GlacialTurtle

Remember when Labour claimed "This isn’t factional. We just aren’t insulting voters with piss poor candidates anymore."

WhatsApp group chat has been exposed with Labour MP's and Councillors often posting abusive, ableist, sexist and derogatory comments.

Several MP's, including Health Minister Andrew Gwynne, whose office caseworker had setup the chat, have now been suspended.

Unsurprisingly, the group chat contains lots of ire for the left wing of party (what's left of it anyway...), including the usual thing of naming everyone even marginally to the left of them as "trots" ( short for Trotskyists). Although this is just inline with what was already exposed in the leaked report intended to investigate the handling of antisemitism complaints, before also finding internal emails and WhatsApp group chats that exposed the same sort of racist, sexist, and highly factional abuse from the right wing of the labour party. A literal conspiracy within Labour to deliberately undermine the complaints process, to then use against Corbyn in the media, which included people who had presented themselves as "whistleblowers" against Labours supposed antisemitism.

Gwynne, 50, had managed to dodge most controversies during his near 20-year stint in parliament, although rose to brief fame for calling Boris Johnson a “pillock” on live television in 2017.

The real political danger, it seems, came not from Westminster but from his constituency 200 miles away on the edge of Manchester, where long-simmering Labour party divisions have now burst into the open.

The WhatsApp group where Labour figures posted racist, sexist and homophobic comments was centred on Gwynne’s power base in the town of Denton in Tameside, where he was elected as a local councillor almost 30 years ago at the age of 21.

Labour insiders said the local party’s “toxic” fallouts were well known in the region. They were not surprised that Gwynne’s inner circle was the subject of the highly damaging leaks, which first emerged in the Mail on Sunday.

“You would turn up at an event and they would be slagging off the other side,” said one senior Labour figure in Greater Manchester. “Any time we were in a party setting with Andrew Gwynne and some of those people, they would just be slagging off the people they didn’t like.

“You get a bit of that in politics but they were probably the worst at it in terms of the Greater Manchester scene.”

The Guardian has seen more than 1,000 pages of WhatsApp messages, spanning 2019 to 2022, in which the sacked minister joked about the death of an elderly voter and a cycling campaigner, who he hoped would be “mown down” by a lorry.

He also said someone “sounds too Jewish” and “too militaristic”, apparently from their name alone.

In newly disclosed messages, Gwynne described a constituent as “an illiterate removed” and a fellow councillor as a “fat middle-aged useless thicket”. He called neighbouring MP Navendu Mishra, a “splitter” for forming a group of leftwing Labour MPs in 2022.

The group, named Trigger Me Timbers, was set up by Gwynne’s office caseworker Claire Reid in January 2019. At its height it had 44 members, most of whom were local councillors and activists.

The forum was initially set up to discuss routine party business, such as local events and campaign literature. But it soon turned “nasty”, according to one Labour figure.

The group’s ire was reserved for leftwing Labour activists, whom they refer to more than 100 times as “trots”.

When Christian Wakeford defected from the Conservatives to Labour in January 2022, Ryan – then a local councillor – joked about “all the trots exploding on socials”.

Gwynne said “the nutty wing” of a local party “is going bonkers that we’ve let a Tory have the Labour whip and not Jezza” – a reference to Jeremy Corbyn, who was suspended by the party.

Reid, now a senior official on Labour’s national policy forum, said of the party’s leftwing membership: “Aside from anything else today it’s very good for the internal Party! Hopefully they’ll all leave”, to which Gwynne replied: “Yep.”

While Gwynne and Ryan are the most high profile to be suspended by Labour, Reid and two other senior councillors – George Newton and Jack Naylor – have stepped down from their cabinet positions on Tameside council amid an investigation by party HQ.

Gwynne’s wife, Allison Gwynne, who posted in the group about local children who have “always enjoyed swimming in street rubbish/raw sewage”, is understood to remain in her role as chair of the council’s overview panel – a position she is believed to have been awarded by Labour HQ.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/10/vile-labourwhatsapp-group-exposes-toxic-divisions-in-andrew-gwynnes-power-base

As first revealed by the Mail On Sunday, Gwynne was accused of posting messages containing racist and sexist comments. The cache of thousands of messages spans a period from 2019 to 2022.

Gwynne is also alleged to have sent messages suggesting a local cycling campaigner should be “mown down” by a lorry, and hoping a pensioner who didn’t vote Labour “croaks it” before an election.

[...]

One senior member of the Tameside Labour group said the party was “in chaos” and some were “fuming” at being suspended.

“I know from talking to councillors some of them are fuming because they’re being associated with those vile posts. Just by their suspension it looks like they’ve been involved but they’ve never posted anything on that group,” they said.

“Tameside Labour is in chaos now. We’ve got to consider the position of the leader because she appointed those people [Gwynne’s allies] to cabinet positions just a few months ago, with the blessing of the national party. This is completely untenable.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/11/labour-suspends-12-members-who-joined-offensive-whatsapp-group

Direct link to letter/press release:

https://democraticleader.house.gov/media/press-releases/dear-colleague-rapid-response-task-force-and-litigation-working-group

Original Twitter/X link in case nitter instance fails/goes down:

https://x.com/kenklippenstein/status/1889692684178108688

Dear Colleague:

I write with respect to our ongoing effort to push back against the far-right extremism that is being relentlessly unleashed on the American people.

We are engaged in a multifaceted struggle to protect and defend everyday Americans from the harm being inflicted by this administration. As outlined last week, it’s an all hands on deck effort simultaneously underway in Congress, the Courts and the Community.

In connection with this effort, House Democrats have formally established a Rapid Response Task Force and Litigation Working Group. I have asked Assistant Leader Joe Neguse to chair the Task Force, which will be co-chaired by Reps. Rosa DeLauro, Gerry Connolly and Jamie Raskin. If you are interested in participating, please contact Rep. Neguse or one of the co-Chairs this week.

House Democrats are committed to driving down the high cost of living for everyday Americans. We recognize that there are far too many people in this country struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. That’s not acceptable in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. In this regard, we will continue to solve problems for hardworking American taxpayers in order to improve their quality of life.

Last year, Republicans repeatedly promised to make life more affordable for everyday Americans. Apparently, they didn’t mean it. House Republicans and the administration have done nothing to lower the high cost of living. The cost of groceries is skyrocketing. Meanwhile, Republicans continue to launch far-right attacks on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public safety and the education of our children. The American people are counting on us to stop them.

Thank you for your continued leadership during this perilous moment. Together, we press on for the people.

Sincerely,

Hakeem Jeffries Democratic Leader

Democrats are mad that their base are demanding and expecting them to at least try to do something.

For some reason Axios posted like at least 3 variations of the same story:

https://www.axios.com/2025/02/06/democrats-congress-trump-musk-doge-calls

https://www.axios.com/2025/02/12/democrats-grassroots-groups-moveon-indivisible

Why it matters: Members of the Steering and Policy Committee — with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in the room — on Monday complained activist groups like MoveOn and Indivisible have facilitated thousands of phone calls to members' offices.

• "People are pissed," a senior House Democrat who was at the meeting said of lawmakers' reaction to the calls.
• The Democrat said Jeffries himself is "very frustrated" at the groups, who are trying to stir up a more confrontational opposition to Trump.
• A Jeffries spokesperson disputed that characterization and noted to Axios that their office regularly engages with dozens of stakeholder groups, including MoveOn and Indivisible, including as recently as Monday

Zoom in: "There were a lot of people who were like, 'We've got to stop the groups from doing this.' ... People are concerned that they're saying we're not doing enough, but we're not in the majority," said one member.

• Some Democrats see the callers as barking up the wrong tree given their limited power as the minority party in Congress: "It's been a constant theme of us saying, 'Please call the Republicans,'" said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).
• "I reject and resent the implication that congressional Democrats are simply standing by passively," said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).

The other side: "People are angry, scared, and they want to see more from their lawmakers right now than floor speeches about Elon Musk," Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg told Axios.

• "Indivisible is urging people who are scared to call their member of Congress, whether they have a Democrat or Republican, and make specific procedural asks," Greenberg said.
• "Our supporters are asking Democrats to demand specific red lines are met before they offer their vote to House Republicans on the budget, when Republicans inevitably fail to pass a bill on their own."

Reminder that Richie "I reject and resent the implication" Torres spent the election trying to get the political streamer Hasan Piker banned for antisemitism (read: criticising Israel).

I also remind dipshit Democrat defenders to hold Democrats to account. They ran a failed election campaign. They decided adhering to genocide was more important than winning. This is how they respond to their base expecting literally anything of them, is to resent them and tell them to shut the fuck up and plead there isn't anything they can do so they just have to roll over.

The Democrats are gonna try a brand new strategy they've never done before: cosying up to oligarchs and moving to the """centre""" (read: becoming more right wing than they were already getting)

Excerpts:

In Northern California, Jeffries and Rep. Sam Liccardo, the freshman Democrat who represents part of Silicon Valley, were working to stem further defections and to rally Democratic-leaning donors to their side. To the crowd, which included several major Democratic bundlers, as well as California Reps. Jimmy Panetta, Mike Levin and George Whitesides, Jeffries described his party’s efforts to push back on Trump and outlined their campaign to retake the House in 2026, according to four people who attended the event and were granted anonymity to describe a private meeting.

“The singular focus was — how do we ensure Silicon Valley remains with Democrats,” said one of the people who participated, “because, right now, Silicon Valley is feeling very purple.”

Jeffries’ appearance was the Democratic leader’s first Silicon Valley swing after the 2024 election and in the run-up to the midterm elections — an early overture at a meeting where no donation was required to attend. And it was no accident he trekked to the nation’s tech capital. In Washington, Democrats in recent days have been lacing into Musk as he wreaks havoc on the federal government, viewing him as a more polarizing — and less popular — foil than Trump. But the moneyed tech world that Musk hails from is critical to Democrats’ fortunes in 2026.

“There is a significant fear that these tech folks, who have been with us for a long time, will say, ‘fuck it, we’re going with the other guys,’” said Alex Hoffman, a Democratic donor adviser who works with donors across the country but did not attend the event. “These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they’re not.”

Democrats are “trying to mend fences and they’re also trying to keep them in the tent,” Hoffman added.

[...]

High-dollar donor frustration — and the problem it presents for Democrats — isn’t limited to California. Across the country, “the mood is tense” among Democratic donors, said another top Democratic fundraiser, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly.

Democrats are on their heels as Trump steamrolls the government, seemingly unchecked. “Everyone wants to know: What can you do about what I just saw Trump do on TV, and why did we end up here?” the fundraiser said.

In Silicon Valley, Jeffries did not independently raise tech issues, despite facing a room anxious to hear how Democrats might approach AI and crypto policies in the next Congress, several people who attended said. A second person who attended the event said they were frustrated that much of Jeffries’ comments focused on Trump.

“When will we move off this posture of complaining and moaning about Trump,” the person said. “What positive ideas will Democrats offer to people to bring people back in?”

That person said Jeffries has time to assuage Democratic-leaning tech leaders and “reestablish strong ties with the tech community.” However, the attendee said, “there’s work that needs to be done, and that begins with an acknowledgement that this last campaign was not their best work.”

[...]

The group included several top tech executives, including DocuSign CEO Allan Thygesen, Box CEO Aaron Levie, Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar and Cooper Teboe, a major Democratic donor adviser in Silicon Valley. Robert Klein and Danielle Guttman Klein, major Democratic donors, hosted it at their home in Los Altos Hills.

In his remarks, Jeffries concentrated on how Democrats planned to retake the House in 2026. He said Democrats were reaching toward the center, while Trump will swing harder right, according to the first attendee, who took notes on the presentation. Jeffries also highlighted how California Democrats helped the party net two more House seats in 2024, as well as the role the state will play in their efforts to flip the House, according to the fourth person who was in the room.

He also told the crowd that Democrats needed to pick their fights. It’s a mantra Jeffries has invoked before, comparing the party’s strategy to the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge, who is “not going to swing at every pitch,” the Democratic leader said.

Also notable that even rich donors have more willingness to suggest Democrats ran a bad campaign than your average r/politics or .world user.

Excerpts:

The Israeli army intensively bombarded residential areas in Gaza when it lacked intelligence on the exact location of Hamas commanders hiding underground, and intentionally weaponized toxic byproducts of bombs to suffocate militants in their tunnels, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call can reveal.

The investigation, based on conversations with 15 Israeli Military Intelligence and Shin Bet officers who have been involved in tunnel-targeting operations since October 7, exposes how this strategy aimed to compensate for the army’s inability to pinpoint targets in Hamas’ subterranean tunnel network. When targeting senior commanders in the group, the Israeli military authorized the killing of “triple-digit numbers” of Palestinian civilians as “collateral damage,” and maintained close real-time coordination with U.S. officials regarding the expected casualty figures.

Some of these strikes, which were the deadliest in the war and often used American bombs, are known to have killed Israeli hostages despite concerns raised ahead of time by military officers. Moreover, the lack of precise intelligence meant that in at least three major strikes, the army dropped several 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs that killed scores of civilians — part of a strategy known as “tiling” — without succeeding in killing the intended target.

“Pinpointing a target inside a tunnel is hard, so you attack a [wide] radius,” a Military Intelligence source told +972 and Local Call. Given that the army would have only a vague approximation of the target’s location, the source explained, this radius would be as large as “tens and sometimes hundreds of meters,” meaning these bombing operations collapsed multiple apartment buildings on their occupants without warning. “Suddenly you see how someone in the IDF really behaves when given the opportunity to wipe out an entire residential block — and they do it,” the source added.

[...]

In January 2024, a spokesperson for the Israeli army told +972 and Local Call in response to a previous investigation that it “has never used and does not currently use byproducts of bomb deployment to harm its targets, and there is no such ‘technique’ in the IDF.” Yet our new investigation reveals that the Air Force conducted physio-chemical research on the effect of the gas in enclosed spaces, and the military has deliberated over the method’s ethical implications.

Three Israeli hostages — Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman, and Elia Toledano — were definitively killed by asphyxiation as a result of a Nov. 10, 2023, bombing that targeted Ahmed Ghandour, a Hamas brigade commander in northern Gaza. The army told their families that, at the time of the bombing, it was unaware that hostages were being held near Ghandour. However, three sources with knowledge of the strike, which was led by the Shin Bet, told +972 and Local Call there was “ambiguous” intelligence indicating that hostages might be in the vicinity, yet the attack was still authorized.

According to six sources, this was not an isolated case but one of “dozens” of Israeli airstrikes that likely endangered or killed hostages. They described how the military command greenlighted attacks on the homes of suspected kidnappers and the tunnels from which senior Hamas figures were directing the fighting.

While attacks were aborted when there was specific, definitive intelligence indicating the presence of a hostage, the army routinely authorized strikes when the intelligence picture was murky and there was a “general” likelihood that hostages were present in the vicinity of a target. “Mistakes definitely happened, and we bombed hostages,” one intelligence source said.

Israel’s efforts to maximize the chances of killing senior militants hiding underground also included attempts to crush parts of a tunnel network and trap the targets inside. Sources described incidents where vehicles fleeing an attack site were bombed without specific intelligence about who was inside, based on the assumption that a senior Hamas figure might be trying to escape.

“The entire region felt and heard the explosions,” Abdel Hadi Okal, a Palestinian journalist from Jabalia who witnessed several major Israeli bombing operations — which Palestinians often refer to as “fire belts” — during the early weeks of the war, told +972 and Local Call. “Entire residential blocks were targeted with heavy missiles, causing buildings to collapse and fall on top of each other. Ambulances and Civil Defense vehicles were unable to contend with the scale of the bombardment, so people had to use their hands and some light equipment to pull bodies from under the rubble of houses. There was no possibility for anyone to survive.”

Excerpt:

Elon Musk’s DOGE team is targeting the Department of Labor, as Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX are under multiple labor investigations by federal agencies.

The scheduled meeting at DOL this afternoon, an initial step in gaining access to the department’s IT systems, has drawn protests from employees arguing that DOGE's incursions at the behest of Musk are unaccountable and threaten workers’ rights. Officials at more than a half-dozen agencies have raised concerns internally that Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)'s actions are illegal, flouting checks on executive branch power.

• In November, SpaceX argued in federal court that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional, a case joined by Amazon. The NLRB, created in 1935, is an independent agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act and decides labor complaints.

• Musk’s companies are facing enforcement actions from a slew of federal agencies, as followed by the nonprofit Public Citizen in its Corporate Enforcement Tracker, many of them over labor protections.

• At the NLRB, Tesla faces seven cases alleging unfair labor practices that would cover more than 140,474 employees. Tesla is also under investigation by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), part of the DOL, regarding a workplace death in an Austin, Texas factory.

• At the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Tesla is amid a civil investigation regarding workplace retaliation and racial discrimination at a California factory, where Black employees allege they were subjected to racial slurs and other harassment.

• SpaceX has 10 open cases with the NLRB covering 9,500 employees, and is litigating a complaint that it illegally fired workers who signed letters criticizing Musk.

Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen, says DOGE’s sights on the Labor Department looks like “a billionaire CEO's attempt to seize the means of worker protection.”

“Is Elon Musk so afraid of the cases SpaceX and Tesla face from OSHA, EEOC, and the NLRB that he is willing to corruptly interfere with law enforcement?,” said Claypool. “If so, the reality that the Trump administration is serving the super rich while screwing workers could not be made clearer.”

Some people evidently need reminding concerning the recent attempts, yet again, at certain dipshits deflecting to voter blaming rather than holding people in power accountable for their own decisions and actions.

Excerpt:

Weeks before, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the administration delivered their most explicit ultimatum yet to Israel, demanding the Israel Defense Forces allow hundreds more trucksloads of food and medicine into Gaza every day — or else. American law and Biden’s own policies prohibit arms sales to countries that restrict humanitarian aid. Israel had 30 days to comply.

In the month that followed, the IDF was accused of roundly defying the U.S., its most important ally. The Israeli military tightened its grip, continued to restrict desperately needed aid trucks and displaced 100,000 Palestinians from North Gaza, humanitarian groups found, exacerbating what was already a dire crisis “to its worst point since the war began.”

Several attendees at the November meeting — officials who help lead the State Department’s efforts to promote racial equity, religious freedom and other high-minded principles of democracy — said the United States’ international credibility had been severely damaged by Biden’s unstinting support of Israel. If there was ever a time to hold Israel accountable, one ambassador at the meeting told Tom Sullivan, the State Department’s counselor and a senior policy adviser to Blinken, it was now.

But the decision had already been made. Sullivan said the deadline would likely pass without action and Biden would continue sending shipments of bombs uninterrupted, according to two people who were in the meeting.

Those in the room deflated. “Don’t our law, policy and morals demand it?” an attendee told me later, reflecting on the decision to once again capitulate. “What is the rationale of this approach? There is no explanation they can articulate.”

Soon after, when the 30-day deadline was up, Blinken made it official and said that Israelis had begun implementing most of the steps he had laid out in his letter — all thanks to the pressure the U.S. had applied.

That choice was immediately called into question. On Nov. 14, a U.N. committee said that Israel’s methods in Gaza, including its use of starvation as a weapon, was “consistent with genocide.” Amnesty International went further and concluded a genocide was underway. The International Criminal Court also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister for the war crime of deliberately starving civilians, among other allegations. (The U.S. and Israeli governments have rejected the genocide determination as well as the warrants.)

The October red line was the last one Biden laid down, but it wasn’t the first. His administration issued multiple threats, warnings and admonishments to Israel about its conduct after Oct. 7, 2023, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killed some 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages.

Government officials worry Biden’s record of empty threats have given the Israelis a sense of impunity.

Trump, who has made a raft of pro-Israel nominations, made it clear he wanted the war in Gaza to end before he took office and threatened that “all hell will break out” if Hamas did not release its hostages by then.

On Wednesday, after months of negotiations, Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire deal. While it will become clear over the next days and months exactly what the contours of the agreement are, why it happened now and who deserves the most credit, it’s plausible that Trump’s imminent ascension to the White House was its own form of a red line. Early reports suggest the deal looks similar to what has been on the table for months, raising the possibility that if the Biden administration had followed through on its tough words, a deal could have been reached earlier, saving lives.

“Netanyahu’s conclusion was that Biden doesn’t have enough oomph to make him pay a price, so he was willing to ignore him,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute who’s focused on U.S.-Israel relations and a former official with the Palestinian Authority who helped advise on prior peace talks. “Part of it is that Netanyahu learned there is no cost to saying ‘no’ to the current president.”

[...]

For this story, ProPublica spoke with scores of current and former officials throughout the year and read through government memos, cables and emails, many of which have not been reported previously. The records and interviews shed light on why Biden and his top advisers refused to adjust his policy even as new evidence of Israeli abuses emerged.

Throughout the contentious year inside the State Department, senior leaders repeatedly disregarded their own experts. They cracked down on leaks by threatening criminal investigations and classifying material that was critical of Israel. Some of the agency’s top Middle East diplomats complained in private that they were sidelined by Biden’s National Security Council. The council also distributed a list of banned phrases, including any version of “State of Palestine” that didn’t have the word “future” first. Two human rights officials said they were prevented from pursuing evidence of abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.

If your response to Trumps recent claims around Gaza are to gloat about how Trump is bad and therefore it's voters fault, you do not and never did care about Palestinians.

If you cared, you would have supported the uncommitted movement in telling Biden and Harris to change policy on Gaza, whose actions were already committing genocide against Palestinians.

If you cared, you would be holding people in power to account over their unbridled support for genocide, and the people who decided committing genocide was more important than listening to their own conscience and their own voter base on the issue.

If you cared, you would not exclusively use the lives of people who were already murdered by the previous administration as some moral cudgel against the people who actually advocated for their lives, their families, and their rights because you're mad that Democrats failed to turn out votes in their favour.

8 months ago, I was told Gaza was irrelevant, no one cares about foreign policy, the issue would go away, everyone who mentions it is some russian disinfo china bot spreading anti-Democrat propaganda. I was told the uncommitted movement asking for something as simple as having a Palestinian American speaker at the DNC, who as a condition of speaking would essentially endorse Kamala on stage, in return for even the slightest hint of movement on Gaza and the unconditional support for Israel to that point, was actually a sabotage campaign being secretly waged to undermine Democrats.

You do not, after the election, have the moral nor intellectual standing to now performatively voter shame about how it's everyone else fault except the people in power who actually decide how to campaign and what policies to pursue and advocate for.

A Palestian-American advocating a cease-fire and a stop to the literal genocide was a step too far for Democrats and their campaign strategy. What wasn't a step too far? Committing the actual genocide, and inviting speakers who proudly boast about their fathers being in the Contras.

Thread from Ro Khanna announcing Democrats completely fucked the recent vote for the NLRB, leading to loss of a Democratic majority that could have continued for 2 years into the Trump admin.

Due to an unforced error by Democrats, we lost the National Labor Relations Board majority two years earlier than expected. This is a huge setback for the hundreds of thousands of workers across this country organizing for a better contract. Let me explain.

The NLRB is America's leading labor law enforcement agency. In the last 3 years, union petitions have doubled because we have a strong NLRB that supports workers who choose to form unions, ensures that corporations allow free and fair union elections, and protects union workers

The term of our previous NLRB Chair, Lauren McFerran, just expired on December 15th. She was eligible for reconfirmation alongside a Republican, who'd be paired with her. This would've secured a 3-2 Democratic majority on the NLRB for the first two years of Trump's second term. @BernieSanders did the right thing. He cleared her nomination on August 6, but the Dems fumbled it.

On the morning of the 11th, Senate Democrats had a chance to move McFarren's nomination vote through – which would've led to a secondary vote to confirm. Senator Vance, Roberts, and Manchin were absent that morning. But we delayed the vote (for what I'm hearing described as "no reason") until Vance and Manchin returned, deadlocking the vote at 49-49.

We then failed to get word to Vice President Harris quickly enough to come and deliver the tie-breaking vote. In the 90 minutes that transpired, Senator Manchin returned first, swinging the vote in the other direction and ceding the NLRB to MAGA control two years earlier than necessary. These procedural blunders have massive implications for the American people, who deserve better from their elected officials. American workers deserve an explanation.

It will hurt the young folks organizing at Starbucks and the workers organizing at Amazon. It’s inexcusable and inexplicable that we did not prioritize confirming the NLRB appointees like we do federal judges and have ceded the Board two years before we needed to.

For paywall: https://archive.is/WJqah

Hey, remember when in 2020 any issue he had speaking was JuSt A StUtTeR? How you should ignore decades of public speaking and interviews and how they looked nothing like the severity and number of problems he was having on stage during primaries and speeches? Remember the terrible debate with Trump this year that anyone could have felt was liable to happen if they weren't sticking their head in the sand the entire time?

Excerpts:

To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.

Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.

Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.

Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden’s case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.

Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public. “They body him to such a high degree,” a person who witnessed it said, adding that the “hand holding” is unlike anything other recent presidents have had.

The White House operated this way even as the president and his aides pressed forward with his re-election bid—which unraveled spectacularly after his halting performance in a June debate with Donald Trump made his mental acuity an insurmountable issue. Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the Democratic ticket and was decisively defeated by Trump in a shortened campaign—leaving Democrats to debate whether their chances were undercut by Biden’s refusal to yield earlier.

This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.

[...]

The president’s slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, the president couldn’t recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble. Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.

[...]

Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.

They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides.

Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.

The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.

If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,” the former aide recalled the official saying.

[...]

During the 2020 campaign, Biden had calls with John Anzalone, his pollster, during which the two had detailed conversations.

By the 2024 campaign, the pollsters weren’t talking to the president about their findings, and instead sent memos that went to top campaign staff.

Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him, according to the people.

People close to the president said he relied on Mike Donilon, one of Biden’s core inner circle advisers. With a background in polling, Donilon could sift through the information and present it to the president. Bates said that Biden stayed abreast of polling data.

But this summer, Democratic insiders became alarmed by the way Biden described his own polling, publicly characterizing the race as a tossup when polls released in the weeks after the disastrous June debate consistently showed Trump ahead. They worried he wasn’t getting an unvarnished look at his standing in the race.

Those fears intensified on July 11, when Biden’s top advisers met behind closed doors with Democratic senators, where the advisers laid out a road map for Biden’s victory. The message from the advisers was so disconnected from public polling—which showed Trump leading Biden nationally—that it left Democratic senators incredulous. It spurred Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to speak to Biden directly, according to people familiar with the matter, hoping to pierce what the senators saw as a wall erected by Donilon to shield Biden from bad information. Donilon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

To get around pay wall: https://archive.is/RHuUy

Excerpts:

While Palestinians are officially prohibited from entering, the reality is more severe than a simple exclusion zone. "It's military whitewashing," explains a senior officer in Division 252, who has served three reserve rotations in Gaza. "The division commander designated this area as a 'kill zone.' Anyone who enters is shot."

A recently discharged Division 252 officer describes the arbitrary nature of this boundary: "For the division, the kill zone extends as far as a sniper can see." But the issue goes beyond geography. "We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists," he says. "The IDF spokesperson's announcements about casualty numbers have turned this into a competition between units. If Division 99 kills 150 [people], the next unit aims for 200."

These accounts of indiscriminate killing and the routine classification of civilian casualties as terrorists emerged repeatedly in Haaretz's conversations with recent Gaza veterans.

[...]

Haaretz has gathered testimonies from active-duty soldiers, career officers, and reservists that reveal the unprecedented authority given to commanders. As the IDF operates across multiple fronts, division commanders have received expanded powers. Previously, bombing buildings or launching airstrikes required approval from the IDF chief of staff. Now, such decisions can be made by lower-ranking officers.

"Division commanders now have almost unlimited firepower authority in combat zones," explains a veteran officer in Division 252. "A battalion commander can order drone strikes, and a division commander can launch conquest operations." Some sources describe IDF units operating like independent militias, unrestricted by standard military protocols.

'We took him to the cage'

The chaotic reality has repeatedly forced commanders and fighters to face severe moral dilemmas. "The order was clear: 'Anyone crossing the bridge into the [Netzarim] corridor gets a bullet in the head,'" recalls a veteran fighter from Division 252.

"One time, guards spotted someone approaching from the south. We responded as if it was a large militant raid. We took positions and just opened fire. I'm talking about dozens of bullets, maybe more. For about a minute or two, we just kept shooting at the body. People around me were shooting and laughing."

But the incident didn't end there. "We approached the blood-covered body, photographed it, and took the phone. He was just a boy, maybe 16." An intelligence officer collected the items, and hours later, the fighters learned the boy wasn't a Hamas operative – but just a civilian.

"That evening, our battalion commander congratulated us for killing a terrorist, saying he hoped we'd kill ten more tomorrow," the fighter adds. "When someone pointed out he was unarmed and looked like a civilian, everyone shouted him down. The commander said: 'Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist, no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone's a terrorist.' This deeply troubled me – did I leave my home to sleep in a mouse-infested building for this? To shoot unarmed people?"

Similar incidents continue to surface. An officer in Division 252's command recalls when the IDF spokesperson announced their forces had killed over 200 militants. "Standard procedure requires photographing bodies and collecting details when possible, then sending evidence to intelligence to verify militant status or at least confirm they were killed by the IDF," he explains. "Of those 200 casualties, only ten were confirmed as known Hamas operatives. Yet no one questioned the public announcement about killing hundreds of militants."

Interesting look at some of the details and examining the potential causes of the particular timing of the purges and show trials.

Excerpt:

The circumstances surrounding the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the leader of the Communist Party in Leningrad, remains disputed. Some historians such as Robert Conquest have argued that General Secretary Joseph Stalin was behind the killing, often relying on circumstantial evidence such as the fact that officials like the Ukrainian Grigory Petrovsky and the Georgian Sergo Ordzhonikidze were supportive of Kirov heading a collective leadership, thereby potentially posing a threat to Stalin.^2^ Ultimately, the motives are to a certain degree irrelevant. Rather, the murder of Kirov permitted a rapid acceleration of the state’s effort at suppression of perceived enemies. On the night of 1 December 1934, the very same evening as Kirov’s death, the Soviet government swiftly passed an anti-terrorism law. This legislation in turn severely limited civil and judicial rights, mandated that investigations had to be completed within 10 days and that the accused were only to be informed of their trial 24 hours in advance with no legal aid, and that appeals were not to be allowed and that death sentences had to be carried out immediately.^3^

The enactment of new laws on the back of the Kirov murder in turn laid the foundation for what would become the Terror. While it did not reach its peak until 1937, arrests and trials were already beginning to take place. As early as 1935, in the newly created milieu, old leaders from the Democratic Centralists and the Workers’ Opposition were imprisoned, though not executed.^4^ While it can be argued that because many of those arrested were not killed it was technically not part of the Terror, the fact of the matter is that the processes cannot be cleanly separated. Some, like Old Bolshevik Avel Yenukidze, were merely demoted and reassigned in 1935, yet he was in fact later executed in 1937. Ultimately, the killing of Kirov and the immediate passage of new judicial mechanisms meant that the framework became rapidly more intense. As such, a decree from 7 April 1935 extended all penalties, including execution, to 12 year olds.^5^ This radicalization was not meant to necessarily target children but rather pressure Stalin’s opponents such as figures like Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, both of whom had children.

It is hereby necessary to address what may appear to be a discrepancy. Though the Terror can trace its immediate origins to late 1934 and early 1935, it remains the case that 1935-6 witnessed a decrease in state coercion. Andrey Vyshinsky, who was the prosecutor in Moscow Show Trials and served as Procurator General of the Soviet Union, admitted to Stalin and Molotov in a letter from April 1936 that 30-35% of convictions for agitations and counterrevolutionary activities (roughly 800 cases examined) were ‘incorrect.’^6^ This was in keeping with his calls for greater reforms to legal procedures more generally. However, this, along with the declining incarceration rate for political crimes in those years, signify a quantitative decrease, not a qualitative change. Critiques such as that by Vyshinsky, which also included attacks on NKVD practices and calls for greater tolerance of ordinary citizens’ criticisms as long as it didn’t attack fundamental policy, may represent an internal political struggle. Namely, it is very well possible that this criticism was voiced in order to enhance the standing of his own agency; one way would be to limit the power of police and in turn strengthen judicial powers.

Unintended Side Effect of Industrialisation

The work edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick has shown convincingly that the timing of the Terror is intimately intertwined with the pressures that surrounded the Second Five Year Plan. In short, managers were unable to keep up with the exact targets in the Second Five Year Plan, despite being less intense than those of the First Plan. This in turn resulted in the falsification of records as self-protective measures in order to hide issues they were facing. The unraveling of these coverups beginning in 1936 resulted in a crackdown on what Moscow perceived to be a large-scale ‘conspiracy.’

This can be seen when examining individual factories or cities like Sverdlovsk where an attempt to cover shortfalls can account for part of the state’s persecution of regional party elites. The year 1936 emerged as a crucial point in time, since it saw a slight economic downturn, which in turn led to state authorities investigating, in turn producing a cycle of arrests and denunciations. The causes for the initial decline have multiple roots, including bad weather that hurt agriculture, a decline in new capital investment, and the labor force already being stretched to the limit while problems from previous years were accumulating.^7^ Similarly, in the case of more industrialized areas, shortages in raw materials prevented machine-building factories from keeping up production, which in turn affected other industries. With the 1936 investment plan being raised 9.5% over 1935 despite the target for cost being reduced by 11%, systematic coverups became harder to conceal.^8^

In general, Moscow cared more about cracking down when production was down, thereby making 1936 a particularly sensitive year and consequently causing the Terror to occur during the latter half of the 1930s. This obsession with clamping down during economic downturns was built into the Soviet system. For example, the Commissions for Party and Soviet Control was created as a response to failures of grain collection yet by the time it was set up in 1934, the worst of the famine was over and crackdowns were not as intense as they otherwise might have been.^9^

Action, Reaction

If the Terror is to be defined as a period of state persecution, as led by the police and the NKVD, then it is important to remember that these agencies were often reacting to events rather than initiating them. This was especially true for accidents that took place in the workplace. According to a typist for the railroad workers’ union in Simferopol, if “there was a train accident, sabotage had to be traced, and a wrecker had to be found.”^10^ The fact that arrests were often massively concentrated in one particular place (e.g. an office or a factory) suggests that this was not about causing fear, especially if a majority were arrested. For example, in the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, 70% of journalists and writers and 80% of party and government leaders were arrested.^11^ As a result, in some places for some professions, there were little to no arrests –i.e. it could not have been intended to cause widespread fear. Consequently, some of these mass arrests should be understood as not part of a systematic campaign under a single banner of ‘the Terror’ but rather locally produced sudden explosions of underlying tensions.

This is similarly true when examined on a macro-scale. For example, despite similar climate and topography, Kazakhstan was far more affected than Uzbekistan. As such, when attributing a cause, it is necessary to define it at times more narrowly, i.e. why did the Stalinist Terror happen when it did in a specific location? In some cases, it was not so much that it was a Stalinist Terror as opposed to simply local officials going to extremes. In the case of Turkmenistan, by the beginning of September 1937, sleep deprivation and beatings were common with detentions becoming even more arbitrary, such as men arrested for having long beards.^12^ The fact that this was later condemned in an internal memo by Stalin in September 1939 highlights the fact that local terrors could at times have local causes that would not elucidate the situation for the entirety of the Soviet Union.