LibertyVoter.Org

By Ashlie D. Stevens

Former president Donald Trump resigned from the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists on Thursday, after the union’s National Board voted “overwhelmingly” to convene a disciplinary process that could have resulted in expelling him in response to Trump’s part in inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol.

Trump released an open letter to SAG-AFTRA on what appears to be photocopied White House stationery addressed to union president Gabrielle Carteris (of “Beverly Hills 90210″ fame) detailing his immediate resignation. “I write to you today regarding the so-called Disciplinary Committee hearing aimed at revoking my union membership,” Trump wrote. “Who cares!”

Trump went on to write that while he was “not very familiar” with the union’s work, he was proud of his work on movies and television shows like “‘Home Alone 2,’ ‘Zoolander’ and ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’; and television shows including ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,’ ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and of course, one of the most successful shows in television history, ‘The Apprentice’ – to name just a few!”

He also wrote that, due to his involvement in politics, he helped resurrect interest in television, which he characterized as a “dying platform with not much time left.”

“[I've] created thousands of jobs at networks such as MSDNC and Fake News CNN, among many others,” Trump wrote.

He concluded the letter by saying that he no longer wished to be involved in the union and was tendering his immediate resignation.

On Thursday afternoon, SAG-AFTRA offered a two-word statement, jointly attributed to Carteris and the union’s National Executive Director David White, in response to Trump’s resignation: “Thank you.”

Trump’s resignation letter was a response to a Jan. 19 release from SAG-AFTRA, which stated that the organization’s National Board had ordered a disciplinary hearing regarding Trump’s role in inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol and “in sustaining a reckless campaign of misinformation aimed at discrediting and ultimately threatening the safety of journalists, many of whom are SAG-AFTRA members.”

“Donald Trump attacked the values that this union holds most sacred – democracy, truth, respect for our fellow Americans of all races and faiths, and the sanctity of the free press,” Carteris said at the time. “There’s a straight line from his wanton disregard for …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Common Dreams

Peace advocates rejoiced on Thursday in the wake of President Joe Biden’s announcement that his administration will be ending U.S. support for offensive operations in the Saudi-led war on Yemen and appointing a diplomatic envoy to help resolve the devastating conflict.

“This war has to end,” Biden said during an address at the State Department. “And to underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales.”

Biden also named Timothy Lenderking as his special envoy to Yemen, saying the career foreign service officer will collaborate with the United Nations and “all parties to the conflict to push for a diplomatic resolution.”

“It’s about time that the U.S. end all complicity in the Saudi/UAE-led war on Yemen, with at least 100,000 dead and tens of millions on the brink of starvation,” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, said Thursday.

Danaka Katovich, Yemen campaign coordinator at the anti-war group CodePink, described Thursday as “a day peace activists around the world have been waiting for. On the campaign trail, President Biden said he would end support for the war in Yemen, and I hope he keeps that promise to the fullest extent.”

As Medea Benjamin, CodePink’s co-founder, pointed out on social media, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration’s cessation of U.S. support for offensive operations in Yemen will include “an end to precision-guided munition sales,” which have contributed to the massive civilian death toll.

While the Biden administration’s “decision to stop U.S. support for ‘offensive operations’ by Saudi Arabia is critically important,” said David Segal, co-founder and executive director of Demand Progress, “we must learn more about how ‘offensive operations’ are defined—and ensure that Biden’s plans entail ending targeting support, spare parts transfers, and other logistical support, both known and unknown to the general public.”

As for the White House’s appointment of Lenderking, Martin said the new special envoy to Yemen “can push Saudi Arabia and the UAE to change its conduct and negotiate in good faith to end their war on Yemen and allow humanitarian aid to flow.”

Martin added that Peace Action wants “to make sure the details include stopping all support and blocking all arms sales to Saudi …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Common Dreams

Democratic House impeachment managers on Thursday called on former President Donald Trump to provide testimony under oath regarding his actions on January 6—the day an extremist mob backed by the then-president attacked the U.S. Capitol—and demanded an answer by 5 pm Friday.

The letter to Trump, signed by lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), was sent two days after the former president’s new legal team said in a pretrial legal filing that a Senate impeachment trial would be unconstitutional and that Trump’s comments the day in question were protected free speech.

Referencing that filing, the letter says that Trump’s defense team “denied many factual allegations set forth in the article of impeachment.”

“You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional offense,” the letter to Trump says.

Impeachment managers had argued that Trump was “singularly responsible” for inciting the insurrection.

The House already impeached Trump—for a second time—January 13, a week before he left office, for citing the insurrection. Oral arguments for the Senate trial are set to begin Tuesday, February 9.

The new letter asks the former president to provide testimony either before or during the trial, between Monday, February 8, and Thursday, February 11, 2021.

In the letter, Raskin suggested that Trump—currently residing in Florida—should have no problem finding time in his schedule to provide testimony

“Indeed, whereas a sitting president might raise concerns about distraction from their official duties,” wrote Raskin, “that concern is obviously inapplicable here.”

Should Trump rebuff the request for testimony, the impeachment managers say “we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021.”

Read the full letter below:

Dear President Trump,

As you are aware, the United States House of Representatives has approved an article of impeachment against you for incitement of insurrection. See H. Res. 24. The Senate trial for this article of impeachment will begin on Tuesday, February 9, 2021. See S. Res. 16.

Two days ago, you filed an Answer in which you denied many factual allegations set forth in the article of impeachment. You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Cody Fenwick

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene faced a vote Thursday that could strip her of her committee assignments in the U.S. House of Representatives. It would be a sharp denunciation of a newly elected lawmaker who had embraced a wide range of dangerous and bigoted conspiracy theories and endorsed violence against politicians, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Ahead of the vote, Greene delivered a speech trying to defend herself. But there was a key problem with it. Even as she sought to distance herself from some of the conspiracy theories she has spread in the past, she refused to take responsibility for spreading them and tried to downplay her participation in pushing these reckless fictions. It showed she hasn’t grown at all as a person since she first dove into the dark world of right-wing lies disinformation.

She tried to claim the attacks on her statements were about “words of the past” that do not represent her. But she notably did not apologize for, for example, promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, pushing for Pelosi’s execution, attacking Muslim members of Congress as unfit to serve because of their religion, or harassing David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland school schooting.

Instead, she just tried to turn the page on everything she’s done while refusing to be held accountable. And she pretended that her past remarks and affiliations, which were widely known while she was running for Congress, had no influence on her campaign, even though she didn’t denounce them at the time.

“School shootings are absolutely real,” Greene said, referring to her previous efforts to cast doubts on such attacks. “I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened.”

She lashed out at what she called the “Russian collusion” conspiracy theory, trying to draw an equivalence between the pernicious and ridiculous QAnon cult and the investigation into former President Donald Trump and some of his associates. But the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s own investigation, led by a Republican, found ample evidence to support the concerns that prompted the Russia probe, including the fact that Trump’s own campaign chair has undisclosed meetings about polling data with a Russian spy during the 2016 campaign.

This undermined her claim that she had justification to distrust the media and go searching for other sources of information. And the false attacks on the Russia investigation itself are, indeed, a close cousin of the QAnon delusions themselves, as they play into …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Alex Henderson

Typically, presidents who are voted out of office ask, “What went wrong?” Donald Trump didn’t ask that question after losing the 2020 election, and he instead peddled bogus and totally debunked voter fraud conspiracy theories. But other Republicans are asking that question, and two post-election analyses — one by consultant Tony Fabrizio and published in Politico this week, the other by GOP pollster John McLaughlin and published by the right-wing Newsmax in November — delve into some reasons why Trump lost.

Journalist William Saletan, in Slate, explains, “Neither pollster blames the former president, but their numbers tell the story: Trump destroyed himself. The autopsies identified two reasons why Trump should have won.”

Saletan adds, “First, based on self-identification, the 2020 electorate was significantly more Republican than the 2016 electorate. Second, public satisfaction with the economy favored the incumbent. Both pollsters found that people who voted in 2020 thought Trump would handle the economy better than Joe Biden would. McLaughlin’s analysis, based on his post-election survey of people who voted in 2020, noted that 61% of these voters said they were better off than they had been four years earlier. Despite this, Trump managed to lose one-third of the 61%.”

Although Democratic nominee Joe Biden was disappointed that he lost Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa to Trump, he was pleasantly surprised by his victories in Arizona and Georgia — both of which were deep red states in the past. Ultimately, Biden won 306 electoral votes and defeated Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote. And Fabrizio and McLaughlin wanted to know why Biden outperformed Trump in so many swing states.

“Fabrizio analyzed exit polls from 10 battleground states Trump had won in 2016,” Saletan notes. “Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas stayed with Trump in 2020; Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin flipped to Biden. Collectively, in the ten states, Fabrizio computed a ‘massive swing’ against Trump among independents by 17 to 19 percentage points and a similar shift among college-educated White voters by 14 to 18 points. Likewise, in his national sample, McLaughlin found that Biden won moderates, 62% to 36%.”

Saletan continues, “Trump repelled these voters, even those who were happy with the economy. In McLaughlin’s national sample, Biden was viewed more favorably than Trump. Among voters who disliked both candidates, the pollster noted, ‘dislike of Trump was more …read more

Source: ALTERNET