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The organizers behind the December charity pub crawl lovingly dubbed SantaCon seem like slightly heavier on the con than the spirit of giving.
Over the past decade, the group’s organizers declare to have raised greater than $1 million for charitable causes, based on their website, however not a lot of that cash appears to have gone to charity. As an alternative, they blew greater than a 3rd of the funds on unhealthy crypto investments and teams tied to Burning Man, finally giving lower than a fifth of that cash to precise nonprofits, based on a Gothamist evaluation of the group’s monetary paperwork.
The group’s greatest act of giving—greater than $66,000—went to a for-profit movie manufacturing crew referred to as Spectaculum Productions, which made the medical fraud documentary At Your Cervix.
The lion’s share of the cash raised by SantaCon—$832,000, or 59 p.c—goes to upkeep, based on the group’s founder and director, Stefan Pildes, who informed Gothamist that the payments add up for the single-day occasion, citing expenditures like short-term workers, road permits, and D.J.s.
“It’s not a small endeavor,” Pildes mentioned.
SantaCon falls underneath the helm of a tax-exempt nonprofit, Participatory Security. And whereas anyone can be a part of the citywide bar hop without spending a dime, in addition they provide members a $15 “Santa Badge” that comes with extra advantages. That has helped the outfit develop tremendously, although the cash is particularly described as put aside for “Santa’s charity drive,” based on SantaCon’s web site.
“No matter what they need to label it, throwing the get together shouldn’t be a charitable exercise,” Lloyd Mayer, a Notre Dame College Legislation College professor, informed the outlet. “It’s nice to go to this get together, proper? However don’t pat your self on the again that you just’re serving to out the Lady Scouts.” SantaCon organizers and members repeatedly tout their group’s charitable aspect as a defend towards allegations that it’s a drunken free-for-all that leaves components of New York Metropolis filthy. Even with none waste—and there appears to be fairly a little bit of it—it’s a lackluster charitable group, elevating barely greater than $100,000 a 12 months.
Russia resumed its cruise missile assault on Kyiv after an 80-day hiatus early Friday morning, an motion that critics say is the direct results of Republicans blocking a overseas help bundle to assist Ukraine.
The 2-hour barrage was impeded by air defenses that thwarted all missiles headed for the Ukrainian capital, based on the Kyiv metropolis army administration. Different missiles resulted in casualties, together with one which struck town of Pavlohrad, which killed one and injured 4 others, and one other that landed within the jap Kharkiv area and killed one individual and injured one other seven, based on CNN.
The missile barrage comes simply two days after Senate Republicans voted to dam a $110.5 billion emergency spending invoice for Ukraine and Israel. Putin allies celebrated America’s right-wing get together for what they interpreted as step one within the complete withdrawal of U.S. help from Ukraine.
“Properly carried out, Republicans! They’re standing agency! That’s good for us,” mentioned propagandist Olga Skabeeva on Russian state TV, grinning.
“This will likely be an ideal revelation to different international locations. It’s much more harmful to be a pal of the USA than its enemy. Ultimately, they’ll abandon you, leaving nothing however the scorched earth in your territory,” mentioned Golovanov Time host Roman Golovanov, based on The Daily Beast.
And Putin loyalists made it clear they’d another excuse to have a good time, predicting that the failed help bundle would lend itself to the downfall of President Joe Biden and the next return of Donald Trump.
“The downfall of Ukraine means the downfall of Biden! Two birds with one stone,” mentioned America analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky, the Beast reported.
The overseas help bundle is tied up in a pseudo hostage state of affairs as Republicans hound Democrats for an excessive border safety bundle that features Trump-tried insurance policies—one thing that the White House has mentioned it’s open to.
Republicans have been unable to show that President Joe Biden is responsible of wrongdoing, and on Friday, even Fox Information was compelled to confess it.
The Home is expected to vote subsequent week on whether or not to formally open an impeachment inquiry into Biden. Republicans have for months accused Biden of corruption and of benefiting from his son Hunter’s abroad enterprise, however they’ve but to provide any actual proof.
“The Home Oversight Committee has been at this for years, and so they have up to now not been in a position to present any concrete proof that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s abroad enterprise,” Fox reporter Peter Doocy mentioned Friday, clearly bodily struggling to say the phrase “not.”
“However they will strive once more with this impeachment inquiry that’s set to begin subsequent week.”
Peter Doocy: “The Home Oversight Committee has been at this for years, and so they have up to now not been in a position to present any concrete proof that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s abroad enterprise.” pic.twitter.com/a5N44hIRrQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 8, 2023
This isn’t the primary time that Fox has acknowledged Republicans haven’t any proof of Biden’s alleged felony habits. In Could, Fox & Pals host Steve Doocy, who’s Peter Doocy’s father, pressed Consultant James Comer in regards to the investigation. Comer, who has spearheaded the investigation, has been one of the vital vocal lawmakers in pushing the accusations towards the Bidens.
“You don’t even have any info to that time. You’ve obtained some circumstantial proof,” Doocy said. “And the opposite factor is, of all these names, the one one that didn’t revenue is—there’s no proof that Joe Biden did something illegally.”
Republicans proceed to insist that Biden and his household are responsible of corruption, regardless of every bit of proof they produce failing to show that the president was concerned. Even the GOP’s personal star witnesses have repeatedly refuted the lawmakers’ claims. Because of this, Republicans have resorted to essentially the most bonkers logic to again up their very own accusations.
Donald Trump is on to his subsequent huge, white, election-engineering whale.
The previous president and his far-right associates have moved on from concentrating on Dominion Voting Programs and Smartmatic and are actually making an attempt to harpoon a system meant to detect and stop voter fraud, the Digital Registration Data Heart, higher generally known as ERIC.
To date this 12 months, Trump has baselessly claimed that the voting accuracy system is a “horrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to scrub them up,” and has overtly speculated how he would possibly make the system “unlawful” throughout the nation ought to he regain the White Home, stories Rolling Stone.
Making a political hooplah out of a system designed by a nonpartisan group in 2012 holds a bounty of potentialities for Trump in 2024, together with seeding extra chaos within the aftermath of Election Day than he did in 2020.
Trump and his allies’ efforts to discredit the system embody making an attempt to get a swath of GOP-led states to depart from the platform. Louisiana led the bunch, eradicating itself from ERIC in 2022. Since then, Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia have carried out so too—dropping its membership to 25 states plus Washington, D.C.—although extra resignations are anticipated, based on the National Conference of State Legislatures.
ERIC, in fact, is nothing in need of a software program engineering marvel that enables states to check their voter rolls towards different states’. Operated by a workers of three with no philanthropic funding, ERIC supplies election officers with stories on potential inaccuracies in voter lists and identifies people who find themselves registered to vote in a couple of state, or inaccurately registered a number of occasions in a single state, from knowledge collected from state data like change of deal with data, DMV knowledge, and Social Safety Administration demise data.
If we lived in a world the place Trump was motivated by greater than an unimpeded ascent to energy, you could be fooled into considering that that is precisely the form of system he cried out for after shedding the final election. With out it, consultants say that voting programs in these states are “more likely to be considerably much less correct” and have the potential to “gasoline false claims of potential voter fraud.”
“Defective voter recordsdata create lengthy strains on Election Day, delays in getting mail-in ballots, a rise in provisional ballots, and delays in figuring out a winner,” ERIC co-founder David Becker, who resigned from his position as government director of this system following a right-wing strain marketing campaign, informed Rolling Stone.
“The larger potential injury right here is that election losers—individuals who have misplaced an election or understand themselves to be about to lose an election—may have extra time and more room to create false narratives about an election being stolen,” Becker added. “The extra issues on the polls, the extra strains, the extra provisional ballots, the longer it takes to depend general ballots and get an unofficial winner, these all feed into the potential for chaos and even incitement to violence by election losers.”
A new study discovered that the quantity of people that journey out of their house state for an abortion has doubled because the nationwide proper to the process was rolled again.
Almost one in 5 sufferers traveled out of state for abortion care within the first six months of the 12 months, based on a research launched Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute. As compared, throughout the identical interval in 2020 (two years earlier than Roe v. Wade was overturned), only one in 10 sufferers needed to journey for care.
“We knew that extra individuals have been touring throughout state strains for abortion because the finish of Roe, however these findings are beautiful nonetheless, and powerfully illustrate simply how disruptive the overturning of Roe has been for tens of 1000’s of abortion sufferers,” Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a Guttmacher knowledge scientists and the research lead, said within the press launch.
The research discovered that individuals who need to journey are usually from states with complete abortion bans or brief home windows when abortions are allowed. The sufferers then journey to neighboring states with extra open abortion guidelines. Among the hottest states for abortion seekers within the first half of 2023 embody Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, and North Carolina.
Researchers additionally noted that their research doesn’t “seize the experiences of individuals for whom abortion bans or elevated restrictions have confirmed inconceivable to navigate.” This contains individuals who can’t afford to journey or are unable to resulting from incapacity. Folks of shade are usually hit hardest by abortion bans due to “persistent racial and financial oppression.”
Inside a month of Roe being overturned, Colorado abortion clinics reported that wait occasions had doubled because of the surge in out-of-state sufferers. In 2023, although, Illinois noticed the biggest enhance in out-of-state sufferers as a result of it borders Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri, all of which have utterly banned abortion.
The preferred states for abortion seekers has doubtless modified, although, after North Carolina Republicans in Could efficiently forced through a regulation banning abortion after 12 weeks. In Florida, the state’s 15-week abortion ban went earlier than the state Supreme Court docket in September. If the court docket upholds the regulation, then an much more restrictive measure banning abortion at six weeks—earlier than most individuals know they’re pregnant—will go into impact. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the massively unpopular invoice in April.
Abortion journey may additionally be affected by the rising “mind drain” out of Republican-led states. Younger professionals resembling ob-gyns have begun leaving red states resulting from restrictive GOP legal guidelines and threats of repercussions for merely doing their job. If somebody wants an abortion and lives in a state the place the process is technically authorized, they could nonetheless must journey out of state as a result of there simply isn’t wherever to get an abortion close by.
The White Home’s involvement in Congress’s border talks seems to be taking a hard-right flip.
Immigration officers within the Biden administration have signaled to Senate Republicans that they’re open to a swath of Democrat-opposed border insurance policies, together with some that had been beforehand tried by Donald Trump, reported The Wall Street Journal.
These embody alterations to the asylum course of that may make it tougher for migrants to get full asylum, by tightening the preliminary screening process, and increasing a fast-track deportation program to be used throughout the nation as a substitute of simply on the border. The administration has additionally mentioned it’s open to designating different international locations as “secure third international locations” as attainable deportation zones.
It additionally seems to be in favor of including 12,000 beds to detention facilities, elevating the overall to 46,500 beds, in an obvious try to compromise on a Republican proposal to detain asylum-seekers as a substitute of releasing them with a court docket date, based on the outlet.
At stake for the administration is a contentious overseas help bundle to Israel and Ukraine that the GOP has successfully held hostage in trade for larger modifications on the border—although it additionally comes as the most recent in a collection of blows that Biden has made towards his personal voting base, notably younger voters and other people of shade, making it tougher for the president to show to their linchpin help once more within the upcoming election.
“Excessive Republicans are enjoying rooster with our nationwide safety, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their excessive partisan border insurance policies,” Biden informed Congress in a speech on Wednesday. “And I’m keen to do considerably extra. However by way of modifications to coverage and to supply sources that we want on the border, I’m keen to vary coverage as properly.”
“I’ve requested for billions of {dollars} for extra border brokers, extra immigration judges, extra asylum officers,” he added. “Republicans need to resolve if they need a political problem or if they need an answer on the border. Do they actually desire a answer?”
Younger voters have additionally come out in droves towards Biden’s unwavering help of Israel, a transfer that would radically depress voter turnout for the incumbent.
A November survey by The New York Instances/Siena School confirmed that the president was neck and neck with Trump amongst voters youthful than 30, with Biden pulling at 30 share factors and Trump at 29 p.c. In the meantime, conspiracy-touting unbiased Robert F. Kennedy Jr. impressed 34 p.c of the surveyed younger voters.
“We write to you to problem a really stark and unmistakable warning: you and your Administration’s stance on Gaza dangers hundreds of thousands of younger voters staying house or voting third get together subsequent 12 months,” learn an open letter to Biden penned by March for Our Lives, GenZ for Change, and the Dawn Motion.
Home Republicans have launched an investigation into antisemitism at MIT, Harvard, and the College of Pennsylvania, following a listening to with these faculties’ presidents that highlights the GOP’s hypocrisy relating to free speech.
Harvard president Claudine Homosexual, MIT president Sally Kornbluth, and College of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill testified earlier than the Home Schooling and Workforce Committee on Tuesday about their responses to incidents of antisemitism on their campuses. All three girls have been criticized for saying that responses to alleged antisemitic situations—together with the content material of chants standard at pro-Palestinian marches—have to be context-specific.
“After this week’s pathetic and morally bankrupt testimony by college presidents … the Schooling and Workforce committee is launching an official Congressional investigation with the total drive of subpoena energy into Penn, MIT, & Harvard and others,” committee Chair Elise Stefanik mentioned in a statement Thursday.
“We are going to use our full Congressional authority to carry these faculties accountable for his or her failure on the worldwide stage.”
Stefanik had requested the college presidents whether or not college students chanting “Intifada” violated the colleges’ codes of conduct. Every president mentioned it might depend upon the context, with Homosexual stating that chants she finds “personally abhorrent” might nonetheless be protected underneath freedom of speech. Stefanik then insisted that this chant was calling for “genocide of the Jews,” a contested and subjective interpretation at finest. A clip of her questioning that omitted the context—that the road of questioning was rooted on “Intifada” and never requires genocide—then went viral, making a firestorm.
Magill explained her stance additional in a video on Wednesday, saying that “speech alone shouldn’t be punishable,” however requires genocide can be “harassment or intimidation.”
It doesn’t appear to have occurred to Republicans, who repeatedly pleasure themselves on being the protectors of free speech, that they’ve launched a undertaking to primarily police free speech on faculty campuses. The GOP appears to haven’t any downside upholding free speech when, say, Donald Trump is threatening his political opponents.
Consultant Jerry Nadler slammed his Republican colleagues on Tuesday for strikes that “weaponize Jewish lives for political features” whereas in actuality doing nothing to “genuinely counter” antisemitism.
Republicans additionally don’t appear to have a difficulty upholding free speech when it pertains to Islamophobia. Though they’ve taken many steps to supposedly deal with rising antisemitism, they’ve made no point out of the sharp rise in Islamophobia in latest months.
In actual fact, many Republicans are literally suppressing the free speech of teams making an attempt to fight Islamophobia. In November, the College of Florida chapter of College students for Justice in Palestine sued state Governor Ron DeSantis, college chancellor Ray Rodrigues, and college president Ben Sasse for barring the group from campus.
The scholars, backed by the ACLU, accused them of “violating their [First] Modification rights.”
Texas Lawyer Basic Ken Paxton threatened docs who carry out abortions with felony prices, even when a court docket says they’ll conduct the process.
A Travis County district choose issued a short lived restraining order Thursday towards Texas’s strict abortion legal guidelines to permit a girl to terminate her being pregnant. The lady, Dallas resident Kate Cox, and her husband had needed to have a toddler, however docs warned the fetus had a deadly abnormality and wouldn’t survive previous start.
Inside hours, Lawyer Basic Ken Paxton issued a warning of his personal. “The Non permanent Restraining Order (“TRO”) granted by the Travis County district choose purporting to permit an abortion to proceed won’t insulate hospitals, docs, or anybody else from civil and felony legal responsibility for violating Texas’ abortion legal guidelines,” he mentioned in a statement.
“This contains first diploma felony prosecutions.”
Paxton acknowledged that Cox’s ob-gyn, Dr. Damla Karsan, was shielded by the order; the TRO “doesn’t enjoin actions introduced by personal residents”—a blatant risk to individuals who search or present abortions.
Cox was 20 weeks’ pregnant when she discovered her fetus had trisomy 18, a situation attributable to having an additional chromosome. This abnormality is sort of at all times deadly, both earlier than start or quickly after.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortions had been banned in Texas besides to avoid wasting the lifetime of the pregnant individual. Since trisomy 18 is simply deadly to the fetus, not the affected person, Cox’s state of affairs did not qualify for a medically mandatory abortion.
She filed a lawsuit Tuesday asking a choose to let her terminate her being pregnant. Thursday’s ruling was the primary time in at the very least 50 years {that a} choose has intervened to permit an grownup to get an abortion.
Paxton’s workplace can enchantment the ruling and ask the next court docket to stop Cox from getting an abortion, however he has not but carried out so.
This isn’t the primary time that Texas’s cruel and restrictive laws have triggered authorized backlash. Over the summer season, a bunch of 15 girls sued the state after they had been denied abortions. The entire girls had needed to hold their pregnancies to time period however wanted abortions as a result of their fetuses had deadly anomalies.
One defendant, Samantha Casiano, vomited in court docket whereas telling the story of how she was compelled to provide start to a child with out components of the mind and cranium. Casiano mentioned she needed to watch her baby die 4 hours after being born.
Mike Johnson in contrast himself to Moses and mentioned that turning into Home speaker was a part of God’s plan.
Johnson was the keynote speaker at Tuesday night’s Nationwide Affiliation of Christian Lawmakers’ annual gala. The NACL is a Christian nationalist group that claims its objective is to codify a “biblical worldview” into regulation. Each its founder and Johnson are big fans of the “Enchantment to Heaven” Christian nationalist flag.
Throughout his speech, Johnson mentioned that a couple of weeks earlier than Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the speakership, God informed him to “put together and be prepared.”
“We’re coming to a Crimson Sea second. What does that imply, Lord?” Johnson mentioned, referring to when God parted the Crimson Sea so Moses could lead on the enslaved Jews out of Egypt.
“When the speaker’s race occurred and Kevin McCarthy, who’s a pricey pal of mine, was deposed and vacated from the chair, oh wow! Properly, that is what the Lord might have been getting ready us for.”
“On the time, I assumed the Lord goes to decide on a brand new Moses, and thanks Lord, you’re going to permit me to be Aaron,” Johnson continued, referring to Moses’s brother.
However because the votes dragged on, Johnson mentioned, God informed him, “Now, step ahead.”
Mike Johnson informed a gathering of Christian nationalists final night time that weeks earlier than he grew to become Home Speaker, “the Lord informed me very clearly” to arrange to grow to be a “Moses” who will lead the nation by a “Crimson Sea second.” https://t.co/DDsoZOcNC6 pic.twitter.com/exCrSnsW2Y
— Proper Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) December 6, 2023
Whereas Aaron did assist Moses, he additionally almost triggered the destruction of the Israelites. When Moses went up Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, the individuals grew bored with ready. They satisfied Aaron to make a statue of a golden calf, and Aaron was going to grow to be the brand new chief. So actually, Johnson mentioned he was ready to guide a insurgent group that worships a false idol.
People appear to have little interest in the Republican main debates, even with two extra of the mud-slinging spectacles freshly lined up by CNN for January.
Over the past a number of months, viewership of the debates has tanked. The primary crowded debate in August hit a excessive of 14.2 million viewers, although these numbers have since plummeted, with simply 3.2 million individuals tuning in to Wednesday’s debate between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Koch-backed former Ambassador Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and biotech millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
The 90-minute punch-packed bully specials haven’t carried out a lot for any of the GOP contenders within the polls, based on aggregated knowledge from FiveThirtyEight. As of Thursday, DeSantis’s and Haley’s numbers have barely budged; they continued to ballot at a measly 12.7 and 10.6 p.c, respectively.
At this level, it’s a scramble to realize an inkling of the eye so simply pulled by the GOP’s best showman, Donald Trump, whose technique of outright avoiding public debates has proved efficient amongst Republican voters—he leads the first with round 60 p.c of the vote, per combination polling.
To that time—Fox Information’s sleepy city corridor between Sean Hannity and a sluggish Trump was essentially the most watched program on Tuesday, pulling simply as many viewers as a full and formal debate stage, based on scores launched by the network.
If People are voting with their remotes, they’ve made it abundantly clear that not one of the candidates on the GOP debate stage are of any curiosity to them.
Even DeSantis’s one-off, utterly unrelated matchup towards California Governor Gavin Newsom held extra public curiosity than the newest debate. Fox’s “Great Red vs. Blue State” publicity stunt, which noticed the Florida governor completely scorched and humiliated amid his personal references to poop and science denialism, garnered 4.7 million viewers.
Nonetheless, faltering public curiosity may not be the one purpose why Wednesday’s debate fell flat on its face. Droves of potential viewers complained on-line that they weren’t capable of finding it—maybe unsurprising provided that the talk was aired on The CW, the community most well-known for airing Gossip Lady and the ultimate (and worst) season of Gilmore Women.
