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Hillary Watch 2016: Tina Brown Endorses Clinton For President

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 Not a day goes by without national media outlets reporting on Hillary Clinton’s immediate future, while seeking definitive answers to the question–will she run for president in 2016?  The New Civil Rights Movement joins the “Hillary Watch” obsession

All of a sudden Hillary Clinton is everywhere this week.  And the national media is following and anticipating her every move.

Citizen Hillary emerges from a short respite since stepping down as Secretary of State in February to deliver two major speeches this week on “women,”  her raison d’etre.  Tonight she will appear at the annual Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards (an organization she helped found) in Washington, D.C. and again on Friday in New York City, where she will speak at the annual Women in the World Summit, organized by Tina Brown, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast/Newsweek.

As Chris Mathews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball said to Brown last night “you got the big “get” of the week” in booking Hillary to speak and Brown did not make waste of the moment. With little prodding from Mathews, Brown endorsed Clinton for president in 2016, who was appearing side-by-side with Howard Fineman, the editorial director at the Huffington Post.

Fineman jumped on the Clinton bandwagon too, calling Hillary’s  colossus global network of women leaders that she launched in 1995 from Beijing when she delivered an electrifying speech, uttering “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights” to women around the world, just maybe what ultimately convinces Clinton to run in 2016 (before the segment was done, Fineman had already tweeted out Brown had endorsed Clinton for president).

But Brown began early yesterday, pumping “Hillary” news first thing, when she appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, by addressing one the most persistent questions among women’s rights advocates who supported Clinton’s “smart” power initiatives as Secretary of State, when she asked “will Hillary Clinton’s women and girls initiatives at the State Department agenda survive” (a Daily Beast article penned by journalist Kathleen Parker) as she transitions from government to an unknown future.

Ultimately, whatever Clinton ultimately decides to do, until she definitively announces she will run for president or not, the media is reporting her every move.

Last week alone, Atlantic Magazine, CNN, MSNBC (two shows), Bloomberg News, Buzzfeed,  The Hill, Politico.com, Roll Call and The New York Times published stories about Hillary Clinton, reporting on what she has been up to since she departed her State Department post in February.

While reporters sniff out what Hillary Clinton is up to, her supporters have been busy too. Indeed,  tonight, Clinton will be greeted by supporters, organized by a Hillary Super PAC, who will be staging near the Kennedy Center when she arrives for the evening affair.

Rally for Hillary Hillary Super PACs have been sprouting up since January, among them, the most serious professional effort is evidenced in Ready for Hillary 2016 , spearheaded by Allida Black, a George Washington University professor, who is working about 30 hours a week and has been a Hillary supporter since the 2008 campaign.

Black  is eager to burnish the PAC’s credentials and recently announced its first donor was Ann Lewis, former communications director in the Clinton White House and that co-founder Adam Parkhomenko was an employee of HillPAC, Friends of Hillary and Clinton’s 2008 campaign. Ready for Hillary has also recently hired digital director Nickie Titus, who previously served as director of digital media for Sen. Tim Kaine’s successful campaign in Virginia, who had also worked at Blue State Digital. And the PAC has also hired Rising Tide Interactive, a digital consulting firm.

Overlooked by nearly everyone last week, was reporting by the intrepid Maggie Haberman, Politico.com and a New York  City based political journalist, who reported on Morning Joe late last week that she was now convinced Hillary Clinton is running in 2016.  According to Haberman, Hillary has a “transition team” assisting her in a return to “normal life;” “she is writing a book and there will be a book tour that will fold into a campaign launch. To date Haberman’s reporting was the most definitive evidence put forward by a national political reporter until Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times confirmed Haberman’s reporting with an A1 story (bottom of the fold) , leading with a donor angle, reporting all leading Democratic big donors were frozen in place, until she decides.

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But last week’s reporting began with long-time Clinton operative James Carville who told Luke Russert of MSNBC that there was a groundswell of support building for a Hillary Clinton run in 2016 and the “pressure will be “unimaginable” and that Democrats all over the country are excited by the prospect of the former first lady taking the plunge.”

“I think it’ll be unimaginable,” Carville said. “I mean, if — I just go around the country and if there’s a Democrat that does not want her to run, I have not met them. Now she is her own person and seems perfectly willing to resist that kind of pressure, but in terms of encouragement, I don’t think there’s ever been anybody that is a prohibitive front-runner for a party’s nomination as former Secretary of State Clinton is right now. You can feel it out there wherever I go and whenever people talk to me, it’s the same thing.”

No doubt Hillary kept her options open for running for president when she endorsed marriage equality for the the Human Rights Campaign in mid-March. Bill Clinton has been traveling the country backing Democratic candidates in primaries. Carville and Harold Ickes Jr. have said they will raise money for her.  She has about a half of dozen staff members on payroll that will be funded by her paid speeches–the first one is scheduled on April 24th.

How will Hillary handle the pressure and manage people’s expectations?  Stay tuned.  We are just getting started. It is almost a 1,000 days until the next “official” campaign begins.

Image courtesy of the Ready for Hillary PAC.

DomiheadshotTanya L. Domi is the Deputy Editor of the New Civil Rights Movement.  She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and teaches human rights in East Central Europe and former Yugoslavia. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi was a nationally recognized LGBT civil rights activist who worked for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force during the campaign to lift the military ban in the early 1990s. Domi has also worked internationally in a dozen countries on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights and gender issues. She is chair of the board of directors for GetEQUAL. Domi is currently writing a book about the emerging LGBT human rights movement in the Western Balkans.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She’s ‘Done Supporting’ The GOP: ‘Party Betrays Its Voters’

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Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Monday that she is “done supporting” her former party—but don’t expect her to join the Democratic party anytime soon.

Greene announced her disillusionment with the GOP on Monday afternoon in a tweet.

“Tucker is not the only one who is done supporting the Republican Party. There is A LOT of us that are absolutely fed up and will not support a party that betrays its voters and country. That does not mean we are turning into Democrats either. But we are DONE with the America LAST Republican Party,” Greene wrote.

She referred to comments made last week by pundit Tucker Carlson. Carlson appeared on the Can’t Be Censored podcast Thursday, saying he would refrain from supporting either major party, and admitted “I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

READ MORE: ‘Gaslight America’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Blasts Trump Ahead of His Trip to Georgia

“How could I or any American voter support a political party that’s not loyal to the United States. That puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens. It’s not possible to vote for people like that, and I’m not going to,” Carlson said, according to Mediaite, referring to America’s long-time ally Israel.

Greene famously broke with President Donald Trump earlier this year when she called for the release of the FBI files relating to disgraced financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. A former staunch ally of Trump, the two started trading barbs. Greene resigned from the House this January. Greene has long called for an isolationist foreign policy, criticizing America’s involvement in Ukraine as well as the current conflict with Iran.

Given that Greene said she has no plans on moving leftward in her politics, it’s unclear if she will refrain from voting or if she’ll throw her lot in with a third party. While American politics are primarily driven by the two major parties, a number of smaller parties also exist.

Greene may find a home in the Libertarian party, the third-largest party by voter registration. The Libertarian party has drifted rightward since its founding in 1971. While initially economically conservative but politically liberal, after 2022, the paleolibertarian Mises Caucus gained control of the party. Paleolibertarianism was developed by anarcho-capitalists, and embraces cultural conservatism. Some of the most widely known paleolibertarians include former Representative Ron Paul and the current president of Argentina, Javier Milei.

Third parties struggle to gain traction in the United States. The closest a third party has come to widespread support was the Reform Party, founded by H. Ross Perot during the 1996 presidential election after he won 18.9% of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election as an independent candidate. Reform won 8.4% of the popular vote in the 1996 election, but no third-party or independent candidate has been as successful as Perot since.

However, the electoral college makes it difficult for a third-party presidential candidate to be elected at all. Third-party presidential candidates are often seen as spoilers for the major candidates. Perot is often believed to have won votes away from President George H.W. Bush in 1992, giving the election to President Bill Clinton. In 2000, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was similarly accused of acting as a spoiler for Vice President Al Gore, leading to the election of President George W. Bush.

Third parties, however, have a better track record in down-ballot races. For example, Kshama Sawant won election to the Seattle City Council in 2014 as a member of the Socialist Alternative party. She held office until 2024, when she declined to seek reelection. She is currently running for a seat in the House of Representatives as an independent.

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Donald Trump Says Iran ‘Will Agree to Major Weapons Inspections’ to Ensure ‘Nuclear Honesty’

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President Donald Trump announced on Monday that Iran “will agree” to allow weapon inspectors into the country in a slightly confusing social media post.

“Everybody is fully aware that Iran will agree to have Major Weapons Inspections in order to ensure ‘Nuclear Honesty’ long into the future,” the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

Vice President JD Vance has been handling the negotiations with Iran to end the military conflict started by the United States and Israel at the end of February. Vance said earlier today that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency would be allowed to enter Iran. The inspectors could be in the country as soon as Monday, according to the Washington Post.

READ MORE: Large Majority of Americans Say Iran Conflict Should End, Hasn’t Met Any of Trump’s Goals

Trump’s wording, however, is somewhat hard to parse. When he says “everyone is fully aware,” is Trump referring to Vance’s Monday announcement that had been widely reported? Or is Trump attempting to cast doubt, suggesting Iran may somehow be pulling a fast one, allowing inspections to provide cover for a weapons program?

Either way, the allowing of weapons inspectors into Iran is similar to what former President Barack Obama’s administration negotiated for in 2015. The Obama-era deal called for IAEA inspectors to make sure Iran was complying with the deal, and was not developing nuclear weapons. But in 2018, after Trump ended the agreement, Iran started to block IAEA inspectors from parts of their nuclear program. Since then, IAEA inspectors do not know the status of Iran’s enriched uranium, according to the Washington Post.

One year ago from Monday, the U.S. struck Iranian sites believed to hold stockpiles of enriched uranium. Since then, Trump has claimed that the strike “completely and totally obliterated” the country’s nuclear enrichment facilities, however, this has never been verified. Even at the time, the Pentagon said that Iran’s nuclear program had only been “degraded…by two years.” Trump’s national intelligence director testified prior to the strike that there was no evidence that Iran’s existing nuclear program was meant to build weapons, according to the Military Times.

Iran has long promised not to build or obtain nuclear weapons. In 1970, Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which deemed the country a non-nuclear state.

While Trump has warned that Iran could have a nuclear bomb “within six months,” the first report from the International Atomic Energy Agency since the Iran conflict started says that there has been no major change to the country’s nuclear program, according to Reuters.

Image via Reuters

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Federal Judge Quashes ‘Retaliatory’ Subpoenas Against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

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Six grand jury subpoenas were quashed by a federal judge Wednesday, when it was decided that the subpoenas were filed to retaliate against Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s administration and the city governments of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the District of Minnesota made his ruling public on Monday, granting the motion requested by the Minnesota officials to quash grand jury subpoenas related to Minnesota declaring itself to be a “sanctuary” state.

Last December, the Department of Homeland Security deployed over 3,000 agents to Minnesota as part of the largest immigration-related operation in the department’s history, Operation Metro Surge. After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by DHS agents, the state of Minnesota as well as the twin cities challenged Operation Metro Surge in court, prompting President Donald Trump to rail against the local officials on social media.

READ MORE: Trump Dangles Another Insurrection Act Threat for Minnesota

Days after Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul filed suit, news reports revealed that the Department of Justice had begun to investigate Walz and Minnesota Mayor Jacob Frey. Trump administration officials said that by not supporting the actions of DHS, Walz and Frey were breaking the law.

The Minnesotan officials argued that the subpoenas were “issued as part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce” them into working with DHS and ICE.

Judge Schiltz found that though grand juries traditionally “have broad investigatory powers,” the subpoenas had exceeded those powers. Schiltz agreed that the subpoenas were in violation of the Tenth Amendment, allowing states some degree of autonomy from the federal government.

Schiltz wrote that he had “no doubt” the subpoenas were issued for the “forbidden purposes” of attempting to “harass” or “coerce” Walz and Frey “into taking official action…. a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process.”

“On the one hand, the evidence that the challenged subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons is overwhelming. On the other hand, the Department has struggled-without success-to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas,” Schiltz wrote, pointing out that the “public record… is replete with direct evidence of the Trump administration—including the highest-ranking officials of the Department—threatening and attempting to punish states and localities that have adopted ‘sanctuary’ policies.”

“To be clear, the Court agrees with the Department that a grand-jury subpoena need not be supported by probable cause. At the same time, a grand-jury subpoena cannot be issued for an improper purpose. The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate,” Schiltz added.

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