Phoenix, Arizona is trying to cool off. America’s hottest city is planting trees. A Vox video by Joss Fong.
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In an historic display of good citizenship and patriotism, armed supporters of defeated candidate Donald Trump gathered at vote processing centers to dispute arithmetic and threaten election workers. God Save the Republic.
More:
“Faced with defeat, armed protesters in Arizona insist election stolen,” Mimi Dwyer, David Shepardson, Reuters
“Election officials worried by threats and protesters,” Nomaan Merchant and Tim Sullivan, Associated Press
“Philadelphia police arrest armed men allegedly heading to vote-counting center,” Cameron Jenkins, The Hill
“Increasingly normal: Guns seen outside vote-counting centers,” Tim Sullivan and Adam Geller, Associated Press
“‘It’s not over’: Trump supporters flock to state capitols after Biden victory is announced,” Susan Miller and Jordan Culver, USA Today
“The Next 2020 Election Fight? Convincing Trump’s Supporters That He Lost,” Miles Parks, NPR News
Updates:
“Philly Vote-Counters Getting Death Threats Because of Trump’s ‘Deranged’ Theories: Republican Commissioner,” Jamie Ross, Daily Beast
“Arkansas police chief resigns after calling for violence against Democrats,” Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, CNN
“Republican Philadelphia official responsible for vote counting says office getting death threats,”Dominick Mastrangelo, The Hill
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Image (“Trump Enthusiasts, after James Whale“) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Right-wing youth indoctrination outfit Turning Point USA (known to us as Trump-Jugend) has been paying teenagers sub-minimum wages to fill social media platforms with attacks on Democratic candidates and disinformation about coronavirus. Twitter and Facebook noticed and shut down the adolescents’ accounts last month. Yesterday, Facebook removed more “inauthentic accounts”and banned Rally Forge, the political marketing firm that helped Turning Point’s Charlie Kirk turn out the teen trolls. Rally Forge is owned by Arizona Republican official Jake Hoffman, who is also behind a phantom campaign called “Navajos for Trump.”
More:
“Facebook bans marketing firm running ‘troll farm’ for pro-Trump youth group,” Isaac Stanley-Becker, Washington Post
“Facebook bans firm behind Turning Point’s election troll farm,” Steven Overly, Politico
“Facebook removes hundreds of fake profiles tied to pro-Trump group,” Kari Paul, The Guardian
“Facebook bans troll accounts linked to conservative group Turning Point USA,” Adi Robertson, The Verge
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Astoundingly, “on-shoring,” one of Donald Trump’s political promises, is happening. His 2020 campaign’s troll farms have moved from Russia to Arizona. A branch of right-wing youth indoctrination outfit Turning Point USA (known to us as Trump-Jugend) has been paying teenagers sub-minimum wages to fill social media platforms with attacks on Democratic candidates and disinformation about coronavirus. Twitter and Facebook finally noticed and shut down the teen accounts this week.
Turning Point Action, an arm of the nominally-nonprofit Turning Point USA, contracted right-wing social media company Rally Forge (get it?) to coordinate the teen trolls’ spamming. Funding may have flowed through shadow political action groups Turning Point PAC and/or RallyPAC. Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action, and Students for Trump are all headed by Charlie Kirk. Rally Forge and RallyPAC are both run by Jake Hoffman. Turning Point Action and Rally Forge are also behind a phantom campaign called “Navajos for Trump.”
More:
“Pro-Trump youth group enlists teens in secretive campaign likened to a ‘troll farm,’ prompting rebuke by Facebook and Twitter,” Isaac Stanley-Becker, Washington Post
Related:
“Turning Point USA co-founder dies of coronavirus-related complications,” Daniel Lippman and Tina Nguyen, Politico
“Pro-Trump super PAC backed solely by bank executive used donations to fund Facebook conspiracy meme campaign,” Brian Schwartz, CNBC
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“More than 250,000 people have signed up to attend a Facebook event planning a raid on Area 51 in southern Nevada to ‘see them aliens.’
According to the event, titled, “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” a group of alien hunters will meet at 3 a.m. on Sept. 20 near the top-secret U.SFrom there, the group will ‘Naruto run’ with their arms stretched behind them like Naruto Uzumaki in the Japanese anime series ‘Naruto,’ and therefore ‘move faster than their bullets.'”
— “‘They can’t stop all of us’: More than 250K pledge to storm Area 51 to uncover alien secrets,” Kelly Taylor Hayes, Fox10 Phoenix
Updates:
“More than 500,000 people have RSVP’d to ‘storm Area 51,’ in the name of memes,” Allegra Frank, Vox
“More Than 1 Million People Agree To ‘Storm Area 51,’ But The Air Force Says Stay Home,” Bobby Allyn, NPR News
“‘Let’s see them aliens’: 1.3 mn people vow to storm classified US base,” AFP via Yahoo News
“How to Infiltrate Area 51 Like a Pro,” Tom McKay, Gizmodo
“Arby’s Feeding Area 51 Raiders Top-Secret Menu,” QSR
“Rural Nevada community not equipped for UFO enthusiasts to ‘Storm Area 51,’” Kelcie Grega, Las Vegas Sun
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Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, recently convicted on federal contempt charges for violating a court order forbidding his racial profiling tactics, has been pardoned by President Trump.
In 2016 the 83-year-old Sheriff, an early and ardent Trump supporter, failed to win re-election after 23 years in office, despite having armed deputies assigned to polling places in an effort to intimidate Mexican-American voters. While elderly Arpaio failed at the polls, his voter suppression effort helped deliver more votes for Donald Trump in Maricopa County than any other county in America. One more reason for Mr. Trump’s bromance with the law-breaking ex-lawman.
President Trump was so eager to get “Sheriff Joe” off the hook, he asked Jeff Sessions to drop the case before Arpaio was convicted.
More:
“Trump pardons Joe Arpaio, former sheriff convicted in racial profiling case,” Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian
“Trump pardons `Sheriff Joe’ for defying court orders to halt racial profiling,” Todd J. Gilman, Dallas News
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, facing federal charges for continuing racial profiling, plans to station armed deputies at polling stations on election day in what is clearly an act of intimidation targeting latino voters. Not only is the 83-year-old Sheriff a firm Trump supporter, he’s up for re-election himself on November 8th. Mr. Arpaio, who has held office for the past 23 years, is trailing badly in the polls, so by suppressing the Mexican-American vote he helps himself as much as the GOP presidential candidate.
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The National Football League pressured Arizona Governor Jan Brewer into doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Mrs. Brewer vetoed the ill-conceived “Religious Freedom for Bigots” bill, the separate-but-equal homophobic-apartheid measure passed by her state’s legislature. The NFL, itself still learning tolerance for sexual minorities, threatened to relocate the next Superbowl from the University of Phoenix Stadium to a more inclusive state. Other huge corporations said they were reconsidering doing business in the Grand Canyon State, and the convention and business meeting forecast started to look cloudy.
Concepts like “equal access to places of public accommodation” likely mean nothing to Mrs. Brewer, but she surely remembers her state’s loss of business when Arizona passed a racist immigration law and earlier when it refused to recognize the King Holiday.
“The Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots group has pulled the plug on Pat Boone and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, cancelling their Sept. 22 ‘Birther’ bash at the city’s Celebrity Theatre ‘due to inadequate ticket sales.’
The venue’s website touts an ‘intimate atmosphere of this 2,650-seat theater in the round’ with an ‘extremely rare revolving stage.’
Prices of entry ranged from $10, for tickets purchased in advance, to $25 if you wanted a ‘Meet and Greet’ with the Maricopa County sheriff, who is pushing for a ‘Congressional investigation into the fraudulent documents produced by the [Obama] administration.”
“Pat Boone and Sheriff Joe’s Arizona ‘Birther’ Party Scrapped,” Gregory J. Krieg, ABC News
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“If you know Middle Easterners, a lot of them, they look Mexican or they look, you know, like a lot of people in South America, dark skin, dark hair, brown eyes. And they mix. They mix in.
And those people, their only goal in life is to, to cause harm to the United States. So why do we want them here, either legally or illegally? When they come across the border, besides the trash that they leave behind, the drug smuggling, the killings, the beheadings. I mean, you are seeing stuff. It’s a war out there.”
— Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, Republican Candidate for Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District
More:
“Arizona GOP Favorite Doesn’t Want Middle Easterners In U.S. ‘Legally Or Illegally,’” Nick R. Martin, TPM Muckracker
“Arizona Pol: Middle Easterners Look Like Mexicans And Don’t Belong Here ‘Legally Or Illegally,'” James King, Village Voice
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Image (“Arizona Tourism Campaign”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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