In fact, Johnson appears to hold minority views regarding other issues, as well. For example, he’s an outspoken opponent of abortion rights while 61% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases (Pew). And while 71% of Americans support same-sex marriage (Gallup), in 2004 Johnson wrote in the Shreveport Times that homosexuality is “inherently unnatural” and that gay marriage would lead to similar rights for pedophiles.
But here’s something that should worry us all: The great majority of Americans believe that Joe Biden won the last election. Not only did Mike Johnson vote against certifying the election, he is credited with coming up with a legal theory to justify Trump’s fabricated objections to the election, and he supported a Texas lawsuit to overturn the results in four states clearly won by Biden.
“The secret to the success of Mike Johnson ascending to the speakership, after about a 24-hour run, is that very few people knew him or knew what he stands for,” she told MSNBC legal analyst Charles Coleman Jr. on Sunday.
Dean recalled that during the House floor vote to elect Johnson, a Democratic colleague asked her: “Do you know anything about this guy?”
Dean said that in fact, she did, because she serves with Johnson on the House judiciary committee.
She looked back on a conversation she said she had with Johnson shortly after the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Johnson “tried to defend to me, and to others on my side of the aisle, why he was such an architect of the election-denying scheme,” and “tried to argue his legal case about it,” she said.
“And when I said to him: ‘But after all, there was an attempted insurrection. You were here for it. That didn’t change your sights at all?’ No, it did not,” she said.
She also noted that Johnson wouldn’t answer questions about whether the election was legitimate as recently as last week.
As Legum points out, Johnson has called same-sex relationships "inherently unnatural" and "harmful and costly to everyone." He has even expressed support for criminalizing homosexual behavior and has firmly opposed gay marriage. He has also declared that life begins at conception and has co-sponsored legislation that would ban abortion nationwide.
But, "despite Johnson's radical views, several prominent corporations backed Johnson before his ascension to power," Legum writes.
Among those corporations was Walmart, which publicly presents itself as a champion of LGBTQ rights. Walmart moved to protect abortion access for its employees after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade. The company even pledged to stop donating to lawmakers who voted against the certification of the 2020 election's results. But none of that has stopped Walmart from giving Johnson $9,000 since 2017.
One of them, which a lot of my friends appreciated, is an article that lists more than 150 Black-owned businesses in North America. I was so happy to see that some people care about helping these companies thrive!
The article is here: https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/support-black-owned-businesses/
I think sharing this list on your page would be a great way to help promote these Black-owned sites and stores.
So please check out Dana's post.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Israelis joined millions of people throughout the world, opposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people, taking to the streets in several towns and cities to demand the government end the war and do everything necessary to bring home the 230 hostages being held in Gaza.
In Tel Aviv, hundreds of angry young protesters gathered outside the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Saturday evening holding banners saying, “Ceasefire now” and “Bring back the hostages, alive, now.”
Haim Rubinstein, for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, demanded, “Is there a plan? We don’t know. That’s what we want to find out.” She added, “We also want to know the meaning of what happened last night,” referring to the IDF ground invasion of Gaza and the bombardment of 150 Hamas underground targets, including tunnels where the hostages are believed to be held.
Hundreds demonstrated outside Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea, accusing him of responsibility for the war, demanding he resign and chanting, “Take responsibility for the sake of the people.” At a demonstration in Jerusalem, banners called for a prisoner exchange. Hundreds took part in a rally in the northern port city of Haifa, home to both Jews and Palestinians, with other rallies held in Beersheba, Herzylia, Netanya and Kfar Saba and other towns.
The images that have emerged from Gaza over the last several weeks are not ones we can easily forget: a once vibrant city reduced to rubble by Israeli occupation forces. A Ministry of Health press conference held in the aftermath of a massacre, where the bodies of murdered Palestinians are piled up around the podium. Young children, visibly in shock, covered in the blood of their families and debris from their homes that no longer exist. Parents, hysterical with grief, holding their dead and dying babies.
Amid all of the pain and suffering we have seen, among all of the incomprehensible stories emerging, we find ourselves returning to one extraordinary fact: Palestinians are going to great lengths to ensure their voices are heard. Decades of evidence tells them that the media will get it all wrong, so they are using their last bits of power during a blockade and sometimes their final moments on earth to correct the public record.
Palestinian journalists who have recently had their homes, families, colleagues, and places of work bombed by Israeli occupation forces continue to do interviews with Western media. No doubt they feel tremendous pressure to address rampant disinformation from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), to correct the media’s use of passive language, and to introduce words like “apartheid” to ahistorical reporting. Everyday Palestinians are also using social media to relay the facts on the ground, documenting the violence of settler colonialism.
These efforts at truth telling are a strong indictment of the U.S. media. Palestinians know what many across the world are just beginning to understand: While Gaza and the Palestinian people stand on the brink of oblivion, the press will only gloss over U.S.-backed war crimes, rationalize their collective punishment, and spin narratives that further erase their rights and realities.
In this earth-shattering, history-defining moment, the American media is failing. Despite the facts on the ground, many American news outlets refuse to identify what’s happening in Gaza as genocide, citing a lack of evidence for the term. But in fact, the very definition of genocide and the metrics for identifying it under international law require precisely the kind of evidence we’re seeing now, which means that any news outlet claiming to produce “evidence-based” journalism that won’t use the word “genocide” is violating its own stated principles.
The world’s population are seeing atrocities of staggering dimensions: buildings pulverized by bombs and missiles; hospitals and apartment blocks leveled; children covered in blood, pulled screaming from the rubble; bodies everywhere. These images of genocidal war have a profound effect on consciousness, which cannot be undone by media lies or government propaganda.
This weekend, half a million people took part in a protest in London. Tens of thousands demonstrated in other cities in Europe, with hundreds of thousands in the Arab and other majority-Muslim countries. In the United States, tens of thousands have marched in New York City, Washington, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, with significant turnouts in hundreds of other cities, both large and small.
One of the most significant aspects of these protests has been the participation of thousands of Jews, particularly Jewish youth. This was seen most dramatically in the takeover of Grand Central Station in Manhattan Friday night, in a sit-in by several thousand called by Jewish Voice for Peace, under the slogan “Not in Our Name.”
The outpouring of popular anger in response to the war crimes in Gaza has shaken both the ruling classes and their media servants. They are so frightened that they’ve decided that the only way to respond is to ignore it and create a counter-reality, manufactured by the media, in which the public supports Israel and its genocidal war on Gaza, and the expressions of mass horror and revulsion simply are not taking place.
The news outlets that set the pace for the American media have imposed a virtual blackout on the protests, limiting their reporting to a handful of online references that are drowned out by the deluge of pro-war coverage, which occupies pages and pages of newsprint and endless hours of television time. There is no reference to the millions who have declared their opposition to the war on Gaza, while there has been non-stop coverage of the October 7 Hamas raid on Israel, the Israeli preparations for war, the bombing campaign, and the visits by top Western leaders—Biden, Sunak, Scholz, Macron and others—to Jerusalem to declare their unbreakable solidarity with Netanyahu and Israel.
On Friday evening, a spontaneous action of civil disobedience by thousands of supporters of the organization Jewish Voice for Peace shut down Grand Central Station in Manhattan to protest the escalating genocide against Gaza. The NYPD arrested several of the protesters, but thousands then gathered outside.
Chants included, “Biden Biden you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The demonstration showed widespread pro-Palestinian sympathies among the public, including Jewish workers and youth, who packed the main floor of the terminal during rush hour.
The protesters also unfurled banners from the mezzanine that read, “Palestinians should be free” and “Israelis demand cease-fire now.” A large number of the participants wore black T-shirts from Jewish Voice for Peace that said, “Not in Our Name” and “Ceasefire Now!”
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with several of those participating. Asked her response to the Democratic Party’s support for the genocide, one protester said, “I’m horrified. They’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Biden is no better than Bush,. In fact, I think he’s worse, if that was possible. The fact that those are the choices we have, there’s something seriously wrong.”
“Most people are against this war, this genocide, [but] they have their own agenda going on.”
Brett Wilkins (COMMON DREAMS) also reports on the protest:
The demonstration was led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), with the participation of IfNotNow and other groups, as well as unaffiliated Jews and allies.
"We refuse to allow our own pain and trauma to be used to justify attacks against another people," said Jay Saper of JVP. "We are here to say: Not in our name."
JVP said New York state
Sens. Jabari Brisport (D-25), Robert Jackson (D-35), and Julia Salazar
(D-18); State Assembly Members Zohran Mamdani (D-36) and Emily Gallagher
(D-50); and New York City Council Members Tiffany Cabán (D-22), Alexa
Avilés (D-38), Sandy Nurse (D-37), and Chi Ossé (D-36) took part in the
protest.
Artist Indya Moore, a signatory to the Artists4CeaseFire letter, said "I am here in solidarity with my Jewish siblings in support of Palestinians, and stand in witness with my ancestors, the Taino, African, and Spanish, colonized and colonizer—in memory of what happened to them, to raise our collective voice of dissent and demonstrate en masse that it is morally irrefutable that we need a cease-fire now and a call to end the genocide of Palestinians."
At 1:00 a.m. on October 28th, Dartmouth College called Hanover Police to arrest two students for trespassing on the Parkhurst Administration Building lawn. The students initiated an encampment six hours earlier, urging Dartmouth to divest from Apartheid as part of the Dartmouth New Deal framework.
After college administrators refused to publicly acknowledge the Dartmouth New Deal and establish a mourning site for lost Palestinian and Israeli lives, two students chose to remain in a tent against school official’s requests. The College subsequently summoned over a dozen officers from Dartmouth College Department of Safety and Security and Hanover Police Department to handcuff and arrest both students.
Kevin Engel, one of two Dartmouth students arrested, says: “After spending over 80 hours outside Parkhurst over the last ten days, it is explicitly obvious to me that the current administration cares very little about the effects of the war in Gaza on students. Tonight, over a dozen Hanover PD and SNS officers arrested and charged me and a peer for occupying a tent. A single tent — even more evidence that Dartmouth prioritizes their public image over the wellbeing of students.”
The arrests took place hours after the campus Sunrise Movement Chapter launched the Dartmouth New Deal, their multi-demand framework for investment in marginalized students and climate-justice. The continued encampment on the administrative lawn escalated a weeklong protest for Palestinian liberation which began after mourners placed small black flags in the administrative lawn following an October 19th vigil for Palestinian and Israeli civilians.
Campus Safety and Security informed event organizers that they would remove the flags immediately afterwards. When the vigil was not dismantled, students decided to keep watch over the memorial 24 hours a day and did so until the arrests.
Roan Wade, a student and Sunrise Dartmouth organizer arrested Saturday Morning, says: “Dartmouth claims to support free speech but arrested me for demonstrating against Dartmouth’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We were told that President Beilock was inside Parkhurst at the time of our arrest. Rather than talking to us, she suppressed our right to voice our concerns. Dartmouth’s commitment to free speech and open discourse fell apart when met with student activism. Police told us we were banned indefinitely from stepping foot in Parkhurst, the building that houses Title IX, the president’s office, and other Dartmouth administrators — further restricting our right to voice our dissent.”
During this time, students at the vigil faced constant surveillance from Safety & Security officers, including frequent visits from the Director of Safety & Security, Keiselim “Keysi” Montás. Repeated attempts to remove students included confiscating a canopy to protect from rain and warning students not to sit down on the steps or store food.
The Associate Dean for Student Life delivered a highlighted copy of Dartmouth’s policy on Freedom of Expression and Dissent, claiming students were deliberately obstructing “the orderly processes of the college.” When asked for a specific example, Montás told students that flags prevented workers from mowing the Parkhurst lawn.
“President Beilock, in her September 22, 2023 inaugural address to Dartmouth College, calls for a ‘brave space’–approach to freedom of expression on campus,” says Hayden El Rafei ’24. “As a student and undergraduate researcher, I see the administration's actions tonight as a cruel and repulsive attack on students’ academic, artistic, and creative expression — their acts of bravery in the wake of grief.
The Palestine Solidarity Coalition of Dartmouth Students, The Sunrise Movement at Dartmouth, and other student groups authored a statement in response to the college’s actions. Dartmouth students plan to hold a rally at 12:30 on Monday, October 30th calling for the protection of students’ free speech and right to protest at Dartmouth.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We look now at how students, professors and others advocating for Palestinian rights across the United States are facing racist attacks and other threats to their free speech, safety and livelihoods.
This week, Florida ordered state universities to ban the group Students for Justice in Palestine, accusing it of supporting a terrorist organization. The group Palestine Legal is documenting and supporting people who were fired or faced other retaliation for sharing social media posts or signing statements in support of human rights for Palestine.
This includes our next guest, Ryna Workman, who was removed from their position as president of the NYU Law School’s Student Bar Association and saw their job offer at the corporate law firm Winston & Strawn withdrawn after they sent a newsletter to classmates expressing, quote, “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination,” unquote, after Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel and the subsequent number of Palestinians who died in these last weeks.
On Thursday, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution, quote, “condemning Hamas and antisemitic student activities on college campuses,” unquote, which referenced Ryna, though not by name. This comes as doxing trucks target people at Ivy League universities who sign Palestinian solidarity statements, have now appeared at Harvard, at Columbia, University of Pennsylvania with digital billboard screens displaying people’s faces, their names, and above them saying “antisemites.”
Palestine Legal and over 600 other legal groups and leaders issued a letter calling on elected officials and institutional leaders to address the, quote, “hundreds of incidents happening across the country [that] signal a much broader effort to criminalize dissent, justify censorship, and incite anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim harassment,” unquote. The letter notes, “This is not a new phenomenon, but it is escalating at terrifying speed,” unquote.
For more, we’re joined in Chicago by Dima Khalidi, the founder and director of Palestine Legal, and by Ryna Workman, the NYU law student who had their prestigious job offer rescinded.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ryna, why don’t we start with you? What exactly happened?
RYNA WORKMAN: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
I think that, you know, I sent a message to my fellow law students supporting Palestine and offering context to a narrative that I already saw building that was excluding the 75 years of history that we’ve seen in Palestine, the apartheid, the military occupation. And I wanted to add that I support Palestinians in their movement for liberation. And that is what my message was intended to get across.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened?
RYNA WORKMAN: You know, after that, we saw this incredibly swift backlash. I lost my job offer. My school immediately put out statements that distanced themselves from me, offered me no specific protections publicly. And, you know, I’ve been receiving hateful and racist and transphobic and queerphobic messages for the past three weeks that have only gotten more vile and more hateful as time has gone on.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about your position both at NYU and your offer of a prestigious law firm employment?
RYNA WORKMAN: Yeah, I think that, you know, the consequences that I’m personally facing are devastating for me. But I’m also really concerned that it’s just promoting this chilling effect that we’re seeing across not only my law school, but across universities and other law schools across the country, because folks are now afraid to speak up, in fear that they might become the next me, that they might lose their offer simply for supporting Palestine and fighting this oppression and trying to end this genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you say to the law firm now? And have they reconsidered?
RYNA WORKMAN: The law firm has not reached out to me at all. And right now I really just want to focus on calling for a ceasefire and ending this genocide. And I really just want to say to everyone who cares about human life and cares about stopping this killing, to call for a ceasefire and, you know, end this genocide that’s happening right now to the Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Dima Khalidi into this conversation. How common is what happened to Ryna Workman?
DIMA KHALIDI: It’s become very common. Palestine Legal has been documenting for years what we call a Palestine exception to free speech, so it certainly didn’t start on October 7th. We’ve seen these same kinds of tactics, severe doxing, attempts to get people fired and investigated, to punish boycotts for Palestinian rights and other advocacy through legislation, and an attempt to purge academia of voices that support Palestinian rights.
But since October 7th, when we’ve seen people mobilizing for Palestinian rights, we’ve seen an exponential increase. We’ve had more than 300 requests for legal help — more than we get in a whole year typically. And Ryna is really not alone. And we’re seeing dozens, dozens of people getting fired and facing unemployment consequences around the country for making simple statements in support of Palestinian rights. We’re seeing students get disciplined, as you mentioned, Amy. There is a widespread attack on the student movement for Palestinian rights, which has built an incredible cross-movement — has built cross-movement alliances on campuses for the last decade. And really, people’s livelihoods are being threatened. And people’s lives are also under attack. We saw a 6-year-old Palestinian boy murdered just for being Palestinian. So this is a widespread effort to intimidate, as Ryna said, intimidate people into silence.
But Ryna is also not alone in the sense that there are so many voices who are speaking out, because people are seeing more and more clearly what is happening here. This is about 75-plus years of a settler colonial state that has dispossessed an entire people of their land and of their dignity and of their humanity. And what is happening now is a complete dehumanization of Palestinians that is coming from the mouths of Israeli officials, which, by the way, have been speaking in genocidal terms about Palestinians for 75-plus years. And it’s being echoed by our own elected officials, who are repeating to level Gaza and to wipe Palestinians off of the map. This is a genocide that is unfolding with U.S. support. And more people are seeing that. And that’s what’s critical here. We have to speak up. We have to protect people who are under attack for speaking out, because that is our responsibility as U.S. citizens whose taxpayer money is being used to fuel this incredible attack on Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what’s happening in Florida, Governor DeSantis demanding of the state university system to disband the organization, the Palestinian student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine?
DIMA KHALIDI: Of course, DeSantis is often the front-runner when we’re talking about undermining our constitutional rights. And once again, he has attacked a student group based on their fundamental First Amendment rights to engage in advocacy on this issue. His move is fundamentally contrary to the First Amendment. And it will be challenged. There is no doubt.
This is also an attempt to criminalize what students and others are speaking out about. And there is no basis for this. And frankly, it’s part of DeSantis’s broader agenda and the right wing’s broader agenda to undermine fundamental First Amendment rights by criminalizing protests for racial justice, by criminalizing protests for environmental rights and Indigenous rights, and by purging academia of people and curricula that are trying to teach about the sordid history of racism in this country. So it is part of his effort to whitewash our universities and academia from dissenting voices. And this has to be challenged in order for us to maintain the fundamental constitutional rights upon which this country is based and that are essential for any prospect of maintaining democracy in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it’s been interesting what’s happened. You’ve got the doxing of students, for example, at Harvard and at Columbia. At Harvard, the more traditional conservative organization, Harvard Hillel, actually also condemned the doxing of students and these billboards that are going around with protesters’ faces with the word “antisemite” above it. And at Columbia, is it true that the pro-Israel and the Palestine groups together condemned the doxing?
DIMA KHALIDI: The doxing is one of the most heinous ways of attacking people. These are students. These are individuals who are, you know, working in various arenas, and they are being severely harassed. Their information is being publicized. They are being barraged, as Ryna has, with death threats and horrible misogynistic, transphobic and racist messages. And their livelihoods are being threatened. So we have seen even pro-Israel groups condemn this, because they see how horrible it is for their own peers to be faced with this kind of harassment. And universities are really failing to protect their students here. We’ve seen a couple of instances where universities are beginning to take measures to prevent this doxing, seeing how severe it is.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Ryna Workman, your final comment? Also, who ousted you as president of NYU’s Law School Bar Association?
RYNA WORKMAN: So, the SBA, the Student Bar Association, originally initiated proceedings against me, but since have all resigned. But currently, due to messaging from Dean McKenzie, I am suspended until further notice from all of my presidential duties. And so, even though I cannot say anything or do anything as SBA president, I still want to say, as a person, that we should all be calling for a ceasefire and an end to this genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryna Workman, I want to thank you for being with us, NYU law student who had a job offer rescinded after speaking out in support of Palestinian rights and calling for a ceasefire, and Dima Khalidi, founder of Palestine Legal. I’m Amy Goodman. Thank you for joining us.
Others attacked have included US House Rep Rashida Tlaib. Her basic statements are too much for some -- such as House lunatic Marjorie Taylor Greene -- to take. Here's an example of a statement by Rashida:
U.S. military support for Israel with absolutely no conditions on upholding human rights has not brought peace and justice to the region. This resolution is not a serious examination of the root causes of the violence we are witnessing and doubles down on decades of failed policy. Achieving a just and lasting peace where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights and freedoms, and where no person lives in fear for their safety, requires ending the blockade, occupation, and dehumanizing system of apartheid. I urge my colleagues to support our Ceasefire Now Resolution to call for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire, to send humanitarian aid and assistance to Gaza, and to save as many lives as possible.
Ramirez: It’s a shame that while they’re doing that, you have the Marjorie Taylor Greenes (R-GA) of the world out there spewing so much hate, hate for people who are [peacefully] protesting the injustices of Palestinians, and [she’s] calling them insurrectionists. You have members here who call some of us Hamas. Why? Because we dare to take a stand for injustice and Palestinian children? It is really scary that they are weaponizing this moment and putting [the] lives of people in this country that they say they love so much at risk … and there are no consequences for their actions.
And these are the same people that are constantly attacking and bullying people like me, people like Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), people like Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), people like Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA), people like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). It is really unfortunate that this is a moment that our children and our young people are having to witness this from their highest level of government representatives.
BLOOMEKATZ: You talked about the murder of a six-year-old Wadea, and also of this horrible hate attack in Lombard. How do you think Illinois — and Chicago — how can we move forward as a state and as residents here in a way that combats this?
RAMIREZ: Look, you need to call out that people who are using hateful rhetoric, be it in Illinois, be it in the city of Chicago, and that have any … influence, or are in any leadership positions, need to be censured. They need to be responsible for the deaths and the violence against our communities. And these are Jewish communities, these are Muslim communities, immigrant communities.
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