#Do not let Pence be president

[mudwerks]

(via Trump Reportedly Said ‘No One Wants to See’ Wounded Vets)

At his welcome ceremony at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall, across the Potomac River from the capital, Milley gained an early, and disturbing, insight into Trump’s attitude toward soldiers. Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America.” Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. To Milley, and to four-star generals across the Army, Avila and his wife, Claudia, represented the heroism, sacrifice, and dignity of wounded soldiers.

It had rained that day, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair threatened to topple over. Milley’s wife, Holly­anne, ran to help Avila, as did Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley. (Recently, Milley invited Avila to sing at his retirement ceremony.)

donny has some real serious issues with disadvantaged people...

[cardinalcringe]

(And in case you don’t have a NYT subscription, here they all are):

“We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen, or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.” - Mark Milley

“The president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.” - Richard Spencer

“President trump and other officials have repeatedly compromised our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain.” - HR McMaster

“Donald trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people- does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort.” - James Mattis

“ I have a lot of concerns about Donald trump. I have said that he’s a threat to democracy.” - Mark Esper

“ a person who admires autocrats and murderers dictators. A person who has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”- John Kelly

“ I think the events of the capital, however, they occurred, were shocking. And it was something that, as I mentioned in my statement, I cannot put aside.”- Elaine Chao

“Unfortunately, the actions and rhetoric following the election, especially during this past week, threaten to tarnish these and other historical legacies of this administration. The attacks on the Capital were an assault on our democracy, and on the tradition of peaceful transitions of power of the United States of America, brought to the world.”- Alex Azar

“Moron.” - Rex Tillerson (re: trump, repeatedly)

“It’s more than just a bunch of papers and what big deal is this and so forth. Lives can be lost.” - Dan Coats

“I didn’t feel he did what he needed to do to stop what was happening.” -Betsy DeVos (a stupid bitch overall, but still right)

“It will always be, ‘Oh, yeah, you work for the guy who tried to overtake the government.’” - Mick Mulvaney

“The fact of the matter is he is a consummate, narcissist, and he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk.” -Bill Barr

“By the time I left the White House, I was convinced he was not fit to be president… I think it is a danger for the United States if he gets a second term.” -John Bolton

“We need more seriousness, less noise, and leaders who are looking forward, not staring in the rearview mirror claiming victimhood.” - Mike Pompeo

“He asked me to put him over the Constitution, and I chose the Constitution, and I always will.” - Mike Pence

“He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.” - Nikki Haley

Stupid. Selfish. Divisive. Authoritarian. Unserious. Tyrant. Professional Victim. Insurrectionist. Narcissist. Dangerous. Moron.

Trump’s best people sum him up.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mary L. Trump at The Good in Us:

Like most Americans, I too want the national temperature to be lowered. I want to see the violent rhetoric to stop. And I want to see our nation unified. But the other side seems to be saying that, in order for that to happen, we’re not allowed to talk about Donal'd’s record of lawlessness, cruelty, and incompetence and we must make concessions to the would-be dictator. On Monday, while Republicans tried to shame their critics into silence by making false and increasingly incendiary claims that it was Democrats who are responsible for creating the context in which Saturday’s shooting took place, we were reminded just how dangerous things will get if Donald wins this election. Today, Aileen Cannon, Donald’s personal pocket judge, took the shocking (but not surprising) and illogical step of dismissing the charges against my uncle. Her behavior since acquiring this case has been abysmal and partisan; she has frequently skated across the line of malpractice. Her repeatedly putting her thumb on the scale in favor of the defense (who am I kidding?—she acted like she was lead counsel for the defense) felt even worse, because we know Donald is guilty. We know he stole our national security documents; we know held them in non-secure locations; and we know he refused to return them. We know these things because we witnessed Donald commit the crimes—and he confessed to them over and over again.

There is no way to interpret Cannon’s decision other than as a political favor from a corrupt judge who, along with the illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court (especially Clarence Thomas) is determined to put Donald above the law.

[...]

What happened at Donald’s rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday was deeply wrong and un-American. The same can be said of his plans for this country if he’s put in the Oval Office again. We can’t be quiet. We can’t let the side that continues to traffic in violent political rhetoric blame us shame us or scare us into silence. We must continue to sound the warnings—there will be no pivoting to unity and peace. There will only be Donald and his sycophants and enablers being exactly what we have known them to be. This morning, while pundits and columnists were, once again, falling for the promise to pivot to unity, Donald simply couldn’t help himself. In response to Cannon’s horrifying ruling, he called for the “dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—the January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia ‘Perfect’ Phone Call charges.” 

[...] Not long after Cannon’s corrupt gift to him, Donald announced the selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. If his goal was to pick a hypocritical bully and revanchist sycophant, he could not have made a better choice. Clearly, Vance thinks he’s immune to the kind of consequences suffered by Donald’s former Vice President—you know, the guy who almost got hanged by Donald’s mob—but I’d still suggest that Vance watch his back. Vance is stronger than Pence when it comes to pursuing his own interests, but he’s as transactional as Donald. Pence has very few principles, but on one important days, he had least one when it really counted. Despite the enormous amount of pressure that was brought to bear on him, he showed up to do his job on January 6th. Vance will have no such compunction. If you have any doubts about that, consider his comments to George Stephanopoulos:

“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.” Of course, Donald gave this fellow-insurrectionist a promotion.  Jen O’Malley Dillon of the Biden-Harris campaign, put it this way, “[Donald] picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people. In other words, Donald didn’t want to take a chance that his new running mate would ever put the country first like Pence did. That’s one more guardrail that no longer exists. 

Mary L. Trump nails it in that we cannot unite around the fascistic and divisive Trump/Vance agenda.

[contemplatingoutlander]

These moments totally happened at the GOP primary debate

WaPo satirist Alexandra Petri add her spin on the Republican primary debate. This is a gift 🎁 link so that those who do not subscribe to The Washington Post can read the entire article. Below are some excerpts. Enjoy! 😁

If you said, “Would you like to watch Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie talk to each other for two hours? FYI, the place where they’ll do so is hotter than Beelzebub’s armpit!,” I would have said, “No, thank you.” But if you said, “The alternative is watching Donald Trump talk to Tucker Carlson on the website formerly known as Twitter,” I would say, “I can’t wait to hear what Ron, Vivek, Nikki, Tim, Doug, Mike, Asa and Chris have to say!” [...] Here is approximately how it went. Bret Baier: Hello. We have brought a bell just because we enjoy the sound of a bell. Martha MacCallum: Feel free to speak over it; it will give the evening a fun, musical vibe. Baier: Yes, and speaking of music, candidates, the number one song in America is something called “Rich Men North of Richmond”! Governor DeSantis, introduce yourself by providing a close reading of the subtle lyrics of this song. DeSantis: Hang on, first I have some prepared remarks! Joe Biden’s basement! Hunter Biden’s paintings! “Rich Men North of Richmond”! Taxes! Florida! Baier: Chris Christie, why would you be better as president? Christie: Bret, I have spent the last four years sailing around sharpening my traffic-cone harpoon for my hated foe (from hell’s heart I spit my last breath at him!), and the one question I did not expect was about a scenario where I could actually become president. Uh, I was governor of New Jersey? So, take that for what it’s worth.

[See more under the cut.]

Scott: I have come to this debate with some specific numbers at my fingertips! I was told everyone would be excited about specific numbers! If not, I would really like those hours back. Ramaswamy: Hello! You may be wondering, who is this skinny guy with a funny name? I’m not a politician who is going to offer you a series of prepared, meaningless platitudes. I’m a businessman with no political experience who is going to offer you a series of prepared, meaningless platitudes. Isn’t it time we stopped running away from things and started running toward things? I am not running for president so much as I am running for the title of Favorite Grandson of your Fox News grandmother. Have you ever considered that people don’t love God anymore? [...] Pence: Hello! I am here to recite scripture and keep referring to the Trump-Pence administration, and I’m all out of scripture. That was some Mike Pence humor; I will never be out of scripture! I am unquestionably the best-prepared person in this race, the single individual with the experience that is closest to being the president, with no exceptions that spring to mind. I have been in the hallway. I have been in the White House. Do you like what my administration did with the Supreme Court? [...] Ramaswamy: You think now is the time for incremental reform. I think it is the time for actual revolution. Pence: Good Lord, no thank you. I do not have any revolutionary proposals. I believe in mild, small, incremental change. Except for a nationwide 15-week ban on abortion, which I want to implement because I promised it to God. Haley: Let’s be realistic! Women hate hearing this. Let’s just admit that it will never happen. But we’re all going to say we want it to happen! But, ladies, it’s not going to happen. [...] Young Person: Please tell me that anyone on this stage believes in climate change, the only issue I care about because I anticipate living on this planet for at least 60 years. I am starting to get worried. Can we have a show of hands? DeSantis: No! We are not schoolchildren! We will not raise our hands or acknowledge the existence of science! Ramaswamy: As the only one on this stage who is not bought and paid for, I have a thought. Christie: I have had enough of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT and stole his opening gambit from Barack Obama. I came here to bludgeon Donald Trump verbally, but Trump is not here and I have a lot of verbal bludgeoning built up. [...] Baier: Why do we have homelessness, drugs and crime? Pence: Because Democrats talked about defunding the police, and everyone knows that if you say “Defund the police!” into a mirror three times, crime appears. It’s just science, or, as Governor DeSantis and I prefer, religion. Christie: I disagree. Crime went up because Hunter Biden did it.

Please use the gift link above to read the rest of Petri's cutting satire.

Just one thing I would like to comment on though. I grew up in NJ... BEYOND the exits on the Turnpike. Why does there always have to be a NJ joke?🤦🏻‍♀️There really are nice parts of NJ. Really. I mean it. 😉

[edited]

[2urban2fantasy]

Repub conservatives aren't evil, but at the core they hold really outdated views based solely on religion. It's an insulting worldview to have for everyone else who doesn't fit that religion, in this case trans people, gay people, other religions, and many sects in the US are still into segregation.

HF put into place Reaganomics, that's a fact we know. They campaigned for it, they had the political power at the time, and they won it. It's a big part of their history, and that was only 30-40 years ago. Which isnt a lot of time in this sort of thing, only enough for us to have 2 generations feel what trickle down economics are like. Now they hired 3 of trumps previous cabinet members after his office, as well as Pence, as well as Trump picking 2/3s of his cabinet from HF. HF and Trump are heavily tied together. He will assist with their campaign if in office, and that's not really hard to see or "conspiracy", it's just reality. This is particularly important due to what Trumps recent appeal means, because they ruled that whatever a president does during office - as long as it is declared a presidential act, and that's very vague - is now legal, even illegal matters. There's a lot that goes into this... but essentially Congress has been rendered quite powerless.

I also figure that there's going to be shit I still campaign for in my local area if Biden wins, such as assisting Palestine or UBI or taxing billionares, but not campaigning against attempting to dismantle parts of the FAA (extremely bad for everyone) because they want to charge for pilots to have weather service from the government (yes, an actual concern with pilots and Trump rn).

You probably won't read all of that or care, but there's a lot of moving parts right now, and the average americans actually in the meat of a bad strike. I was someone unconcerned with Trump the first election, I think his first presidency was flailing around quite often to distract from things his cabinet was doing, and didn't really get concerned until the last year or so. This time, I dont think he's a funny haha fuckup anymore, I think he's got a lot of people under him that want to fuck a lot of people over due to religion, and that's just that.

It's not about fighting evil, it's about looking at the really big picture and going "This is going to look really fucked up in about 5 years." Honestly, I wouldn't be so worried if Trumps case wasn't appealled - but it's great timing for him.

Lots to unpack here but let’s just throw away the whole suitcase

[nodynasty4us]

The [Republican vice president] job is open because the previous employee who held it was nearly killed by the person doing the hiring. Other Republicans have nonetheless been beating down Trump’s door, in some cases almost literally, for several years to increase their chances of being chosen. “Sounds great!” they say, looking at what happened to Pence and the many other Trump right-hand men and women who have ended up in jail, indicted, bankrupt, or giving interviews to anyone who will listen about how he is a fundamentally delusional and narcissistic person whose election would threaten the continued existence of the country. “Let’s do this!”

Ben Mathis-Lilley, Donald Trump vice president pick: Potential running mates like Elise Stefanik and Tim Scott are humiliating themselves, in Slate

[triviallytrue]

You referenced Benghazi and Her Emails in your recent Hillaryposts. I don't get where you're coming from. I came away from that era thinking that those were both largely manufactured controversies that persisted through misinformation, like birtherism. The damage came from the sustained media furor and campaign PR failures, not the events themselves, and however bad the real events were, they were business as usual for US politicians.

Prev ask said it's baffling to claim that running your own email server for work stuff is acceptable. Idk. Why? Nobody else is doing that? Does it let you get away with crimes?

Maybe I'm wrong, but it's not like I can google Her Emails in 2024 and find my way to a truthful objective analysis.

Where are you at on this? And where do you think the public consensus is?

Fwiw I wasn't talking about Benghazi - I honestly forgot about it entirely, seems disproportionate and mostly manufactured by right wing media.

I was talking about broader US strategy in Libya, which seemed to perfectly thread the needle of knocking out the pillar of stability in the region but not bothering to stick around and clean anything up. She had quite the take on it:

The reason the email server thing is something that would get you fired is that if you work for an organization, that organization wants to be able to have a consistent record of what you've received and written when acting in your capacity as a representative of said organization, doubly so if your work is as critical as US diplomacy and your employer is the US government.

Other people also do this - my vague recollection is that Mike Pence had done the same thing at some point and was getting hammered for hypocrisy - but I have never really found "other people break rules too" to be a very convincing defense.

I think the public negatively polarized on both issues - Trump supporters view it as basically treasonous and Hillary supporters do the whole mocking "but her emails!" thing to minimize it.

Personally I don't have a strong stance on whether it implies corruption or criminality or anything, but as I said in the ask it certainly contributes to my sense that she didn't have much interest in following rules designed for normal people.

In the electoral context of 2016 the whole thing is nonsense of course, Hillary would've been a worse president than Obama or Biden but significantly better than Trump, and the false equivalences that pervaded the coverage of the race were insane. I think more than anything, the shared assumption that she was a shoe-in as soon as the conventions were over by her campaign, the media, and James Comey was what doomed her.

[uboat53]

Cabinet Endorsements

One thing that's flown a bit below the radar in this election is that former cabinet members haven't been acting like they usually do. Normally, former cabinet members will automatically endorse their former boss for re-election, but Trump's have not been doing that.

This is of particular interest because, while we, the voters, get to see the President give speeches and the like, we don't actually work with him. Presumably a cabinet member is someone who agrees with the president and who the president trusts and who gets to work closely with the president, so their opinion of the president is an important benchmark.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the 44 former cabinet members of the Donald J. Trump administration and the 2 former cabinet members of the Joseph R. Biden administration. I'll put an (E) next to the ones that have endorsed their former boss, an (H) next to the ones who haven't yet, and an (R) next to the ones who have outright refused to do so.

Cabinet Members of the Donald J. Trump Administration (R) VP Mike Pence (H) Sec. State Rex Tillerson (H) Sec. State/CIA Director Mike Pompeo (E) Sec. Treasury Steven Mnuchin (R) Sec. Defense James Mattis (H) Sec. Defense Patrick Shanahan (nominated) (R) Sec. Defense Mark Esper (H) Sec. Defense Christopher Miller (acting) (H) AG Jeff Sessions (R) AG William Barr (H) AG Jeffrey Rosen (acting) (E) Sec. Interior Ryan Zinke (H) Sec. Interior David Bernhardt (H) Sec. Agriculture Sonny Perdue (E) Sec. Commerce Wilbur Ross (H) Sec. Labor Andrew Puzder (nominated) (H) Sec. Labor Alex Acosta (H) Sec. Labor Eugene Scalia (H) Sec. HHS Tom Price (H) Sec. HHS Alex Azar (H) Sec. HHS Pete Gaynor (E) Sec. HUD Ben Carson (H) Sec. Transporation Elaine Chao (H) Sec. Transportation Steven Bradbury (acting) (H) Sec. Energy Rick Perry (H) Sec. Energy Dan Brouillette (H) Sec. Education Besty DeVos (H) Sec. Education Mick Zais (acting) (H) Sec. VA David Shulkin (E) Sec. VA Ronny Jackson (nominated) (H) Sec. VA Robert Wilkie (R) Sec. HS John Kelly (H) Sec. HS Kirstjen Nielsen (H) Sec. HS Chad Wolf (nominated) (E) US Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer (H) DNI Dan Coats (H) DNI John Ratcliffe (H) UN Ambassador Nikki Haley (H) OMB Directory Mick Mulvaney (E) OMB Director Russel Vought (H) CIA Director Gina Haspel (H) EPA Admin. Scott Pruitt (H) EPA Admin. Andrew Wheeler (H) SBA Admin. Linda McMahon (H) SBA Admin. Jovita Caranza

Cabinet Members of the Joseph R. Biden Administration (E) Sec. Labor Marty Walsh (E) OMB Director Neera Tanden (nominated) (H) Office of Science and Tech. Director Eric Lander

The first thing we notice, obviously, is that there are a whole lot more former Trump cabinet members. This is partially because Biden is still in office so his 23 current cabinet members are not counted (it'd be a huge surprise if they didn't endorse him and they probably wouldn't still be working for him if they didn't), but it's also because Trump had way above average turnover for cabinet officials, 19 in the first four years not including the 5 who resigned due to his handling of the 2020 election results (not included because Biden hasn't reached that point in his first term yet), while Biden has had far below average turnover, only 3 so far.

So a lot more people shuffling in and out of the Trump administration, but we also notice a ton more H's than E's there. Heck, there's almost as many R's among Trump's people as there are E's (5 to 7). Meanwhile, Biden's shooting 2 for 3 and the third one hasn't (at least not that I could find) ruled out endorsing him.

Keep in mind, endorsing the nominee of your party is pretty much the bare minimum that any party operative needs to do. Imagine if you applied for a job somewhere, the first question was "do you think this company should be in business", and you answered "no". You probably wouldn't be getting a job there. In other words, refusing to endorse has some big consequences for the people doing it, not just costing them a job in the potential next Republican presidency, but locking them out of the party entirely, and yet a good deal of the people who worked for Trump disliked working with him so much that they're doing it anyways.

As I said, this tends to fly below the radar because it's kind of a formulaic ritual; of course members of the President's party who are closely tied to him are going to endorse him for re-election! That's why you should pay attention now that most of the people who've worked with Trump aren't doing so. It says something, something big.

[odinsblog]

Back in 2001, Senate Bill 1 passed the Texas state legislature and banned Harris County - that's Houston - from keeping polls open late into the night, or overnight, so that shift workers could vote, while expanding early voting in rural counties. It lets the state throw away absentee ballots that don't come in with the voters drivers license number attached, without telling people that their vote hasn't been counted. It makes it a felony for any state employee to mail out an unsolicited absentee ballot. It requires election officials to do monthly purges of voting rolls, without notifying voters that they'll no longer be able to vote.

It provides new legal protections for so-called, non-partisan poll watchers.

They're actually recruiting Proud Boys down in Texas to be poll watchers, and it makes it a one year in prison offense if you try to stop them or confront them.

And it maintains the state's lack of convenient online voter registration, making it the most difficult state in the union to vote in. That was two years ago to set up Greg Abbott's election victory in the election of 2022.

Now they're coming back with a brand new piece of legislation that would allow the Republican Secretary of State to throw out all the votes in any county with over 2.7 million people, if the secretary of state believes there are any “irregularities” in the count. Now interestingly enough, the county that has Dallas has 2.6 million people and it votes Republican. The county that has Houston, which votes Democratic, has 2.7 million people. It has over 2.6 million, so in the law they made it only apply to any county with over 2.6 million people.

This is just one small piece of a much larger effort.

As the Texas Civil Rights Project noted, in just the first four years after five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Texas Republicans closed 1173 polling places in mostly Black and Hispanic counties that had previously been protected by the Voting Rights Act, but none of that was enough for them.

As the Houston Chronicle noted two days ago, the effort is now to be able to throw out election results in Houston, and then say, “now the state has to have a new election that has to be paid for by the county,” or “now the county has to have a new election that has to be paid for by the county.”

And of course they want to do this because they know that special elections have very low turnout, and low turnout always favors Republicans, because the people who can most easily vote are the people who are salaried, upper middle class — white people mostly, and people who are retired. You know the aging Republicans in Texas, and you know it's pretty straightforward stuff.

Out of the 254 counties in Texas, only Harris County, only Houston was selected for this. And this is, you know, a county now that is led by people of color, as the Harris County attorney pointed out.

And Republican Secretaries of State across the nation were vigorously purging people from the polls. Over 17 million, more than 10% of America's active voters were purged off voting rolls in just the two years leading up to the 2018 elections, according to NBC News.

In North Carolina, now this again after the Voting Rights Act was gutted by five Republicans on the Supreme Court, in North Carolina 158 polling places were permanently closed in the 40 counties with the largest African-American populations leading up. This was just before the 2016 election, the Donald Trump election. This led to a 16% decline in African-American early voting in that state.

An MIT study found that nationwide, Hispanic voters wait 150% longer than white people do in line.

Black voters wait 200% longer in line.

In Indiana when then Governor Mike Pence passed a rigorous new Voter ID law, it produced an 11.5% drop in African-American voting in Indiana. This is why we didn't get President Al Gore or President Hillary Clinton. We would have gotten both of them if it wasn't for voter suppression.

Down in Florida, Jeb Bush knocked 90,000 African-Americans off the voting rolls so that his brother could win by 537 votes. Or we would have had President Al Gore, if it had been illegal for Jeb Bush to throw those people off the voting rolls.

And the same thing in 2016: an 11.5% drop in African-American voting just in Indiana, because of a law that Mike Pence passed.

Well, it was happening all over the country. By 2016, the Republican Party had really fine-tuned this voter suppression machine.

The New York Times reports in 2017 that just in Wisconsin, this is in the 2016 election, about 17,000 registered votes were turned away from the polls because of a new Voter ID law from Scott Walker.

In 2018, Greg Palace sued a number of Republican Secretaries of State and got his hands on purge lists that included 90,000 people in largely Democratic parts of Nevada, and 769,000 people in Colorado.

Keep in mind this is when Colorado was run by Republicans. 340,000 people in Georgia, and 469,000 people purged in Indiana.

In the dissent, in the Huston v. Randolph case, this was the case in 2018, where five Republicans on the Supreme Court said, “Yeah, it's fine. You can keep purging people from voting rolls.”

This was the Ohio Secretary of State, Stephen Breyer pointed out in his dissent, and I quote, “the record shows that in 2012, Ohio identified 1.5 million registered voters, nearly 20% of its 8 million registered voters as ineligible to remain on the voting rolls because they changed their residences,” and he points out that's 20% of the state's voters - who were kicked off for moving, when on any average year, about 4% of Americans move. How do these numbers come in while they just, you know, hey, Brown people, Black people, college towns, let's just purge them.

Calling the findings disturbing, the Brennan Center said, almost 4 million more names were purged in the rolls between 2014 and 2016. This led up to the Trump election.

Then between 2006 and 2008, this growth in the number of removed voters represented an increase of 33%, far outstripping growth of both total registered voters, 18%, and total population 6%.

This has been their strategy for years and years and years, to throw people off the voting rolls. Now on top of that, they're waging their culture wars, but the culture wars are not all that popular among most Americans.

—Republicans cry “Voter Fraud!” while enacting massive Voter Suppression laws

[deadpresidents]

Regarding the relationships between the Presidents and the Vice Presidents, which ones would you say were the most toxic among one another or disagreed with each other the most?

Maybe it's just recency bias, but I seem to remember President Trump not only throwing Vice President Pence under the bus and calling him a coward for not helping to overturn the results of free and fair election, but very publicly doing so while hordes of Trump's supporters were chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" and attacking the Capitol (the place where Pence was physically located at the time) during a violent insurrection.

I mean, plenty of Presidents and Vice Presidents have said bitchy things about one another, but I feel like that one has to be the gold standard for toxic POTUS/VP relationships.-- which is pretty remarkable considering how embarrassingly loyal and personally subservient Pence had been for the initial 3 years and 350 days of the Trump Administration.

Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun at least deserve an honorable mention. At the end of his Presidency, Andrew Jackson said his two biggest regrets were that he was "unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun". Calhoun was Jackson's Vice President for most of his first term and it's clear that they weren't teaming up to solve mysteries like Obama and Biden. Calhoun -- who had also served as Vice President under Jackson's immediate predecessor, John Quincy Adams -- eventually resigned as VP, partly to take a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate, partly because Martin Van Buren had been elected to replace him as Vice President in the 1832 election, and partly because his disagreements with President Jackson over the Nullification Crisis were getting pretty tense and openly hostile.

Political rivalries were at the root of the issue between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson when they were President and Vice President (1797-1801), and things got nasty, but nobody was threatening to kill each other. Their war of words took off more after Adams left office and Jefferson succeeded him, but they also reconciled and enjoyed one of history's great pen pal partnerships for the rest of their lives.

When Jefferson became President in his own right, he had his own beef with his first Vice President, Aaron Burr, over the 1800 Election. It didn't really result in much drama once Jefferson was on solid footing in the White House, and nobody got killed. Well...except for Alexander Hamilton. He totally got killed. The incumbent Vice President of the United States actually killed a fellow Founding Father, eventually returned to Washington, and presided over the Senate despite catching a murder indictment from the State of New Jersey. Even though he got himself a different VP for his second term, Jefferson never let go of the grudge he held against Burr, and pushed for Burr eventually getting charged with treason for sketchy dealings he had going on in the area recently acquired via the Louisiana Purchase. Much to Jefferson's disappointment, Burr was eventually acquitted.

Now that I'm laying out the facts, the Jefferson/Burr relationship definitely sounds pretty toxic when the ingredients include shady maneuvering over their initial election, murder and treason.

But it's important to remember that Vice Presidents played almost no role in the Executive Branch until the second-half of the 20th Century when Presidents started carving out a role for them, so it was really easy for a President to sideline his VP if they didn't get along. There were also long stretches of Vice Presidential vacancies because there was no mechanism for replacing a Vice President until 1967. We've had a President of the United States for over 234 years, and I once figured out that during that entire history, we've gone 37 years, 290 days of that time without a Vice President.

So, if there have been issues between a President and the Vice President, the VP has never had much leverage to use in order to better their position. As a federally-elected official in their own right, the Vice President is the one person that Presidents can't fire. But their only weapon has been their role as a tie-breaking vote in the Senate, and most Vice Presidents are in ideological lockstep with their President politically, so it's usually been rather unlikely that they'd have an opposing viewpoint on potential legislation requiring a tie-breaker. There are always issues that bubble to the surface between Presidents and Vice Presidents (or between their staffs and/or families) and we normally find out about them after the fact when folks are writing their memoirs and settling scores, but it's not usually anything too dramatic.

[dizzyluc]

TW: Politics, Death, Suicide I really hate discussing politics, but after today I do feel like I need to at least say some things on it. So, one of the BIG reasons I'm against saying the whole "should have been killed" thing is because personally, saying that kind of thing will give the idea to those on the "independent" side, that's on neither party side, that one side wants their opposition killed in the literal sense. (While the other side has not blatantly said it... as of recent.) "As of recent?" Yeah, although not technically their opposing side, the cult literally wanted Mike Pence's head during J6, but it's like everyone forgets that... and do you know why? Recency bias. Whatever is in people's heads at the current time is what they are going to think the most on, which will sway their voting (J6 happened over 3 years ago, versus something that literally happened today... so people aren't going to remember as well that MP was on the idiots' list of "taking down" as well as about 10 people dying to J6, (hard to find info on all deaths) they only are going to think about the "current" news and paint "the guy that lived, that the opposing side wishes death on" a hero) Hell, I saw people trying to spin "no one died during J6, while 2 people died today." YES, PEOPLE DID DIE. (Most are... rather weird deaths, but one of the people participating was fatally shot by capital police, another from being trampled... but also overdose??? And two died from "natural causes" during the event? (a heart attack and a stroke) Then of capitol police, one died the following day from being attacked by the mob (mentioned natural causes, but the mob played a major role), and 2 officers... went out by their own means, one after the attack and one 4 days after) I swear, seeing people act like it wasn't a big deal and act like no one died when that was all on that idiot that just sat there for hours as it went down. (I still remember being home and watching it go down on TV, calling my mom as she did not know it was happening) I do have to say it though, you aren't going to get the opposing side to change their vote obviously (as they are too far up their own ass about their "savior"), but saying you want your opposition dead is not going to win anyone over on the fence about voting. The best thing you can do, is try not to give this anymore attention as of the following day, and continue to let people know all the things the GOP plan to do if they take office, and asking them "is that what you want in a president?" As much as I hate both candidates, I'd rather vote in the best possible person to make him NOT be president, than just throw my vote at a 3rd party at this point. (I'm usually one that would not care about voting, but at this point it's starting to get a bit "scary" with how bad the previous president's cult has been) Especially with how Project 2025 is sounding... Note: Also me trying not to use certain words in the above post cause I'm used to trying not to bring in certain words in the algorithm on Twitter, so I don't get a bunch of MAGA assholes or anyone of the like talking shit to me lol...

[sataniccapitalist]

In his speech, Biden indicted Trump for remaining silent for hours as the mob broke through police lines, stormed the Capitol and poured through its halls, sending US senators and members of the House of Representatives, as well as Vice President Mike Pence, fleeing for their lives.

“As America was attacked from within, Donald Trump watched on TV in the private small dining room off the Oval Office,” Biden said. “The entire nation watched in horror. The whole world watched in disbelief. And Trump did nothing.”

This begs the question: What was President-elect Joe Biden doing? He made no public denunciation of the attack on Capitol Hill. He sounded no alarms. He made no warning to the American people to be on their guard, let alone issue an appeal to the population to take action to defend their democratic rights. When he finally appeared on camera, it was, incredibly, to appeal to Trump, the chief coup plotter, to call off the mob which he had himself brought to Washington.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Arthur Delaney at HuffPost:

Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger delivered a ringing endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday. Kinzinger, a congressman from Illinois who served for 12 years, is one of highest-profile members of Donald Trump’s party to endorse his Democratic opponent. “Tonight, as a Republican speaking before you, I’m putting our country first, because the fact is, I do belong here,” Kinzinger said. “I know Kamala Harris shares my allegiance to the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy.” Kinzinger was one of 11 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting a mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kinzinger’s Republican colleagues ostracized him from the party and he retired the next year rather than seek reelection.

“I’ve learned something about the Democratic Party, and I want to let my fellow Republicans in on the secret: The Democrats are as patriotic as us. They love this country just as much as we do,” Kinzinger said, speaking to an audience that has repeatedly broken into “USA” chants this week. “I was relieved to discover that because I’ve learned something about my party too, something I couldn’t ignore: The Republican Party is no longer conservative,” Kinzinger said. “It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself.” Kinzinger’s presence at the DNC reflects a concerted effort by the Harris campaign to court moderate Republican voters turned off by Trump. Other Republican speakers at the DNC included former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former Mike Pence homeland security adviser Olivia Troye and former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

Speaking at the DNC Thursday night, former Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger gave a solid Republicans For Harris case to support Kamala Harris. #DNC2024

[tomorrowusa]

Sam Bankman-Fried, the indicted crypto con-man, just had his bail revoked by Federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan for discussing his case in the media. He will now await his trial in the slammer. Donald Trump should learn from this – but probably won't.

A prominent billionaire is arrested on criminal charges. At his arraignment, the presiding judge releases him pending trial on condition he not try to influence potential witnesses and orders him not to speak with the media about the pending trial. He repeatedly violates the order. Eventually, the judge has had enough. He revokes bail and orders him jailed pending trial. I’m not referring to Donald J. Trump — although on Thursday, Judge Tanya Chutkan designated witness interviews and recordings as covered by a protective order and warned Trump once again against trying to influence or intimidate potential witnesses. Trump had spent much of the past week blasting former Vice President Mike Pence — likely to be a key witness — and others. No, the person I’m referring to is Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried — whose wealth had soared to $28 billion before the collapse — had been under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California, since his arrest in December on fraud charges stemming from FTX’s implosion. At a hearing yesterday, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan revoked Bankman-Fried’s bail and ordered him to await his October trial in jail. Prosecutors showed that Bankman-Fried had twice tried to interfere with witnesses, including by giving documents to reporters and engaging in numerous conversations with others in the media despite the judge’s order not to do so. “He has gone up to the line over and over again, and I am going to revoke bail,” Judge Kaplan said from the bench. Bankman-Fried was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. There is a lesson here for Donald J. Trump, as there is for other ultra-wealthy people who for too long have assumed that the law doesn’t really apply to them because they can buy their way out of whatever fix they’re in. Federal prosecutors and the federal courts are not buying it.

Judge Kaplan's words about Bankman-Fried ("He has gone up to the line over and over again") could easily apply to Donald Trump's behavior. Given that Trump is a pathological blabbermouth, I'd say the chances of pre-trial detention for him are over 50%.

Trump should not be allowed to use his upcoming trials as campaign stops for 2024.

Few things would do more to restore public confidence in the justice system than for people to see wealthy celebrities not getting preferential treatment in court. So Judge Kaplan and Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan seem determined not to let billionaire defendants hijack trials.

Judge Repeatedly Reminds Lawyers Trump Will Be Treated Like Any Criminal Defendant

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 11, 2023 (Tuesday)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 12, 2023

The dramatic events in Nashville last week, when Republican legislators expelled state representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black men, for speaking out of turn when they joined protesters calling for gun safety, highlighted a demographic problem facing the Republican Party. Members of Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, grew up doing active shooter drills in their schools, and they want gun safety legislation. And yet, Republicans are so wedded to the gun industry and guns as part of party members’ identity that today, one day after five people died in a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky—including a close friend of Kentucky governor Andrew Beshear—the Indiana Senate Republicans passed a resolution honoring the National Rifle Association (NRA). Later this week, Republican leaders will speak at the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis, where firearms, as well as backpacks, glass containers, signs, and umbrellas, are prohibited. Those speakers will include former president Trump and former vice president Mike Pence. The resolution and the speeches at the NRA convention seem an unfortunate juxtaposition to the recent mass shootings. Abortion rights are also a place where the Republican Party is out of step with the majority of Americans and especially with people of childbearing age. Last Tuesday, Janet Protasiewicz, who promised to protect reproductive rights, won the election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court by an astonishing 11 points in a state where elections are often decided by less than a point. Victor Shi of Voters of Tomorrow reported that the youth turnout of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, increased 240% since the last spring general election in 2019. Youth turnout at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, increased 232%. Almost 90% of those young people voted for Protasiewicz. And yet the party needs to grapple with last Friday’s ruling by Trump-appointed Texas federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone, a drug used for more than 50% of medically induced abortions, and that it must be removed from the market. The party also must grapple with a new Idaho law that makes it illegal for minors to leave the state to get an abortion without the consent of their parents. In New York today, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg pushed back against Republican overreach of a different sort when he filed a lawsuit in federal court against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) in his official role as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee itself, and Mark Pomerantz, whom the committee recently subpoenaed, in response to a “brazen and unconstitutional attack by members of Congress on an ongoing New York State criminal prosecution and investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.” The lawsuit accuses Jordan of engaging in “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack District Attorney Bragg” and to use congressional powers to intervene improperly in a state criminal prosecution. Like any defendant, the lawsuit says, Trump had every right to challenge his indictment in court. But rather than let that process play out, Jordan and the Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee “are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation, and obstruction” that has led to multiple death threats against Bragg. Bragg’s office "has received more than 1,000 calls and emails from Mr. Trump's supporters,“ the complaint reads, “many of which are threatening and racially charged." “Members of Congress are not free to invade New York’s sovereign authority for their or Mr. Trump’s political aims,” the document says. “Congress has no authority to ‘conduct oversight’ into District Attorney Bragg’s exercise of his duties under New York Law in a single case involving a single defendant.” While Jordan and the Republicans defend Trump, there is a mounting crisis in the West, where two decades of drought have brought water levels in the region’s rivers to dangerously low levels. According to Benji Jones of Vox, who interviewed the former director of the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico, John Fleck, last year about the crisis, the problem has deep roots. One hundred years ago, government officials significantly overestimated the water available in the Colorado River System when they divided it among Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming through the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The compact provided a formula for dividing up the water in the 1450 miles of the Colorado River. It was designed to stop the states from fighting over the resource, although an Arizona challenge to the system was not resolved until the 1960s. On the basis of the water promised by the compact, the region filled with people—40 million—and with farms that grow much of the country’s supply of winter vegetables. Now, after decades of drought exacerbated by the overuse permitted by the Colorado River Compact and by climate change, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have fallen to critical levels. Something must be done before the river water disappears not only from the U.S., but also from Mexico, which in 1944 was also guaranteed a cut of the water from the Colorado River. The seven states in the compact have been unable to reach an agreement about cutting water use. Today the Interior Department released an environmental review of the situation that offered three possible solutions. One is to continue to follow established water rights, which would prioritize the California farmland that produces food. This would largely shut off water to Phoenix and Los Angeles. Another option is to cut water distribution evenly across Arizona, California, and Nevada. The third option, doing nothing, risks destroying the water supply entirely, as well as cutting the hydropower produced by the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. There is a 45-day period for public comment on the plans, and it appears that the threat of the federal government to impose a solution may light a fire under the states to come up with their own agreement, but it is unlikely they will worry much about Mexico’s share of the water. Historically, states have been unable to agree on how to divide a precious resource, and the federal government has had to step in to create a fair agreement. Meanwhile, back in Tennessee, the fallout from last week’s events continues. Judd Legum has reported in Popular Information that Tennessee House speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, doesn’t live in his district as state law requires. And Tennessee investigative reporter Phil Williams of News Channel 5 reports that state representative Paul Sherrell, “who recently suggested bringing back lynching as a form of capital punishment, has been removed from the House Criminal Justice Committee.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

LAS VEGAS (JTA) — Mike Pence chose a Jewish gathering to announce his exit from the presidential race, with a veiled warning that his onetime boss, Donald Trump, posed a threat to a robust American foreign policy that he said was vital to Israel’s interests.

Pence, the former vice president, elicited gasps and cries of “We love you!” when he addressed a presidential forum at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas.

“I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time,” Pence said.

Pence could not bring himself to mention the name of Trump, who was scheduled to speak later Saturday and who is far and away the favorite to win the nomination. Pence even avoided namechecking the former president while reviewing the record of what he called the most “pro-Israel administration” in American history.

But after delivering the expected exhortation to remove President Joe Biden, Pence made clear that he did not want Trump to retake the office, framing his concerns in the context of Israel’s war with Hamas.

“Will Republicans continue to be the party of the traditional conservatives that has defined our movement of the past 40 years, or will our party follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles?” Pence said.

“A new populist movement in the Republican Party says that America should retreat from her leadership position, turn inward and focus solely on domestic concerns,” he said. “Let me say from my heart, anyone who says that America cannot solve our problems at home and be the leader of the free world, there’s a pretty small view of the greatest nation that we have. We must and we will do both for the sake of America, Israel and the world.”

Trump has not said yet how his calls to reduce the American footprint overseas would affect assistance to Israel. He has distanced himself from some of the most robust pro-Israel figures from his term, including Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador; Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State; and Pence.

Trump’s most profound falling-out with Pence was on Jan. 6, 2021, when Pence rebuffed Trump’s exhortations to throw the election to Trump during the congressional review of electoral votes, something Pence was not empowered to do. Trump’s urgings spurred a violent insurrection, with some rioters seeking Pence’s assassination.

Another candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has explicitly called for cutting funding to Israel.

Trump’s slogan since 2016, when he and Pence won the election, has been “America First,” a phrase that has echoes in an antisemitic movement of the 1930s and 1940s led by Charles Lindbergh.

In his current campaign, Trump has favored retreat from the international scene and has mocked Israel’s leadership for how it handled Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 invasion. He has called the Hezbollah terrorist movement, which is engaging with Israel from the north, “smart.”