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Murdoch family drama plays out in court with fate of Fox News at stake

If #Rupert #Murdoch, 93, prevails in his legal effort to change voting rights of the #family #trust
to ensure that his chosen successor and conservative-leaning eldest son, #Lachlan Murdoch, 53, runs the company after his death, little may change.

The proceedings pit Murdoch, 93, and his chosen successor, Lachlan, against his three more liberal-leaning siblings, Prudence, Elizabeth and James,
over future control of Murdoch’s #Fox Corp and #News Corp through the family’s control of the global empire’s share structure via an irrevocable trust set up in 1999.

According to the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, Murdoch is arguing that
“shifting voting control of the trust to Lachlan should be allowed because it is in the best interest of all the beneficiaries, including his other children”.

️But if the patriarch loses, the younger brother #James Murdoch, in concert with his sisters #Prudence and #Elizabeth, could force Fox News to move away from the conservative news alignments of their father and brother.

That would be an earthquake in American politics.

No other media power in the US has the impact that Fox News has had in the last two decades.

It has become a driving force of American conservatism, feared for its power by both Republicans and Democrats.

And condemned by many for its conservative bias and numerous show hosts who have become darlings of the US right and powerful players on their own.

Figures such as Sean #Hannity are hugely powerful within the Maga world, while the former host Tucker #Carlson
– now exiled from the station where he rose to power
– has withered outside it and been largely unable to recreate the influence he had while broadcasting to Fox’s viewers.

Gaming out the different scenarios at stake in Reno is water cooler talk at Fox News’s midtown New York headquarters,
with TV hosts discussing a reposition of their own personal brands if liberal-leaning James wins
and opening back-channel communications with him if his father and rival brother prevail.

But despite their immense importance the legal arguments over the Murdoch Family Trust presented within the impenetrable walls of a 1960’s annex court extension in Reno last week are known only to the judge and court staff, Rupert Murdoch, his first and second set of children and an army of lawyers, including Trump’s attorney general William Barr.

“A family trust like the one at issue in this case … is essentially a private legal arrangement,”
the Washoe county probate commissioner Edmund J Gorman Jr, wrote in an 18-page recommendation before the parties convened.

James, Elisabeth and Prudence, want the trust to be maintained and oppose Murdoch’s proposed change giving Lachlan control because they would stand to lose voting power.

Yet while Lachlan’s politics are comfortably rightwing and match his father’s,
the opposing other siblings have a different world view.

James Murdoch even hosted Joe #Biden in his home for a fundraiser in 2022 and has endorsed #Kamala #Harris to beat Trump in 2024.

But it won’t be Fox politics under discussion so much in Reno.
Instead, much of that argument will be couched in an examination of US corporate governance conventions that allow for a family to control a business they do not majority own by a so-called #dual #class structure of shares
– in effect the family shares have more power than others.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/sep/22/murdoch-family-fox-news-court?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

An Anti-Biden Conspirator Now Acknowledges That #Ron #Johnson Was
“Doing the Bidding”of Russia

In sworn testimony before Congress, Lev #Parnas, a former Trump henchman, says the senator from Wisconsin was “our guy in the Senate.”

On Wednesday, Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian businessman who worked closely with former New York mayor Rudy #Giuliani and other Trump associates to smear Biden in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, and who eventually went to #prison for his wrongdoing, said in testimony before the House Oversight Committee, “The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and various individuals in government and media positions, all of whom worked to create a web of falsehood. They did this purely to serve their own interests, knowing that it would undermine the strength of our nation.”

In damning testimony at the hearing, which House Republicans had organized in a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to develop their Ukraine-related argument for impeaching Biden, Parnas explained,

The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents, which everyone sitting here today knows.
FBI informant Alexander #Smirnov has admitted to getting all his so-called intelligence on the Bidens from Russia.

According to their own statements, federal prosecutors found him guilty of “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections.”

And as recently as November 2023, a number of Ukrainian politicians sympathetic to Russia were implicated as having helped funnel false information about the Bidens to Giuliani while also being connected to a Russian foreign influence network.

During more than a year of jetting around Europe, as part of what he described as a Giuliani-led effort to dig up dirt on Biden before the 2020 election, Parnas said,

I found precisely zero proof of the Bidens’ criminality.
Instead, what I learned in that timeframe was the true nature of the conspiracy that the Kremlin was forcing through Russian, Ukrainian, American, and other channels to interfere in our elections.

Ultimately this was meant to benefit Trump’s reelection, which would in turn benefit Vladimir #Putin.

Which brings us back to #Ron #Johnson.
After the senator dismissed his briefing from the FBI, Johnson moved to release a report that The New York Times described as “little more than a rehashing six weeks before Election Day of unproven allegations that echo an active Russian #disinformation campaign and have been pushed by Mr. Trump.”

Where was Johnson getting his material?

Parnas told the House Committee on Wednesday that Giuliani and his allies convened “regular strategy meetings at BLT Steak in Washington, D.C.,”
and “I was told in that setting that Senator Ron Johnson would be ‘our guy in the Senate,’ responsible for pushing all the information we were getting. But he would actually end up spreading unverified conspiracy theories instead.”

“Every person integral to this shadow diplomacy knew that the Biden corruption rumors were baseless,” Parnas testified.

Then-Congressman #Devin #Nunes, Senator #Ron #Johnson, and many other individuals understood that they were pushing a false narrative. The same goes for #John #Solomon, #Sean #Hannity, and media personnel, particularly at #Fox #News, who used that narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 election.
They are still doing this today, as we approach the 2024 election.

After Parnas testified, US Representative Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) followed up on the allegation regarding Johnson.
Referencing the statement that the Wisconsinite would be the group’s “‘guy in the Senate’ to push all the information,” Frost asked,
“What did you mean by that?”

“Senator Ron Johnson was our guy in the Senate,” replied Parnas.
“It was told to me that, when we pushed the information, he was going to push it in the halls of Congress.”

Frost continued, “So when the media was getting skeptical about pushing disinformation
—after they’ve proven it wrong time and time again
—the plan was to have a US senator, Ron Johnson, to push that information even further?”

“Correct,” said Parnas, “because we had Congressman Nunes already doing it, so Senator Ron Johnson jumped on board.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/an-anti-biden-conspirator-ron-johnson-doing-bidding-russia/

What should the Democrats run on?
Alerting every voter to what is in store for them if the radical right succeeds in its endgame to enchain American democracy.

Lurking behind the full-frontal assault by Donald Trump and his enablers lies a more far-reaching threat.
If the Republicans gain control of both Houses of Congress, expect a state-authorized #Constitutional #Convention to eviscerate core rights and protections most Americans hold dear.

Imagine living in a country without Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, the right to organize a union, civil rights enforcement, and clean air and water protections, let alone action to stop climate collapse.
The Constitutional Convention, in the plain language of the leading organizer for it, aims “to reverse 115 years of progressivism.”

That’s big talk, 115 years.
Think it can’t be done?
Although the convention push has been all but ignored by the commentariat and national Democratic leaders, it has powerhouse backing.

The #Koch network and other dark-money donors are generously funding it.
The corporation-underwritten American Legislative Exchange Council ( #ALEC ) has supplied “model legislation” and training to Republican state legislators. Endorsers include Mark #Meadows, Ron #DeSantis, Greg #Abbott, Sean #Hannity, and many more.

Convention of States Action ( #COS ), the 501c(4) organization leading the campaign, whose head was a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, has recruited and deployed volunteers to lobby their legislatures.
(It also offers training in “biblical citizenship.”)
COS has held three practice conventions with legislators from nearly every state.
The Heritage Foundation
—the 800-pound gorilla on the right
—recently signed on in “a game-changing report” that such a convention would be “a potent check on federal power” and is “a worthy cause.”

That endorsement is likely to drive even more cash to add to the over $70 million in IRS-traceable contributions that groups solely focused on convening such a gathering have garnered from 2012 to 2022, in findings of the Center for Media and Democracy.
That figure does not include contributions to #ALEC, which has promoted the convention since 2013;
its revenue hovers around $10 million annually.

Promoters have been methodically lining up authorizations from the states since the 2012 election showed them that most Americans reject the kind of society they seek, even Mitt Romney’s mild version.
So strategists concluded that the only way to permanently entrench minority rule by plutocrats and theocrats is to encase it in a dramatically altered Constitution.

They count on most of us remaining in the dark until it is too late to stop their scheme.
So far, that’s proved a good gamble. How many of us know that there are two routes to amending the Constitution—the usual one, and the nuclear option never yet tried?
Under Article V of the Constitution, Congress “shall call a convention for proposing amendments” when it receives applications from two-thirds of the states.
In reality, this is hard, because one party would need to control both houses of 34 state legislatures (or 33 plus unicameral Nebraska).
But ALEC has fabricated a claim built around the idea that enough states have made
past calls for a convention, some going back decades, for the idea to proceed.
It plans to use these outdated state resolutions to argue to the courts that they should force Congress to convene one.

But it gets worse.
If Republicans control Congress, they won’t have to bother with litigation, because it would be up to the majority in control to determine the validity of the applications
—and Article V lacks the guardrails to prevent this manipulation.

Seriously?
Yes, alas.
House Speaker #Mike #Johnson, who would be in a position to call it, is a longtime ally of COS.
https://newrepublic.com/article/178442/republicans-rewrite-constitution-radicalism-beyond-trump?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=0ebfdd1a-b649-4e29-8906-7cf27aa98108