Tulsi Gabbard Has Endorsed At Least 12 Republicans This Election Season

On October 11, Tulsi Gabbard proudly announced her departure from the Democratic Party. Calling on “fellow common sense independent-minded Democrats” to join her, Gabbard did not indicate where exactly she was going. Her recent activity gives enough of an idea.

The former Hawaii congresswoman and 2020 Democratic presidential contender has exclusively endorsed at least 12 Republican candidates across the country. Many of these races are high-stakes. Among Gabbard’s endorsements are several election-denialists and conspiracy theorists.

Less than a week after her announcement that she was leaving the Democratic Party, Gabbard endorsed Republican Don Bolduc in the New Hampshire Senate race. Threatening to unseat incumbent Senator Maggie Hassan, Bolduc is an election denialist who has repeatedly—and bizarrely—falsely claimed children are using litter boxes in schools. A day after that, Gabbard endorsed Republican Kari Lake, the conspiracy theorist and election denialist running for governor in Arizona.

Gabbard has also endorsed JD Vance against Tim Ryan in Ohio’s Senate race, Adam Laxalt against Catherine Cortez-Masto in Nevada’s Senate race, and Tudor Dixon against Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan’s gubernatorial election.

On Monday, Gabbard waded into the country’s most expensive House race, endorsing election denialist Tom Barrett in Michigan, rebuking Liz Cheney’s earlier endorsement of Democrat Elissa Slotkin.

On Wednesday, Gabbard tweeted a video endorsing Blake Masters, citing a need to “rein in big tech companies.” (Masters and Vance have both enjoyed financial support from the venture capital and technology industry they were a part of, including from tech billionaire Peter Thiel.) Also on Wednesday, Gabbard appeared at a rally for South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who days earlier she had called her “close friend.”

Gabbard has also endorsed Illinois gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey, Utah Senate incumbent Mike Lee, candidate for Washington’s third congressional district Joe Kent, and candidate for Michigan’s third congressional district John Gibbs (an election denialist who in the past suggested that women should not have the right to vote).

Gabbard’s shift is not surprising. Beyond appearing at CPAC this year, she has found a home in right-wing media. There, she has focused less on bringing conservatives closer to her, and more on bringing herself closer to them—criticizing the impeachment inquiry into former President Donald Trump as “partisan,” complaining about “open borders,” and even filling in for Tucker Carlson on his show.

If Gabbard is just preparing for 2024, she can take comfort knowing support is already bubbling. David DePape, the man who attacked Paul Pelosi last week, has endorsed Gabbard to be Trump’s running mate.

This piece has been updated.

In a rare piece of good news, an Arizona judge has banned people accused of voter intimidation from monitoring the state’s ballot boxes ahead of the contentious midterm elections.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi sharply restricted the activities of a group called Clean Elections USA late Tuesday. The group says it is watching ballot dropoff locations for potential voter fraud, but it has been accused of voter intimidation

Group members cannot stand within 75 feet of a ballot box, Liburdi said in his ruling. They cannot speak to people at the boxes unless spoken to first and cannot follow voters after they drop off their ballots.

Watchers are not allowed to be armed—some of them have been—and they cannot take photos or videos of voters. Both the group and its founder Melody Jennings have to post statements on the Clean Elections USA website and Truth Social, former President Donald Trump’s social media platform, explaining they have been spreading disinformation about Arizona elections.

Arizona law enforcement has been on high alert over the past few weeks after reports of sometimes armed people showing up to watch ballot boxes. Many voters have accused the watchers of voter intimidation after they took photos and videos of people dropping off their ballots and followed voters.

The watchers could have scared off other potential early voters, or voters in general. They have received support from Mark Finchem, who is running for Arizona secretary of state.

They have apparently been inspired by widespread lies about the 2020 election result. Trump has claimed for years, with zero proof, that the vote was rigged against him.

The League of Women Voters sued Clean Elections USA last week, accusing them of voter intimidation and seeking a court order to halt their actions. During the trial on Tuesday, a man and his wife testified that they had been harassed and filmed by eight to 10 people accusing them of being “mules” for fraudulent votes.

Photos of the man and his car were published, and Jennings later spoke about them on the podcast of former Trump advisor Stephen Bannon.

Liburdi’s ruling Tuesday is both a relief and an about-face from Friday, when he refused another group’s request to ban Clean Elections USA from ballot boxes. “Plaintiffs have failed to show” their case is likely to succeed, the Trump-appointed judge said.

Arizona has struggled particularly hard with false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Governor Doug Ducey certified the state’s result in favor of President Joe Biden, but the state’s Republican Party supported a massive recount of the votes that ultimately found no evidence of voter fraud.

Republicans are also already priming voters to reject Democratic victories in the upcoming midterm elections, particularly tight ones, as fraudulent.

The main news takeaway from the Israeli elections Tuesday is that Bibi Netanyahu is apparently lined up to be prime minister again, thus avoiding prison (which some speculated was the main, Trump-like reason he ran in the first place) and sweeping back to power. His Likud Party will lead a right-wing bloc that may hold up to 65 seats in the 120-seat Knesset—a pretty substantial margin in a deeply divided country. 

But scratch below the surface, and the real big news is even worse than a resurgent Bibi. The hard right coalition of small parties scored a huge win and will roughly double its representation in the parliament. Haaretz, the liberal newspaper, didn’t mince words. The headline on the column by Aluf Benn, the paper’s respected editor, read: “The Latest Incarnation of the Right: Kahanist Bibi-ism.”

If you don’t know anything about Israeli politics, consider this. Translating that headline into American terms, it might read something like: “The Latest Incarnation of the Right: Duke-ist Trumpism,” Duke being David Duke, the neo-Nazi Klan leader from Louisiana. That’s how bad this is. Kahanism refers, of course, to Meir Kahane, the racist, right-wing leader from the 1980s whose Kach Party was so extreme it was banned from the Knesset.

The new face of Kahanism is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit Party, part of the Religious Zionism coalition. He has spent years spouting extremist and racist rhetoric about Arabs; last week, his party started forming an armed civilian militia in Tel Aviv to monitor Palestinian laborers. Benn referred to him as the “star” of the campaign, waving his “banner of racism and nationalism, which has also infected the Likud campaign.” Haaretz also reported that according to some witnesses, the crowd celebrating Ben-Gvir’s victory “chanted ‘death to Arabs’ alongside the more prevalent calls for ‘death to terrorists.’”

The vote is only about 85 percent complete, so if the small parties of the left and center exceed their existing count in the remaining votes, the worst extremism could yet be blocked. But it appears that Israel has taken a sharp turn toward a right that’s more extremist and hard-line than even Bibi.  

Death, tax favors, and inequality: the certainties of American capitalism. Just last year, the 506 highest paid individuals in America made more money than the 30 million lowest paid full-time workers, according to a new analysis from DCReport.

David Cay Johnston, economics journalist and author of the report, argues that a growing yet still exclusive class of “executive” workers augment already existing inequality. Johnston points to how only 13 individuals made $50 million or more in 1997, compared to 506 in 2021. The average pay of those 506 individuals? $151 million.

“The savings and investments that the best paid employees can afford only widen the distance between America’s once vibrant but now hollowed out Middle Class and the Executive Class,” Johnston writes.

Meanwhile, the rich seldom pay taxes. Much of their wealth stems from stock and asset gains, whose taxes can be avoided. Loopholes like these, as well as carried interest and pass-through business income, allow the wealthiest to avoid fair taxation. Politicians have signed off on this. Recall Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema holding up President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act until a provision addressing the carried interest tax loophole was removed.

While the slowly-increasing “exclusive” class enjoys comfortable benefits and daily life, it remains expensive to be poor. Childcare, mobility, housing, health care, and even groceries cost much more proportionally for a working person than someone at the top.

It’s no secret how often our elected officials themselves contribute to these inequalities—whether by passing rich-favoring tax laws, inhibiting progressive legislation, or even being among the rich who commit insider trading.

Johnston argues that such inequality has led to millions of Americans being “willing to throw away their liberties” in the false hope that people like Donald Trump may alleviate financial woes.

Beyond his own tax evasion and fraud, Trump’s tax cuts helped billionaires for the first time pay less taxes than the working class.

Read more at DCReport.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s peaceful transfer of power to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, following his election loss, is thanks in large part to one man: top Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes.

The judge has been praised for his dogged campaign to rein in the outgoing far-right leader. But many analysts worry that Moraes has overstepped the boundaries of his role, and risks denting the high court’s legitimacy in the long run.

Bolsonaro, a firmly anti-establishment figure, and Moraes, a stalwart of Brazilian political institutions, have feuded bitterly over the past few years. Moraes, who was appointed by Bolsonaro’s predecessor, has launched multiple criminal probes into the now former president and arrested some of his main allies.

Moraes is also investigating the source of lies and death and rape threats against the Supreme Court justices and their families, as well as an alleged online network of businessmen, political advisors, and bots spreading pro-Bolsonaro disinformation.

Michael Mohallem, a professor at the Law Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, warned that the court’s casting of itself as both victim and judge could come back to bite it. “Once you cross that line, you have extra work to say why that same precedent doesn’t apply again,” he told Bloomberg News in June.

Bolsonaro, for his part, has lashed out repeatedly at Moraes. The former army captain has said he does not recognize Moraes’ power and praised the former military dictatorship.

In the run-up to the election, Bolsonaro repeatedly sought to cast doubt on Brazil’s electronic voting system, saying it was susceptible to fraud. Many worried that he would refuse to accept the results if he lost and try to overturn the election, in the manner of Donald Trump. Bolsonaro is an outspoken admirer of the former U.S. president, and vice versa.

Bolsonaro has yet to formally acknowledge his defeat, but he has not contested the results. His office has said it has begun the transfer of power to Lula.

Moraes, who was appointed the chief election official, was given unilateral power in the last few weeks before the election to moderate what was posted online in Brazil.

He was able to order tech companies to remove any posts that contained false information. Bolsonaro’s supporters decried the move, but so did many internet law and civil rights experts, who said it risked tipping into authoritarianism.