Summer’s almost over. Have you noticed how peaceful it has been compared to the last few years? This calm is particularly remarkable since ICE activity is at an all-time high and the mid-term elections are right around the corner. Dismantling USAID certainly put a crimp in these orchestrated demonstrations. But there was more behind the cutback, notes Jeff Childers at Flopping Aces. He credits Secretary Scott Bessent’s close examination of nonprofit organizations being used as conduits to move illicit funds to support political terrorism:
On July 16, Bessent spoke at a State Department event organized by Marco Rubio. “Increasingly,” he said, “legitimate nonprofit and charitable structures are being exploited as a mechanism to conceal the movement of illicit funds to support political terrorism.” Then he dropped the hammer. “In the fall, the United States designated four far-left Antifa extremist groups abroad as foreign terrorist organizations.”
In January, Chris Rufo interviewed Bessent. “When you see these protesters, someone is financing them,” Bessent explained. “There are safe houses. When you see the 300 people with the same laser that they’re using to blind DHS agents in courthouses in Portland, someone bought those lasers.” Meaning, a left-wing NGO. If that isn’t a threat, I don’t know what is.
Rufo asked Secretary Bessent, “There are 501(c)(3) nonprofit groups funded by left-wing dark money, that are organizing -- or at least at arm’s length encouraging -- criminal activities. Is the Treasury looking into this? Is it something you have authority to crack down on, and what can we expect?”
Note Bessent’s answer: “Yes, yes, and yes. So these groups that are engaging in this -- we have the authority, and we are examining them.” Then came the mailed fist inside the silk glove: “What we do is follow the money -- just like we followed it with the mafia. We’ll find out who’s done this.”
Apparently CAIR, the SPLC, and the George Soros’ Open Society Foundations are presently under Treasury Department investigation.
Bessent’s inner circle is drafting a blueprint that could ultimately strip non-compliant organizations of their 501(c)(3) status, according to two of the people familiar with the plans. The reviews could result in massive back payments and civil penalties, the same sources said. [snip] Officials have also scrutinized a number of anti-corporate and labor-aligned advocacy groups that could end up on the blacklist, including the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, the anti-Amazon Athena Coalition, left-leaning watchdog MediaJustice, and the Strategic Organizing Center alongside its parent union, the SEIU, according to the three insiders briefed on the matter.
It’s not only the feds that are tracking down who’s funding what. The genius known as Data Republican has been tracking funders and recipients and has now created an interactive map of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). “Click any org, person, or project and walk the network one tie at a time. Start at DSA and see where it leads.”
While we were spared another one of those ironically dubbed, ”summers of love,” the lawfare war continues, and with some interesting developments.
Take the latest bizarre twist in the Administration’s efforts to have USPS manage mail balloting, something Judge Indira Talwani has done everything to prevent. It’s a twist, to my knowledge, that only Jeff Childers has reported.
Briefly summarized, there were two cases before her seeking relief against the promulgation of rules by the Postal Service respecting mail balloting. She enjoined the first, and on an emergency basis the Supreme Court lifted the injunction as having been improvidently granted before any regulations were adopted. After the regulations were adopted and published, the plaintiffs repeated their request, and Judge Talwani again enjoined the process, emphasizing the impossibility of the states to conform in such a short time. But, and here’s the surprise, one of the plaintiffs, North Carolina, could and is complying.
North Carolina’s Board of Elections issued a short but sweet statement:
The North Carolina State Board of Elections has submitted our envelopes to the U.S. Postal Service for review and approval. This complies with the requirements that we upload a list of everyone we’re sending a ballot to by mail and that is the only requirement. These are measures we do all the time and involves simply basic practices such as creating a report from SEIMS and putting that into a spreadsheet.
Our office is confident that the county boards of elections plan to send out absentee ballots to North Carolina voters who have requested them for this election, starting September 4, as required by state law, will happen flawlessly and smoothly. We do not which to comment on hypothetical scenarios, but if it becomes necessary, we will do our best to comply with any court decisions, as we always do.
So simple! So easy! Note that highlighted line: North Carolina just said that, while complying, its election “will happen flawlessly and smoothly.” Smoother than Jif peanut butter.
This is yet another wildly unforeseeable development, the latest bizarre bend in the ongoing drama, and corporate media has completely refused to report it. It seems the looming September 4th deadline isn’t the real one after all. Against all odds, the Administration just got handed another two weeks till the next round of states begin sending ballots on September 19th.
But it’s not just about the enlarged deadline. It’s much bigger.
This is a colossal plot twist, much more than it first appears. Assuming USPS approves NC’s envelope format, accepts the voter uploads, and timely processes the September 4th military-and-overseas mailing smoothly and flawlessly, the government can argue that the plaintiffs’ claims of “impossibility” of complying are made up.
North Carolina is proving that state election officials can comply. And they can do it rapidly, flawlessly, and smoothly -- and so the much ballyhooed disruption is purely speculative rather than unavoidably imminent. [snip]
Picture a courtroom where the plaintiff solemnly explains that a grand piano cannot possibly be moved before Friday. At that exact moment, two movers roll the piano past the open courtroom door and are overheard saying that delivery should proceed “flawlessly and smoothly.” Corporate media would report the plaintiff’s severe back strain and omit the piano on the grounds that furniture is outside the scope of the story.
[snip] Judge Talwani somberly opined in her order that compliance would be “practically impossible,” that failure “seems unavoidable,” and that state declarations of impossibility were unrebutted. Welp. They’re rebutted now, Sally! By one of the plaintiffs.
It is now up to the First Circuit Court of Appeals to expedite the appeal, throw it into “warp speed,” if you will, to give the Administration time to reach SCOTUS. Since the First Circuit already denied the Administration’s July appeal, the one that did reach the Supreme Court, it is not sympathetic and is unlikely to be of much help.
Any sane lawyer handicapping this mess would normally put the odds near zero. But these aren’t normal times. And the Administration keeps enjoying windfalls of “good luck.” For now, the show goes on. [/quote]
For every action, in nature, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, and for some of the actions of overreaching partisan district court judges, the reaction has been something at the Supreme Court called “the shadow docket,” which Professor Jonathan Turley explains:
Talwani has offered the strongest case in favor of the expanded use of the emergency docket, also known as the “shadow docket.” Liberal law professors and litigants have bewailed the expanded use of this docket at the Supreme Court to resolve cases without the need for a long briefing and oral argument. However, judges like Talwani have created legitimate concerns of the gaming of the system to harness or freeze new policies. This is why the “shadow docket” has become more prominent. [snip] What concerned the justices was that many of these injunctions directly contravened earlier precedent, exposing the cynical purpose of these orders. For a president to be able to carry out major changes, he had to run a gauntlet of hundreds of judges, any one of whom could effectively negate reforms. In response, the Supreme Court ramped up the use of the emergency docket and cracked down on national injunctions, quickly reversing the rapidly increasing number of injunctions against the Trump administration.
With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, the odds favor challengers in either running out the clock or prevailing on the merits on the mail-in ballots. But Talwani and some other judges have reinforced suspicions of the Roberts court that some courts are willing allies of partisan groups in seeking to gum up the system.
Then again, there are tools apart from the shadow docket for dealing with judicial meddling. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio stopped issuing immigrant visas to nationals of the 75 countries considered at higher risk for public charge issues and a federal judge vacated that freeze, Rubio responded. He simply halted the processing of immigrant visas from anywhere in order to train all immigrant visa officers on how to assess, on an individual basis, which applicants are likely to become public charges and, therefore, are to be denied visas.
