Republicans’ Dangerous New Bill Would Try to Muzzle All Criticism of Israel

A new House resolution condemning antisemitism isn’t quite what it seems.

House Resolution 894 doesn’t simply call for the public denouncement of antisemitic behavior. It also equates any and all anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

The four-page resolution “clearly and firmly” cements the false conflation that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” That would plaster any Jewish anti-Zionist as an antisemite, and would likely warrant character attacks on any lawmaker who objects to the current iteration of the bill.

The resolution, which could be voted on as soon as this week, condemns not just the October 7 assault that claimed 1,200 Israeli lives but also popular chants utilized by peaceful protesters that are plainly protected by the First Amendment, including “From the River to the Sea,” “Palestine Will Be Free,” and “Gaza Will Win.”

The resolution blatantly vilifies pro-Palestinian sentiment, including calls for the end of Israel’s 56-year occupation in the Middle Eastern country. As one example, it mischaracterizes a protest and candlelight vigil at the Democratic National Committee headquarters last month as “endangering” people’s lives.

As of Monday, more than 15,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed in the conflict since the initial attack by Hamas, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Fighting resumed on Friday after a weeklong truce to exchange hostages. Since then, an additional 800 Palestinians have been killed in a weekend ground offensive headed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza.

Meanwhile, Americans overwhelmingly support a cease-fire in the war-torn region. Last month, an Economist/YouGov poll indicated that 65 percent of surveyed Americans wanted a cease-fire, while only 16 percent said they didn’t.

Money poses another issue. While Congress battles to pass a foreign aid package to Israel, just 32 percent of Americans felt that the current level of aid to the right-wing government should continue, while 23 percent said they wanted less.

Newly ousted Representative George Santos already has a new job: making videos on Cameo. And at least there’s proof of this latest addition to his résumé.

Cameo is a website where people can pay for a personalized video from their favorite celebrities. Santos, who has dubbed himself a “former congressional ‘icon,’” is charging $200 for a video or just $10 for a personalized message.

In one of his first videos on Cameo, Santos says, “They can boot me out of Congress, but they can’t take away my good humor or my larger than life personality, nor my good faith and the absolute pride I have for everything I’ve done.”

Santos does not specify what he means by “everything I’ve done,” but if he’s referring to his work in Congress, then perhaps he should have less pride in it. During his 11 months on Capitol Hill, Santos introduced 40 bills or resolutions. All of them died in committee without a vote.

Santos also co-sponsored 152 bills. The only one that became law was an act creating a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.

Santos did, however, lie about his professional, academic, and athletic background. He has falsely claimed that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, his mother died in the 9/11 attacks, and four of his employees were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting. He also lied about founding an animal rescue charity and producing the disastrous Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

He was federally charged with 23 counts of various types of financial fraud. Santos pleaded not guilty to the initial 13 in May, and he has denied the additional 10 that were filed in October in a superseding indictment. Earlier this year, he agreed to a deal with Brazilian authorities investigating him for financial fraud so he could avoid prosecution.

Santos did become the sixth member of Congress ever expelled, when his colleagues finally gave him the boot on Friday. A House Ethics Report revealed Santos repeatedly used his campaign to solicit donations, only to use that money for personal expenses, including buying designer goods and makeup, getting cosmetic procedures, and “smaller purchases at OnlyFans.”

Santos told reporters last week that he plans to write a book and wouldn’t rule out a turn on the reality competition show Dancing With the Stars. But for now, he’s just on Cameo.

If you buy a Cameo video for him, though, maybe try to avoid giving him your credit card information directly. You could end up like Representative Max Miller.

House Republicans released more of Hunter Biden’s bank records on Monday, claiming they showed illicit payments to his father, Joe Biden. In reality, the documents likely showed repayments for a truck.

Republicans have claimed for months that Biden has benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings, but they have yet to produce any actual evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Monday’s revelation appeared to be yet another major miss.

“Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden,” Representative James Comer, who chairs the committee and has spearheaded the investigation into the Bidens, said in a video.

“This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world.”

The payments did come from an account linked to Owasco, a company Hunter Biden set up to handle income from foreign business deals. The Oversight Committee released one bank statement showing Owasco transferred $1,380 to Joe Biden on September 17, 2018—when Biden was not in office.

What Comer does not say is that Hunter made only two additional payments to his father in the same amount, on October 15, 2018, and November 15, 2018, a committee aide told the Washington Examiner, speaking anonymously. (That’s a total of less than $4,500.)

Comer also does not mention the previously reported emails from Hunter’s laptop that indicate those transfers were paying his father back for a pickup truck. Instead, he makes it seem as though Hunter has been making shady monthly payments to his father for years.

In 2019, Hunter’s then personal assistant, Katie Dodge, sent multiple messages regarding his bills. In one, sent on January 17, she said that Biden would pay his son’s bills “in the short-term as Hunter transitions in his career.”

That email included a PDF of the payments Hunter needed to make. The document showed Hunter owed $1,380 to his father for a 2018 Ford Raptor truck. Dodge had reminded Hunter about the $1,380 truck repayment he owed his father in an email she had sent three days earlier.

“The truth is Hunter’s father helped him when he was struggling financially due to his addiction and could not secure credit to finance a truck,” Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement Monday. “When Hunter was able to, he paid his father back and took over the payments himself.”

Republicans repeatedly cite Hunter when arguing that the president is guilty of corruption. House GOP leaders could move this week toward a vote on formally opening an impeachment probe into Biden. But Republicans consistently fail to show that Biden is guilty of anything.

The National Republican Congressional Committee released a wildly xenophobic ad on Monday, depicting several national parks overrun with immigrants.

The ad used artificial intelligence to create images of different national parks in the style of vintage travel posters. The parks, which include the Grand Canyon and the National Mall, are filled with tents that supposedly belong to undocumented immigrants.

“More crime. Less tourism. No beauty,” the ad says. “Democrats’ National Parks.”

The ad is an attempted jab at Democrats who voted last week to block a bill that would prohibit using public lands for temporary housing for migrants applying for asylum. The bill passed in the House on Thursday by a vote of 224–203. Six Democrats joined Republicans to support the measure, which is unlikely to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Many Democrats have warned that the bill is a Republican messaging tactic ahead of 2024, when GOP candidates are expected to make draconian immigration policies a major part of their platforms.

Those critics were proven right Monday with the RNCC ad. The ad combines two popular Republican talking points: opposing immigration and accusing Democrats of being soft on crime. But not only is the ad deeply xenophobic, it’s also false. A study released in July by a team of economists from Stanford University found that immigration has not caused crime rates to increase in 140 years.

Trevian Kutti, one of Donald Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference trial, seems to have broken her bond with an off-the-cuff Instagram Live last week—and may even be indicted again.

On Tuesday, the publicist implied that she would “fuck up” the life of state witness Ruby Freeman, a former Georgia poll worker whose life was turned upside down by conspiracy theorists, after the trial.

“As a matter of fact there’s a woman sitting somewhere who knows this whole thing is a lie, who knows I never did anything, who knows I never—who knows she begged me for help,” Kutti fumed, according to an Instagram Live video captured by MeidasTouch. “There’s a woman sitting somewhere who knows I’m gonna fuck her whole life up when this is done.”

Kutti, who previously worked for Kanye West and R. Kelly, faces three charges in the election interference case: conspiring to commit solicitation of false statements and writings, violating the state’s racketeering law, and intimidating witnesses to make false claims of election fraud.

She spent the better part of the Instagram Live session asking for donations to help her in her legal battles.

“We got this. So I just wanted to give an update. I think all of you know what I’m dealing with in Georgia. I just want to come and say look, the fight is the fight. I have some things coming up very soon where I’ll be delivering a few blows and I just want to let ya’ll know I’m here for ya’ll,” Kutti shared.

Legal experts predicted that the Live overstepped Kutti’s bond agreement, which plainly bars her not just from intimidating witnesses but also from posting about the case on social media.

“I suspect we’ll see a motion to revoke Trevian Kutti’s consent bond for witness intimidation of Ruby Freeman within the next two hours and would not be shocked if she’s indicted again for an additional racketeering act by the Grand Jury,” posted Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.

“It’ll be the state’s burden to demonstrate to the court the meaning of Trevian Kutti’s statement and that it was a violation of the terms of her bond and the public interest favors remand if the state so moves. I don’t think they’ll have a hard time with that showing here,” he added.

This year’s oil magnate president of COP28, the United Nations–backed climate change summit, is desperately trying to walk back a string of incendiary comments in which he claimed there was “no science” behind the effort to phase out fossil fuels.

“I respect the science in everything I do. I have repeatedly said that it is the science that has guided the principles or strategy as COP28 president. We have always built everything, every step of the way, on the science, on the facts,” Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber said during a hastily arranged press conference on Monday.

“I know that there are strong views among some [countries], about the phase-down or phaseout of fossil fuels. Allow me to say this again: This is the first [COP] presidency ever to actively call on parties to come forward with language on all fossil fuels for the negotiated text,” he said.

But Al Jaber’s insistence on the “facts” falls in stark contrast to what he said just a few days ago.

Al Jaber—who happens to be the president and host of the Dubai-based COP28 as well as the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc—upset the international consortium of climate scientists after he challenged former Irish President Mary Robinson during a She Changes Climate event on November 21.

“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C,” Al Jaber said at the time.

“Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phaseout of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” he added after Robinson cited reports that Adnoc was planning to invest in more fossil fuel initiatives.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres railed against those claims on Friday, arguing that “the science is clear.”

“The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe,” he said.

Other climate scientists joined the chorus, affirming that Al Jaber’s terminology was “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial,” reported The Guardian.

More than 100 countries signed a joint statement last month calling for the phaseout of the limited energy source.

Last week, the summit released the most damning climate report to date, which noted that 2023 was both the hottest year on record and the coolest for years to come.

Donald Trump tried Monday to set the record straight with former Representative Liz Cheney, insisting that he wasn’t depressed after his 2020 election loss. He was just hangry.

In Cheney’s book Oath and Honor, which comes out Tuesday, she says that her former colleague Kevin McCarthy told her he’d visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago because Trump was so “depressed” after January 6 that he wasn’t eating. Trump hit back Monday.

“Crazy Liz Cheney, who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome at a level rarely seen before, writes in her boring new book that Kevin McCarthy said he came to Mar-a-Lago after the RIGGED election because, ‘the former president was depressed and not eating.’ That statement is not true,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I was not depressed, I WAS ANGRY, and it was not that I was not eating, it was that I was eating too much.”

Trump’s Truth Social rant refers to a scene in Cheney’s book where she has a conversation with McCarthy, who said he had just visited Trump in Florida.

“Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?” Cheney asked.

“They’re really worried,” McCarthy reportedly replied. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”

“What? You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?” Cheney said.

“Yeah, he’s really depressed,” McCarthy answered.

Cheney was one of just a few Republicans to reject Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election had been rigged against him. The party turned on her as a result, and she ended up losing her 2022 reelection campaign during the primaries.

Before she left office, Cheney worked as vice chair of the House January 6 investigative committee. Since leaving Capitol Hill, Cheney has remained vocal in her opposition to Trump. Her upcoming book describes him as “the most dangerous man to ever inhabit the Oval Office.” The book also slams her former colleagues for their “cowardice” and willingness to “violate their oath to the Constitution” out of loyalty to Trump.

Donald Trump’s former sycophants at Fox News appeared somewhat reformed on Saturday, interrupting the GOP presidential candidate’s unhinged campaign speech to fact-check his election lies.

During a couple of back-to-back campaign stops in Iowa, Trump reiterated claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and even went so far as to claim he wanted to “redo the election” and encourage his followers in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta to “watch those votes when they come in” in 2024.

Fox News took note.

“Well, the former president finally got around to some campaign promises amid lots of cheering, as you heard,” said Fox host Arthel Neville. “Many untruths; the 2020 election was not rigged, it was not stolen.”

The live react could be part of a turning tide for Fox, which earlier this year settled a historic lawsuit for failing to dispute similar election lies, paying a whopping $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems. The network is still in the throes of another, $2.7 billion lawsuit by Smartmatic, another voting machine company allegedly defamed by Fox’s conduct.

Still, it’s not the first time Trump and Neville have clashed—in 2019, the former president tweeted that Neville and fellow hosts Leland Vittert and Shepard Smith should quit Fox in favor of CNN.

That wasn’t the only headline Trump was after on Saturday. In the same tour, Trump claimed that he invented the term “caravan” and unironically claimed that he was God-chosen in the 2020 election.

“I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, ‘I’m gonna be the scorekeeper here,’ I think we’d win [in California], I think we’d win in Illinois, and I think we’d win in New York,” Trump said.

Leaders of the Texas Republican Party rejected a resolution to ban party members from associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers, just two months after a prominent state conservative activist was seen meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

The Texas GOP executive committee voted 32–29 on Saturday to remove a clause that would have banned meeting with neo-Nazis from a pro-Israel resolution. About half of the board also tried to prevent a record of the vote being kept, which floored some members, The Texas Tribune reported.

The rejected clause stated, “BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Republican Party of Texas have no association whatsoever with any individual or organization that is known to espouse anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sympathies, or Holocaust denial.”

Some committee members felt the language was too vague, with one member, Dan Tully, insisting such a ban could “put you on a slippery slope.”

But members who supported the ban were livid with their colleagues, pointing out that many regularly accuse political opponents of “antisemitism.” “I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists, and RINOs don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham told the Tribune.

The vote comes two months after neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, was seen meeting for seven hours at the offices of Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm for far-right candidates.

Pale Horse is owned by Jonathan Stickland, who founded the PAC Defend Texas Liberty, which has donated to multiple Texas politicians on the right, including the lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Defend Texas Liberty quietly ousted Stickland as its president following the meeting with Fuentes. But multiple members of the PAC’s leadership team have made viciously antisemitic posts on social media, praised Fuentes, and donated to an anti-immigration organization connected to Fuentes.

Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi was seen entering the Pale Horse office building while Fuentes was there. He denied meeting with Fuentes.

On Saturday, Rinaldi abstained from the vote, but he argued that antisemitism is not a serious problem among Republicans. “I don’t see any antisemitic, pro-Nazi, or Holocaust denial movement on the right that has any significant traction whatsoever,” he said.

Rinaldi couldn’t be more wrong. Fuentes has met with Donald Trump, who is currently the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary by a massive margin. That meeting was also attended by Kanye West, who has said he identifies with Hitler.

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans had a tweet up for months expressing support for Trump, West, and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk. All three men have made openly antisemitic statements. The committee only deleted the tweet after West made his pro-Hitler comments.

So it’s safe to say that antisemitism has a pretty strong foothold on the right.

Happy weekend to everyone! Billionaire Mark Cuban has spared the nation from another massive headache, announcing that he has “no plans” to run for president. Things looked touch and go all week after the presidential rumor mill started spinning in earnest after Cuban dropped some bombshells into the news cycle, first by announcing he would be leaving the start-up investment reality television show Shark Tank, and then by disclosing his plans to sell one of his biggest assets, the Dallas Mavericks, to casino billionaire Miriam Adelson.

This week marked the second time Cuban has fomented speculation about a potential presidential run—and the second time he’s let the country off the hook. In July, the investor told NBC News that “my family would disown me” if he considered running as a third-party candidate.

“I just want to have a couple summers with my teens before they go off on their own,” Cuban told The Hollywood Reporter when asked about his decision to leave the ABC hit. “Nothing to do with the show. I love it. I love being on it. I love what [it] represents and how it motivates entrepreneurs around the world.”

On Friday morning, Cuban squelched the speculation again, telling Axios’s Dan Primack that he “never plans to run for any elective office.”

It was easy to imagine that Cuban might throw his hat into the already crowded race between President Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, Green Party front-runner Jill Stein, a possible No Labels candidate, and whoever emails us after this is published, angry that we left them off this list—even with less than a year on the clock until the 2024 election.

Cuban had hinted at making presidential bids in the previous two elections, though in terms of ratings he’s always fared better in venues other than presidential politics—compared to 2016 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and the 2020 heated matchup between Biden and Trump, Cuban never marshaled the sort of polling numbers worth taking seriously—not that poor showings in the polls consistently dissuade everybody.

Still, the billionaire hasn’t avoided politics. At an Axios event in 2022, Cuban criticized America’s two-party system, arguing that it encourages candidates to bend to the most extreme voices in their parties. In 2015, Cuban said that he would identify as a Republican if he didn’t disagree with their stances on social issues, according to USA Today.