Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone dives into the details of the shocking domestic terror plot unveiled this week, in which a white supremacist was arrested with a hit list of prominent Democrats and journalists:
What is the source of Hasson’s anger? Later in the email quoted by prosecutors he writes: “Liberalist/globalist ideology is destroying traditional peoples esp white. No way to counteract without violence.” He appears to be advocating a race war: “Much blood will have to be spilled to get whitey off the couch. For some no amount of blood will be enough. They will die as will the traitors who actively work toward our demise.”
In a separate email draft quoted in the detention memo, Hasson describes himself as “a long time White Nationalist, having been a skinhead 30 plus years ago before my time in the military.” In this letter, as quoted by prosecutors, Hasson uses a variant of the N-word to describe the increasing diversity of the American Northwest and declares: “We need a white homeland as Europe seems lost.”
At the Miami Herald, Charles Duncan highlights a new report on the surge of hate groups in America:
“Surging numbers of hate groups. Rising right-wing populism and antisemitism. Mounting acts of deadly domestic terrorism. Increasing hate crimes. Exploding street violence. That was the landscape of the radical right in 2018,” the SPLC writes.
“White supremacists’ angry energy metastasized in the two weeks leading up to the midterm elections, when three radical right terrorist attacks and one failed attempt at a mail-bombing spree shook the country, leaving 15 dead,” according to the SPLC.
Will Bunch writes about Justice Thomas and his attack of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan:
If threats and physical bullying doesn’t chill press freedom, the idea that the president of the United States could, at some future date, sue the New York Times over stories he doesn’t like, like this week’s report on his alleged efforts to interfere in federal probes of him and his allies, is downright terrifying. Donald Trump and Clarence Thomas long for an America where powerful people like them cannot be held accountable.
On a separate topic, The Daily Beast asked each 2020 campaign about election security and guess who refused to pledge not to use stolen materials:
Nearly three years after hacked materials upended the 2016 presidential campaign, every Democratic candidate running for the White House has pledged not to knowingly use such material should they end up being published during the current election cycle.
Only one 2020 campaign declined to make such a commitment: President Donald Trump’s
On the Mueller report, Matt Steib walks through scenarios if it is released next week, as rumored:
For #resistance types hoping for a damning report, there’s some inverse logic at work: the less damaging Mueller’s findings are, the more likely we are to see the bulk of them. “If the White House determines that the special counsel’s report contains no finding or conclusion that the president engaged in any unlawful conspiracies — what the White House refers to as ‘collusion’ — they might view the disclosure of the report to affirm their repeated messaging about the investigation and therefore to be in their political interest,” David Laufman, a former Department of Justice official who oversaw the Clinton email investigation, told Vanity Fair.
On a final note, at USA Today, the editors highlight the scandal of dangerous housing for military families and call for action:
And the Pentagon and Congress should make sure that no money appropriated for housing improvement is diverted to build a southern border wall under President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration last week. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said that's unlikely. A Pentagon spokeswoman told us it won't happen.
It should be out of the question. The bare minimum America owes its troops is the assurance that their families won't be sickened by the base housing they call home.