by Greg Palast with Dennis J Bernstein

Donald Trump may have halted Kris Kobach’s so-called Presidential Advisory Commission on “Election Integrity” — but he hasn’t stopped its work. Far from it, he’s put its nefarious vote-stealing activities on steroids.

On January 3, shortly after Trump issued his Executive Order dissolving the Commission in the same way it was created, by the stroke of a pen, Kobach told Briebart that the Commission’s mission wasn’t over, rather it was being “handed off” to the Department of Homeland Security.

Far from being a victory for progressives, as most of the liberal lamestream media portrayed the Commission's demise, this was a brilliant chess move by Kobach. Now Kobach hopes to operate his racist voter purging program away from the glaring spotlight of the Commission, under the special veil of secrecy afforded to the DHS. Worse still, the program is now backed by Homeland Security’s police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) powers. (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

Palast at King's Atlanta Church on assignment for Al Jazeera

It was a Republican, Martin Luther King Sr., who made John Kennedy president of the United States — for JFK’s saving Daddy King’s son, Martin Jr., from lynching.

This harrowing and little known drama of terror and courage, confirmed for me by Martin Luther King III, changed American politics — and America — forever.

On October 19, 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Georgia for driving with an Alabama driver's license and sentenced to six months hard labor. No one expected King to survive the sentence — he’d be lynched at the outset.

His father, Martin King Sr., had one desperate chance to save his son. Daddy King had endorsed Richard Nixon, a family friend, for the presidency. Nixon could count on King, a Republican like many African-Americans, who chose the party of Lincoln over the racist Democratic party of Jim Crow segregation.

A desperate King called Vice-President Nixon — who refused to answer. But MLK’s wife, Coretta, had a single hope. She called a friend, pacifist activist Harris (later Senator) Wofford who called Bobby Kennedy.

RFK didn’t hesitate, calling from a pay phone on Long Island to his brother, demanding John save MLK Jr.

It was just three weeks before the presidential election, a race too close to call. This was a crisis. Three Southern governors warned the Kennedys that any help for Dr. King and JFK would lose three Deep South states.

John Kennedy, who’d just won the Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage, knew this was his test. He gave Bobby the go-ahead to save King.

Bobby called Atlanta and told the judge he’d post King’s bond — though the judge had never offered bond. But this Democratic judge (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

Progressives are always looking for a "victory," a pony hiding in the horseshit. We saw this when most states claimed to reject Kris Kobach’s request to turn their voter rolls. In fact, governors were lying (Mississippi and Louisiana) or too ignorant (Virginia) to know their states had already given Kobach their voter rolls. (Show me more...)

Shh! The NEW post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case Of The Stolen Election is out TODAY on Amazon and Amazon Prime.

Official launch later this month! (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

Don’t be fooled by news of Trump's Executive Order dissolving the so-called Commission on Election Integrity. Trump is not ending the Kris Kobach scheme to attack, he’s moving it into Homeland Security as per Kobach’s original plan. (Show me more...)

Happy New Year from Greg Palast and the investigations team.

It's still not too late to make an end of year tax-deductible donation to support our work — and pick up some great premiums too! (Show me more...)

Chosen as one of Time Magazine's Top 100 Photos of 2017: Our own Zach D. Roberts’ photo of the beating of a Black school teacher De'Andre Harris by neo-Nazis. In case the photo isn’t clear, the five men beating the teacher are the "good people" lauded by President Trump. (Show me more...)

By Gary Flowers and Greg Palast for Richmond Free Press

Since 2013, this stealth voter purge program has cost tens of thousands of Virginians of color their right to vote. It’s called (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

I hope you savored the moment. Yesterday, Monday December 11, voting rights advocate John Brakey won a court order – in Montgomery, Alabama no less – requiring every county to keep copies of their ballots after the voting Tuesday.

Now, you may think that in a democracy, in the United States of America, in the 21st Century, you wouldn’t simply throw away ballots, announce a winner, and say, “trust us, we counted the ballots fairly.”

But this is not exactly America, nor the 21st Century.  This is Alabama; Alabama after the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act.

Then, by 6pm Alabama time, the voting rights victory dance came to an end. GOP state officials, in an "ex-parte" (i.e. private) meeting with an Alabama Supreme Court judge, obtained a (Show me more...)

By Nicole Powers

A group of Alabama voting rights activists have secured a temporary restraining order to stop digital election records being destroyed after Tuesday’s highly contentious Senate special election between Doug Jones (D) and Roy Moore (R). The preliminary injunction, issued by a Montgomery circuit court judge, orders all Alabama counties to save all digital copies of ballots that are created when vote counting machines scan paper ballots.

The temporary restraining order (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

In 2004, BBC TV exposed Brett Doster, now Judge Roy Moore’s campaign chief, for illegally "caging" Black, Hispanic, and Jewish voters, a crime explained by Bobby Kennedy, Jr. in our film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

The Palast team got our hands on highly confidential documents from inside the George W. Bush campaign giving "BDoster@GeorgeWBush.org," their Florida chief, one of several secret lists of voters to challenge.

They’d sent letters, for example, to soldiers at their home addresses, where they were legally  registered, while they served overseas.   When the letters came back to the RNC as "addressee not home," the "caged" letters were used (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

Medal of Honor for the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union — the poor people’s non-profit bank that's suing Donald Trump over the illegal seizure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (see story). This is the same little bank that took on Goldman Sachs (see my Democracy Now! report above) and kicked ass. (Show me more...)

By Nicole Powers

The Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union has filed a lawsuit to block Donald Trump from installing Mick Mulvaney as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, December 5, 2017 by New York law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP on behalf of the not-for-profit credit union, which is owned by its 8,500 members and serves predominantly low-income New York residents under a unique federal charter. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast with Dennis J Bernstein

Last month the Keystone pipeline cracked in South Dakota and dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of the dirtiest tar sands oil onto a previously pristine prairie. In this episode of Flashpoints we discuss how this burst came about when there were supposed to be foolproof high tech safety measures in place. This episode is particularly relevant to Flashpoint's local Northern California audience, since before the Keystone pipeline burst, another pipeline in San Bruno exploded for very similar reasons. The 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline blast, which sent plumes of fire into the air, wasn't just an environmental disaster, it was deadly; the explosion destroyed 38 homes and killed eight people. In this edition of Flashpoints, we not only discuss intentionally compromised Pipeline Inspection Gauges (aka PIGs) at the heart of both these tragedies, we also discuss the Tax Bill and an intentionally compromised president, who seems to have conveniently forgotten to include one of his major campaign promises — one he stole from Bernie — to close the Billionaire speculators' "carried interest" loophole. (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

The RNC is petitioning a federal district court in New Jersey to lift a Consent Decree that blocked an ugly Jim Crow voter purge scam known as "caging." (Show me more...)

Last week the Keystone pipeline cracked in South Dakota and dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of the dirtiest tar sands oil onto a previously pristine prairie. Was the problem caused by a muzzled PIG? (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast

Yesterday, the Keystone pipeline cracked and dumped 210,000 gallons of oil onto the South Dakota prairie.

Here’s the reason the pipeline burst: the PIG didn’t squeal. The PIG, the Pipeline Inspection Gauge, is sent through the Keystone to check for evidence of any leak, failure, or corrosion that will cause it to burst. But the PIG didn’t squeal a warning. Why not?

Because, as disclosed in my investigation for Britain’s investigative TV series Dispatches in 2010, the PIG has been silenced, its software jacked and hacked by a company that provides PIGS. The software is deliberately (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

This week, Nebraska will decide on whether to approve an extension of the Keystone pipeline which will carry the oil down to Texas.

Oil to Texas?!

Koch Industries owns an oil refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, which cannot use Texas oil because it’s too "light"—that is, doesn’t have enough sulphur in it, it’s too thin (and too clean). The Koch refinery needs "heavy" oil, like the nasty gunk from Canada’s tar sands — the stuff carried by the Keystone Pipeline. So, the Koch’s have been captive customers of (Show me more...)

By Lance Simmens | Guest Commentary

Joe Stalin said, it’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.  Having been involved in political campaigns and politics at all levels of government for the past forty years, I can attest to another maxim that is equally as important on election day, in any election, and that is that the side that does the best job of getting out the vote (GOTV) usually wins. (Show me more...)

The massive success of our film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy — which was first released two months BEFORE the 2016 election and predicted Trump would win (and how!) — has led to demands from NAACP, ACLU, Transformative Justice Coalition for an update. This post-election edition is subtitled: The Case of the Stolen Election.

Over TWO MILLION have seen the original version of our film — and it’s had one hell of an impact: The NAACP and League of Women Voters have sued the State of Indiana to stop Kris Kobach and "Crosscheck" voter purges based on our film’s findings. After viewing our film, Indivisible and the ACLU have drafted legislation to kill off the Jim Crow Crosscheck operation in Illinois. (Show me more...)