Ramaswamy Doubles Down on Comparing Ayanna Pressley to KKK Grand Wizard

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is doubling down on his comparison of Representative Ayanna Pressley to a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.

On Sunday, Ramaswamy received a grilling from CNN’s Dana Bash on his remarks.

“The KKK wasn’t just about rhetoric—they lynched people, they murdered people, they raped people, they burned their homes,” Bash argued. “If you want to have an intellectual discussion do you think that maybe comparing [Pressley] to the grand wizard and the notion of what she said to being a modern leader of the KKK was maybe a step too far, or you stand by what you said?”

Ramaswamy told Bash he stands by what he said.

Ramaswamy first compared Pressley to the KKK grand wizard during a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday.

He was criticizing Pressley, the first Black representative from Massachusetts, for remarks she made in 2019 on how “we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice.”

The GOP presidential candidate also attacked How to Be an Antiracist author Ibram X. Kendi, pushing the idea that progressives are the real racists. 

“The greatest racism I’ve experienced—and I have experienced racism—comes from the modern left at a scale unimaginable,” Ramaswamy said. “These are the words of the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.”

Ramaswamy refused to back down from the incendiary words on Sunday, telling Bash he believed Pressley’s comment had the same “spirit” as the KKK.

“I stand by what I said to provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,” he said. “We need to have real, open, honest, raw conversations as Americans. That is our path to national unity.”

Pressley, for her part, called Ramaswamy’s comments “deeply offensive.”

“The verbal assault lobbied against myself and Dr. Kendi is shameful. It is deeply offensive. And it is dangerous,” she said. “I remain squarely focused on the work of undoing the centuries of harm that has precisely been done to Black Americans and charting a path of true restorative justice and racial justice forward.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was loudly booed while at a weekend vigil for victims of a racist mass shooting in Jacksonville.

A white man opened fire in a Dollar General store in a predominantly Black neighborhood on Saturday, killing three people, all of whom were Black. The shooter, who then killed himself, used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, at least one of which was painted with a swastika. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said the shooter “hated Black people” and acted alone.

DeSantis attended a vigil Sunday night. But when he tried to give a speech, the crowd began booing him so loudly that he was drowned out. Some people also shouted “Black Lives Matter!” and “Black history matters!” This was a reference to DeSantis’s administration blocking an AP African American Studies course and rewriting the state’s Black history curriculum, which now requires teachers to tell students that enslaved people learned valuable skills from slavery.

Jacksonville Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman stepped in and told the crowd to stop, saying, “It ain’t about parties today. A bullet don’t know a party.”

But the boos for DeSantis are understandable. In addition to his attacks on Black history, the governor has signed multiple bills this year that make it easier for people to access firearms. In April, DeSantis signed a law that would allow people to carry concealed loaded guns without any permits, training, or background checks. A month later, he signed a law preventing credit card companies from tracking firearm and ammunition sales, making it harder to track suspicious weapons purchases.

The first Republican presidential debate started on an odd note—literally—when the moderators played a song called “Rich Men North of Richmond” for the candidates. The singer and songwriter, Oliver Anthony, thinks it’s extra weird they used his song.

“I wrote that song about those people,” he said in a YouTube video posted Friday, referring to the candidates. “It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news trying to identify with me like I’m one of them.”

He also addressed how many conservatives have embraced the song as a new right-wing protest anthem. “The one thing has bothered me is seeing people wrap politics up in this,” he said. “It’s aggravating to see certain musicians and politicians act like we’re buddies, like we’re fighting the same struggle here.”

As of Friday, “Rich Men North of Richmond” is number one on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart. The song decries the rich and powerful who exploit working classes.

Despite Anthony’s protests, the debate moderators, Fox News anchors Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum, told Politico Friday they got his permission to use the song.

The song also does have a vein of QAnon conspiracy theory running through it, as well as extremist political undertones. In “Rich Men North of Richmond” and in other songs of his, Anthony appears to embrace popular conservative talking points and conspiracies.

In one line of “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Anthony judges the grocery purchases of overweight “welfare queens.” He also makes references to human trafficking and people taking advantage of children, a clear reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory that Democrats and Hollywood elites run a global sex trafficking ring. And in another song, released Wednesday, Anthony says the U.S. is on the cusp of a new world war—something to which right-wing leaders have also alluded.

The National Labor Relations Board issued new rules Friday that will make it easier for workers to form unions—and much more difficult for companies to stop them.

The new unionization process framework is part of a decision in a case between Cemex Construction Materials Pacific and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. If a majority of workers ask a company to recognize their union, under the new rules, the company must now immediately either recognize the union or petition the NLRB to hold a union election.

“However, if an employer who seeks an election commits any unfair labor practice that would require setting aside the election, the petition will be dismissed, and—rather than re-running the election—the Board will order the employer to recognize and bargain with the union,” the NLRB said in a statement announcing the ruling.

Essentially, if a company tries to union-bust, it will instead be forced to automatically recognize the union and start negotiating with them.

“The Cemex decision reaffirms that elections are not the only appropriate path for seeking union representation, while also ensuring that, when elections take place, they occur in a fair election environment,” NLRB Chair Lauren McFerran said in the statement. “An employer is free to use the Board’s election procedure, but is never free to abuse it—it’s as simple as that.”

The decision comes near the end of a banner season for workers’ rights. Earlier this week, Teamsters ratified a historic contract with UPS. The so-called “hot labor summer” has also seen Trader Joe’s workers, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema employees, and students and interns start to unionize. Screenwriters and actors who are members of SAG-AFTRA have been on a historic strike for months.

Ohio Republicans are trying once more to thwart an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, this time by amending the ballot initiative language to be more extreme.

The Ohio Ballot Board voted 3–2, along party lines, on Thursday to reject using the full text of the proposed amendment on the ballot in November. Instead, the ballot will have a summary of the proposal written by Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, using language such as “unborn child” instead of “fetus.” The summary also removes all mention that the amendment would protect non-abortion forms of reproductive health.

The full text of the amendment has not changed. The amendment would allow people to decide for themselves about all reproductive health, including abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, and miscarriage treatment. The state could only restrict abortion access after a doctor determines the fetus is viable or could survive outside the uterus. Even then, abortions can be performed if the patient’s health or life is at risk. The text also explicitly states that the state cannot “burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against” someone exercising their reproductive rights.

Still, the summary language is sure to sway some people at the polls. In addition to replacing the word “fetus” with “unborn child,” the summary also uses the phrase “pregnant person” instead of “pregnant woman” and refers to the procedures as “medical treatment” instead of a “decision.”

The new text makes two other crucial changes: First, it says that “citizens of the State of Ohio” cannot infringe upon reproductive rights, instead of the state, making it appear as if state officials could still intervene. The summary also says the amendment will “always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician’s determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health.” In doing so, the summary invokes the right-wing bogeyman of “late-term abortions,” a term designed to make it seem that pro-choice policies border on infanticide.

These changes are a clear attempt to make the amendment seem far more extreme and dangerous than it actually is. LaRose said the full amendment text will still be available at election boards and on posters at voting stations, but people will need to know to look or ask for this extra information. All they’ll have in the actual voting booth is LaRose’s summary.

Lauren Blauvelt, co-chair of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, slammed the summary as “propaganda.” Even one of the Republican Ballot Board members, anti-abortion Senator Theresa Garavone, warned that the amendment’s true nature would now be “hidden behind overly broad language.”

But Blauvelt was confident that the pro-choice side would prevail in November. She may well be right. Republicans have already tried once—and failed spectacularly—to block the abortion amendment. Ohio voters in early August overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to raise the threshold for ballot initiatives to 60 percent of votes, which would have paved the way for minority rule in the state. What’s more, A USA Today Network/Suffolk University poll released in July found that 58 percent of Ohioans support enshrining abortion rights, while just 32 percent oppose it.

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe Donald Trump should stand trial before the 2024 election, according to a new Politico Magazine/Ipsos poll published Friday.

Roughly three in five people, or 61 percent of poll respondents, think the federal trial on Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election should take place before the general election in November 2024.

The poll, which surveyed 1,032 Democratic, Republican, and independent adults, is more bad news for the Republican Party’s front-runner. Trump has thus far spun his indictments as a “witch hunt” and painted himself a victim, not a perpetrator. 

In the new poll, nearly 90 percent of Democrats want an early trial date for Trump, while a third of Republicans agree. But what’s really damning are the responses from independents, a group Trump sorely needs to secure the presidency.

Sixty-three percent of independents said Trump should stand trial before the general election, a sharp increase from the 48 percent who responded to a similar question Politico/Ipsos asked in June, following Trump’s indictment in the classified documents case. This shows that independent voters are taking Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election quite seriously.

There are other damning numbers for Trump as well. The poll found that a majority of Americans believe that the federal 2020 election subversion case was based on a fair evaluation of the evidence, including 64 percent of independents. Additionally, roughly one-third of independents said that a conviction in the Department of Justice’s election case would make them less likely to support Trump.

The poll also showed that about half of the country (51 percent) believes Trump is guilty in both the Justice Department’s case on the 2020 election and the case out of Fulton County, Georgia, on overturning that state’s election results. A slightly higher 52 percent of respondents believe Trump is guilty in the Justice Department’s classified documents case.

Sarah Palin has called for people to “rise up” and potentially start a civil war over Donald Trump’s arrest in Georgia.

Trump surrendered to authorities in the Peach State Thursday evening, marking the fourth time he has been indicted and arrested this year. He is charged with felony racketeering for trying to overthrow the state’s 2020 presidential election results.

Palin expressed her outraged (and outrageous) opinion during an interview with Newsmax Thursday night.

“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tiered system of justice, and I want to ask them, ‘What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war?’ Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this,” Palin told host Eric Bolling.

“And Eric, I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.”

Palin is now at least the second prominent right-wing figure to casually throw the concept of civil war around this week. Trump opted to release an interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday instead of participating in the first Republican presidential debate. At one point, Carlson asked Trump if he believed the United States is headed for “civil war.”

Trump began reminiscing about the January 6 riot, saying there was “tremendous passion, and … tremendous love” in the crowd, as well as “such hatred of what they’ve done to our country.”

Republicans’ tacit condoning of violent attacks is dangerous. Political violence has been steadily increasing in recent years, and it can be directly traced back to this kind of rhetoric.

Donald Trump surrendered to authorities in Georgia on Thursday evening, marking the fourth time he has been indicted and arrested this year.

This time, he was treated like other criminal defendants.

The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office booked him as inmate number P01135809. He was also registered as being 6’3”,  215 pounds, and with “blond or strawberry” hair color.

The Fulton County Sheriff’s office also released a photo of Trump’s mug shot. Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat had promised earlier this month that the former president would get no special treatment and would have his mug shot taken.

And the list of alleged crimes is long: Trump has been charged with 13 criminal counts for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. He has also pleaded not guilty to dozens of other charges related to making hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, and trying multiple times to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Here is a list of all 91 official charges he faces.

Georgia: 13 counts

1 count of racketeering

3 counts of solicitation of violation of oath by public officer

2 counts of false statements and writings

1 count of conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer

2 counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree

2 counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings

1 count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents

1 count of filing false documents

Washington: 4 counts

1 count of conspiracy to defraud the United States

1 count of conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding

1 count of obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding

1 count of conspiracy against the right to vote

Florida: 40 counts

32 counts of willful retention of national defense information

1 count of conspiracy to obstruct justice

1 count of withholding a document or record

1 count of corruptly concealing a document or record

1 count of concealing a document in a federal investigation

1 count of scheme to conceal

1 count of false statements and representations

1 count of altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object

1 count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating. or concealing a document, record, or other object

New York: 34 counts

34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree

Vivek Ramaswamy is trying to use his presidential campaign as an excuse to wiggle out of legal proceedings against him.

Ramaswamy was a board member of both Roivant Sciences, which he founded in 2014, and Sumitovant Biopharma until earlier this year. Sumitovant successfully negotiated to acquire Roivant subsidiary Myovant in October 2022. Under the deal, which was completed in March, Sumitovant agreed to pay $27 per share for all outstanding Myovant shares.

But soon after, the investment management firm Alpine Partners, a now-former Myovant shareholder, launched an appraisal rights lawsuit to determine that it and other shareholders had been fairly compensated for their stock. Alpine requested that Ramaswamy testify and provide materials about “how Sumitovant valued Myovant at the time of the merger and the negotiating process that led to the merger.” Alpine’s subpoena set Ramaswamy’s testimony for June 30; the filing also gave him a 30-day grace period to comply.

Ramaswamy responded on July 27, saying that he couldn’t possibly testify because he is too busy running for president.

“As a candidate for President of the United States, I must frequently travel across the United States to campaign, make speeches, give media interviews, and meet with voters,” he said in a court filing. “Consequently, I am often away from home, and when I am home it is often not until late in the evening after a full campaign day.”

“The subpoena request and resulting discovery would therefore constitute an undue burden and will materially affect my ability to run for higher office.”

Ramaswamy also insisted that he does not have “any material knowledge of the transaction that is the basis of the underlying Appraisal Proceeding.”

The judge has yet to rule on Ramaswamy’s motion. But Ramaswamy clearly thinks that he is above the law now that he is running for president.

Ramaswamy isn’t the only person using his campaign to avoid legal trouble. It seems he has taken the cue from Donald Trump, who is facing a mountain of lawsuits. He has repeatedly tried to set trial dates for well after the election, hoping that he will win and thus be immune from multiple cases.

Elon Musk’s reckless tweeting has once again come back to bite him.

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against SpaceX on Wednesday, alleging that the company discriminated against refugees and asylees. And it cited one of Musk’s own tweets as proof.

In June 2020, Musk tweeted that “US law requires at least a green card to be hired at SpaceX, as rockets are considered advanced weapons technology.”

The lawsuit lists this tweet as just one of a few public discriminatory statements that SpaceX’s CEO has made over the years. The lawsuit alleges that these public statements were intended to discourage refugees and asylees from applying to SpaceX. Those who did end up applying were not fairly considered, according to the lawsuit.

According to the suit, SpaceX repeatedly wrongly stated in job postings and public statements that the company could “only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents” from at least September 2018 to May 2022.

The lawsuit also alleges that SpaceX “wrongly claimed” that U.S. export laws prevented it from hiring refugees and asylees. “Export control laws and regulations do not prohibit or restrict employers from hiring asylees and refugees; those laws treat asylees and refugees just like U.S. citizens,” the lawsuit says.

The investigation into discrimination was launched in May 2020 by the Department of Justice’s Immigrant and Employee Rights section, but was stalled significantly by SpaceX’s unwillingness to cooperate. SpaceX tried to slow down the DOJ’s investigation and only provided requested documents a full year after they were first requested.