While Harris’s nomination is historic and meaningful, Black women’s overwhelming interest and commitment to casting a ballot is not a new feature in American politics. In 2008 and ’12, Black women voted at the highest rate of any race and gender subgroup. [...] The passage in 1920 of the 19th Amendment, which granted voting rights to all women in theory but only white women in practice, had little effect on Black women’s lives. Through an array of legal and extralegal strategies, white Americans worked to keep Black people from practicing the constitutional right to vote. Black women passionately resisted these efforts. During the 1960s, for example, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer led a nationwide movement to expand the voting rights of Black Americans. It was a bold act of defiance—and a matter of…
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Dan Parri, a lawyer in the city of Clearwater, loved driving around town with the Pinellas County Jeep Club — until some members started festooning their vehicles with Trump 2020 campaign flags.So Mr. Parri spoke up, then kept speaking. The Confederate flag also bothered him, he told his fellow Jeep enthusiasts, as did the systemic racism that brought about the killing of George Floyd.And when his words were met with resistance, he founded what he calls a “progressive Jeep club.”“We have about 70 members,” he said, standing proudly next to his Jeep, which he has named Prometheus and decorated with red, white and blue balloons; an American flag; a Black Lives Matter flag; another flag with an L.G.B.T. rainbow he found on Amazon; and lots of…
Judges are supposed to rule fairly and impartially on the laws before them. Before I get into Amy Coney Barrett, let’s review the batch of judges you don’t hear about. Trump and McConnell used over 200 of them to flood our judiciary; let’s see if they seem likely to rule fairly or impartially. Trump-appointed District Judge Thomas Farr Fourth Circuit Judge Allison Rushing has ties to a right-wing hate group. Lawrence VanDyke received a stunning rebuke from the ABA, saying he was “lacking in knowledge,” and didn’t have “a commitment to being truthful.” He now sits on the Ninth Circuit. Appellate Judge Mark Norris said being Muslim is synonymous with being a terrorist, Judge Thomas Farr got rubber-stamped despite his hostility to African Americans, and Judge Leonard Grasz received a unanimous…
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said on Thursday night that he will not put up with any attempts by Donald Trump or organizations like the Proud Boys to intimidate voters in his state. “We’ve been preparing for this moment for months,” Shapiro said during an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid. “We will not let any groups, from the Proud Boys to anyone else, step in and interfere with the election in any way.” Shapiro said that the president’s efforts to undermine democracy in Pennsylvania are clearly rooted in a fear that, if all the votes are counted, Trump will lose. “[Trump’s] trying to do so because he knows if there’s a straight-up vote, where all votes are counted in Pennsylvania, he’s going to come out on the short end of…
Quick, think about disinformation. What comes to mind? “Vladimir Putin, president of Russia.” But in 2020, many experts are more concerned with disinformation coming from our very own backyard. Like this guy, who, with a single tweet, disrupted a governor’s race in Kentucky. “Oh I’m just a broke college student, basically.” “He had 19 followers. It’s slightly absurd. But it’s also slightly terrifying.” What makes misinformation truly dangerous is that it doesn’t need to hack into the actual infrastructure of an election. It only needs to hack the brains of voters. “A seed of doubt is sowed into the democratic process of elections. People just don’t trust the process anymore.” “The purpose is to confuse people, to cause chaos and to cause division. The hope with disinformation is that a…
● NH-Sen (Likely D to Safe D): Republican Corky Messner has self-funded $6 million in his bid to unseat second-term Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, but he doesn't have much to show for it: Every public poll of New Hampshire's Senate race has shown Shaheen over 50% and Messner well behind. National Republicans haven't paid him any attention, and with Joe Biden up double digits, a flip now looks out of the question. Campaign Action ● NH-Gov (Likely R to Safe R): While Democrats appear to be headed for a good night in the Granite State, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who defied the midterm blue wave to win re-election in 2018, looks like he's once again immunized himself from the broader political environment. Sununu's generally gotten good marks for handling the…
Nothing threatens the progressive project more than the existence of a Supreme Court that adheres to the Constitution. It’s really that simple.That’s what the tantrum over Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation is all about. The notion that the same Democrats who shelved the judicial filibuster and now threaten to destroy the separation of powers with a Court-packing revenge scheme — the same people, incidentally, so fond of smear-drenched confirmation hearings — are sticklers for process or decorum is simply ludicrous.For one thing, no norms have been undone by the confirmation of Barrett. If Democrats won a Senate majority in 2016, Merrick Garland would already be ensconced in the Supreme Court, election or no election. Many of the same Democrats now feigning outrage over Barrett’s confirmation, including Joe Biden, argued back…
Rachel Maddow blasted Donald Trump and his Republican loyalists on Monday night for killing the independence of the United States Supreme Court in a single presidential term. The MSNBC host said that Trump has put his stain on all three of his Supreme Court appointments, effectively transforming the court into another political body with zero credibility. “In President Trump’s less than four years in office, Mitch McConnell has arranged for President Trump to have two Supreme Court nominees confirmed before tonight and a third confirmed tonight,” Maddow said. “In both of those instances, Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh, they were both sworn in at the White House, at lavish White House ceremonies overseen from inches away by the president himself.” “The president making sure he was in every shot, including…
With this ill-won majority of radicals, the Supreme Court is poised to gut the rule of law, render the Voting Rights Act a dead letter, and give a green light to GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts, all so that Republicans can permanently entrench minority rule at every level of government. Donald Trump himself has openly stated that he wanted Barrett on the court before the election so that its conservatives would decide the outcome in his favor. Just days ago, four justices were willing to blow up the foundation of federalism to further Republican suppression of the vote, and Barrett may soon give them a majority in the likely event that that case returns to the court—or if not, shortly thereafter. Since 2010 elections swept them into power across…
Voter education is particularly important in an election held in the middle of a pandemic. The Vote Early Day website is just one of many that provide a plethora of resources to help people find out how to vote early, since policies and procedures vary from state to state. xAs of today 10/24, Americans can vote early in person in these states... (Deep breath) AK, AR, AZ, CA, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, ME, MI, MN, MT, NC, ND, NE, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, PA, RI, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WV, WI, WY#VoteEarlyDay https://t.co/lrvwtZHTMq— Swing Left (@swingleft) October 24, 2020 As we count down the days until we #VoteThemOut, there’s a a social media phenomenon that many people, including your fearless writer, have become fascinated with: Voting lines. Some…
In the interview, Biden said: "There's a number of alternatives that are—go well beyond packing. […] The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football, whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want. Presidents come and go. Supreme Court justices stay for generations." So on the "packing" thing, he needs to do some work. Talking about it as "balancing," if not "expansion," is a better way to address it. But it doesn't hurt to get people used to hearing "expansion" and internalizing it—then it won't seem like a radical thing when it happens. But six months, 180 days, is far too long for Biden and a likely Democratic Senate to wait to act. There are going to be massive actions that have to…
More Than a Vote, the collective of athletes headlined by the basketball star LeBron James, on Wednesday will introduce its final political push before Election Day, a rapid response and advertisement operation meant to combat the spread of misinformation among younger Black voters.The initiative, which is a collaboration with the political group Win Black and includes some celebrity partners, will seek to educate younger Black voters on how to spot false political statements spreading on social media. The goal is to provide advice that culminates in young people making a plan to vote — either by absentee ballot or in person.Called “Under Review,” the effort will be featured on Snapchat through Election Day, and will include videos from celebrities and activists like Desus and Mero, Jemele Hill and the athletes…
Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Nick Corasaniti, your host on Tuesdays for our coverage of all things media and messaging.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday.Until a month ago, the biggest-spending Democratic super PAC in the general election had aired only a single television ad during the campaign. Now the group, Future Forward, is on pace to spend more than $108 million on television ads supporting Joe Biden and two Senate candidates, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad tracking firm.The group is barreling into the race a month after Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor and presidential candidate, pledged to spend $100 million to support Mr. Biden — exclusively in Florida. And Priorities USA, one of…
“The unprecedented proposal could have the effect of shifting both political power and billions of dollars in federal funds away from urban states with large immigrant populations,” The Texas Tribune reports, “and toward rural and more Republican interests.” Some say unprecedented, the lower courts say illegal. Of course the worry now is that the Supreme Court that’s set to hear the case on Nov. 30 is drastically different than the Supreme Court that last year temporarily blocked officials from adding a citizenship question to the census. In that ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal justices in that 5-4 decision. If Republicans now succeed in confirming Trump’s illegitimate nominee following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump could have the votes he needs to win. However, NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reports that because…
Bettie Griggs, a retiree in Los Angeles, was 12 years old and living in Louisiana when her mother received her first voter registration card in the mail. It was 1965.“I can still recall the joy that she had,” Ms. Griggs said. “I can recall seeing that the card was actually stamped ‘illiterate’ and thinking, ‘Oh my God, they stamped her card illiterate.’”The long history of voter disenfranchisement in the United States is a central theme that guides Ms. Griggs’s family reunions, held every other year in Shreveport, La.That is because in the African-American family tradition, reunions frequently act as opportunities for political organizing, with older generations emphasizing to younger family members the importance of registering to vote. Save the church, Black families have often lacked designated spaces — public, and…
When we work together, we may not move mountains, but we block pipelines—a much more ecologically desirable outcome. In 2011, member Bill McKibben, environmentalist founder of 350.org, wrote “Um, thanks to all,” after Transcanada suspended the Keystone pipeline. “Back in the early days of the Keystone fight, it was hard to get anyone to pay attention. But when we wrote diaries at Kos, people helped spread the word and build the movement … I know that there have always been, and always will be, cynics about citizen movements. But today is not a day for cynicism; it's a day to understand that we have power too.” In 2018, Daily Kos members rallied in support of Native American voting rights in North Dakota after the Supreme Court permitted a Republican-backed voter…
Senior lawyers for the Trump campaign set up a small law firm last year that is working for Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican House candidate in Georgia with a history of promoting QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory.While federal filings show that the firm, Elections L.L.C., principally collects fees from the president’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, it also does work for a number of congressional candidates, and none more so than Ms. Greene, underscoring the connections between QAnon and Mr. Trump and his inner circle. The latest example came Thursday night, when President Trump repeatedly declined to disavow QAnon at a televised town hall.Ms. Greene is one of several Republican candidates who openly espouse the collection of bogus and bizarre theories embraced by followers of QAnon, who have been…
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris said that Russian election interference could cost Joe Biden the White House. When asked about Russian election interference on CNN’s State of the Union, Harris said: I am clear that Russia interfered in the election of the President of the United States in 2016. I serve on the senate intelligence committee. We have published detailed reports about exactly what we believe happened. And I do believe that there will be foreign interference in the 2020 election and that Russia will be at the front of the line. CNN’s Dana Bash asked, “Could it cost you the White House?” Harris answered, “Theoretically of course, yes.” Bash followed up, “And that’s based on what you’re hearing publicly?” Harris talked about being realistic and voter suppression, “Let me…
We already know all there really is to know about Donald Trump. He has no bottom. A few of us knew that in 2016. There is truly no excuse for naivete after what we heard from him in the primary and general elections of 2016 and the nearly four years since. So when Jeffrey Goldberg’s article on Trump’s attitude about American war heroes came out, the real question is not what this says about Trump. We already know who Trump is. The revelations in Goldberg’s article only confirm everything we saw and heard from Trump ever since he launched his political career by selling birtherism to the most racist and gullible people in America. (And even if you’re of the view that the Atlantic is an “anti-Trump” fake news site,…
In addition to the mere one-week duration, though, there's a caveat there. Only new advertisements will be refused; if political groups already have ads in the Facebook pipeline, they will be allowed to boost spending on and visibility of those ads during the final week. Facebook will be showing plenty of political ads in that final week; what the one-week ban provides is a small buffer zone in which Facebook doesn't have to scurry to deal with brand new false claims being disseminated by a campaign or allied groups. Given the network's extremely slow responses when political groups are proven to have made false claims, this doesn't mean false political claims won't appear in the election's last week. It just means they have to have been in the queue beforehand.…
Ernst faces a well-funded challenge from Democrat Theresa Greenfield, prompting major outside groups from both sides to spend massive sums and reserve even more advertising time for the fall. National Republicans may have hoped that they could weaken Greenfield by going on the offensive right after her June primary win, but surveys taken since then have continued to find the race neck-and-neck. Campaign Action This is now the second time we've moved Iowa's Senate race to a more competitive rating, following our shift from Likely Republican to Lean Republican in May. While Iowa backed Trump by double digits four years ago, all signs indicate it's returning to swing state status, at least for 2020. It may still retain a slight edge for the GOP, but at this point, neither a…
From the very beginning of the Covid pandemic, Donald Trump did everything wrong. He ignored the warnings in his intel briefings. Then he denied it was here. After that, he claimed the pandemic was a hoax invented by the “Democrat Party” because even a pandemic was really all about him. He did nothing until it was virtually uncontrollable, then, when he suggested drinking bleach, he claimed he was following the science. It didn’t matter until it started infecting red states who, unlike New York, were ill-equipped to handle the onslaught of sickness and death. And we have people who actually look to Donald Trump for instruction on whether or not to wear masks and social distance. We have people who still believe that Donald Trump is a messiah here to…
Democrats won a major court decision that stops Republicans in Texans from disenfranchising millions of the state’s voters on a technicality. According to a statement by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee provided to PoliticusUSA:The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Texas Democratic Party announced a major victory in their litigation to ensure Texas takes all remaining steps to comply with the National Voter Registration Act. This ruling, fully implementing simultaneous voter registration, means any online driver’s license renewal or change-of-address will automatically result in the user being registered to vote at their current address. Today’s victory follows Democrats’ previous victory that forced Texas to immediately register three voters based on their online drivers’ license renewals with the Texas Department of Public Safety. Texas Democratic Party Executive Director…
The Wisconsin Department of Justice on Friday released a statement saying two officers deployed shock weapons when trying to arrest Jacob Blake, just before one of the officers shot him seven times in the back.The news about the stun guns comes amid protests, arrests and public outcry about the shooting. Among other news, Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with homicide in the killing of two people at protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, earlier this week, will remain in custody in Illinois after a judge agreed to delay a hearing on his extradition to Wisconsin.Rittenhouse faces a first-degree intentional homicide charge and five other charges for shooting three people, two fatally, during unrest Tuesday night in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake.Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake, a Black man, seven times…
Kamala Harris has blasted Republicans for trying to exploit the Coronavirus pandemic to suppress the vote in November’s elections. The Democratic senator has called out Donald Trump’s own double standard on mail-in ballots. The vice presidential candidate wrote an op-ed in Wednesday’s Washington Post marking the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave some women the vote. She discussed the limitations of that amendment but also highlighted the ongoing attacks on American’s ability to vote. “We know what we have to do to fulfill the promise embodied in the 19th Amendment: We need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, support automatic and same-day voter registration and help fund secure state voting systems,” Harris wrote. “And that is what Joe Biden and I will do when we’re in the White…
LeBron James is not only one of the richest and most successful athletes in the world, he’s also one of the most charitable. The Lakers star has paid for numerous college educations, served thousands of meals and even built a school in his home town of Akron, Ohio. This year, the basketball star has turned his attention towards voting rights and fighting voter suppression. James formed a group called More Than a Vote alongside other star athletes and in conjunction with NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The newest initiative for the group is an effort to recruit poll workers in predominantly black neighborhoods. As seen earlier this year, lack of poll workers can lead to long lines and confusion as to where people are supposed to vote. This was evident during Georgia’s…
More Than a Vote, a collective of athletes headlined by LeBron James that is fighting to combat voter suppression, will announce a multimillion-dollar initiative to increase the number of poll workers in Black electoral districts ahead of November’s general election.The project, a collaboration with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, aims to recruit young people to serve at polling locations in Black communities in swing states, including Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio. The effort will involve poll worker recruitment, a paid advertising campaign and a corporate partnership program that will encourage employees to volunteer as poll workers.Election officials throughout the country have reported a shortage of poll workers to staff in-person voting sites amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has upended every facet of American life — including the electoral process.…
Trump couldn’t keep it together for five minutes while accepting the Republican nomination as he claimed that Democrats are stealing the election. Trump said: Because we caught them doing some really bad things in 2016. Let’s see what happens. We caught them doing some really bad things. We have to be careful because trying it again with this whole 80 million mail-in ballots that they’re working on. Sending them out to people that didn’t ask for them. They didn’t ask. They just get them. And it’s not fair and it is not right and it is not going to be possible to tabulate in my opinion. It’s just my opinion. We have to be very, very careful and you have to watch, every one of you, you have to watch…
Joseph R. Biden Jr. accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night, beginning a general-election challenge to President Trump that Democrats cast this week as a rescue mission for a country equally besieged by a crippling pandemic and a White House defined by incompetence, racism and abuse of power.Speaking before a row of flags in his home state of Delaware, Mr. Biden urged Americans to have faith that they could “overcome this season of darkness,” and pledged that he would seek to bridge the country’s political divisions in ways Mr. Trump had not.“The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long — too much anger, too much fear, too much division,” Mr. Biden said. “Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with…
Lawmakers of both parties, along with civil rights groups and state attorneys general, have raised concerns about the operational changes given the growing likelihood that many Americans will need to vote by mail this November because of the coronavirus pandemic. At a time when Mr. Trump is attacking mail-in voting, voting rights advocates fear that the slowdown in service could intentionally or incidentally undermine the integrity of the vote.Mr. DeJoy said on Tuesday that he would suspend some of the changes, but he has not committed to Democrats’ demands that he reverse some that are already in place, like the removal of hundreds of mail-sorting machines. Democrats are now trying to use Congress’s power to force him to do so and infuse $25 billion in emergency funding into the beleaguered…
