Calls for civil war and political violence spiked the day after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump , according to a new analysis. Moonshot, a data analysis institution that monitors violent extremism online, found a sudden rise in calls for civil war – 1,599 posts, a 633 percent increase over the day before – across a range of platforms, including 4Chan and Reddit, as well as YouTube and newer sites oriented toward right-wing extremists, CBS News reported Tuesday. "The uptick in online calls is fairly typical of online discourse in spaces that glorify violence," said Moonshot chief strategy officer Elizabeth Neumann.
"The fact is, there is an online ecosystem out there working day in, day out to encourage violence of all kinds, from political civil war to mindless school shootings." Gunman Thomas Crooks, 20, stunned the nation when he fired an AR-style rifle at a rally in Butler, Pa., killing firefighter Corey Comperatore and leaving Trump and two attendees wounded.
But experts say the reaction followed a common pattern as other mass shootings or targeted violence, and point to Crooks' reported prior posts about violence . Moonshot found 2,051 specific threats or encouragements to violence the day after the shooting, more than double the typical amount. ALSO READ: We asked 10 Republican senators: ‘Is Kamala Harris Black?’ Things got weird fast The group also found Google searches were the gateway to platforms that hosted the troubling discussions, while actual calls for carrying out violence came from a smaller subset of individuals.
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, which partnered with Moonshot to produce a new report on the chatter, told CBS he wished such platforms would do more to prevent the spread of such content. "In the aftermath of mass shootings, we often learn that the shooter was radicalized with help from vile content he found on sites like YouTube," Feinblatt said, "yet the leaders of these platforms consistently refuse to crack down on users who violate their own policies." A representative for YouTube said the platform explicitly prohibits content that glorifies or promotes violent tragedies and removed 2.
1 million videos in the first quarter of this year for violating those policies, and a spokesperson for Reddit said its policies also banned content that incites or glorifies violence and rapidly monitored that content and removed it. Feinblatt argued more needs to be done, saying, "We call on these companies to put public safety ahead of traffic numbers, and proactively moderate spaces that are breeding grounds for hate and violence." J.
D. Vance failed to connect on one of his first attacks since learning the identity of his Democratic vice presidential rival. The Ohio Republican appeared Tuesday in Philadelphia hours after Kamala Harris tapped Minnesota Gov.
Tim Walz as her running mate, and Vance described him as a "San Francisco-style liberal" — an irony called out by Bryan Metzger, senior politics reporter for Business Insider. "Vance spent about four years living in SF between 2013 and 2017 as a venture capitalist," Metzger wrote. "Walz visited SF for the first time *just last month.
*" Republicans have been trying to deride Harris, who spent time in California as a child and spent most of her professional and political career there, as out of touch with most Americans due to her time in the Bay Area, a dynamic Walz commented earlier this week. "There was a desire to make these undesirable places," Walz said of conservative attacks on coastal regions and urban areas. "They do it to San Francisco, and just to be candid .
.. last week was my first time, last week was my first time in San Francisco.
Stayed down there, I was doing some meetings, woke up, did my five-mile run through the Presidio, to the Golden Gate, went back to my hotel, was downtown, and as I was leaving, I said, 'That is the most beautiful city I've ever been in.' ALSO READ: Tim Walz's personal finances are extraordinarily boring — and that may help Harris "The temperature, and I see the Golden Gate – what they've done, look, have there been problems? Yes, homelessness is an issue across the country, but just to see this – it was exotic to me." "I've seen San Francisco on TV hundreds of times and I've heard about it, and there I am driving around, and I'm like a kid again," Walz added.
"I'm, like, 'America is so awesome, San Francisco is just the greatest,' and that's the way people would feel – go out to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, go to northern Minnesota and look where the mining has happened for 100 years. This is the beauty of America, and they demonize it." — (@) CONTINUE READING Show less Dozens of House Democrats on Tuesday called on the president of the Heritage Foundation to disclose the details of Project 2025's so-called "Fourth Pillar," a section of the far-right agenda that has been kept under wraps as Republican nominee Donald Trump attempts— unconvincingly —to distance himself from the unpopular project.
In a letter to Roberts, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.
), and 36 other congressional Democrats highlighted the "glaring problem" that Project 2025's Fourth Pillar "remains shrouded in secrecy" despite organizers' pledge to be "an open book" about their agenda. "You have conspicuously declined to publish or disclose any of the prioritized early actions that we believe would obviously be the most important parts of Project 2025," the Democrats wrote. "The immediate executive orders, emergency declarations, presidential directives, and other measures are likely to have profound impacts on the American people and their government.
Therefore, we believe it is overwhelmingly in the public interest for you to actually keep your 'open book' promise by disclosing the 'Fourth Pillar' of Project 2025, and we hope you'll consider explaining why, unlike the first three pillars, you have been keeping it secret for so long." "If the published part of your 'second American revolution' is so extreme that it has alarmed millions of Americans, including many conservatives, what additional controversy are you worried about?" The lawmakers urged Kevin Roberts, who recently suggested bloodshed could follow if the left refuses to capitulate to Trump and his far-right movement, to meet with members of Congress on Capitol Hill to discuss the Fourth Pillar and other elements of the Project 2025 agenda. "You have intimated that the reason for keeping this 'Fourth Pillar' of Project 2025 secret is that it is too controversial for the public to see.
With all due respect, if the published part of your 'second American revolution' is so extreme that it has alarmed millions of Americans, including many conservatives, what additional controversy are you worried about?" the House Democrats asked. "It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025." Project 2025's website provides a brief summary characterizing the Fourth Pillar as "our 180-day Transition Playbook" that "includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency.
" Spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 was crafted with the help of around 110 conservative groups and at least 140 former Trump administration officials, and its authors have released a 922-page agenda outlining their sweeping plans to gut worker protections and climate regulations, accelerate Medicare privatization , abolish the Department of Education, and much more. Survey data shows the project, which has become a focal point for Democrats ahead of the November election, has become increasingly unpopular as more and more Americans are informed about its far-right policy proposals. In June, as Common Dreams reported , Huffman and other congressional Democrats launched the Stop Project 2025 Task Force in an attempt to counter "this right-wing plot to undermine democracy.
" "We need a coordinated strategy to save America and stop this coup before it's too late," Huffman said at the time. Trump, meanwhile, recently claimed he knows "nothing" about Project 2025, a statement one of his former advisers called "totally false." One of the key architects of Project 2025, Russell Vought, served as head of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump and is "likely in line for high-ranking post" if the former president wins another White House term, according to The Associated Press .
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running mate, praised Roberts in what The Guardian characterized as a "glowing forward" to the Heritage Foundation president's soon-to-be-published book. Despite public efforts by the Trump campaign to distance itself from Project 2025—and vice versa —analysts at Center for American Progress Action noted last week that there is significant "overlap" between Project 2025 and Trump's 2024 campaign platform .
"In fact, President Trump already attempted to implement key policy components of Project 2025 during his first term, with varying degrees of success," the analysis wrote. "Project 2025 was designed to remove the guardrails that prevented President Trump from enacting his baser instincts and priorities in his first term." CONTINUE READING Show less Call it the Kamabla conundrum.
Former President Donald Trump's failed attempts to dub Vice President Kamala Harris with a snarky moniker spell trouble for the Republican nominee's political campaign, legal experts say. "'Kamabla' is almost certainly a wild swing that won't connect," Andrew Wroe, senior lecturer in American politics at University of Kent, in England, told Newsweek Tuesday. "It's just not clear what it means.
" Wroe praised Trump's past ability to dub his political opponents with nasty nicknames that stuck, such as "Crooked Hillary" and "Little Marco." But he threw his hands up in the air when it came to "Laffin' Kamala." " Trump is a master of identifying an opponent's key weakness and capturing it in a pithy and derogatory nickname," Wroe said.
"Trump's efforts to land a similar punch on Kamala Harris have so far failed, despite trying many different combinations." Trump's inability to land a nickname for Harris suggests a bigger problem with his presidential reelection campaign and its inability to pivot after President Joe Biden decided to step aside, Wroe argued. ALSO READ: Tim Walz's personal finances are extraordinarily boring — and that may help Harris "He knew Biden's weaknesses, as did the wider electorate, and 'Sleepy Joe' was one of his greatest punches," Wroe said.
"He wishes Biden was his opponent and is struggling to refocus his campaign on Kamala Harris." Political scientist Thomas Gift agreed 'Kamabla' and 'Kamala Crash' have yet to do the work Trump needs them to do. "Trump's difficulty in smearing Kamala Harris with a nickname is a lot like his campaign at the moment," Gift told Newsweek.
"It's throwing things at the wall, but nothing seems to be sticking." Meanwhile, Harris' running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) appears to have earned his position on the ticket thanks in part to his own deft political messaging , reports show.
Democrats across the nation echo the now-viral speech in which the midwestern former school teacher likened Trump and the MAGA right to name-calling bullies. "These guys are just weird, that's who they are," Walz said. "We're not afraid of weird people.
We're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid." CONTINUE READING Show less.
