https://www.yahoo.com/news/harris-meets-texas-democrats-republicans-205139028.html There are many people here much smarter than me. How likely is the Federal government to get involved in this? I know they can't really tell states how to conduct their voting but can they create "Minimum Federal guidelines" or something like that?
not smarter than you but I’m confident they aren’t gonna touch that with a 10 foot pole. If anything they’ll back supporters of voting rights, which shouldn’t even be a thing — there shouldn’t be proponents of taking away voting rights! The easier it is for people to participate in democracy the better. That’s one of the foundational things that makes us a democracy.
They can try whatever they want. The Supreme Court has repeatedly decided to not intervene on state election issues or straight up gut voting rights at the national level. They won’t overturn a legit election result. But the thing is, elections are decentralized and states each conduct their elections according to their own rules. So long as those rules don’t violate federal law, they are fine. The best thing going right now are the individual state law suits trying to prevent some of these suppression laws from going into effect. There’s very little chance the USSC actually takes up a state election law case unless it truly violates the constitution. As far as a minimum standard, that’s what the gop is so fervently against being enacted. It’s the main cause of the Dems desire to get rid of the filibuster. The gop openly stated that as long as more people and not less are able to vote, they won’t win a national election ever again. They are also convinced a new voting rights act would all but ensure they won’t win anymore. Instead of trying to earn votes, they are trying to make it harder for people who might not vote for them to vote.
So they removed additional voting measures that were put in place during the pandemic to promote social distancing like drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting, changed poll watcher policies, and removed unsolicited notifications for mail-in ballots, and instituted an ID check process for absentee ballots. Some of those are debatable on what goal they are trying to achieve, but I fail to see how any of that is the "worst thing since Jim Crow."
Depending on your state, like here, they specifically are trying to get rid of Sunday voting because there is a thing called souls to the polls where black people go to vote after church. At the end of the day, they continue to attempt to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. Making voting easier shouldn’t be controversial. Also, stripping away power from the office of people who oversee elections and placing it in the hands of the state legislatures seems real fishy to me.
Sure, some of that is suspect. But, "the worst thing since Jim Crow" seems pretty histrionic. And as for your second point, don't state legislatures ultimately have that power anyway based on your point? Wouldn't that apply to all legislatures? If enough of them got together, they could even rewrite the entire U.S. Constitution without any input for national representatives.
That's the part that should worry everyone. They can just decide who won the presidential election if the vote doesn't go there way. .
I suppose you’re right. The issue being the stated logic behind these changes is because the Secretaries of State of the states that went for Biden this time over Trump, didn’t overturn the results of the election to hand Trump an unearned victory. They are setting up something potentially violent where if future elections don’t go their way and they choose to decide that “nah, this is how it will be. Come make me change it.” What happens then?
Yes, maybe for the Presidential elections. For some of the state and locals....those lawsuits cost money, and they might not be there. Bottom line, I don't think anyone is looking at this legislation and saying it makes the process more open, fair, or less partisan.
I think you have to look at the entire project as a single entity. If it were just one legislature in one state enacting some questionable security procedures, then it wouldn't be as serious. But it's pretty clear that this is a national project by the Republican Party to enact in any state where they have power, and to pair it with gerrymandering-as-policy and a constant drumbeat of lies about elections in general.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-show-putins-plot-to-put-trump-in-white-house Decent chance that the Kremlin leaked this themselves. Having Putin claim he blackmailed Trump is like having someone say "I fucked your mom" when your mom is actually a ho. You know they're saying it just to fuck with you, but are they fucking with you with the truth or with a lie?
I've been waiting for Putin to get on stage and just reveal everything. The Helsinki meeting, the kompromat, the money laundering, every little thing. Because he knows that the Trumpists are too far in now. We would be too busy tearing each other apart to bother with him.
Burning his Trump card would ensure a response from the US, one that would likely go beyond just sanctions and wrist-slapping. We'd start actively working to dismantle the Putin regime. I think the only way that happens is if: 1. it's no longer valid, ie the compromising material isn't actually a valid threat. I have to consider this the most likely, because what on Earth could discredit Trump to his supporters? Also, you have to imagine "kompromat" on Trump would fetch a penny or two, and this might be Putin's way of advertising that, before the Trump empire unravels in court. 2. It needs to be discredited before it gets leaked for real. Ie, leaking falsified material ahead of a more inflammatory set of leaks to "salt the Earth" with disbelief. Dirt on Trump isn't hard to find: a good hard audit of his financials will reveal a lot of Russians with nebulous ties to folks in Putin's regime, among other piles of sketch shit. So what? Dirt on Russian infiltration into various agencies or outright manipulationof other political figures (ie, using Trump to amass more blackmail material)? That would be a game-changer. 3. Putin needs the clout to beat back an internal threat. Letting the world know he's the guy who blackmailed an American President and punked the most powerful nation on Earth would be a powerful reminder and make him a popular figure with some folks in the regime. 4. Trump isn't playing ball, and needs to get burned before it gets worse and Trump himself turns on Russia. Unlikely, but feasible, especially if he's feeling nervous about a set of investigations. 5. Trump isn't likely to be useful any longer, and it's better to scorch him now and destroy his credibility as a long shot to sow even more chaos in the US. Also, borrowing the "no one gets caught their first time" principle: I have to imagine nearly every country on Earth has an interest in the US presidential elections and will favor one candidate or another. Usually, the candidates aren't so stupid as to accept their help, especially in developing revolutionary ways of disseminating propaganda, misinformation and lies. And the countries who do so are very well-insulated against discovery. In this case, given Trump's proclivity to prioritize b-listers who put loyalty over skill, and his long odds of winning in 2016, it made sense for him to do things that were blatantly illegal out of ignorance or a low probability of success. He doesn't strike me as the kind of person to have his campaign manager run some of these strategies past a legal team, or hire highly ethical folks to run this shit. If you believe his goal was his own media channel, and running for President was supposed to be a months-long preview of that, then he'd willingly accept the help: no one audits the loser of the race. He pulled off the upset and had to tread very carefully with Russia, the Mueller investigation and created a lot of smoke to screen actual fires. Now the media channel dream is long gone, and anyone rational sees his chances in 2024 as dismal. The ground shifted beneath everyone's feet, and the tools that worked in 2016 are now in danger: Facebook and parts of the media that enabled his success in 2016 are now under pressure to improve, scrutiny on their agenda and facing lawsuits. The window of value for this material is rapidly closing, and there might be a few reasons to leak this intentionally or unintentionally. I think Putin sees an opportunity to use this leverage one last time, and he's taking it, playing the US media like a pawn shop fiddle the entire time.
Putin also seems like the kinda guy who would swear on the Bible that he didn’t fuck your mom, but then take every opportunity to say things like “just like your mom last night.”
What's amazing about this is that you can see Gaetz has a pavlovian reaction to the word "pedophile" at this point. He physically reacts before his conscious brain processes that he's being trolled.
McCarthy has named his five picks for the Jan 6 commission. They include three Reps who voted against certifying the results on Jan 6, including the festering boil of the House himself, Jim Jordan. Pelosi better exercise her veto power over those three.