A federal judge ruled that a Venezuelan businessman can move forward with his defamation lawsuit against Fox News and Lou Dobbs over claims that he was involved in rigging the 2020 presidential election.

U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton rejected the defendants efforts to dismiss the case, finding that the businessman, Majed Khalil, “adequately alleges that Fox may be held liable for the defamatory claims.” Read the opinion here.

Stanton’s decision means that the case can proceed, with a jury ultimately left to decide on the merits if it goes to trial.

In his lawsuit, Khalil cited a Dec. 10, 2020, tweet on Dobbs’ account in which he wrote that the election was a “Cyber Pearl Harbor.” The tweet included a document in which Khalil is named as the “effective ‘COO’ of the election project, under Chavez and Maduro. Khalil is a liaison with Hezbollah.”......

Khalil’s lawsuit is separate from claims filed by two elections systems companies, Smartmatic and Dominion, which have sued the network and other defendants for billions of dollars over claims amplified by hosts and guests that they were involved in election rigging. Khalil filed his lawsuit last year, seeking $250 million in damages

According to a report from the Daily Beast's Kelly Weill, the Libertarian Party is experiencing a wave of turmoil as state party officials leave and some chapters collapse due to a turn to the far-right which some members believe now provides a helping hand to the Republican Party.

Central to the descent into chaos is the growth of the Mises Caucus which has taken control of several state committees and pushed far-right policies more in line with Donald Trump than traditional Libertrain sympathies.

As Weill wrote, "In the few years since its 2017 founding, this socially conservative group has swept state and national Libertarian organizations, officially taking control of the LP at the party’s convention this May. Mises Caucus supporters say the group is rebooting America’s third-largest political party. Critics say the caucus promotes bigotry, helps Republicans, and is driving everyone but Mises acolytes out of the organization."

According to the report, the few Libertarian candidates who have made inroads with voters have been moderates like former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, but with Mises Caucus driving the policy debate, voices like his are being shoved to the side.

"The caucus has come out in support of 'national divorce,' the notion of breaking the U.S. into multiple smaller nations. The theory is controversial among libertarians, as are recent tweets from Mises-led state Libertarian parties," the report states. "The MC-led Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, for instance, has repeatedly called for repealing the Civil Rights Act, and tweeted '6 million dollar minimum wage or you’re antisemitic,' in reference to the Holocaust. A recent tweet by the national party, called for the immediate firing and prosecution of educators who teach 'queer theory or critical race theory.'"

Democrats cannot say they weren’t warned.

Consider these two developments. On one front, a top House Republican is threatening to use future debt-limit fights to force concessions from Democrats. Relatively sane Senate Republicans are taking this seriously, warning of a “nightmare.”

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On another front, a very competitive GOP Senate candidate is insisting that Republicans must block FBI investigations into Donald Trump. This echoes other GOP demands, which are only growing.

Put all this together, and what do you get? An ugly picture of how a GOP-controlled Congress will stoke governing turmoil, to nefarious ends, including but not limited to placing Trump above the law.

If Democrats don’t use their power to act against this threat, it will be a serious dereliction of duty. Here’s a start: Pass legislation in the lame-duck session that will disable coming GOP threats to default on the nation’s borrowing limit (causing financial havoc), which Republicans will try to use as leverage to extract major concessions from them.

Yes, Democrats can do this; more on this below. But first, here’s how real the threat has become: With the nation set to hit the debt limit in early 2023, Axios reports that Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri — a front-runner for Banking Committee chair in a GOP House — is openly declaring that Republicans should use it to “reverse” the Biden administration’s “radical” policies......

Democrats can avert this scenario. In the lame-duck, they can use the reconciliation process to pass a 2023 budget outline (with only Democrats and no Republicans), which would allow them to raise the debt limit (again without Republican support) to an amount unlikely to be reached for President Biden’s full term and well beyond.

That’s because the reconciliation process allows measures on spending, taxes, and … the debt limit, notes Georgetown University law professor David Super, a specialist in congressional procedure. This is probably doable without setting the debt limit at a hard number that Republicans would attack.