WHAT'S BREWING
POLICE VISITED WOLVERINE WATCHMEN TRAINING SITE Over the last two years, Michigan law enforcement repeatedly visited the training house for the Wolverine Watchmen, an anti-government, anti-law enforcement group whose members allegedly conspired to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The house in Munith, Michigan, is now a focal point in an alleged plot by 13 men that included kidnapping the Democratic governor. Two of the men charged, Joseph Morrison, 26, aka “Boogaloo Bunyan,” and his father-in-law, Pete Musico, 42, both lived at the Munith house, which authorities say was used for “field training exercises.” [HuffPost]
TWITTER, FACEBOOK BLOCK ANTI-BIDEN NY POST ARTICLE LINKED TO GIULIANI Facebook and Twitter took the highly unusual step of blocking links to a thinly sourced New York Post article that appears to have connections to a Russian disinformation campaign targeting Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Facebook blocked the article while it fact-checks the claims. Twitter said it violated rules on hacked materials. The article rests on uncorroborated material provided by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. [HuffPost]
A TRUMP-TIED LAW FIRM PLAYED 'BOTH SIDES OF THE LEDGER' DURING OIL MARKET CRASH A law firm that previously employed Trump’s interior secretary and has multiple clients in the U.S. fossil fuel industry continued to represent Saudi Arabia through an oil price war that devastated U.S. oil drillers earlier this year. Since 2016, the government of Saudi Arabia has paid Colorado-based lobbying giant Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck more than $6.7 million to represent its interests in Washington. New regulatory filings to the Department of Justice now confirm that BHFS not only represented the kingdom through a standoff that rocked domestic producers, but that its work for the kingdom early this year included lobbying specifically on oil and gas issues. [HuffPost]
OVER 100 CONFEDERATE SYMBOLS OR STATUES REMOVED, RENAMED More than 100 symbols of the Confederacy across the United States have been removed, relocated or renamed since police killed George Floyd in May, new data shows, providing further proof of the significant scale and impact of anti-racist uprisings this year. By way of comparison, only 142 Confederate symbols were banished in the nearly five years prior to that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. This year’s acceleration in the destruction of Confederate iconography is part of a wider “reckoning” with systemic racism. [HuffPost]
HALF OF AMERICANS VOTING IN PERSON 'DON'T TRUST' VOTING BY MAIL Half of all voters who plan to vote in person in the upcoming presidential election are doing so at least in part because they don’t trust voting by mail, a HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. Overall, just over 60% of those who plan to vote in the upcoming presidential election say they will do so in person, either on Election Day (41%) or at an early voting location (21%). Of those who’ve already voted, 13% say they did so in person. 39% of Democrats versus 61% of Republicans are planning to cast their ballots in person. [HuffPost]
CONSERVATIVES TOLD DON'T FEAR 'VOTER SUPPRESSOR' LABEL A series of recordings obtained by The Washington Post show prominent conservative activists discussing behind closed doors their alarming strategies for handling the upcoming election. The videos reportedly depict “dozens of hours” of meetings held over three days in February and three days in August by the Council for National Policy, a conservative group that serves as a network for activists and leaders of several tax-exempt charities. It also counts Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, among its members. [HuffPost] |
