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carolinehayter

Texas GOP's New Voting Restrictions On Verge Of Approval : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...trictions-on-verge-of-approval

politics us gop policy trump

shared by carolinehayter on 30 May 21 - No Cached
  • passed along party lines around 6 a.m. after eight hours of questioning by Democrats, who have virtually no path to stop it from becoming law.
  • Republicans in the Texas Senate muscled one of the most restrictive new voting laws in the U.S. to the cusp of the governor's desk early Sunday, approving fewer ways to cast a ballot and more criminal penalties after rushing the bill to the floor in the middle of the night.
  • Under revisions during closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election and pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls. The 67-page measure would also eliminate drive-through voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris County, the state's largest Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.
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  • Texas is the last big battleground in the GOP's nationwide efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Georgia and Florida have also passed new voting restrictions, and President Biden on Saturday unfavorably compared Texas' bill to election changes in those states as "an assault on democracy."
  • The bill would newly empower partisan poll watchers by allowing them more access inside polling places and threatening criminal penalties against elections officials who restrict their movement. Republicans originally proposed giving poll watchers the right to take photos, but that language was removed from the final bill that lawmakers were set to vote on this weekend.
  • Another new provision could also make it easier to overturn an election in Texas, allowing for a judge to void an outcome if the number of fraudulent votes cast could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome.
  • GOP legislators are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1 p.m., which critics called an attack on what is commonly known as "souls to the polls" — a get-out-the-vote campaign used by Black church congregations nationwide.
  • Major corporations, including Texas-based American Airlines and Dell, have warned that the measures could harm democracy and the economic climate. But Republicans shrugged off their objections, and in some cases, ripped business leaders for speaking out.
  • Texas already has some of the country's tightest voting restrictions and is regularly cited by nonpartisan groups as a state where it is especially hard to vote. It was one of the few states that did not make it easier to vote by mail during the pandemic.
  • "Even as the national media minimizes the importance of election integrity, the Texas Legislature has not bent to headlines or corporate virtue signaling," they said in a joint statement.
  • Since Trump's defeat, at least 14 states have enacted more restrictive voting laws, according to the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice. It has also counted nearly 400 bills filed this year nationwide that would restrict voting.
  • Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chaired Trump's presidential campaign in Texas, offered a $1 million reward to anyone who could produce evidence of voter fraud. Nonpartisan investigations of previous elections have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. State officials from both parties, including in Texas, as well as international observers have also said the 2020 election went well.
yehbru

Revolt by Texas Democrats heaps pressure on Washington to act on voting reform - CNNPol... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US Politics Republicans Democrats Voting Rights

shared by yehbru on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • their last-ditch effort may only temporarily stall the effort and underscores how the deadlock in Washington is making it easier for Republicans to act on Donald Trump's election fraud lies to stack the deck in future votes.
  • The Lone Star State drama came after the GOP-led Senate in Washington blocked an independent commission into the January 6 insurrection and attack on American democracy last week and after House Republican leaders failed to meaningfully punish Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for comparing mask wearing to the Holocaust.
  • The Texas imbroglio may be the first sign of a more aggressive counterattack against Republican restrictive voting bills that are proliferating from Texas to Florida and Arizona to Georgia as well as many other states.
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  • Democrats effectively succeeded in running out the clock on this year's legislative session by depriving the Republicans of a quorum needed to pass the bill in a late-night session
  • Among other steps, the bill makes mail-in voting more difficult, bans after-hours and drive-through voting that helped Black and Latino voters in the Houston area cast their ballots in 2020. It prohibits early voting on Sundays -- a popular practice for Black churches -- before 1 pm and makes it easier to overturn an election.
  • "When you are pushed to extremes you respond to that with extreme(s)," Moody said on CNN's "New Day" on Monday.
  • Some Democrats may see hope in the fact that Manchin was angry and disappointed that Republicans used the filibuster to kill off the bipartisan January 6 commission. But he has so far given no indication that he will temper his desire for bipartisan action.
  • More evidence of Republican efforts to build on Trump's election fraud lies are causing some Democrats to wonder how much longer it will be politically feasible for Biden to pursue deals with a Republican Party that appears bent on locking them out of power.
  • "Let's be clear. If 10 Republican Senators cannot even vote for a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection, 10 Republican Senators will not vote for anything meaningful to improve the lives of the American people. We must abolish the filibuster & act now," Sanders wrote.
  • If the infrastructure deal fails, that event may come to be seen as the moment when a more partisan White House approach became inevitable.
carolinehayter

Texas Governor Threatens No Pay After Democrats Block Voting Bill : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...age-a-walkout-over-voting-righ

politics us policy voting Culture GOP

shared by carolinehayter on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he intends to withhold paychecks to state lawmakers after House Democrats staged a walkout to block voting restrictions proposed by their Republican counterparts.
  • A large group of Democrats walked out of the House chamber in Austin late Sunday, so there was no quorum and that prevented a final vote on the proposal
  • The bill, which had appeared poised for passage, would cut back polling hours, reduce access to mail-in voting and give more authority to partisan poll watchers.
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  • Voting rights advocates say those and other provisions of the bill would make voting more difficult in Texas and would disproportionately burden people of color. There's been no evidence of significant voter fraud in Texas or elsewhere.
  • Abbott also has said he intends to order lawmakers back to Austin to complete work on the bill.
  • Lawmakers in several states have introduced similar legislation, motivated at least in part by former President Donald Trump's continued promotion of the "big lie" that the 2020 election was somehow stolen despite evidence to the contrary.
mattrenz16

Here Are The Texas GOP's Reasons For Voting Restrictions - And Why Critics Disagree : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...strictions-and-critics-replies

shared by mattrenz16 on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Texas Republicans say their controversial move to tighten voter restrictions is sorely needed to prevent fraud. But the few examples of fraud they cite have been out of proportion to the sweeping changes included in their legislation, which seeks to reshape the way many Texans exercise their fundamental democratic right.
  • Senate Bill 7 is now effectively dead after Democrats walked out of the Texas Capitol in a quorum-busting maneuver that prevented a final vote on the bill. But Republicans plan to call a special session of the state Legislature to revive their push for new controls.
  • If Texas lawmakers want to help voters, the Texas Civil Rights Project says, they should turn their attention elsewhere. The group says that "we have no online voter registration, only a fraction of Texans have the right to vote by mail, and 750 polling places were closed between 2013 and 2019, predominantly in communities of color."
rerobinson03

Harris Asked to Lead on Voting Rights, and It's a Challenge - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...harris-voting-rights.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 03 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Vice President Kamala Harris did not come to her role with a list of demands. She wanted to be a generalist, in large part to learn the political rhythms of a president she was still getting to know. In the first few months of her tenure, some of her portfolio assignments were just that: assignments.
  • Back in Washington, the president’s announcement has not clearly illuminated a path forward for Ms. Harris, whose involvement in the issue stands to become her most politically delicate engagement yet. Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the farthest-reaching elections overhaul in a generation, including a landmark expansion of voting rights that is faltering in the Senate.
  • “The work of voting rights has implications for not just one year down the road or four years down the road but 50 years from now,” Symone Sanders, the vice president’s senior adviser and press secretary, said in an interview on Wednesday.
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  • The voting rights bill faces a more urgent timeline. The vast majority of the party has agreed to make the bill the party’s top legislative priority, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, vowed to put it up for a vote later this month so any changes could be put into effect before the 2022 elections.
  • Mr. Biden has already pledged to sign the bill, which the House passed with only Democratic votes this spring. Known as the For the People Act, the bill would overhaul the nation’s elections system by creating new national requirements for early and mail-in voting, rein in campaign donations and limit partisan gerrymandering. But with the bill all but stalled in the Senate, Mr. Biden has repeatedly expressed concern over its future in his discussions with Democrats.
  • Ms. Harris’s impact on the hand-to-hand politics of the Senate is expected to be limited, but she often drew attention to voting rights during her four years as a senator.
  • In 2020, Ms. Harris was also a co-sponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore a piece of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that relied on a formula to identify states with a history of discrimination and require that those jurisdictions clear any changes to their voting processes with the federal government. The protections were eliminated by the Supreme Court in 2013.
  • At an event in his home state on Wednesday, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, argued that Democrats were inflating the impact of new state voting laws in an attempt to justify an unwarranted and chaotic slew of top-down changes to the way states run elections.
  • “What is going on is the Democrats are trying to convince the Senate that states are involved in trying to prevent people from voting in order to pass a total federal takeover in how we conduct elections,” he told reporters. He said “not a single member” of his party supported the bill.
Javier E

If Democracy Is Dying, Why Are Democrats So Complacent? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...618964

democracy threat right-wing authoritarian 2021 crisis politics policy

shared by Javier E on 24 May 21 - No Cached
  • If you’ve followed recent Democratic messaging, you’ll have heard that American democracy is under serious attack by the Republican Party, representing an existential threat to the country.
  • If you’ve followed Democratic lawmaking, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the threat is actually a rather piddling one. The disconnect, in this case, isn’t attributable to Democratic embellishment, but to inexcusable complacency.
  • When it came to the third, Biden was both pointed and emphatic, tying the events of January 6 and the broader effort to delegitimize November’s election to a wider crisis of democracy. “Congress,” he declared, “should pass H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and send them to my desk right away.”
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  • In his first address to Congress, last month, President Joe Biden established three basic themes—each one invoked in a language of crisis and political urgency: “The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
  • Suffice it to say, a concerted right-wing effort really is under way to limit popular democracy and suppress votes.
  • So what are Democrats doing about it? In a legislative sense at least, a cogent and comprehensive response is already in the works, in the form of the two bills cited by Biden in his congressional address. If realized, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and H.R. 1 (also known as the For the People Act) would constitute the most sweeping acts of democratic reform undertaken in decades. The latter alone would establish automatic national voter registration, independent redistricting commissions for House seats to prevent gerrymandering, expanded mail-in voting, and a number of new measures to reduce the overbearing influence of organized money.
  • If Democrats plan to match their rhetoric with action, they must train public attention not only on the existential problem of the Republican assault on voting, but also on the need to eliminate the main obstacle to countering that assault. This means doing whatever it takes to bring holdout senators onside, in private or in public.
  • Even with the filibuster removed or substantially modified, H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would still face barriers to becoming law. But to simply accept these barriers is nonsensical, the product of a fraudulent and conservative “realism” that is really defeatism by any other name.
  • What, after all, is more important: the death of democracy, or the preservation of a Senate tradition that has been leveraged for decades to protect conservative minority rule?
aidenborst

Opinion: What Fauci's emails reveal -- and what they don't - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics US crisis Trump history Culture policy Pandemic Economics Fauci Emails

shared by aidenborst on 03 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • This week, 3,234 pages of emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the President, were released through a Freedom Of Information Act request. I'm still trying to digest them all, as I expect many people are.
  • I also, of course, note what is missing -- namely, many details from the White House Task Force. We get just little hints: "Let us discuss this when we are together at the 4:00 PM TF Meeting," for example. That history will have to wait. Only occasionally does any frustration with the federal government's response show up in the emails, such as when he is commenting on current Covid-19 tests being "misleading" or defending his public presence to fellow public health scientists: "I genuflect to no one but science and always, always speak my mind when it comes to public health."
  • Fauci's emails reveal that by early April he was responding to a question about why face coverings were not being advised with: "That recommendation is in the works." I celebrate his willingness to say in March of 2020, "Will have to check," in response to a question from a follow doctor about post-infection immunity.
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  • In March of 2020, for example, he forwarded a correspondence about the possible Covid-19 immunity of indigenous people harvesting guano (bat excrement), as well as an idea from a psychiatry professor about using the antibiotic minocycline to slow viral replication. He commented on an email from a Swedish psychiatrist, "There may be nothing to this, but we should at least be aware." And in April of that year, he told a persistent doctor with multiple ideas for possible antiviral agents, "You are not being ignored."
  • I find the emails about the funding of Fauci's agency particularly fascinating. Over the course of the messages, budget discussions transition from small funding increases to tremendous week-on-week growths in expenditures -- particularly when the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was empowered by Congress to dream bigger thanks to $1.532 billion in supplemental appropriations. To put a finer point on this group of emails: it was these bigger dreams and bigger trials that provided us with important answers and, ultimately, with the vaccines.
  • At other times, it feels like looking at the celebrity photos on the front pages of People magazine: "He felt that way, too?!"
  • Finally, in between the lines, we watch him manage this pandemic as a human. There are emails where he is clearly overwhelmed, forwarding media request after speaking request to his assistants at the Office of the Chief of Staff. (One has to wonder: who wouldn't be overwhelmed by this number of requests?)
  • There are emails where he is tremendously kind, thanking people for their service, telling staff to "stay well and safe" or complimenting folks on well-written papers and columns.
  • Again and again, he responds to concerned citizens, scientists and journalists with: "Thank you for your note." He pays attention both to people he knows -- apologetically telling Ralph Nader at 7 p.m. on a Sunday, "I receive over 1000 e-mails per day and even with staff screening, I do not see them for days." -- and to those he probably doesn't. There are times when he's funny, times when he's frustrated and times when he's clearly exhausted, admitting that he's simply too tired to make sense of something.
  • He is just like us -- or, at least, he's how most of us like to imagine ourselves to be, on our best days.
anonymous

Relief Payments Provide Lifelines To Struggling Americans : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...mulus-checks-begin-rolling-out

shared by anonymous on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • When Mike Phelps moved from Detroit to western Kentucky in 2019, he brought his small business, GenDrop, with him.GenDrop rents out generator power for concerts and music festivals. Phelps had already powered nearly 100 special events throughout Michigan, and he hoped to do the same in his new state. But when the pandemic hit, and shows were canceled all over the world, Phelps began bleeding money.
  • Phelps got a loan from the Small Business Administration, but it was far too small to make a difference. Now he plans to use his $1,400 stimulus check to help keep GenDrop afloat until business picks up.
  • Since only a day after President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill, people around the country have reported seeing deposits pending in their bank accounts. That money is expected to be made available as soon as Wednesday.
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  • Phelps is from one of the 80% to 90% of households expected to receive a stimulus payment from the government. And to the delight of many, that money is coming sooner than anticipated.
  • Most individuals can expect to receive up to $1,400, couples up to $2,800, and those with children and adult dependents can expect $1,400 for each one. Payments start tapering off for individuals making $75,000 per year, or married couples making $150,000. And unlike the earlier stimulus checks, the maximum cutoff is lower: Individuals no longer qualify once they make $80,000 a year ($160,000 for couples).
  • According to the U.S. Treasury, payments to eligible Americans will continue through the next several weeks on a rolling basis. Most people who are eligible will automatically receive those payments — no action required.
  • The IRS says it will automatically calculate the amount that people receive, based on their latest processed tax return.
  • Payments will go out in batches. The first batch will go to taxpayers who provided direct deposit information on their 2019 or 2020 tax returns. That will be followed by a second batch to taxpayers for whom the IRS already has payment info. For them, the payments could come in the form of checks or prepaid debit cards in the mail.People who receive Social Security or other federal benefits will receive the payment in the same way as their regular benefits. The IRS has not yet announced a payment date for this group, but says it will do so shortly.
  • The Treasury says it will provide more information in the coming days for people who don't have a bank account, or whose address has recently changed. People will soon be able to check the status of their stimulus check at the IRS website.For Phelps of GenDrop, the deposit is already "pending" in his bank account, and should be available within days.
ethanshilling

The Pandemic's Silver Lining? This Village May Have Been Saved by It. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...pain-coronavirus-pyrenees.html

pandemic spain village

shared by ethanshilling on 18 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The castle that crowns the hill above the village of Gósol used to be among the grandest along Spain’s border with France, with views of fertile farms and forests rich in timber that stretched up to the cloudy mountaintops.
  • But the castle is in ruins now, and until last year, Gósol had fallen on hard times, too. The town census had gone down in nearly every count since the 1960s.
  • It took a pandemic for Spaniards to heed his call.Among those who packed their bags was Gabriela Calvar, a 37-year-old who once owned a bar in a beach town near Barcelona, but watched it go under during last year’s lockdowns and decamped to the town in the mountains for a new start.
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  • It was the rare silver lining of a troubled time: About 20 or 30 newcomers to a dwindling town of 140 souls, where even the tiny school on the town plaza got a second chance after parents started enrolling their children there.
  • “If it weren’t for Covid, the school would have closed,” said Josep Tomás Puig, 67, a retired mail carrier in Gósol who spent his life watching the younger generation depart to Spain’s cities.
  • Rafael López, a former renewable energy entrepreneur whose business collapsed in Spain’s 2008 financial crisis, was interested. “My mom said she saw this on TV,” said Mr. López. “And I said, ‘Well, what do you say if we take the car and go have a look, see what’s there?’”
  • For decades in Spain, a landscape of walled cities, stone bridges and ancient winding roads has become mostly abandoned as generations of young people left for cities. La España Vacía, or “the Empty Spain,” is the phrase that was coined to describe the blight.
  • Yet tiny Gósol had fared better than many others, residents say.It sits in the wealthy autonomous region of Catalonia, in a majestic valley in the Pyrenees Mountains that brought tourists and part-time residents in the summer months.
  • By 2015, the situation had gotten critical. The number of permanent residents was 120 and falling. The mayor went on television warning, among other things, that the school was about to close because it was down to five students.
  • “And if the school closed, the town might as well have closed too.”
  • Over the next months, hundreds of people came to Gósol to kick the tires. They said they were impressed by the quaint homes and the ruined castle atop the hill.
  • As the coronavirus began to spread last year, Spain entered another economic crisis, this one on a scale even greater than the collapse that had brought Mr. López in 2008.
  • In Castelldefels, a seaside town southwest of Barcelona, life was starting to look upside-down for Ms. Calvar, the bar owner who came to Gósol in September.
  • The path seemed clear when, passing through Gósol one day, Ms. Calvar learned that the owner of the grocery store on the plaza was at looking to sell the business.
  • The schoolhouse sits along the plaza, a place of kid-sized chairs and tables, paper planets hanging from the ceiling and an incubator warming eggs.
  • Classes ended at 5 p.m. and Ms. Otero, the telecommuting web designer who had moved to Gósol from Barcelona last June, was waiting for two of her children, 6 and 7.
  • There was a note of regret in her voice when she thought about the end of the pandemic, and the pressure that she knew would inevitably build to return to Barcelona. She didn’t want Gósol to disappear yet, she said.
anonymous

Democrats launch Senate battle for expanded voting rights - 0 views

apnews.com/...de82aee5edbdabde43f48d7fc60e09

shared by anonymous on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Democrats renewed their efforts Wednesday to muscle through the largest overhaul of U.S. elections in a generation, setting up a fight with Republicans that could bring partisan tensions to a climax in the evenly split Senate and become a defining issue for President Joe Biden.
  • The Senate bill, similar to a version passed by the House earlier this month, could shape election outcomes for years to come, striking down hurdles to voting, requiring more disclosure from political donors, restricting partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts and bolstering election security and ethics laws.
  • The debate over who has the right to vote, and how elections are conducted, could play out for months, if not years.
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  • Unless they united around changing Senate rules, which now require 60 votes for most bills to advance, their chance to enshrine expansive voting protections could quickly slip away.
  • Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., making a rare appearance at a hearing, said Wednesday it took “mighty movements and decades of fraught political conflict” to achieve the basic dignities of current election laws and “any American who thinks that the fight for a full and fair democracy is over, is sadly and sorely mistaken.”
  • “In the end, that insurrection was about an angry mob working to undermine our democracy,” Klobuchar said. “And it reminds all of us how very fragile our democracy truly is, and how it is on all of us to not just protect that democracy, but to ensure that it thrives.”
  • the Senate legislation would create automatic voter registration nationwide, allow former felons to vote, and limit the ways states can remove registered voters from their rolls. It would expand voting by mail, promote early voting and give states money to track absentee ballots. Millions of people took advantage of those practices during the pandemic last year — and after some Republican states tried to restrict them in favor of voting in person.
  • The bill would increase oversight for election vendors and boost support for state voting system upgrades after Russia attempted to breach some of those systems in the 2016 election. It would overhaul federal oversight of campaign finance and encourage small donations to campaigns, while requiring more disclosure of political donations.
  • Testifying at the hearing, former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served under President Barack Obama, said the legislation would help fight politicians who want to maintain an “unjust status quo.”
  • “The events of the past few months have brought into stark focus what has been true for too long: There is a large and powerful faction in this country intent on retaining power and who will bend or break the rules of our democracy in order to do so,” Holder said.
  • Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a longtime opponent of restrictive campaign finance laws, also made a rare hearing appearance, sitting across the dais from Schumer. He said the bill is full of “silly new mandates” that would create “an invitation to chaos” for states that would have to put them in place.
  • Lacking the 60 votes needed for passage, Democrats have discussed options like lowering the threshold to break a filibuster, or potentially breaking the bill into pieces. For now, Democrats have suggested they will start with bringing up potentially popular proposals like the voting rights measure and expanded gun background checks and let them fail, forcing Republicans to go on the record in opposition.
  • Republicans called West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner to testify in opposition to the bill. He said the legislation would force his state and others to follow “arbitrary guidelines, most of which are impossible or unattainable under the deadlines.” He urged the senators to “leave election administration up to the states.”
carolinehayter

Amazon Union Vote Count In Alabama: Why Is It Taking So Long? : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...nion-vote-count-taking-so-long

politics US GOP economics policy Culture

shared by carolinehayter on 08 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The results of the 2021 election that everyone has been awaiting with bated breath are taking a while. Blame it on mail-in votes. Yes, this one, too.
  • The results of the historic Amazon union vote in Alabama, which ended more than a week ago, are still a few days away. The count of yes and no votes began on Thursday.
  • The National Labor Relations Board has received 3,215 ballots from workers at Amazon's warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. That's according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which is looking to represent this workplace. It's also a remarkable turnout of more than 50%.
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  • The vote-tally process — done by hand — includes several lengthy steps.
  • Hundreds of ballots have been challenged, the union says, mostly by Amazon. These ballots are then set aside and may play a huge role if the tally of uncontested votes produces a result that's so close that these set-aside votes could sway the outcome.
  • Afterward, the vote-count moved on to the next step. Inside that first letter was a second sealed envelope containing the anonymous ballot. That second set of envelopes required opening and shuffling.
  • On Thursday afternoon, the hand-counting of yes and no votes finally started. This tabulation of anonymous ballots is being streamed online for preregistered members of the media and the general public.
  • The Bessemer workers are deciding whether to form Amazon's first unionized warehouse in America.
  • A vote to unionize would shake up history for both Amazon and Alabama.
  • Amazon unleashed a strong push to sway Bessemer workers to vote against unionizing.
  • The vote is the most consequential labor battle in the U.S. in recent history.
zoegainer

Barr Is Said to Be Weighing Whether to Leave Before Trump's Term Ends - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...arr-considering-resigning.html

trump Politics US

shared by zoegainer on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • It was not clear whether the attorney general’s deliberations were influenced by Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede his election loss or his fury over Mr. Bar
  • r’s acknowledgment last week that the Justice Department uncovered no widespread voting fraud. In the ensuing days, the president refused to say whether he still had confidence in his attorney general.
  • By leaving early, Mr. Barr could avoid a confrontation with the president over his refusal to advance Mr. Trump’s efforts to rewrite the election results.
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  • Mr. Barr, 70, is the strongest proponent of presidential power to hold the office of attorney general since Watergate.
  • He managed to heal fissures between the White House and the Justice Department that broke open when the president learned that his campaign was under investigation related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
  • But weeks after taking office, Mr. Barr released a summary of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that a judge later called distorted and misleading
  • And after the election, Mr. Barr opened the door to politically charged election fraud investigations, authorizing federal prosecutors to investigate “specific allegations” of voter fraud before results were certified.
  • Mr. Barr soon asked John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to open an investigation into the Russia inquiry itself to seek out any wrongdoing under the Obama administration
  • Pairing the Durham announcement with that revelation was widely seen as an effort to placate Mr. Trump, who was said to be enraged that Mr. Barr had publicly contradicted him.
  • Throughout the presidential campaign, Mr. Barr was among the loudest voices warning that mail-in ballots would result in mass election fraud. He routinely claimed in speeches and interviews that the potential for widespread voter fraud was high and posed a grave danger. Mr. Barr’s claims were sometimes false or exaggerated and were widely refuted.
  • “I don’t have empirical evidence other than the fact that we’ve always had voting fraud. And there always will be people who attempt to do that,” Mr. Barr said in September. He called his conclusions “common sense.”
  • In October, he secretly appointed Mr. Durham a special counsel assigned to seek out any wrongdoing in the course of the Russia investigation.
  • Mr. Barr broke his silence a few days later, telling The Associated Press that he had not seen evidence of election fraud on a scale that would have changed the fact that Mr. Biden won.
  • “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he said.
anonymous

Cellphones in hand, 'Army for Trump' readies poll watching operation | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...tching-operation-idUSKBN26S1J5

trump election mailinballots fraud usnews

shared by anonymous on 07 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Republicans are mobilizing thousands of volunteers to watch early voting sites and ballot drop boxes leading up to November’s election, part of an effort to find evidence to back up President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated complaints about widespread voter fraud.
  • to capture photos and videos Republicans can use to support so-far unfounded claims that mail voting is riddled with chicanery, and to help their case if legal disputes erupt over the results of the Nov. 3 contest between Republican incumbent Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
  • Some voting-rights activists are concerned such encounters could escalate in a tense year that has seen armed militias face off against protestors in the nation’s streets.
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  • Donald Trump Jr., made the unfounded claim that Democrats plan to “add millions of fraudulent ballots” to rig the results.
  • A 1982 consent decree restricted these activities after the party sent teams of gun-toting men to minority neighborhoods during a New Jersey election wearing uniforms saying “Ballot Security Task Force.”
  • “To be clear: the satellite offices are not polling places and the Pennsylvania Election Code does not create a right for campaign representatives to ‘watch’ at these locations,”
anonymous

With Child Hunger Rising, A Federal Aid Program Has Stalled : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...hasnt-gotten-to-needy-families

shared by anonymous on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • When schools shut down in the spring, that raised immediate worries about the nearly 30 million children who depend on school food
  • According to a report from Feeding America, 1 in 4 households with children experienced food insecurity in 2020
  • Typically, she says, when families are having trouble stretching their food budget, the adults will go without food before allowing the children to go hungry. But in April, with shutdowns at their most acute, nearly 20% of mothers said their children themselves didn't have enough to eat. That's compared with fewer than 5% in 2018.
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  • School food programs have been working hard: offering groceries, pre-prepared meals and everything in between. But as we've reported, it often isn't enough.
  • Congress passed a law giving families the cash value of the meals they missed when schools were closed.
  • if your family didn't have food stamps already, you might get a debit card in the mail with hundreds of dollars on it to spend at any grocery store. Families were eligible for $117 per child per month.
  • all by itself, Pandemic EBT, as it was known, lifted between 2.7 million and 3.9 million children out of hunger.
  • Congress reauthorized the benefits for this current school year on Oct. 1. And the benefit was supposed to be extended to younger children as well. The potential value, estimates Bauer: $12 billion.
  • So far, so good. But the plan ran into a wall of bureaucracy. One complication was that this fall, not every school around the country was closed all month. Closures varied week to week, state to state, district to district, and even school to school.
  • States were supposed to calculate the number of missed meals and give the money out equitably.
  • And so as a result, everything has been in a holding pattern."
  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture didn't issue guidance to states on plans for how to do this for six weeks. So far, they have approved only the plans from Massachusetts, Indiana and Rhode Island. And they haven't yet touched the issue of how to give out the money to children under 6.
  • USDA remains committed to providing states with technical assistance that delivers benefits to eligible children and responds to changes in schools' instructional models and children's eligibility over the course of the school year. USDA will continue to actively partner with states to understand their concerns, streamline processes, and provide benefits in accordance with our authority."
  • "The long and short of it is for the past three-plus months, states should have been able to distribute more than $100 of food benefits per child [per month]," she says. "And USDA is not making it easy for any state to roll out this program."
xaviermcelderry

Can Conservative Media Still Return to Business as Usual? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...turn-to-business-as-usual.html

Republicans Conservatives

shared by xaviermcelderry on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • On a Friday in late December, people who tuned in to “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on Fox Business encountered something they had most likely never seen before: a subdued, uncertain Lou Dobbs. “There are a lot of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software,”
  • This was a major departure from the norm. In the weeks after the November election, Dobbs had spent most of his prime-time hour on a farrago of conspiracy theories about how Donald Trump had actually defeated Joe Biden. Among his favorites was one involving Smartmatic, which — according to Dobbs and various guests — was founded by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who died in 2013, and sat at the center of a plot to rig the election.
  • But such clarifications evidently made little impression on the believers who, a few weeks later, stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of the election results, leaving conservative media with a question even more vexing and consequential than how to respond to the threat of a libel lawsuit: How far could it really follow its audience?
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  • After the elections, those on the supply side of the conservative media equation — especially Fox, a huge corporate entity with significantly more to lose than its smaller rivals — believed their greatest challenge was how, exactly, to serve the audience’s demands without running afoul of libel law.
  • The network understood that it could spend all day pushing scandals, even tendentious ones, but there were still some things better left to wilder precincts.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox. It was Donald Trump, during his guest appearances on “Fox & Friends” and other Fox shows, who banged the drum of birtherism; the network’s own stars largely steered clear.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox. It was Donald Trump, during his guest appearances on “Fox & Friends” and other Fox shows, who banged the drum of birtherism; the network’s own stars largely steered clear. When conspiracy theorists claimed online that Obama planned to use a military training operation to declare martial law in Texas, Fox covered the kerfuffle mostly to dismiss or even mock it. The network understood that it could spend all day pushing scandals, even tendentious ones, but there were still some things better left to wilder precincts.
  • Now that Fox is preparing for a Biden administration, the same muscle memory is kicking in. The business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter and his brother James have given rise to myriad Fox reports about a “Biden crime family,” and the network has become preoccupied with Biden’s age, with a “medical contributor” appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show to talk about atrial fibrillation and cognitive decline.
  • Indeed, since Trump’s defeat, many conservative-news consumers have abandoned the comparably more staid precincts of Fox for OANN and Newsmax; in the month after the election, Newsmax viewership rose 497 percent between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., while Fox suffered a 38 percent decline. The demand among conservative-news consumers for the unhinged is obviously high.
  • For the past four years, Trump has not only met that demand; he has steadily increased it. Now, with his claims of a landslide electoral win, he has crossed a line that conservative media is asked to cross, too, lest it be left behind. It’s one thing for conservatives to believe Biden is corrupt or hopelessly senile, but to believe that his election is patently fraudulent goes far beyond the outer edges of even toxic partisanship
brookegoodman

These Are the 7 Weapons the Barbarians Used to Take Down Rome - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...7-legendary-barbarian-weapons

history

shared by brookegoodman on 25 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • The Battle-Axe
  • Germanic soldiers were known to wield heavy battle-axes capable of smashing through shield, armor and helmet in a single blow.
  • “The iron head of this weapon was thick and exceedingly sharp on both sides while wooden handle was very short,”
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The double-edged long sword was the main weapon of the Gauls,
  • The Long Sword
  • The axe was one of the many barbarian weapons that carried over into the medieval world.
  • Julius Caesar became the first Roman general to encounter the war chariots of the native Celtic tribes.
  • chainmail, which may have been invented in Europe by the Gallic Celts in the third century B.C. Most Gallic mail took the form of a short-sleeved shirt or vest made from an interlocking mesh of small metal rings. This provided flexibility while also protecting the wearer from slashing blows by swords and daggers,
  • Chainmail was extremely labor intensive to make—a single vest might include tens of thousands of rings
  • The Celtic Chariot
  • Chainmail
  • . The Falcata
  • When the Romans invaded modern day Spain in 218 B.C., they came face to face with a barbarian tribe known as the Celtiberians. These warriors were renowned both for their guerilla fighting ability and their skill as sword-smiths and metalworkers.
  • “falcata,” a curved, two-foot-long steel sword that was single-edged near the hilt and double-edged near the point. The weapon was weighted towards the tip, which allowed it to slash or stab its way through armor with relative ease.
  • The Recurve Bow
  • Attila and his Hun steppe marauders invaded Europe from the East and cut a bloody swath across the Roman Empire
  • Most Hun warriors carried composite bows assembled from wood, sinew, horn and bone. Unlike the Western bow, these steppe weapons were made to curve back on themselves at the ends, which generated added torque and made arrows fly with enough velocity to penetrate armor at 100 yards
  • Siege Towers and Battering Rams
  • Unlike most barbarian groups, the Huns were particularly proficient at siege warfare.
  • Huns used massive, wheeled siege towers to move protected archers close to the battlements and rain arrows onto the city’s defenders. They also pummeled the city’s walls with huge battering rams, which Priscus described as “a beam with a sharp metal point suspended on chains hung loosely from a V-shaped timber frame.”
Javier E

The I.R.S. Sent a Letter to 3.9 Million People. It Saved Some of Their Lives. - The New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...alth-insurance-fine-study.html

health care death rate obamacare

shared by Javier E on 11 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • Three years ago, 3.9 million Americans received a plain-looking envelope from the Internal Revenue Service. Inside was a letter stating that they had recently paid a fine for not carrying health insurance and suggesting possible ways to enroll in coverage
  • these notices increased health insurance sign-ups. Obtaining insurance, they say, reduced premature deaths by an amount that exceeded any of their expectations
  • Americans between 45 and 64 benefited the most: For every 1,648 who received a letter, one fewer death occurred than among those who hadn’t received a letter.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • the letters may have wound up saving 700 lives
  • The experiment, made possible by an accident of budgeting, is the first rigorous experiment to find that health coverage leads to fewer deaths, a claim that politicians and economists have fiercely debated in recent years as they assess the effects of the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion
  • The results also provide belated vindication for the much-despised individual mandate that was part of Obamacare until December 2017, when Congress did away with the fine for people who don’t carry health insurance.
  • “There has been a lot of skepticism, especially in economics, that health insurance has a mortality impact,
  • “It’s an innovation to know that just sending a letter to people with information about what it means to be insured versus uninsured can substantially change coverage rates,”
  • “It’s really important that this is a randomized controlled trial. It’s a really high standard of evidence that you can’t just dismiss.”
  • Multiple studies showed a decline in mortality rates after states expanded Medicaid, but none could tie the outcome directly to the policy change, since states typically cannot randomly pick which residents do and don’t receive Medicaid
  • Finding any change requires a very large sample to study.
  • The Obama administration had planned to send letters to all 4.5 million Americans paying tax fines for not carrying health coverage, only to learn the budget was not quite big enough. About 600,000 uninsured taxpayers were randomly left out of the mailing.
  • This created a randomized controlled trial, which researchers generally view as the gold standard for studying the results of a specific policy intervention
  • gaining coverage was associated with a 12 percent decline in mortality over the two-year study period
Javier E

Ricky Gervais and Jeremy Clarkson are no laughing matter | Stewart Lee | Opinion | The ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...larkson-are-no-laughing-matter

populism critics pundit comedian australia

shared by Javier E on 12 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • in a much-needed and well-timed satire of snowflake hand-wringing over the Australian bush fires, the Sun’s politically incorrect columnist Jeremy Clarkson declared the continent unfit for human habitation and welcomed scorched whiteys back to the motherland, unaccompanied minors and all.
  • Clarkson’s suggestion that Australians needed to “come home”, while unconsciously prefiguring the mass migrations the climate crisis will cause in this decade, could read as a slap in the face to indigenous Australians, for whom the continent has always been “home”
  • Both Clarkson’s and Turd’s careers have flourished by exploiting the notion that they are lone voices of sanity against a politically correct snowflake cabal intent on silencing normal blokes like them
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  • Their comedy counterpart Ricky Gervais has managed to monetise this notion spectacularly, saying the things that he is apparently not allowed to say, on a variety of global media platforms, for millions of dollars, with the full co-operation and approval of the legal representatives of the institutions on which, and about which, he says the things he is not allowed to say, his functionally adequate standup act having been overpromoted worldwide off the back of his pitch-perfect contribution to the ground-breaking Office sitcom two decades ago.
  • In the Daily Mail, Sarah Vine ripped the lid off the rotting kitchen food waste bin of her mind to retch forth some choice owl pellets of praise for Gervais’s performative outrage. For Vine, Gervais was “a knight in shining armour, saviour of humanity, saviour of comedy, restorer of sanity and… undisputed Wokefinder General”
  • Clarkson, Turds and the Wokefinder General are narcissistic populists, all clever enough to know better, who continue to court the attention of angry impotent people and take no personal responsibilty for the consequences of their words, other mortals merely collateral damage, rabbits churned up in the combine harvester blades of their ongoing ambitions.
  • A Ricky Gervais Netflix standup special walks into a pub with a massive pile of stinking dogshit on its shoulder. The barman says: “Where did you get that massive pile of dogshit?” And the dogshit says: “Netflix. They’ve got bloody loads of them!”
bluekoenig

The Greatest Heist You've Never Heard Of | Retro Report | The New York Times - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

politics US history culture fbi retro report retro report

shared by bluekoenig on 07 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • bluekoenig on 07 Jan 20
     
    In the 70's antiwar movements against the Vietnam War were raging and the FBI was secretly keeping tabs on protesters. They would go through people's mail, monitor their calls, and other invasive actions to monitor people they found dangerous, even famous individuals, politicians, and diplomats. In Media PA, just outside of Philadelphia, three political protesters broke into the FBI building and took documents proving the surveillance which they distributed to newspapers. The information put the FBI and its head, J Edgar Hoover, in deep trouble with the American public and revealed illegal means. They were never found until they revealed themselves decades later. I think this was a pretty interesting story since it took place so close to home and it features regular people performing impossible feats.
johnsonel7

In tiny town, immigration detainees outnumber residents - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...s-outnumber-residents-68327407

immigration US legal system

shared by johnsonel7 on 17 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The seven-hour drive from North Carolina to the Stewart Detention Center in a remote corner of southwest Georgia has become all too familiar. One of her sons was held here before being deported back to Mexico last year, leaving behind his wife and children, who accompany Campos now. Campos fears her other son will meet the same fate after being detained when police were called on his friend.
  • Those immigrants are caught in a larger system of immigration courts that are facing unprecedented turmoil from crushing caseloads and shifting policies.
  • Campos doesn’t have money to pay for a lawyer, so her son is representing himself.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • It’s difficult for detained immigrants to see or even speak to lawyers who live far away, they have no access to email or fax, and the phones sometimes don’t work or are expensive, Argueta said. Communications are done by mail, which slows the process of collecting documentation, filling out forms in English and getting documents translated and notarized.
  • When detainees are released, it’s often in the evening. If they aren’t fortunate enough to have family waiting for them, they’re driven 30 minutes away to Columbus and left at one of two bus stations. “There is no set time of release, so it’s difficult to formulate plans,” said Rita Ellis, founding member and chief financial officer of Paz Amigos, a volunteer organization that springs into action when bus station staff notify them that a new group of detainees has arrived. The organization helps between 40 and 50 men a month, picking them up, feeding them and often putting them up in a hotel or a spare bedroom at a volunteer's homes. Donations of snacks, clothes and backpacks are handed out and phone calls are made to family members to arrange their travel.
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