Crooked Media - What A Day: Campaign in the neck

- Trump lawyer, former Harvard law professor, and Jeffrey Epstein associate Alan Dershowitz, uh, losing the plot after being named on a list of his own: the Epstein unsealed documents

An election year is upon us, and it’s already feeling gnarly. 
 

• State and local government buildings in multiple states faced a wave of bomb threats for a second day in a row on Thursday. Several locations were targeted in Mississippi alone, alongside offices in Florida, Massachusetts and Maine. The deluge came one day after state capitol buildings in eight states were evacuated or placed on temporary lockdown after bomb threats, which authorities described as false and nonspecific. The FBI said none of it appears credible. Still, the incidents underscore the intensifying climate of intimidation and harassment faced by public officials, particularly those responsible for overseeing voting and ballot access. The 2020 election saw unprecedented threats to election workers amplified by rampant right-wing conspiracy theories, a trend that is expected to continue if not worsen in 2024. 
   

• All this unnerving activity is going down right before the anniversary of the most notorious episode of political violence in recent U.S. history. January 6 will feature prominently for both presumptive 2024 candidates, disgraced former president Donald Trump and current president Joe Biden, on the campaign trail. Both men will deliver speeches on Saturday to commemorate the third anniversary of the insurrection in, uh, rather different ways. President Biden will visit Valley Forge, Pennsylvania—the site where George Washington and the Continental Army endured a brutal winter during the American Revolution—to highlight Trump’s role in January 6 in the critical swing state. Trump will hold two campaign rallies in Iowa, where he will, we assume, will echo past statements about the insurrectionists and call them “patriots” or some bullshit. 
   

• And speaking of Trump’s NBD view of January 6, Trump appealed a Colorado State Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday, which will likely force the Supreme Court to weigh in directly on his 2024 candidacy. Both the Rocky Mountain State and Maine have ruled that Trump is disqualified from seeking the GOP nomination due to his role in January 6, which those states argue falls under the constitutional provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment barring anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office. Trump appointed one-third of the Court, which we’re sure won’t have any bearing on their jurisprudence!

Disgraced former president Trump continues to be an unbelievably corrupt man accused of 91 felonies, and both his base and Republican colleagues continue to not care! 
 

• Trump reportedly received at least $7.8 million in foreign payments from 20 (!) countries during his four years in the White House according to a new report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. Most of the money came from China. It’s exactly the kind of foreign interference and corruption that House Republicans are desperately trying to pin on President Biden via their bogus impeachment inquiry. 
   

• The scathing 156-page report entitled “White House For Sale” details how foreign governments poured millions of dollars into the Trump businesses—mostly through his hotels—in flagrant violation of the Constitution, which prohibits federal officials from accepting money, payments, or gifts “of any kind” whatsoever from foreign governments unless they have obtained the explicit consent of Congress to do so. Trump, you will be shocked to learn, never sought such congressional approval. 

House Republicans dismissed the report (we’re all shocked), and argued that there was nothing wrong with Trump receiving revenue from foreign governments while in office. Meanwhile, they say President Biden’s family is corrupt. After almost a year of investigating, the House GOP has provided no evidence to support their claims that President Biden enriched himself as Vice President. Our tax dollars at work, everybody!

It's officially a huge, super high-stakes election year and there’s so much to keep track of: important voting deadlines, volunteer shifts, emergency therapy, and apparently you still have to go to work and stuff. That’s why Crooked and Vote Save America created a 2024 planner to help you stay focused, sane, and organized next year. It’s filled with important dates, motivation, and some fun stuff to keep you from falling face-first into your couch and never coming out. It’s a great gift for the person who’s already sending anxiety texts about the election, or the friend who keeps saying “we should volunteer” but uses a post-it as a calendar. Start the election year off right. Head to crooked.com/store to get your planner.

The head of the Lebanese militant group and political party (and Hamas ally) Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, vowed “a response and punishment” for the assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arourir in Beirut on Tuesday. Al-Arouri was the highest-ranking Hamas leader killed since the start of the conflict in October. Nasrallah continued, “Whoever considers a war with us will regret it. A war with us will be very, very, very costly.” 

An American airstrike in Baghdad killed an Iran-linked militia commander on Thursday, risking an acceleration of regional fallout from the United States’ staunch support of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken departed for the Middle East on Thursday as a latest effort to prevent broadening the Israeli-Hamas conflict. It will be Blinken’s fourth trip to the region since the October 7 Hamas attack, and he will visit Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Blinken will reportedly aim to increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza, urge Israel to quell tensions of settler violence in the West Bank, and protect civilians in Gaza who are facing an unprecedented starvation crisis. 

United Nations agencies have not been able to deliver aid to northern Gaza for at least three days according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing “access delays and denials,” in a Wednesday statement. Such aid includes a 30-day supply of medicine that could support more than 100,000 people and much-needed food. Safe drinking water continues to be a scarce resource.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Thursday for twin explosions in Kerman, Iran on Wednesday that killed nearly 100 people and wounded hundreds more. Tehran has vowed revenge for the bloodiest attack on Iranian soil since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Russia and Ukraine each exchanged over 200 prisoners of war on Thursday in the largest prisoner swap between the two nations since the conflict began almost two years ago. 

American intelligence officials determined that Russia has acquired ballistic missiles from North Korea and is attempting to procure clos-erange ballistic missiles from Iran. 

Multiple people were shot and wounded at a high school in Perry, Iowa on Thursday as students returned from the first day of classes back from winter break. The suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to local law enforcement. 

Vanessa Joy, a trans woman running for the Ohio House of Representatives, was disqualified for using her legal name on ballot petitions, as opposed to the name given to her at birth, or “dead name.” Joy had collected all necessary signatures required for candidacy. 

Consumer Reports has found that plastics retain a “widespread” presence in food, a known health risk, and called on regulators to reevaluate the safety of plastics that come into contact with food during production and packaging.

Court documents regarding late billionaire and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein were unsealed on Wednesday night (and a second batch dropped late Thursday evening). But the more than 900 pages in Wednesday’s pile contained mostly information that has been previously reported. The documents don’t contain a literal list of Epstein associates. But they do contain more than 100 names, including some high-profile public figures. Merely being named in these files, however, doesn’t imply wrongdoing. The United Kingdom’s Prince Andrew is of course named, given that he settled a lawsuit in 2022 with a woman who accused him and Epstein of abusing her as a teenager. Former president Bill Clinton is also named, having been allegedly described by Epstein as “a good friend” (according to one Epstein accuser). Clinton took four trips on Epstein’s private jet, the former president’s spokesperson confirmed in 2019, but he has not been accused of wrongdoing. Other names in the documents included disgraced former President Donald Trump, magician David Copperfield, Michael Jackson, scumbag Trump lawyer (and Epstein lawyer!) Alan Dershowitz, and others. Epstein was accused of sexually assaulting and trafficking numerous teenage girls with his longtime friend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Some of the girls were as young as 14 years old, according to prosecutors. He pleaded not guilty to federal charges in 2019 and died in prison shortly thereafter. His death was ruled a suicide.

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The National Labor Relations Board ruled on Wednesday that Google parent company Alphabet violated U.S. labor law by refusing to bargain with the YouTube Music union, and now must do so. Unions: like and subscribe!!!

The U.S. Department of Commerce said on Thursday that it plans to award Microchip Technology $162 million in government grants to increase American production of semiconductors and MCUs.