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Saturday, December 03, 2022

Watch the skies? No, watch our intelligence agencies and their penchant for disinformation.

Watch the skies? No, watch our intelligence agencies and their penchant for disinformation.

“Call it the buildup to a letdown, as the latest of the required intelligence reports to Congress on the UFO question undergoes a prolonged and likely angst-filled vetting before being delivered to the relevant committees.

A month has passed since its leaked contents were detailed in the New York Times, and still the document has not appeared and it’s not hard to guess why. Its findings will be surprising only to those who imbibed previous official disinformation on so-called UAP, or unidentified aerial phenomena. The most credible and widely trumpeted sightings by Navy pilots now are explained as illusions. Though Chinese surveillance drones do operate in areas where U.S. training flights occur, these are conventional drones, with no unusual capabilities. They aren’t the uncannily speedy, supernaturally maneuverable objects mentioned in previous accounts. 

Oops. But at least Biden officials have become alert to the risks of the defense establishment’s indulgence of the UFO bunco. The belated fessing up, if it comes, arrives just as Reason magazine, under the headline “The Military-UFO Complex,” points out the suspect incentives behind the alien-visitation racket, which started five years ago with the purported “leak” of pilot videos. The author correctly notes also a “creeping weirdness in the Pentagon” on the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena.

Bingo. Last year’s first mandatory intelligence report in what now seems a misdirection claimed several sightings “appear to demonstrate advanced technology.” A procession of current and former officials in the media hinted at secret and disturbing knowledge. The public was listening, with academics speculating that the long history of such now-validated sightings means aliens have been among us for decades if not millennia. America’s allies and adversaries were listening too, and reasonably wondered if our military pilots were actually recording encounters with secret U.S. super-capabilities that might tip the military balance.

A year ago NASA’s Bill Nelson was enjoying the frolic, telling the press, “Who am I to say that planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours?” More recently, he seems to have recognized that matters were getting out of hand and launched a NASA research project with the implicit purpose of delivering to the American people the non-hysterical truth that our intelligence agencies, for some reason, were withholding.

READ MORE BUSINESS WORLD

The UFO Bubble Goes Pop

The UFO Bubble Goes Pop

The UFO Bubble Goes Pop

Zero-Covid and Xi Jinping’s Deal With the Devil

Zero-Covid and Xi Jinping’s Deal With the Devil

F ormer Obama CIA chief John Brennan, who by now should be recognized as a reliable font of disinformation, told a podcaster two years ago that the evidence indicated “some type of phenomenon that . . . constitutes a different form of life.” If the Times is right, he and colleagues have known this was bunk all along. UFOs were a smokescreen. At best, their motive may have involved wanting to conceal their knowledge of Chinese spying techniques. But don’t dismiss the possibility that they see a Putinesque benefit in keeping Americans bamboozled and susceptible to manufactured panics and conspiracy theories.

The New York Times itself, after the cockpit videos surfaced in 2017, became a giddy and credulous purveyor of UFO disinformation. In its latest reporting debunking the phenomenon, it now cites a “long history of the U.S. government using speculation over conspiracy theories to prevent secrets from becoming widely known.”

Quite a change in tone, but then the UFO kerfuffle has much in common with the FBI and intelligence community campaign to promote the false Russia collusion story. It has much in common with the convoluted efforts of former FBI chief James Comey to turn false piffle masquerading as “Russian intelligence” into the secret but widely leaked justification for his improper actions in the Hillary Clinton email case.

Finally the real danger comes into view, and it’s not aliens or even Chinese or Russian possession of super-advanced technology. It’s intelligence officials who think their job includes promoting false and tendentious information to the American public for their own purposes. The representative spy of our time really is Britain’s Christopher Steele, presumably trained by MI6 in both information and disinformation techniques. It was only the latter that he peddled to his private clients, including the FBI and the Clinton campaign, in the collusion hoax.“

Watch the skies? No, watch our intelligence agencies and their penchant for disinformation

Watch the skies? No, watch our intelligence agencies and their penchant for disinformation.

“Call it the

Friday, December 02, 2022

Herschel Walker gets brutal news from member of his OWN party

Biden pushes South Carolina as first primary state, elevates Georgia and Michigan - The Washington Post

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Biden pushes South Carolina as first primary state, elevates Georgia and Michigan

The tectonic decision to radically remake his party’s presidential nominating calendar for 2024 came as a shock to party officials and state leaders who had been lobbying hard to gain a place in the early calendar

President Biden, speaking at a news conference during French President Emmanuel Macron's state visit, is asking the DNC to radically remake the party’s presidential nominating calendar for 2024. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News)
President Biden, speaking at a news conference during French President Emmanuel Macron's state visit, is asking the DNC to radically remake the party’s presidential nominating calendar for 2024. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News)


President Biden has asked leaders of the Democratic National Committee to make South Carolina the nation’s first primary state, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada a week later, and hold subsequent weekly primaries in Georgia and Michigan, according to Democrats briefed on the plans.

The tectonic decision to remake his party’s presidential nominating calendar for 2024 came as a shock to party officials and state leaders who had been lobbying hard in recent weeks to gain a place in the early calendar, which historically attracts millions of dollars in candidate spending and attention. While many in the party had long anticipated changes, the specific order Biden proposed had generated little if any chatter in Democratic circles. Much of the talk among Democrats had not focused much on either South Carolina going first or Georgia joining the early mix.

The proposal is likely to win approval from the Democratic officials, given the support from the leader of the party. By breaking with decades of tradition, Biden’s move is meant to signal his party’s commitment to elevating more variety — demographic, geographic and economic — in the early nominating process. Iowa, a largely White state that historically held the nation’s first Democratic caucus and experienced embarrassing problems tabulating results in 2020, would have no early role in the Biden plan.

“We must ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window,” Biden wrote in a letter to members of the Rules and Bylaws Committee that was delivered Thursday evening, as members planned to meet for dinner. “As I said in February 2020, you cannot be the Democratic nominee and win a general election unless you have overwhelming support from voters of color — and that includes Black, Brown and Asian American & Pacific Islander voters.”

Race was at the center of a heated discussion in the Democratic presidential primary debate on Feb. 7, 2020. (Video: Mahlia Posey/The Washington Post)

The new calendar would run through states that were pivotal to Biden’s victory in the 2020 nominating fight and general election, suggesting he is serious about following through on his public statements about intending to seek reelection. In the Thursday letter, Biden told fellow Democrats that he did not want to bind the party to the same calendar in 2028.

“The Rules and Bylaws Committee should review the calendar every four years, to ensure that it continues to reflect the values and diversity of our party and our country,” he wrote.

The plan is expected to face resistance from some of the affected states. Democrats in New Hampshire said Thursday night that they would not abide Biden’s wishes. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, has also said he would follow state law and hold his state’s primary a week before any other.

“The DNC did not give New Hampshire the first-in-the-nation primary and it is not theirs to take away,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said in a statement. “This news is obviously disappointing, but we will be holding our primary first. We have survived past attempts over the decades and we will survive this.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) called the Biden recommendation “tremendously disappointing.” Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) said in a statement that it was “deeply misguided.”

Iowa Democrats also signaled resistance to the plan. “This is merely a recommendation,” said Scott Brennan, Iowa’s representative on the Rules and Bylaws Committee. “We’re going to stand up for Iowa’s place in the process.”

Democrats will need Republican support in Georgia to move that state’s primary earlier in the calendar. In Nevada, a Republican governor will be sworn into office next month, potentially complicating efforts to move the date in that state. The Republican Party has already committed to the traditional order for 2024, allowing four states to go before all the others: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

In rules passed this summer, Democrats gave their chair the power to strip delegates, debate access and data access from candidates who campaign in unsanctioned states. The chair also has the power to unseat state delegations from the nominating convention if they defy party rules.

“This is a principled decision. Fundamentally, he felt that this was an opportunity,” said one Biden adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to more openly describe the president’s decision to prioritize states with more diverse electorates. “He has done it with the Supreme Court. He has done it with his Cabinet and his administration. He just felt it was very important.”

The Michigan delegation greeted the news as a success.

“This president knows that any road to the White House has to go through the heartland of America,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who had helped to lead her state’s bid. “To me this has been a 30-year quest,” she said, referring to her work with the late Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to get the state on the early calendar.

South Carolina Democrats also welcomed the news.

“It appears as though President Biden is not only transforming our country,” Trav Robertson, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, wrote in a text message. “He’s transforming the way in which we nominate presidents. He is going to have a lasting impact on America.”

The plan must be ratified by the Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is meeting Friday and Saturday at a Washington hotel, and then approved by the full Democratic National Committee in February, Democratic officials said.

In recent weeks, Biden has personally spoken with officials from Nevada, New Hampshire and Michigan about his plans. He spoke Wednesday with the co-chairs of the committee, James Roosevelt Jr. and Minyon Moore, about his thinking, Democratic officials said.

Senior Democrats began meeting in public in March to discuss revamping the nominating calendar, after top officials close to Biden made clear their displeasure with the Iowa caucuses, a state that shunned Biden’s campaign and struggled to count results in 2020. Democrats have said they were concerned about the amount of money and effort Democrats were spending in a state that has become less competitive in general elections and does not reflect the diversity of the party and the country. The caucuses, held in the evening during the week, also ensure more limited participation than a primary.

In recent cycles, Iowa has gone first for Democrats, followed by New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Iowa is bound to hold the nation’s first nominating caucus under current state law. In his letter to the committee, Biden said he did not believe caucuses should be allowed in Democratic nominating efforts.

Iowa Democrats have not said whether they will move forward with the first-in-the-nation caucus with Republicans if they are kicked out of the nominating order by their party. They could also hold a nominating caucus, which they currently plan to conduct by mail, after the rest of the country joins the nominating process.

Earlier this year, party officials adopted guidelines for revamping the calendar that would prioritize states that commit to hold primaries, demonstrate general-election competitiveness and are demographically diverse. They also set a goal to include at least one state from New England, the South, the Midwest and Western regions of the country. But they also acknowledged that Biden’s view would figure prominently in their final decision. Sixteen states and Puerto Rico ultimately made presentations to Democratic officials about why they should go early in the process.

Democrats in Michigan say they will be able to move the primary date, given their complete control of state government. Nevada Democrats are also optimistic they will be able to control their primary date, despite the election of a new Republican governor who will take office next year. The decision marked a letdown for Democrats in Minnesota who had campaigned aggressively to be chosen over Michigan as the Midwestern replacement for Iowa.

“I got into politics because of civil rights and the possibility to change our imperfect union into something better,” Biden wrote to the committee Thursday. “For fifty years, the first month of our presidential nominating process has been a treasured part of our democratic process, but it is time to update the process for the 21st century.”


Biden pushes South Carolina as first primary state, elevates Georgia and Michigan - The Washington Post

Opinion | What Ron DeSantis and the Rest of the G.O.P. Can Learn From Marx - The New York Times

What Ron DeSantis and the Rest of the G.O.P. Can Learn From Marx

A T-shirt shows the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, with a microphone and an American flag.
Mark Peterson/Redux

"With their new majority, House Republicans are planning to take on “woke capitalism.”

“Republicans and their longtime corporate allies are going through a messy breakup as companies’ equality and climate goals run headlong into a G.O.P. movement exploiting social and cultural issues to fire up conservatives,” Bloomberg reports. “Most directly in the G.O.P. cross hairs is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is under pressure from the likely House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to replace its leadership after the nation’s biggest business lobby backed some Democratic candidates.”

I wrote last year about this notion of “woke capitalism” and the degree to which I think this “conflict” is little more than a performance meant to sell an illusion of serious disagreement between owners of capital and the Republican Party. As I wrote then, “the entire Republican Party is united in support of an anti-labor politics that puts ordinary workers at the mercy of capital.” Republicans don’t have a problem with corporate speech or corporate prerogatives as a matter of principle; they have a problem with them as a matter of narrow partisan politics.

That the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, railed this week against the “raw exercise of monopolistic power” by Apple, for example, has much more to do with the cultural politics of Twitter and its new owner, Elon Musk, than any real interest in the power of government to regulate markets and curb abuse. (In fact, DeSantis argued in his book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” that the Constitution was designed to “prevent the redistribution of wealth through the political process” and stop any popular effort to “undermine the rights of property.”)

Nonetheless, there is something of substance behind this facade of conflict. It is true that the largest players in the corporate world, compelled to seek profit by the competitive pressures of the market, have mostly ceased catering to the particular tastes and preferences of the more conservative and reactionary parts of the American public. To borrow from and paraphrase the basketball legend Michael Jordan: Queer families buy shoes, too.

Republicans have discovered, to their apparent chagrin, that their total devotion to the interests of concentrated, corporate capital does not buy them support for a cultural agenda that sometimes cuts against those very same interests.

Here it’s worth noting, as the sociologist Melinda Cooper has argued, that what we’re seeing in this cultural dispute is something of a conflict between two different segments of capital. What’s at stake in the “growing militancy” of the right wing of the Republican Party, Cooper writes, “is less an alliance of the small against the big than it is an insurrection of one form of capitalism against another: the private, unincorporated, and family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned.” It is the patriarchal and dynastic capitalism of Donald Trump against the more impersonal and managerial capitalism of, for example, Mitt Romney.

To the extent that cultural reactionaries within the Republican Party have been caught unaware by the friction between their interests and those of the more powerful part of the capitalist class, they would do well to take a lesson from one of the boogeymen of conservative rhetoric and ideology: Karl Marx.

Throughout his work, Marx emphasized the revolutionary character of capitalism in its relation to existing social arrangements. It annihilates the “old social organization” that fetters and keeps down “the new forces and new passions” that spring up in the “bosom of society.” It decomposes the old society from “top to bottom.” It “drives beyond national barriers and prejudices” as well as “all traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproduction of old ways of life.”

Or, as Marx observed in one of his most famous passages, the “bourgeois epoch” is distinguished by the “uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions.” Under capitalism, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at least compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

In context, Marx is writing about precapitalist social and economic arrangements, like feudalism. But I think you can understand this dynamic as a general tendency under capitalism as well. The interests and demands of capital are sometimes in sync with traditional hierarchies. There are even two competing impulses within the larger system: a drive to dissolve and erode the barriers between wage earners until they form a single, undifferentiated mass and a drive to preserve and reinforce those same barriers to divide workers and stymie the development of class consciousness on their part.

But that’s a subject for another day and a different column.

For now, I’ll simply say that the problem of “woke capitalism” for social and political conservatives is the problem of capitalism for anyone who hopes to preserve anything in the face of the ceaseless drive of capital to dominate the entire society.

You could restrain the power of capital by strengthening the power of labor to act for itself, in its own interests. But as conservatives are well aware, the prerogatives of workers can also undermine received hierarchies and traditional social arrangements. The working class, after all, is not just one thing, and what it seeks to preserve — its autonomy, its independence, its own ways of living — does not often jibe with the interests of reactionaries.

Conservatives, if their policy priorities are any indication, want to both unleash the free market and reserve a space for hierarchy and domination. But this will not happen on its own. The state must be brought to bear, not to restrain capital per se but to make it as subordinate as possible to the political right’s preferred social agenda. Play within those restraints, goes the bargain, and you can do whatever you want. Put differently, the right doesn’t have a problem with capitalism, it has a problem with who appears to be in charge of it.

There is even a clear strategy at work. If you can stamp out alternative ways of being, if you can weaken labor to the point of desperation, then perhaps you can force people back into traditional families and traditional households. But no matter how hard you try, you cannot stop the dynamic movement of society. It will churn and churn and churn, until eventually the dam breaks."

Opinion | What Ron DeSantis and the Rest of the G.O.P. Can Learn From Marx - The New York Times

Thursday, December 01, 2022

Appeals Court Scraps Special Master Review in Trump Documents Case - The New York Times

Appeals Court Scraps Special Master Review in Trump Documents Case

"The panel’s decision removed a major obstacle that for more than two months had hindered the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of sensitive government documents.

Former President Donald J. Trump standing a podium during a campaign rally with a screen behind him showing a video of himself and part of an American flag in front of him.
The Justice Department is investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of more than 11,000 documents and photographs that were hauled away from Mar-a-Lago by the F.B.I. in August. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

A federal appeals court on Thursday removed a major obstacle to the Justice Department’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of sensitive government documents by ending an outside review of the records. 

In a strongly worded ruling, the three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit shut down an independent review of thousands of documents seized this summer from Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. That move allowed the government to pursue its inquiry into whether Mr. Trump illegally kept national security records at his Mar-a-Lago home and obstructed the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.

The unanimous but unsigned 21-page ruling was sharply critical of Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s decision in September to intervene in the case, saying she never had jurisdiction to do so. 

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”


Appeals Court Scraps Special Master Review in Trump Documents Case - The New York Times

House Democrats elect Hakeem Jeffries as first Black leader in Congress | House of Representatives | The Guardian

House Democrats elect Hakeem Jeffries as first Black leader in Congress

"New York congressman will assume role of minority leader early next year, inheriting position held for decades by Pelosi

Hakeem Jeffries said his caucus would look for opportunities to work with Republicans, but would also resist extremism ‘whenever necessary’.
Hakeem Jeffries said his caucus would look for opportunities to work with Republicans, but would also resist extremism ‘whenever necessary’. Photograph: José Luis Magaña/AP

House Democrats on Wednesday elected the New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries as their new leader, making him the first Black American to lead a major political party in Congress after Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker, announced that she was stepping aside to pave the way for a new generation.

Jeffries, 52, will assume the role of minority leader when the new Congress is sworn in early next year, inheriting the position held for nearly two decades by Pelosi, a towering figure in Democratic politics who was the first female speaker.

In a show of unity after losing the House but delivering a stronger-than-expected performance in the midterm elections, Democrats unanimously approved Jeffries and two other top leadership positions by acclamation.

Emerging from the closed-door meeting room, the soon-to-be leader declared: “House Democrats fight for the people. That’s our story. That’s our legacy. That’s our values. That’s our commitment.”

The trio of top leaders led by Jeffries will include the Massachusetts congresswoman Katherine Clark, 59, as whip and Pete Aguilar of California, 43, as caucus chair, in charge of messaging. They will take the mantle from three octogenarians: Pelosi and her long-serving deputies, Steny Hoyer of Maryland (majority leader) and James Clyburn, the whip from South Carolina.

“Today is a day of transition and hope and a renewal of the shared values of our caucus,” Clark told reporters.

Hailing the Democratic caucus as a “beautiful mosaic of the country”, Aguilar acknowledged the significance of being a Latino in a leadership role.

“Having an opportunity to help guide this caucus is a great responsibility and I don’t take it lightly,” he said.

The seamless elevation of a new generation of leaders came in stark contrast to the fractured House Republican conference, which has yet to unite around Kevin McCarthy after the weaker-than-expected midterms win. With only a few votes to spare, McCarthy is attempting to shore up enough support to become speaker.

The narrow margin of Republicans’ majority, and McCarthy’s tenuous hold on his caucus, is likely to give Democrats some leverage in negotiations, particularly when it comes to must-pass legislation. Vowing to “get stuff done”, Jeffries said his caucus would look for opportunities to work with Republicans but would “push back against extremism whenever necessary”.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, Pelosi, who has led Democrats since 2003, announced that she intended to pass the torch and would support Jeffries, another barrier-breaking leader.

On Tuesday, House Democrats granted Pelosi the honorific title of “speaker emerita”. Clyburn, now the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, intends to remain as assistant leader to help with the transition. That election, and votes for other leadership posts, will take place on Thursday.

Jeffries is a former lawyer who represents a diverse district in Brooklyn and Queens once represented by Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to serve in Congress. He is known on Capitol Hill as a disciplined tactician with a measured style and a penchant for pop culture references.

In remarks to reporters on Wednesday, Jeffries traced his ascent from the Brooklyn hospital where he was born, the son of a caseworker and a social worker. Moved by what he described as a desire to “advance the ball for everyday Americans”, he first won election to the New York state assembly, where he sat for six years.

Some progressives view Jeffries skeptically as a business-friendly centrist but such concerns were not raised on Wednesday. The vote was a jovial affair, celebrated with “handshakes, high fives and hugs”, Aguilar said.

Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said: “With this new generation of leadership, House Democrats are well positioned to enter the 118th Congress and confront the challenges ahead.”

Jayapal also noted that House Democrats’ top three leaders would for the first time be entirely “women or people of color”.

In his own statement, Hoyer called Jeffries “a skilled consensus-builder, effective legislator, and experienced leader … well equipped to … deliver further results for the people during the 118th Congress and retake the majority in 2024.”

Though Pelosi will remain in Congress, she promised not to be the “mother-in-law in the kitchen”. Asked if the continued presence of Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn might be a burden, Jeffries said the new leaders felt honored to “stand on their shoulders”.

“It’s a blessing that we embrace,” he said."

House Democrats elect Hakeem Jeffries as first Black leader in Congress | House of Representatives | The Guardian

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Trump official FORCED to answer brutal question live on air

Hear what Herschel Walker said about his residency

‘I live in Texas’: Herschel Walker speech adds to Georgia Senate run problems | Georgia | The Guardian

‘I live in Texas’: Herschel Walker speech adds to Georgia Senate run problems

"Republican candidate’s reference to his out-of-state home opens him to same attacks that dogged Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania

Herschel Walker
Herschel Walker: ‘I was sitting in my home in Texas, and I was seeing what was going on in this country.’Photograph: John Bazemore/AP

In a campaign speech earlier this year, Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Georgia, said: “I live in Texas.”

Walker will face the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock, in a runoff next Tuesday, a contest triggered after Warnock won on election day but did not pass 50% of the vote. Polling puts the two candidates near-level, with early voting at record levels.

Control of the Senate has already been decided but victory in Georgia would give Democrats outright control by 51-49.

Endorsed by Donald Trump, Walker has ridden controversies over his business record, alleged encouragement of abortions, family relationships, and more.

A football star for the University of Georgia, he went on to star for the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL. Earlier this month, CNN reported that he was benefiting from a tax break on a Dallas home described as his principal residence.

On Tuesday, CNN returned to the well, reporting that in January, while discussing immigration policy in a speech to Republicans at the University of Georgia, Walker said: “I live in Texas … I went down to the border off and on sometimes.”

Walker also said: “Everyone asks me, why did I decide to run for a Senate seat? Because to be honest with you, this is never something I ever, ever, ever thought in my life I’d ever do. And that’s the honest truth.

“As I was sitting in my home in Texas, I was sitting in my home in Texas, and I was seeing what was going on in this country. I was seeing what was going on in this country with how they were trying to divide people.”

CNN also said Walker gave at least four interviews about his Georgia run from his Texas home.

Republicans have been burned by a similar issue already this year, in another close race vital to control of the Senate. In Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate, John Fetterman, focused on questions about whether his opponent, the TV doctor Mehmet Oz, actually lived in New Jersey. Fetterman ultimately won convincingly.

The US constitution says senators must be 30 years old, a citizen for nine years, and “shall … when elected, be an inhabitant of that state for which he shall be chosen”.

When CNN first reported Walker’s Texas tax break, Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, told the network: “This is more of a political problem than a legal one … where Walker can be painted as a carpetbagger.”

This week, however, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that a legal complaint had been filed, urging “state investigators … to probe whether … Walker violated the law by receiving a tax break on his Texas home meant for primary residents of that state even as he runs for federal office in Georgia”.

The paper noted that Walker registered to vote in Georgia in August 2021, shortly before declaring his candidacy.

Nikema Williams, chair of the state Democratic party, told the AJC Walker may have “lied about being a Georgia resident”.

“Georgians deserve answers,” said US congresswoman said, “and Walker must be held accountable for his pattern of lies and disturbing conduct.”

The Walker campaign did not comment."


‘I live in Texas’: Herschel Walker speech adds to Georgia Senate run problems | Georgia | The Guardian