Raw Story

Tim Walz's sister is trying to correct the record after a group purporting to be Nebraska-based family members of Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate staged a picture this week in which they all wore shirts saying, "NEBRASKA WALZ'S FOR TRUMP."

Former President Donald Trump called the photo a "great honor" and repeated the claim at a Wednesday night town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

It turns out that, although Nebraska is indeed the state where Walz grew up, the people posing in that photo are distant relatives.

According to The Associated Press, a spokesperson for Charles Herbster, who previously ran for governor of Nebraska with Trump's endorsement but lost the primary amid allegations of groping, said the relatives in the photo were "descendants of Francis Walz, who was brother to Tim Walz’s grandfather.”

ALSO READ: Why Trump’s Arlington controversy is actually a crime

"Walz’s sister, Sandy Dietrich, of Alliance, Nebraska, said she suspected it might be people from that branch of the family. Dietrich and Walz’s father, James Walz, died of lung cancer in 1984 when the future congressman and Minnesota governor was just a teenager. His father had been the school superintendent in Valentine, Nebraska," noted the report.

“We weren’t close with them," Dietrich said. "We didn’t know them.”

She said her side of the family is firmly in the "Democrats for Tim" camp.

Walz, a veteran of the Army National Guard who previously served as a teacher and a championship-winning assistant football coach before being elected to Congress and the governor's mansion in Minnesota, has been a target of right-wing opposition research ever since being named as Harris' running mate, but the hunt to find scandals to pin to him hasn't been going well.

In one of the most recent such opposition releases, Walz's brother, who is not supportive of his campaign, cited as an example of his lack of "character" the fact that he used to get carsick when he was a kid.

U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) is under fire over video of him baselessly telling students women and doctors would “crush” the “skull” of babies just minutes before they are born, if abortion were legal, apparently at nine months, or starve them to death immediately after. The secretly recorded video, reportedly recorded and leaked by a student, is going viral.

“…you crush a baby’s skull,” Scott says in the video (below), which has received over 400,000 views in under four hours. “A baby that would be born healthy and alive at nine months, two minutes before, okay, it could be crushed and killed,” Scott can be heard saying in the video, remarks very similar to ones he has made before. NCRM has not verified the authenticity of the video or its context, which was posted to social media by attorney and MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski.

Senator Scott, the wealthiest U.S. Senator, is the former governor Florida, an attorney, and the former head of a hospital corporation that plead guilty in the largest health care fraud case at the time in history. He is running for re-election after winning his 2018 race by a mere 10,033 votes, a tiny margin of about 0.12 percent.

“On top of that, all the Democrats have voted to say that a baby born healthy and alive can be allowed to [be] put in the corner and starved itself to death,” he can also be heard saying in the video. Filipkowski says Scott was “speaking to a college class and I got this from a student.”

In a May interview with Politico, Sen. Scott said Democrats “want to crush a baby’s skull at nine months, and they want to leave a healthy baby born alive in the corner to die.”

He also said he would sign an abortion ban if it were at 15 weeks.

Florida Politics reports Scott is leading his Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, by just three or four points in the latest polls, and calls his position “vulnerable.”

ALSO READ: Something broke Trump’s brain

MSNBC‘s Steve Benen earlier this year wrote, “Before becoming a far-right politician, Scott led a company called Columbia/HCA, which faced a federal fraud investigation over Medicare. As the FBI’s investigation advanced, Scott resigned as CEO, though he nevertheless faced considerable scrutiny — including an infamous civil deposition in which the Republican asserted his Fifth Amendment rights 75 times.”

“Scott’s former company ultimately pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and was fined $1.7 billion. It was, at the time, the biggest Medicare fraud case in American history,” according to Benen. “Though the article is no longer online, The Miami Herald reported in 2010 that federal investigators ‘found that Scott took part in business practices at Columbia/HCA that were later found to be illegal — specifically, that Scott and other executives offered financial incentives to doctors in exchange for patient referrals, in violation of federal law, according to lawsuits the Justice Department filed against the company in 2001.'”

Wednesday on MSNBC, Murcarsel-Powell told MSNBC that Rick Scott “has been proudly saying” he supports an abortion ban, and called him “one of the most extreme senators” on abortion.

“Florida is in play,” Mucarsel-Powell said.

“Shameful the lies that people like Rick Scott are willing to tell to hold on to power. Infuriating,” wrote Democratic former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill.

“This is demented,” remarked Salon’s Heather Digby Parton.

“These freaks and weirdos really, really hate women. Abortion bans are absolutely rooted in hatred of women,” observed Democratic communications strategist Laura Chapin.

Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist and author Laurie Garrett asked: “What psycho horror movie alternate reality is this man living in?”

Watch the video below or at this link.

A New Yorker who sent thousands of threatening phone calls to members of Congress was sentenced to prison Tuesday, federal prosecutors said.

Ade Salim Lilly, of Queens, was sentenced Tuesday to 13 months in prison and three years of supervised release, prosecutors in Washington, D.C. said in a news release.

Authorities said Lilly threatened to kill a Congressional staffer and unleashed a "campaign of pervasive harassing communications" against lawmakers.

Lilly pleaded guilty May 30 to interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure and repeated telephone calls.

ALSO READ: The real reason corporate media won't cover Trump's attacks on democracy

Court documents showed Lilly made 12,000 calls for about 21 months beginning in February 2022 to about 54 offices in Congress across the country, both in district offices and offices in the nation's capital. Of those, about half were to offices in Washington, D.C.

Most of the calls were answered by staffers or interns, and in some of them, Lilly became enraged, using vulgar and harassing language, authorities said. Lilly tried to disguise his calls and at one point threatened to kill or harm one of the people who answered.

"I will kill you, I am going to run you over, I will kill you with a bomb or grenade," he told the employee.

A New Yorker who sent thousands of threatening phone calls to members of Congress was sentenced to prison Tuesday, federal prosecutors said.

Ade Salim Lilly, of Queens, was sentenced Tuesday to 13 months in prison and three years of supervised release, prosecutors in Washington, D.C. said in a news release.

Authorities said Lilly threatened to kill a Congressional staffer and unleashed a "campaign of pervasive harassing communications" against lawmakers.

Lilly pleaded guilty May 30 to interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure and repeated telephone calls.

ALSO READ: The real reason corporate media won't cover Trump's attacks on democracy

Court documents showed Lilly made 12,000 calls for about 21 months beginning in February 2022 to about 54 offices in Congress across the country, both in district offices and offices in the nation's capital. Of those, about half were to offices in Washington, D.C.

Most of the calls were answered by staffers or interns, and in some of them, Lilly became enraged, using vulgar and harassing language, authorities said. Lilly tried to disguise his calls and at one point threatened to kill or harm one of the people who answered.

"I will kill you, I am going to run you over, I will kill you with a bomb or grenade," he told the employee.

A Michigan judge ruled Tuesday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must remain on the ballot in that state, even after he suspended his campaign in there and threw his support behind former President Donald Trump.

The environmental lawyer and conspiracy theorist suspended his independent campaign last month and vowed to take himself off the ballot in every battleground state, to avoid stealing votes from Trump.

In Michigan, Kennedy sued and asked to remove his name from the ballot after Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said it was impossible for minor party candidates to withdraw.

"Minor party candidates cannot withdraw, so his name will remain on the ballot in the November election," Cheri Hardmon, senior press secretary for Benson, told Axios in a statement last week.

ALSO READ: Dem leaders keep shrugging off Moms for Liberty — even as Trump keeps grooming them

RFK sued on Friday and said the election could the 2024 election "could be drastically changed, and the electorate's votes diminished and rendered invalid, if the Michigan Bureau of Elections places a name on a ballot for an individual that withdrew' from the race, Axios reported.

However, Michigan Court of Claims Judge Christopher Yates ruled in favor of the secretary of state, and said elections are "not just games, and the Secretary of State (SOS) is not obligated to honor the whims of candidates for public office."

The news won't come as a surprise to many experts.

Analysts have said Kennedy cannot take himself off the ballot in Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin due to various state laws and passed deadlines.

In Wisconsin, the state's Elections Commission voted that Kennedy could not be removed from the ballot.

Donald Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), has been drawing widespread criticism not only for his attacks on "childless cat ladies" and "childless Democrats" who have decided against having children, but also, for his insensitivity to couples who have struggled with fertility. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris' running mate, and his wife Gwen Walz have been calling Vance out.

Gwen Walz, during an "Educators for Harris-Walz" event on August 30, commented, "Now, I read that JD Vance said he was really disturbed by teachers who don't have biological children. Well, for a long time, Tim and I were teachers who struggled with infertility, and we were only able to start a family because of fertility treatments. So, this is really personal for me, and I think it is for millions of Americans. We do not take kindly to folks like JD Vance telling us when or how to start our families."

Trump, meanwhile, has responded to the IVF controversy by campaigning on free IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatments for women — a proposal that The Guardian's Arwa Mahdawi slams as "desperate" and "half-baked" in a biting September 3 column.

ALSO READ: Something broke Trump’s brain

"While it may be half-baked, Trump's free IVF policy makes it clear that he is desperate to woo female voters," Mahdawi argues. "Women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every U.S. presidential election since 1980, and now — for obvious reasons — they are leaning heavily towards Kamala Harris. I'm not sure a last-minute IVF policy is going to cancel out the fact that abortion rights are a key issue in this election and Trump has boasted about being the guy who overturned Roe v. Wade. Nor will it cancel out the fact that Trump is a legally defined sexual predator who can't stop himself from saying every misogynistic thought that creeps into his little head."

According to the New York Times, Vance applauded a series of essays from the Heritage Foundation — creators of the controversial Project 2025 — that included vehement opposition to IVF.

Mahdawi stresses that IVF is incompatible with Republican "fetus personhood" proposals, which means that "Trump seems to be running on a platform where IVF would be free but also effectively illegal."

"Free IVF may sound like a progressive policy on the surface," Mahdawi writes, "but for many on the right, it is linked to a belief that women are nothing more than baby-making machines designed to pass on the legacy of men. A future Donald J. Trump Insemination Institute may not be as far-fetched as it sounds."

Arwa Mahdawi'sfull column for The Guardian is available at this link.