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the Capitol Police reached out to me and offered to launch an investigation and I have accepted. Because of the pending investigation, we will have no further comment."

Dodd said that Barton is using her firm to handle this matter rather than his congressional office because "it's the holiday weekend" and there have been "a lot of calls" about the image and he needed the "extra help."

The most-discussed proposals are to make mail-in voting available to all eligible voters nationwide, and to expand early in-person voting to limit the crowds on Election Day.

“Congress failed to include sufficient, urgently needed funds in the stimulus to help states run elections in a time of pandemic,”

Republicans opposed to spending big on balloting changes viewed it as an attempt by Democrats to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on states. Democrats said the price tag reflected the enormity of the task of safeguarding the vote during a pandemic.

“You can’t just flip a switch and vote by mail, this is a very involved process,” Hovland said. “A lot of what is possible in November will be determined now.”

Some officials in both parties still worry they could lose out in a nationwide vote-by-mail system.

Fears about the outbreak, which has now infected more than 85,000 Americans and killed over 1,200, have started to affect Americans’ intentions to vote.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken March 18-24, 63% of adults questioned said they were “completely certain” to vote in November. But that figure dropped to 56% when the respondents were asked to project their behavior if coronavirus were still a factor on Election Day.

But one of the biggest challenges will be familiarizing people with a new way of voting in a very short time, said Tina Barton, the city clerk and chief elections official in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

“It’s going to take a massive education campaign not only to train all your clerks on a new process but also to educate voters,” Barton said.

The Brennan Center estimated the cost of ensuring vote-by-mail was available

for all voters could be up to $1.4 billion, with postage alone costing $600 million. Hovland of the U.S. Election A

But rules differ from state to state. Some states provide postage-paid envelopes. Others do not. Most allow no-excuse absentee voting. Others require a specific reason for not showing up at the polls, such as an illness or travel.

Surveillance footage released by the district attorney shows Rodriguez stepping out of the window and pulling a gun out of his waistband as officers were yelling for him to show them his hands and drop the gun.

He appears to be putting his hand down on his left side, and officers opened fire on him seconds later.

Attorneys have not been listed for the officers as of Wednesday. Currently, there are no dates set for the case.

The incident report states that Rodriguez "did not follow officers' commands and was subsequently shot."

In an email sent to CNN, Dan Stewart of the Oklahoma City Police Department said that the department was informed on Tuesday that the officers would be charged.

"A loss of life is always a tragedy, and we know these officers did not take firing their weapons lightly," John George, president of the Oklahoma City Fraternal Order of Police, said in a statement. "The OKC FOP stands by these officers and maintains they acted within the law."

Police records show that all five officers fired at Rodriguez.

Five Oklahoma City Police officers were charged with first-degree manslaughter in last year's fatal shooting of a 15-year-old armed robbery suspect who had already dropped his weapon, according to court documents filed Wednesday in Oklahoma County.

A sixth officer, who fired a less-lethal round, was not charged, the affidavit states.

The affidavit of probable cause filed by District Attorney David W. Prater alleges the officers "jointly, willfully, unlawfully and unnecessarily" killed the teenager "while resisting an attempt by the deceased to commit a crime or after such an attempt had failed."

At that point, the officer who was not charged fired a 40 mm "less lethal" round that struck Rodriguez, the affidavit says. Officers Sears, Barton, Adams, Skuta and Pemberton all then "unnecessarily" fired lethal rounds at him, striking him 13 times, the document says

the intellectual right effectively dismissed the book

Here is David Brooks, echoing the conservative consensus in 2006:

As any number of historians, sociologists and pollsters can tell you, the evangelical Protestants who now exercise a major influence on the Republican Party are an infinitely diverse and contradictory group, and their relationship to these hyperpartisans is extremely ambivalent.

The idea that members of the religious right form an “infinitely diverse and contradictory group” and were in no way “hyperpartisan” is now clearly absurd. Christianism, in fact, turned out to be the central pillar of Trump’s success, with white evangelicals giving unprecedented and near-universal support — 84 percent — to a shameless, disgusting pagan, because and only because he swore to smite their enemies.

The fusion of Trump and Christianism is an unveiling of a sort — proof of principle that, in its core, Christianism is not religious but political, a reactionary cult susceptible to authoritarian preacher

Christianism is to the American right what critical theory is to the American left: a reductionist, totalizing creed that “others” half the country, and deeply misreads the genius of the American project.

Christianism starts, as critical theory does, by attacking the core of the Founding: in particular, its Enlightenment defense of universal reason, and its revolutionary removal of religion from the state.

Mike Johnson’s guru, pseudo-historian David Barton, claims that the Founders were just like evangelicals today, and intended the government at all levels to enforce “Christian values” — primarily, it seems, with respect to the private lives of others. As Pete Wehner notes, “If you listen to Johnson speak on the ‘so-called separation of Church and state’ and claim that ‘the Founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around,’ you will hear echoes of Barton.”

Christianism is a way to think about politics without actually thinking. Johnson expressed this beautifully last week: “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.

this tells us nothing, of course. The Bible demands interpretation in almost every sentence and almost every word; it contains universes of moral thought and thesauri of ambiguous words in a different ancient language; it has no clear blueprint for contemporary American politics, period

Yet Johnson uses it as an absolute authority to back up any policy he might support

The submission to (male) authority is often integral to fundamentalism

Trump was an authority figure, period. He was a patriarch. He was the patriarch of their tribe. And he was in power, which meant that God put him there. After which nothing needs to be said. So of course if the patriarch says the election is rigged, you believe him.

And of course you do what you can to make sure that God’s will be done — by attempting to overturn the election results if necessary.

Christianism is a just-so story, with no deep moral conflicts. Material wealth does not pose a moral challenge, for example, as it has done for Christians for millennia. For Christianists, it’s merely proof that God has blessed you and you deserve it.

“I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear: that God is the one that raises up those in authority. And I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment.” That means that Trump was blessed by God, and not just by the Electoral College in 2016. And because he was blessed by God, it was impossible that Biden beat him fairly in 2020.

More than three-quarters of those representing the most evangelical districts are election deniers, compared to just half of those in the remaining districts. Fully three-quarters of the deniers in the caucus hail from evangelical districts.

since the Tea Party, the turnover in primary challenges in these evangelical districts has been historic — a RINO-shredding machine. No wonder there were crosses being carried on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. The insurrectionists were merely following God’s will. And Trump’s legal team was filled with the faithful.

Tom Edsall shows the skew that has turned American politics into something of a religious war: “When House districts are ranked by the percentage of voters who are white evangelicals, the top quintile is represented by 81 Republicans and 6 Democrats and the second quintile by 68 Republicans and 19 Democrats.”

the overwhelming majority of the Republican House Caucus (70%) represents the Most Evangelical districts (top two quintiles). Thus, we can see that a group that represents less than 15% of the US population commands 70% of the districts comprising the majority party in the House of Representatives.

And almost all those districts are safe as houses. When you add Christianism to gerrymandering, you get a caucus that has no incentive to do anything but perform for the cable shows.

This is not a caucus interested in actually doing anything.

I don’t know how we best break the grip of the fundamentalist psyche on the right. It’s a deep human tendency — to give over control to a patriarch or a holy book rather than engage in the difficult process of democratic interaction with others, compromise, and common ground.

he phenomenon has been given new life by a charismatic con-man in Donald Trump, preternaturally able to corral the cultural fears and anxieties of those with brittle, politicized faith.

What I do know is that, unchecked, this kind of fundamentalism is a recipe not for civil peace but for civil conflict

It’s a mindset, a worldview, as deep in the human psyche as the racial tribalism now endemic on the left. It controls one of our two major parties. And in so far as it has assigned all decisions to one man, Donald Trump, it is capable of supporting the overturning of an election — or anything else, for that matter, that the patriarch wants. Johnson is a reminder of that.

“implicitly questioning the integrity of the researchers conducting those studies can be viewed as a form of intimidation that could deter scientists from freely carrying out research on important national challenges.”

The study found that the “rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than what was seen during the latter half of the 20th century.”

In fact, 2014 was the warmest year on record, and this year is likely to end up even warmer.

Fortunately, NOAA did not acquiesce to Mr. Smith’s outrageous demands. The agency pointed out that it had provided Mr. Smith’s committee with the scientific briefings, data and studies behind the Science article, as well as two thorough briefings by NOAA scientists

At the same time, as NOAA noted, the confidentiality of communications between scientists is “essential to frank discourse.” For that reason, the agency rejected his demand.

Now he is using his committee chairmanship to go after the government’s own climate scientists, whose latest study is an inconvenience to his views.

ut he added, ominously, that “this prioritization does not alleviate NOAA’s obligation to respond fully to the Committee’s subpoena.”

During his tenure as the committee’s chairman, he has attempted to slash funding for earth sciences research by the National Science Foundation.

He has threatened to replace the foundation’s vaunted scientific peer-review process with a system where congressmen like him help choose which scientific grants are funded.

And he recently started a congressional investigation into the finances of an environmental institute headed by a climate scientist who was a lead signatory of a letter suggesting that if fossil fuel companies knowingly misrepresented what they knew about climate change, they should be held accountable in the same way the tobacco industry was for hiding its knowledge about the health impacts of tobacco.

In 2005, Joe L. Barton, a Texas Republican who was chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sought all of my personal emails and notes because I had published a study with colleagues showing how the planet’s temperature had shot up after 1900.

Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, also weighed in against what he saw as “a kind of intimidation which threatens the relationship between science and public policy” that “must not be tolerated.”

While there is no doubt climate change is real and caused by humans, there is absolutely a debate to be had about the details of climate policy, and there are prominent Republicans participating constructively in that discourse. Let’s hear more from these sensible voices. And let’s end the McCarthy-like assault on science led by the Lamar Smiths of the world. Our nation is better than that.

To the question “How did he do it?” McKay offers a fairly coherent answer, one grounded in Bale’s canny and sensitive performance. As biography, in other words, the movie works pretty well. As history, though, it’s another story — at once tendentious and undercooked, proposing a reductive, essentially conspiratorial account of recent events.

The motley pageantry of our politics — the endless arguments about race, class, religion, ideology, sex, region and heritage that have defined the republic since the beginning — boils down to a single personality. All you really need to know about the world today is that everything wrong with it is Dick Cheney’s fault.

How did he get away with it, though? The answer McKay supplies is that he was smart and the rest of us were too dumb and too distracted to stop him

In the United States, this story is perhaps best exemplified by Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross and one of the most celebrated figures in the nation's history. Her lifesaving work on Civil War battlefields and her lasting contributions to the betterment of society are a reminder of how much a determined woman can do.

In this historic year of celebrating the 19th Amendment giving women the power of the vote, I'm still a believer in Bella's prediction because I have witnessed what can happen when women bring forward the full scope of our experiences as mothers, daughters and sisters, individually and collectively, to redefine power by how we use it and share it. From negotiating peace to leading toward climate justice, we have, as a global women's community, the opportunity to fully actualize Bella's faith in us.

Although recent victories against these companies are encouraging, there is a long fight ahead of us still, and Rachel will continue to inspire. Because she never gave up, and she succeeded in banning DDT despite the vested interests of corporations and the government—despite the fact that she was secretly battling the cancer that killed her. In addition, I was always supported and encouraged by my mother.

My first reaction to learning about Claudette Colvin was, "How did I not know about her until now?" In 1955, Claudette was 15 and living in Montgomery, Alabama. On her ride home from school one day, the driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white woman. Claudette refused, and two police officers dragged her off the bus in handcuffs.

When I first met Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, I was a young, single mom on public assistance and food stamps. I was active in the community—serving as president of the Black Student Union, volunteering with the Black Panther Party, while raising two young boys. The time I spent on her campaign deeply impacted my life.

As soon as she finished her speech, I offered to do anything I could for her campaign. But when she asked me if I was registered to vote, I admitted that I was not. She was not pleased. She looked at me and said: "Little girl, you can't change the system if you're on the outside looking in. Register to vote."

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm remains an inspiration to little girls and women everywhere, including myself, reminding us to strive for what's possible, unburdened by what's been. As my mother—another hero in my eyes—used to say, "You may be the first to do many things, but make sure you're not the last."

When the New York Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights passed 10 years ago, I knew I was both witnessing a massive historical achievement in that moment and riding the crest of a longer historical arc, lifted up by millions of women who have been fighting for respect and dignity for generations.

Along with nearly one thousand other women from all over the world, I traveled to Brussels in May of 1989 for the first-ever international peace conference convened by women. Proudly hanging on the front of the European Parliament building was a banner: "WOMEN: GIVE PEACE A CHANCE."

One of the people who has inspired me is Mariame Kaba, one of the nation's leading prison abolitionists and the founder of the organization Project NIA, which works to end youth incarceration. She's truly remarkable. One of the attributes I most admire about her is the resilience she embodies and the genuine sense of hope she exudes. She is deeply principled and warm hearted in her pursuit of justice. She said something years ago that has stayed with me: "Hope is a discipline." When things feel bleak, I come back to these words to maintain perspective and to persevere.

In 1962, after two years studying chimpanzees, I went to Cambridge University to read for a PhD in ethology. There I was told there was a difference in kind between humans and other animals, that only we humans had personalities, minds, and emotions. But I had learned that this was not true from my childhood teachers, my wonderful mother and my dog, Rusty! So I refused to comply with this reductionist thinking. Eventually, because the chimpanzees are so similar to us biologically as well as behaviorally, most scientists accepted that we are part of the animal kingdom. But I received much criticism.

Amelia Earhart broke the barrier for women in aviation, then Jackie Cochran founded the WASP, a WWII Women Pilots Service, paving the way for Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

And finally, suffragists rallied and marched for women's equality starting in 1848, seeking the basic right to vote and assure their voices were counted. It took over 50 years before their dream was realized and none of the brave early leaders lived to celebrate or exercise this important right. It opened so many doors for the next steps to true equality.

More than 20 years ago in Beijing, Hillary Clinton stood in front of the United Nations World Conference on Women and declared that "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights." Although Hillary's history-making speech was directed at the world, it felt like she was speaking directly to me. At the time, I was a young lawyer, but Hillary's words forced me to ask myself tough questions about what I was doing to make the world a better place.

During times of uncertainty, it's important to reach for inspiration as a way to stay connected to what's possible. I'm grateful for my own mother, Lynette Schwartz, who taught me from a young age to always expect the unexpected and be prepared for the things that you cannot see. When I was growing up, I used to think that my mother was unnecessarily worried about everything and overly prepared. Her advice and habits have become especially helpful in the last few weeks as uncertainty spreads. Because of her, our home has become a sanctuary for those who don't have the same.

The women of color who founded the movement we carry forward today are my inspiration. Their persistence to be seen and heard gives me strength to carry on in uncertain times. The term "women of color" was born in 1977 in Houston, Texas, at the first and only National Women's Conference. There, among more than 20,000 mostly white women, a cadre of Black, Latina, Asian American and Native women redefined the women's agenda to include race, class and solidarity. They inspired entire generations of us to step fully into our collective leadership and power. Now women of color—a majority of women in several states—are leading progressive reforms as voters, organizers and courageous elected leaders.

I can still remember standing with my mother, Ann Richards, on the floor of the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. It was the first time we'd done anything like this together. As State Treasurer of Texas, Mom had been asked to give a speech seconding Walter Mondale's nomination for the presidency, and she asked me to go along. Even though her speech was the next day, it was the furthest thing from our minds while we waited for Mondale's running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, to take the stage. That night, she would become the first woman ever nominated as vice president on a major party ticket.

As a young girl impacted by over-policing and over-incarceration in my communities, I was particularly grateful when I learned about the abolitionist movement that helped support enslaved Africans to gain their freedom. I would learn and relearn the brilliant story of Harriet Tubman—a young enslaved woman who would free herself from slavery and eventually free so many others including her entire family. This kind of bravery helped me assess the life I was living and created a courage in me that translated into the work I currently do today.

In my life, I have had many moments of self-doubt when I have felt that I lacked the knowledge, the background, the expertise necessary to deal with vexing issues. Most women have had such experiences.

Born into slavery and orphaned as a young woman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an uncompromising and courageous voice for race and gender justice. She resisted not just the terror of racism and the suffocation of sexism, but also the conventions that artificially limited advocacy against these "isms."

When I wrote "American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country" an observation jumped out: in many instances in the remarkable progress of women in history, the first barrier breakers worked for years to be recognized in their fields, but never saw their success.

We went out into one of the tiny rice-paddy villages, a cluster of six tin open-sided lean-to huts. It's a day's trek, by minibus from the little town of Bontoc, then by foot up and down steep hillsides and across fragile rope bridges, then teetering along thin strips of earth that divide the paddies. Finally we sit on the mud floor of one of the huts, drinking peanut coffee from a shared tin cup. Urban Filipinas speak English, some Spanish and only a little Filipino (Tagalog); the tribal people of the North have their own languages. One woman translates.

Later that afternoon, each of us clutching at the ropes of a swaying bridge, my activist translator shouted to me that somehow, she must find the funding to start an adult literacy program for the women of this rice paddy. And so we all did. But Gunnawa is always with me. Because all of us need to know how to read the signs that tell us where we are. So we can know where we're going.

What Texan Republicans are living is an inconvenient fact of life and politics: It's much easier to hold your principles in theory than in reality. Or, when you know your no vote won't change reality.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild, part-owner of the Economist magazine and a director of Estée Lauder, set up the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism after deciding in 2012 that she needed to bring together top executives to try to head off the threat.

The next 10 years could easily see the words of the past 10 years turned into action, both from governments becoming more interventionist and companies doing more to try to head off political involvement in their businesses. Shareholders should brace for change.

"DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE," Trump tweeted on Thursday, citing a report from the right-wing One America News Network. Without showing any evidence, he claimed that states using the company's technology had "SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN."

Trump's tweet is completely without evidence.

"No credible reports or evidence of any software issues exist," the company wrote. "While no election is without isolated issues, Dominion Voting Systems are reliably and accurately counting ballots. State and local election authorities have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process."

the network claims to have proof of widespread voter fraud but is choosing to sit on that proof for more than a week.

Giuliani has claimed to have received an affidavit from someone "inside" Dominion who alleges that batches of "phony" pro-Biden ballots were counted. Giuliani hasn't released any evidence.

Dominion, a Canadian company founded in 2002 with US headquarters in Denver, is the second-largest provider of voting technology in the US, according to a 2017 report from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Public Policy Initiative. In 2016, Dominion's technology was used in 1,635 jurisdictions in more than two dozen states, the report found

Further undermining Trump's claims was the fact that hours after his tweet, federal government agencies released a statement declaring that "the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history."

The county's initial results showed Joe Biden leading, and election officials quickly realized on election night that something was wrong with their results, the local clerk told the Detroit Free Press last week.

The county uses Dominion's technology to tally ballots, but the mistake was due to human error and not the company's systems, according to the Michigan Secretary of State.

"This was an isolated error, there is no evidence this user error occurred elsewhere in the state, and if it did it would be caught during county canvasses, which are conducted by bipartisan boards of county canvassers," the secretary of state's office said in its statement.

Other rumors pointed to Oakland County, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, where initial results mistakenly double-counted votes from the city of Rochester Hills, according to the secretary of state's office. But that was due to human error, not a software issue, the local clerk said.

"As a Republican, I am disturbed that this is intentionally being mischaracterized to undermine the election process," Tina Barton, the clerk of Rochester Hills, Michigan, said

But online, right-wing voices -- including Giuliani, Eric Trump, conservative Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar and Breitbart News -- have seized on those isolated issues as purported evidence of wider "glitches" with Dominion's software.

"It really does feel like people believe what they want to believe," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen it quite like this before."

Social media posts have also baselessly alleged ties between Dominion and Democratic leaders, misinformation that was first noted and debunked by The Associated Press.

Several Twitter posts that have been retweeted thousands of times have claimed that the company is involved with the Clinton Foundation. But while Dominion did agree to donate its technology to "emerging democracies" as part of a program run by the Clinton Foundation in 2014, according to the foundation's website, Dominion said in its statement that it has "no company ownership relationships" with the foundation.