The Resistance (signs of hope)

[fraurosena]

Here's a follow-up to my post above:

D.C. and Maryland to sue President Trump, alleging breach of constitutional oath

Spoiler

Attorneys general for the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland say they will sue President Trump on Monday, alleging that he has violated anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution by accepting millions in payments and benefits from foreign governments since moving into the White House.

The lawsuit, the first of its kind brought by government entities, centers on the fact that Trump chose to retain ownership of his company when he became president. Trump said in January that he was shifting his business assets into a trust managed by his sons to eliminate potential conflicts of interests.

But D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) and Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) say Trump has broken many promises to keep separate his public duties and private business interests. For one, his son Eric Trump has said the president would continue to receive regular updates about his company’s financial health.

The lawsuit, a signed copy of which Racine and Frosh provided to The Washington Post on Sunday night, alleges “unprecedented constitutional violations” by Trump. The suit says Trump’s continued ownership of a global business empire has rendered the president “deeply enmeshed with a legion of foreign and domestic government actors” and has undermined the integrity of the U.S. political system.

“Fundamental to a President’s fidelity to [faithfully execute his oath of office] is the Constitution’s demand that the President ... disentangle his private finances from those of domestic and foreign powers. Never before has a President acted with such disregard for this constitutional prescription.”

The suit could open a new front for Trump as he navigates investigations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and congressional committees of possible collusion between his associates and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign.

If a federal judge allows the case to proceed, Racine and Frosh say, one of the first steps will be to demand through the discovery process copies of Trump’s personal tax returns to gauge the extent of his foreign business dealings. That fight would most likely end up before the Supreme Court, the two said, with Trump’s attorneys having to defend why the returns should remain private.

“This case is, at its core, about the right of Marylanders, residents of the District of Columbia and all Americans to have honest government,” Frosh said. To fully know the extent of Trump’s constitutional violations “we’ll need to see his financial records, his taxes that he has refused to release.”

Racine said he felt obligated to sue Trump in part because the Republican-controlled Congress has not taken the president’s apparent conflicts seriously.

“We’re getting in here to be the check and balance that it appears Congress is unwilling to be,” he said.

The constitutional question D.C. and Maryland will put before a federal judge is whether Trump’s business ownership amount to violations of parts of the Constitution known as the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses.

To guard against foreign countries gaining sway over the new republic’s ambassadors in the late 1700s, drafters of the Constitution prohibited any “Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust” from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

In another part of the Constitution, framers sought to prevent a president from favoring one state over another, forbidding him from receiving any gift or emolument from a state and instead, only the compensation approved by Congress.

The lawsuit, to be filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, will be the latest and most significant legal challenge to Trump over the issue of emoluments. The first was filed in January by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a D.C.-based watchdog group. In March, a D.C. restaurant sued Trump, alleging the new Trump International Hotel in D.C. benefits from unfair advantages because of its close association with the president. And last week, a group of Democratic members of Congress said they plan to file suit soon. Each, however, has faced legal hurdles over standing to sue the president.

In the Trump administration’s most detailed response yet, the Department of Justice filed a 70-page legal brief on Friday arguing the CREW lawsuit should be dismissed. The administration said Trump’s businesses are legally permitted to accept payments from foreign governments while he is in office. The filing held up the lack of past complaints — going all the way back to farm produce sold abroad by George Washington — to assert that market-rate payments for Trump’s real estate, hotel and golf companies do not constitute emoluments as defined by the Constitution.

Racine and Frosh, however, argue Trump’s violations are on scale never seen before and that both D.C. and Maryland are being adversely affected by the Trump hotel near the White House.

After hiring staff and holding events to cater to foreign diplomats, the Embassy of Kuwait held an event at the hotel, switching its initial booking from the Four Seasons. Saudi Arabia, the destination of Trump’s first trip abroad, also booked rooms at the hotel through an intermediary on more than one occasion since Trump’s inauguration. Turkey held a state-sponsored event there last month. And in April, the ambassador of Georgia stayed at the hotel and tweeted his compliments. Trump himself has appeared at the hotel and greeted guests repeatedly since becoming president.

As a result, the hotel may be drawing business away from the taxpayer-owned D.C. convention center and one in nearby Maryland subsidized by taxpayers, Frosh and Racine argue.

Norman Eisen, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer for President Barack Obama and is CREW’s board chairman, said jurisdictions such as the District and Maryland are among the “most perfect plaintiffs” to sue over emoluments because they have a coequal say in making sure the Constitution is being enforced.

“In the emoluments clauses, we have these ancient air bags that were placed in the Constitution by the framers that are now being deployed,” said Eisen, who has been advising the District and Maryland on their suit. “Trump is the framers’ worst-case scenario; a president who would seize office and attempt to exploit his position for personal financial gain with every governmental entity imaginable, across the United States or around the world.”

On the domestic side, the suit alleges Trump has received unconstitutional financial favors from the U.S. government. It says the U.S. General Services Administration, which handles federal real-estate, wrongly allowed Trump’s company to continue to lease the Old Post Office building, where Trump built his D.C. hotel, even though a clause in the contract said no elected official could remain on the lease.

The GSA initially said Trump would have to fully divest from the hotel after the election. But after Trump proposed increasing GSA’s budget, the suit says the agency issued a letter saying Trump was in full compliance.

The suit also alleges that Trump is violating domestic emoluments by creating a situation in which states feel compelled to compete for Trump’s favor, perhaps by offering zoning exemptions, waivers or other benefits to help his businesses.

After initially saying the Trump organization would not pursue new deals while he was in office, Trump’s sons announced last week that the company would begin building a network of new hotels in mostly red states that he won in last year’s election.

The suit by D.C. and Maryland says the two jurisdictions are faced with an “intolerable dilemma” to either go along with the Trump Organization getting special treatment, including possible lost local revenue or “deny such requests and be placed at a disadvantage vis-à-vis states and other government entities that have granted or will agree to such concessions.”

The District and Maryland file the suit at great peril, Racine and Frosh allege, because the two have a disproportionately large percentage of federal workers and could be acutely affected by federal budget cuts that Trump could seek as retribution.

But Maryland argues that it has special standing to sue. As one of the original states that approved the Constitution, Maryland gave up a clause in its own state declaration that had required its governors not to take any gifts from foreign governments or other states.

“This case represents another storm, not just a dusting of snow, but a blizzard of trouble for Trump,” Eisen said. “Who better than governmental actors to say our deal was, our fundamental democratic bargain was, we would get a president who would follow the Constitution.”

Racine and Frosh say that unless Trump is reined in under the emoluments clause, Americans can never be certain that “underlying his travel ban, withdrawal from the Paris Accord climate deal or proposed tax cuts” that he is acting in the country’s best interest and not his own.

Strict adherence to the emoluments clauses, D.C. and Maryland argue, “ensure that Americans do not have to guess whether a President who orders their sons and daughters to die in foreign lands acts out of concern for his private business interests; they do not have to wonder if they lost their job due to trade negotiations in which the President has a personal stake; and they never have to question whether the President can sit across the bargaining table from foreign leaders and faithfully represent the world’s most powerful democracy, unencumbered by fear of harming his own companies.”

The suit seeks an injunction to force Trump to stop violating the Constitution, but leaves it up to the court to decide how that should be accomplished.

 

[fraurosena]

And another follow-up on the above posts, for those interested in the official paperwork:

 

[sawasdee]

The thing is, that in only four months we've almost got inoculated to the flagrant breaches - how much Secret Service per diem monies have gone to the TT at Mar-a lago and his golf clubs, why did he double membership fees at Mar-a Lago after his election, why are so many foreign governments and businesses transferring events to his Washington Hotel, how many advantages have he and his family got from overseas governments - trademarks and such - , how much is the family saving on security with the Secret Service accompanying Uday and Qusay all over the world, will his new budget chain of hotels , in mainly deep red states, benefit from easier passages through planning and zoning laws. There was even a brochure at his NJ Golf Course that said if you booked your wedding there, the presidunce might drop in!

There are so many violations, it's almost impossible to keep up.

The commercialisation of the presidency is bad enough - I haven't even touched on the nepotism...

ETA And I forgot to say, that the lease of the DC hotel SPECIFICALLY FORBIDS  an elected official from operating it!

[onekidanddone]

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Here's a follow-up to my post above:

D.C. and Maryland to sue President Trump, alleging breach of constitutional oath

And it's boom boom boom
Boom boom boom
Boom boom all night long
Boom boom boom
Boom boom boom
Boom boom all night long  -The Iguanas-

Quote

 

 

[sawasdee]

@onekidanddone Did you notice that in the picture which accompanies that story - which I don't know how to post - his hair is almost entirely WHITE? Is he trying to shed the orange labels - Tangerine Toddler, Cheeto etc? Or did someone actually tell him how ridiculous he looked?

Or is he trying for presidential gravitas?

[onekidanddone]

2 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

@onekidanddone Did you notice that in the picture which accompanies that story - which I don't know how to post - his hair is almost entirely WHITE? Is he trying to shed the orange labels - Tangerine Toddler, Cheeto etc? Or did someone actually tell him how ridiculous he looked?

Or is he trying for presidential gravitas?

We will always know he is orange no matter how much he tries to hide it.

[fraurosena]

On 2017-6-13 at 0:00 AM, onekidanddone said:

We will always know he is orange no matter how much he tries to hide it.

The Tangerine Toddler is merely FAKE! orange, as any Dutch person will glady remind you.

Don't mess with our national color, you Cheating Charlatan Cheeto! 

[sawasdee]

 

Here's a follow-up to my post above:

D.C. and Maryland to sue President Trump, alleging breach of constitutional oath

 

Attorneys general for the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland say they will sue President Trump on Monday, alleging that he has violated anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution by accepting millions in payments and benefits from foreign governments since moving into the White House.

The lawsuit, the first of its kind brought by government entities, centers on the fact that Trump chose to retain ownership of his company when he became president. Trump said in January that he was shifting his business assets into a trust managed by his sons to eliminate potential conflicts of interests.

But D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) and Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) say Trump has broken many promises to keep separate his public duties and private business interests. For one, his son Eric Trump has said the president would continue to receive regular updates about his company’s financial health.

The lawsuit, a signed copy of which Racine and Frosh provided to The Washington Post on Sunday night, alleges “unprecedented constitutional violations” by Trump. The suit says Trump’s continued ownership of a global business empire has rendered the president “deeply enmeshed with a legion of foreign and domestic government actors” and has undermined the integrity of the U.S. political system.

“Fundamental to a President’s fidelity to [faithfully execute his oath of office] is the Constitution’s demand that the President ... disentangle his private finances from those of domestic and foreign powers. Never before has a President acted with such disregard for this constitutional prescription.”

The suit could open a new front for Trump as he navigates investigations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and congressional committees of possible collusion between his associates and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign.

If a federal judge allows the case to proceed, Racine and Frosh say, one of the first steps will be to demand through the discovery process copies of Trump’s personal tax returns to gauge the extent of his foreign business dealings. That fight would most likely end up before the Supreme Court, the two said, with Trump’s attorneys having to defend why the returns should remain private.

“This case is, at its core, about the right of Marylanders, residents of the District of Columbia and all Americans to have honest government,” Frosh said. To fully know the extent of Trump’s constitutional violations “we’ll need to see his financial records, his taxes that he has refused to release.”

Racine said he felt obligated to sue Trump in part because the Republican-controlled Congress has not taken the president’s apparent conflicts seriously.

“We’re getting in here to be the check and balance that it appears Congress is unwilling to be,” he said.

The constitutional question D.C. and Maryland will put before a federal judge is whether Trump’s business ownership amount to violations of parts of the Constitution known as the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses.

To guard against foreign countries gaining sway over the new republic’s ambassadors in the late 1700s, drafters of the Constitution prohibited any “Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust” from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

In another part of the Constitution, framers sought to prevent a president from favoring one state over another, forbidding him from receiving any gift or emolument from a state and instead, only the compensation approved by Congress.

The lawsuit, to be filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, will be the latest and most significant legal challenge to Trump over the issue of emoluments. The first was filed in January by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a D.C.-based watchdog group. In March, a D.C. restaurant sued Trump, alleging the new Trump International Hotel in D.C. benefits from unfair advantages because of its close association with the president. And last week, a group of Democratic members of Congress said they plan to file suit soon. Each, however, has faced legal hurdles over standing to sue the president.

In the Trump administration’s most detailed response yet, the Department of Justice filed a 70-page legal brief on Friday arguing the CREW lawsuit should be dismissed. The administration said Trump’s businesses are legally permitted to accept payments from foreign governments while he is in office. The filing held up the lack of past complaints — going all the way back to farm produce sold abroad by George Washington — to assert that market-rate payments for Trump’s real estate, hotel and golf companies do not constitute emoluments as defined by the Constitution.

Racine and Frosh, however, argue Trump’s violations are on scale never seen before and that both D.C. and Maryland are being adversely affected by the Trump hotel near the White House.

After hiring staff and holding events to cater to foreign diplomats, the Embassy of Kuwait held an event at the hotel, switching its initial booking from the Four Seasons. Saudi Arabia, the destination of Trump’s first trip abroad, also booked rooms at the hotel through an intermediary on more than one occasion since Trump’s inauguration. Turkey held a state-sponsored event there last month. And in April, the ambassador of Georgia stayed at the hotel and tweeted his compliments. Trump himself has appeared at the hotel and greeted guests repeatedly since becoming president.

As a result, the hotel may be drawing business away from the taxpayer-owned D.C. convention center and one in nearby Maryland subsidized by taxpayers, Frosh and Racine argue.

Norman Eisen, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer for President Barack Obama and is CREW’s board chairman, said jurisdictions such as the District and Maryland are among the “most perfect plaintiffs” to sue over emoluments because they have a coequal say in making sure the Constitution is being enforced.

“In the emoluments clauses, we have these ancient air bags that were placed in the Constitution by the framers that are now being deployed,” said Eisen, who has been advising the District and Maryland on their suit. “Trump is the framers’ worst-case scenario; a president who would seize office and attempt to exploit his position for personal financial gain with every governmental entity imaginable, across the United States or around the world.”

On the domestic side, the suit alleges Trump has received unconstitutional financial favors from the U.S. government. It says the U.S. General Services Administration, which handles federal real-estate, wrongly allowed Trump’s company to continue to lease the Old Post Office building, where Trump built his D.C. hotel, even though a clause in the contract said no elected official could remain on the lease.

The GSA initially said Trump would have to fully divest from the hotel after the election. But after Trump proposed increasing GSA’s budget, the suit says the agency issued a letter saying Trump was in full compliance.

The suit also alleges that Trump is violating domestic emoluments by creating a situation in which states feel compelled to compete for Trump’s favor, perhaps by offering zoning exemptions, waivers or other benefits to help his businesses.

After initially saying the Trump organization would not pursue new deals while he was in office, Trump’s sons announced last week that the company would begin building a network of new hotels in mostly red states that he won in last year’s election.

The suit by D.C. and Maryland says the two jurisdictions are faced with an “intolerable dilemma” to either go along with the Trump Organization getting special treatment, including possible lost local revenue or “deny such requests and be placed at a disadvantage vis-à-vis states and other government entities that have granted or will agree to such concessions.”

The District and Maryland file the suit at great peril, Racine and Frosh allege, because the two have a disproportionately large percentage of federal workers and could be acutely affected by federal budget cuts that Trump could seek as retribution.

But Maryland argues that it has special standing to sue. As one of the original states that approved the Constitution, Maryland gave up a clause in its own state declaration that had required its governors not to take any gifts from foreign governments or other states.

“This case represents another storm, not just a dusting of snow, but a blizzard of trouble for Trump,” Eisen said. “Who better than governmental actors to say our deal was, our fundamental democratic bargain was, we would get a president who would follow the Constitution.”

Racine and Frosh say that unless Trump is reined in under the emoluments clause, Americans can never be certain that “underlying his travel ban, withdrawal from the Paris Accord climate deal or proposed tax cuts” that he is acting in the country’s best interest and not his own.

Strict adherence to the emoluments clauses, D.C. and Maryland argue, “ensure that Americans do not have to guess whether a President who orders their sons and daughters to die in foreign lands acts out of concern for his private business interests; they do not have to wonder if they lost their job due to trade negotiations in which the President has a personal stake; and they never have to question whether the President can sit across the bargaining table from foreign leaders and faithfully represent the world’s most powerful democracy, unencumbered by fear of harming his own companies.”

The suit seeks an injunction to force Trump to stop violating the Constitution, but leaves it up to the court to decide how that should be accomplished.

 

Now it looks as though Congressional Democrats are doing the same - citing their Constitutional duty to police the emoluments clause. Since that is in Article 1 of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers obviously thought it important.

If this goes ahead, we'll see how genuine the Constitutional scholars on SCOTUS are in their devotion to it.

[fraurosena]

Hey guys, here's a helpful tweet to get around not being able to call a senator because he's not of your state:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Washington has become the capital of political dissent"

Spoiler

One out of every three Washingtonians has marched in protest against President Trump or his policies at least once since January, making the District of Columbia the capital of national dissent, a new Washington Post poll finds.

But a clear racial divide exists among those who have attended the demonstrations since Trump took office, starting with the Women’s March on Washington the day after his inauguration and continuing through the winter and spring with marches against the president’s policies on climate change, health care, immigration and a host of other issues.

...

According to the Post poll, 53 percent of white residents participated in a march or demonstration in opposition to Trump’s policies since the start of the year, compared with 16 percent of African Americans and 36 percent of Hispanics and those of other racial and ethnic groups.

The overwhelmingly African American residents of Wards 7 and 8 are the city’s least likely to protest Trump, with only 12 percent saying they had. By contrast, 54 percent of residents in overwhelmingly white Wards 1 and 3 in Northwest D.C. say they have protested the president.

High-income residents are among the most likely Trump protesters this year.

...

Yet whether they rally outside the U.S. Capitol or remain at home, a majority of all Washingtonians — 54 percent — believe Trump has changed the city at least “some” or “a lot.”

Women are about twice as likely as men to say that Trump has altered the city “a lot,” according to the poll conducted June 15-18 among a random sample of 901 District residents. It carries a four-point margin of sampling error.

“Given the ups and downs of the first five months, I’m surprised that we’re not dead yet,” said Sarah Ronnebaum, 37, a white health-care researcher who lives on Capitol Hill. She attended the Women’s March, the March for Science and a protest against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Because the District has no vote in Congress, “the least I can do is show up,” Ronnebaum said.

She said she fears that Trump’s imprint will repel the waves of young newcomers drawn to Washington by President Barack Obama.

“At this point, I have trouble imagining the young person who thinks the government has their best interests in mind and is looking out for the best interests of the nation,” Ronnebaum said. “So many people who wanted to work for Obama will not be sustained under Trump.”

Mark Woodard, a black hospital technician who lives in Kingman Park, said he has not felt compelled to protest because his life has not changed much under the new administration.

“I’m kind of waiting to see — he hasn’t made an impact yet,” Woodard said. “I’m able to go to my job, my benefits are fine. He’s not doing anything to affect me, so I’m not going to support any protests.”

Justina Jackson, 28, a black assistant pastry chef in Brookland who voted for Hillary Clinton, said that she is accustomed to being disappointed in government, no matter which party is in the White House, and that Trump is no different.

“I’m used to stuff not going my way,” she said. “There’s always some kind of obstacle I have to overcome just because I’m a young African American female. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who are upset about Trump.”

The District is an overwhelmingly Democratic city in which more than 90 percent of the electorate voted for Clinton over Trump in November. Since the election, many residents say, a sense of unease and even despondency has pervaded the city — and not just because the new resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW is a Republican.

Trump and his advisers have also alienated Washingtonians with an often abrasive, freewheeling style that challenges more genteel traditions embedded in the city’s political culture.

“It seems a lot harsher; it feels a lot meaner; it feels more like facts don’t matter anymore,” said Keith Krueger, 60, who is white, lives in Northwest and runs an educational nonprofit. He attended the Women’s March and “one of the environmental ones” — he could not recall which one. “Most of the people I know are upset about the direction of the country. Everything seems to be a whiplash from the Obama years.”

The dissatisfaction has driven Washingtonians to join the resistance to the president’s policies at a rate far higher than in other parts of the country. A Fox News poll in February found that 14 percent of registered voters nationwide had participated in a march or demonstration since the election in November, far less than the 35 percent of Washington registered voters who have protested between the beginning of the year and June.

Certainly, proximity has something to do with participation. It is relatively easy for Washingtonians to attend a weekend march on the Mall. In some circles, protests have become the new Saturday routine or weekday lunch break. The day after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, an impromptu gathering outside the White House attracted office workers who held aloft signs made with manila envelopes and other office supplies.

...

Still, there’s something more at play than convenience.

“At a certain point, when you have 100,000, 300,000 or a million people in the streets, you can’t pretend it’s a few dissident voices from the left,” said Noah Klose, 23, a recent graduate of Earlham College in Indiana who lives in Northwest and joined the Women’s March, as well as protests against Trump’s immigration policies and the ban on travelers from some Muslim-majority countries. “A protest of 100 doesn’t mean anything, but a protest of 100,000 has a certain gravitas.”

“People I grew up with who never showed political opinions are becoming much more active,” said Klose, who is white. “People are talking about health care, and some of it’s because we never had to worry about it before.”

African American respondents interviewed said they were less inclined to march, even if they disagreed with Trump.

Terrell Dobey, 27, an African American deliveryman who lives in Southeast, said he has “no time” or inclination to participate in demonstrations, even though he said he “felt more comfortable with Obama being president.”

“It brings negative energy to D.C. — it causes an uproar, and it’s not good for the city,” Dobey said. “I can’t risk putting myself in jeopardy. I’m not willing to get pepper-sprayed or shot or anything like that.”

Raynard Styles, 47, an African American maintenance worker who lives in Southwest, said he voted for Trump because “we needed a change; we needed to fire everybody.” But he questions the wisdom of his vote and whether it was fueled by “wishful thinking, rose-colored glasses.”

Nevertheless, Styles said, he would never consider attending an anti-Trump protest even if “I disagree with him. Because he’s still my president, and I’m an American first.”

The Post survey finds that about half of the District’s college graduates and residents from households with incomes exceeding $100,000 demonstrated against Trump. By contrast, 20 percent of residents without college degrees and 16 percent of those earning under $50,000 attended a march to protest the president.

...

When asked to choose from four Trump policies that would most affect the District, 41 percent of residents selected budget cuts to Medicaid and social safety-net services. About a quarter said the overhaul of the Affordable Care Act, 13 percent cited increased deportations of undocumented immigrants, and 11 percent said increased defense spending.

Daniel Giglio, 48, a Hispanic interpreter who lives in Mount Pleasant, said he is most focused on Trump’s quest to overhaul health care. But he is also concerned about “the lack of access that the press and the people have to Trump.”

“I’m not a hugely political person, but I pay much more attention to the issues now,” Giglio said, adding that he and his partner often find themselves talking about Trump and being “taken aback by his comments” but that they have not attended protests. “We give money to the ACLU,” he said. “Maybe that’s how we make our contribution.”

Marcus Murchison, 44, an African American budget analyst who works for the federal government, said it is too soon to measure the full impact of Trump’s policy decisions, though he understands that many Washingtonians are fearful, as if there were a “tornado coming up the coast.”

Instead of attending marches, Murchison, who lives in the Hillcrest neighborhood in Southeast, said he finds it more productive to express himself on social media and at small gatherings.

“I do believe demonstrations serve a purpose, but I’m leaving that to younger people,” he said. “I need to speak up in my own circles. You have to start with your friends and family and bring another perspective.”

I guess the TT would think he's succeeding bigly because more people are protesting him than have protested other presidents.

[GreyhoundFan]

Great article about Sleeping Giants! "The mysterious group that’s picking Breitbart apart, one tweet at a time"

Spoiler

Hardly anyone paid attention last November when a strangely named Twitter account, Sleeping Giants, sent its first tweet into the digisphere. “Are you aware that you’re advertising on Breitbart, the alt-right’s biggest champion, today?” read the tweet, aimed at a consumer lending outfit called Social Finance. “Are you supporting them publicly?”

Within 30 minutes, Social Finance replied, tweeting that it would stop running ads on Breitbart.

It was, it turns out, the start of an odd, and oddly effective, social media campaign against Breitbart.com, the influential conservative news site headed by Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former campaign chairman and ex-chief White House strategist.

Sleeping Giants is a mysterious group that has no address, no organizational structure and no officers. At least none that are publicly known. All of its leaders are anonymous, and much of what it claims is difficult to independently verify. A spokesman for the group wouldn’t identify himself in interviews for this story.

But the group does have a singular purpose, pursued as relentlessly as Ahab chasing a whale: It aims to drive advertisers away from Breitbart. “We’re trying to defund bigotry,” the spokesman says.

Sleeping Giants’ basic approach is to make Breitbart’s advertisers aware that they are, in fact, Breitbart advertisers. Many apparently don’t know this, given that Web ads are often bought through third-party brokers, such as Google and Facebook. The brokers then distribute them to a network of websites according to algorithms that seek a specific target audience (say, young men) or a set number of impressions.

As a result of such “programmatic” buying, advertisers often are in the dark about where their ads end up. Advertisers can opt out of certain sites, of course, but only if they affirmatively place them on a blacklist of sites.

So when an ad appears on Breitbart, Sleeping Giants or one of its 109,000 Twitter followers and 35,000 Facebook followers flag the advertiser, often accompanied by an image of the sponsors’ ad next to a Breitbart story.

The other day, for example, a Sleeping Giant follower tweeted at Country Inns, informing the hotel chain that it was advertising on “the racist Breitbart site.” Within a day, the company tweeted back: “Thank you for your concern . . . We have added Breitbart to our blacklist of ads.”

This apparently happens a lot. Sleeping Giants’ database lists nearly 2,900 companies that have declared Breitbart off limits since November — an astonishing figure, though one hard to confirm because some ad buys recur. Nevertheless, it’s not an implausible number. During one 24-hour period, advertisers such as the air-conditioning manufacturer Rheem, transport operator Caltrain, Sutter Health Plus and Rose Medical Center of Denver all publicly acknowledged that they had blacklisted Breitbart in response to a Sleeping Giants tweet.

Breitbart, based in Los Angeles and Washington, says it doesn’t know how many advertisers have blocked it, nor has it calculated how much revenue it has lost as a result. But the financial impact appears to be significant enough for Breitbart to take the group seriously.

“What they’re doing is a very dangerous thing,” says Alexander Marlow, Breitbart’s editor in chief. “They are trying to impose corporate censorship and corporate segregation on us, and they’re doing it anonymously.” He says it is disputes the group’s underlying claim, calling it “a lie” that Breitbart promotes hate speech of any kind.

Marlow also takes issue with the group’s mysterious origins, suggesting that it could be funded by a “left-wing [political] group or a foreign entity.” But he admits he doesn’t know. It might just be “a bunch of trolls obsessed with Breitbart typing away in their basements,” he says.

Closer to the latter description, Sleeping Giants’ spokesman says. “We are doing this on a voluntary basis, so we need to keep our day jobs going,” he says.

Hence the group’s anonymous nature. The spokesman says some leading members are employed by companies that might not take kindly to their employees engaging in a prolonged activist effort. On the other hand, many of its thousands of supporters openly identify themselves on Twitter when tweeting at Breitbart’s sponsors.

The group decided to single out Breitbart almost by happenstance. “It really happened as a reaction to Steve Bannon’s rise,” the spokesman says. “We weren’t familiar with Breitbart at the time and were obviously pretty shocked at the articles. . . . To be honest, we weren’t familiar with [other conservative] sites,” so those weren’t even considered, he says.

The group has raised about $1,500 from T-shirt sales and about $7,000 from an online fundraiser, but it otherwise operates with little overhead, he notes. “If I had a nickel for every claim that we’re being funded by [liberal billionaire activist] George Soros, I’d be well off. It’s crazy. There’s not much need for funding. Tweeting is free.”

Breitbart has fought back with limited success against what it has called “left-wing totalitarians.” When Kellogg became one of the first major sponsors to blacklist Breitbart last year, the site launched a petition drive promoting a boycott of the breakfast-food maker. The petition has attracted some 500,000 signatures, according to Marlow. But it hasn’t brought Kellogg back.

For its part, Sleeping Giants has been notably unsuccessful in getting three of the tech world’s giants to pay any attention to it at all.

Facebook and Google — two of the biggest Web-ad distributors — have never responded to Sleeping Giants, which wants the two companies to impose a blanket ban on serving ads to Breitbart. It has gotten the same non-reaction from Amazon.com. The giant Internet retailer has stayed mum in the face of an employee petition and protests at its annual meeting aimed at cutting its advertising on Breitbart (Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey Bezos, owns The Washington Post). Sleeping Giants even raised money to put up a billboard outside Amazon’s Seattle headquarters in May reading, “Amazon, Stop Funding Bigotry” — all to no avail. (Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment).

Even if Sleeping Giants persuaded every advertiser to avoid Breitbart, it seems unlikely to threaten the site’s existence or even impose severe financial hardship. Breitbart is directly funded, and partially owned, by Robert Mercer, a tech-industry billionaire with an extensive portfolio of investments in conservative causes and candidates. Among others, Mercer has financed the campaigns of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Trump himself. It’s likely that he views Breitbart more as a media platform and political megaphone than as an ordinary business proposition.

Breitbart editor Marlow says that the threat posed by activist groups like Sleeping Giants isn’t to just his company but to free speech generally. “No one [in the media business] has said anything to defend Breitbart,” he says. “No one is standing up and saying, ‘This is about Breitbart now. But it could be about us tomorrow.’ ”

Marlow's highlighted comments are the height of irony.