Lawyers, Trump and money: Ex-president spends millions in donor cash on attorneys as legal woes grow.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s political fundraising machine is raking in donations at a prodigious pace, but he’s spending tens of millions of dollars he’s bringing in to pay attorneys to deal with the escalating costs of the various criminal cases he is contending with as he moves further into the 2024 presidential campaign.
Campaign finance experts say using the money to pay for lawyers in cases not related to the campaign or officeholder duties appears to conflict with a federal ban on the personal use of donor dollars, even though the Federal Election Commission has ruled the prohibition doesn’t apply to so-called leadership political action committees. The massive amount of money going to lawyers also amplifies the urgency Trump is feeling to raise money both for the campaign and his legal defense, which is unfolding on multiple fronts.
Trump’s Save America political action committee has paid nearly $37 million to more than 60 law firms and individual attorneys since January 2022, Federal Election Commission records show. That amounts to more than half of the PAC’s total expenditures, according to an Associated Press analysis of campaign finance filings, and represents a staggering sum compared to other political organizations.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-lawyers-millions-payments-2024-campaign-2e06de2a8a90b3752e7758dfea56a509
Donors spending millions on Trump's legal battles
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-6299850
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-republicans-fundraising-indictment/
Trump dominates 2024 GOP cash race.
Former President Trump entered October with nearly triple as much cash on hand as any of his Republican rivals, according to his public filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Why it matters: Trump's robust campaign war chest underscores the tough path forward for GOP rivals vying to puncture his commanding lead.
Nearly 37% of all of the money brought in by the Republican 2024 candidates who qualified for the Septemeber debate went to Trump, according to FEC filings.
DRIVING THE NEWS: TRUMP ALSO MAINTAINS A STRONG GRASSROOTS EDGE OVER HIS GOP RIVALS, WITH THE MAJORITY OF HIS FUNDRAISING COMING FROM SMALL-DOLLAR DONORS, THOSE UNDER $200.
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/18/trump-2024-campaign-cash-funding-election
Republicans Declare Banning Universal Free School Meals a 2024 Priority.
AS STATES ACROSS THE COUNTRY MOVE TO MAKE SURE STUDENTS ARE WELL FED, REPUBLICANS HAVE ANNOUNCED THEIR INTENTION TO FIGHT BACK.
States across the country are moving to provide universal free school meals to all our children. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to stop them from doing just that.
The Republican Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members) on Wednesday released its desired 2024 budget, in which the party boldly declares its priority to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, from the School Lunch Program. Why? Because “CEP allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/173668/republicans-declare-banning-universal-free-school-meals-2024-priority
Republicans are denying free school lunch to low-income students (while at the same time asking low income supporters for donations...)
Republican elected officials at both the state and federal level are actively working to block students from receiving free or reduced-price school lunches — meals that experts say are key to reducing childhood hunger in the United States.
Alaska, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Texas all declined to participate in the Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer program, which was created earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic to give low-income families extra money to purchase food when schools are closed. Because those states are not participating in the program, millions of low-income students from those seven Republican-controlled states won’t get $120 this summer to spend on groceries, Pluribus News reported. Officials in the states said it was too much work to distribute the extra food aid.
“The reality is the requirements of the P-EBT program are labor intensive for both school districts and DPHHS,” the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services said in a statement in June after a local television station reported that the state would no longer be participating in the P-EBT program.
Meanwhile, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu denied a request from state lawmakers to automatically sign up students for free and reduced-priced meals if they were eligible rather than have their families be required to find the information themselves and sign up.
And last summer, Missouri refused to opt in to a federal program that would have allowed parents of low-income students to pick up meals during the summer when school was out, according to NBC News. The GOP-controlled state was the only state in the country not to opt in to the Summer Food Service Program.
Democratic-controlled states, meanwhile, are passing laws to expand access to free school meals.
https://americanjournalnews.com/republicans-deny-free-school-lunch-low-income-students/
The free school lunch paradox
Studies from around the world show U.S.-supported free school meals improve health, education, and economic development. So why are they at risk of cuts back home?
https://scholar.harvard.edu/rachelsadoff/publications/free-school-lunch-paradox
Republicans Plan to Cut Free School Lunches.
The largest ideological caucus in the House Republican conference is proposing steep cuts to free and reduced school lunch programs nationwide, citing the need to "prevent the widespread fraud present in the program."
Embedded deep in the Republican Study Committee's (RSC) recommended budget released Wednesday night, the plan calls for a series of reforms designed to cut federal funding for school lunches and encourage states to increase their shares of funding for the program—a move the RSC argues will encourage state legislatures to restrict the eligible population receiving school lunch to "truly needy" households.
The decision comes on the heels of the sunset of a widespread expansion of free school lunch programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, a policy decision the federal government said actively proved to reduce childhood hunger.
https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-plan-cut-free-school-lunches-1807361
'Not on My Watch': Dems Vow To Oppose GOP Attack on Free School Meals.
"WHAT'S UP WITH THE GOP'S FETISH FOR PREVENTING HUNGRY KIDS FROM GETTING FED?" ASKED SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN.
Progressive U.S. lawmakers said Thursday that they'll do everything in their power to stop the Republican Party from achieving its stated goal of eliminating a school lunch program that serves low-income communities, which was included in a proposed budget unveiled by the party this week.
Along with making former President Donald Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy permanent and imposing work requirements for recipients of social services up to age 64, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) made clear in its proposed budget on Wednesday that reducing the number of children who receive government-funded meals at school is a policy priority in the coming year.
The document states that the RSC—which counts three-quarters of House Republicans among its members—aims to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from the federal school lunch program, citing the fact that the provision "allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student."
The CEP is available to schools in low-income communities and allows schools to provide free school meals to their entire student population instead of excluding children based on their household income.
The budget makes clear that to the Republican Party, "every wealthy child accidentally fed is a policy failure," said Adam Cisroe Pearson, director of the St. Louis Department of Human Services.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gop-budget-free-school-meals
The race to dethrone small-dollar Don
Republican presidential candidates are trying to rewrite the fundraising playbook.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/28/trump-small-dollar-donor-00099089
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fundraisers-skipping-gop-debate-trump-lays-plans-potential/story?id=105480022
“Gangsters of Capitalism”: Jonathan Katz on the Parallels Between Jan. 6 and 1934 Anti-FDR Coup Plot.
When American Financiers and Business Leaders Plotted to Overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and Install a Fascist Government in the U.S.
https://conspiranon.blogspot.com/2023/11/smedley-butler-and-1930s-fascist-plot.html
Donors spending millions on Trump's legal battles
As Donald Trump's legal woes mount, donors and the Republican party have paid millions in dollars of his legal fees.
His newest legal headache saw him and three of his children hit with a fraud lawsuit, which alleges they lied about the value of property "by billions".
Financial data shows that he has already spent more than $1m (£890,000) of donations fighting the case in 2022.
Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
The latest lawsuit, announced by New York state Attorney General Letitia James, was the culmination of a long-running civil investigation which began in 2019.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62998508
Bonhoeffer (executed by the Nazis in 1945) argued that stupid people are more dangerous than evil ones. This is because while we can protest against or fight evil people, against stupid ones we are defenseless as all attempts at reason fall on deaf ears.
https://youtu.be/ww47bR86wSc
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