Authored by Dmitri Orlov,

The Cuban Missile Crisis is a malicious misnomer. Cuba never had any nuclear missiles; it temporarily played host to some Soviet ones. The crisis started when Americans put their intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Turkey that posed a new threat the Soviet Union, which responded by placing similar missiles in Cuba, evening the score. The Americans flew into a rage but eventually calmed down and withdrew their missiles from Turkey. The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba and the crisis was over. And so it should be called the American Missile Crisis.

What’s happening now couldn’t be more different. Unless you spent the last few weeks hiding under a rock, you have probably heard that some sort of new nuclear crisis is underway because of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” or some such. Some people have suffered nervous exhaustion as a result, neglecting their duties and generally letting themselves go. Take former British PM Liz Truss, for instance. The poor silly thing latched on to Putin’s words that “the wind rose can point in any direction” (a factual point about the utter uselessness of tactical nuclear weapons). She then allowed the British economy to go into free-fall while she obsessively tracked the wind direction over the Ukraine. It all ended badly for poor Liz. Don’t be like Liz.

I am here to tell you that there is nothing going on beyond the usual – the usual Western propaganda fakery, that is.

In particular, this has nothing to do with anything Putin or with anything nuclear. Instead, this is all part of a desperate attempt to compensate for narrative failure, and a failed attempt at that. The problem for the collective West is simply this: 80% of the world’s population has refused to join it in condemning, sanctioning or otherwise punishing Russia, with some very large countries (China, India) either supportive or neutral on the subject.

Most of the world, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, is carefully watching Russia systematically destroy what was by far the largest and most capable NATO-equipped, NATO-commanded army in the world (the Ukrainian army, that is), understanding full well that what is unfolding is Washington’s Waterloo. Some countries (Saudi Arabia, for instance) are so sure of the result that they are already refusing to obey Washington’s dictates. This is a problem, because all the Washingtonians know how to do is impose their will on the world. Treating others as equals or looking for opportunities to negotiate a win-win is simply not part of their core competence—or any of their competence, for that matter. Once defanged, all they know how to do is bark and drool.

To fix this problem, the narrative-mongers in Washington and Brussels have decided to play the nuclear card and accuse Russia of nuclear blackmail. Meanwhile, all that Russia has done is decimate the Ukrainian army several times over, then accept four former Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation based on highly conclusive local referenda closely watched by a goodly number of international observers, and then announce that it will defend these regions against foreign attack by all means necessary. These, obviously, include nuclear means, since Russia does have them, and would use them in accordance with its nuclear doctrine, which precludes their first use.

Meanwhile, the US has no such stipulation in its nuclear doctrine, has actually used nuclear weapons against civilians (in Japan), and has for decades dreamed of developing a nuclear first strike capability that could not be countered. If any country should be judged to be a nuclear threat, it is the US, not Russia… except, as I will explain, the US is no longer much of a nuclear threat either. Putin barely hinted at this, but a mere hint was enough to utterly infuriate the US national defense establishment, whose worst enemy is reality itself. Putin pointed out that at this point Russia has some weapons in its nuclear deterrent arsenal that are superior to that of the West.

These new weapons, of which more later, guarantee that any nuclear attack on Russia would be a suicidal move. That is, the West has no way of reliably destroying Russia (it is too big and its economic core is too independent and too well defended with air and space defense systems) while Russia can reliably destroy the West (which is not nearly as well defended) but will not do so unless the West attacks first. Unlike back in the old Soviet days, Russia has no missionary zeal; it is happy to sit back and watch the West starve itself (due to a lack of Russian chemical fertilizer) in the dark (due to a lack of Russian oil and gas). All it wants to do is gather the pieces of the shattered Russian world and all the people and lands that the collapse of the USSR abandoned behind some Bolshevik-decreed border. In this situation, the risk of a nuclear war is pretty much zero. Please sit back, take a series of deep breaths and let the good news soak in. Feel the joy.

But the joy probably won’t last if you listen to craven idiots whose job is to lie to you about “Putin’s nuclear threat.” When, for instance, Jack Philips writes that Moscow has threatened to use… tactical nuclear weapons… in Ukraine to salvage its war there,” he is basically just lying to us, and not once but thrice in the same sentence: Russia did not threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons but instead pointed out their uselessness; and Russia’s special operation is a success. The fact that there is no threat is the main message of this article, but let us briefly digress and describe of Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat look like.

The Ukraine is victorious in that according to the IMF its GDP is down 35% in 2022; according to its national bank inflation has topped 30% and isn’t slowing down; according to the World Bank next year 55% of Ukrainians will be below the poverty line, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day; according to the Ukraine’s economics minister, unemployment has reached 30%; according to its prime minister, it will be unable to pay pensions and salaries without immediate foreign aid; according to the UN, 20% of the population has left the country and another 33% are internally displaced; according to its energy ministry, it has already lost 40% of its electricity generating capacity. The Ukrainian army is drafting any male up to the age of 60, having run out of reservists, and the casualties it is suffering at the front are nothing short of horrific.

Meanwhile, Russia is vanquished because according to Reuters the Russian ruble is the strongest currency in the world; according to the Guardian Putin is more powerful and popular than ever; according to its agriculture ministry this year’s grain harvest is over 150 million tonnes, 50 million of which are for export, making Russia the world’s largest grain exporter; according to The Economist, Russia is emerging from recession just as the West is entering recession; and according to Goldman Sachs the index of economic activity in Russia is now higher than in the West. Russia just got done calling up 300 thousand, or 1%, of its trained and experienced reservists, who are now being drilled in the latest NATO-fighting techniques before being sent to the Ukrainian front.

But let’s not let facts stand in the way of the dominant narrative: the Ukraine has to be winning and Russia has to be losing because otherwise what could possibly cause Russia to become so utterly desperate as to threaten the world with its nuclear weapons? That part is simple; what is less obvious is why Western propagandists are sufficiently desperate to concoct and promulgate the false narrative of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail”?

The reason for all of this hectic propagandizing is that the collective West cannot hope to survive politically or economically unless Russia is brought to its knees and agrees to exchange its energy and mineral resources freshly minted digits that reside inside computers at Western central banks which can be confiscated at any time and for any reason. The situation is dire: the US is running through its Strategic Petroleum Reserve at breakneck pace, yet facing a shortage of diesel fuel and stubbornly high gasoline prices. It has a massive debt to roll over and expand but can only do so through direct money-printing, driving inflation, already at over 10%, ever higher. Europe is bracing for a harsh winter of ridiculously high energy bills, industry shutdowns and massive unemployment, while the US is not far behind. The fracking bonanza in the US was never quite profitable and now has perhaps a year or two before it is tapped out. Then the dream of US liquefied natural gas replacing Russian pipeline gas in Europe, never a realistic plan, will be dead for good while industry shutdowns spread to the US.

To avoid this scenario, desperate measures have been applied, and all of them have failed. First there was the plan of sanctions from hell, forcing numerous Western companies to stop shipping product to Russia and doing business there. This has done great harm to Western companies while providing Russia with an opening to steal their market share. What couldn’t be replaced with domestic production has been replaced with “parallel imports” via third countries.

Next, the West (Europe in particular) curtailed its Russian energy imports through a number of means, from sanctions against Russian tankers, to bans on the use of existing pipeline capacity through the Ukraine and through Poland, to outright terrorist strikes on Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic. An outright ban on Russian oil imports to the European Union is scheduled for December, and it will make the situation predictably worse. The result is that Russia has started shipping oil and gas to its partners in Asia instead, China in particular, and the West is now welcome to compete for this energy on the spot market, while spare supplies last. They won’t. Because of higher prices, Russia is exporting less energy but earning more foreign revenue.

And so an ingenuous plan was hatched for a nuclear provocation in the Ukraine. The Ukrainians, with some US and British help, were to take an old Soviet-era ballistic missile (a Tochka-U), load it up with nuclear waste from one of the Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, blow it up somewhere in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (which is already contaminated with long-lived radionuclides) and then Western media and diplomatic sources would all wax hysterical and blame it all on Russia in unison, hoping that at least some of the countries around the world that have been refusing to join Western sanctions against Russia would be cajoled into joining them.

How well did it go? Not at all well, apparently! First, Russian intelligence got the details on the whole operation from an inside source or two or three. This is not surprising, since no self-respecting nuclear engineer would be too excited to take responsibility for such a travesty. Second, Russia’s defense minister Sergei Shoigu, under direct orders from Putin, made phone calls to his counterparts throughout the world, sharing this evidence with them. Third, Russia specifically requested that the IAEA go and investigate the two Ukrainian sites at which the travesty was being concocted. The end result is that the Ukrainians are now hurriedly destroying the evidence and covering their tracks. Considering that every gram of such highly controlled substances must to be inventoried and its every movement logged, this coverup may come to involve some incidents, accidents and force majeur circumstances. A nasty little accident involving a teacup of nuclear waste and a firecracker is not to be ruled out, to be blamed on Russia, of course.

Meanwhile, in the real world of nuclear superpower standoffs, two interesting events took place. On Thursday, October 20, 2022, the American nuclear sub West Virginia, an Ohio-class sub that carries 24 Trident II ballistic missiles, each of which carries 10 nuclear charges, surfaced in the Arabian Sea and was visited by Michael Kurilla, commander of United States Central Command. I imagine that he lined up the crew on deck, stood before them in navy dress whites, then dropped his pants down and did a little “milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner fudge is made” routine… because he might as well have. The purpose of a nuclear sub is to be stealthy because Russian air defense systems can intercept Trident II missiles especially well if they know where they are coming from. Thus, the act of surfacing and holding parades on deck basically announces to the world that the sub is off-duty for the time being.

Why would the Americans do this? Is this a clumsy peace gesture, a cryptic act of surrender or a veiled cry for help? Or are they all going senile because whatever Biden has got is infectious? It is hard for us to tell. Whatever it is, the Russians seem unaffected. The Russian nuclear sub Belgorod recently sailed off into the blue, causing a bit of a panic within NATO. It carries a number of the new Poseidon nuclear-powered drone torpedos, which are all about the number 100. Each of them carries a charge of 100 megatons. Poseidons have almost infinite range, move at around 100 km/h at a depth of 1000m (three times deeper than any nuclear sub) and when detonated near an underwater coastal ridge can raise a 100-meter tsunami. Just five of them are sufficient to demolish both coasts of the US and all of Northern Europe. These would be underwater nuclear tests conducted in international waters—antisocial, yes, but not exactly direct nuclear strikes on anyone’s territory, so hardly a casus belli. And the ensuing tsunami? Uh-oh! Oopsie-daisy, sorry about that! Nobody is going to write “in case of tsunami destroy Russia” into the US nuclear doctrine. Best of all, Poseidons can lie in wait for years, surfacing periodically to receive new orders. But if Russia is destroyed they will rise up and destroy the rest of the world world, because “What use is the world if there is no Russia in it?” (V. Putin)

We can be sure that the Russians won’t launch a nuclear war because it’s risky and they don’t have to take that risk in order to win. We can be sure that the Americans won’t launch one because it would be suicide. And so we can all sit back and relax while the “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” narrative-mongers bark their stupid heads off. As for all those assorted media whores who are scaring people with their nuclear nonsense in order to catch some hype—shame on them!

Are voter ID laws an obstacle to transgender people exercising their rights at the ballot box?  Some trans groups and the ACLU argue that this is the case as the midterm elections near.  

The push against identification at the polls has been aggressive, with Democrats making up the bulk of people in opposition.  A long list of excuses has been presented as to why very simple and straightforward laws requiring ID to vote are a violation of the civil liberties of various minorities.  Notably, Democrats and the ACLU have suggested that such laws are “racist” because minorities often don’t have or are “not capable” of getting a state ID.

The ACLU argues, for example, that over 25% of blacks and 16% of Hispanics of voting age in the US do not have ID.  This data comes from the GOA and the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and was collected from 2012-2014, around a decade ago.

The problem with this argument is that there are no legal obstacles for minorities to get a state ID.  If they don’t have one then it is their fault they are not able to vote.  The only people who would have trouble obtaining an ID are illegal immigrants who are not allowed to vote anyway.  The minority access to ID argument just doesn’t hold water.

However, not to be defeated, anti-ID groups are turning to a tiny portion of the population that might face legitimate confusion at polling stations because of their appearance – Transgenders.

Representatives from the ACLU in Tennessee where stricter enforcement of voter ID laws is underway suggest that the act of a trans person having to explain their trans status is humiliating:

“It’s not just embarrassing, but it’s terrifying to have to do that — to try to read the room and see, like, are they going to kick me out? It can be really dehumanizing to have your whole identity nitpicked just so that you can cast your ballot and have your voice be heard…” Says Henry Seaton, an ACLU advocate.  Seaton is a woman who transitioned in appearance to a man who claims she once had her ID scrutinized in 2016.

Beyond the apparent embarrassment, trans rights groups also say that ID confusion could potentially lead to people being turned away from the polls, or it could put trans people “at risk” of harassment.  Almost all stats involving trans harassment accounts are collected by trans rights groups with a clear political agenda, so it is difficult to say how serious this threat actually is and how much of it is fantasy.

“People who might be inclined to harass marginalized voters at the polls are more aware of trans people’s existence,” said Olivia Hunt, the policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “So I expect that we’re going to hear more stories of trans people being harassed, whether by voters, poll workers, poll monitors or other folks who are present during the election.”

Legitimate harassment is illegal regardless of the individual, as are any acts of assault or violence.  Trans people are protected under the same laws as everyone else, but groups like the ACLU claim that this is not enough and separate laws need to be established giving trans people special protections.  This would include making them exempt from voter ID laws.  

Frankly, this is yet another example of social justice proponents trying to make their problems into the country’s problems.  If a person’s identification does not match their appearance then it is going to be scrutinized whether they are trans, a minority or they are white and straight.  By attempting to change their appearance to look more like the opposite sex, trans people set themselves up for questions when going to vote.  There are dozens of other scenarios where this would also be an issue.  It is not for state governments to cater to every individual case; their job is only to ensure that ballots are secure and that non-citizens don’t vote illegally.

Since the ACLU and trans rights organizations cannot come up with many examples of trans people being denied the right to vote and only present anecdotal stories of individuals being inconvenienced for five minutes, it’s hard to find justification for an overhaul of state laws preventing voter fraud.

The more likely explanation for the growing interest in transgender voting is that social justice activists have hit a brick wall when it comes to stopping the spread of ID laws and they are looking for a legal toe hold or weakness in the armor.  Their exploitation of minorities failed, but if voter ID can be challenged using trans people as a foil, then these groups might be able to bring down all ID laws for everyone, including illegal immigrants; the real golden goose for progressive politicians.      

Several years ago, when the “liberal, tolerant” left first decided to cancel Zerohedge , they did so using their two favorite eradication strategies: deplatforming (we were removed from Facebook and Twitter, a death sentence for most websites that depend on media powerhouses for their traffic, luckily we are not one of them) and demonetization (we lost ads hosted by Google, Amazon, and various other platforms, and we also were booted by PayPal, which in retrospect was a lucky outcome). Despite this full-bore effort by the left to silence us, we somehow survived – in large part thanks to our readers who have signed up as subscribers for our premium offering.

Fast forward to today when it is now the turn of the world’s richest man to go through this same drama.

In a carbon copy of what happened to us, America’s woke, politically correct corporations are taking aim at Twitter in hopes of starving it of cash, nevermind that its traffic is orders of magnitude greater than such socialist-endorsed, mindnumbingly boring propaganda websites and TV channels as MSNBC, CNN, Vox, The Atlantic and everything else that desperately relies on implicit advertiser subsidies to survive. According to the WSJ, food giant General Mills, Oreo maker Mondelez, pandemic profiteers Pfizer and Volkswagen’s Audi are among a growing list of brands that have “temporarily” paused their Twitter advertising in the wake of the takeover of the company by Elon Musk. General Motors paused its spending on the social-media platform last week.

Kelsey Roemhildt, a spokeswoman for General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Bisquick and Häagen-Dazs, confirmed the company has paused Twitter ads. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” she said.

So, @Pfizer – making billions off of government mandates, liability protection, & often demonstrably false propaganda – pulls ads from Twitter – over, uh, “concerns about disinformation?” #HealthcareFreedom #BeatBigHealthcare

— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) November 4, 2022

Some advertisers are concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform, which should answer Elon Musk’s question what advertisers prefer: free speech or political correctness.

Advertisers should support:

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

Other advertisers temporarily halting their ads because of the uncertainty at the company as top executives exit and Mr. Musk considers a raft of changes, some of the people said.

And just in case it’s still unclear, as long as a handful of shrill, ultra-left harpies such as this lunatic manage to outshout everyone else, it will always be free speech that loses, even if that means that advertisers are stuck peddling their wares at places like MSNBC and CNN where most of the audience has zero disposable income as it is entirely reliant on the government for its handouts.

Several ad buyers say they expect the number of brands pausing Twitter ads to rise. The platform isn’t considered a must-buy for many advertisers, with far larger budgets going to tech giants such as Google and Meta Platforms, they say, and pausing makes sense during the bumpy transition under Musk.

Additionally, many executives on Madison Avenue are uneasy with the rash of sudden executive departures from Twitter’s advertising sales and marketing units. Among those who have exited are Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette, Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, and Jean-Philippe Maheu, Twitter’s vice president of global client solutions. Those executives “helped reassure advertisers that their ad dollars were being spent wisely and appropriately on Twitter” according to the Journal. We assume that means that the woke ad agencies were assured that only liberals would be allowed to view their ads.

Musk has been working to reassure advertisers, both publicly and privately, that the platform will remain a safe place for brands. Since tweeting last week that Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape,” the billionaire has participated in several meetings and video calls with some of the world’s largest ad companies and blue-chip advertisers, ad executives said.

On Wednesday, Musk participated in a video call with WPP PLC, the world’s largest ad company, and some of its clients such as Coca-Cola, Unilever PLC and Google, according to people familiar with the meeting. During the meeting, Musk stressed that Twitter would be a safe place for brands, promising to rid the platform of bots and add community-management tools, according to the people.

He also discussed how he was seeking to segment the content on Twitter so users could customize what shows up in their feeds. That would allow people to have the equivalent of a PG-rated version of the platform, Musk said, and give advertisers the ability to choose which content to be near.

Somehow we doubt that approach will succeed. Instead, what Musk – and other thought leaders – should do, is show the variance in disposable incomes between those who frequent conservative media outlets, and those which are a magnet for liberals. Something tells us advertisers will be very surprise at who has more purchasing power. Because when you cut out the virtue signaling and the PC bullshit, at the end of the day, an ad is supposed to reach the richest, most willing to buy segment of society. The fact that this has become lost may explains the dismal state of consumer-facing companies in the US today.

As for Twitter, ironically less ads will only make the user experience that much more enjoyable. For Musk, it will also mean that the website will generate far less cash flow, which means that either he will have to dig deep to keep it funded, or he will have to start charging everyone, not just the bluechecks, for access. Whether that is a viable proposition, remains to be seen.

Billionaire Elon Musk is reportedly trading up his 2015 Gulfstream G650 private jet for a top-of-the-line Gulfstream G700, Bussiness Insider reported.

The G700 costs a whopping $78 million and is powered by all-new, high-thrust Rolls-Royce engines that can propel the aircraft to a maximum Mach .925 while cruising at more than 50,000 feet. 

Insider said Musk is expected to take delivery of one of the finest private jets in the world in early 2023. It can fly up to 7,500 nautical miles without refueling, allowing the billionaire to travel non-stop from Austin, Texas (where Tesla Motors is headquartered) to Hong Kong. 

The addition of the new jet shows Musk’s growing desire for Gulfstreams, which would expand his overall fleet of private jets to four. Three would be Gulfstreams, while the Dassault 900B stands out. 

Billionaires and elites have run into trouble with private jet ownership this year — mainly because of climate change warriors tracking their every movement and posting jet locations on social media. We noted last month that French businessman Bernard Arnault, the owner of the luxury-goods company LVMH, sold his private jet after being fed up with social media tracking his every movement. He said renting private jets solves that issue. 

We are certain Jack Sweeney, who created the Twitter account “Elon Musk’s Jet” to track the billionaire, will be adding the G700 sometime next year. 

But with a fleet of four jets, it’s getting more difficult to track the billionaire unless independently verified on the ground that he was in the plane. 

The number of billionaire donors to the GOP has been rapidly increasing vs. previous midterm election cycles – dwarfing the amount Democrats have received from their own Democrat donors (and which is largely due to George Soros).

In particular, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, Blackstone Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison have been ramping up contributions.

The three men, worth a collective $150 billion, are among the 12 top political donors ahead of the elections, according to the most recent data from OpenSecrets. Of that dozen, 10 are backing Republicans in a big way: They’ve spent a cumulative $338 million, up 250% from the 2018 cycle. –Bloomberg

And as Bloomberg further notes, this is a trend which extends to the top 100 political donors – among which some $574 million has gone towards Republican candidates and groups – around 45% more than what Democrats have received.

George Soros is of course the largest supporter of Democratic causes with $129 million in donations – nearly double the largest GOP donor Elizabeth & Richard Uihlein. Other GOP whales include Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Yass and Timothy Mellon.

Several new names appear near the top of this year’s top 100, who combined account for almost 35% of total campaign contributions. Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, is the second-largest contributor to Democrats, while another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, is backing Republicans. -Bloomberg

“If you look at the people who are giving on the Republican side — Griffin and Schwarzman and the others — they’re all historically Republican donors,” said Chartwell Strategy Group founding partner, David Tamasi. “It’s not like this is their first rodeo with giving. It’s just got more weight behind it.”

Last week we noted that Democrat donors had all but abandoned Florida.

• “The Democratic Governors Association spent just $685,000 this election cycle. It gave $14 million to Florida in the past two governor races.
• Big outside donor money has almost completely dried up. New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg contributed only $1.5 million to Democrats this cycle. He vowed $100 million to Florida in 2020.
• Democrats have collectively raised $29 million in the four non-federal statewide races. Republicans raised nearly $200 million.” — Politico

The boost from GOP billionaire donors will give Republicans an advantage in what Bloomberg suggests is a ‘dead-heat race’ to regain control of the Senate, on top of an expected majority win in the House.

That said, Democrats still top Republicans in terms of overall campaign donations this cycle, outraising Republicans by nearly $191 million in all House and Senate races.

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden administration on Wednesday renewed the public health emergency determination for monkeypox.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said in a statement that his decision to renew the public health emergency was “a result of the continued consequences of an outbreak of monkeypox cases across multiple states.” He had consulted with public health officials before renewing the determination.

The Biden administration first declared monkeypox a public health emergency this year on Aug. 4. It would have expired Wednesday, Nov. 2, if it was not renewed.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky previously said the declaration would provide more “access to resources” and will “enable personnel to be deployed to the outbreak” in some areas. The emergency will also “further raise awareness” and encourage testing for monkeypox.

The latest U.S. renewal of the public health emergency comes after the World Health Organization announced that its emergency committee had likewise determined monkeypox as a global health emergency. The determination was made following a meeting of the committee on Oct. 20.

As of Wednesday, the CDC has recorded 77,573 monkeypox cases globally and 38 deaths. It has recorded 28,492 cases of monkeypox in the United States, with the death toll at 8.

Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality congressional caucus, praised the renewal of the public health emergency determination, saying it will ensure continued support to address the outbreak.

“Thanks to vaccination efforts across the country, the contraction and spread of MPV has decreased significantly. However, MPV continues to spread and is disproportionately impacting people of color. We must bolster support and resources—including by appropriating sufficient funds—to help these communities and end this outbreak,” Cicilline added.

Read more here…

The man who allegedly attacked Paul Pelosi is an illegal immigrant, U.S. officials have confirmed.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on Canadian national David DePape with San Francisco County Jail, Nov. 1, following his Oct. 28 arrest,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told The Epoch Times in an email.

DHS is the parent agency of ICE, which is tasked with removing people who are in the United States illegally.

Immigration detainers are placed on suspects who are illegal immigrants. They are meant to prevent state or local officials from releasing the suspects.

If a suspect is due to be released, the detainer means officials hand over the person to federal officials, unless local officials defy the request.

Adam Lipson, DePape’s public defender, indicated after DePape’s arraignment this week that he was representing an illegal immigrant.

“He currently has a federal hold so he can’t be released anyway,” Lipson told reporters when asked about the motion for no bail entered by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

Lipson could not be reached for comment.

“Nobody in America should be victimized by an illegal alien. The illegal alien crime rate here should be exactly 0.0%,” the National Border Patrol Council, the Border Patrol’s union, said in a statement.

Immigration records show DePape entered the United States in March 2008 as a temporary visitor. Canadians are generally admitted without a visa if they are visiting for business or pleasure and can typically stay in the United States for up to six months.

Additionally, according to a lawyer who has been in touch with DePape’s former girlfriend, DePape has embraced left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theories.

As Janice Hisle reports at The Epoch Times, the former girlfriend, Oxane “Gypsy” Taub, is herself in a women’s prison for 20 crimes involving a teen boy.

Taub’s attorney, Christopher Dobbins, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 2 that based on his conversations with Taub the theories about DePape being a right-wing extremist seem to be off base.

Dobbins thinks DePape tends to believe conspiracy theories in general, whether they’re left-wing or right-wing.

“He’s all over the place,” Dobbins said.

Dobbins said he has heard from Taub by phone frequently since news broke that DePape, 42, was arrested in the Oct. 28 breach of the Pelosi mansion in San Francisco. She has expressed a lot of concern for DePape, Dobbins said.

Taub has been trying to raise funds for DePape’s defense, Dobbins said.

Statements from Dobbins and a neighbor shed new light on DePape’s unorthodox lifestyle, his apparent homelessness, and his thought processes.

“Even though he’s probably Public Enemy No. 1 right now,” and DePape and Taub have apparently been estranged for a while, Taub still cares for her ex, Dobbins said.

She thinks he’s deeply troubled and has serious mental issues, Dobbins said. The two have known each other for many years and both were pictured in San Francisco newspapers in 2013 when they were protesting city ordinances banning public nudity.

Taub asked Dobbins to defend DePape; Dobbins said he declined the offer, choosing to steer away from a potential conflict of interest involving his representation of Taub.

Lawyer Contests ‘Fixated’ Claim

DePape is the father of two of Taub’s three children. A daughter, fathered by another man, is grown; two boys, in their late teens or early adulthood, have been living alone at their mother’s property during her legal troubles, Dobbins said.

Now 53, Taub is imprisoned near Los Angeles for offenses involving a teen boy, prosecutors said in a news release when a jury convicted her in August 2021.

Dobbins points out that his client testified in her own defense, and she still asserts that she is innocent. She testified that her actions toward the boy were misinterpreted.

The teen was a schoolmate of one of her sons, and Taub was convinced the boy was being abused, Dobbins said. She believed she was being helpful to him, as she was repeatedly contacting him after being told to stop, Dobbins said. But “she never touched him,” he declared.

Prosecutors, however, said Taub “became fixated on a 14-year-old boy in 2018,” and committed the offenses.

That was how the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office put it in a news release.

Prosecutors issued the release in August 2021 after a jury found Taub guilty of four felonies—attempted child abduction, stalking, and two counts of dissuading a witness—plus 16 misdemeanors: a count of molestation and 15 violations of court orders to stay away from the boy.

“Over the course of 14 months, she sent him numerous obsessive emails, created blogs directed at him, used his friends to send him messages, and eventually tried to abduct him a few blocks from his school in Berkeley,” the release said. “While the case was pending, Taub also tried to dissuade the victim from testifying.”

DePape Lived in School Bus

Dobbins, who was a schoolteacher before he became an attorney 14 years ago, said Taub is one of the most interesting, unusual clients he has ever encountered.

He described her as a free spirit and a well-intentioned idealist who can be misunderstood. “She is a kind of out-there person, kind of pushing the envelope,” he said, acknowledging that her nudist, bohemian lifestyle irritates her neighbors; he said he had visited the area several times.

Ryan La Coste, who resides near the house where Taub lived in the 1500 block of Woolsey St., Berkeley, Calif., told The Epoch Times that he only saw DePape “in passing,” but he believes DePape sometimes lived in a yellow school bus that is parked at the property.

Authorities have said they believe DePape mostly was living in a garage on Shasta Street in Richmond, Calif., for the past two years.

La Coste said DePape sporadically showed up in the Berkeley neighborhood even after Taub was incarcerated. La Coste believes he most recently saw DePape staying in the bus a couple of months ago.

La Coste has lived in the neighborhood for five or six years. Right after he moved in, “the problems started immediately” at Taub’s house, he said.

“Children was setting fires out here. They were dressed in like snorkeling gear and swim trunks, setting fires and smoke was coming into my house,” he said. “So I was like, trying to go tell their mother, not knowing who she was.”

Later that evening, he got a call that was “super-weird,” he said. “They said I threatened to kill her children…and it just got worse and worse from there…it was just kind of like a constant flow of bugging me and disturbing me and trying to pick fights with me.”

That stopped only after Taub was locked up on the charges involving the young boy. She is eligible for parole in January, court records show.

La Coste described DePape and a parade of other “characters” coming and going at Taub’s property, “almost like a hippie collective.”

“They’ve had people camping right here, trying to sell me drugs over the fence,” he said, “And, you know, they’re active nudists; they’re plastered all over the internet.”

Even Taub’s sons have been known to be “just standing there, naked,” La Coste said, even in front of his 13-year-old niece.

Psychedelic Experiences?

La Coste also said he found it strange that Taub was enamored of a psychoactive substance called ibogaine—which she would go to Mexico to obtain and then frequently offered to others, including him.

Ibogaine is found in the African rainforest shrub known as Tabernanthe Iboga. “It is unlicensed but used in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction,” according to a 2016 report in the National Library of Medicine. “However, reports of ibogaine’s toxicity are cause for concern.”

Asked to respond to La Coste’s statements about ibogaine, Dobbins acknowledged that his client testified about the drug during her trial last year, and acknowledged that she tried to offer it to the young man she was hanging around.

Read more here…

It’s only appropriate that one day after we saw a veritable cornucopia of mass layoff announcements…

Layoffs announced in the last day:

– Lyft 13% of workers
– Opendoor 18%
– Stripe 14%
– Chime 12%
– Twitter 50%
– Morgan Stanley (% unknown)

— Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA (@GRDecter) November 3, 2022

… and on the same day that Elon Musk will fire half of Twitter employees, that the Bureau of Lies (sic) and Statistics will come up with the most grotesque “seasonal adjustment” yet, and claim that some 200K jobs were created in the US, or at least that’s what the median Wall Street consensus is; the actual reported number will likely be just fractionally below this estimate to make it seem “credible.” Alas, a representation of the actual US economic reality won’t be available until the first Friday of December, with the midterm elections now in the rearview mirror, when the BLS will have no choice but to aggressively start catching down to what the jobs number is, including aggressive prior revisions (which by then nobody will care about), in a month that will be seen as a watershed “kitchen sinking” of data, and which will furiously reprice the Fed’s hiking intentions and terminal rate.

But before we get there, we have tomorrow’s payrolls fairy tale to get through: in his preview of what’s in store, Goldman trader John Flood writes “TYVM to Jay Pow for somewhat derisking the jobs print tomorrow. Street is looking for +200k headline print (GIR +225k, last +263k), AHE MoM .3% (GIR .35%, last .35%), U/ E Rate 3.6% (GIR 3.5%, last 3.5%) and Labor Force Participation rate of 62.3% (GIR 62.3%, last 62.3%). We are still FIRMLY in a bad data is good for stocks and vice versa setup here (and will be for the foreseeable future).”

The Goldman trader also adds that “weaker employment data should lift the S&P more than stronger data will hit it (I would not have said this before yesterday’s developments)”, and provides the following NFP matrix:

• Goldilocks: headline, AHE <.3 u rate>3.6 and Labor Force Participation rate >62.3%. S&P quickly claws back 2+%
• Worst Case: >300k headline, AHE >.3%, U/E
• Base Case: 175k – 225k headline, AHE .3%, U/E 3.6% and LFP 62.3%. S&P rallies 50 – 100bps.

A more detailed look of what to expect courtesy of Newsquawk:

• The rate of payrolls growth is expected to moderate in October, while the jobless rate is expected to rise a little.
• Goldman estimates non-farm payrolls rose by 225k in October (mom sa), above consensus of +195k but a slowdown from the +263k pace in September.
• There will be attention on the wages measures; any downside could give the Fed cover to downshift the pace of rate hikes in December.
• A weak headline could also see calls for the Fed to slow its normalization become louder, as the central bank aggressively tightens policy into restrictive territory to cap inflation, particularly as politicians have an eye on the US midterm elections next week.
• According to Goldman, labor demand remains elevated despite declining this year, and Big Data indicators generally point to above-consensus payroll gains. The bank also believes the exit of the youth summer workforce weighed on job growth in the September report, and the absence of that headwind argues for a pickup in some low-skill services categories. Generally, job growth tends to pick back up in October when the labor market is tight, as firms frontload autumn and pre-holiday hiring.

Estimates:

Consensus expects 200k nonfarm payrolls to be added to the US Economy in October, moderating from the 263k rise seen in September. If the consensus expectation is realized, it would be beneath the three-, six- and 12-month averages (at 372k, 360k, 474k respectively).

The unemployment rate is seen nudging up by one-tenth of a percentage point, taking it to 3.6%; there will be focus on the participation rate to see whether the rise is a function of returning workers (participation previously fell one-tenth to 32.3%, which helped bring the jobless rate down by two-tenths to 3.5%). The Fed’s September economic projections forecast the unemployment rate would rise to 3.8% by the end of this year, before picking up to 4.4% next year, though the updated projections still see the longer-run unemployment rate at 4.0%.

Labor Market Proxies: Claims data for the week that coincides with the BLS’ reference period in its establishment survey saw initial jobless claims were ultimately little changed at 212,250k vs 215,750k in the reference week for the September jobs report. Similarly, continuing claims climbed a little between both of those windows, from 1.381mn to 1.388mln. In its flash purchasing managers data series for October, S&P Global said employment was broadly unchanged in the month, though the seasonally adjusted Employment Index was below the neutral 50.0 level for the first time since June 2020, driven by a fall in service sector staffing numbers, while manufacturers registered a slower pace of job creation. The ISM survey is also consistent with that view of a neutral labour market in October, with its manufacturing employment index rising from 48.7 to the neutral 50.0 level (note: the services ISM has not been released at the time this preview is being published). Meanwhile, ADP’s new gauge of national employment – which analysts continue to remain critical of given that it does not forecast the official data with any deal of success – was strong, seeing 239k payrolls added, topping expectations of 195k.

Wages: Average hourly earnings are seen rising by 0.3% M/M in October, matching the pace from the September report; the annual measure is expected to ease to 4.7% Y/Y from 5.0% – that will be encouraging Fed officials who are lifting rates to combat inflation, particularly since some analysts say that base effects will support the annual measure in October. As a point of reference, the ADP’s data for October said pay growth eased again in October, and the momentum of gains for job changers was ebbing (for these workers, annual pay growth edged down for the third straight month, to 15.2% Y/Y from 15.7% in September); for job stayers, pay gains registered 7.7% in October, in line with recent months. That would be welcome news at Fed HQ, particularly after the recent quarterly Employment Cost Index data, which suggests that pay growth was still accelerating in Q3 by some measures. Meanwhile, average workweek hours are seen unchanged at 34.5hrs.

Arguing for a stronger-than-expected report:

• Tight labor markets. When the labor market is tight, job growth tends to slow in September and pick back up in October, as shown in Exhibit 1. The September tendency in part reflects the loss of the summer youth workforce, which in September 2022 contributed -128k to job growth according to the household survey (mom sa). The absence of this headwind argues for a pickup in some low-skill services categories in tomorrow’s report. Additionally, the tight labor market incentivizes firms to frontload autumn and pre-holiday hiring, given the likely difficulty of finding workers in November and December

• Big Data. High-frequency data on the labor market were mixed in October but generally point to strong job growth, with three of the four measures available this month consistent with above-consensus payrolls (see Exhibit 2).

• Job availability. JOLTS job openings rebounded by 0.4mn to 10.7mn workers in September, swinging from below to above the level implied by alternative data (see Exhibit 3). The labor market has likely continued to rebalance at a steady pace, in Goldman’s view. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those  saying jobs are hard to get— decreased substantially relative to September but remains at a high level (-5.6pt to +32.5)

• ADP. Private sector employment in the ADP report increased by 239k in October above expectations for 195k.

Arguing for a weaker-than-expected report:

• Employer surveys. The employment components of business surveys generally decreased in October. Our services employment survey tracker decreased by 0.7pt to 51.5 and our manufacturing survey employment tracker decreased by 0.2pt to 52.7.
• Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas increased 7.6% month-over-month in October, following a 30.0% increase in September (SA by GS).

Neutral/mixed factors:

• Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims decreased during the October payroll month, averaging 212k per week vs. 220k in September. Residual seasonality (i.e., goalseeking) and other so-called “non-economic factors” explain much of the variation in initial claims over the last few months, and according to Goldman, “the overarching message from the jobless claims data is that layoff rates remained very low in Q3. Continuing claims in regular state programs increased 92k from survey week to survey week, although they may also be affected by residual seasonality.”

Policy Implications: Recent reports indicate that the Fed may downshift to a slower pace of rate hikes from December onwards. However, for that to happen, officials have previously indicated that they would want to see meaningful progress in bringing inflation down. Accordingly, the wages data could be influential for the December debate (the market is currently shooting for 75bps in November, and then 50bps in December). This week, the latest JOLTs data (for September) showed a rise against expectations it would decline, and while that didn’t do much to change the narrative for the November FOMC meeting, expectations of where the eventual terminal rate will be moved hawkishly (the market now sees above 5.0% in May 2023, vs just above 4.8% a week earlier). On the other side of the coin, if the headline begins to show stress (for instance, if it were to come in towards the bottom, or below the 50-300k forecast range), it could reignite concerns regarding the economic slowdown, at a time when the Fed is tightening policy aggressively, which could lead to more calls for the Fed to slow the rate it is normalising policy, particularly from the political community given the US midterm elections next week. (Note: this preview is being published before the November FOMC meeting).

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

So it turns out the US intelligence cartel has been working intimately with online platforms to regulate the “cognitive infrastructure” of the population.

This is according to a new investigative report by The Intercept, based on documents obtained through leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, on the “retooling” of the Department of Homeland Security from an agency focused on counterterrorism to one increasingly focused on fighting “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” online.

While the DHS’s hotly controversial “Disinformation Governance Board” was shut down in response to public outcry, the Intercept report reveals what authors Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein describe as “an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms” in order to “curb speech it considers dangerous”:

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

Docs show Facebook and Twitter closely collaborating w/ Dept of Homeland Security, FBI to police “disinfo.” Plans to expand censorship on topics like withdrawal from Afghanistan, origins of COVID, info that undermines trust in financial institutions. https://t.co/Zb3zmI1dQF

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 31, 2022

The report reveals pervasive efforts on the part of the DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the FBI, to push massive online platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to censor content in order to suppress “threats” as broad as fomenting distrust in the US government and US financial institutions.

“There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use,” The Intercept reports.

“Emails between DHS officials, Twitter, and the Center for Internet Security outline the process for such takedown requests during the period leading up to November 2020,” says The Intercept. “Meeting notes show that the tech platforms would be called upon to ‘process reports and provide timely responses, to include the removal of reported misinformation from the platform where possible.’”

While these government agencies contend that they are not technically forcing these tech platforms to remove content, The Intercept argues that its investigation shows “CISA’s goal is to make platforms more responsive to their suggestions,” while critics argue that “suggestions” from immensely powerful institutions will never be taken as mere suggestions.

“When the government suggests things, it’s not too hard to pull off the velvet glove, and you get the mail fist,” Michigan State University’s Adam Candeub tells The Intercept. “And I would consider such actions, especially when it’s bureaucratized, as essentially state action and government collusion with the platforms.”

This is absolutely wild. The government is secretly transforming “national security” agencies into a new Narrative Police.

“If a foreign government sent these messages,” said the former ACLU president, “there is no doubt we would call it censorship.”

Read the story: https://t.co/9bMjDKSmcd

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 31, 2022

The current CISA chief is seen justifying this aggressive government thought policing by creepily referring to the means people use to gather information and form thoughts about the world as “our cognitive infrastructure”:

Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.

Another CISA official is seen suggesting the agency launder its manipulations through third party nonprofits “to avoid the appearance of government propaganda”:

To accomplish these broad goals, the report said, CISA should invest in external research to evaluate the “efficacy of interventions,” specifically with research looking at how alleged disinformation can be countered and how quickly messages spread. Geoff Hale, the director of the Election Security Initiative at CISA, recommended the use of third-party information-sharing nonprofits as a “clearing house for trust information to avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”

But as a former ACLU president tells The Intercept, if this were happening in any government the US doesn’t like there’d be no qualms about calling it what it is:

“If a foreign authoritarian government sent these messages,” noted Nadine Strossen, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, “there is no doubt we would call it censorship.”

Indeed, this report is just another example of the way western powers are behaving more and more like the autocracies they claim to despise, all in the name of preserving the values the west purports to uphold. As The Intercept reminds us, this business of the US government assigning itself the responsibility of regulating America’s “cognitive infrastructure” originated with the “allegation that Russian agents had seeded disinformation on Facebook that tipped the 2016 election toward Donald Trump.” To this day that agenda continues to expand into things like plots to censor speech about the war in Ukraine.

[Thread]

Hundreds of former agents of a notorious Israeli spying organization are now working in key positions at the world’s biggest tech/comms corporations, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

My new investigation for @MintPressNews: https://t.co/blv2ieGOmS

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 31, 2022

Other examples of this trend coming out at the same time include Alan MacLeod’s new report with Mintpress News that hundreds of former agents from the notorious Israeli spying organization Unit 8200 are now working in positions of influence at major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon (just the latest in MacLeod’s ongoing documentation of the way intelligence insiders have been increasingly populating the ranks of Silicon Valley platforms), and the revelation that The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté were barred from participating in a Web Summit conference due to pressure from the Ukrainian government.

We’re destroying western values to defend western values. To win its much-touted struggle of “democracies vs autocracies”, western civilization is becoming more and more autocratic. Censoring more. Trolling more. Propagandizing more. Jailing journalists. Becoming less and less transparent. Manipulating information and people’s understanding of truth.

We’re told we need to defeat Russia in Ukraine in order to preserve western values of freedom and democracy, and in order to facilitate that aim we’re getting less and less free speech. Less and less free thought. Less and less free press. Less and less democracy.

I keep thinking of the (fictional) story where during World War II Winston Churchill is advised to cut funding for the arts to boost military funding, and he responds, “Then what are we fighting for?” If we need to sacrifice everything we claim to value in order to fight for those values, what are we fighting for?

Dissent is becoming less and less tolerated. Public discourse is being more and more aggressively disrupted by the powerful. We’re being shaped into the exact sort of homogeneous, power-serving, tyrannized, propagandized population that our leaders criticize other nations for having.

Any journalists or press freedom advocates out there care about a US gov’t ally, Ukraine, pressuring a media conference to cancel two journalists? https://t.co/sPwaQAIiTV

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 31, 2022

If the powerful are becoming more tyrannical in order to fight tyranny, what’s probably actually happening is that they are just tyrants making up excuses to do the thing they’ve always wanted to do.

As westerners in “liberal democracies” we are told that our society holds free speech, free thought and accountability for the powerful as sacrosanct.

Our leaders are showing us that this is a lie.

The problem with “western values” is that the west doesn’t value them.

In reality, those who best exemplify “western values” as advertised are the ones who are being most aggressively silenced and marginalized by western powers. The real journalists. The dissidents. The skeptics. The free thinkers. The peace activists. Those who refuse to bow down to their rulers.

Our ongoing descent into tyranny in the name of opposing tyrants calls forth a very simple question: if defeating autocracy requires becoming an autocracy, what’s the point of defeating autocracy?

*  *  *

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Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

State actors that include China’s communist regime are seeking to influence next week’s U.S. midterm elections, according to the nation’s cybersecurity chief.

China, Iran, and Russia may all seek to influence or otherwise interfere with U.S. democratic processes, according to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly.

“We are concerned about Russia and Iran and China trying to influence our elections,” Easterly said during a Nov. 1 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

“It’s a significant concern when you think about these adversaries who are trying to sow discord, that are trying to break us apart as Americans and are trying to undermine integrity in our elections.”

Easterly’s comments follow closely behind several revelations in recent months regarding how hostile foreign powers are attempting to undermine stability in the United States.

Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said in September that it had disrupted several Chinese and Russian influence operations. Those operations took place on Facebook, Instagram, and Meta competitor Twitter, and appeared largely aimed at increasing political polarization among Americans by spreading false and inflammatory posts about controversial topics including race, abortion, fascism, and gun control.

Likewise, a report published in October by intelligence firm Recorded Future found that China-based actors were attempting to influence the Nov. 8 midterm elections by undermining confidence in lawmakers who were critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and in the U.S. system of government itself.

Yet another report by nonprofit Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) team at New York University asserted that social media giant TikTok failed to prevent 90 percent of political ads with misleading or blatantly false election information, even as the company claims it doesn’t allow any political advertising.

Easterly said the need to maintain strong cyber defenses against such operations is critical, and that the United States would need to be prepared for activity designed to cause instability.

“It’s not the time to put our shields down,” she said. “We need to be prepared for potential disruptive [and] destructive activity.”

“That’s what foreign adversaries want. They want to have disruption. They want to sow discord. They love the partisan rancor. They love the tearing apart of America.”

Easterly, who served 20 years as a U.S. Army officer, said that there were no credible or specific threats to election infrastructure now, but the types of influence operations seen recently could contribute to the growing number of other threats being made against Americans attempting to conduct the elections.

From physical intimidation to threats to misinformation, Easterly said the threat environment facing everyday Americans who work at the polls is more complex than ever.

To that end, Easterly said that securing elections is a nonpartisan activity, and Americans need to work together to protect the American way of life by increasing election literacy and ensuring safe and resilient conditions for poll workers.

Read more here…