POLITICO Nightly: Campaign advertising’s dark turn

 

UNDER PRESIDENT BIDEN CRIME IS DOWN! 

REPUBLICAN HYSTERIA, FEAR MONGERING & LIES...always interesting what disinformation "R" voters will believe....

By Calder McHugh Former President Donald Trump stands alongside Misty Fuoco, whose sister Sgt. Nicole Gee died in Afghanistan, at a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images MURDER SHE WROTE — When Vice President Kamala Harris takes the debate stage against former President Donald Trump Tuesday evening, she’ll be charged with responding to weeks of attacks from the Trump campaign and its allied Super PACs for allegedly being soft on crime. It’s not exactly a novel line of criticism — for decades, Republicans have blasted Democrats, whom they accuse of not doing enough about crime in America. But in this election cycle, political advertising on the issue has gotten notably more serious and intense, in particular highlighting the murders of white Americans at the hands of largely undocumented immigrants. Where there were once fears that an ad that’s too menacing could spark backlash, this year there are no holds barred. Campaigns around the country are tapping into the raw emotions that are sparked by seeing a dead American’s relatives on screen. In an advertisement from the pro-Trump Preserve America PAC, funded largely by Miriam Adelson, the mother of an 18-year-old who was killed by an undocumented immigrant in 2015 addressed the camera directly about her son’s death . “[My son] was murdered by an illegal alien. He was tortured, strangled to death and then set on fire,” says Laura Wilkerson. Wilkerson was featured prominently in a 2016 Trump ad lambasting Hillary Clinton as well. But her description of his death and her attack on Harris are more direct than the 2016 vintage. Wasn't DRUG DETECTION equipment included in the BORDER BILL that RUMP instructed the MAGA GOP to defeat? MAGA GOP needs to take responsibility for their OBSTRUCTION  “I fear that if Kamala Harris is elected president there will be so many more mothers that will have to go through the things that my family did — kids dying of fentanyl, more kids dying of gang violence, it’s going to get worse under Kamala Harris. I don’t want your family to suffer,” she continued. MORE MAGA LIES! POMPOUS POMPEO negotiated with the TALIBAN, released 5,000 AFGHAN PRISONERS, drew down US MILITARY in order to sabotage incoming President Biden....there is Congressional testimony that "R" voters are too lazy to look up or watch. POMPOUS POMPEO even invited the TALIBAN to CAMP DAVID! At the Republican National Convention, they hit a similar theme. Gold Star families of U.S. service members who were killed in the midst of the withdrawal from Afghanistan came on stage to blast President Joe Biden (before he dropped out of the race) and Harris, blaming them for their loved ones’ deaths and failing to properly acknowledge their memory. Trump then courted controversy when he tried to hammer that message home at the Arlington National Cemetery , which doesn’t allow for political statements on their grounds. The most famous example of a political advertisement playing on Americans’ fears of murder remains the 1988 George H.W. Bush “Willie Horton” ad , which attacked his opponent Michael Dukakis for allowing Horton, a prisoner serving time for a murder in the midst of a robbery, to go on a furlough during which he committed more crimes. Experts have credited the ad with helping Bush defeat Dukakis, but also with playing into ugly racial animus in the country. MAGA GOP inciting FEARS, RACISM & LIES OUT OF DESPERATION....HOW MANY MURDERS HAVE BEEN COMMITTED BY WHITES DURING THE SAME PERIOD? This election cycle, much of the starkest political advertising involving murder has included the specter of illegal immigration. During the State of the Union, a conservative advocacy group ran an ad blasting Biden’s policies, which they argue led to the murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student killed on a jog; the police indicted José Antonio Ibarra, who entered the U.S. illegally, in the case. “Laken Riley should have been able to go on a run in broad daylight without being murdered by an illegal immigrant. But Joe Biden promised not to deport illegal immigrants,” the voiceover in the advertisement read. (Biden’s deportation record is near that of the Trump presidency, according to the Migration Policy Institute .) Another ad posted online in June highlights the 2023 murder of Rachel Morin, and connects her death to Riley’s. “Laken Riley wasn’t the first. And in Joe Biden’s America, sadly she won’t be the last,” the narrator says. The suspected killer in the Morin case was also in the country illegally. An ad in Wisconsin attempted to link Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin with the killing of six people in the state at a Christmas parade in 2021. In New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte’s Republican gubernatorial campaign had to apologize after an ad of hers falsely stated that a woman named Denise Robert was killed while her opponent Joyce Craig was the mayor of Manchester; Robert’s murder came two years before Craig became mayor. For Republicans, though, the barrage of ads have served to connect the issue of illegal immigration to that of crime and safety. And the concept has serious purchase with much of their base. Just this weekend, a post spread like wildfire in right-wing circles that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were capturing, killing and eating ducks and cats in the area. JD Vance , Ted Cruz and the House Judiciary GOP X account have all posted on social media about the alleged incidents; the Springfield Police Department said this morning they’ve received no reports about pets being abducted and eaten. MAGA GOP LUNACY! Republicans are far from alone in using fear as a motivator to get to the polls. Democrats have based much of their 2024 campaign strategy themselves on the idea that a second Trump term could effectively end democracy in the U.S. UNDER BIDEN-HARRIS, CRIME IS DOWN! THIS IS MAGA GOP LIES TO PROVOKE FEAR & RACISM! But the specific attacks on rising crime — related often to immigration — have become a favorite and effective talking point on the right. The question now is whether these advertisements, many of which were written to beat Biden (and name checked him directly) will work on Harris in the same way. Harris has made up some ground on Trump on the issue of crime , but she remains relatively weak on immigration . And she’ll try to use her prosecutorial background in order to head off the idea that she’s soft on crime at the pass. The litany of attack ads involving murdered Americans, though, could just be a preview of how Trump hopes to go after Harris in Tuesday’s debate and in the last two months of the campaign. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh .   What'd I Miss? — NYPD commissioner expected to step down amid federal probe: NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban is expected to resign his post in the coming days , following news of a federal investigation involving possible corruption, four people familiar with the matter told POLITICO. Caban was scheduled to meet with police brass today, as he weighs a decision that is not entirely his to make, according to two people who were granted anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive matter. — Elena Kagan keeps pressing for ethics code enforcement at Supreme Court: Justice Elena Kagan is keeping up her public drive for an enforcement mechanism for the Supreme Court’s ethics code despite strident criticism from some voices on the right and skepticism about it among some legal ethics scholars. “It seems like a good idea in terms of ensuring that we comply with our own code of conduct going forward in the future. It seems like a good idea in terms of ensuring that people have confidence that we’re doing exactly that,” Kagan said during an appearance today at New York University’s School of Law. “So, it seems like a salutary thing for the court.” — Google tries to reality-check Biden’s lawyers in court: Google and the U.S. Department of Justice got into a sharp argument about business reality in a federal courtroom today — a back-and-forth that went to the heart of the bigger challenges facing the Biden administration as it tries to rein in fast-moving segments of the tech industry. As the trial opened in the administration’s second major attack on the tech giant, lawyers for both sides quickly started squabbling over who had the more accurate interpretation of the “commercial realities” of the online ad market. That’s a nearly $300 billion business that funds the flow of information on the internet through real-time auctions  measured in milliseconds. Nightly Road to 2024 BOTH SIDES NOW — Donald Trump said he supports loosening federal marijuana restrictions and will vote for a Florida ballot initiative seeking to legalize the drug for adult use just hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis warned hundreds of church goers that the measure would create an invincible drug cartel in their shared home state. Trump already signaled his support for the legalization measure, which will appear on the November ballot as Amendment 3, during a Truth Social message posted in late August. The former president and GOP presidential nominee more explicitly endorsed it with another message posted late Sunday. Trump stopped short of supporting federal decriminalization, but indicated support for reclassifying marijuana under federal law, along with passing banking reform for state-regulated cannabis companies and supporting states’ rights to pass legalization laws. MAGA GOP WITCHHUNT LADEN WITH LIES IGNORING THAT POMPOUS POMPEO NEGOTIATED WITH THE TALIBAN, RELEASED 5,000 TERRORISTS, DREW DOWN US MILITARY TO SABOTAGE INCOMING PRESIDENT BIDEN....POMPOUS POMPEO DID HIS BEST TO DESTROY THE STATE DEPARTMENT.... FRONT AND CENTER — Three years after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Democrats and Republicans are launching a fresh wave of attacks and counterattacks on who is to blame for the debacle, all with an eye toward the November ballot. The battle of the “who screwed up Afghanistan” narrative is playing out across Washington in the form of congressional investigations, cable news hits and statements from campaign proxies. Republicans released a new investigation over the weekend , particularly well-timed for former President Donald Trump’s campaign ahead of Tuesday’s debate, that puts the blame for the way the U.S. departed Afghanistan squarely on President Joe Biden (and now Kamala Harris). DEBATE PREP — Kamala Harris expects that former President Donald Trump is “going to lie” during their debate Tuesday and is prepping for those “untruths,” she said in a prerecorded radio interview released today. “There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” the vice president said on “The Rickey Smiley Morning Show.” “And we should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth.” Harris also said she believes the former president will revert to personal attacks during the debate, pointing to the “playbook” he used with former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. AROUND THE WORLD Mario Draghi, then-president of the European Central Bank (ECB), speaks to the media at the Bundestag after he spoke to German parliamentarians on October 24, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images CASH INFUSION — Europe must invest twice as much as it did rebuilding after World War II , allow more tech and telecoms companies to merge and take drastic measures on defense spending, Italian economist, former prime minister and former president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi said. In a landmark report on how to stem the Continent’s economic decline, Draghi said Europe needed to invest an additional €800 billion ($883 billion) a year to drag itself out of a trough of low productivity and feeble growth that’s pushing it behind the United States and China in the international pecking order. He called it an “existential challenge.” As the bloc gears up for the next five years under a newly constituted European Commission, Draghi’s 400-page report is meant to guide the work for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her revamped team. Many of his recommendations will need buy-in from all the bloc’s 27 governments, something that may prove elusive. And it comes as the European Union is buffeted by forces that make radical change look impossible. In its two biggest countries, an enfeebled German chancellor presides over an economy on its knees, and France, burdened by huge public debt, has a new parliament fractured between opposing extremes. CRACKING DOWN — Germany will temporarily institute tighter controls at all of its land borders to reduce irregular migration and to improve security, Berlin said today. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced in a press conference today that the new controls will be in place for six months, starting Sept. 16. “We want to further reduce irregular migration,” Faeser said. “To this end, we are now taking further steps that go beyond the comprehensive, ongoing measures.” “The number of refusals will increase as a result of this measure alone,” she added. Germany shares borders with nine countries: Poland, Austria, France, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Ordinarily, travel between the countries, which are all part of the Schengen area, is seamless. However, the new controls mean German police will carry out checks on people seeking to cross.       Nightly Number $36 billion The amount of credit card debt that American consumers added over Q2 (April 1-June 30) according to new analysis from WalletHub. That’s around 17 percent less than Q2 in 2023, and it brings the total credit card debt in America to $1.28 trillion. RADAR SWEEP CARE FOR CARE WORKERS — In America, almost five million people are care workers — long term caring for children or the elderly or the sick — and over 85 percent are women. For decades, this group had little political power, and the pay often remains bad. Many of them live paycheck to paycheck. However, in recent years many of these workers have begun local or national organizations aimed at increasing pay and making working conditions better. Few of them are technically unionized, but their political power is beginning to increase. For Glamour, Mattie Kahn went behind the scenes with care work and exposed how times might quickly be changing for these workers. Parting Image On this date in 1957: A crowd of students, journalists and curious Little Rock citizens watch as Arkansas National Guard troops, following the orders of Gov. Orval Faubus, are dispatched to prevent nine black students from entering Little Rock's all-white Central High School. | AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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POWER PLANT TARGETING ARRESTS - WHITE SUPREMACISTS & NAZIS

 

18-year-old arrested in white supremacist plot targeting New Jersey power grid

excerpt: 

Minnah Arshad

USA TODAY

An 18-year-old New Jersey man allegedly en route to join a paramilitary force in Ukraine was arrested at an airport this week after sharing his plan with an undercover law enforcement operative to destroy an electrical substation as part of his white supremacist ideology, according to federal prosecutors.

Andrew Takhistov instructed the officer to destroy a New Jersey energy facility with Molotov cocktails while he was overseas, detailing how to evade surveillance cameras, discreet parking locations, and escape plans, according to federal court papers.

He also spent months discussing steps to achieve "white domination" and encouraged violence against ethnic and religious minorities, court filings said. Takhistov was allegedly planning to travel to Ukraine to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, a Russian militia fighting for Ukraine.

“Imagine the chaos and number of life-threatening emergencies if a large population of people in New Jersey lost power in the middle of the current heat wave,” FBI Newark Special Agent in Charge James Dennehy said in a statement.

USA TODAY

3 men sentenced for racist conspiracy plot to destroy Northwest power grid

Krystal Nurse

USA TODAY

Published July 26, 2024 

Three men were sentenced to prison for their roles in plotting to attack an energy facility to further their "violent white supremacist ideology," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday.

Federal officials did not identify the specific location of the facility but court documents say agents seized a handwritten list of about a dozen locations in Idaho and surrounding states that contained "a transformer, substation, or other component of the power grid for the Northwest United States."

“As part a self-described ‘modern day SS,’ these defendants conspired, prepared, and trained to attack America’s power grid in order to advance their violent white supremacist ideology,” said Garland said.

The three men - Paul James Kryscuk, 38 of Idaho; Liam Collins, 25 of Rhode Island; and Justin Wade Hermanson, 25 of North Carolina - were given sentences ranging from 21 months to 10 years for their roles in conspiracy and firearms offenses. Garland said the men met on a now-closed neo-Nazi forum called the "Iron March," researching and discussing former power grid attacks.

Their sentencing is the latest development in energy attacks across the U.S. by saboteurs looking to blow up or cripple power grids. People vandalized or shot at power substations in Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington state, causing major power outages in one instance.

Garland said in the case of the three men, they wanted to use violence to "undermine our democracy."

Men stole military gear, trained for the attacks

The Justice Department said in a statement the men, part of a five-person 2021 indictment, spent time between 2017 and 2020 manufacturing firearms, stealing military equipment and gathering information on explosives and toxins for the attack.

Collins and co-defendant Jordan Duncan, of North Carolina, were former Marines, stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and used their status to illegally obtain military equipment and information for the plot. According to the indictment, they wanted to use 50 pounds of homemade explosives to destroy transformers.

The men could be seen in a propaganda video wearing Atomwaffen masks and giving the "Heil Hitler" sign. The Southern Poverty Law Center designated Atomwaffen as a terroristic neo-Nazi group.

"In October 2020, a handwritten list of approximately one dozen intersections and places in Idaho and surrounding states was discovered in Kryscuk’s possession, including intersections and places containing a transformer, substation, or other component of the power grid for the northwest United States," the department wrote this week.

USA TODAY

*****MUST READ!**** "Terrorgram"

                THIS IS THE RESULT OF GREAT EFFORT BY THE LAW ENFORCEMENT 

                AGENCIES INVOLVED FOR WHICH WE SHOULD BE GRATEFUL! 

                THIS IS THE PRODUCT OF TRUMP ENCOURAGING HATE & VIOLENCE 

                WHILE REPUBLICANS & THE MAGE GOP REMAIN SPINELESS & 

                FAIL TO CONDEMN THE RHETORIC. 

                NOTE THE ARRESTS FOR PLANNING TO ATTACK NEW JERSEY POWER

                PLANT - ARTICLES POSTED SEPARATELY

                

"Terrorgram" Joyce Vance Sep 10 DOJ has been guns blazing for the last couple of weeks, indicting the terrorist group Hamas, would-be Russian election influencers, Chinese spies, and today, the leaders of a transnational terrorist group, Terrorgram, that is charged with soliciting both hate crimes and the murder of federal officials and with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. From the indictment: Terrorgram’s fake newspaper cover. We’ll talk about the indictment in a minute, but I want to let y’all know about something I’m really excited about. Tomorrow night, during the debate, I’ll be hosting a special premium for paid subscribers, a live chat during the presidential debate. I’ll start the thread later tonight so you can bookmark it, but you’ll also get a reminder tomorrow morning. You’ll be able to interact with me and other Civil Discourse community members when the debate gets underway at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday. And we’ll be joined by some special friends, too! If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, this is a great time to upgrade to a monthly or yearly subscription. One thing for sure, there will be NO sane-washing Donald Trump on Civil Discourse. Back to the indictment. The Justice Department announced today that it had indicted a California man, Dallas Humber, and an Idaho man, Matthew Allison, in a 15-count indictment. The indictment was sealed until the defendants could both be arrested, which happened last Friday. That suggests that there were concerns they were flight risks or even posed a violent threat to law enforcement or the community if they learned about the indictment before they were in custody. They lead the Terrorgram Collective, which the indictment describes as a transnational terrorist group. In a press release, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said, “Today’s arrests are a warning that committing hate-fueled crimes in the darkest corners of the internet will not hide you, and soliciting terrorist attacks from behind a screen will not protect you. The United States Department of Justice will find you, and we will hold you accountable.” Kristen Clarke heads DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which is prosecuting the case along with the National Security Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Colorado. Today, Assistant Attorney General Clarke directly addressed a new evolution in civil rights violations: hate crimes, committed on or amplified by digital messaging platforms, are on the rise. She said, “This indictment charges the leaders of a transnational terrorist group with several civil rights violations, including soliciting others to engage in hate crimes and terrorist attacks against Black, immigrant, LGBT, and Jewish people. Make no mistake, as hate groups turn to online platforms, the federal government is adapting and responding to protect vulnerable communities.” Terrorgram Collective is a transnational terrorist group that operates on the digital messaging platform Telegram, where it promotes white supremacist accelerationism, an ideology centered on the belief that the white race is superior; that society is irreparably corrupt and cannot be saved by political action; and that violence and terrorism are necessary to ignite a race war and accelerate the collapse of the government and the rise of a white ethnostate.  The indictment says Humber and Allison: Assisted with the creation and distribution of Terrorgram videos and other publications that provide very specific, detailed guidance for carrying out crimes. They had names like “The Hard Reset,” “White Terror,” and “The List.” Solicited Terrorgram users to “commit bias-motivated attacks against racial enemies and terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure,” and become “Saints” if they committed an attack that furthered “white supremacists acceleration.” Celebrated attacks committed by white supremacists and created a hit list of “high-value targets” for assassination. The hit list included U.S. federal, state, and local officials, as well as leaders of private companies and non-governmental organizations, many of whom were targeted because of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity. The type of attacks the two encouraged their followers to commit focused on people Terrorgram deemed enemies of the white race. They believe that terrorist attacks on government infrastructure—government buildings and energy facilities—would ignite a race war and help accelerate the collapse of our country. Along a similar vein, they encouraged attacks on politicians and government officials because they believed their murders would sow chaos and accelerate the government’s downfall. Their followers carried out at least three attacks: A shooting of three people, two of whom died, outside of an LGBT bar in Slovakia; ****An attack that was planned on energy facilities in New Jersey; and The stabbing of five people near a mosque in Turkey. Humber and Allison are charged with 15 separate crimes, including conspiracy, soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, doxing federal officials, making threatening communications, distributing bomb-making instructions, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. The indictment lays out the way they targeted and motivated other people to commit hate crimes in frightening detail. The details are chilling. In the hate crimes solicitation charges, the indictment specifies that the two men targeted Black people, white people associated with Black people, who they considered “race traitors,” Jews, non-white immigrants, and LGBTQ people. Among the targets the defendants selected for followers to murder were a U.S. Senator, a federal judge, and a former U.S. Attorney. It appears that federal authorities were onto the two’s activities early on and were able to insert undercover agents and other covert personnel into the schemes to ensure no one was actually hurt. In other words, we got lucky because of the hard work of law enforcement. Bringing prosecutions like this is incredibly important, not only to take these two dangerous men off the streets but also to deter others who may have thought they could get away with crimes like these behind the mask of anonymity available online but are now learning the dark web doesn’t give them the protection they thought it did. If convicted of all charges, Humber and Allison each face a maximum penalty of 220 years in prison. A sobering indictment today and a good reason to be deeply grateful to the men and women in law enforcement who keep us safe. You can read the indictment here. This indictment comes as Donald Trump is threatening to imprison his enemies. Politicians, but also people who run elections across the country and Americans who donate to candidates—presumably those Trump doesn’t like. He has threatened lawyers, and specifically Jack Smith. It is not a long path from these kinds of threats to the more violent ones charged by the Justice Department today. I hope I’ll see you in the debate chat tomorrow night! We’re in this together, Joyce