Daily Archives: October 15, 2022

Congress, the executive branch, and the American people deserve to know whos influencing research and public policy in our country, is how Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, a co-sponsor of the most stringent recent proposal, put it.

Yet while the proximate controversy, and the subject of Grassleys bill, involve money from foreign sources, the logic of the criticism is that think tanks have an outsize effect on public policy and the public is therefore entitled to know whos calling the shots. Its a logic that doesnt necessarily stop at the waters edge.

Consider the highest-profile left-wing critic of Brookings, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose broadsides against nefarious foreign funders often elide into broadsides against nefarious domestic donors: Special interest money slithers through Washington like a snake, and for years Ive been sounding the alarm about corporations and foreign governments secretly using think tanks to lobby, Warren said in a statement. Her own bill, which predates the Allen tumult, would require think tanks to disclose donors not just foreign ones that pay for lobbying materials, among other things.

For all the joy that conservative pols have taken at Brookings latest turn in the barrel, conversations with people around the industry reveal an irony: Any potential new wave of government-mandated disclosure rules, especially those that go beyond foreign money, would actually represent a bigger cultural change at right-wing organizations, some of which historically have tended to see donations as a form of free speech. Establishmentarian center-left outfits like Brookings already share significant pieces of that information thanks in part, it should be noted, to previous funding imbroglios, and their reliance on corporate dollars. (The Heritage Foundation, by contrast, says less than two percent of its income comes from corporate sources.)

The last spate of transparency efforts, which followed a blockbuster set of New York Times reports in 2014 and 2016 about donor influence at think tanks, was embraced way more on the left than the right, one longtime conservative think tank figure tells me. (To be clear, this veteran of fundraising told me, thats because it was centrist and liberal outfits that had been caught out.) While a visitor to Brookings website can today peruse annual reports that identify top donors, the American Enterprise Institute says it doesnt provide that information as a matter of course.

Its going to be a harder, bigger disruptor for center-right think tanks, even though more of them say they dont take foreign government money, says Enrique Mendizabal, who leads On Think Tanks, a research outfit that researches the think tank business.

Its also notable that none of the proposals that have been publicized since the tumult at Brookings would have done much about Allen, whose allegedly fishy work for Qatar was done before he took over Brookings and would theoretically be covered by the Foreign Agent Registration Act. (Hes denied improper behavior and hasnt been charged with any wrongdoing.)

What the scrutiny of Allen did do, though, was re-focus attention on the organizations broader history with the emirate. In June, I reported on a 2007 contract with the Qatari government establishing a Brookings outpost in Doha while handing its autocratic regime an unusual and unattractive degree of contractual prerogatives over an independent organization. The previously unreported contract has been cited by members of Congress supporting new disclosure rules and demanding federal investigations. (In a final irony, it was during Allens tenure that Brookings actually disaffiliated from its Doha center and began eschewing funding from non-democratic governments.)

That Qatar deal wound up in angry public letters by Warren as well as a quartet of GOP senators, and in the most stringent of the bills introduced following Allens departure, the Think Tank Transparency Act, sponsored by Grassley and Michigan GOP Rep. Jack Bergman.

Not only does their measure require the quick disclosure of all funding from foreign sources, including private citizens, it also orders think tanks to share the contracts so that the public would know, as in the case of Brookings Doha center, whether management had agreed to submit a budget and program agenda to a government ministry. And it says any briefings for Congress or the executive branch funded by the foreign donation be labeled as such. The prospect of having to announce the support of the government of Qatar or Norway on every paper prepared for a federal policymaker is something that fills a lot of think-tankers with dread.

Under the bill, the rules apply to nonprofits that spent at least 20 percent of resources influencing public policy, which is how it avoids looping in art museums or cancer-research facilities or other nonprofits. Technically, theres no legal definition of think tank.

Another measure, the Fighting Foreign Influence Act, with bipartisan sponsorship that includes Democratic Reps. Jared Golden (Maine) and Katie Porter (Calif.) as well as the far-right Republican Rep. Paul Gosar (Ariz.), would require think tanks to declare any funding from foreign governments and political parties, which would then be published by the Treasury Department.

None of this would have happened if not for John Allen, says Ben Freeman, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a longstanding critic of think tanks as a place where foreign entities can skirt FARA rules and have a real impact on American policy and public opinion. Freeman says the attention generated by the fall of Allen even if a large portion of it was just partisan pile-on by folks who dont like Brookings politics did more to galvanize the issue than any number of the papers he and colleague Eli Clifton have produced as theyve built a cottage industry as think-tank watchdogs.

I call it an enormous dark-money operation, Freeman says. Lets be honest here, these think tanks are going to play a vital role in advising policymakers and members of government about what would be good policies, presumably, in the national interest. The lack of mandatory disclosure, the fact its all voluntary, the fact that theres no enforcement, even of the accuracy of these voluntary disclosures, it all kinds of builds towards what is potentially an enormous national security problem.

Under the status quo, there are few rules about who a think tank may accept money from and who it has to tell. And there are probably as many internal policies as there are think tanks: The Heritage Foundation doesnt take any money from governments of any sort, foreign or domestic. Brookings does take money from governments, but only democratic ones. The Center for American Progress also takes foreign money, but not for any specific project. It also discloses donors, unless those donors choose to remain anonymous, something deep-pocketed types occasionally do to avoid being hit up by others. AEI doesnt disclose donors, but does release a graph about where the money comes from. And those are just the biggest outfits, the ones that can support sizable accounting staffs.

Freeman and Clifton say most of the larger places could abide foreign-donation transparency rules, despite the paperwork hassle. Many are already partly there. But the less august realms of the think tank sphere may prove trickier. I think where this matters a lot is at places that dont disclose any of this stuff and where, for the first time, were going to get a look under the hood there and see just how swampy it might be, Freeman says.

Like a lot of observers, the pair are skeptical about whether the measures can actually become law in a quickly-expiring Congress. But its likely that they presage future rough times for research outfits facing scrutiny from genuine reformers as well as ideological foes who just want to discredit the policy industry. That aspect of the national mood concerns even some folks who favor more transparency.

We should be wary of anything that undermines the use of expertise in policymaking, says David Solimini of the Stimson Center, an international-relations focused think tank. Stimson, he says, currently discloses its overseas and domestic donors, though it allows individual donors to opt for anonymity.

For folks whove made their lives in think tanks the heart of the matter is something more fundamental and unmentioned in any of the legislation and agitation: Just what are think tanks, anyway?

A quintessentially Washington industry whose research shapes public policy, whose jobs incubate future administrations, and whose role in Congressional testimony and media influences American public opinion, leaders of the institutions have often cast their world as a universe of dispassionate scholarship.

In the current climate of criticism, though, theyre being cast as something much earthier a part of the advocacy game, more like lobbyists with PhDs than like college professors who study Tennyson or Mayan civilization. And if lobbyists and foreign agents should have to declare who pays them, the logic goes, shouldnt it be the same for think tanks, which after all are subsidized by the government via their tax-exempt status?

Its an uncomfortable question for the self-esteem of think-tank employees, many of whom dont want to think of themselves as grubby influence-peddlers. But its also a problematic one for the folks who need to raise money for the outfits, which unlike colleges cant charge tuition.

People in the think tank world are worried, says Ken Weinstein, the former head of the conservative-oriented Hudson Foundation. They want to keep the focus on the scholars. They dont want to talk about the funders. The motives of the funders are not always the motives of the think tanks.

Mendizabal, who studies think tanks around the world, tells me hes in favor of broad transparency but wary of government regulations that could give aid and comfort to authoritarian regimes elsewhere that have cracked down on independent research organizations. Allegations of foreign meddling have been part of the playbook in countries like Russia that seek to quash any research or opinions that lack an official stamp.

As for the bigger question of what this new climate means for think tanks identities, he says he thinks part of the problem is that top organizations have become victims of their own hype. Though they like to describe themselves as rigorously research-based, they also solicit donations by talking up how much influence they have the kind of talk that, in a country already suffering from high levels of distrust, can cause political troubles.

The bill states that they have huge influence, he says of the Grassley-Bergman measure. Wheres the evidence of that? These think tanks are creating problems for themselves by claiming to be so influential. Its as if Congress has no agency theyre saying we need to be protected from these influential organizations that were powerless against and that use foreign money.

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Top Republicans Are Aiming at Brookings. Will It Backfire? - POLITICO

More than 100 days ahead of Marylands primary and facing an uphill battle against three rivals, Del. Dan Cox stood proudly on the floor of the House of Delegates to introduce his wife and 10 children, expressing confidence he would be the Republican Partys gubernatorial nominee.

I just wanted to real quickly let the body know my bride, Valerie, [and] the future first family of Maryland is here visiting me today in the gallery, a smiling Cox said. Some colleagues clapped. Others jeered.

But the Trump-endorsed, anti-abortion backbencher went on to defeat fellow Republican Gov. Larry Hogans hand-picked successor in the July 19 primary, widening a rift between Trump and Hogan supporters in Marylands GOP.

Hes got another mountain to scale in the Nov. 8 race against Wes Moore. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 in Maryland and Moore is out-fundraising him at a rate of 10-to-1. But as the GOP nominee, Cox, 48, is closer to the governors office than early polls, the media and political scientists ever imagined.

By now, many voters have heard Cox is a Make America Great Again Republican, arranged for buses to the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington, wont say whether hell accept the results of his gubernatorial race or that Hogan dubbed him a QAnon whack job.

So, where did he come from? And what happens to him on Election Day and in the ballot-counting days that follow?

Republican Dan Cox speaking Wednesday during a gubernatorial debate with Democrat Wes Moore in Owings Mills. (Michael Ciesielski/AP)

Hes a father of 10, ranging from a baby to a 25-year-old, and is one of 10 children himself.

I named my son Daniel after the prophet Daniel in the Bible, Coxs father, Gary, said in an interview at his sons primary victory party. I was awe-struck that its possible for people of faith to live their faith and, in the process, to impact the culture around them for good.

Gary Cox is the founder and superintendent of Wellspring Christian Family Schools, an organization that offers support services to families who home-school their children. Dan Cox enrolled in the school as a child, and served as a high school instructor and registrar from 1995 to 2005. According to its website, Wellspring Christian Family Schools is a faith-based, home-school organization that requires meaningful church attendance for all enrolled families and emphasizes parents involvement.

Cox attended Mount St. Marys University, a Catholic college in Emmitsburg, from 1992 through 1995, then earned a bachelors degree in government and politics in 2002 from whats now University of Maryland Global Campus. In 2006, he received a law degree from Regent University in Virginia Beach, which was founded by televangelist and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox greets supporters July 19, 2022, with two thumbs up at his campaign party on primary night in Emmitsburg. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun)

Cox announced on July 4, 2021, that he would run for governor, but his interest in politics was evident 20 years earlier.

Cox and his wife, Valerie, were living in the Eastern Shore town of Secretary in 2001 when they wrote a letter to The Dorchester Star about a state bill to bar discrimination against people based on their sexual identity in employment, housing and other areas. They said it would violate the rights of business owners ... who firmly believe homosexuality is sin and those who practice it are in danger of temporal disease and eternal death.

I love civil rights, as many bigoted business owners have been stopped from persecution of people because of their skin color or ethnicity. But there is no bigotry in standing strong against an action, the letter said. Homosexuality is not the same thing as being African-American or Hispanic. The legislature passed the anti-discrimination bill.

In 2006, Cox ran an unsuccessful clerk of court campaign in Dorchester County. According to a 2006 report from The Star, Coxs platform included establishing a division to help fathers gain visitation and ensure mothers receive child support. It also included a plan to refuse to issue licenses for same-sex marriages, which were not legal in Maryland at the time.

Cox won office in 2008 in Secretary, which had around 500 residents at the time. He served a term on the Town Commission, and was its president.

Cox has described himself as both a constitutional and civil rights attorney. Cox founded a law firm in 2007; according to his most recent legislative ethics disclosure filing, it netted over $200,000 in 2021.

Hes litigated cases that included a challenge to public health restrictions Hogan established during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit was dismissed in November 2020. Also, Cox represented a father and son who sued the Harford County Board of Elections in 2020, alleging their civil rights were violated when they couldnt vote without masks. That case, too, was dismissed.

Del. Dan Cox, a Republican, speaks April 9, 2022, at the state House of Delegates against a measure to expand abortion access in Maryland. (Brian Witte/AP)

In 2016, Cox ran unsuccessfully against then-state Sen. Jamie Raskin in parts of Carroll, Frederick and Montgomery counties to represent Marylands 8th District in Congress. Raskin won with 61% of the vote to Coxs 34%, and went on to help lead the impeachment trial against Trump after the Jan. 6 riot.

During the attack on the Capitol, Cox tweeted Republican Vice President Mike Pence was a traitor. Cox has said he was not involved in the buildings takeover.

The nice thing Id like to say is that he has nice and very patient kids who were brought to every protracted, interminable debate and forum that we had, Raskin told The Baltimore Sun.

Raskin contrasted Coxs campaigning with his.

He has extremist politics and a conspiratorial cast of mind. Im devoted to grassroots, door-to-door campaigning, Raskin said. As far as I can tell, they werent doing any of that. He really was just trying to organize right-wing elements online.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox greets his family at his party on primary night July 19, 2022, in Emmitsburg. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun)

With a congressional seat not in the cards, Cox ran a successful campaign in 2018 for a term in the Maryland House of Delegates representing areas of Frederick and Carroll. In a field with three Republicans and three Democrats running for the districts three seats, he finished at the top with 21% of the vote.

Cox filed 84 bills in four years in the House, including a 2022 resolution to impeach Hogan. The Democrat-controlled legislature passed two Cox bills, both from his first session: one requiring a sign about National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline in every state courthouse and another creating a task force to study crime classification and penalties.

He voted this year against a bill prohibiting schools from discriminating against LGBTQ students and their families. He supported an amendment similar to a Dont Say Gay policy in Florida that prohibits teachers from discussing sexuality and gender in public schools. The amendment failed and the Maryland bill became law this summer.

Cox opposes the expansion of LGBTQ rights in education, highlighting at several turns during his gubernatorial campaign his belief that addressing issues of gender, sex and sexual orientation in schools equates to indoctrination and propaganda, and that schools are participating in brainwashing and sexual grooming.

Cox is vocal about parental involvement in education. He introduced an unsuccessful bill in 2022 that would have allowed parents to object to instructional materials if they disagreed with the content on moral, philosophical and religious grounds. The bill also would have allowed parents to keep a child from studying some of their schools health curriculum.

The many unknowns swirling around the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in its early days, afforded Cox and other politicians a way to raise their profiles and connect with voters. Cox and Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, now that states GOP gubernatorial nominee, used Facebook to urge their respective governors to roll back public health restrictions they deemed onerous.

Mastriano and Cox, both endorsed by Trump, have struck up a friendship. Trump gave Cox a shoutout last month at a rally for Mastriano.

Trump is hosting a fundraiser Monday for Cox at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. For $25,000, attendees can stand alongside Cox and the former president for a photo. Its not clear how much of that money Cox gets; the Maryland limit for a campaign contribution to a candidate is $6,000.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox gave two thumbs up to supporters after speaking with reporters June 30, 2022, in Annapolis. He had appeared at a news conference held by one of his primary opponents, Kelly Schulz. (Kenneth K. Lam / Baltimore Sun)

Cox, often a showman, is no stranger to controversy.

Ahead of the primary, Cox ambushed a June campaign event for Republican Kelly Schulz, Hogans pick to succeed him. Standing just feet away, Cox yelled, Defamation, sir! when the governor called him a QAnon conspiracy theorist.

During a House debate in 2021, Cox compared a bill to expand access for preteens to mental health care without parental consent to Nazi experimentation on Jews. And he did it on Holocaust Remembrance Day, while wearing a mask printed with a depiction of the Nuremberg trials at which the Allies sought to bring Nazi officials to justice after World War II.

In July, Cox defeated Schulz 52% to 43% to become the GOP nominee. But establishment Republicans notably Hogan; Barry Glassman, the Republican nominee for state comptroller; and GOP leaders in the Maryland House and Senate have not endorsed him.

Republican Del. Ric Metzgar of Baltimore County said he was the first House member to endorse Cox in his gubernatorial bid. He told The Sun that his constituents made it clear they were not interested in seeing Schulz provide the equivalent of a third term for Hogan.

People in my district said to me, Delegate, if theyre connected to Governor Hogan, Im not voting for them. And with that said, they saw how Governor Hogan alienated himself against Trump, he said.

Republican Dan Cox, candidate for governor, speaks with reporters after debating Democrat Wes Moore at Maryland Public Television. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun )

Cox has run a shoestring campaign compared to Moore, who raised $1.7 million compared to Coxs $252,000 in the five weeks after the July 19 primary, according to the latest campaign finance reports, which were filed at the end of August. The next reports are due in two weeks.

His family has pitched in to work on the campaign, with one daughter serving as campaign manager during the primary. He only recently hired a veteran campaign spokesperson.

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Keep up to date with Maryland politics, elections and important decisions made by federal, state and local government officials.

The campaign provided a quick denunciation Oct. 10 after information started circulating about a planned Unite the Right event in Maryland. The gathering with Republican candidates had the same name as a white supremacist rally that turned deadly five years ago in Virginia.

We will not be associated with anything that is reminiscent, accidental or otherwise, of the unspeakable tragedy that took place in Charlottesville, VA on August 12, 2017, Cox said in a statement. Anything less is unacceptable. Dan Cox and his campaign remains committed to the empowerment, safety and freedom of all Marylanders.

It was a forceful rejection for a candidate who has, at times, embraced conspiracy theories, such as his continued support for false claims that Trump only lost his reelection bid in 2020 because of widespread election fraud.

Cox recently lost an appeal in the states highest court in which he tried to keep county election boards from scanning any mail-in ballots that arrived before of Election Day. Cox has yet to say whether he will accept the results of his own race, and is aligning his campaign with groups that plan to press for their own audit of the results.

So, can Cox pull off a win and give Republicans a third consecutive term in Marylands top executive office?

I wouldnt bet my house on it, said House Minority Leader Jason Buckel of Allegany County, who supported Schulz in the primary. If he wins, thats great for him. If he loses, thats something we all accept as the nature of politics and we move on to getting the work done.

Baltimore Sun reporters Jeff Barker, Emily Opilo and Sam Janesch contributed to this article.

Originally posted here:

Dan Cox upended the status quo in Maryland's Republican primary. Where will the election for governor take him? - Baltimore Sun

To the Editor

No issue is more important to the survival of our republic than voter access, fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power.

Sadly, the national Republic party is under the sway of a faction that promotes the falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and conveniently ignores the violence that took place on January 6, 2021 in our nations capitol. This faction and the GOP national leadership disregards the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, William Barr and a host of other Republicans on the events leading up to and surrounding January 6. It sanctions Republicans who take issue with their point of view. Case in point Liz Cheney.

Connecticut citizens may want to believe themselves to be aloof from the national political scene, a rational outpost, where we can have serious differences yet respectfully engage and accept electoral outcomes and representatives decisions. Yet, we are not an island. It behooves us to consider the larger reality. A local candidate may label themselves a different kind of Republican. Yet the fact remains that party loyalty and strict adherence to party leaderships directions is the expectation, reality and the norm of the controlling faction of the GOP.

CT Examiner would provide a great service to the electorate if it would directly ask each Republican candidate the following questions: Do you believe that Joe Biden was elected president in a free and fair election, yes or no? Do you agree with the legal findings by numerous courts that there was no meaningful evidence of voter fraud that would have altered the election outcome, yes or no? Do you consider the events of January 6, 2021 to have been a violent insurrection that illegally sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, yes or no. How a Republican candidate answers these questions is vital to our understanding of how they stand regarding our national identity and rule of law.

Daniel A. WelchOld Saybrook, C

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Ask Every Republican Candidate About Jan. 6 and the 2020 Election - CT Examiner

Gov. Ned Lamont said Friday that Republican Bob Stefanowskis consulting for Neom, a company founded by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, calls into question his opponents fitness and independence.

Lamonts comments were the first since Stefanowski confirmed Wednesday that he had been concealing his employment by Neom, a client of a consulting practice that has allowed him to largely self-fund his campaign for governor.

I can see why somebody running for office wanted to hide that from the public, Lamont said. I think it raises some real questions about his judgment and his independence.

Responding to reporting by Hearst Connecticut, Stefanowski acknowledged approaching the Saudis in late 2018, not long after Saudi agents killed Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist critical of the regime.

I think signing the deal with the Saudis, right after the assassination of Khashoggi raises questions about judgment, Lamont said.

At the time, Stefanowski had just lost his first race for governor and was looking for consulting work. He began working for Neom in 2019 as the CIA concluded that Khashoggis death was most likely was ordered by the crown prince.

On Friday, interviewed after a late-afternoon campaign stop at at turkey farm in Sterling, Stefanowski declined to directly respond to Lamonts attacks on his judgment or independence.

Gov. Lamont is no one to question my judgment, Stefanowski said.

He repeated his criticisms of Lamont for the state contracting with Sema4, a company in which a venture capital firm co-founded by First Lady Annie Lamont had invested.

But the Saudi disclosure flipped the script on a Stefanowski line of attack in 2022 that Lamont and his wife were not fully transparent in their finances.

Stefanowski said only after being approached by Hearst Connecticut did he seek permission from Neom to confirm they were a client. He said he had been bound by a non-disclosure agreement.

The reason I disclosed it was because it was made public by another means, he said. I have to put my clients first. And I wasnt going to disclose. I wasnt going to break my NDA.

He offered no explanation of how the mere disclosure they were a client would have jeopardized any portion of Neom, a project that the crown prince announced in 2017 to global fanfare.

Its not my determination to make. I put my clients first, he said.

The Lamonts say they have disclosed all sources of their income in their annual Statements of Financial Interest, as required by the state ethics code. Their filings are public.

In addition, they have disclosed the identities of companies in which Annie Lamonts company, Oak HC/FT, is invested, whether or not those investments have produced income for the Lamonts.

On that list is Sema4, one of four companies that won fast-track, no-bid contracts to provide COVID-19 testing in the earliest months of the pandemic.

The Lamonts say they have derived no income from Sema4, whose value has tanked. From a peak of nearly $26 a share in February 2021, it closed Friday at 86 cents.

Stefanowski acknowledged he was still working for Neom and traveling to Saudi Arabia earlier this year. He says has reduced his work by 98%, without saying if his Neom income also has fallen by 98%.

It sounds like Bob is still on the payroll. At the same time, hes a candidate for public office, Lamont said. So Im not quite sure if hes really working it right now or not. I think hes campaigning pretty much full time. But it does lead to questions. The Saudis are trying to get involved in our political process far and wide. So thats why I think let things settle out. But those are the questions I have.

Lamont said Stefanowski was hiding his ties to the Saudis, who recently have cut oil production to force higher prices, while the Republican was faulting Democrats for higher gas prices.

Until Wednesday, Stefanowski had not disclosed any sources of the income he earned through his consulting firm, Lolo. Last month, Stefanowski released summary pages of the $36.8 million he and his wife reported earning in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

His consulting practice produced sharply higher income than the millions he reported earning in 2016 and 2017, the last years as chief executive officer of DFC Global, a payday loan company. His income then was $6.9 million and $9.7 million.

On Friday, Stefanowski suggested Lamont was somehow tainted by Neom due to the reported interest in investing in Neom by Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates.

If the governor is going to say anything negative about me to this, hes got to speak to the fact that he took $100 million from Ray Dalio, Stefanowski said.

Stefanowski was referring to $100 million that Dalios family charity had pledged to the state, not Lamont, in a partnership to serve disaffected youth. The partnership was dissolved before going forward, and the Dalio family is pursuing its goals through private philanthropy.

In April, Lamont released his summaries of his tax returns showing an adjusted gross income that averaged $8.65 million a year in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He did not release 2021 taxes, for which he had sought an extension.

Ive now disclosed everything, Stefanowski said. Ive disclosed my 2021 taxes. Ive started to disclose major disclosures on clients.

Lamont, whose deadline for filing was Oct. 15, is expected to release the 2021 summaries.

Both Lamont and Stefanowski are largely self-funding their campaigns.

Reports filed late Tuesday night for the three-month period ending Sept. 30 showedthe Democratic governor and Republican challenger spending at a record pace: $14.8 million by Lamonts campaign and $9.2 million by Stefanowskis.

While the governors tax returns showed ample investment income to pay for his campaign, Stefanowski said Lamont should say what assets, if any, he sold to finance his reelection.

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Lamont, Stefanowski joust over the Republican's work for Saudis - The Connecticut Mirror

Ever since Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, an industry of rationalization and justification has thrived. The theme is clear: Look what you made us do. The argument is simple: Democratic unfairness and media bias radicalized Republicans to such an extent that they turned to Trump in understandable outrage. Republicans had been bullied, so they turned to a bully of their own.

No aspect of that theory has been more enduring than what Ill call the Mitt Romney martyr thesis. The Republicans nominated a good and decent manso the argument goesand the Democrats and the media savaged him. Republicans respected norms, Democrats did not, and now those same Democrats have the gall to savage the GOP for Trump?

I happen to agree that there has been, in fact, a Mitt Romney radicalization process. But it is quite the opposite of what this narrative suggests. It isnt rooted in Republican anger on behalf of Romney but in Republican anger against Romney, and over time that anger has grown to be not just against Romney the man but also against the values he represents.

The Mitt Romney martyr thesis is important to understand. Like many popular (but mistaken) theories, its based on some grains of truth. Many of the attacks against Romney were definitely extreme, most notably when in 2012 Joe Biden told an audience that included hundreds of Black Americans that Romneys policies would put you all back in chains.

Biden wasnt referring to literal slavery but rather the chains of, in his view, unfair economic rules. But the language was indefensibly inflammatory. When Biden launched that attack, I was personally infuriated. I was a Romney partisan from way back. In 2006, just as Romney planned his first run for president, I formed a groupalong with my wife, Nancy, and a small band of friendscalled Evangelicals for Mitt.

Our goal was to persuade evangelical Christians to vote for a Mormon candidate. We built our case around Romneys competence and character. (It was sadly naive to believe that the bulk of evangelical voters truly cared about personal virtue in politicians.) We spent countless hours supporting Romney through two separate campaigns, and in 2012 Nancy and I both were Romney delegates to the Republican National Convention.

A partisan mindset is a dangerous thing. It can make you keenly aware of every unfair critique from the other side and oblivious to your own sides misdeeds. I was indignant about attacks against Romney, for example, while brushing off years of birther conspiracies against President Barack Obama as fringe or irrelevant.

Mitt Romney: America is in denial

Then, of course, Republicans nominated Trump, the birther in chief, and the scales fell from my partisan eyes.

And now, in hindsight, the real Romney radicalization is far more clear. You could see the seeds planted during the 2012 Republican primary. On January 19, two days before South Carolina primary voters cast their ballot, Newt Gingrich had a moment during the GOP primary debate.

The CNN host John King asked Gingrich about claims by one of his ex-wives (Gingrich has been married three times) that he pressed her in 1999 to have an open marriage. Gingrich responded by condemning the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media, declared that he was appalled that King would begin a presidential debate on the topic, and said that it was despicable for King to make Gingrichs ex-wifes claim an issue two days before a Republican primary.

The crowd interrupted Gingrich with cheers and hoots of approval. But why? Wasnt Kings underlying question fair? After all, Gingrich had admitted to cheating on his first and second wives, and he admitted to cheating on his second wife at the same time that he was speaker of the House and leading impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his own extramarital affair.

Moreover, Gingrich was having his affair after the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America and a key Republican constituency, had passed a Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials that contained the following statement: Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in Gods judgment.

Surely, heavily evangelical voters in a key Republican stronghold would be concerned about Gingrichs scandals? No, they were far angrier at media outlets than they were at any Republican hypocrisy.

From the November 2018 issue: The man who broke politics

Gingrich went on to win the South Carolina primary in a landslide powered by evangelicals. It was the only time in primary history that South Carolina voters failed to vote for the eventual GOP nominee. But South Carolina voters werent out of step; rather they were ahead of their time. They forecast the Republican break with character in favor of a man who would fight.

To understand the emotional and psychological aftermath of Romneys loss, one has to look at the cultural break between the GOP establishmentwhich commissioned an autopsy of the party in 2012 that called for greater efforts at inclusionand a grassroots base that was convinced that it had been hoodwinked by party leaders into supporting the safe candidate.

They wanted a street brawler, and when (they believed) Romney campaigned with one hand tied behind his back, they were angry. Yes, there was anger at Democrats and reporters for their treatment of Romney, but the raw anger that really mattered was their anger at Romney for the way he treated Obama and the press. They were furious that he didnt angrily confront Candy Crowley when she famously fact-checked him in the midst of the third and final presidential debate of 2012.

And so the Republican establishment and the Republican base moved apart, with one side completely convinced that Romney lost because he was perhaps, if anything, too harsh (especially when it came to immigration) and the other convinced that he lost because he was too soft.

Trumps nomination was a triumph of that base. Well before Romney came out against Trump in the primary and well before Romneys first impeachment vote, Trump supporters scorned him. They despised his alleged weakness.

When Trump won, the base had its proof of concept. Fighting worked, and not even Trumps lossalong with the loss of the House and the Senate in four short yearshas truly disrupted that conclusion. And why would it? Many millions still dont believe he lost.

The Mitt Romney martyr theory thus suffers from a fatal defect. It presumes that large numbers of Republicans werent radicalized before Romneys rough treatment. In truth, they already hated Democrats and the media, and when Romney lost, their message to the Republican establishment in 2016 was just as clear as it was in South Carolina in 2012. No more nice guys. The character that mattered was a commitment to punching the left right in the mouth.

Continued here:

Don't Buy the Mitt Romney Martyr Theory - The Atlantic

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat Colorado. More atchalkbeat.org.

A Republican State Board of Education member who believes socialism poses grave dangers at home and abroad has put his stamp on how Colorado students will learn about the Holocaust.

Over the last year and a half, Steve Durham has pushed for the states academic standards to connect the Holocaust and other genocides to socialism. Durham succeeded in omitting the word Nazi from an early version of the standards in favor of the partys full name, the National Socialist German Workers Party.

Durham agreed to include the word Nazi after Jewish community members lobbied the State Board of Education so long as the full name with the word socialist remained.

People dont know and have a right to know that this party was and is a socialist party, Durham said at an August State Board meeting. That is largely lost on the American people and on a number of history teachers as well. I oppose dumbing down the standards.

Historians say Durham is wrong about the Holocaust and wrong about the roots of genocide. The idea that Nazis were socialists is a lie, according to David Ciarlo, a University of Colorado history professor who studies German politics. Its completely wrong.

Still, Durham has exerted outsized influence over the standards related to genocide, which are meant to guide teaching across Colorado. A key section largely authored by Durhamoverrides recommendations from a committee of teachers and experts. The approved standards drop references to genocide in Rwanda, for example, while adding detailed references to the Communist Party of China.

The standards as written absolutely suggest to teachers that they should be making a connection between genocide and socialism, said John Gallup, a history teacher in Jeffco Public Schools who recently returned from Auschwitz as part of afellowship on teaching genocideand reviewed the standards at Chalkbeats request.

Read more at chalkbeat.org.

The measure would allow for the creation of natural medicine healing centers where people could use psychedelic mushrooms. Proposition 122

The U.S. Forest Service will institute an overnight permit and fee system next year as visits to the area near

Ossie wonders why some folks want to tear down everything, even what they mostly like, when collaboration could be more

You know those tiny green houses from Monopoly? Maybe thats where you should be looking for affordable homes in Colorado.

Colorados NHL champions raised the banner in Ball Arena this week, but that doesnt mean it wouldnt look good on

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How one Colorado Republican shaped what students will learn about the Holocaust - The Colorado Sun

Republican Sen. Ron Johnsonrepeatedly facedlaughterandboosfrom the audience gathered at Marquette University on Thursday for the final debate between the two-term GOP incumbent and Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin's key U.S. Senate race.

With less than a month to go before the November midterms, Barnes Wisconsin's lieutenant governor took Johnson to task over his opposition to abortion rights, support for cutting Social Security and Medicare, and 2017votein favor of former President Donald Trump's deeply unpopular and regressive tax cut for the rich and large corporations.

"When Senator Johnson talks about making Social Security discretionary spending, that means he's coming for your retirement," Barnes said Thursday night, referring to the Wisconsin Republican'scommentsduring a recent radio interview.

Barnes also spotlighted Johnson's opposition to raising the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage, which hasn't seen an increase inmore than a decadeeven as costs-of-living have soared. During last week's debate, Johnson went as far assuggestingthe federal minimum wage shouldn't exist, arguing the "marketplace" should "take care of it rather than government."

"It's odd that you can make the argument about inflation and how costs are increasing and not support raising the minimum wage," Barnes said Thursday.

During his time on the debate stage Thursday night, Johnson attempted to counter Barnes' criticism of hislong record of opposing abortion rightsby doubling down on his call for a state referendum that wouldaskWisconsin voters, "At what point does society have the responsibility to protect the life of an unborn child?"

Wisconsin Republicansrecently rejectedDemocratic Gov. Tony Evers' push for a reproductive rights referendum in the state, where anabortion ban from 1849is currently in effect following the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling inDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

In his pitch for another term, Johnson declared that he has "honored" his promises to always tell the truth and never conduct himself with reelection in mind remarks that drew laughs from the audience.

Johnson was also booed when he asked why Barnes has "turned against America" in response to moderators' invitation for the candidates to express what they find admirable about their opponent.

Wisconsin is one of a handful of battleground states where Democrats are hoping to flip Senate seats in their push to retain and increase their majority in the upper chamber.

Jake Spence, Wisconsin state director of the Working Families Party, which is supporting Barnes, said in a statement late Thursday that the final debate offered "a glimpse into Ron Johnson's America an America where there's no minimum wage, where no one has access to abortions, where violent insurrectionists are protected by law, while Americans dependent on Social Security and Medicare are tossed aside."

"Trump Republicans like Johnson are good at just two things: restricting freedoms, and raking in millions of dollars for himself and his donors at the expense of working families," Spence added. "As senator, Mandela Barnes will go to the mat for working people, whether it's defending abortion access or ending bad trade deals. It's clear from tonight's debate and it's clear from everything we've heard at the doorsMandela Barnes is the right choice for Wisconsin's working families."

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Debate audience laughed at Republican Ron Johnson's claims and it only got worse from there - Salon

Republican congressional candidate George Santos has refused to walk back comments calling abortion a

Republican congressional candidate George Santos has refused to walk back comments calling abortion a "barbaric" practice comparable to "slavery." (Photo: Santos for Congress/Facebook)

Amid a public backlash to the Supreme Courts June decision overturning Roe v. Wade, some Republican congressional candidates have tried to walk back, downplay or conceal their hardline stances against abortion rights.

But George Santos, the Republican nominee in a Long Island House seat that President Joe Biden won, is one contender sticking to his staunch anti-abortion views and remarks comparing abortion to, among other things, slavery.

As a candidate challenging Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) in New Yorks 3rd Congressional District in 2020, Santos declared his opposition to the 1973 Supreme Court decision recognizing a Constitutional right to an abortion. He said he would vote to ban abortion nationwide if elected to Congress. He even supports criminal charges for doctors who perform abortions, according to local news outletThe Island Now.

Following the Supreme Courts decision, Santos issued a statement clarifying that he would always support exceptions for abortion in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mothers life.

But Santos has also said he wants strict vetting of rape claims. In a 2020 interview, he said he supports allowing rape survivors to seek abortion only in an extreme circumstance with proven police documentation.

Nowadays you sleep with your partner you dont like, you know you had a bad day, and you wake up pregnant, and like, I was raped, he told the conservative talk show, Indivisible with John Stubbins. Thats a little too loose.

Finally, just this past August, Santos told an audience of Republicans in Queens that we are going to be remembered as the most barbaric generation to ever live because of abortions legality. He argued that future generations would frown upon abortion just as we now look down upon slavery.

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All of us in this room can agree that when we look at slavery, it was barbaric, Santos said in remarks to the Whitestone Republican Club, first reported by the New York Daily News. Fifty years from now, were going to look back at what were doing in this country, and we are going to say, We killed babies out of the womb? We aborted our own? That is barbaric.

Santos, a financier, is competing with Democratic nominee Robert Zimmerman, a small business owner, to succeed Suozzi, who announced plans to retire in January.

Santos and Zimmerman are openly gay and would be Long Islands first LGBTQ members of Congress. Santos, whose father is Afro-Brazilian, is also biracial.

When offered an opportunity to clarify Santos stance on abortion rights or walk back some of his comments,Santos campaign manager, Charley Lovett, did not provide a direct answer.

Instead, Lovett insisted that the question is irrelevant because New York has enshrined abortion rights in state law.

Democrats know that abortion is not under any threat in the state of New York, but they continue to say anything to distract from their disastrous policies that have unleashed a wave of inflation and crime that is crippling New York families, Lovett said in a statement. Liberal politicians like Robert Zimmerman may be fools, but voters certainly arent.

Zimmerman, who does not support any legal restrictions on abortion, has made his support for abortion rights a core part of his campaign in the district.

George Santos represents the greatest threat to women and our democracy of any candidate running for Congress in New York state, Zimmerman said in a statement to HuffPost. His own record makes his position clear: describing legal abortion as barbaric, comparing abortion to slavery, urging the arrest of doctors, claiming that women will use rape as an excuse to obtain an abortion, and supporting a national abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. This type of vile extremism and disrespect for women has no place in our country.

Santos anti-abortion views are likely a liability in New Yorks 3rd, which includes a swath of Long Islands North Shore and a small corner of northeast Queens in New York City.

Biden carried New Yorks 3rd by more than eight percentage points.

Whats more, 76% of Long Island voters support abortion rights, including 42% who say the issue could determine their vote, according to a recent Newsday poll.

The race between Santos and Zimmerman is nonetheless neck-and-neck. Zimmerman led Santos by one point among likely voters, with 14% undecided, according to a late August and early September poll commissioned by the advocacy group U.S. Term Limits.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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Long Island Republican Stands By Comments Comparing Abortion To Slavery - Yahoo News

U.S. House Rep. Bill Posey, from FL-8, who we haven't gotten filed the Birther Bill.

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Floridas 8th Congressional District, Bill Posey, the U.S. House Representative from Floridas 8th District, the author of HB 1503, aka The Birther Bill that would force all presidential candidates to submit their birth certificates. When asked if he believed President Obama was an American citizen in the wake of that, he refused to answer, calling the question irrelevant.

Poseys also obsessed with overturning the Affordable Care Act, having participated in every attempt to repeal it, and then voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown to attempt to stop it (also voting against re-opening the government when the time came). His one positive quality is that he wants to fund medical research into autism, but it comes with the caveat that hes only doing so because he believes its possible that vaccines cause autism (but he does not believe in climate change). Hes also been a part of GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and voted against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act.

Bill Posey dodged hosting a town hall in 2017 by instead, opting to call his constituents to let them know he was having a telephone town hall WHILE IT WAS ALREADY UNDER WAY. He was apparently still distressed that upon learning this, ten thousand of his voters bombarded him with complaints, not only about his availability, but how the GOP was planning on exercising control of both Congress and the White House, and defended the move because Gabby Giffords got shot at a town hall. His constituents then further berated him, because Giffords herself called on all members of Congress to hold town halls, as their duty remains to the people.

In July of 2018, after Donald Trump gave a bizarre joint press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, where he denied Russians interfered in the 2016 election, effectively siding with the Russian dictators denials over his own intelligence community, Bill Posey offered his support to the president, arguing that maybe that interference isnt so bad, because America has done it to other countries for the past 50 years. Posey returned to Washington after being re-elected in 2020 with 61% of the vote, and resumed being a clueless moron as a legislator:

Floridas 8th Congressional District has a +11 lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, which has helped prop Bill Posey up and keep him in place over a decade. Especially when the primary for his seat just gets cancelled. His challenger in 2022 is Democrat Joanne Terry, who had better hold his feet to the fire for having voted against a bill to provide disaster relief to Florida after Hurricane Ian, which is, yknow, a big f***ing deal. Unless shes content watching Posey remain in power until he decides to retire, or shuffles off the mortal coil, thats probably a point she needs to make.

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Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day: Bill Posey- 2022 Update - Daily Kos