GOP Rep. Issues Dire Warning About His Party’s Claims on Russia

A rift is emerging in the Republican Party between the pro-Russia right and a group of senior GOP Congress members warning against those pushing Kremlin messaging on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Ohio Representative Mike Turner, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is one of those Congress members. Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, Turner railed against members of his own party who oppose funding Ukraine for repeating the Russian line that the invasion of Ukraine is a dispute over NATO expansion.

“We see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” Turner said.

Turner is not the only Republican to criticize Republicans’ parroting of Kremlin propaganda. Last week, Texas Representative and chair of the House Foreign Services Committee Michael McCaul warned that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

To whom are McCaul and Turner referring? A faction of Republicans opposed to the passage of any aid for Ukraine, most likely. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday described the conflict as a “war on Christianity,” applauding Russia for “protecting” Christianity from supposed Ukrainian attacks. She has also promised to hold aid hostage by threatening to hold a vote to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson from the speakership if a bill sending aid to Ukraine is put on the table.

Senators Ron Johnson and Tommy Tuberville have repeated the “NATO expansion” canard to which Turner made reference, and expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin before voting against a military aid package. Disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson visited Russia for a fawning interview with Putin.

But if Turner and McCaul are looking for the source of this authoritarian apologia, they ought to look at their leader, Donald Trump. The former president, who was impeached for holding promised aid over the head of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskiy in exchange for damaging information on then-candidate Joe Biden, has certainly trafficked in the kind of pro-Russian messaging Turner criticized. Trump has also promised to end all aid to Ukraine if he is elected president in 2024.

The rot infecting the GOP, as described by Turner and McCaul, is coming from the top of the party. But will their colleagues give them a hearing? Don’t count on it.

The Foreign Press Association slammed Israel on Monday for preventing international journalists from accessing Gaza, suggesting that Tel Aviv was trying to prevent the rest of the world from seeing the extent of the destruction.

Israel’s brutal war in Gaza has killed at least 33,175 people in the last six months, including 13,000 children. Images and reports from the territory show vast areas filled with rubble, horrific images of corpses, and bombing survivors nursing grief over their loved ones as well as their own serious injuries.

And that’s with Israel barring any journalists from entering Gaza independently.

“The barring of independent press access to a war zone for this long is unprecedented for Israel,” the Foreign Press Association said in a statement. “It raises questions about what Israel does not want international journalists to see.”

The group is calling for Israel to grant international media “expanded and unfettered access to Gaza.”

The gruesome reports the world has seen have come from Gazan journalists on the ground, who have to balance their own safety—as well as that of their families—with the duty of documenting the attacks, atrocities, and daily life as the war continues into its sixth month. A small amount of media has been allowed into the territory under military escort, but it is subject to Israeli military censorship. Gazan journalists, such as Motaz Azaiza, Plestia Alaqad, Bisan Owda, Hind Khodary, and others have had to rely on viral social media posts to get their uncensored reports out.

It stands to reason, then, that foreign journalists would expose even more horrific effects of Israel’s military attacks, as U.S. officials have reportedly said anonymously. Last week, British radio host James O’Brien drew the same conclusion on Leading Britain’s Conversation.

At least 95 journalists and media workers are among the dead as a result of the war to date, according to preliminary investigations from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Not all of the dead are from Gaza, either: Among the confirmed media casualties are 90 Palestinians, two Israelis, and three Lebanese.

In addition, 16 journalists were reported injured, four were reported missing, and 25 were reportedly arrested, according to the CPJ. And that doesn’t include threats and censorship against journalists in the region. For example, Israel’s Knesset passed a law last week giving the country’s senior ministers the ability to shut down any news outlet deemed a security risk, a move that was widely seen as targeting one of the few international outlets with correspondents inside Gaza, Al Jazeera.

It’s conventional wisdom that the right wing is dominated, defined, even, by “grifters all the way down.” No big surprise, then, that the insurance company footing the bill for Donald Trump’s fraud case bond is itself unscrupulous.

An investigation by The Daily Beast revealed that Knight Specialty Insurance, the company backing Trump’s $175 million civil fraud penalty payment, is not licensed as a solvent surety firm by the New York Department of Financial Services, and has not been vetted by the state’s Excess Line Association, a board of insurers that provides voluntary audits of other insurer’s finances. The reason for that: The California-based Knight does not appear to have enough money in its coffers to post Trump’s bonds.

According to the Beast, Trump’s bond accounts for a third of the company’s assets and more than its total surplus funds. Maria T. Vullo, a former New York financial regulator, has called the move to post Trump’s bond “incomprehensible for a carrier to underwrite.”

The company, for its part, seems aware of its predicament: The Beast reports that Knight has not legally promised to pay Trump’s penalty if the former president’s appeal is unsuccessful. Instead, the document Knight produced indicates, Trump would still be responsible for paying.

Knight Specialty Insurance is owned by the “king of the subprime car loan,” right-wing billionaire Don Hankey. Hankey appeared to come to Trump’s rescue after the former president loudly struggled to post in his real estate fraud case.

But now, what appeared to be a stroke of luck for Trump may actually be a case of two grifters looking to get one over on one another. If Hankey’s company in fact has not legally agreed to pay the penalty, Trump may ultimately be forced to forfeit assets if he cannot cover the disgorgement himself. New York Attorney General Letitia James has promised to seize Trump properties if he cannot pay.

In dealing with a shady businessman like Hankey, Trump, whose Department of Justice sued Hankey for illegally repossessing the cars of military veterans, might have heeded the words of one of his favorite poems: “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”

Trump is bringing back his “greatest” hits on immigration in his current presidential campaign.

Remember in 2018, when he referred to immigrants from places such as Haiti as “people from shithole countries” and wondered why more immigrants weren’t coming from places like Norway? Well, at a private fundraiser over the weekend, Trump made a callback to those remarks, once again lamenting where immigrants to America come from.

At a multimillion-dollar event in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump complained that immigrants weren’t coming from “nice” countries “like Denmark,” according to The New York Times, which got an account of the event from one attendee. He even suggested that the wealthy guests at the event, hosted at a mansion owned by billionaire John Paulson, weren’t safe from nearby undocumented immigrants.

“These are people coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster,” Trump said, the Times reported.

“I said [in 2018], you know, ‘Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries, I’m trying to be nice,’” he continued, to reported chuckles from the crowd. “Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

The setting of the event was also interesting: Guests were seated outdoors at white-clothed tables under a white tent, looking out over the body of water that separates wealthy Palm Beach (98.3 percent white, according to census estimates) from the more diverse city of West Palm Beach, where nearly a third of the population is Black and almost a quarter is Hispanic.

“In fact, I don’t think they’re on this island, but I know they’re on that island right there. That’s West Palm,” Trump at one point said during his speech, gesturing across the water. “Congratulations over there. But they’ll be here. Eventually, they’ll be here.”

Trump also mentioned immigrants from the Middle East, noting that immigrants were arriving from Yemen, “where they’re blowing each other up all over the place.”

All of Trump’s rhetoric and policies have been based on racism from the time he began seriously campaigning for president in 2015. Who could forget his first campaign speech, after he descended his golden escalator? He claimed that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Trump either fails to realize or refuses to admit that immigrants move to different countries for better lives, For example, his preferred origin for immigrants, Denmark, ranks sixth in the world in the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which is based on factors such as life expectancy, literacy rate, access to electricity, GDP per capita, income inequality, and others. In contrast, the U.S. is ranked twentieth.

Donald Trump on Monday publicly announced his long-awaited decision on a potential national abortion policy, satisfying no one and leaving both parties up in arms.

In a video posted to Truth Social, Trump boasted about the Supreme Court ending Roe v. Wade during his term, smeared Democrats as “the radical ones on this issue,” erroneously accused the left of supporting “execution after birth,” and finally staked out a position on an issue he’s said little about publicly. The big reveal: The legality of abortion should be left for the states to decide, with supposed exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the patient’s life. This is, of course, more an acknowledgment of the law as it currently exists post-Roe than a position on a potential federal abortion ban. 

Understandably, the announcement enraged abortion rights activists, who argue that Trump’s endorsement of states’ right to outlaw abortion effectively hands red state governments a blank check to pass the most extreme anti-abortion laws in the country, like those already on the books in Texas, Florida, and Idaho. Advocates have rightly argued that the so-called exceptions for rape, incest, or the patient’s health trumpeted by the Republican presidential nominee are effectively toothless window dressing, since the bans have a chilling effect on doctors who fear legal backlash for performing any abortions. As abortion rights activists also pointed out, the video left unsaid whether Trump would sign a national ban if congressional Republicans successfully brought a bill  to his desk.

But the right is also up in arms. The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, or SBA, claimed to be “deeply disappointed” in Trump’s position in a press release. In leaving abortion to the states, President Marjorie Dannenfelser argues, Republicans “[cede] the national debate to Democrats.” Republicans who support anything less than a national ban are in bed with the “abortion industry” and want to popularize exceedingly rare late-term abortions, Dannenfelser said, echoing Trump’s false claim.

Trump had been conspicuously quiet on the abortion debate prior to Monday’s announcement, although he privately floated national 16- and 15-week bans. But even as he demurred from publicly supporting the kind of national prohibition favored by groups such as SBA (and faced criticism from other Republicans for refusing to endorse a federal ban), he has consistently taken credit for the state bans passed in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson. 

Now, however, with his official position no longer a secret, and with the brutal implications of Dobbs made evident across the country, Trump can no longer play coy on the issue. And outraged though extremist anti-abortion groups may be with Trump at the moment, it’s clear that the right’s assault on abortion rights is just beginning.