- Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), endearing himself to us through the old “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Wow, Republicans make such a big deal about Hunter Biden you would think he is the president.
 

• Fox News’s favorite target was indicted on Thursday by DOJ prosecutors on three federal gun charges after lying about his drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018, then illegally possessing the weapon. The charges were filed by Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed as a special counsel last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland. 
   

• MAGA-headed House Republicans have been chomping at the bit to use the younger Biden’s work at a Ukrainian energy company to build a bullshit case for impeaching President Biden, despite the fact that the available evidence has been worked over dozens of times beginning all the way back in disgraced former president Trump’s first impeachment hearings. Indeed President Biden’s main contribution to Ukraine policy in the Obama administration was to pressure Ukraine to fire a corrupt prosecutor who refused to investigate the energy firm that Hunter was collecting money from. 
   

• The Justice Department is now in the unusual position of pursuing criminal indictments against both a former president, who is running to reclaim the White House in 2024, and the son of a sitting president. If convicted, Hunter Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines (which members of the House GOP are praying for every night before they go to sleep), but that would be almost unheard of  for a nonviolent first-time offender not accused of using the weapon in another crime. Former federal prosecutors have said they can’t recall anyone ever being charged in this way for this infraction.

Hunter Biden is a private citizen who has never held public office, which you wouldn’t know from how central he’s become to the daily waking nightmares inflicted on us by congressional Republicans. 
 

• Garland tapped Weiss as special counsel when a previous plea deal, which would have resolved the long-running investigation into Hunter’s alleged crimes without him serving prison time, collapsed. Weiss’s team signaled that it continues to investigate Hunter’s business dealings. After years of various investigative committees and authorities combing through the information, they’ve found no evidence of any impropriety on Biden’s part. Multiple House Republicans have acknowledged this publicly only for MAGA freaks like Marjorie Taylor Greene to call for them to face primaries. 
   

• Thomas Sobocinski, a high-ranking FBI official, provided testimony to the House Judiciary Committee last week contradicting a key claim made by an IRS agent who said that political interference had hampered the investigation into Hunter Biden’s years of back taxes. The IRS “whistleblower” allegations also included the false claim that David Weiss said he didn’t have final authority to charge the president’s son, which another FBI agent involved in the probe similarly contradicted. 
   

This bears repeating every time the GOP accuses the FBI and DOJ of being “weaponized” against conservatives to help The Libs: the only consistent evidence suggesting the FBI and our domestic investigative agencies fail to act against known threats or investigate federal crimes is when they’re perpetrated by far-right extremists. Hope we’re all clear on that now!

This week on Pod Save The World, hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes talk to US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken about Kim Jong Un’s trip to Russia, the international implications and what it may be signaling about Russia’s strategy in their war with Ukraine. That plus insights on the G20 summit and more. Listen to this episode right now, wherever you get your podcasts.

After decades of operating behind closed doors, American neo-Nazis feel emboldened to wave their flags of hatred in broad daylight. On September 2—just one week after a far-right extremist shot and killed three Black people in a Dollar General in Jacksonville, FL—neo-Nazis from the “Aryan Freedom Network,” and the “Order of the Black Sun,” held a protest outside of Disney World, with about 15 people flying swastika flags. The same day, just 25 miles away, similar demonstrations from members of the “Goyim Defense League,” and the “Blood Tribe” took place in the suburb of Altamonte Springs. According to a new database created by VICE, there have been almost two dozen protests involving neo-Nazi and White-supremacist groups in just the first nine months of 2023, more than the total number of events from all of 2022. Even more shocking, the number of such events in 2022 was already a sharp increase from 2020 and 2021. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray reaffirmed this summer in testimony before Congress that “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists” continue to pose one of the gravest threats to U.S. national security. Most of the prominent mass shootings of the past decade have been connected to White-nationalist and neo-Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazi protests have popped up in 15 states just in 2023, but it will not surprise you to learn that the majority of newer neo-Nazi organizations are headquartered in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has all but openly courted them with his draconian immigration policies, assault on LGBT rights, and war on “Critical Race Theory.” Some members of the Order of the Black Sun were seen waving DESANTIS 2024 flags at their demonstrations. Elected Republican officials in states where these open demonstrations occur show no interest in addressing the problem, lest they lose a key voting constituency. One thing is clear: neo-Nazis have clearly concluded that the tide has turned enough that they can comfortably show their faces in public, and Republicans have given them every reason to feel that way.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee announced on Thursday that disgraced former president Donald Trump and 16 co-defendants in the election interference case will not be tried alongside Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, who asked for speedy trials that are scheduled to begin in October. 

Alex Jones spent $93,000 on himself in one month while he has yet to pay a dime of the $1.5 billion settlement he owes Sandy Hook families. 

The GOP-controlled Wisconsin Senate voted on Thursday to fire the state’s nonpartisan elections official ahead of the 2024 elections, for totally non-nefarious reasons, probably. 

The death toll from floods in the coastal city of Derna in Libya has climbed to 11,300. 

The European Central Bank raised its key interest rate to a record-high of four percent on Thursday, the tenth hike in 14 months. 

A new climate study shows that earth is outside of its “safe operating space for humanity,” in six of nine key measurements (like biodiversity, climate, freshwater, and human-made chemical compounds) of its health. Oh good! 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to California on Monday to meet with Twitter CEO Elon Musk after the latter was accused of amplifying antisemitism on his social media platform. Not helping his case, Musk has been feuding with the Anti-Defamation League over the issue. Hate speech has increased dramatically since Musk bought the site last year and relaxed or dissolved many content moderation safeguards.

Contract negotiations between the Detroit Three (Ford, General Motors, and Stellanis) and the United Auto Workers union remain at a standstill ahead of the Thursday deadline at 11:59 p.m. Eastern, all but ensuring the first-ever simultaneous strike at the three carmakers. The UAW represents 146,000 American auto workers, and is asking for 40 percent pay raises through September 2027 and significant improvements in benefits in the face of record profits. In just the first six months of 2023, the Detroit Three made $21 billion. UAW President Shawn Fain said starting wages for autoworkers have decreased from 2007, when new workers made $19.60 per hour ($28.96 adjusted for inflation). Now, sixteen years later, starting wages are $18.04 per hour. Fain said last month in an address on Facebook Live, “Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet. That's not living. It's barely surviving and it needs to stop.” Ford CEO Jim Farley, who made $21 million last year, claims that the UAW’s proposals would put the company “out of business,” and would not budge on Ford’s offer for a pay increase of just 20 percent. President Biden had previously stated he thought a strike would be averted, and has been in regular communication with both UAW leadership and the automotive industry executives.

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The U.K.’s Labour Party announced on Tuesday that it would repeal recently introduced conservative legislation that limits workers’ right to strike should they win next year’s election, and deputy leader Angela Rayner pledged to enhance worker protections. 

In the wake of the state supreme court’s new liberal majority Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announced it will resume services next week.