Even the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” guy…
"what digby sez..."
Month: April 2021
“This is a systemic, cultural, deeply ingrained, coming-down-from-leadership type of attitude, where this is not community policing—it’s community terrorism, practically.” – Sarah Schielke, attorney for Karen Garner, 73-year-old grandmother of nine.
Like the Virginia incident involving a Black, uniformed U.S. Army lieutenant, this incident involving a white, Colorado grandmother happened in 2020, and is surfacing only now because of a lawsuit filed against police. From Vice News:
Garner has dementia and sensory aphasia, an inability to understand spoken and written speech, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed on her behalf this week against the city of Loveland and three officers involved in Garner’s arrest.
Hopp asked Garner why she didn’t stop after he activated his lights and siren, at which point Garner gave him a blank expression, said something unintelligible, and started to move away.
The rest you can guess.
While Garner’s children were doing their best to keep an eye on her, she slipped out to Walmart the afternoon of her arrest, Schielke said. Later, Garner wound up wandering out of the store without paying for Pepsi, a candy bar, a T-shirt, and some stain-removing wipes—worth less than $14 altogether.
Walmart employees stopped her and took the items back. They then refused her attempt to pay and called the police, according to the lawsuit.
Seventy-three years-old. Dementia. Five feet tall. Eighty pounds. Tackled. Handcuffed. Hog-tied.
It’s a wonder they didn’t think she deserved to be tasered worse. And if she’d been black?
And he said: “Son, this world is rough
Shel Silverstein – “A Boy Named Sue”
And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you’d have to get tough or die
And it’s the name that helped to make you strong
Donald Trump — the obese, pampered, bad-boy heir, unindicted co-conspirator — uttered strongly so many times that someone eventually will count them. The American right’s obsession with strength/weakness and with guns as a form of male enhancement is so palpable as to be comic if it were not so deadly.
It is why “A Boy Named Sue” has been the unofficial anthem of the conservative movement since Johnny Cash first played it to a roomful of convicts. It celebrates violence as the appropriate response to insecurity and physical strength as the definition of manhood.
And it’s the name that helped to make you strong. Not a good man. Not a good husband, or a good father, or a good citizen. But strongly, huh?
The song struck a chord with the guests at San Quentin, as did Donald Trump with conservatives across the country. Their obsessions with him and with guns and with suppressing the votes of non-white neighbors broadcast their insecurities to the world. Like that dream about showing up at work or school without pants. Where would you carry your gun?
More than twice as many Americans have already died from gun violence in 2021 than servicemembers died in Afghanistan in nearly twenty years.
Turning freedom into a worship word is another revelatory obsession.
“The ‘liberty’ promised by the Declaration of Independence is interfering with the ‘life’ and the ‘pursuit of happiness’ in ways the Founding Fathers could never have imagined,” writes Zachary B. Wolf for CNN. “Given the choice, with help from conservative courts and Second Amendment true believers, the country is choosing personal freedom over public safety, giving some of its people a feeling of liberty, but also causing many people to die in the process.”
But strongly, huh?
There have been 45 mass shootings in the US in the past month. But most gun deaths won’t be in mass shootings. More have died this year by suicide, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. More than twice as many Americans have already died from gun violence in 2021 than servicemembers died in Afghanistan in nearly twenty years.
The war over guns is a domestic one, Wolf writes, one in which the insecure demand neighbors “who didn’t volunteer for duty” make themselves human sacrifices.
Democracy itself is on the altar now, dressed, trussed, and prepared for ritual burning by people threatened by their perceived loss of power. They tried to light the fire once already on Jan. 6.
As Colbert I. King sees it:
It is an existential threat to an essential right of U.S. citizenship — the freedom to vote in open elections.
Staring us in the face are 361 restrictive bills by mostly Republican state legislatures across the country that, at bottom, aim to curb voter participation. The supposed rationale for the open assault on voting rights is the baseless charge of voter fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election leveled by the defeated president, Donald Trump, and echoed by his flock of followers.
Threatened, Republicans are, at having to share power, and at having lost Georgia’s 2020 electoral votes and two Senate seats to the strength of Black voter turnout.
As the Rev. Jesse Jackson put it back in 1981 when confronted with resistance to court-ordered busing, “It ain’t the bus, it’s us.”
Republicans see voter suppression (and more guns) as the appropriate response to their gnawing insecurities.
And in fealty to Trump, their improbable embodiment of strongly, the insecure conservative makes neighbors “who didn’t volunteer for duty” human sacrifices to COVID-19.
Greg Sargent writes that 45 percent of Republicans do not plan to get vaccinated. Because freedom:
But what’s surprising is how easily this “populism” melded with a much more conventional and ideologically rigid anti-statism, congealing in college-dorm-level notions of individual liberty and the mass shunning of collective action in response to a major public health crisis, contributing to extraordinarily terrible consequences.
As Will Wilkinson aptly puts it, this ideology has devolved to the point where “tens of millions of Republicans feel entitled to behave as if there were no pandemic,” something that has hardened into a “foundational principle.”
And for untold numbers of voters, it’s backslid to little more than a marker of tribal loyalty to the disgraced failure who did so much to make it all possible. We can only hope the damage will be limited going forward. But as Watts suggests in his lament, it’s hard to be optimistic.
Not a good person. Not a good spouse, or a good parent, or a good citizen. But strongly.
This devolution of a major U.S. political party into a personality cult for the insecure threatens to pull down the temple of democracy in supplication to an earthly deity, much the way Jeff Sharlet found in The Family’s philosophy of “Jesus plus nothing”:
“A covenant,” Doug answered. The congressman half-smiled, as if caught between confessing his ignorance and pretending he knew what Doug was talking about. “Like the Mafia,” Doug clarified. “Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a fist and held it before Tiahrt’s face. Tiahrt nodded, squinting. “See, for them it’s honor,” Doug said. “For us, it’s Jesus.”
Coe listed other men who had changed the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”: “Look at Hitler,” he said. “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden.” The Family, of course, possessed a weapon those leaders lacked: the “total Jesus” of a brotherhood in Christ.
“That’s what you get with a covenant,” said Coe. “Jesus plus nothing.”
Trump has stepped in, plus nothing, for the strongmen The Family admires.
This is what I call soothing …
I love them.
Come on people. It’s long past time:
Only the Silent Generation over the age of 75 remain opposed. Unfortunately, our president is one of them.
Politico’s at it again:
One evening in February,Ron DeSantis quietly slipped into the luxurious Charleston Place Hotel in South Carolina.
Over dinner, the Florida governor addressed an audience ofdeep-pocketed donors convened by the influential Bradley Foundation, an organization that funnels cash to right-leaning nonprofit groups. DeSantis, whose attendance has not been previously reported, held forth for nearly an hour, detailing the anti-lockdown approach to the coronavirus pandemic that’s turned him into a conservative hero and propelled him to the upper echelon of potential 2024 GOP hopefuls.
Art Pope, a longtime conservative benefactor who chairs the foundation, said his early favorite was former Vice President Mike Pence, who also addressed the conference. But he added that DeSantis had done an “excellent job” as governor and had been well-received by attendees.
“He’s in the top tier, should he choose to run for president,” Pope said.
As the Republican Party charts its path forward, national donor interest in DeSantis is skyrocketing. Major givers across the country are lining up to support the governor’s 2022 reelection effort, with some committing to hosting fundraising events and others plowing funds into his campaign bank account. In the past two-plus months alone, DeSantis has received six-figure contributions from Republican megadonors including Bernie Marcus, Paul Tudor Jones and Steven Witkoff, who in March held a high-dollar fundraiser at his lavish Miami Beach home.
The surge of attention illustrates how the GOP donor class is beginning to look beyond former President Donald Trump. While the former president would almost certainly lock down vast donor support should he wage a 2024 comeback bid, the lack of clarity about his plans has opened the door for other would-be candidates to get a look. Nearly two dozen top Republican Party contributors and fundraisers said in interviews that the focus was increasingly centered on DeSantis.
Donor interest in the governor extends far beyond Florida. Andy Sabin, a New York-based precious metal company executive, said he expects to host a pair of fundraisers later this year bolstering the governor’s reelection effort. Dallas businessperson Doug Deason anticipates holding a pre-summer event. Don Tapia, who served as ambassador to Jamaica during the Trump administration, is planning on hosting a fundraiser at his Arizona home.
Like others, Tapia praised DeSantis for his handling of the pandemic and what he described as the governor’s independent style.
DeSantis “has a major political future in the Republican Party,” said Tapia, a retired electrical company executive who’s given extensively to GOP causes for several decades. Tapia wouldn’t say DeSantis was his first choice among potential 2024 candidates but called him a “strong candidate I would truly look at.”
The enthusiasm was on full display during DeSantis’ appearance at last weekend’s Republican National Committee donor gala in Palm Beach, Fla., where he drew wild applause for declaring the party needed figures who withstood public pressure and weren’t afraid to confront what he called the “elite, New York corporate media.”
The governor was mobbed over the course of the weekend. Joanne Zervos, a New York City donor who spoke with DeSantis during the conference, said many contributors saw him as “a nicer version of Trump,” someone who had embraced the former president’s policies but lacked his rough edges. Zervos said she was drawn to the governor because of his approach to dealing with the coronavirus.
DeSantis last week also made a surprise appearance at a donor retreat convened by the Conservative Partnership Institute, an organization overseen by Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). The event was held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. During his appearances last week, some attendees approached him and encouraged him to run in 2024.
Whether DeSantis’ popularity among donors is lasting or fleeting remains an open question. The 2024 nominating contest is a long way off, and other would-be candidates have also developed close relationships with contributors. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was also well-received at the RNC retreat, according to attendees. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has previously drawn financial support from hedge fund manager Paul Singer, one of the party’s most sought-after givers. Pence spent years cultivating big contributors, many of whom were uncomfortable with Trump but saw the then-vice president as an ally within the administration.
For now, DeSantis aides insist that the 42-year-old governor is focused squarely on running for reelection and hasn’t begun thinking about the presidential contest, something they have been trying to remind donors. The governor faces a potentially challenging 2022 contest against Democratic state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is expected to enter the race soon.
But DeSantis’ aggressive courtship of national givers bears striking similarities to the approach then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush used in his 1998 reelection race, which preceded his presidential bid two years later. Bush spent the 1998 campaign traveling the country and introducing himself to the Republican Party’s biggest donors, many of whom contributed to his reelection effort and later became key to his 2000 national campaign.
God help us. He’s the real fascist Trump played on TV.
Let’s hope Trump turns on him soon. He can’t be happy about DeSantis getting all this attention.
Biden is on track to allow fewer refugees into the country than Trump did. And now there are reports that the White House doesn’t intend to change course after all because of the “optics” which flies in the face of Psaki’s statement from just last week.
Nobody seems to know the details but from what I just heard on CNN, they are concerned because of the number seeking asylum at the border.That means this is a political decision. But stopping others in the world from coming here will not stop their political opponents from demonizing them. In fact, it just strengthens their hand.
This is not going to fly. Biden the empathetic Great Humanitarian cannot close the doors on refugees, particularly the ones from Afghanistan. If we’re going to leave, as we should, we simply have to take care of those who helped the US over the past 20 years and allow people who are in grave danger of being killed to gain asylum.
We cannot restore the soul of our nation by consigning people we promised to take care of if they helped us, to their deaths.
Joe Conason says it well in this piece in the National Memo:
The courage of President Biden’s decision to bring our troops home from Afghanistan should not be underestimated. But neither should that withdrawal be mistaken for the end of the “forever war” that the United States and its NATO allies have endured there for so long. We will leave, but the Afghans aren’t going anywhere — and our responsibility for what happens there won’t disappear either.
Biden surely knows there will be bad prospects for the government in Kabul when our troops go, even though we will continue to finance its army and air force. Most Americans, who devote little attention to what happens in Afghanistan, probably don’t know how limited the reach of that regime is today (which is why our veterans sometimes call it #Forgotistan). After two decades, $2 trillion and the loss of more than 2,000 of our troops, it scarcely rules over more than the capital itself. The Taliban and other hostile forces control the rest.
That obviously doesn’t bode too well for the future, and as Biden also knows, his Republican critics will blame him should the Kabul regime fall. They will conveniently forget that his predecessor not only insisted on an Afghan withdrawal but also set a departure date too abrupt to be met.
No doubt Donald Trump will join that chorus, turning around and shamelessly attacking Biden for “abandoning” Afghanistan, because that’s what he does. So will figures like Sen. Lindsey Graham, a military strategist whose insights lured us into Iraq, a far worse disaster than Afghanistan. Graham now predicts that pulling out will result in terror attacks — but the biggest threat to America is from white supremacists within our own borders, a menace he denies. We don’t have to occupy another nation to fight extremist enemies here or abroad.
Biden’s critics will also forget the most salient fact about the Afghan war, which is how it began. I will confess to supporting the initial invasion following the 9/11 attacks, because I regarded the destruction of al-Qaida and the punishment of the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden as essential to American and world security. Like many others who endorsed the war in its earliest stages, I have long believed that the administration of former President George W. Bush — obsessed with overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq — ensured failure at the start.
Yet honesty compels me to say that those few who opposed the U.S. action back then may have been right all along. After such a long and costly misadventure, it isn’t certain that what once seemed imperative was ever prudent, or just. What could have been done and what should have been done are no longer relevant — except to the Afghan people, who have suffered gravely without any end in sight. More than 150,000 of them have died in the war, with almost a third of the dead civilians.
Those Afghans were innocent of the terrorist violence that struck our cities on Sept. 11, 2001, and that level of death and destruction seems like a high price compared with what happened on 9/11, a day I remember too well. While most of the Afghan dead were killed by the Taliban, that doesn’t absolve our responsibility. We also owe a deep and permanent debt to the veterans who served — the great majority of whom want us to bring their brothers and sisters home.
Discharging that debt will oblige us to rescue as many Afghans as we can from the vengeance of the Taliban, especially but not only those who served alongside our troops. For years now, Taliban assassins have murdered Afghan interpreters and others who assisted allied forces. They ought to have gained asylum here, but the Islamophobic prejudices of the Trump administration put obstacles in their way.
Now that must end. The United States should grant “immediate refugee status to all Afghan nationals that have helped us in the last 20 years,” says Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat. “We can’t let them be targets.” Gallego, a Marine veteran of Iraq, is painfully aware of how Iraqis who worked with U.S. troops there were later hunted down by Islamic State group killers. He is right to demand that we start protecting the Afghans left behind.
It’s been another awful week of gun violence, including at the hands of police.
Last Sunday, Daunte Wright was pulled over for a minor traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and was shot and killed by police officer Kim Potter. He was unarmed. We can’t even count the number of times this has happened in our country, undoubtedly many more than have been documented. Until the proliferation of cell phones and police body cams, this incident could easily have been turned into a he-said-she-said that could never be proven one way or another.Advertisement:
This particular shooting does have a special twist to it, however.
When Wright got back into his car without permission, the police at the scene became extremely agitated. Potter warned Wright that she was going to use her Taser on Wright and immediately yelled “Taser! Taser! Taser!” as she shot her weapon. Only the weapon wasn’t a Taser, it was her service revolver. Wright’s foot hit the gas and Potter said “Holy shit, I shot him.” The car rolled down the street a ways before veering off the road, with Wright dead in the front seat.
Many people have asked how anyone could have mistaken the Taser for a Glock pistol. It’s made of yellow plastic, it has led lights on the back and it is carried on the opposite side of the officer’s dominant hand which is reserved for the sidearm. None other than Pat Robertson, of all people, expressed skepticism that anyone could make such a mistake:
It does seem impossible that any experienced police officer could make such an error. Potter was not just any cop either. She was a two-decade veteran who was on that very day training new officers on the job. Her husband, who retired in 2017, had been a police instructor in the use of force, Tasers and crowd control. How could she have failed to reach across her body to grab the Taser instead of reaching down for her gun? Part of the reason is that despite what Pat Robertson says, Tasers are actually designed to have the feel of a gun and mostly because police officers demanded it.
According to this piece by James D. Walsh in New York Magazine, back when Tasers were first being deployed a couple of decades ago the manufacturers had a number of designs they could have used, such as a flashlight-shaped object with a thumb trigger. But they queried police departments on the subject and police liked the familiarity of the style and look of the gun so that was that. Since then there have been some changes such as the use of yellow plastic, but they are still designed with a grip and a trigger much like a pistol.
Now, it’s not common for police to grab their gun instead of their Taser “by accident.” But there have been a number of incidents in which they claim that’s exactly what happened. The most famous example is the case of Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old lying face down on the ground who was shot in the back and killed by a San Francisco Bay Area transit officer who also claimed that he meant to grab his Taser but grabbed his gun instead. That officer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two years in jail. But there are at least 18 other documented incidents, according to Walsh.Advertisement:
We don’t know enough of what happened last Sunday to truly understand why Potter, who resigned days later, shot Daunte Wright instead of Tasering him. We’ll likely have to wait for her trial to see how she explains it. But I don’t think that’s the only question that needs to be answered. Why did she feel the need to Taser him in the first place? Indeed, why should a routine traffic stop create such mayhem and over-reaction from the police at all?
I’ve been writing about Tasers for a long time, even here on Salon back in the aught years. Yes, they are certainly a better choice than using a gun (if the cops can keep their wits about them enough to tell the difference.) But the truth is that Tasers are often deadly weapons in themselves. There have been at least 500 documented deaths by law enforcement’s use of Tasers in the U.S. since 2003, according to Amnesty International, 90% of which were perpetrated on unarmed people. Two police officers were charged with murder in Oklahoma last year for killing a man by Tasering him over 50 times.Advertisement:
Generally, these deaths are attributed to “underlying conditions” such as the dubious medical diagnosis of “excited delirium,” the unusual condition that mainly afflicts people in police custody. The plain fact is that Tasers are electroshock torture devices designed to force people to comply with the police. When they are used on people with mental health problems, on drugs, or with underlying conditions, they can be debilitating and sometimes deadly, which one would think would cause police to be very cautious about using them on unarmed people at all if they can help it. Just because it doesn’t usually break any bones doesn’t mean it isn’t excessive force. In fact, unless there is no choice other than to actually shoot someone, it is excessive force.
A demand for instant compliance, no questions asked, is at the center of policing in this country and that authoritarian mindset constantly creates confrontations where other methods could be deployed. This incident in which some Atlanta police officers used Tasers on a couple of college kids in their car on the way home from a protest last summer is an example of using an electroshock weapon simply to demonstrate dominance — and it happens all too often.
Daunte Wright was stopped for having expired tags on his car. He cooperated with the police and then moved to get back in the car. He had no weapon and he didn’t threaten them. All they knew was that he had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant and an air freshener hanging from the mirror, which is illegal in Minnesota for some reason. There was no reason for the instant escalation, with the officer who was closest to Wright scuffling with him in the front seat and Potter pulling out her gun screaming “I’ll tase you!” over this traffic violation. That level of agitation was completely out of line and even if she had shot him with the Taser instead of her gun it would have been excessive force.Advertisement:
The newest idea in police reform is to take cops out of the traffic stop business and put it in the hands of people who have no power to arrest, making these kinds of confrontations much rarer. And some jurisdictions are using mental health workers to respond to calls in which citizens are having episodes that the cops are ill-prepared to deal with and which often devolve into violence unnecessarily. Some common-sense gun safety laws to take lethal weapons off the street would no doubt reduce some of the tension as well.
These are strategies well worth trying to end this cycle of young men driving while Black ending up in the morgue and mentally ill people being tortured with Tasers. But until we deal with this militaristic, authoritarian attitude among the police which demands instant compliance or else, this problem isn’t going to go away. Not every interaction has to be a battle of wills with police holding a Taser in one hand and a gun in the other.
New Pew Poll on the new administration:
Joe Biden approaches the 100-day mark of his presidency with a relatively strong job approval rating and the public continuing to express positive views of the coronavirus aid package passed by Congress last month. Moreover, nearly three-quarters of Americans (72%) say the Biden administration has done an excellent or good job managing the manufacture and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to Americans.
Currently, 59% approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, while 39% disapprove. Biden’s job approval rating has increased modestly from 54% in March. Biden’s job approval is comparable to several of his predecessors – including Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush – and much higher than Donald Trump’s in April 2017.
Views of Biden and his administration highlight several stark contrasts with opinions of his predecessor. Far more Americans say they like the way Biden conducts himself as president (46%) than say they don’t (27%), while another 27% have mixed feelings about his conduct. Similarly, 44% say he has changed the tone of political debate for the better, while 29% say he has made the tone of debate worse (27% say he has not changed it much).
On both questions, there are sizable differences in views of Biden and Trump. Last year, just 15% said they liked the way Trump conducted himself as president, which was little changed from telephone surveys dating to 2017. In both 2020 and 2019, majorities (55% on each occasion) said Trump had changed political debate in the U.S. for the worse.
However, the share of the public saying they agree with Biden on important issues is little different from the share saying that about Trump last year. Fewer than half of Americans (44%) say they agree with Biden on all or nearly all (13%) or on many (31%) of the important issues facing the country; 25% say they agree with Biden on a few issues, while 29% say they agree with him on almost no issues. Last year, 42% of Americans said they agreed with Trump on nearly all (19%) or many issues (23%).
While an overwhelming share of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (88%) say the administration has done an excellent or good job in managing the vaccine rollout, so too does a much smaller majority (55%) of Republicans and Republican leaners.
The Trump administration receives far lower ratings for how it managed the manufacture and development of COVID-19 vaccines (43% say they did an excellent or good job). However, a 55% majority of the public – including 86% of Republicans and nearly a third (31%) of Democrats – express positive views of the Trump administration’s support for the development of COVID-19 vaccines by several pharmaceutical companies.
Public support for the coronavirus aid package, which Biden signed into law a little more than a month ago, remains robust. More than twice as many Americans approve (67%) than disapprove (32%) of the $1.9 trillion aid bill. That is little different from the 70% who favored the economic aid package in March, shortly before it was enacted.
More Americans expect the economic aid bill will benefit the country than themselves: 55% say the aid package will have a mostly positive effect on the country as a whole. Fewer than half as many (26%) say it will have a negative effect, while 18% say it will not have much of an effect. About half (49%) expect that the aid bill will have a mostly positive impact on themselves and their families.
While the coronavirus legislation has gotten a positive response from the public, the public has somewhat mixed views of whether Biden’s economic policies are making the economy better when compared with Trump’s. About four-in-ten (43%) say the policies of the Biden administration are making the economy stronger than it was during Trump’s presidency; 36% say his administration’s policies are making the economy weaker, while 20% say they are not making much of a difference.
As is the case with the public’s overall views of the U.S. economy, assessments of how Biden’s policies have affected the economy are deeply divided along partisan lines. About three-quarters of Republicans (76%) say Biden’s policies are making the economy weaker compared with the policies of his predecessor, while nearly an identical share of Democrats (74%) say Biden’s policies are strengthening the economy.
The survey finds that, for the most part, the public’s views of major problems facing the U.S. are little changed from about a year ago. However, the share of Americans saying the coronavirus is a very big problem has declined 11 percentage points since last June (from 58% to 47%), while the share citing illegal immigration has increased 20 points (from 28% to 48%).
That last is almost certainly the result of the media hysteria. What has changed in people’s lives as a result of immigration in the last three months?
There’s a lot more here in this very in-depth poll which I’ll discuss later. Suffice to say that a majority of the country is much more satisfied with President Biden than they ever were with Trump. Which explains why he lost the election by 7 million votes…
The New York Times is publishing a podcast series entitled “The Improvement Association” by “This American Life” reporter Zoe Chace. The series examines the backstory to the Republican absentee ballot fraud in Bladen County, North Carolina that when exposed caused the state Board of Elections to overturn the 2018 congressional election in NC-9.
Chapter 2 looks at Republican allegations that the Black-run Bladen Improvement PAC has been cheating for years. Chace found no evidence for this in observing multiple elections since. What “evidence” Republicans in the area showed her was more a collection of suspicions and unsubstantiated allegations. But it might be voter fraud, could be, possibly, etc.
Essentially, Bladen Republicans were indifferent to Black voters organizing until Black candidates (including a Black sheriff) began winning elections in the rural county. Republican allegations that followed of Democrats cheating sound familiar here on the opposite end of the state. It is a pattern Hullabaloo readers will recognize from national Republican politics: elections are only legitimate if Republicans win.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Marc Elias of Democracy Docket is Democrats’ most prominent election protection attorney, He issued another “On the Docket” email today. Subject line: Republican “Army” Expands State Strategy. Here is just some of what else is percolating in the states:
In the States: Republicans’ 50-State Strategy
There’s a lot to keep track of in the world of voting rights this week. Corporations are feeling the pressure to weigh in on suppressive legislation. Republicans are planning ahead—proposing legislation to make voting harder, and recruiting for their Election Day activities around bills that have yet to pass. Plus, redistricting is coming up, in what will be a much-litigated process to establish the landscape for the 2022 elections (we will have your guide to all things redistricting, coming soon). Here are some key highlights from the states this week:
Texas: Republicans in Harris County are preparing a poll watching “army” to intimidate Black and brown voters and gin up unfounded allegations of voter fraud. In a leaked video obtained by the watchdog group Common Cause, Texas Republicans are heard laying out their recruitment plan for a 10,000-member “Election Integrity Brigade.” They’re recruiting suburban conservatives from mostly white areas of the Lone Star state to flood Black and brown precincts of Harris County with partisan poll watchers—who, under recently-proposed Republican legislation, would be empowered to film voters they suspect of fraudulent behavior and send those videos to the Secretary of State. The potential for voter intimidation and harassment here is virtually unlimited, and the Republican Party knows it: they’re asking for volunteers with “confidence and courage” to come to Harris County and film the “voter fraud” they know isn’t happening. Why such courage would be needed for honest, good-faith poll watching is up to you to infer. You can watch the video for yourself here.
New Hampshire: The introduction of cameras at polling places is not limited to Texas. In New Hampshire, new voter ID laws that have passed the Republican-led state house would require voters who register on Election Day and do not have an accepted photo ID to have their photos taken at their polling location; the bill, HB 523, would also eliminate previous religious exemptions for voter ID requirements. Another piece of legislation, HB 292, would add additional ID requirements for voters requesting an absentee ballot be sent to a different address than the one on file with their county clerk. This provision clearly targets highly-mobile college students, who have been a key focus of Republican voter suppression in the Granite State. New Hampshire has one of the highest student populations as a share of their total electorate, and HB 292 is just one of many attacks on their access to the ballot this year. The two voter suppression bills now move to the state senate for consideration.
Ohio: The Buckeye State holds an honorable title at the moment: it is one of only three states that is not currently considering voter suppression legislation. That will soon change—it was reported this week that the state Republican leadership plan to introduce their first voter suppression bills of 2021 soon. We don’t have a draft of the legislation yet, but it will include banning drop boxes except in emergencies, as well as taking aim at other voting reforms that were the center of debate during the 2020 election. Also under consideration: eliminating early voting on the day before Election Day, and moving up the deadline for absentee ballot requests. Democrats in Ohio have been proactive about battling these restrictions; last year, they sued the Secretary of State to allow counties to set up multiple drop boxes, and Democratic legislators have proposed a bill to establish at least one permanent drop box per county. But the legislation has no Republican sponsors and has not been put on the committee schedule by Republican leadership. We’ll keep you informed as new voter suppression legislation in Ohio gets introduced.