Daniel Imperato – Official Website
Daniel Imperato For President 2024
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Former representative Joe Cunningham, D-SC, speaking in Washington, DC, on July 23, 2020. (Caroline Brehman / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
After South Carolina helped propel President Joe Biden’s Democratic primary victory in 2020, he installed the state party’s chairman as head of the national party and successfully pushed party leaders to hold the nation’s first 2024 primary in the Palmetto State.
Now, Biden is getting his thanks: South Carolina’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee last year, whom Biden once endorsed, is helping lead a corporate front group’s 2024 ballot access campaign for a potential third-party “unity ticket” — a dark money effort that Democrats worry could throw the election to Donald Trump.
Joe Cunningham, a former South Carolina congressman and Democrats’ 2022 gubernatorial nominee, recently joined No Labels — a pro-business, outwardly centrist advocacy group — as a national director. He is working on its reported $70 million ballot-access project laying the groundwork for a third-party challenger to Biden.
The move comes after Biden selected South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison to run the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the urging of powerful representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC), whose endorsement was pivotal in helping Biden win the state’s primary and the Democratic nomination in 2020. Biden also convinced committee leaders to reorganize the party’s primary schedule and make South Carolina the first state in the Democratic presidential nominating process next year.
No Labels, Cunningham, the Biden campaign, the DNC, and the South Carolina Democratic Party did not respond to requests for comment from the Lever. A Biden White House spokesperson declined to comment.
Democratic operatives argue the No Labels effort could significantly undermine Biden’s prospects of reelection next year, because the group is specifically trying to appeal to moderates that Democrats relied on to defeat Trump in 2020.
Another major issue, as the Lever reported last month, is that No Labels is a dark money, corporate influence machine — and thanks to a campaign finance law loophole, the organization will likely never have to publicly disclose who’s paying for its ballot access effort, even if the group decides to formally back a presidential candidate in 2024.
Taken together, the No Labels effort raises the prospect of billionaires using their own ballot line to run handpicked, corporatist candidates. Even if the candidates have no shot at winning, their presence could swing elections — and affect policy to the benefit of No Labels’ anonymous donors.
Cunningham was once considered a rising star in the Democratic party — a rare Democrat elected to represent the Charleston area’s gerrymandered 1st congressional district. He won with an endorsement from Biden, who touted Cunningham’s “commitment to put country over party.”
The Blue Dog congressman quickly became a favorite of corporate groups in Washington, but lost his reelection in 2020 after just one term. After winning the Democratic nomination for South Carolina governor in 2022, Cunningham lost by seventeen points.
No Labels effort raises the prospect of billionaires using their own ballot line to run handpicked, corporatist candidates.
“For anyone who thinks that this is the nail in the coffin or that I’m going away, far from that, folks,” he said on election night.
Cunningham didn’t go away quietly: he is now helping lead No Labels’ campaign to create America’s first dark money ballot line in preparation for a bipartisan, third-party unity ticket, which would feature one Democrat and one Republican, or two independents.
“Like many of you, I am extremely disappointed that we seem to be heading towards a rematch of Trump vs. Biden in 2024, and I am desperate for new leadership,” Cunningham said in a statement. “That’s why I am working with No Labels to secure ballot access for a unity ticket — a Democrat and a Republican on the same ticket for president and vice president — to provide Americans with a better choice.”
He separately wrote a column in the Charleston Post and Courier, South Carolina’s biggest newspaper, arguing that the No Labels plan would give voice to voters in the center.
“Just like Republicans, Democrats continue to push away moderate voters,” Cunningham wrote, arguing that “voters in the middle — whether middle-left or middle-right — have virtually no voice and no representation in Washington.”
Two days after Cunningham published his column, his longtime political adviser Tyler Jones tweeted: “For anyone asking/wondering, I’m 100 percent committed to electing Joe Biden and defeating Donald Trump again in 2024.”
Chris Kenney, a donor to Cunningham’s 2022 campaign for governor, wrote his own Post and Courier column calling Cunningham’s decision “reckless.” He noted that the No Labels is courting “suburban swing voters who avoid party primaries but tip general elections in key swing states,” arguing that this would “all but guarantee Trump a second term.”
Cunningham’s decision to work with No Labels infuriated one of his old friends in Washington, the corporate-funded Democratic think tank Third Way, whose team also believes the third-party unity ticket plan would boost Trump. Cunningham was previously involved with a Third Way super PAC before running for governor.
“We were incredibly disappointed by Joe’s decision to endorse the No Labels presidential bid and the way he chose to do it,” Matt Bennett, Third Way’s executive vice president for public affairs, told the Lever. “Their third-party effort has zero chance of success, but it carries an enormous risk of serving as a spoiler and reelecting Donald Trump. There is no greater threat to America than that.”
News of Cunningham’s hire came two months after he launched a new consulting firm offering public affairs, government relations, crisis communications, and brand management. The firm’s website hints of plans to work with corporate clients and “grasstops” coalitions, a moniker generally used to describe fake grassroots efforts or astroturf lobbying.
No Labels is a picture-perfect example of a corporate astroturf group. While the organization characterizes itself as “the voice for the great American majority who increasingly feel politically homeless,” it is a longtime front for billionaires in the private equity, hedge fund, real estate, and oil and gas industries.
During the first two years of Biden’s presidency, No Labels worked closely with conservative Democratic lawmakers to stymie core Democratic Party agenda items, like higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
No Labels has flatly refused to disclose who is financing its 2024 ballot access project.
“We never share the names of our donors because we live in an era where agitators and partisan operatives try to destroy and intimidate organizations they don’t like by attacking their individual supporters,” No Labels says on its website.
During a call with supporters last month, No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson rejected a request from one prospective donor to name the major funders of its ballot access project.
“You don’t in this day and age put your donors out,” she said. “They get harassed, they become news stories, you know, there’s enemies that we have that are out there. I think you’ve all seen it. So we just wouldn’t do it.”
If No Labels does decide to nominate a candidate, it will have to register and start disclosing its donors — but only going forward, not retroactively.
Thanks to a 2010 court ruling and a subsequent 2014 Federal Election Commission, No Labels will not have to disclose who’s funding its efforts to buy ballot access nationwide, because nonprofits seeking to draft federal candidates are not technically considered political committees until they officially nominate a candidate.
If No Labels does decide to nominate a candidate, it will have to register and start disclosing its donors — but only going forward, not retroactively.
So far, No Labels has secured ballot access in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon.
The group’s ballot access plan is generating controversy at the state level, most prominently in Maine.
Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows (D) recently sent a cease and desist letter to No Labels arguing that its canvassers may be misleading voters in their attempts to persuade people to put the No Labels Party on the ballot.
According to Bellows, “numerous” Maine voters have complained to municipal clerks that No Labels organizers never informed them signing their materials meant enrolling as members of the No Labels Party.
Bellows’s office sent letters to more than six thousand voters who signed up with the No Labels Party to notify them of their party status.
“We think it’s really important that voters have full and fair information about their right to enroll in the party of their choice,” she told the Portland Press Herald.
“Every No Labels organizer in Maine was given crystal-clear instructions that they are asking citizens to change their party affiliation,” No Labels said in a statement, adding: “We have operated under the guidelines provided by the Maine secretary of state, according to both the letter and spirit of the rules, and we have total confidence in our transparent engagement with Maine voters.”
You can subscribe to David Sirota’s investigative journalism project, the Lever, here.
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The West’s support of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine should come as no surprise. Historically, powerful U.S. financial interests not only supported Nazi Germany as well as Bandera Nazism in Ukraine. In some regards the totalitarian practice of Neo-nazism is akin to …
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The Islamic Republic denies it is seeking nuclear weapons, though officials in Tehran now openly discuss their ability to pursue one.
By Associated Press
Near a peak of the Zagros Mountains in central Iran, workers are building a nuclear facility so deep in the earth that it is likely beyond the range of a last-ditch U.S. weapon designed to destroy such sites, according to experts and satellite imagery analyzed by The Associated Press.
The photos and videos from Planet Labs PBC show Iran has been digging tunnels in the mountain near the Natanz nuclear site, which has come under repeated sabotage attacks amid Tehran’s standoff with the West over its atomic program.
With Iran now producing uranium close to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers, the installation complicates the West’s efforts to halt Tehran from potentially developing an atomic bomb as diplomacy over its nuclear program remains stalled.
Completion of such a facility “would be a nightmare scenario that risks igniting a new escalatory spiral,” warned Kelsey Davenport, the director of nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association. “Given how close Iran is to a bomb, it has very little room to ratchet up its program without tripping U.S. and Israeli red lines. So at this point, any further escalation increases the risk of conflict.”
The construction at the Natanz site comes five years after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear accord.
Since the demise of the nuclear accord, Iran has said it is enriching uranium up to 60%, though inspectors recently discovered the country had produced uranium particles that were 83.7% pure. That is just a short step from reaching the 90% threshold of weapons-grade uranium.
As of February, international inspectors estimated Iran’s stockpile was over 10 times what it was under the Obama-era deal, with enough enriched uranium to allow Tehran to make “several” nuclear bombs, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
President Joe Biden and Israel’s prime minister have said they won’t allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon. “We believe diplomacy is the best way to achieve that goal, but the president has also been clear that we have not removed any option from the table,” the White House said in a statement to the AP.
The Islamic Republic denies it is seeking nuclear weapons, though officials in Tehran now openly discuss their ability to pursue one.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations, in response to questions from the AP regarding the construction, said that “Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities are transparent and under the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.” However, Iran has been limiting access for international inspectors for years.
Iran says the new construction will replace an above-ground centrifuge manufacturing center at Natanz struck by an explosion and fire in July 2020. Tehran blamed the incident on Israel, long suspected of running sabotage campaigns against its program.
Tehran has not acknowledged any other plans for the facility, though it would have to declare the site to the IAEA if they planned to introduce uranium into it. The Vienna-based IAEA did not respond to questions about the new underground facility.
The new project is being constructed next to Natanz, about 225 kilometers (140 miles) south of Tehran. Natanz has been a point of international concern since its existence became known two decades ago.
Protected by anti-aircraft batteries, fencing and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, the facility sprawls across 2.7 square kilometers (1 square mile) in the country’s arid Central Plateau.
Satellite photos taken in April by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by the AP show Iran burrowing into the Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā, or “Pickaxe Mountain,” which is just beyond Natanz’s southern fencing.
A different set of images analyzed by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies reveals that four entrances have been dug into the mountainside, two to the east and another two to the west. Each is 6 meters (20 feet) wide and 8 meters (26 feet) tall.
The scale of the work can be measured in large dirt mounds, two to the west and one to the east. Based on the size of the spoil piles and other satellite data, experts at the center told AP that Iran is likely building a facility at a depth of between 80 meters (260 feet) and 100 meters (328 feet). The center’s analysis, which it provided exclusively to AP, is the first to estimate the tunnel system’s depth based on satellite imagery.
The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nonprofit long focused on Iran’s nuclear program, suggested last year the tunnels could go even deeper.
Experts say the size of the construction project indicates Iran likely would be able to use the underground facility to enrich uranium as well — not just to build centrifuges. Those tube-shaped centrifuges, arranged in large cascades of dozens of machines, rapidly spin uranium gas to enrich it. Additional cascades spinning would allow Iran to quickly enrich uranium under the mountain’s protection.
“So the depth of the facility is a concern because it would be much harder for us. It would be much harder to destroy using conventional weapons, such as like a typical bunker buster bomb,” said Steven De La Fuente, a research associate at the center who led the analysis of the tunnel work.
The new Natanz facility is likely to be even deeper underground than Iran’s Fordo facility, another enrichment site that was exposed in 2009 by U.S. and other world leaders. That facility sparked fears in the West that Iran was hardening its program from airstrikes.
Such underground facilities led the U.S. to create the GBU-57 bomb, which can plow through at least 60 meters (200 feet) of earth before detonating, according to the American military. U.S. officials reportedly have discussed using two such bombs in succession to ensure a site is destroyed. It is not clear that such a one-two punch would damage a facility as deep as the one at Natanz.
With such bombs potentially off the table, the U.S. and its allies are left with fewer options to target the site. If diplomacy fails, sabotage attacks may resume.
Already, Natanz has been targeted by the Stuxnet virus, believed to be an Israeli and American creation, which destroyed Iranian centrifuges. Israel also is believed to have killed scientists involved in the program, struck facilities with bomb-carrying drones and launched other attacks. Israel’s government declined to comment.
Experts say such disruptive actions may push Tehran even closer to the bomb — and put its program even deeper into the mountain where airstrikes, further sabotage and spies may not be able to reach it.
“Sabotage may roll back Iran’s nuclear program in the short-term, but it is not a viable, long-term strategy for guarding against a nuclear-armed Iran,” said Davenport, the nonproliferation expert. “Driving Iran’s nuclear program further underground increases the proliferation risk.”
The post ‘Nightmare scenario’: Iran nuclear site deep underground challenges West, beyond range of US weapons appeared first on World Israel News.
Orthodox faction will receive up to $68 million for stipends to its yeshiva students.
By JNS
Israel’s governing Likud Party announced on Monday that an agreement was reached with United Torah Judaism on the state budget, removing a major obstacle to its passage.
Under the deal, the 2023-2024 draft budget will not change. Instead, UTJ’s Agudat Yisrael faction will receive up to 250 million shekels ($68 million) for stipends to its yeshiva students that will come from surplus coalition funds.
Construction and Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, head of the Chassidic Agudat Yisrael faction, negotiated the deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Agudat Yisrael’s four members of Knesset had been threatening to vote against the state budget. Failure to pass the 2023 budget by May 29 would see the Knesset automatically dissolved and send Israel to its sixth election in just over four years.
The final stages of approving the state budget began at 9 a.m. on Monday with discussions in the Knesset plenum as the chairpersons of the committees made their presentations.
On Tuesday night, Netanyahu and Smotrich will speak on the budget along with opposition and Yesh Atid Party leader Yair Lapid and Knesset Finance Committee Chairman MK Moshe Gafni, who heads UTJ’s second faction, the three-MK “Litvak” Degal HaTorah movement.
Then the voting will begin and continue overnight into Wednesday.
The two-year draft budget approved by the Finance Committee stands at 484 billion shekels ($132 billion) in 2023 and 514 billion shekels ($140 billion) in 2024.
Budget disputes remain with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit Party and with Noam Chairman Avi Maoz.
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There is something perverse about a nominally contributory social insurance scheme that excludes from eligibility many of those who contribute to the scheme. (Vera Livchak / Getty Images)
Minnesota passed a paid leave program earlier today. This is the thirteenth time Democrats have passed one of these programs on the state level, and every single one of them is designed specifically to exclude from eligibility a large minority of new mothers, especially the poor. Minnesota had a chance to break from this mold, but the same advocates who delivered the other garbage programs delivered yet another one.
In other countries, parental leave programs are commonly designed such that all new parents receive a cash benefit equal to some percentage of their prior earnings or some minimum amount, whichever is greater in their case. But Minnesota’s plan has no minimum benefit and entirely excludes all new parents who did not earn $3,500 in the twelve months leading up to birth.
According to the latest American Community Survey data, 22 percent of Minnesota women between the ages of eighteen and forty-five do not satisfy this work-history requirement. Individuals who are not likely to satisfy the requirement include students, disabled people, and those facing an unluckily timed spell of unemployment.
Here is how the Minnesota work-history requirement stacks up against other states with similar programs.
State
Work History Needed in Prior Year
CA
Earn $300
CO
Earn $2,500
CT
Earn $2,325 in Highest Quarter
DE
Work 1,250 Hours
MA
Earn $6,000
MN
Earn $3,500
MD
Work 680 Hours
NJ
Earn $12,000 or Work 20 Weeks & Earn $4,800
NY
Work 26 Weeks at 20 Hours Per Week or Work 175 Days
OR
Work 25 Hours Per Week for 180 Days
RI
Work 52 Weeks at 30 Hours Per Week
WA
Work 820 Hours
It would be trivially easy to fix this problem. Adding a single paragraph to the statute that said that any new parent who is not otherwise eligible for the earnings-related benefit will instead be eligible for a minimum benefit would get the job done. But paid-leave advocates flatly do not care about these exclusions. I know this because I have talked to many of them over the years, asking them about this problem, asking them if they’d help to resolve it, especially in states that are on the cusp of passing legislation, and the answer, after some hemming and hawing, is always no.
In a way, there is something to admire in the naked class politics of it all. Professional-class advocates are securing benefits for themselves and could not care less if other kinds of people are left out.
But others really should care about the parents and kids left out in the cold by these regimes. They need money to help keep them afloat while they care for their newborns just as much as professional class parents do. In fact, in most cases, they need it more.
There is also something a little bit perverse about a nominally contributory social insurance scheme that excludes from eligibility many of those who contribute to the scheme. Just because someone did not earn $3,500 in the twelve months immediately preceding a birth does not mean that they never contribute taxes into the program. A young parent who gives birth prior to joining the workforce will be denied benefits when they are caring for their newborn and then charged 1.1 percent of everything they earn for the rest of their life to finance a program that was not there for them when they needed it.