned, guys, there’s no question about it. It’s just going to take some time to do it.” (Watch below.)

This remarkable statement highlights how Republicans have come to — correctly — count on the federal courts to ensure they stay in power.

The Supreme Court already overturned Colorado’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot and agreed to hear his outrageous absolute immunity claim in the January 6 case after refusing to hear it on an expedited basis when asked by prosecutor Jack Smith. That foot-dragging resulted in the March 4 date for Trump’s DC trial being removed from the calendar, and it’s exceedingly unlikely there will be a new trial date before the election.

So why wouldn’t Johnson look to the conservatives on the Supreme Court to save Trump this time around?

Too bad David McCullough passed recently. We’ll need a narrator for this version of Ken Burns’ Civil War. Burns gave the commencement speech for undergraduates at Brandeis University. It’s worth a listen or read. Burns has documented a lot of our recent history and knows us well.

Another voice, Mercy Otis Warren, a philosopher and historian during our revolution put it this way, “The study of the human character at once opens a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of people, but when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, humanity is obscured.” I have had the privilege for nearly half a century of making films about the US, but I have also made films about us. That is to say the two letter, lowercase, plural pronoun. All of the intimacy of “us” and also “we” and “our” and all of the majesty, complexity, contradiction, and even controversy of the US. And if I have learned anything over those years, it’s that there’s only us. There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there’s a them, run away. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment, which brings me to a moment I’ve dreaded and forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality.

There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, “The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.” The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, “a bigger delusion”, James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.

The lies are more evident than ever, but they’re directed at an audience with no interest in the truth. Here’s another one from Senator Tim Scott via Axios. And yes, I’m quoting William Kristol again.

Sen. Tim Scott wants you to know: 2024 is not an abortion-policy election.

“The Supreme Court has already ruled that this is a states’ issue. President Trump and Speaker Johnson have both said that this will remain a states’ issue,” Scott said yesterday on Fox News Sunday. “That is a settled issue for our party, and frankly, it is one that takes that issue off the table for the Democrats, who have the most extreme position on abortion

Here’s some truth via Pro Publica. “Witnesses in the various criminal cases against the former president have gotten pay raises, new jobs, and more. If any benefits were intended to influence testimony, that could be a crime.”  The Trump Family Crime Syndicate just can’t stop criming. Here comes another set of charges that will be hard to get through trial before November.

Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.

The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.

These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.

Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.

Here’s one from Amanda Marcotte–writing for Salon–that will once again show how far the fetus fetishists will go to control women and deny them bodily autonomy. “Texas professors sue to fail students who seek abortions. Men are using abortion bans to control and abuse women in their lives for “consensual sexual intercourse”

A pair of Texas professors figured out that their female students have sex and, boy, they do not like it. So now the philosophy professor and finance professor are suing for the right to punish their students who, outside of class, have abortions.

“Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not ‘health care,'” University of Texas at Austin professor Daniel Bonevac sneers in a federal court filing with professor John Hatfield. Instead, Bonevac writes, because pregnancy is the result of “voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse,” students should not be allowed time off to get abortions. If the students disobey and miss class for abortion care, the filing continues, the professors should be allowed to flunk students. Additionally, Bonevac asserts that he has a right to refuse to employ a teaching assistant who has had an abortion, calling such women “criminals.”

The sexual hang-ups of abortion opponents are rarely far from the surface, but even by those low standards, the unjustified male grievance on display in this new Texas lawsuit is a doozy. At issue are federal regulations, called Title IX, first signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1972. They currently bar publicly funded schools from discriminating on the basis of sex or gender. This means that schools cannot penalize students for health care based on sex. As a male student would be granted leave if he had to travel for surgery, so must a female student, the federal statute requires. The two men argue that granting students an excused absence in such cases violates their First Amendment rights.

Even though the plaintiffs suing for the right to flunk female students for abortion include boilerplate arguments in which they feign concern that abortion is “killing,” the legal filing makes it clear that what really outrages Bonevac and Hatfield is that Title IX prevents them from controlling the private lives of students. Along with their anger about abortion, they  grouse about not being allowed to punish students “for being homosexual or transgender.” They also argue they should be able to penalize teaching assistants for “cross-dressing,” by which they appear to mean allowing trans women to wear skirts.

It’s really difficult to describe these angry Christian white nationalists with any label but utter shitgibbons. If they can’t quote the Beatitudes, then they’re not really dealing with the historical Jesus. A shake-up at the Washington Post may make me finally cancel my subscription. This is the summary of the state of affairs by Politico today. “Playbook: The Trump Verdict Lands on the Hill.”

WAPO SHOCKER — SALLY BUZBEE is out as the Washington Post’s executive editor after a three-year run, to be immediately replaced by former WSJ editor in chief MATT MURRAY and, after the election, by the Telegraph’s ROBERT WINNETT. Both have previously worked under WaPo Publisher and CEO WILL LEWIS.

The announcement came in an 8:38 p.m. news release and landed as a thunderbolt to the Posties we spoke to, who were uniformly shocked by the sudden timing of Buzbee’s departure, if not necessarily by the fact of it. It was an unusually abrupt transition for the Post, where top leadership transitions are typically announced months in advance. (The newsroom did not immediately have a story ready to publish and, adding insult to injury, the NYT managed to get theirs up first.)

The buried lede: After Winnett takes over the “core” newsroom in November, Murray will lead a “third newsroom … comprised of service and social media journalism and run separately from the core news operation. The aim is to give the millions of Americans — who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed — compelling, exciting and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want.”

It’s all about the clicks these days. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an Op-Ed from one of Alito’s former clerks. “I was a law clerk for Justice Alito. He must recuse himself from hearing cases involving Donald Trump. Flying the U.S. flag upside down, once a signal of distress, has become a symbol of those who reject the results of the 2020 presidential election. When Alito did so, it was indeed a distress call.” These are the thoughts of Susan Sullivan.

As a former law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., I often admired him as a person for his integrity and honesty. As a progressive liberal, however, I vehemently disagreed with the approach he takes to reading the Constitution, the narrow interpretation he adopts, and his reverence for the framers’restrictive intent.

Over the years, I became increasingly distressed with the results of his decisions. And then came Dobbs.

By striking down the rights of women to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, the decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which he wrote, eviscerated women’s fundamental right to self-determination. Dobbs is not just about abortion; it is about setting the clock back and undermining the core protections enshrined within the Constitution of liberty, equality, and access to justice.

And then came the flag.

Flying the American flag upside down, formerly a signal of distress, is now understood to unequivocally telegraph support for those who have co-opted and corrupted its original intent. It has become the symbol of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol in a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, who challenged — and continue to deny — the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. It is the emblem for the “Stop the Steal” Trump factions, the symbol now held hostage by those who attacked our democracy at its very core.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Justice Alito flew an upside-down flag at his home in Fairfax, Va., and another controversial flag at his beach house on Long Beach Island — acts that are widely accepted as an abhorrent affront to anyone who respects our constitutional democracy. So, when that flag is flown upside down by a member of the nation’s highest court, it is indeed a distress call.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deciding whether a president’s actions while in office are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution, irrespective of whether they concern the legitimate business of the office. Donald Trump has been indicted in state and federal courts in Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, and New York, alleging fraud as well ascrimes in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, the mishandling of classified documents, election interference, and more.

If the Supreme Court decides that he has blanket immunity — a decision expected any day now — these criminal charges, and any others, disappear. This means a president could commit serious crimes while in office, having nothing to do with the legitimate function of government, without facing any consequences. A president could theoretically hire an assassin to kill a competitor with impunity.

Justice Alito must recuse himself from having any role in the decision of these cases.

You may continue to read her rationale at the link.   Meanwhile, this is an interesting read at The Guardian. “The reich stuff – what does Trump really have in common with Hitler? Comparisons between the ex-president and the 20th-century Nazi leader are controversial but a new book says they resemble each other as political performance artists.”

WhenDonald Trump shared a video that dreamed of a “unified reich” if he wins the US presidential election, and took nearly a full day to remove it, the most shocking thing was how unshocking it was.

Trump has reportedly said before that Adolf Hitler did “some good things”, echoed the Nazi dictator by calling his political opponents “vermin” and saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”, and responded to a white supremacist march in Charlottesville by claiming that there were “very fine people on both sides”.

The Hitler-Trump analogy is controversial. “Some of Trump’s critics – including Biden’s campaign – argue that Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and authoritarian behavior justify the comparison,” the Politico website observed recently. “Meanwhile, Trump’s defenders – and even some of his more historically-minded critics – argue that the comparison is ahistorical; that he’s not a true fascist.”

The former camp now includes Henk de Berg, a professor of German at the University of Sheffield in Britain. The Dutchman, whose previous books include Freud’s Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies, has just published Trump and Hitler: A Comparative Study in Lying.

In it, De Berg compares and contrasts Hitler and Trump as political performance artists and how they connect with their respective audiences. He examines the two men’s work ethic, management style and narcissism, as well as quirks such as Hitler’s toothbrush moustache and Trump’s implausible blond hair.

In a Zoom interview from his office at the university campus, De Berg quotes the American comedian and actor George Burns: “The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” He adds: “The most important thing in populism is authenticity. The moment you’re able to fake that, you’re in.”

De Berg, 60, happened to be renewing his study of National Socialism, and rereading Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, just as Trump was first running for the White House in 2015. “Obviously, there are massive differences,” he acknowledges. “Hitler was an ideologically committed antisemite who instigated the second world war and was responsible for the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews died.

“But then I looked at their rhetorical strategies and their public relations operations and I began to see how similar they are in many ways. So I thought, OK, why not do a book looking at Hitler from the perspective of Trump?

Well, it’s another Monday in this version of the United States.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

https://skydancingblog.com/2024/06/03/mostly-monday-reads-shake-off-the-stress-fight-for-the-country/

#Repeat1968 #AyatollahMikeJohnson #ChiefInquisitorAlito #FeloniousTrump #fetusFetishists #JohnBuss #ShakeItOff #UncleTimScott #WhiteChristianNationalism

Ruth Marten

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It’s difficult to check the headlines these days. It’s like living in an alternate America where bizarro rules apply. But hey, it’s what a small minority of White Nationalist Christians want, and they’ve worked hard to get elected officials at all levels to turn us into everything we were warned about in The Handmaid’s Tale and by Hillary Clinton. We’ve talked a lot about it here, but David French provides some elucidation in his opinion piece in today’s New York Times. ” I suppose it only gets serious attention when a man writes about it. I watched Rob Reiner’s interview with Ari Melber last week.  Now I feel I should definitely see this film.

The problem with Christian nationalism isn’t with Christian participation in politics but rather the belief that there should be Christian primacy in politics and law. It can manifest itself through ideology, identity and emotion. And if it were to take hold, it would both upend our Constitution and fracture our society.

The sociologists Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead define Christian nationalism as a “cultural framework that blurs distinctions between Christian identity and American identity, viewing the two as closely related and seeking to enhance and preserve their union.” The author and pastor Matthew McCullough defines Christian nationalism as “an understanding of American identity and significance held by Christians wherein the nation is a central actor in the world-historical purposes of the Christian God.” Both definitions are excellent, but what does ideological Christian nationalism look like in practice?

In 2022, a coalition of right-wing writers and leaders published a document called “National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles.” Its section on God and public religion states: “Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.” That’s an extraordinary — and ominous — ideological statement, one that would immediately relegate non-Christians to second-class status. It’s utterly contrary to the First Amendment and would impose a form of compelled deference to Christianity on both religious minorities and the nonreligious.

But Christian nationalism isn’t just rooted in ideology; it’s also deeply rooted in identity, the belief that Christians should rule. This is the heart of the Seven Mountain Mandate, a dominionist movement emerging from American Pentecostalism that is, put bluntly, Christian identity politics on steroids. Paula White, Donald Trump’s closest spiritual adviser, is an adherent, and so is the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Tom Parker, who wrote a concurring opinion in the court’s recent I.V.F. decision. The movement holds that Christians are called to rule seven key societal institutions: the family, the church, education, the media, the arts, business and the government.

One doesn’t have to go all the way into Seven Mountain theology, though, to find examples of Christian identity politics. The use of Christianity as an unofficial but necessary qualification for office is a routine part of politics in the most churchgoing parts of America. Moreover, one of the common red-America arguments for Trump is that he might not be devout himself, but he’ll place lots of Christians in government.

Ruth Marten

The thing that struck me about this, having never and still not being a fan of French, is that I’m really tired of people defending a religion whose roots have never been benign.  Its roots were all so the reason many folks came here to escape whatever brand of it was most toxic at that point in history.  It’s worth getting everyone to know about what kind of danger lurks in this current version of fascism. It’s also tiring to hear “not everybody …”.

It’s also worth noticing that Mike Johnson may not be able to get much done, but he’s working diligently on getting fertilized more rights than living, breathing women. This is from the Washington Post. “Republicans who say they support IVF backed a bill protecting life ‘at conception’, The antiabortion bill in the House has no provisions for processes like in vitro fertilization.”  The story is reported by Mariana Alfaro.

Prominent congressional Republicans are coming out in support of in vitro fertilization days after the Alabama state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people and therefore that someone can be held liable for destroying them.

But many of the same Republicans who are saying Americans should have access to IVF have co-sponsored legislation that employs an argument similar to the one the Alabama Supreme Court used in its ruling.

The congressional proposal, known as the Life at Conception Act, defines a “human being” to “include each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization or cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” The bill would also provide equal protection under the 14th Amendment “for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.”

I’ve been watching the back-and-forth between Hillary and Lady Lindsey on Threads and Twitter.

They came for abortion first. Now it’s IVF and next it’ll be birth control.

The extreme right won’t stop trying to exert government control over our most sacred personal decisions until we codify reproductive freedom as a human right.https://t.co/dEUkPW8LJf

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 22, 2024

Notice Sen. Graham's phrasing here: "legal birth control."

On abortion rights, Republicans spent years whittling away legality and access until Trump's MAGA Supreme Court majority blew the whole house down.

They think we're going to trust them now? pic.twitter.com/cZ2AUBdyrC

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 26, 2024

How do Republicans in power actually feel about IVF?

Look at the bills they sponsor. https://t.co/2tKSNr2Rtd

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 26, 2024

We need to win these rights permanently before we lose them forever.

Ruth Marten

Here’s a fascinating article from ProPublica. “Inside the Internal Debates of a Hospital Abortion Committee. In states that banned abortion, doctors are forced to wrestle with tough decisions about high-risk pregnancy care. “I don’t want to have a patient die and be responsible for it,” one Tennessee doctor said. This report is written by  Kavitha Surana.

Sitting at her computer one day in late December, Dr. Sarah Osmundson mustered her best argument to approve an abortion for a suffering patient.

The woman was 14 weeks pregnant when she learned her fetus was developing without a skull. This increased the likelihood of a severe buildup of amniotic fluid, which could cause her uterus to rupture and possibly kill her. Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who helps patients navigate high-risk pregnancies, knew that outcome was uncommon, but she had seen it happen.

She drafted an email to her colleagues on the Nashville hospital’s abortion committee, arguing that the risk was significant enough to meet the slim exception to Tennessee’s strict abortion ban, which allows termination only when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” She pleaded with her fellow doctors to spare this woman the gamble when her baby wasn’t even viable.

Then came the replies.

One doctor wasn’t “brave enough.”

Ruth Marten

We’ve finally got some folks in the media noticing that Trump is a drooling idiot these days.  It’s Salon today. Maybe tomorrow, some of the East Coast rags will pull it together. “Trump’s CPAC speech showed clear signs of major cognitive decline — yet MAGA cheered. A confused Donald Trump kept up his threats of retribution during this weekend’s conservative confab. This is written by Chauncey DeVega.

Donald Trump was in his full glory over the weekend at the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference. For his MAGA people, Republicans, and other neofascists and followers, Trump is like a father figure, preacher, teacher, confessor, lover, and god messiah prophet all in one person. In that way, CPAC is Donald Trump’s “church family” – only the church is full of fascism, hatred, wickedness, cruelty, and other anti-human values, beliefs, and behavior. Trump masterfully wields and conducts this energy.

Donald Trump’s speech at this year’s CPAC was truly awesome. As used here, “awesome” does not mean good, but instead draws on the word’s origins as in “inspiring awe or dread.” In his keynote speech on Saturday, Trump said that America is on a “fast track to hell” under President Biden and the Democrats and that “If crooked Joe Biden and his thugs win in 2024, the worst is yet to come. Our country will sink to levels that are unimaginable.”

He continued with his Hitler-like threats of an apocalyptic end-times battle between good and evil and that the country would be destroyed if he is not installed in the White House. Of course, Trump continued to amplify the Big Lie about the 2020 election being “stolen” from him and the MAGA people. He also made great use of the classic propaganda technique, as though he learned it personally from Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels: Accuse your opposition of that which you are guilty of.

If you want some really frightening things from Trump and his White Christian Nationalists/Fascists, check out Just Security. “American Autocracy Threat TrackerA Comprehensive Catalog Based on Donald Trump and His Associates’ Plans, Promises, and Propositions.”

Former President Donald Trump has said he will be a dictator on “day one.” He and his advisors and associates have publicly discussed hundreds of actions to be taken during a second Trump presidency that directly threaten democracy. These vary from Trump breaking the law and abusing power in areas like immigration roundups and energy extraction; to summarily and baselessly firing tens of thousands of civil servants whom he perceives as adversaries; to prosecuting his political opponents for personal gain and even hinting at executing some of them. We track all of these promises, plans, and pronouncements here and we will continue to update them in real time.

We assess there is a significant risk of autocracy should Trump regain the presidency. Trump has said he would deploy the military against civilian protestors and his advisors have developed plans for using the Insurrection Act, said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to conduct deportations of non-citizens, continued to threaten legally-established abortion rights, and even had his lawyers argue that a president should be immune from prosecution if he directed SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political enemies. Trump also seeks the power to protect his personal wealth as he faces staggering civil fines, and to bolster his immunity as he faces 91 criminal charges in prosecutions in different parts of the country.

While Trump has claimed he will be a dictator for only the first day of his administration, his promise to do so–even for 24 hours–is antithetical to American democracy. History teaches us that dictatorial powers, once assumed, are rarely relinquished. Moreover, Trump cannot possibly achieve his stated goals for the use of that power (in immigration and energy policy) in one day, meaning that his “dictatorship” would of necessity likely last much longer.

Trump’s former advisors—those with the most experience watching him govern behind the scenes—believe he is a danger to the country. John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisor, said, “I think Trump will cause significant damage in a second term, damage that in some cases will be irreparable.” Alyssa Farah Griffin, former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications, noted, “Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly.”

Trump’s dictatorial aspirations are complemented by an extensive pre-election plan to fundamentally alter the nature of American government: the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project (Project 2025). Created by Trump allies and staffed by those including his past and likely future administration appointees, it is in the words of Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, a plan for “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Trump has returned the compliment, saying of Roberts (and Heritage) that he’s “doing an unbelievable job, he’s bringing it back to levels we’ve never seen … thank you Kevin.”

This is your bedtime reading if you want nightmares.

I hope no one has their inheritance in the hands of a Trump Cult Member.  Who would trust their money to anything Trump-related?  Well, CNBC has some answers. “Trump and his favorite fundraising platform both face donor problems.”  Of course, they do. This is reported by Brian Schwartz.

Every so often, Matthew Hurtt receives concerning emails. The subject lines are each slightly different: “Stop charging my account,” “Urgent!” and “Donation not approved,” but the people who send them all want the same thing: to halt the Republican political contribution platform WinRed from making any more automatic, recurring withdrawals from their accounts.

Hurtt is chairman of the Virginia-based Arlington County Republican Committee and says he’s reviewed a “few dozen” of these types of emails since the 2020 election. When WinRed processes a contribution to a Republican campaign, the charge shows up on the donor’s credit card or bank statement as a payment to “WINRED http://www.GOP.com, Arlington VA,” according to a statement provided by Hurtt and reviewed by CNBC.

As a result, people often mistakenly believe their money went to the Arlington County Republican Party, he said.

“Cancel account and stop billing my credit card,” Oklahoma resident Samie Elliot wrote in a January email that landed in Hurtt’s inbox. She later explained to him that neither she nor her husband, who are both retired, recalled ever signing up for recurring monthly political donations and that these charges have been occurring for at least a year.

Federal Election Commission records, however, paint a very different picture of the Elliots. According to campaign finance reports, WinRed processed $14,300 in political contributions from Elliot and her husband, Orin Elliot, between 2020 and the end of 2023.

These donations all appear to have been small, recurring contributions. Exactly the kind that Elliot said they did not recall signing up for. Samie Elliot did not respond to requests for comment.

“Every one of them has told me a similar story: elderly, sometimes dementia, and don’t remember donating month after month,” said Hurtt, who shared nine email exchanges with CNBC for this story.

“As a county committee chairman who struggles to raise money, it infuriates me,” he said.

WinRed did not respond to requests for comment.

I was going to try to find something cheery and not frightening today, but it is what it is. I’ve left some easter eggs in the links to the artist Ruth Marten, whose surrealistic art is featured today. Enjoy!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

https://skydancingblog.com/2024/02/26/mostly-monday-reads-surrealistic-wallow/

#fetusFetishists #IVF #RuthMarten #TrackingFascistTrumpPolicies #TrumpDonationScams #WarAgainstWomen #WhiteChristianNationalists