2024 U.S. Election of President and Vice President

[TopHatter]

This is nothing short of an attempt at voter suppression.

How else are they going to win the election?

[InExile]

I do think that some of the worries about Trump establishing an authoritarian regime after a return to power are overblown. For example, even if were to stack the Justice Department with his enablers, the ultimate decisions would still be made by the judges in the court who would not defer to him even if they are appointed conservatives. Project 2025 sounds scary with the promise to fire over 50,000 Government employees, however, this would most likely simply deprive the US Government of much-needed expertise and quite easily backfire. The far right militias and activist's like the Proud Boys would no doubt be emboldened, but one does have to admit that the levels of political violence in the US are quite low and in spite of the more dangerous rhetoric by the right-wing, actual violent acts are thankfully still not happening much.

However, one thing that does worry me is the MAGA's attempting to gain control over the US military, either by mass firings and/or appointing loyalists like Michael Flynn to leadership positions. This is outlined in this article in the Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...oyalty/676140/

The US military does have a long tradition over 200 years of staying out of politics and this is a line that military officers, even those sympathetic to Trump will be hesitant to cross. But as this article points out, it might take only a few officers like Michael Flynn, especially in senior positions to cause serious dangers.

[Chunder]

Well. I swore myself off U.S. politics. Stupid me, I checked the polling yesterday. God help us all, Especially Ukraine. You have got to be kidding me. Best wishes to you all.

[tbm3fan]

I see there is a ballot proposition concerning protecting abortion obtaining signatures right now. Looks like they will easily get the required amount before the deadline. That would put it up during the November 2024 Presidential Election. Those propositions have had strong turnouts in whatever state they have been held in so far and those weren't Presidential elections. If that holds true to form what will that mean for Florida if the turnout is higher than normal?

TALLAHASSEE - Backers of a proposed constitutional amendment that would ensure abortion rights in Florida have totaled more than 621,000 valid petition signatures as they try to meet a Feb. 1 deadline to get on the 2024 ballot.

The Florida Division of Elections website Friday morning showed 621,690 valid petition signatures for the measure, which is sponsored by the political committee Floridians Protecting Freedom. The committee by Feb. 1 will need to submit at least 891,523 valid signatures statewide and meet signature requirements in at least half of the state's congressional districts to get on the November ballot.

The committee also needs the Florida Supreme Court to sign off on the proposed ballot wording.

Attorney General Ashley Moody has challenged the proposed wording, contending that it would mislead voters - an argument that supporters of the measure dispute.

The ballot summary of the proposal says, in part: "No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider."


https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/f...00-signatures/

__________________________________________________ _________________

Of course the state AG is asking the Florida Supreme Court to keep it off the ballot. You mean the AG doesn't think people should be allowed to vote on it. Yeah, just as Paxton got an injunction to prevent that woman in Texas from having an abortion due to a non-viable fetus. You go Paxton and show just who is Boss in Texas.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s Republican attorney general has asked the state Supreme Court to keep a proposed abortion rights amendment off the ballot, saying proponents are waging “a war” to protect the procedure and ultimately will seek to expand those rights in future years.

But proponents of the proposed amendment said Attorney General Ashley Moody is playing politics and that her arguments fall legally short given what the call the clear and precise language of the proposed measure.

A group called Floridians Protecting Freedom has gathered nearly 500,000 of the 891,523 voter signatures needed ahead of a Feb. 1 deadline for signatures to put the proposal on the 2024 ballot. The state Supreme Court would be tasked with ensuring the ballot language isn’t misleading and applies to a single subject if it goes before voters.

cont.

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-...2410b7670b16e3

[Monash]

I do think that some of the worries about Trump establishing an authoritarian regime after a return to power are overblown. For example, even if were to stack the Justice Department with his enablers, the ultimate decisions would still be made by the judges in the court who would not defer to him even if they are appointed conservatives. Project 2025 sounds scary with the promise to fire over 50,000 Government employees, however, this would most likely simply deprive the US Government of much-needed expertise and quite easily backfire. The far right militias and activist's like the Proud Boys would no doubt be emboldened, but one does have to admit that the levels of political violence in the US are quite low and in spite of the more dangerous rhetoric by the right-wing, actual violent acts are thankfully still not happening much.

However, one thing that does worry me is the MAGA's attempting to gain control over the US military, either by mass firings and/or appointing loyalists like Michael Flynn to leadership positions. This is outlined in this article in the Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...oyalty/676140/

The US military does have a long tradition over 200 years of staying out of politics and this is a line that military officers, even those sympathetic to Trump will be hesitant to cross. But as this article points out, it might take only a few officers like Michael Flynn, especially in senior positions to cause serious dangers.

I would also suggest that sacking 50,000 government employees without first proving just cause would be a legal quagmire. The livelihood of those employees and their families would be on the line. Even if both houses jumped on board and passed the necessary retrospective legislation those government employees effected are going to have very strong grounds for appeal.

[Albany Rifles]

I would also suggest that sacking 50,000 government employees without first proving just cause would prove be a legal quagmire. Even if both houses jumped on board and passed the necessary legislation retrospectively those government employees effected are gong to have very strong grounds for appeal.

As one of those 50,000 I am glad I will leave 49,999 in place come June.

[TopHatter]

I do think that some of the worries about Trump establishing an authoritarian regime after a return to power are overblown.

FWIW, I agree that that is a distant prospect. "No man rules alone, after all"

It's the flamethrower that he's going wield, paving the way for the next authoritarian asshole, that worries me.

[TopHatter]

Well. I swore myself off U.S. politics. Stupid me, I checked the polling yesterday. God help us all, Especially Ukraine. You have got to be kidding me. Best wishes to you all.

Hey c'mon, just because we're sleepwalking into another catastrophe, that's no reason to swear off....OK, yeah, actually it is a good reason.

[TopHatter]

Trump doubles down on ‘dictator’ remarks at New York Republican gala

Former President Trump on Saturday appeared to double down on remarks he made about whether he would abuse power or serve as a “dictator” if reelected to the White House, reiterating that he only wants to be a “dictator for one day” in order to secure the southern border and begin drilling in the U.S.

“[Peter] Baker today in the New York Times said that I want to be a dictator,” Trump said Saturday while delivering a keynote speech to the New York Young Republican Club’s 111th Annual Gala. “I didn’t say that. I said I want to be a dictator for one day. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

His remarks prompted chants of “build a wall” from the audience before Trump added, “Well we did.”

Trump was making an apparent reference to an article published earlier Saturday by The New York Times’s chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, in which he discussed the implications of Trump’s “dictator” remarks in a Fox News town hall last week.

Trump was pressed last week by Fox News’s Sean Hannity on whether he has plans — if reelected — to “abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people.”

Trump initially avoided directly answering the question, and then, when asked for a second time, the former president said, “Except for day one.”

“He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, no, no, no — other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator,” Trump said to Hannity before an audience in Iowa.

The remarks further fueled concern from Democrats and even some Republicans that a second Trump term could threaten democracy and risk an abuse of power to target those who have disagreed with or wronged him.

Saturday night’s gala featured other headlining Republican voices, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and Sen. Roger Marshall (Kan.), both of whom have endorsed Trump’s 2024 reelection bid.

“Less than a year from now, American has a choice to make — greatness or decline. I look around this city and I see the fingerprints of President Trump everywhere,” Gaetz said in a fiery speech Saturday. “And how has New York rewarded this great man? By trying to bankrupt him and imprison him,” he said, referencing Trump’s ongoing civil trial in which control of his business empire is at stake.
__________

When someone tells you who they are...

[Albany Rifles]

What the fuck happened to Nelson Rockefeller's New York GOP?!?!?

SMDH

[TopHatter]

What the fuck happened to Nelson Rockefeller's New York GOP?!?!?

SMDH

It's the Party of Trrrrummmppp now.

[TopHatter]

Yes, Trump can win the 2024 election. Here are four reasons why



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - He has been impeached twice, tried to thwart the peaceful transfer of power after losing the 2020 presidential election, faces scores of charges in multiple criminal cases, and his critics warn he is plotting to rule as an autocrat. Yet, Donald Trump could still return to the White House.

Trump leads his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination by nearly 50 percentage points in national opinion polls, a remarkable comeback for a one-term president who three years ago appeared vanquished and humiliated.

Here are four reasons why Trump could win the November 2024 election against Democratic incumbent Joe Biden:

UNHAPPY VOTERS

The Biden White House argues the economy is in good shape, with unemployment down to a near-historic low of 3.9% from 6.3% when Trump left office and inflation cooling from a peak over 9% in June 2022 to 3.2% as of October.

Large swaths of the public, including many voters of color and young voters, believe otherwise. They point to wages not keeping pace with the costs of essential goods and services such as groceries, cars, houses, child and elder care.

When Biden talks about the economy, Americans think about affordability, not economic indicators. Opinion polls show that voters by a large margin view Republicans as better stewards of the economy, even though Trump has offered only vague proposals.

SPEAKING TO FEAR

Voters are unsettled for reasons that extend far beyond the economy. Trump speaks to the worries, real or not, that many white Americans have in a country that is becoming increasingly diverse and more culturally progressive.

There is also a pervasive sense of losing ground, that the cornerstones of American life - home ownership, a decent wage that keeps pace with inflation, a college education - are becoming more out of reach for many. Polls show voters are worried about crime and nervous about the flow of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

Trump is adept at channeling and packaging those fears, while still presenting himself as someone who comes from outside the U.S. political system. He is both arsonist and firefighter, who declares the country is in chaos and then offers himself as a savior.

TRUMP'S ACTIONS NOT DISQUALIFYING FOR MANY VOTERS

While critics within his own party, the Democratic Party and the media view him as unfit for office, millions of voters disagree.

Instead, many of his supporters have become convinced that Trump is a victim of a political witch hunt. At least half of Republicans surveyed by Reuters/Ipsos earlier this year said they would have no problem voting for Trump even if he were convicted of a crime.

Trump can also point to his four years in office and argue that the machinery of government largely functioned, if at times chaotically, despite fears he could not govern and that the worst allegations about him - such as his colluding with Russia - were never proven.

BIDEN GETS ALL THE BLAME, NO CREDIT

Trump can also take advantage of a White House that, so far, has been unable to persuade much of the public that Biden’s job-creation policies - through heavy government investment in infrastructure, clean energy and chip manufacturing - have made a difference to their lives.

Biden also has been saddled with a pair of foreign wars that have divided Americans. Trump’s non-interventionist, "America first" message may resonate with voters fearful of further U.S. involvement in Ukraine or Israel while Biden maintains a more traditional, interventionist American foreign policy.

None of this, of course, means Trump is certain to win the election.

He remains deeply unpopular in many parts of the country and among many demographics, and if he is chosen as his party's nominee it could provoke a high turnout in favor of Democrats to counter him.

His inflammatory rhetoric, including threats to take revenge on political enemies he denounces as "vermin," could also be a turn-off for more moderate Republicans and independent voters, who he will need to beat Biden.

Democrats have also successfully campaigned as defenders of abortion rights to defeat Republicans across the country in a series of elections and will again make that issue central to their 2024 campaign.

But at this moment, 11 months from Election Day, Trump stands a better chance of returning to the White House than at any point since he left office.
______

[TopHatter]

Inside the Troll Army Waging Trump’s Online Campaign
A team of meme-makers has been flooding social media with pro-Trump posts riddled with sexist and racist tropes. Donald Trump is cheering them on.

The video, called “Let’s Get Ready to Bumble,” is a slick mash-up of President Biden’s verbal slip-ups and his stumbles set to a thumping 1990s dance track. And when it was played on a big screen at Trump rallies late last year, it consistently drew laughs and jeers from the crowd.

But Donald J. Trump thought he could improve it.

So the former president asked an adviser to pass along a few notes to one of the video’s creators: It should include a clip of the president falling off a bicycle, he suggested, and another of him flubbing a line in a recent speech.

The video’s co-creator — Bryan Heestand, a product engineer in Ohio who goes by the anonymous handle C3PMeme — rushed to incorporate the former president’s edits. He was delighted, he said later in a podcast interview, to see Mr. Trump play the new version at his final rally before the midterm elections, pausing his speech to watch it with well over a thousand supporters gathered at Dayton International Airport.

“He had some suggestions. We made it happen,” Mr. Heestand said.

Mr. Heestand doesn’t work for Mr. Trump, but he belongs to a small circle of video meme-makers who have effectively served as a shadow online ad agency for his presidential campaign. Led by a little-known podcaster and life coach, this meme team has spent much of the year flooding social media with content that lionizes the former president, promotes his White House bid and brutally denigrates his opponents.

Much of the group, which refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine, operates anonymously, adopting the cartoonish aesthetic and unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls.

Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor.

Their most vulgar invectives are often aimed at women, particularly those seen as enemies of Mr. Trump. In one video, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley’s face is pasted on the body of a nearly naked woman, who kicks a man with the face of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the groin. Another depicts Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, as a porn star. Women with ties to Mr. DeSantis are often shown with red knees, suggesting they have performed a sex act.

The former president and his inner circle have celebrated the group’s work and helped it reach millions. Dan Scavino, Mr. Trump’s social media adviser; Steven Cheung, the campaign’s spokesman; and Donald Trump Jr. frequently share the memes on their social media accounts.

Since March, Mr. Trump has posted videos made by the team to his Truth Social and Instagram accounts — which have more than 30 million followers combined — at least two dozen times. He tends to share the group’s less crude content, favoring memes that feature him in a positive light.

But Mr. Trump and his campaign have also taken a more active role in the group’s activities, a New York Times review found. Over the past year, he and his campaign have privately communicated with members of the meme team, giving them access and making specific requests for content. In at least one instance, the campaign shared behind-the-scenes footage to be used in videos, according to members of the team.

Late last month, Mr. Trump sent personalized notes to several of the group’s members, thanking them for their work. In September, Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, posted that the meme team was “single-handedly changing the landscape of politics and social media.”

Asked by The Times about the group, the Trump campaign on Tuesday cast them as mere volunteers.

“Every campaign in politics has volunteers and shows appreciation to their volunteers,” said Mr. Cheung, the campaign spokesman, adding that the group had done a “masterful job” highlighting Mr. DeSantis’s “insecurities and blunders.”

Viral memes have played a role in presidential races since Barack Obama’s first run for the White House in 2008. But the meme team’s work — blessed by Mr. Trump, polished and substantially scaled up — represents an evolution with the potential to transform campaigning online.

In an age of social media, the power of memes is rising as the influence of traditional television ads fades. Cheap to make and free to distribute, they are largely unconstrained by regulations about accuracy, fairness and transparency that apply to television and radio advertising. And they are proliferating just as fewer internet platforms try to police political content.

“It’s ominous,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer who now works at the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog nonprofit.

Mr. Ghosh said the meme team’s activities appeared to fit the definition of a super PAC — an entity that can raise and spend unlimited sums to support a candidate or issue but must report its donors and spending. Yet because the group operates outside the campaign finance system, its finances and funders remain unknown.

The lack of transparency “creates an avenue for lots of money to be spent in coordination with a campaign and having a serious impact on races without the public having any sense of what’s really going on,” Mr. Ghosh said.

‘It Doesn’t Have to Be True’

At the center of Mr. Trump’s meme militia is Brenden Dilley, a 41-year-old podcaster, failed congressional candidate and self-described social media and political influencer. Mr. Dilley doesn’t create the memes himself, but he provides the organizing force and smash-mouth ethos driving the crew.

“It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to go viral,” he has said on his podcast.


Brenden Dilley, a life coach and onetime congressional candidate, is the ringleader of the meme team. His podcast offers a running narrative of the team’s work and ambitions.

The group’s more than two dozen members, posting under the hashtag #DilleyMemeTeam, convene in a private Telegram channel to share ideas and pick targets. Many also faithfully tune into Mr. Dilley’s daily podcast, where he talks at length about the group’s activities, interacts with a small but devoted audience and promotes his 2013 self-help book, “Still Breathin’: The Wisdom and Teachings of a Perfectly Flawed Man.”

Most of the meme-makers post anonymously. The Times used podcast transcripts, photographs, news footage and public records to identify Mr. Heestand, who declined to comment.

While some members have sizable followings, they have also been amplified by high-profile right-wing figures. Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Mr. Trump, hosted Mr. Dilley on his podcast last week, saying that he had “changed the course of history in this country.” The right-wing podcaster Jack Posobiec and the internet troll known as Catturd, who each have more than two million followers on X, regularly share the group’s work.

But the team’s content isn’t just niche entertainment for the profoundly online; many memes have broken through to the mainstream.

A video calling President Biden a “puppet candidate” and filled with conspiracy theories about election fraud went viral in July after Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, posted his criticism, calling it “the most alarming political ad I’ve seen this year.”

In an interview, Mr. Luntz said he worried that such spots would soon become commonplace. “They have figured out how to manipulate the public,” Mr. Luntz said, “and they frankly don’t care about the consequences.”

In August, when Mr. Trump was indicted on conspiracy charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, several team members produced a music video targeting the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis. A Kanye West parody, it used artificial intelligence to mimic Mr. Trump’s voice rapping lyrics that were peppered with racist dog whistles.

The initial posting on social media, by the meme team member Ramble_Rants, logged 1.4 million views on X and was widely shared on other platforms.

Nobody has borne the brunt of the group’s attacks more than Mr. DeSantis.

The meme team has produced hundreds of derisive posts attacking the Florida governor’s masculinity, demeanor, marriage and parenting, and his height.

The group’s members have described the onslaught as part guerrilla messaging aimed at shaping coverage of the race and part psy-op aimed at the candidate himself. They take credit for catapulting “bootgate” — the unproven rumor that Mr. DeSantis wears lifts in his cowboy boots — into the mainstream media. (Politico published a 1,400-word investigation into the candidate’s footwear in October.) They also claim its barrage of mockery is the reason Mr. DeSantis wears the boots in the first place.

“They all went straight to his head,” Ramble_Rants posted last month.

The DeSantis campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Dilley has sworn to “destroy” the governor’s career and make him “unelectable,” even if he drops out of the 2024 race. A recent Christmas-themed meme directed at Mr. DeSantis ended with: “Forever you will be mocked.”

Mr. Dilley declined to be interviewed for this article, and the team subsequently produced a video mocking The New York Times. Mr. Dilley told his podcast listeners that he planned to hang a copy of this article next to a signed letter from Mr. Trump.

“Thanks to your efforts,” that letter reads, according to photos posted to social media, “we exposed Joe Biden’s failures and lies for the whole country to see.”

Gratitude and Access

Mr. Dilley has been a supporter of Mr. Trump for years, and in 2018 he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in Arizona as a “staunch believer in the Make America Great Again movement.” But until recently, his devotion always came from a distance.

Today, Mr. Dilley, who now lives north of Atlanta, says he has visited Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort three times in the past year. He and his team have posted numerous photos of themselves posing with Mr. Trump, spending time with his advisers and attending events at Trump properties.

During an episode of his show just before Thanksgiving, Mr. Dilley claimed to be texting one of those advisers, asking if he could join the former president at a football game at the University of South Carolina. That weekend, he and his wife were photographed by Mr. Miller in the governor’s box at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, S.C., along with Mr. Trump.

A video that Mr. Dilley’s wife, Reanna, shot of Mr. Trump walking on the field at halftime was subsequently viewed millions of times online and reposted by the former president on Truth Social.

Like many other influencers, Mr. Dilley appears to receive talking points from the campaign. He also claims more exclusive access, describing phone calls from advisers to Mr. Trump to discuss memes his team is producing and whether they strike the desired tone.

In July, one of the group’s most prolific contributors — a musician from outside San Diego named Michael Beatty, who goes by the handle Miguelifornia — mentioned that Mr. Scavino and Mr. Miller “gave us tons of great video” shot at a Trump rally in South Carolina.

Days later, the team released a clip that appeared to use behind-the-scenes footage of Mr. Trump at a rally. The moody meme, cast in blue monochrome and set to a Phil Collins song, cast Mr. Trump as a serious, heroic leader and concluded with information on how to text a donation to the campaign.

“This is a campaign ad if I’ve ever seen one,” one team member, who goes by MAGADevilDog, wrote on X.

A Plan to Avoid ‘a Ton of Oversight’

Because the Dilley Meme Team’s content is shared on the internet, rather than on television or radio, it generally isn’t subject to laws requiring ads to include disclosure about who paid for them.

“If it goes on the internet, there’s essentially no regulation,” said Richard L. Hasen, an elections law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. And without regulation, he added, it’s impossible to know who is paying for the content.

But campaign finance experts pointed to two other unknowns about the Dilley Meme Team’s operations: coordination and compensation.

If a group is receiving compensation to help a candidate get elected, then it could be considered a super PAC and should be registered and reporting its donors and spending.

If it is not compensated but is coordinating with the campaign, then it may run afoul of strict limits on in-kind contributions, said Paul S. Ryan, who serves as deputy executive director of the pro-democracy group Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation.

Mr. Ryan said receiving video footage that was not publicly available could be considered coordination.

Memes created with input from the campaign, he said, “are just as good as a direct contribution to the campaign” and may be worth far more than the $6,600 individual limit per election cycle.

Mr. Dilley and other members of the meme team often claim they receive no financial compensation for their efforts.

“Everything they do, they do it for free and out of love of country,” said Alex Bruesewitz, a Republican strategist close to Mr. Trump, who frequently shares Dilley Meme Team posts.

Mr. Dilley, who in 2019 was found to have failed to pay more than $24,000 in child support and interest, says he now makes “multiple six figures” a year. That income, he said on his podcast last month, comes from a combination of sources: podcast subscriptions and sponsors, sales of apparel, his life-coaching business and streaming revenue from the video platform Rumble, where the Dilley Show has more than 12,000 subscribers.

“There’s nothing here that’s mysterious,” he said. “It’s all transparent.”

Federal Election Commission records show no payments from any political committee to Mr. Dilley or other members of the meme team.

Mr. Dilley has claimed to have received gifts from Mr. Trump. Last March, he posted video of a box filled with 28 Make America Great Again hats, each signed by the former president. The package was sent by the campaign in thanks for assisting with “rapid response” during President Biden’s State of the Union address, Mr. Dilley said.

Signed MAGA hats can sell for as much as $1,000 on the secondary market.

Mr. Dilley also said he got access to dozens of V.I.P. tickets to a Trump rally in Hialeah, Fla., on Nov. 8, which he gave to supporters of his show. It is unclear how much the tickets were worth, but tickets for other rallies have sold for as much as $1,500 apiece.

Mr. Dilley has been clear that he is looking for more than just thank-you gifts.

In October, he told his podcast audience that he wanted to use limited liability companies to receive money from Trump donors to fund his team’s work. The idea, he said, is to avoid “a ton of red tape” and “a ton of oversight” that come with operating as a super PAC or being paid by the campaign.

“If you go super PAC or official campaign, you can get paid, but the problem is a lawyer has to watch every single thing you put out, and we don’t want that,” Mr. Dilley said on his podcast in October. “What we need is people that were going to give huge dollar amounts to the super PACs and the campaigns to just give directly to us.”

“We already have L.L.C.s formed,” he added. “We’re ready to rock ’n’ roll.”

Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer who advises both Democrats and Republicans, described that plan as “problematic” because it implies a clear goal of circumventing public disclosure as required by the F.E.C.

“People can take advantage of those failures of the regulatory system to promote the interests of a candidate without the public ever being aware of it,” Mr. Kappel said. In that landscape, he added, “L.L.C.s have become the tool of choice” because they can be layered to obscure both the source and recipient of payments.

The Dilley Meme Team was registered as a business in July, using the address of a UPS store outside Tampa, according to Florida business records. Mr. Dilley acknowledged being involved in its parent company, Counter Productions Digital Media L.L.C., which was registered at the same address in early 2022. He denies having said he set up any L.L.C.s to avoid campaign finance rules.

On his podcast, Mr. Dilley has laid out his vision for his team, saying he hopes to hire all 27 meme team members full time through the 2024 election. “We need 12 months of everyone full time working to meme Donald Trump back into the White House while destroying Joe Biden,” he said.
__________

[TopHatter]

Factbox-Trump's foreign policy: rethink NATO, troops to Mexico, boost tariffs


Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends a "Commit to Caucus" event for his supporters in Coralville

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican former President Donald Trump is planning to fundamentally alter America's relationship with Europe should he win a second term in office. On the campaign trail, he has also floated sending armed forces into Mexico to battle drug cartels and slapping expansive tariffs on friends and foes alike.

Here is a look at the foreign policy proposals Trump has pledged to institute should he win the 2024 presidential election:

NATO, UKRAINE AND EUROPEAN ALLIES

Trump has said that under his presidency, America would fundamentally rethink "NATO's purpose and NATO's mission." He has also said that he would ask Europe to reimburse the United States for "almost $200 billion" worth of munitions sent to Ukraine.

Trump cut defense funding to NATO toward the latter part of his time in office, and he frequently complained America was paying more than its fair share.

On the war in Ukraine specifically, he has called for de-escalation, frequently claiming that he would have the conflict resolved in 24 hours, though he has put forward few tangible policy proposals.

CHINA, TRADE AND TARIFFS

Trump frequently threatens to implement major new tariffs or trade restrictions on China - as well as on some European allies.

His proposed Trump Reciprocal Trade Act would give him broad discretion to ramp up retaliatory tariffs on countries when they are determined to have put up trade barriers of their own. He also floated the idea of a 10% universal tariff during an August interview, which could disrupt international markets.

Trump has also called for an end to China's most favored nation status with respect to America, a status that generally lowers trade barriers between nations. He has vowed to enact "aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership of any vital infrastructure in the United States."

Trump rarely discusses Taiwan, or what he would do if China were to invade, beyond saying that China would never dare to invade if he were president.

MEXICO AND NARCOTICS

Trump has said that he would designate drug cartels operating in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations, and that he would order the Pentagon "to make appropriate use of special forces" to attack cartel leadership and infrastructure, which would be unlikely to get the blessing of the Mexican government.

He has also said he would deploy the U.S. Navy to enforce a blockade against the cartels and that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport drug dealers and gang members in the United States.

Civil rights groups and Democratic senators have pushed for the repeal of that act, passed in 1798, which gives the president some authority to deport foreign nationals while the country is at war.

CONFLICT IN ISRAEL

After first criticizing Israeli leadership in the days after its citizens were attacked by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Oct. 7, he has since said that Hamas must be "crushed." While his rhetoric has been bellicose, he has proposed few policy solutions, beside saying he would be tougher on Iran, which is closely linked to groups classified by the U.S. as terrorist organizations, including Hamas.

Trump also said at a recent rally that he would seek to deport all resident aliens who are Hamas sympathizers.

AFGHANISTAN

Trump has said on the campaign trail that he would demand Afghanistan return military equipment abandoned by the U.S. military during its 2021 withdrawal as a condition for keeping aid money flowing into country.

He had said in 2021 that he would attempt to bomb the abandoned equipment, but he has not repeated that position lately.

CLIMATE

Trump has repeatedly pledged to pull out of the Paris Agreement, a multilateral accord meant to limit greenhouse gas emissions. He did pull out during his term in office, but America rejoined the accord under Democratic President Joe Biden in 2021.

MISSILE DEFENSE

Trump has pledged to build a state-of-the-art missile defense "forcefield" around the United States. He has not gone into detail, beyond saying that the Space Force, a military branch that his administration created, would play a leading role in this process.
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[DOR]

Trump Is Disqualified From the 2024 Ballot, Colorado Supreme Court Rules
It’s the first court to find that the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment applies to Mr. Trump, in addition to affirming that he engaged in insurrection.
The New York Times, Dec 19, 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/u...amendment.html

-10 on the Electoral College !