Took leave from work to take care of myself (as much as I could, all considered) this week for the first time in as long as I can remember. To see everything I’ve worked on for years — fighting disinfo and the radicalization of veterans — with death of vets in the Capitol... 1/x

It’s been crippling. It’s all that I can think about. And I’m angry. Angry at those who didn’t listen — particularly those on the Hill who I’ve been warning for years. Angry at those who avoided responsibility, could have been proactive, and refused to seek solutions. 2/x

After a two-year investigation on behalf of @VVAmerica, I wrote and published a report on the way veterans were being targeted online. My mandate at the time was to focus on foreign entities seeking to take advantage of, defraud, and radicalize troops, vets, and our families. 3/x

I discovered during my investigation that Macedonians stole "Vets for Trump" FB pages, and were using them to spread hateful, racist, and xenophobic rhetoric **MORE EFFECTIVELY THAN THE ORIGINAL OWNERS.** 4/x

As @craigtimberg explained: The saga of Vets for Trump is a case study in how misinfo +political activism can become intertwined, and how the line between domestic and foreign actors can blur in an online world where social media accounts can be bought, sold and even hijacked 5/x

Days after a Capitol insurrection that left 5 people dead, and as we learn of domestic terrorism threats ahead of inauguration, I still can't wrap my head around House Republicans having a full-blown tantrum about having to walk through a metal detector.

What is going on here?

At best, these GOP lawmakers are embarrassingly entitled.

At worst, they’re sneaking guns onto the House floor and don't want to get caught -- and terrifying their colleagues in the meantime.

These are actual quotes from House Republicans reacting to have to walk through a metal detector to get onto the House floor.

“Horse shit!”

“You are creating a problem you do not understand the ramifications of!”

“You can’t stop me, I’m on my way to a vote!"

The Capitol Police officers by the metal detector -- some of whom just saved these lawmakers' lives last week -- had to stand there and get yelled at, and be told the situation is "unconstitutional."

There is nothing in the Constitution about walking through a metal detector.

Never mind that you're not allowed to bring a gun onto the House floor, which it sure sounds like Rep. Madison Cawthorn did.

Some lawmakers are afraid of EACH OTHER. Some are raising concerns about Trump allied-lawmakers being conspirators with the violent insurrectionists.

(Thread) Before the whole #ForceTheVote spectacle disappears in the usual ways that these things do in the Eternal Sunshine of the Very Online Left, something it might be worth taking a beat to think about:

So much of the discourse about this has treated it as a debate between insidery incrementalism and something more outsidery and confrontational--I've seen a few people describe it as a challenge to "electoralism"--but that stops making sense if you think about it for 5 seconds.

I know that some sort of spark to grassroots action was allegedly on the other end of the parliamentary Rube Goldberg machine:

"play hardball" in bargaining about the leadership vote --> get a floor vote that would have been defeated in a landslide making voters take M4A less seriously than ever as a real world possibility --> supposedly somehow get ammunition for this for primary challenges

...but about the most generous thing you can say about that is that it's *extremely* speculative.

(Thread)
I may not be all that old, but I’m old enough to remember a time when politicians weren’t self absorbed bags of shit.
I’m old enough to remember how everyone came together in the wake of a tragedy that killed Americans.
A time before we had the internet widely available

In the days after 9/11 I was 16 years old in the NY Metro area. We watched our communities come together to lift up America.
We were proud to be American.
We were survivors in the face of terrorism. We buried loved ones and attended memorial after memorial for the 2,977 souls.

Nobody discounted any loss. Each was just as tragic as the next. From the people on the planes to those who gave their lives trying to rescue people from those buildings.
We were one people. We were American people.
We weren’t Republicans or Democrats we were AMERICANS.

In the years that followed, peoples dedication faded and life went back to a place of being semi-normal. But I never lost that pride of being an American.
My grandmother immigrated to America during WWII as a refugee from Poland.
She fled for the American dream.

When Barack Obama ran, I not only campaigned for him, but I voted for him. Twice, once in 2008 and again in 2012. I felt proud to have a successful black man breaking history for all of the little boys and girls that would look up to him.
But this is where it started.

In the NY Times today, I argue w/ @brianbeutler that a Civil War amendment to the Constitution--barring those who've "engaged in insurrection" from holding office--authorizes a broader response, one that goes beyond impeachment and beyond Trump

Congress should use its power under the 14th Amendment to pass a law blocking the instigators and perpetrators of last week’s siege of the Capitol--including but not limited to Trump--from holding office ever again.

This would be a complement, not a substitute, for impeachment.

Even during the Civil War, the traitors never breached our Capitol. On Wednesday, they did. They paraded the Confederate battle flag through its halls, halted the electoral vote count, and upended the peaceful transfer of power with

As we respond, we should draw from the lessons of preceding generations--including those who drafted the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment during what Reconstruction historian Eric Foner calls America's "Second

The Framers of the 14th Amendment arrived at a consensus that we sadly find ourselves needing to enforce again: Those who swear an oath to defend our Constitution but then betray that sacred oath by participating in an insurrection cannot be permitted to hold public office again.

When I say Trump is not special, I mean his politics fall comfortably on a spectrum between neocons and Tea Party Republican and his preening reality TV persona and alternating gleeful and sulking narcissism are fairly typical for that type of conservative.

Trump's only innovation was to unapologetically say the quiet part out loud and get away with it, bringing the GOP's racism, misogyny, and desire for white supremacist, monarchal rule to the forefront, but Republicans and the media were eager to enable him from the start.

It could have been anyone, though. You can see guys like Jim Jordan and even Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham wish they'd done it first. Because the GOP and their rabid white supremacist base were fully primed for someone to come along and say and do what Trump did.

Once Trump won, the entire GOP folded into Trumpism overnight because there was never any practical difference between them. The early worriers like Graham merely feared it wouldn't work and there would be a political price to pay. It turns out: not really. The base ate it up.

The media spent about a year trying to spin Trump as a continuation of "respectable" Republicanism or in tension with them before they caught on that conservatives didn't care and just started repeating his lies with a shrug.

In 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, thousands of union members occupied the Wisconsin state capitol - shutting down the legislature in an effort to stop anti-union legislation. Months later, the Occupy movement exploded. A thread on how this relates to #DC + why it matters.

Mass demonstrations of upwards of 100,000 union members, community groups, and their supporters broke out in early 2011 against the Wisconsin Act 10, which attacked collective bargaining, health care and pensions. By February 20th, a physical occupation of the capitol began.

"In Wisconsin, public sector workers, students, and others more generally occupied the Capitol building to stop it from functioning. They prevented the legislative process, the transition from paper, to voting quorum, to the laws taking effect, and thus manifested a force..."

In early March, after being locked out of the capitol, union protesters re-occupied the building while chanting "general strike!"

Inside the occupied capitol, assemblies were held and food was shared communally. On the outside, strikes were called and solidarity occupations broke out at universities. Talk of a general strike filled the air.

1/

In light of GA's election results, and what's likely a flipping of the Senate, a quick thread recapping some key provisions of the Biden Tax Plan...

(No GIFs. Proposals don't get those)

On the income tax side, the Biden tax plan sets a clear, bright-line mark at $400k...

2/

If you're below that, you'd be pretty 'safe' from seeing your tax rate(s) increase under his plan.

For those w/ income of $400k or more, he proposed returning the top rate to 39.6% (though whether this is for single filers, joint filers, or both, was never made clear)...

3/

Biden also proposes eliminating the QBI deduction for anyone with income more than $400k (today, non-specified service biz owners may be able to continue to benefit from the deduction if they have sufficient wages or property).

The $400k mark is also the proposed cut off...

4/

for taxpayers who want to do a 1031 exchange. Income higher than that? You wouldn't be able to do one under the plan.

Deductions for high earners would also take a hit under Biden tax plan, as the max benefit would be capped at 28% instead of at the taxpayer's actual rate...

5/

Biden also proposes replaced IRA and 401(k) deductions w/ a flat credit. Would be a big benefit for those w/ more modest incomes, while hurting those with higher incomes.

Would also flip SOP for high earners, making Roth accounts FAR more likely to be the better option...

Immediately after the 2016 election, I wrote a piece on Trump's victory. Like other JOCs, I pointed to racism as the center. It's striking to me how so many mainstream journalists 4 years later still struggle to deal with the realities of this country.

FROM 2016: "Trump clearly sensed the fragility of the coalition that Obama put together — that the president's support in heavily white areas was built not on racial egalitarianism but on a feeling of self-interest."

"A recent study by sociologists from Harvard and Tufts found that white Americans believed that they experienced more discrimination than black Americans. Trump spoke openly to those Americans, articulating what many Iowans felt but could never say. It was liberating."

"There has never been a moment in America in which black people’s gains have not been perceived by some white p as their loss. History is littered with ex of how economic and racial anxieties can create a wedge with which to destroy interracial political and economic alliances."

"White supremacists overthrew the biracial fusion party in NC in the late 1800s and, with the support of the white population in the state that had once supported the sharing of power, worked to disenfranchise black North Carolinians and usher in seven decades of Jim Crow."

Last day of the Donald Trump presidency. Let's see where we're at on those 2016 campaign promises!

1. "I will build a great wall, and Mexico will pay for it!"
Only 80 miles of new wall was built where there was none before. Mexico didn't pay for it... you did.

2. "If I become president, we're all going to be saying 'Merry Christmas' again."
...

3. "I'll eliminate 'Department of Environment Protection' (EPA)"

He did cut the budget, but the EPA is still alive and well. In fact, he felt the EPA was necessary enough to look into his claim of “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once."
No, really.

4. Heavily surveil and close some mosques in the US, and create database of Syrian refugees.

Good news! No mosques were closed on government order.
But if you really think mosques weren't being surveilled before, or that Feds didn't already have refugees in a database...

I'm not seeing much discussion of the massive damage that's been done to the Democratic Party.

The Democrats I know are cops, farmers, teachers; families who love America & their neighbors. They love the DP they knew from the past.

But the party has been wholesale hijacked.

The Clintons bear much of the blame for destroying the DP, but not all of it. The DP has sold out to multinational corporations, and allowed itself to be infiltrated by America-hating Marxists and other extremist splinter groups, while pandering for votes.

That's why Dems like Pelosi, Biden, Feinstein, Nadler, Tom Perez, Donna Brazile seem so hog-tied most of the time

Trump has been a GIFT to them, because they can focus all their public attention on him, and not on the deep divisions & fatal fractures in their party.

For example, they've embraced Antifa & BLM activists thinking that this will pull more voters to the DP, unified by their loathing of Trump.

The DP thinks it can "turn off" these protests like a spigot if/when they win the WH and Congress.

They're wrong.

Just like their embrace of the Squad: AOC, Tlaib, Pressly and Omar, those decisions are going to come back to bite them.

The Democratic Party has now taken the Marxists, anarchists and their poisonous ideologies right into the heart of the party, and it's going to kill them.

I’m just going to post this response to someone saying they don’t think I can see through the forest.
I lived in the fucking forest. I was and continue to live in the weeds.... I feel it is so important to put forth as much truth as I legally can:

You still fail to provide your reasons for voting FOR Biden, not for NOT Voting for Trump. I’m extremely capable of seeing through the forest as I worked in it for 16 years. Sorry you don’t know what I know right now. But you soon will.

If not revealed by Durham, some will actually come out in my case as we move forward finally after 8+ years.

Those characters in the FBI who did extremely illegal and unethical activities were my peers, unfortunately.

So, unfortunately, I have had the “honor” of knowing a bit more than I really think I was ready to know. I have actually had to take breaks from the information that will rock the core of this nation. Totally way bigger than Watergate. It actually hurts to say that.

I don’t know if the Bu can survive but I pray that it does. I am more than willing to assist in any way. But this may shake Americans, who are & are in not believing the magnitude of the situation, so much that I’m not sure the American people will be supportive of just reform.

Yesterday afternoon Georgia’s Senate panel hosted Rudy Giuliani for an evidential hearing regarding voter fraud in Georgia. The fake news won’t report the facts so it is up to us. Here were my key takeaways from the session.

The biggest piece of evidence was video footage that showed several suitcases being rolled out from under a table after poll watchers and media were told that vote counting was over and asked to leave. Clear evidence of significant fraud.

A Professor of Constitutional Law and member of 11th Circuit and Supreme Court Bar spoke about a lower than normal mail-in rejection rate of 0.33% in this election versus 6.4% in the 2016 election despite having twice the number of mail-in ballots.

Normalizing for this, 40k votes were counted that shouldn’t have been. More critical perhaps, was the view that the consent decree signed by Georgia’s Secretary of State violates the statutory scheme and permits the legislature to invalidate the entire election.

A change to the underage registration window to allow 16 yr olds to register 6 months earlier than normal also violates the constitution and allows the legislature to step in. Some 66k underage votes were counted in this election that shouldn’t have been counted under state law.

Who would be using someone in Germany to switch votes in elections

News Analysis🔎The firm hired by @GaSecofState to conduct an #Audit of #DominionVotingSystems is the same one that previously certified the #Dominion systems and also approved a last-minute system-wide software change. (Thread👇)