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Democratic Senators Now ‘Daring’ Republicans to Block IVF Protections: Report

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Democratic Senators led by U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) will ask unanimous consent on Wednesday to pass legislation to protect in-vitro fertilization (IVF), after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos are “children.” Immediately following that ruling, some medical facilities that offer IVF services paused those practices over fear they could be prosecuted.

“I warned that red states would come for IVF, and now they have. But they aren’t going to just going to stop in Alabama,” Senator Duckworth said Tuesday during a press conference announcing the legislation, The Hill reported. “Mark my words. If we don’t act now, it will only get worse.”

Many House and Senate Republicans quickly came out to claim they support IVF after the Alabama ruling, some at the direction or urging of Donald Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), despite having voted for legislation that claims human life begins at conception. Because IVF can involve discarding frozen embryos, discarding them could put fertility clinics and physicians at risk, under the Alabama ruling.

Senator Duckworth has a PhD in human services and is the first U.S. Senator to give birth while serving in office. She “had her two daughters via IVF,” Axios reports, and “says that under Alabama’s ruling, her doctor’s decision to discard her non-viable embryos with her consent would’ve potentially been considered manslaughter or murder.”

READ MORE: ‘Conspiring With Putin’: Democratic Congressman Brings the Hammer Down on Jim Jordan

Over the past two years Sen. Duckworth has supported or sponsored legislation to protect IVF and “other assisted reproductive technology (ART) services.”

On Tuesday Duckworth announced “she’ll seek unanimous consent tomorrow in Senate on her bill to protect the right to IVF nationwide,” reports CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane. “She is quite noticeably daring Republican US Senators to attempt to block it.”

CNN reports, “The Life at Conception Act – which was introduced in January 2023 by GOP Rep. Alex Mooney of West Virginia and has 125 total Republican sponsors in the House, including House Speaker Mike Johnson – defines the term ‘human being’ to include ‘all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.'”

In one of numerous examples of incongruence between their stated claims and voting record, CNN adds that “GOP Rep. Michelle Steel of California, who represents a Biden-won swing district, was one of the Republicans who came out quickly on social media to express support for IVF and share her own struggles with infertility. She also said she opposes any federal restrictions on the procedure.”

“But Steel is also a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act — which Democrats have been quick to point out. Steel’s office has not yet returned a request for comment on how she squares those two positions, nor have other House Republicans who expressed support for IVF while being co-sponsors of the House bill.”

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Republicans have been “scrambling to contain the fallout” after the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, Reuters reported.

“Recent polls conducted by Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, who worked in the Trump White House, and shared with Reuters showed widespread support for IVF and fertility treatments, even among those who oppose abortion,” Reuters added. “According to Conway’s firm, 85% of all respondents and 86% of women support increasing access to fertility-related procedures and services for individuals facing challenges in conceiving, including 78% of people who consider themselves anti-abortion and 83% of evangelicals.”

In 2022, U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) killed Sen. Duckworth’s legislation to protect IVF, after objecting to it being passed by unanimous consent.

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‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

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General Mark Milley, one of then-President Donald Trump’s top generals who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the Republican presidential nominee is “fascist to the core” and there is no one in America who has ever posed more of a threat to the nation.

Milley, appointed by Trump in 2019, served as the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Armed Forces until his retirement last year. His remarks appear in Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, “War,” The Independent reports.

After the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Gen. Milley requested a meeting with incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland, “to urge him to investigate domestic violent extremism and far-right militia movements.”

“According to Woodward, a senior Department of Justice lawyer said at the time that Milley’s sit-down with Garland might have been the first-ever meeting between a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the country’s top civilian law enforcement official. He writes that the general asked for the meeting because he was ‘deeply convinced’ that Trump remained ‘a danger to the country’ even though he had been forced from office after Biden’s election win.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

Later, in March of 2023, Milley spoke directly to Woodward, telling him that “no one has ever been as dangerous to this country” as the former president.

Milley had talked to Woodward about Trump for a previous book, “Peril,” but apparently his concerns had grown stronger since then.

“Do you realize, do you see what this man is?” Milley asked the veteran journalist. “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.”

“A fascist to the core,” the General declared.

The Guardian adds that Milley “fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.”

“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues,” Woodward writes. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”

Former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, according to Woodward, has vowed to hold Milley “accountable.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

In 2021, Woodward’s book “Peril” revealed Milley acted to ensure Trump could not misuse the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley took steps to prevent then-President Donald Trump from misusing the country’s nuclear arsenal during the last month of his presidency, according to a new book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa obtained by NBC News,” the news organization had reported.

The book “recounted a phone conversation Milley had with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, which Pelosi blamed on an ‘unhinged’ Trump. Pelosi said in January that she spoke to Milley about ‘preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.'”

“‘I can guarantee you, you can take it to the bank, that there’ll be, that the nuclear triggers are secure and we’re not going to do — we’re not going to allow anything crazy, illegal, immoral or unethical to happen,’ Milley told her, according to a transcript of the call obtained by the authors.”

“The president alone can order the use of nuclear weapons. But he doesn’t make the decision alone. One person can order it, several people have to launch it.”

READ MORE: ‘Dangerous’: Musk Laughing at Idea of ‘Puppet’ Kamala Harris Being Killed Sparks Fury

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Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

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Billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who purchased the social media platform Twitter and renamed it X, is “all in” on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, The New York Times reports. X has “reportedly worked with Donald Trump’s campaign to censor material that could be harmful to the former president’s White House chances as part of a pattern of election interference that is unprecedented in U.S. history,” according to The Daily Beast.

Musk, The Times reports, “seen over the weekend jumping for joy alongside former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa., is now talking to the Republican candidate multiple times a week.”

Video (below) shows Musk wore a black “Make America Great Again” cap with the words “Never Surrender” embroidered on the side and praising the ex-president’s actions during the attempted assassination.

The relationship between Musk and Trump “has proved significant in other ways. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

The reporter, Ken Klippenstein, whose work often focuses on national security issues, published the document because “it’s of keen public interest in an election season.”

Klippenstein last month called his ban “political,” and wrote: “It’s been widely reported that my suspension from X (Twitter) is only temporary. Those reports are false. My ban from X, the company says, is permanent.”

The New York Times’ Aric Toler writes: “Trump’s campaign worked with Musk/Twitter to implement a blanket ban on sharing the link to the Vance dossier.” NBC News’ Kevin Collier adds, “Per NYT, X’s crackdown on Ken Klippenstein and the Iran-hacked Vance doc came after the Trump campaign reached out. Well within each party’s right, but this is the exact same thing Musk, Trump, and the right threw a yearslong fit about over Hunter Biden.”

Journalist Steve Mullis notes, “It’s crazy that this is a single paragraph in the NYT’s Elon Musk story. Given that there were congressional hearings accusing Biden and Democrats of doing this sort of thing, this should be its own huge story.”

Musk, The Times adds, “has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election,” and “relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44 billion and has used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and to insult its candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The Times’ article ends with this: “Online, Mr. Musk has painted a dark picture of what would happen if Mr. Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Mr. Musk personally. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged ‘trashing Kamala nonstop’ and being all in for Mr. Trump.”

“If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, ‘how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?'”

Democratic strategist Matt McDermott writes, “Doesn’t seem to be enough appreciation for the fact that it’s entirely reasonable to assume that Elon Musk is going all in on Trump because he’s worried about a federal probe into corporate corruption + election interference and knows Trump will shut down an investigation.”

The Times notes that Musk “is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used.”

READ MORE: ‘Dangerous’: Musk Laughing at Idea of ‘Puppet’ Kamala Harris Being Killed Sparks Fury

The Times does not include news from August related to Musk’s super PAC, America PAC.

Attorney Jay Kuo alleged on Substack, “Elon Musk’s PAC Is Harvesting Voter Data.”

“The America PAC is using fraudulent techniques to obtain highly personal information from voters in swing states,” Kuo wrote, pointing to a CNBC “explosive report on how Elon Musk’s America PAC is defrauding voters through online ads. As the report explained, Musk’s Trump-aligned PAC is running a scheme that pretends to register people to vote. But in many cases, the PAC simply collects higher personal information from users that it can later use to retarget them.”

According to The Washington Post, some of Musk’s foreign backers in his $44 billion purchase of Twitter include Billionaire investor Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud ($2 billion) and The Qatar Investment Authority ($375 million). Buzzfeed News in 2022 referred to them as “countries that have historically restricted freedom of speech.”

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“What’s even more telling is that America PAC only collects this personal information from users residing in swing states, such as Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. For anyone else, it actually does assist them with registering to vote,” Kuo wrote. “It’s possible that America PAC simply ‘messed up’ badly by forgetting to actually redirect users in swing states to voter registration sites after scraping their personal information. In so doing, however, it has made it abundantly clear that it treats swing state users very differently than non-swing state ones. In exposing its own operations this way, it has raised a more troubling question: Is Musk involved in improper data harvesting and planning to improperly influence the election, just like we saw in 2016?”

READ MORE: ‘Trafficking in Nazi Race Science’: Trump Blasted After ‘Vile Trifecta’ of Antisemitism

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Trump Stands Silently for ‘God Bless the USA’ Then Trashes Detroit to Detroit Economic Club

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Donald Trump gave what was billed as a speech on economic policy Thursday afternoon at the Detroit Economic Club, but he spent a good portion of his time focused on attacking the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene, attacking his Democratic presidential opponent Vice President Kamala Harris, attacking the city of Detroit, appearing to be unaware foreign auto manufacturers build cars in the U.S., announcing one of his daughters is expecting, and standing silently for several minutes for his own theme song, “God Bless the USA,” “like it was the national anthem,” according to one reporter.

“The whole country is going to be like—you want to know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” Trump said, referring to Vice President Harris. “You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”

The city’s Democratic mayor, Mike Duggan, hit back: “Detroit just hosted the largest NFL Draft in history, the Tigers are back in the playoffs, the Lions are headed to the Super Bowl, crime is down and our population is growing. Lots of cities should be like Detroit. And we did it all without Trump’s help.”

READ MORE: ‘On January 20’: Trump Exploits Hurricane Milton to Rally Floridians for Votes

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel commented, “This guy is calling us ugly and then asking us out on a date. Detroit and the rest of Michigan is ready to show Trump the exit when we overwhelmingly elect @KamalaHarris president.”

Michigan State Senator and Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow added: “As a proud elected representative of tens of thousands of Detroiters: Fuck this guy. Don’t come back.”

David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator had a different take on Trump’s remarks:

“Not only is this politically tone deaf, it’s something else. Can you tell me what it is? Can you tell me what he is saying when he says the whole country will be like Detroit, the city with the highest percentage of black residents of any in the U.S., if you elect the black woman to be president? Could it be racism?”

Trump also declared the American auto industry is going out of business.

READ MORE: ‘Sick’: Dem Mom Who Lost Son to Gun Violence Horrified to See Herself in Anti-Harris Ad

ClickOnDetroit reports that “Trump also falsely claimed that his administration had the highest job numbers during his speech in Detroit. The unemployment rate fell slightly lower under President Joe Biden — to 3.4% early last year, the lowest in a half-century, below 3.5% before the pandemic under Trump.”

Trump did offer some economic remarks, including wanting to make interest on car loans tax deductible.

Former Chief Economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers Ernie Tedeschi responded to the news (via Trump’s prepared remarks): “Add this to the list of Trump’s policies that will raise your cost of living. If the after-tax cost of financing a car becomes cheaper, that savings will be at least partially capitalized in the price of the car itself.”

He also vowed to impose massive tariffs.

“I will impose whatever tariffs are required — 100 percent, 200 percent, 1,000 percent,” he said, according to Washington Post White House economics reporter Jeff Stein.

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READ MORE: Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

 

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