With less than three weeks before Election Day and the coronavirus pandemic still raging, Donald Trump wants voters to consider some very important things. Like did Osama bin Laden survive the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on his compound by using a body double, and did former Vice President Joe Biden then order the murder of Navy SEALs to cover that fact up? Did Biden then order the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya to cover that up? Trump boosted that convoluted conspiracy theory twice on Twitter this week, in one case retweeting a QAnon believer and in another retweeting a […]
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Nine immigrant-rights activists who’d been extradited across state lines on misdemeanor charges of trespass and littering gathered outside the Henrico County, Virginia, Sheriff’s Office on Thursday with supporters, waving flags and calling for their charges to be dropped. An hour away in Newport News, Virginia, heavily armed men—some associated with the right-wing “Boogaloo” movement—also gathered outside a police station to protest a misdemeanor trespassing charge against one of their own. Members of the immigrants-rights group, who learned that their cases would not be dropped, were taken inside the Henrico County Sheriff’s Office to process their arrest paperwork. Members of the Boogaloo […]
GREENSBORO, N.C.—When he arrived at the polls to vote for the first time on Thursday, Ricardo Lopez-Salazar was on edge. “On the way over here I was kind of nervous,” Lopez-Salazar, an 18-year old student at Guilford Technical Community College, told The Daily Beast. Soon enough, a Republican poll observer stared directly at him, just days after Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to show up early and often at polling places across America. Under North Carolina law, each party is allowed to have up to two observers in each polling place. Dianne Doughty, a Guilford County GOP volunteer, told The Daily […]
A man was shot dead during rival rallies between far-right groups and Black Lives Matter protesters in Denver on Saturday. The victim, who has not been identified, was rushed to a hospital but succumbed to his injuries a short time later, Denver police confirmed. Two suspects were taken into custody in connection with the shooting, which occurred in the courtyard of the Denver Art Museum. Nearby, hundreds of activists from the far-right and Black Lives Matter had been facing off in dueling demonstrations. The shooting is now being investigated as a homicide, police said. A video said to be taken from […]
A Madison Heights, Michigan, man killed by FBI agents during a still-murky standoff over a weapons warrant. Thirteen other Michigan and Delaware men arrested in state and federal busts over alleged plots to take over the state government. A Maryland man busted on federal weapons charges. A Virginia man arrested for allegedly violating a local open-carry law. At least four state and federal busts—and, in one case, a local arrest—have targeted the so-called “Boogaloo” movement over the past week. A loosely affiliated but broadly right-wing and libertarian collective, Boogaloos have been on federal radar over the past year, a period during […]
The 13 men arrested for allegedly plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and possibly spark a new civil war drank an impressive variety of flavors of far-right, fringe Kool Aid. There was Eric Molitor, a 36-year-old whose Facebook page gushed about 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, the Blue Lives Matter wannabe militiaman accused of killing two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this summer. Molitor now faces state charges of providing material support for terrorist acts and carrying a firearm during the commission of a felony. As The Daily Beast previously reported, he was also apparently a fan of QAnon, the disturbingly mainstream conspiracy […]
MUNITH, MI—Seven Michigan men were arrested Thursday as part of a sprawling right-wing plot allegedly targeting the state’s government and its embattled Governor Gretchen Whitmer in particular. The charges against the men, who allegedly called themselves the “Wolverine Watchmen,” came in tandem with federal charges against six other men in an alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer. The group’s involvement—or lack thereof—with those facing federal charges was murky at the time of the announcements. But social media posts and testimony from neighbors of the “Wolverine Watchmen” suggest they had a disturbing relationship with the far-right paramilitary movement. According to state prosecutors, the […]
The truck-revving, banner-waving, loudspeaker-blaring pro-Trump rally took place, conveniently, on Sept. 19, the first Saturday of early voting in the swing state of Virginia, in a parking lot where voters in Democratic-leaning Fairfax County were lined up to cast their ballots. Some Trump supporters drove circles around the voters while others—many without face masks—mingled with the line, chanting and waving flags. “We had a couple poll observers there that had to actually escort voters in because we saw people that would get to the edge of the parking lot, and see this giant group of Trumpers yelling and screaming,” Jack Kiraly, […]
This is a preview of Right Richter, our newsletter about the extreme right wing. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox, sign up for it here. The election is less than 40 days away. Donald Trump is refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. And now the Trumpworld hunt is on for material that can be used to discredit any election results that show Joe Biden winning the election. On to this week’s newsletter! This week: James O’Keefe and associates circle voter registration groups. Bogus ballot “destruction” story blows up on the right Liberal groups fear election infiltration from […]
LOUISVILLE—Protests over prosecutors failing to indict any cops for the March killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor flared up again here Thursday, even as the city was still picking up the pieces from an explosive night of violence and unrest. Less than 24 hours after Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a conservative Trump ally, declined to charge officers for fatally shooting Taylor, a Black emergency medical worker, during a botched attempt to serve a warrant, activists were out in force in Jefferson Square Park. Dozens cheered as protesters were released from a side door at the Department of Corrections adjacent the square—over 100 […]
LOUISVILLE—On Wednesday night, at least 20 members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, were observed guarding storefronts in downtown Louisville amid sometimes violent unrest over the lack of charges in the police killing of Breonna Taylor. The businesses included Bader’s Food Mart—which is also a Shell gas station—Stewart’s Pawn Shop, and Hampton Inn Downtown Louisville, all at or near the intersection of Jefferson and South 1st Street. All of the businesses, besides the hotel, appeared to be closed at the time. The heavily armed men—many bearing rifles, night-vision goggles, and wearing camouflage—were seen on the roof of Stewart’s Pawn […]
Four people are dead. One criminal trial is pending, while a second will never take place. And amid all that death and uncertainty, the two shooters at the heart of the incidents are enjoying spectacular martyr status on the right. Jake Gardner, an Omaha, Nebraska, bar owner, who shot and killed a Black man during local Black Lives Matter protests in May, died of suicide this week, according to his lawyer. This just days after Gardner was indicted for alleged manslaughter, use of a firearm in commission of a felony, attempted first-degree assault, and terroristic threats in connection with that incident. […]
One hundred days into sometimes chaotic protests over police brutality, with federal agents throwing protesters into unmarked vans and recent political clashes between demonstrators leading to two deaths, even some of Portland, Oregon’s more extreme actors think things are getting out of hand. Now they could get even worse. Portland, a longtime hotbed for political clashes, veered into its latest protest escalation last Saturday, when a pro-Trump coalition, organized by an Idaho man, caravanned into the city. Many came armed with paintball guns or mace, and deployed them against demonstrators on the left, who have been waging their own protests over […]
Even a former member of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security thinks he is batshit, and surrounded by actual racists. It would be funny if some of the stories that former DHS official Elizabeth Neumann told Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this episode on The New Abnormal weren’t so terrifying. She admits that she did “hold her nose” and vote for him in 2016 and really believed he would rise to the occasion. But that dream died super quick—by the end of summer 2017 to be exact. “It was clear he didn’t have a strong enough character to put aside some […]
As Kenosha, Wisconsin, continues to reel from the police shooting of Jacob Blake, residents are increasingly turning their anger to so-called outside agitators who some say invaded the city to sow chaos amongst the protests—and even kill demonstrators. “They [outsiders] tore up our neighborhood, this is our neighborhood, this is where we shop at. These are not Kenosha people,” Lonnie Stewart, 60, told The Daily Beast. “They’re coming to Kenosha, Wisconsin to destroy our city.” Immediately after a Kenosha police officer shot 29-year-old Blake in the back several times as he tried to get into a van with his kids on […]
On April 22, American Gavin Seim caused a minor media firestorm in Mexico when he posted a video on social media showing him flouting COVID-19 restrictions in the city of Santiago de Querétaro. The maskless Seim insisted that the government had no right to close a plaza he was visiting as part of its efforts to limit large gatherings, nor to manage his health. Several media outlets and commentators brushed him off as a disgruntled tourist. The American ambassador to Mexico, Christopher Landau, called him “a spoiled brat and an embarrassment to our country… a perfect example of the ‘Ugly American.’” […]
Members of the so-called “men’s rights” movement want to get one thing straight: while a prominent member allegedly killed a judge’s son, seriously wounded her husband, and was implicated in the killing of another activist, it should not reflect badly on their community. In fact, the most deranged strand of the insular crowd’s alternately panicked and dismissive reaction to a bizarre internal beef spilling out into spectacular murders was the idea that all the shootings were a conspiracy to make men’s rights activists look bad. Roy Den Hollander, 72, is accused of targeting the family of a judge who was presiding […]
A prominent nuclear engineering professor in California with influence over millions of dollars in federal research funds is also a prominent player in Dveri, a far right-wing party in Serbia that publicly supports a convicted war criminal, among other extremist stances. Jasmina Vujic has been on the faculty at the University of California Berkeley since 1992. She formerly served as chair of UC Berkeley’s nuclear engineering department, and is the founding director of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, a key hub for nuclear security research and training, where she directs 50 affiliated faculty members and hundreds of researchers from eight […]
The pro-Trump internet is abuzz about left-wing “antifa”activists’ nefarious plans for the Gettysburg National Cemetery on July 4—even if no one can quite agree on what’s actually going to happen. One theory holds that antifa will burn American flags at the Civil War graveyard, while another centers on a nonexistent plan to desecrate soldiers’ graves. In the most extreme version, antifa is plotting to massacre white people nearby after a celebratory flag-burning—a scheme they’ll supposedly pull off by distracting police with the fireworks that have become omnipresent this summer. Bizarrely, the only event that has actually been advertised is a ridiculously […]
After a week of lusting for conflict in a six-block activist zone in Seattle, far-right figures went and made their own trouble. Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone—or CHAZ, although some newer stylings refer to it as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP—is a small protest area that emerged last week, after police vacated a nearby precinct and city leaders agreed to leave the streets open for Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Almost immediately, figures on the right looked for evidence that the loosely organized protest area was a den of violence and criminality, with President Donald Trump tweeting threats to send […]
What do far-right blogger Michelle Malkin, conspiracy nuts, and Trump’s racist fanboys have in common? They’re “like political herpes”—no matter what you do, they’re always going to reappear, somewhere. In Episode 9 of The New Abnormal, The Daily Beast’s podcast for a world gone off the rails, Rick Wilson explains why he’s avoiding sushi, tea, helicopters, and, perhaps, knives and Molly Jong-Fast mulls over what is going on in Michelle Malkin’s mind, and unexpectedly wins an alt-right prize. Oh, and, of course, they have to talk about the Trump kids creep-tweeting over the weekend. “All this signaling from this weekend [made […]
President Donald Trump’s Saturday morning started like so many of his mornings do: with a very early Twitter tirade. The president praised lockdown protesters harassing a local TV reporter, retweeted a cartoon depicting Rep. Adam Schiff as the Joker, and lauded a video of a right-wing columnist who was shunned by conservatives for supporting a Holocaust denier. In a spree of at least 28 tweets starting Saturday morning, Trump retweeted the video of Michelle Malkin, a former Fox News contributor who has since aligned herself with the most virulent corners of the far-right. In the video, Malkin very loudly complained about […]