#up election 2022 opinion poll

[qqueenofhades]

Hi just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully respond to these anon messages. I work in dc w a fairly wonky set and i cant overstate how haunted the DC Professional Thought Havers are by the spectre of the "low propensity voter." I think these ppl (myself included LOL) thought we had everything figured out ahead of the 2016 elections and then never recovered from the way it ended up going......i feel like in all the years that followed.....the liberal bubbles.....the coastal elites.......the hillbilly elegies......the real america....the ohio diners....the pennsylvania diners.......the polls......the 2020 horserace....while part of an earnest attempt to understand What Happened, were primarily self-indulgent, self-flagellation for being "out of touch" bc of a self-diagnosed "elite" status that then turned into ANOTHER myopic view of the world, just opposite, where the "libs" are hapless and everyone else remotely to the left are primarily victims to the unstoppable supernatural forces of the Right. Then in 2020 the narrative flipped AGAIN and once again, instead of taking the opportunity to expand a worldview and having the bravery to confront their own shortcomings, the opinion havers and wonks and beltway pressers have decided to groupthink their way into writing off democracy altogether. Its BEYOND frustrating to see! Like damn volunteer at a soup kitchen or smthn instead of being obsessed w the fact that i vote lol

Yes, and there are several reasons for that. First, despite all the factors that contributed to Trump's shock win in 2016 (anti-Clintonism, white backlash to Obama, general low voter enthusiasm, Russian disinformation, etc) we should never forget that until James Comey decided to announce 10 days before the election that he was reopening the EEEEEEEMAILS case, even though we all knew there was nothing there, she was leading fairly comfortably in the polls. And while we will never know how the 2016 election would have gone without that, which imho was one of the most unforgivable acts of blatant sabotage by a public official in American history, it's also true that we saw her poll averages start sliding almost in real time, as people who hadn't really been keen on voting for her anyway decided firmly not to and Trump was able to scrape out 16,000 votes across PA, MI, and WI to take the Electoral College. Which... we all remember how we felt that night, right? (Or in my case, early morning, since I was overseas?) We don't, we really, really don't want to feel that way again. Just saying.

As such, the media (which had already beat up Clinton nonstop during the BUT HER EEEEEMAILS saga) drastically overcorrected and as you say, began writing endless angsty handwringing pieces about Trump Voters in Rural Ohio Diners and giving endless sympathetic airtime to how "economically left behind" they felt, regardless of the fact that open racism, especially Obama backlash, was and remains the principal animating feature of Republican politics (since their only economic platform is that which makes very rich people even richer and Democratic economic policies are the only ones actually targeted at helping ordinary people). The hangover was so strong that even when Democrats had a massive 2018 midterm result and flipped the House blue for the first time since the post-ACA backlash lost it in 2010, the Conventional Wisdom was now beyond any doubt that Democrats were doomed for a generation or something, and not that Trump had squeaked out a fluky win (while losing the popular vote) due to endless Russian/Comey/third party-etc interference and wasn't actually that powerful. Even in 2020 when Biden was leading fairly steadily and things were going to hell with Covid, etc. etc. TRUMP IS UNSTOPPABLE, TRUMP IS GOING TO WIN.

(And now. Like. I know Trump thinks Trump won in 2020, as do a large majority of his cultists, but that doesn't mean he did.)

Even after that, when Roe went down in 2022, that made no difference to the RED WAVE COMING!!! narrative, and the amount of smug white male pundits insisting that abortion just wasn't very important and people weren't going to base their entire vote on it reached truly disgusting levels. We're now seeing the same thing with the constant "people won't vote for democracy and/or abortion rights" blast, when as you say, this narrative has just been completely made the fuck up by a lot of groupthinking DC media who are determined that this time, Trump really is going to win and then they get to be principled chroniclers in opposition or something. Not to mention, the basic principle of "democracy and abortion rights are good" do in fact win by thumping margins every time they're on the ballot, including in deep red states. But there is literally not a single piece of empirical evidence despite the massive amounts of it supporting the truth (i.e. that Democrats are doing historically well in competitive elections since 2018 and there's not really a major reason to think this will change in 2024) that will get the media to change the "Democrats in disarray and Biden Iz Doomed" horserace BS they so love. They don't like Biden because he's boring and competent and just does the job without being insane, because it's totally a great idea to treat American government like a reality show! (Recall the infamous comment by the CBS CEO who literally said that Trump was bad for America but great for CBS, because he pulled in high ratings and therefore lots of money and visibility for CBS. We live in the worst timeline.)

As such, the mainstream media has a vendetta against Biden, is determined that this time Trump is super definitely going to win and everyone will see how genius they are, and not-so-secretly wants Trump back because a) he's good for money and ratings, and b) because the media conglomerations are owned by oligarchs who have a vested interest in making sure that Democrats and their policies never get too popular. Notice how the once self-proclaimed centrist independent Elon Musk has turned into a rabidly alt-right fanboy ever since the Democrats really got serious about taxing billionaires as a key part of their platform. Likewise, insisting that Biden Iz Doomed makes Democrats nervous (and thus more likely to tune in) and Republicans gleeful (and thus more likely to tune in), so there's literally no incentive for the media to even try to report things accurately. You could create a very different narrative of the 2024 election if you just remotely bothered to write about things that have actually happened as they have actually taken place, rather than bending over backward to insist that Biden being four years older than Trump is a worse crime than 91 felony indictments, 2 impeachments, 1 insurrection, 450 million dollars and counting in punitive jury verdicts, more major criminal trials coming down the pipe, and just demonstrably being the worst human being alive in so many ways. I mean. Wow.

The good news, as I said in my other post, is that when people actually vote, these utter bullshit narratives get routinely blown out of the water, and that's a good thing. Because it turns out that unlike Super Smart Beltway Pundits' Super Smart Predictions, the average American does actually like democracy and freedom for women to make their own personal healthcare decisions, and they vote accordingly. So while yes, it's being made harrowingly much harder than it needs to be because of how much the media simply refuses to report that basic fact, and there is no amount of evidence that will convince them otherwise, at least we're trending in the right direction and, if we all pull our weight, can do it one more time. I realized the other day that I hadn't heard a fucking peep about Ron DeSantis in the last two months, and oh, how glorious it was. I yearn beyond words for the day (God willing, soon) when the same is true of Trump as well.

[coochiequeens]

Common sense is returning.

James Crisp, EUROPE EDITOR 13 April 2024

Dr Hilary Cass said children who think they are transgender should not be given any hormone drugs at all until at least 18 CREDIT: Yui Mok

Belgium and the Netherlands have become the latest countries to question the use of puberty blockers on children after the Cass Review warned of a lack of research on the gender treatment’s long-term effects.

Britain has become the fifth European nation to restrict the use of the drug to those under 18 after initially making them part of their gender treatments.

Their use was based on the “Dutch protocol” - the term used for the practice pioneered in the Netherlands in 1998 and copied around the world, of treating gender dysphoric youth using puberty blockers.

The NHS stopped prescribing the drug, which is meant to curb the trauma of a body maturing into a gender that the patient does not identify with this month.

In Belgium, doctors have called for gender treatment rules to be changed.

Research into impact

“In our opinion, Belgium must reform gender care in children and adolescents following the example of Sweden and Finland, where hormones are regarded as the last resort,” the report by three paediatricians and psychiatrists in Leuven said.

Figures from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom show that more than 95 per cent of individuals who initiated puberty inhibition continue with gender-affirming treatments,” the report by P Vankrunkelsven P, K Casteels K and J De Vleminck said.

“However, when young people with gender dysphoria go through their natural puberty, these feelings will only persist in about 15 per cent.”

The report was published after a 60 per cent rise in the number of Belgium teenagers taking the blockers to stop the development of their bodies. In 2022, 684 people between the ages of nine and 17 were prescribed the drug compared to 432 in 2019, the De Morgen newspaper reported in 2019.

Pressure is also building in the neighbouring Netherlands to look again at their use. The parliament has ordered research into the impact of puberty blockers on adolescent’s physical and mental health.

Dutch protocol

The Telegraph understands that the Amsterdam Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, where the protocol originated, is set to make a statement on the use of puberty blockers next week.

“I too thought that the Dutch gender care was very careful and evidence-based. But now I don’t think that any more,” Jilles Smids, a postdoctoral researcher in medical ethics at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, told The Atlantic.

Attitudes in the Netherlands have hardened against trans rights, with a bill to make it easier for people to legally change their gender being held up in parliament.

The Cass Review said that the NHS had moved away from the restrictions of the original Dutch protocol, and researchers in Belgium have also demanded those restrictions be reintroduced.

Belgium is regarded as one of the most trans-friendly countries in Europe. A minister in the government is transgender and people have been able to legally change their gender without a medical certificate for the past five years.

But the hard-Right Vlaams Belang party is currently leading the polls ahead of national and European elections in June.

It has called for “hormone therapy and sex surgery to be halted for underage patients until clear and concrete research has been carried out.”

‘Greatest ethical scandals’

In March, a report in France described sex reassignment in minors as potentially “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine”.

Conservative French senators plan to introduce a bill to ban gender transition treatments for under-18s.

On Monday, the Vatican’s doctrine office published a report that branded gender surgery a grave violation of human dignity on a par with euthanasia and abortion.

Finland was one of the first countries to adopt the Dutch protocol but realised many of its patients did not meet the Protocol’s strict eligibility requirements for the drugs.

It restricted the treatment in 2020 and recommended psychotherapy as the primary care.

Sweden restricted hormone treatments to “exceptional cases” two years later. In December, Norwegian authorities designated the medicine as “under trial”, which means they will only be prescribed to adolescents in clinical trials.

Denmark is finalising new guidelines limiting hormone treatments to teenagers who have had dysphoria since early childhood.

In 2020, Hungary passed a law banning gender changes on legal documents.

“The import and the use of these hormone products are not banned, but subject to case by case approval, however, it is certain that no authority would approve such an application for people under 18,“ a spokesperson told The Telegraph.

In August, Russia criminalised all gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments.

[mariacallous]

Last week, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency took the dramatic step of classifying the Saxony state branch of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as a threat to democracy—a potential first step towards banning it outright as unconstitutional. “There can be no doubt about the extreme right orientation of this party,” declared Dirk-Martin Christian, president of Saxony’s State Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Although Germany has, in the past, exercised constitutional powers in the name of domestic security to rein in hardcore far-right (and radical leftist) forces, the objects of censure were marginal neo-Nazi parties and associations that had no chance of coming to power—even at the municipal level or in coalition governments. The AfD is a different story. Opinion polls show the AfD as the strongest party by far today in eastern Germany; riding a powerful wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, it has also notched record tallies in western German state elections and is poised to win the most votes next year in the country’s eastern half. It could conceivably wield executive power, should conservatives—such as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) or the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP)—consider it in their interests to treat the far-right party as a legitimate expression of popular will.

Even though both parties say they rule it out, the option is not so far-fetched: Across the EU, conservative parties have turned far-right parties into governing coalition partners, including in Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Slovakia, and elsewhere. In the German state of Thuringia, the CDU, FDP, and AfD, all in the opposition but with a majority between them, now team up occasionally to bypass the leftist minority government.

Suddenly, Germans are seeing images of the political chaos of the interwar Weimar Republic flash before their eyes—the republic that ended ignominiously in the Nazi party’s victory and Adolf Hitler’s takeover in 1933.

This is why the agency’s ruling and a possible injunction against the AfD—the latter a highly controversial and risky option that is nevertheless gaining backers across Germany’s political spectrum—has observers questioning whether the Europe-wide surge of the far right can be stopped or slowed by legal measures.

The strategies pursued by the political class haven’t done the job thus far—on the contrary, the AfD is booming—and there’s a long history of banning extremist parties and associations in Europe, not least in Germany. Since mid-2022, both Germany and France arrested members of far-right extremist organizations involved in the planning of terrorist attacks. Under its autocratic leader Viktor Orban, Hungary, as well as authoritarian-ruled Poland, have been denied European Union funds, and in 2019, Orban’s party, Fidesz, was expelled from the mainstream conservative European People’s Party.

But Fidesz’s ouster wasn’t a prohibition, and the extremists in France and Germany did not belong to parties with representatives in the national parliament. In fact, the AfD is the second-largest opposition party in the German Bundestag after the Christian Democrats (and their Bavarian counterpart), and it says that it wants to come to power—democratically, through the ballot box.

The ruling makes Saxony the AfD’s third state branch to come under this level of red-button surveillance, which can include measures such as the German spy services’ covert observation and even infiltration of the party. All three state-level parties—Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia—are eastern German states with elections scheduled for next year. (In mid-April, the AfD’s nationwide youth organization was also deemed a threat to the democratic order and thus put under surveillance.)

Moreover, in the wake of Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom’s victory in the Netherlands in November, like-minded contenders across Europe, including the AfD, are expected to perform better than ever in June’s European Parliament election, an event that would have ominous ramifications for the European Union—and beyond.

Much like the rulings on Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, Germany’s intelligence agency declared that leading members and functionaries of the Saxony AfD regularly express racist, Islamophobic, and antisemitic sentiments. It labeled the branch as one with “typically ethnic-nationalistic positions” and said that both it and its national youth organization work in tandem with known neo-Nazi and officially banned movements, such as the Reichsbürger movement.

The Saxony branch has a diverse membership, the intelligence agency found, but the party’s leadership adheres to the ideology of its “spiritual father and leader,” referring to “the right-wing extremist Björn Höcke, who now shapes and dominates the character of the entire state-level party.”

Höcke, the AfD’s high-profile, outspoken party leader in Thuringia, was on the party’s far-right fringe for years. But the party has drifted so far to the right that its standard-bearer is now the 51-year-old Höcke , a demagogue who publicly espouses revisionist theories of Germany’s Nazi past and employs racist slogans against immigrants. He was charged in June with using Nazi slogans at AfD campaign rallies—a crime in Germany, where the use of slogans, propaganda, and symbolism linked to “anti-constitutional” organizations is banned.

German law gives the constitutional court the authority to shut down a political party when it pursues anti-constitutional goals and is in a position to achieve these goals. In 2017, Germany’s highest court chose not to disqualify the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a thoroughly neo-Nazi party both in public profile and programmatically, on account of its diminutive size: The party of 6,000 people rarely breached the states’ 5-percent hurdles to be included in parliament and thus never came anywhere near entering government. This autumn, the constitutional court confirmed the expulsion of a former AfD official as a justice in a Saxon state court for constituting a danger to constitutional norms.

This year, the AfD saw representatives voted into official posts as a district administrator and a mayor (in Saxony-Anhalt) for the first time. Presumably, the AfD’s recent showing in the Bavarian and Hessian elections (15 percent and 18 percent respectively, which makes it the strongest opposition party in the regional legislatures) and polling numbers of twice that in eastern Germany endow it with a size unlike the NPD’s and great enough to pose a legitimate threat.

This, at least, is what a growing number of voices from all of Germany’s mainstream parties argue. Those voices are collecting supporters in the Bundestag, where a majority is required to bring the party before the constitutional court.

One of them is a lawyer and CDU parliamentarian from Saxony, Marco Wanderwitz, who argues that “there’s a good reason why the [German Constitution] gives us the option of banning a party,” as he told the daily Die Tageszeitung, “because a defensive democracy [wehrhafte Demokratie] has to wield very sharp swords against its greatest enemies. I have come to the conclusion that the AfD is now undoubtedly radical right wing. They are up to no good and are serious about it. We’ve got to use all of the options at our disposal to beat them. I’m afraid that without a court-ordered prohibition, we’re not going to be rid of them.”

Living in Saxony, Wanderwitz said, he observes how the AfD and its even more militant counterparts draw in disillusioned people and set a confrontational, aggressive tone. “In the parliaments, the AfD is on our backs every day,” he said. “It has thousands of employees who flood the internet and parliaments with right-wing extremist content 24 hours a day. At events in Saxony, I regularly experience that we’re met with burning hatred; we’re shouted at and threatened. I’m glad that there are loads of people standing between us and them outside the door. It’s something that feels a bit like what I imagine the early 1930s were like.”

Wanderwitz added that he thinks it is conceivable that the AfD garner 40 percent in the eastern elections come September. “What democracy here needs is some breathing space,” he said.

Other commentators shoot back that Germany’s democratic culture and the solid arguments of its political parties can beat back a populist party that spins outlandish conspiracy theories, apes Nazi slogans, and wants out of the EU.

“We can’t give the impression that we’re taking the easier route with a ban procedure because we can’t manage it any other way,” retorted Social Democratic lawmaker Sebastian Fiedler, who belongs to the Bundestag’s subcommittee for domestic security. “Well-functioning constitutional states can’t dismiss the way their own populations vote. We have to offer concepts that are convincing: here and now. Of course, the AfD is trying to attack the state from within, but the constitutional state is resilient.”

Fiedler and his parliamentary peers—not all of whom are opposed to putting the AfD on trial—argue that the state has other means at its disposal to mitigate far-right parties. In November,  all of the Bundestag’s democratic parties passed a  law that deprives the AfD from the kind of public funds that other parties use to finance foundations involved in public education work. They also argue there should be more funding for grassroots programs that strengthen civil society and fight fake news in the Internet. Wanderwitz and Fiedler—and just about all of their colleagues—agree that putting the AfD on trial and then losing would be a disaster, as well as a confirmation for the AfD that the mainstream parties are out to get it, based on the party’s specious rationale.

One of the strongest arguments against such bans is that outlawing a party doesn’t annul its supporters—and sometimes even turbocharges them. The Germans need only to look to Greece to see how the prohibition of a far-right party, the Golden Dawn, did nothing to dent the vote tallies of the Greek far right, which reorganized itself under new parties. Golden Dawn itself was disqualified from running in the election this year not because it was an immigrant-bashing, Holocaust-denying scourge, but rather because its leaders had engaged in criminal business activities.

Nevertheless, the party that captured more than 6 percent of the vote in 2015, when economic paralysis gripped the country, was out of the race. Instead, in June, three far-right parties made it into the national legislature, comprising the Spartans, backed by imprisoned Golden Dawn leader Ilias Kasidiaris, the pro-Russian party Greek Solution, and ultra-Christian Orthodox Niki (Victory). They captured 34 seats out of an available 300 and accounted for more than 12 percent of the vote.

It seems that Germany and Greece—in fact, just about all of Europe—will have to dig further down into their respective legal scriptures and political cultures to get at the  toxins that threaten to imperil their democracies.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In the two years after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, leading to abortion bans across many parts of the south and midwest, abortion rights have only grown more popular, new polling from Pew Research Center has found.

A majority of Americans has long supported abortion rights. But more than 60% of Americans now believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases – a four percentage-point jump from 2021, the year before Roe fell.

This support transcends numerous demographic divides in US society: most men, women, white people, Black people, Hispanic people and Asian people believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. It extends to majorities of all age groups and education levels, although 18-to-29-year-olds and people with more education are more likely than other cohorts to believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

People who live under abortion bans have also become increasingly supportive of abortion access since the overturning of Roe in June 2022. In August 2019, only 30% of people who live in states where abortion is now outlawed said they believed it should be easier to access abortion. Today, 42% of people in the same states say that.

The broad support for abortion may prove pivotal in the upcoming US elections – Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has zeroed in on abortion as a winning issue as the president continues to trail Donald Trump in polls. Battleground states such as Arizona and Nevada are expected to hold ballot measures to protect abortion rights, which Democrats hope will boost both voter turnout and their own chances.

Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to support abortion rights, with 85% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters believing that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. By contrast, 41% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters said the same.

GOP opposition to abortion is largely fueled by conservative Republicans, since more than 70% who identify as such think abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances. More than two-thirds of moderate and liberal Republicans support abortion rights, Pew found.

Among the groups measured by Pew, conservative Republicans and white evangelical Protestants were the only groups with majorities that opposed abortion access. Nearly three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants think abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances.

Some people’s views of abortion did grow more complex the deeper Pew inquired. Most groups that support abortion rights ultimately thought abortion should be legal in “most” circumstances, rather than “all”. In other polling on abortion, support for the procedure tends to dwindle when people are asked whether they would back abortions in the second or third trimester of pregnancy.

More strikingly, Pew also asked Americans to evaluate how much they agreed with certain statements about abortion. More than half of Americans agreed with the statement that “the decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman”, while only 35% of Americans say they agreed that “human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights” – a stance that would logically lead them to oppose abortion.

Yet a third of Americans said that both statements describe their views to some extent, even though those statements clash.

[darkmaga-retard]

An excellent essay by Jeffrey Tucker

Madhava Setty

Sep 02, 2024

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree….I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”

—Mark Zuckerberg

What are the implications of this admission from the CEO of one of the largest social media platforms in the world?

Jeffrey Tucker, Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute, an organization that puts out excellent editorial commentary regularly, takes a hard look at the repercussions of our current administration’s unprecedented actions against the freedom of expression in an article (full text below).

Here are the some of the big takeaways:

Outright censorship is only part of the problem. By limiting engagement with a piece of content, users will mistakenly believe that what is offered does not resonate with most people. In other words, if a ton of people have taken the time to watch, listen or read something it will motivate others to check it out. I can personally attest that this is continuing today on another massive platform, YouTube (see below)

Those of us who have been trying to express the problems with the lockdowns, mandates, etc. may have wrongly concluded that the public was too ignorant to understand what was transpiring. The reality is that by limiting exposure to such opinions, people were unaware that there were a lot of qualified voices offering a counter narrative.

The fallout of this form censorship is in our faces right now. Democratic nominee for VP, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz beat Dr. Scott Jensen in a gubernatorial race in 2022. Jensen is a highly credentialed physician who saw through the simplistic “safe and effective” mantra. He lost to Walz by 8%, a substantial margin, but one that likely existed because of the broad suppression of counter narrative voices like his. Had platforms like Zuckerberg’s stayed out of the public debate we would have likely had a different Democratic ticket today as well as a completely different public discussion around the upcoming election.

Independent candidate for POTUS, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has sued the Biden administration for the very same attack on free expression that Zuckerberg is confessing to. While that case continues to be swatted around with injunctions being enforced and then dropped, the FB CEO is publicly confirming Kennedy’s allegations.

Tucker speculates that Zuck’s recent admission may be due to the fact that as the head of FB he has one of the best looks at what people are really believing. Could this be a sign that a second Trump presidency is in the offing, despite the polls that assure us that it’s a toss up? If so, given Trump’s assurances that he will dismantle attacks on the First Amendment if elected, it would be better to admit fault now rather than be found guilty in a courtroom later.

It’s my hope that Zuckerberg’s candid letter will prompt other platforms to admit to their complicity in this egregious assault on the foundation of democracy. The reality is that this is a big but first step. The distortion of public debate continues right now.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: James Crisp

Published: Apr 13, 2024

Belgium and the Netherlands have become the latest countries to question the use of puberty blockers on children after the Cass Review warned of a lack of research on the gender treatment’s long-term effects.

Britain has become the fifth European nation to restrict the use of the drug to under 18s after initially making them part of their gender treatments.

Their use was based on the “Dutch protocol” - the term used for the practice pioneered in the Netherlands in 1998 and copied around the world, of treating gender dysphoric youth using puberty blockers.

The NHS stopped prescribing the drug, which is meant to curb the trauma of a body maturing into a gender that the patient does not identify with this month.

In Belgium, doctors have called for gender treatment rules to be changed.

‘Last resort’

“In our opinion, Belgium must reform gender care in children and adolescents following the example of Sweden and Finland, where hormones are regarded as the last resort,” the report by three paediatricians and psychiatrists in Leuven said.

Figures from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom show that more than 95 per cent of individuals who initiated puberty inhibition continue with gender-affirming treatments,” the report by P Vankrunkelsven P, K Casteels K and J De Vleminck said.

“However, when young people with gender dysphoria go through their natural puberty, these feelings will only persist in about 15 per cent.”

The report was published after a 60 per cent rise in the number of Belgium teenagers taking the blockers to stop the development of their bodies. In 2022, 684 people between the ages of nine and 17 were prescribed the drug compared to 432 in 2019, the De Morgen newspaper reported in 2019.

Pressure is also building in the neighbouring Netherlands to look again at their use. The parliament has ordered research into the impact of puberty blockers on adolescent’s physical and mental health.

Dutch Protocol

The Telegraph understands that the Amsterdam Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, where the Protocol originated, is set to make a statement on the use of puberty blockers next week.

“I too thought that the Dutch gender care was very careful and evidence-based. But now I don’t think that any more,” Jilles Smids, a postdoctoral researcher in medical ethics at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, told The Atlantic.

Attitudes in the Netherlands have hardened against trans rights, with a bill to make it easier for people to legally change their gender being held up in parliament.

The Cass Review said that the NHS had moved away from the restrictions of the original Dutch Protocol, and researchers in Belgium have also demanded those restrictions be reintroduced.

Belgium is regarded as one of the most trans-friendly countries in Europe. A minister in the government is transgender and people have been able to legally change their gender without a medical certificate for the past five years.

But the hard-Right Vlaams Belang party is currently leading the polls ahead of national and European elections in June.

It has called for “hormone therapy and sex surgery to be halted for underage patients until clear and concrete research has been carried out.”

‘Greatest ethical scandals’

In March, a report in France described sex reassignment in minors as potentially “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine”.

Conservative French senators plan to introduce a bill to ban gender transition treatments for the under-18s.

On Monday, the Vatican’s doctrine office published a report that branded gender surgery a grave violation of human dignity on a par with euthanasia and abortion.

Finland was one of the first countries to adopt the Dutch Protocol but realised many of its patients did not meet the Protocol’s strict eligibility requirements for the drugs.

It restricted the treatment in 2020 and recommended psychotherapy as the primary care.

Sweden restricted hormone treatments to “exceptional cases” two years later. In December, Norwegian authorities designated the medicine as “under trial”, which means they will only be prescribed to adolescents in clinical trials.

Denmark is finalising new guidelines limiting hormone treatments to teenagers who have had dysphoria since early childhood.

In 2020, Hungary passed a law banning gender changes on legal documents.

“The import and the use of these hormone products are not banned, but subject to case by case approval, however, it is certain that no authority would approve such an application for people under 18,“ a spokesperson told the Telegraph.

In August, Russia criminalised all gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments.

[ Via: https://archive.today/0oU9Z ]

==

It's kind of ironic that in the early 20th century, Russia was the center of the scientific corruption and scandal that was Lysenkoism, where ideology trumped reality. Millions suffered and died as a result of denying biological reality.

The process of cementing Lysenkoism was eerily familiar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

On August 7, 1948, at the end of a week-long session organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that Lysenkoism would henceforth be taught as "the only correct theory." Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko, and criticism was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist".

Today, countries like the US, Canada and Australia are up to their armpits in a modern-day form of Gender Lysenkoism.

[warningsine]

PARIS (AP) — Voters across mainland France have been casting ballots Sunday in the first round of an exceptional parliamentary election that could put France’s government in the hands of nationalist, far-right parties for the first time since the Nazi era.

The outcome of the two-round election, which will wrap up July 7, could impact European financial markets, Western support for Ukraine, and how France’s nuclear arsenal and global military force are managed.

Many French voters are frustrated about inflation and economic concerns, as well as President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership, which they see as arrogant and out-of-touch with their lives. Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally party has tapped and fueled that discontent, notably via online platforms like TikTok, and dominated all preelection opinion polls.

A new coalition on the left, the New Popular Front, is also posing a challenge to the pro-business Macron and his centrist alliance Together for the Republic.

There are 49.5 million registered voters who will choose 577 members of the National Assembly, France’s influential lower house of parliament, during the two-round voting.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s resurgent National Rally, cast her ballot in her party’s stronghold in northern France on Sunday.

Turnout at midday at the first round stood at 25.9 % according to interior ministry figures, which is higher from the 2022 legislative elections at this time of the day. It was 18.43% at midday two years ago.

After a blitz campaign marred by rising hate speech, voting began early in France’s overseas territories, and polling stations opened in mainland France at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) Sunday. The first polling projections are expected at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT), when the final polling stations close, and early official results are expected later Sunday night.

The voting is taking place during the traditional first week of summer vacation in the country, and absentee ballot requests were at least five times higher than in the 2022 elections, according to figures from the interior ministry.

Voters who turned out in person at a Paris polling station on Sunday had issues from immigration to inflation and the rising cost of living on their minds as the country has grown more divided between the far right and far left blocs with a deeply unpopular and weakened president in the political center.

“People don’t like what has been happening,” said Cynthia Justine, a 44-year-old voter in Paris. “People feel they’ve lost a lot in recent years. People are angry. I am angry.”

She added that with “the rising hate speech,” it was necessary for people to express their frustrations with those holding and seeking power and cast their ballots.

“It is important for me because I am a woman and we haven’t always had the right to vote,” Justin said. “Because I am a Black woman, it’s even more important. A lot is at stake on this day.”

Pierre Leclaer, a 78-year-old retiree, said he cast his ballot for the simple reason of “trying to avoid the worst,” which for him is “a government that is from the far right, populist, not liberal and not very Republican.”

Macron called the early election after his party was trounced in the European Parliament election earlier in June by the National Rally, which has historic ties to racism and antisemitism and is hostile toward France’s Muslim community. It was an audacious gamble that French voters who were complacent about the European Union election would be jolted into turning out for moderate forces in a national election to keep the far right out of power.

Instead, preelection polls suggest that the National Rally is gaining support and has a chance at winning a parliamentary majority. In that scenario, Macron would be expected to name 28-year-old National Rally President Jordan Bardella as prime minister in an awkward power-sharing system known as “cohabitation.”

In the restive French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, polls already closed at 5 p.m. local time due to an 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew that authorities on the archipelago have extended until July 8.

Nine people died during a two-week-long unrest in New Caledonia, where the Indigenous Kanak people have long sought to break free from France, which first took the Pacific territory in 1853. Violence flared on May 13 in response to attempts by Macron’s government to amend the French Constitution and change voting lists in New Caledonia, which Kanaks feared would further marginalize them.

Voters in France’s other overseas territories from Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, French Polynesia and those voting in offices opened by embassies and consular posts across the Americas cast their ballots on Saturday.

While Macron has said he won’t step down before his presidential term expires in 2027, cohabitation would weaken him at home and on the world stage.

The results of the first round will give a picture of overall voter sentiment, but not necessarily of the overall makeup of the next National Assembly. Predictions are extremely difficult because of the complicated voting system, and because parties will work between the two rounds to make alliances in some constituencies or pull out of others.

In the past such tactical maneuvers helped keep far-right candidates from power. But now support for Le Pen’s party has spread deep and wide.

Bardella, who has no governing experience, says he would use the powers of prime minister to stop Macron from continuing to supply long-range weapons to Ukraine for the war with Russia. His party has historical ties to Russia.

The party has also questioned the right to citizenship for people born in France, and wants to curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality. Critics say this undermines fundamental human rights and is a threat to France’s democratic ideals.

Meanwhile, huge public spending promises by the National Rally and especially the left-wing coalition have shaken markets and ignited worries about France’s heavy debt, already criticized by EU watchdogs.

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

WHY UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ARE JUST AS UNLIKELY AS EVER, UNFORTUNATELY

I'm a leftist (Libertarian-Socialist), who votes progressive, because I live under an "elected" government, and I had thought I had purged the MSNBC/CNN Nation from my friends list, but apparently not, as my timeline is just chock-full of media-driven hysteria over current events, so here's a primer:

"Liberals" who think their arguments are clever or relevant to the Second Amendment are exhausting.

They are not the left; they are just one half of the good cop/bad cop act of the corporate owned fire-hose of bullshit that is the corporate media, and corporate America's governing criminal cartel/duopoly.

Both cults "I like simple and ineffectual 'solutions', because they make me feel like I'm doing something, and I'm just stinky with fear."

There are over a hundred million legal gun owners, who some want to punish for somebody else's crime.

Well, there are some things to consider.

We've been a heavily armed country since 1621, and yet the epidemic of daily mass-shootings didn't begin until 20 April 1999 (Columbine), at a time when gun ownership was at an all-time low, and five years after Clinton's assault-weapons ban, so maybe guns aren't the variable.

Maybe, just maybe, dead school-children are the price of the neoliberalism practiced under the "Washington Consensus" of BOTH right-wing authoritarian parties since the 1980's? When your country offers you no prospects, and you become terrified of the future, what then? Fear can make unstable people do desperate things. Add to that a culture of celebrity, and what could possibly go wrong?

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world

Another factor that goes completely unexamined, is the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill emptied our state hospitals onto our streets, and onto families ill-equipped to deal with the sometimes violent mentally ill.

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/the-desperate-and-the-dead/series/community-care/

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/story/2023-04-24/opinion-impact-of-deinstitutionalization-on-homelessness-reagan-mental-health-hospitals-san-diego

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/03/hard-truths-about-deinstitutionalization-then-and-now/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/us-mental-health-community-centers.html

Thank God, the "solution" is so simple...

Also, 84% of NRA members support universal background checks. The problem is, every time a bill comes up for a vote, Democrats add poison pill amendments guaranteeing defeat in the legislature (and the courts), and then they proceed to tell the TV cameras that "once again the GOP and the gun lobby have voted down background checks and defied the will of the people", or some such nonsense.  

If you want to watch Dems sabotage universal background checks (while Republicans roll their eyes and face-palm) in real time, go here:

https://www.c-span.org/networks/

P.S. You can probably guess which one of these three groups I belong to (Hint: It's the one that's growing and actually decides elections):

https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/bk82tkyic0sqaulbp34asq.png

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vxWG3CrKYLkPwpJHj9BD7ou5DR0=/1400x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22430597/bbc_k5onqe6g_al6vtvcqg.png

#LaborPartyNow!!!

P S The line, "You don't need 30 rounds to shoot a deer!" is not clever.

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting tools, toys for hobbyists (target shooting), or even weapons for self-defense.

It's about ARMS!!!

It's about the individual citizen's right to arms, so they'll be prepared to join a militia, not the other way around. ‘Well regulated’ at that time, simply meant, ‘efficient.’ In other words, in order for a muster to be efficient, civilians needed to be already armed.

So the "collective rights" argument has a couple of problems that make it quite unhinged from history and reality.

1) As I've mentioned above, Americans have always been relatively heavily armed. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

2) Contrary to what you were probably taught in school, by the time of the Confederate artillery barrage on Fort Sumter, the war over slavery had already been going on for over six years, and was fought entirely by independent volunteer militia's. Fort Sumter was just the beginning of official involvement by government troops. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

3) In what universe do government forces need to have their right to arms protected?

4) Since when do National Guard members keep National Guard arms (Hint: they're kept at the armory, and have been since colonial times)?

5) Obviously, "Liberals" are stupid.

Again: #LaborPartyNow!!!

P P S That was ENTIRELY the point of the first fruits of dissent, the 10 Amendments we've come to call the BILL OF RIGHTS (which have become a beacon to aspiring democrats all over the world), to protect INDIVIDUALS from the government they had just created. #TrueStory

[kp777]

By Juan Cole

Common Dreams Opinion

Nov. 11, 2022

One of the issues that drove America's youth to vote in unusual numbers in the midterm elections, and to tilt heavily Democratic, is the climate emergency. It was up there with reproductive rights and gun safety as a key issue. A recent Harvard youth poll found that among these young people, "Democrats are moved by abortion (20%), protecting democracy (20%), inflation (19%), and climate change (16%). More than 7-in-10 young Americans (72%) believe that the rights of others are under attack, and 59% believe that their own rights are under attack."

According to a recent Blue Shield poll, some 75% of youth in America report that they have had panic attacks, depression, anxiety, stress and/or feelings of being overwhelmed when considering the issue of climate change.

Their feelings on the issues proved crucial, since many observers credit Gen Z with halting any red wave and with helping Biden emerge as the most successful president in the midterms in over 20 years.

Further, 63% of youth voted for Democrats, whereas only 35% voted Republican. Further, in one poll, 75% of youth said they are more likely to support a candidate for Congress who is "addressing climate change."

Where the climate implications of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which promotes green energy and green transportation, were explained to them 69% of younger voters said they would be more likely to vote for a congressman who voted for the IRA. They know of Biden's green energy commitments, but they apparently do not think they go far enough. The youth seem to like Biden's policies and those of the Democratic Party even though they don't particularly care for Biden himself (or only 44% do).

The catastrophe of the human-caused climate emergency is going to fall more heavily on Gen Z or the "Zoomers"– people born between 1997 and 2012. Even if we can get to zero carbon emissions by 2050, some changes are already in train that likely cannot be ameliorated for a very long time. These young people's lives will be harder and more challenging than those of their predecessors.

And they know it. According to a recent Blue Shield poll, some 75% of youth in America report that they have had panic attacks, depression, anxiety, stress and/or feelings of being overwhelmed when considering the issue of climate change. Globally, many of these young people are even afraid to bring children into the world that is being produced by our high-carbon styles of life.

A small Green 2.0 poll found that 89% of youth say that climate change has already had an impact on their lives and 44% said that it has had a major impact on their lives.

It will be hot in 2050, and some very large glaciers may melt under those conditions, causing the sea level to rise even more than the projected 4-5 feet. We are already seeing mega-droughts, heat waves, wildfires and massive flooding, so imagine how chaotic the climate will be in 30 years if we go on putting billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually for the next two decades.

The good news is that temperatures would immediately stop rising if we went to zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, according to climate models, and then over time the oceans would absorb most of the extra CO2 we have spewed into the atmosphere in the past century and a half. If we do this right, the earth will be on the road to less severe climate impacts a century from now. But as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, "in the long run" we are all dead. A century from now is too far off to do the Zoomers much good.

Still, this is an area of life where early action will produce better outcomes sooner than later action. So, Gen Z is impatient to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions.

The Blue Shield poll found that 45% of US youth say that they have tried to reduce electricity use. Most electricity in the US is still produced by burning coal or fossil gas, with only 25% of our electricity being generated by sustainable sources. Hence, the less electricity used, the fewer greenhouse gases are generated.

They know, however, that such individual actions are not enough and that government must act. 81% of youth in the Blue Shield poll said that global leaders are not doing enough to combat climate change.

Imagine how furious they are when they hear Republican politicians deny that humans burning fossil fuels is radically altering our climate! Moreover, they know exactly how to express their displeasure. They helped turn a lot of the rascals out of office.

Juan Cole

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His newest book, "Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires" was published in 2020. He is also the author of  "The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East" (2015) and "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (2008).  He has appeared widely on television, radio, and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. 

[airasilver]

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/how-trump-wins-and-harris-and-the-democrats-blow-it/

It’s Nov. 6, 2024, the morning after Election Day.

The people in the Trump campaign should be counting their lucky stars for Donald Trump’s close victory, given the political incompetence they showed in July and August. In the six weeks between July 21, when Joe Biden dropped out, and Labor Day, they had one job: to define Kamala Harris as an elite San Francisco liberal before she could define herself as a middle-class moderate. The Trump campaign did next to nothing. All they needed was to play the 2019 clips of Harris sounding like a wokester cliché, but they couldn’t even come up with an argument, let alone act upon it. Harris brilliantly defined herself in that vacuum.

This mistake could have been fatal for the Republicans, because Trump is the 46% man. That’s roughly the share of the popular vote he won in 2016 and 2020. He was never going to ride a majority wave to victory in 2024, so it would have been helpful to take his opponent down a few points.

And yet this is the pattern with Trump. He seems to do everything possible to sabotage his own campaigns, but still does surprisingly well in elections. Even with the fantastic weeks she had coming into Labor Day, Harris was not in as good a shape as Hillary Clinton was in 2016 or Biden was in 2020. Harris had a roughly 2-point lead on Labor Day weekend, but Clinton led by about 4 or 5 percentage points at that stage and ended up losing. That’s in part because polls perennially underestimate Trump’s support — by about 2.2% in 2016 and 3.3% in 2020.

Just look at the swing states. According to the 2016 polls, Clinton led Michigan and Wisconsin by 4 to 8 points going into the fall, but still lost on Election Day. In 2016, Clinton led in Pennsylvania at summer’s end by about 6 points, while in 2020 Biden led by between roughly 3 and 4 points, but Trump still beat Clinton there and came within a point of beating Biden.

Most of the election models had the 2024 campaign right on Labor Day: It was basically a tied race, even if Democratic exuberance gave the impression that Harris had some ineffable momentum.

Which gets to a core point: It’s always misleading to follow campaign news day to day. The ephemera distracts you from what really matters. Elections are driven by a few core realities. Trump had several fundamental issues that drove support to him, no matter how jerkish he could be. Trump being victorious in 2024 comes down to these five turbines of Trumpism:

Democrats want to expand the welfare state so that our social insurance system would look more like Europe’s. But Europe is economically stagnant and falling behind. In 2021, households in the European Union enjoyed, on average, only 61% of the disposable income Americans enjoyed. By this measure, rich European countries like Norway are behind poor American states like Mississippi. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, large European corporations invested 60% less than American corporations in 2022 and grew at two-thirds the pace. For a decade, Europe has been falling behind on capital development, research and development, and productivity growth. Even the vaunted German economy has basically flatlined since 2018.

Many American voters might envy the long European vacations, but they want economic dynamism more. For years voters in swing states had been telling pollsters that the economy and inflation were their top issues. They looked around the country and concluded that the Republican approach seemed better at generating dynamism and growth, or at least better than Harris’ pitch for and defense of Bidenomics.

Democrats are the party of the ruling class. The most important divide in American life is the diploma divide. College-educated folks tend to vote for Democrats, and high-school-educated folks tend to vote for Republicans. Thus, the richest places tend to be Democratic. The Democrats dominate the media, the universities, the cultural institutions and government. Even the big corporations, headquartered in places like New York and San Francisco, are trending blue.

Ruling-class Democrats live in very different worlds than high-school-educated Republicans. The average high school grad dies nine years sooner than a college graduate, is more likely to be obese, is much less likely to marry and is much more likely to divorce. The overdose death rate for high school grads is about six times as high as the rate for college grads. Of course working-class voters resent these inequalities.

Worse, educated-class folks have rigged the game. Children from affluent families tend to attend public and private schools flush with cash, while working-class kids don’t. By the eighth grade, children from affluent families are performing at four grade levels higher than children from poor families. According to Daniel Markovits of Yale University, on the SAT, “students from families earning over $200,000 per year (roughly the top 5%) score 388 points higher than students from families earning less than $20,000 per year (roughly the bottom 20%).” According to a 2017 study led by Raj Chetty of Harvard University, students from families in the top 1% of earners were 77 times as likely to get into the Ivy League as students from families making less than $30,000 a year. In that year, students from the top income quintile were about 16 times as numerous at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as students from the bottom quintile.

Highly educated Democrats like Harris see themselves as increasing the size of government to help the downtrodden. But many Americans look at those efforts and they just see affluent people amassing more power for themselves in Washington. They conclude: This is what the educated elites always do. They promise to do stuff for us, but they end up serving only themselves.

Social and moral cohesion. Republicans can be rugged individualists when it comes to economics, but Democrats can be rugged individualists when it comes to morality. They are more likely to hew to a code of moral freedom that holds that individuals should be free to live by their own values. Individuals get to choose their own definition of when human life begins. Any form of family and social life is OK so long as the individuals within it give their consent. This is the privatization of morality.

Yet in most places, people are formed within morally cohesive communities. They derive a sense of belonging and solidarity from shared moral values. Their lives have meaning and purpose because they see themselves living in a universal moral order with permanent standards of right and wrong, within family structures that have stood the test of time, with shared understandings of, say, male and female.

Privatized morality leaves even many progressives with existential insecurity. Forty-one percent of very liberal men and 60% of very liberal women report that they are in poor mental health more than half the time.

But the lack of social and moral order is a practical calamity for less-educated folks. For them, economic policy is not separate from social issues and moral values. The things that derail their lives are broken relationships, infidelity, out-of-wedlock births, addictions, family conflict and crime. When Republicans talk about immigration, crime, faith, family and flag, they are talking about ways to preserve the social and moral order. Democrats are great at talking about economic solidarity, but not moral and cultural solidarity.

General dissatisfaction. Kamala Harris practiced the politics of joy in this election, running a hope-filled and sunny campaign, as any incumbent party tries to do. But many Americans are not feeling it. As the fall general election campaign got unofficially underway after Labor Day, only 25% of Americans were satisfied with the direction of the country, according to Gallup, while 73% were dissatisfied. According to Ipsos, 59% of Americans said the country was in decline, 60% agreed with a series of statements conveying that “the system is broken,” 69% agreed that the “political and economic elite don’t care about hardworking people,” and 63% agreed that “experts in this country don’t understand the lives of people like me.”

In other words, many Americans feel betrayed, distrustful, angry. They feel that the American dream has been destroyed. Trump, like all global populists, tells this betrayal story well.

The toxic levels of distrust undermined the Harris campaign in another way. Her basic message was: You should support me because I’ll give you benefits — child care subsidies, mortgage subsidies, student loan debt forgiveness, etc. But distrustful voters no longer reward benefits with votes. Trump sent out more than $800 billion in checks during the pandemic and derived no political benefit from it. Biden spent billions of dollars subsidizing red America and received no boost in support. The expanded child tax credit poured money into middle-class families, but surprisingly, there was little outcry when it went away. Corrosive distrust and disaffection means that voters are not in a mood to reward even those politicians who dole out money to them.

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Most Americans who vow to leave over an election never do. Will this year be different? (USA Today) The idea of moving to another country to protest a presidential administration or political policy isn’t new—think the Vietnam War or even vows to move following the re-election of President George W. Bush. Even Trump once joked he might leave if Biden was elected. Typically, relatively few who vow to leave actually make the move, said Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, a University of Kent migration scholar and expert on Americans abroad. But this year, as voter anxiety hits the red zone ahead of a divisive election contest between Trump and President Joe Biden, there are signs that Americans from a cross-section of society are taking a more serious look at the exits. The percentage of U.S. citizens who would settle abroad if they were able reached 34% in a March 26 poll by Monmouth University, up from 12% since 1995. Monmouth polling officials said they believe the political rancor of recent years likely helped fuel the rise.

Beryl unleashes high winds, heavy rains in Texas (AP) Tropical Storm Beryl unleashed heavy rains and powerful winds along the Texas coast on Monday, knocking out power to more than 2 million homes and businesses and flooding streets with fast-rising waters as first responders raced to rescue stranded residents. Beryl had already cut a deadly path through parts of Mexico and the Caribbean before making a turn, sweeping ashore as a Category 1 hurricane in Texas early Monday, then later weakening to a tropical storm. At least two people were killed. The National Hurricane Center said damaging winds and flash flooding will continue as Beryl continues pushing inland. More than 2 million homes and businesses in the Houston area were without electricity, CenterPoint Energy officials said, and crews cannot get out to restore it until the wind dies down.

Comeback story (NYT) America’s so-called “left behind” counties—the once-great manufacturing centers and other distressed places that struggled mightily at the start of this century—have staged a remarkable comeback. In the last three years, they added jobs and new businesses at their fastest pace since Bill Clinton was president. The turnaround has shocked experts. “This is the kind of thing that we couldn’t have even dreamed about five or six years ago,” said John Lettieri, the president of the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank that studies economic distress in the U.S. Those counties span the nation but are largely concentrated in the Southeast and Midwest. Researchers say it’s too soon to know exactly what’s changed, but there are theories. The pandemic disrupted some long-running patterns of where Americans live and work; some people appear to have fled cities like New York for remote jobs—or for the chance to start a new company—in less expensive areas.

Is college worth it? Poll finds only 36% of Americans have confidence in higher education (AP) Americans are increasingly skeptical about the value and cost of college, with most saying they feel the U.S. higher education system is headed in the “wrong direction,” according to a new poll. Overall, only 36% of adults say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to the report released Monday by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation. That confidence level has declined steadily from 57% in 2015. Some of the same opinions have been reflected in declining enrollment as colleges contend with the effects of the student debt crisis, concerns about the high cost of tuition, and political debates over how they teach about race and other topics.

El Salvador’s president threatens to use gang-crackdown style tactics against price gougers (AP) Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, famous for his heavy-handed crackdown on street gangs, threatened to use similar tactics against price gougers. Since 2022, Bukele has rounded up tens of thousands of suspected street gang members—often on little evidence—and filmed them being frog-marched in their underwear though vast new prisons. In a speech late Friday, he threatened to use the same tactics on wholesalers and distributors who he blamed for a recent steep rise in the prices for food items and other basic goods. It’s all very much in character for Bukele, who once described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator.”

Can you ‘Trump-proof’ NATO? As Biden falters, Europeans look to safeguard the military alliance (AP) Growing skepticism about President Joe Biden’s reelection chances has European leaders heading to the NATO summit in Washington confronting the prospect that the military alliance’s most prominent critic, Donald Trump, may return to power over its mightiest military. NATO—made up of 32 European and North American allies committed to defending each other from armed attack—will stress strength through solidarity as it celebrates its 75th anniversary during the summit starting Tuesday. Event host Biden, who pulled allies into a global network to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion, has called the alliance the most unified it has ever been. But behind the scenes, a dominant topic will be preparing for possible division, as the power of far-right forces unfriendly to NATO grows in the U.S. and other countries including France, raising concerns about how strong support will stay for the alliance and the military aid that its members send to Ukraine.

France’s left-wing surge (BBC) Nobody expected this. When the graphics flashed up on all the big French channels, it was not the far right of Marine Le Pen who was on course for victory. It was the left who had clinched it, and Emmanuel Macron's centrists—the Ensemble alliance—had staged an unexpected comeback, pushing the far-right National Rally (RN) into third. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran left-wing firebrand seen by his critics as an extremist, wasted no time in proclaiming victory. His alliance, drawn up in a hurry for President Macron's surprise election, includes his own radical France Unbowed, along with Greens, Socialists and Communists and even Trotskyists. But their victory is nowhere big enough to govern. France is going to have a hung parliament. None of the three blocs can form an outright majority by themselves of 289 seats in the 577-seat parliament.

‘A Little Scary’: Ukraine Tries to Stay Neutral in U.S. Political Dogfight (NYT) Ukraine, which depends on American military aid for its survival, has long tried to maintain bipartisan support in the United States. That has never been easy, but it is getting harder, especially with the increased possibility that Donald J. Trump, no great friend of Ukraine, will return to the White House. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is asked in nearly every interview what a second Trump administration would mean for Ukraine. While Mr. Zelensky chooses his words carefully, sometimes the emotional weight of the assumption behind the question—that Mr. Trump could end American military assistance, allowing Russia to succeed in destroying the Ukrainian state—spills into view. Mr. Trump’s claim last week during his debate with Mr. Biden that he alone knew the path to peace is “a little scary,” the Ukrainian president said in an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News. “If there are risks to Ukrainian independence, if we lose statehood—we want to be ready for this, we want to know,” Mr. Zelensky said in a subsequent interview last week with Bloomberg. “We want to understand whether in November we will have the powerful support of the U.S. or will be all alone.”

The Killer Stalking Sri Lanka’s Men (NYT) Something odd has been happening to young men in the sultry farming and fishing communities of Sri Lanka. Since the 1990s, men in their 30s and 40s have been turning up at hospitals with late-stage kidney failure, needing dialysis or even transplants. In some communities, as many as one in five young men is affected. Their condition has no clear cause; in fact, it is called “chronic kidney disease of unknown origin.” But experts say the illness is most likely the result of exposure to extreme heat, and the resulting dehydration, as well as an overuse of toxic pesticides that have seeped into the groundwater. The trend is most striking in young men, but some women, too, seem to have the disease. And children as young as 10 already show early signs of kidney trouble.

After 9 Months of War, Israelis Call for a Cease-Fire Deal and Elections (NYT) Israelis on Sunday marked nine months since the devastating Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7 and the start of the ensuing war in Gaza with a nationwide day of anti-government protests at a time that many here view as a pivotal juncture in the conflict. Primarily calling for a cease-fire deal with Hamas that would see hostages return from captivity and for new elections in Israel, protesters brought traffic to a standstill at several major intersections in cities and on highways across the country. But many Israelis, among them the families of some of the hostages, fear that the cease-fire efforts could be torpedoed not only by Hamas, but also by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel who, they say, might prioritize the survival of his government over a deal that could topple it. The leaders of two ultranationalist parties who are key elements of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition have threatened to bring the government down if the prime minister agrees to a deal before Hamas is fully destroyed—a goal that many officials and experts consider unattainable. The far-right parties in the governing coalition “don’t want a deal,” Shikma Bressler, a protest leader, said in a social media post early Sunday, adding, “They need Armageddon.”

Nearly 1,000 homes in Cape Town destroyed by storms as city braces for a week of bad weather (AP) Nearly 1,000 homes in informal settlements in Cape Town, South Africa, have been destroyed by gale-force winds, displacing around 4,000 people, authorities and an aid organization said as the city braces for a week of damaging storms. South African weather authorities said Monday that Cape Town and surrounding areas are expected to be hit by multiple cold fronts until at least Friday, bringing torrential rain, strong winds and flooding. The worst-hit areas are expected to be the poor, informal settlements on the edge of South Africa’s second biggest city.

Pope: We need the ‘scandal’ of faith (Vatican News) What the world needs now is “the scandal of faith,” Pope Francis said during his homily for Mass on Sunday, in the Italian city of Trieste. “We need a scandal of faith” that is not indifferent to the problems of this world, but that is rooted in the Incarnation, a faith “that enters history, touches people’s lives, and becomes a leaven of hope and a seed for a new world.” Pope Francis insisted that God is found precisely “in the dark corners of our lives and of our cities,” and among “the least, the forgotten, the discarded.” All too often, he said, we are scandalized by little things, when instead we should be outraged “in the face of rampant evil.” Like Jesus—who, despite being rejected and even tried and executed, “remained faithful to His mission”—we Christians are also called to be prophets and witnesses to the Kingdom of God, in whatever place or situation we find ourselves.

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the course of the American election campaign as a "sad scene," while he considered that the French elections "do not represent democracy very much," noting that "the second round is designed to manipulate the will of the voters."

This is definitely the quote of the day.

This sums up everything I think, and I am convinced that Lavrov is not trolling anyone, but simply sharing what he knows and what he believes.

Today is election day in France, the second round of legislative elections which began in June. I talked about it in a previous post, and nothing about the potential outcome has changed since then.

Everything is in place to guarantee the victory of the white supremacists and their far-right party "The National Rally". This is a result:

which has been announced or rather hammered home by the major media, public or private, for weeks as if it were the only natural outcome,

which has been carefully constructed in my opinion, as I implied in my last post, for at least 2 years.

By that I mean I'm convinced the election is rigged.

The 2022 presidential and legislative elections were only won by Macron and his party through massive electoral fraud, as his popularity and electoral base had already collapsed by that time.

The presidential race already gave a lot of suspicious clues: Macron refused to lead his own campaign, he used the war in Ukraine as a pretext when France was not at war and no French soldier was fighting on the ground, at least officially.

His campaign team barely promoted his candidacy: he had no political posters, distributed a limited number of leaflets, had no volunteers to go door to door and did not even ask the general public to finance him to pay his campaign expenses.

He only organized one big meeting before the elections for which he rented the largest stadium in Paris with 40,000 seats but was only able to fill it half. And a meeting between the two rounds which was only accessible by invitation and only brought together 2,000 people to the surprise of the independent journalists present at the meeting (the major media used the images provided by its communications team and acts as if everything was normal).

Polls kept his popularity ridiculously high as France was just emerging from two years of pandemic mismanagement in which his government lied about just about everything. The death toll reached 150,000 victims but no ceremony was organized to honor the memory of the dead, to pay tribute to their families for their courage given that many survivors were unable to attend the burial of their loved ones, nor to gather around him the French Nation which has suffered so much.

The culmination of this charade was the debate between the far-right party candidate and Macron. Polls said that 75% of French people rejected this duel and yet they both won the first round! Macron was publicly rumored to be embarrassed to debate with Marine Le Pen, who led the far right, because her political culture and communication skills were very limited. So, as major national and regional media reported, he sent deputies (members of parliament) from his own party to train her in debate!

Can you imagine Clinton in 2016 sending members of Congress to train Trump on the most important issues that concerned the American nation to ensure that the debate was of decent quality?

After Macron's victory, Marine Le Pen went on vacation, as if 2 months later there had been no legislative elections! Her party won 90 seats without doing anything: the far-right candidates were so out of their element that the only subjec on which they could respond to journalists was immigration. Any other subject created a humiliating silence.

90 seats is also the number of seats won by the conservative party Les Républicains. Such perfectly equal figures, which resemble a sharing of the cake, have never been seen in France under the Fifth Republic, founded by General De Gaulle in 1958.

Another thing this Republic has never seen before is the fact that Macron's party won when it was at its lowest in the previous elections. He lost the 2020 municipal elections: his party finished last with 2% of the vote for a very low turnout of 41%. Same thing in 2021 during the regional elections where his party came fourth with a participation rate of 34%!

However, we were supposed to believe that a year later, Macron's party overcame these massive defeats and once again became the leading party in France with 245 seats (even if it lost the majority that would allow it to govern without an alliance), because it was a national election which does not present the same issues, according to the mainstream journalists who interpreted the results!

In my opinion, what happened in 2022 happened again in 2024 during the European elections and now during the legislative elections, which is why I did not vote in the legislative elections.

Whoever controls the results uses the same method each time which obviously includes the use of AI, and the enormous data collected for decades on the sociology of votes city by city, village by village by many public institutions responsible for mapping the territory of France and its population.

In my last post, I explained how Macron could use article 16 of the constitution to impose a dictatorship, and this remains a very credible result for me. He enjoys the support of the Chief of Army Staff and all senior officers. Before the pandemic, 300 senior officers wrote him a letter asking him to take power by force. During the pandemic, he has had dozens, if not more, of secret defense cabinet meetings with the Army chief of staff and other military personnel.

The French media seem to think that he can govern with the far right as long as they do not have a majority to govern alone, which would force them to form an alliance with the conservatives, while they would be under threat of an activation of the party. article 16. This situation would keep them under pressure from the president, even if legally the government must be the only one responsible in a situation where the government and the president are from different political sides and must coexist.

But their theory does not take into account the massive rise in racist and violent incidents in recent weeks against black and Arab populations. 30,000 police officers are deployed today throughout the country to contain the most violent protests. But it's not just about voting day, I don't see the situation getting any less tense if the far-right party wins, because they simply don't control their voters.

The only response to this violence seems to be the use of art 16.

[mariacallous]

In Russia’s presidential election in mid-March, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially won his fifth term with 87 percent of the vote and the highest reported turnout in the country’s post-Soviet history. Indeed, by most measures, Putin remains popular. Opinion surveys just before the election pegged his approval rating above 80 percent. Some voters are likely afraid to tell pollsters otherwise, of course, but for an autocrat, that kind of fear is almost as good as real support. Either way, Russians are generally avoiding open protest. This helps the Kremlin get away with touting Putin’s sweeping election victory as an endorsement of both the president and his signature policy, the war in Ukraine.

At the same time, these numbers are far from a reliable indicator of popular support for the war. Many Russians, including Putin voters, are skeptical of the Kremlin’s determination to continue the two-year-old conflict. Although Putin’s approval ratings are impressive, survey data from the Russian Election Study (RES), which we lead, indicate that only a slim majority of his supporters now favor staying the course in Ukraine. In fact, despite the Kremlin’s massive effort to drum up support, nearly one in four Putin backers opposes continuing the war, and roughly the same number say they are unsure whether they support the war (19 percent) or decline to answer the question (four percent). This means that only slightly more than half of Putin supporters—54 percent—think Russia should continue the war that Putin has championed since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Among all Russian voters, support for Putin’s war is even softer. In October 2023, just 43 percent of Russians said they backed continuing what the Kremlin refers to as its “special military operation.” When asked to identify their position on the war, a third of those surveyed chose the response, “No, I do not support the continuation of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine,” and nearly a quarter declined to state an opinion. These figures are surely known to the Kremlin, which conducts its own polls and allows independent surveys to operate as well. Because it is easier to govern as a popular autocrat than an unpopular one, Putin closely tracks public opinion. The Kremlin works tirelessly to shape these opinions, but its efforts to drive up support for Putin himself have been more successful than its attempts to boost support for the war.

These findings are both good and bad news for Ukraine and its allies. Waning support for the war among Russian citizens will not, in itself, compel Putin to end his assault on the country. Given the Kremlin’s extensive suppression of civil society and public dissent, he can continue to wage war without strong popular backing for it. The lack of popular enthusiasm, however, could complicate this effort. Putin will need to rely more heavily on repression to forestall opposition. Lack of popular enthusiasm for the war’s continuation also makes it harder to recruit soldiers and maintain morale and raises the cost of buying public support. In a televised address following the March 22 terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall, Putin made a call for unity, while alleging Ukrainian involvement in the attack. His remarks suggest that the Kremlin will seek to use the attack to bolster support for aggression against Ukraine or for tougher terrorism laws that would further stifle domestic dissent. Winning the election was easy; stiffer challenges lie ahead.

BUSINESS AS USUAL?

In some respects, the RES’s most recent survey provides a sobering view of public support for the Putin regime. Contrary to some observers’ hopes that declining support for the war might trigger the collapse of Putin’s rule, the findings suggest it is not so simple. Led by a team of scholars supported by the National Science Foundation, the RES has contributed to understanding the evolution of Russian public opinion and voting behavior for nearly three decades. In national surveys conducted around each Russian presidential election in which Putin has featured as a candidate, the team has found that his support is multidimensional. This month’s election supports that pattern. The Russian leader continues to draw on a broad base among ordinary Russians—support built over nearly a quarter century that can prop him up even if many of these backers sour on the war itself. Putin’s appeal also continues to rest on his management of the country’s economy, his hypermasculine image, and—increasingly—his association with conservative values that resonate with many Russian citizens.

Manipulating these other sources of support has been part of Putin’s strategy all along, a tactic often overlooked in Western analyses of Russia’s war strategy. Since the start of the invasion, for example, he has frequently downplayed the so-called special military operation, suggesting that the armed forces will take care of it, leaving most ordinary Russians to go about their lives as usual. He has also stressed the message that Russia has remained stable and continued to flourish during the war.

Consider the economy. Russians who support Putin despite opposing the war are generally optimistic about how the economy has performed in the face of Western sanctions. About half of them think the economy is either unchanged or has even recovered over the last 12 months. (By contrast, just 14 percent of Russians who do not support Putin and are against the war see the Russian economy in this positive light.) Russians who are pro-Putin but antiwar are also much more likely to have avoided personal financial losses since the invasion of Ukraine: three in four report that their household finances have remained the same or improved over the past year. More than half of respondents who oppose both Putin and the war say their economic situation has worsened.

But there is a tension in the Kremlin’s efforts to downplay the war and promote a sense of normality. At various moments, including the launch of Putin’s reelection campaign in December 2023, he has emphasized that Russia’s fight—in Ukraine and against the West—is an existential one and that every Russian must do their part. Another such moment was when Putin ordered the “partial mobilization” in the fall of 2022, calling up hundreds of thousands of Russians to fight. Such moves contradict the Kremlin’s other messaging that seeks to minimize the war. Raising the stakes of the war effort is a risky strategy in itself. Should Putin continue to push an existential narrative and his supporters tire of the war, they may become more likely to break with him if developments take a negative turn in other areas they care about, such as the economy.

This risk could increase if opposition to the war grows or if Russia’s economic outlook deteriorates. For example, our research shows that Putin supporters who oppose continuing the war are still divided about whether financing the offensive should take priority over social programs. This may partly reflect the Kremlin’s success, at least so far, in increasing social spending and maintaining a sense of economic stability even as it put the economy firmly on a war footing. If Russia experiences an economic decline or a demand for more social spending, this acquiescence to the war could diminish, eroding Putin’s base.

IT’S THE WAR, STUPID

A larger potential concern for the Kremlin is the specific nature of popular opposition to the war. The most recent RES survey shows that some groups from which Putin has traditionally drawn support now oppose the military campaign. For one thing, Russians who are skeptical about the war are disproportionately women, and more than a quarter of Putin’s female supporters want the special military operation to end. For another, Putin’s supporters in rural areas are more opposed to prolonging the war than his backers in Russia’s major urban centers, with one in three saying they are against continuing it. These rural areas have been hit harder by military recruitment than urban centers. If antiwar sentiment among these Russians begins to align with anti-Putin sentiment, as it more often has in cities, it could be a turning point for the Kremlin.

Added to these potential problems is the possibility that the Kremlin might be compelled to order another round of mobilization. Such a decision would have a particular impact on women and rural Russians. Men from rural areas are far more likely to be mobilized than those from major cities. And wives and mothers of soldiers, who are particularly concerned about high casualty rates and eager for their loved ones to be rotated home from the front, have already become a key source of public protest against the government’s war strategy. To mollify this constituency, the Kremlin could rotate frontline troops more frequently—but that could, in turn, require fresh rounds of mobilization.

Among Putin supporters, opposition to the war is particularly concentrated in groups that are more likely to be recruited for military service and facing economically precarious circumstances. In remote ethnic regions in Siberia such as Buryatia, Altai, and Zabaykalskii Krai, where death rates among men of military age have been among Russia’s highest, as many as two-thirds of Putin supporters are outright against continuing the war. On average, in these regions and in other ethnic republics, such as Chuvashia and Udmurtia, roughly half of all Putin supporters express antiwar sentiments. Similarly, less-educated Putin backers are more likely to oppose continuing the war than their counterparts with advanced degrees.

Faced with this ambivalence toward the war in the very regions where the Russian military has been concentrating its recruitment efforts, the Kremlin has taken no chances. After initially allowing the antiwar opposition candidate Boris Nadezhdin to register for the presidential election, the Russian authorities disqualified him on the grounds that the signatures he had collected were invalid. Clearly, the Putin regime thought that it was too dangerous for Nadezhdin to press his case to an electorate already skeptical about continuing the “special military operation.”

To paper over antiwar sentiment, Russian state television regularly broadcasts displays of pro-military fervor and bellicosity, and Russian schools have doubled down on patriotic education. But such efforts have been unable to quash doubt, even among the war’s supporters. For example, only half of Russians who support continuing the war say that the best path available in February 2022 was “starting a full-scale military operation.”

THE THREAT FROM WITHIN

For Putin to retain his base of support, an electoral victory is less important than what comes after. In the past, he has sometimes deferred unpopular moves until after elections. A new wave of mobilization is the most opposed potential policy on the horizon. Even many backers of the war do not seem interested in making personal sacrifices to advance the effort. In a recent RES survey, seven of ten respondents who support the war said they were opposed to a fresh mobilization. In a hypothetical election scenario, support for a candidate declined by 25 percentage points when respondents were told that the candidate advocated mass conscription. Even Putin backers reduced their support for this hypothetical candidate by 16 points. All these findings suggest that there is only so much Putin can ask Russians to sacrifice for the war without fomenting more serious opposition.

For now, the Kremlin’s official position is that no new mobilization is needed. It has recruited enough soldiers on lucrative contracts over the past year to carry out some limited rotation and forestall the demand for more troops. The Kremlin’s strategy for avoiding a new mobilization appears to be to place the principal combat burden on politically marginalized groups—ethnic minorities, the rural poor, and convicts—and to pay big salaries and bonuses to those who volunteer to fight.

At the same time, the Kremlin has asked the wives and mothers of soldiers at the front to be patient, promising new benefits and social mobility for combat veterans who return home. Putin has assured loyalists—war supporters and those who have served—that they are the “true elite” and will be showered with rewards. Only time will tell whether he will uphold his promise to place and promote them in state companies, education, public associations, and government, a pledge he made in his annual address in February. Further battlefield setbacks for Russia, however, would make signing up new contract soldiers and other volunteer forces the Kremlin has used to fill manpower gaps more difficult. If fewer Russians volunteered, this would raise the pressure for more extensive mobilization, an option that Putin is clearly trying to avoid. A stagnating economy would compound this challenge, reducing his room to maneuver and making it more likely that he would effectively have to choose between the war and his core supporters.

To make either scenario more likely, Western countries must challenge Moscow in its current bet that Western war fatigue is eroding support for Kyiv. Although Western analysts have suggested in recent assessments that Russia may be gaining the upper hand over Ukraine, that trend can be reversed. The West must supply Ukraine with the military support it needs to make Russia’s rotation of troops more urgent and the Russian costs of volunteering high. At the same time, Western nations should send Russian audiences a message that the economic and military costs of continuing the war in Ukraine outweigh the benefits. In doing so, the West could exploit the fact that war fatigue is now a problem for Moscow itself and that popular dissatisfaction with continuing the offensive is real—even among Putin’s own supporters.

Such efforts to capitalize on Russian opposition to the war will not automatically drive Putin from office. It is hard to oust an autocrat, especially in wartime, and even autocrats who lose wars often stay in power. The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein survived ruinous wars against Iran and Kuwait. But the dissonance among the Russian leader’s base must unnerve the Kremlin. After the February death of Alexei Navalny, it may seem that the regime has all but eliminated viable sources of opposition. But Putin’s greatest threat may now come from his own current supporters.

Putin’s policies have not always followed public opinion, but he has generally avoided taking steps—such as steep increases in the pension age—that are broadly unpopular, and military mobilization certainly falls within this category. Moreover, despite the Kremlin’s best efforts, even staunch Putin supporters are largely ambivalent about the war. That the Kremlin devotes so much energy to snuffing out even trivial forms of antiwar activity suggests that it is acutely aware of the danger that such discontent poses—a danger that even an overwhelming electoral victory cannot hide.

[influencermagazineuk]

France's Snap Polls Open: Far-Right on Quest for Historic Win

French voters went to the polls on Sunday for the first round of high-stakes snap legislative elections, with the far-right National Rally (RN) party, led by Marine Le Pen, potentially gaining power for the first time since World War II. Despite President Emmanuel Macron's efforts to halt its rise, support for the anti-immigrant and eurosceptic RN has increased in the midst of mounting economic concerns and the current Ukrainian conflict. This election could signal a watershed moment in French politics, with 49 million eligible voters deciding the country's future course. Voting Day Details Polling booths in mainland France started at 8:00 a.m. (0600 GMT) and will close after 12 hours. Voters in France's overseas territories, which cover the globe, cast their ballots earlier this weekend. In New Caledonia, a French Pacific island, voters lined up to vote amid high emotions following last month's violent rioting. "The vote is decisive," stated Cassandre Cazaux, a nurse. By lunchtime local time, turnout throughout the archipelago was 32.4 percent, a considerable rise from 13.06 percent in the 2022 legislative elections. Notable figures, including former President Nicolas Sarkozy, Greens Party leader Marine Tondelier, and former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, were among the first to vote. Philippe, the mayor of Le Havre, was spotted smiling and conversing with residents on Sunday morning, highlighting his political ambitions. Lorie Shaull, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Key Figures and Parties The election for the 577 members in the National Assembly is a two-round process, with the final shape of the new parliament being determined after the second round on July 7. Current polls show that the RN is on track to win the most seats in the lower house, but it is unclear if the party can obtain an outright majority. Final opinion polls show the RN obtaining 35 to 37 percent of the vote, compared to 27.5 to 29 percent for the left-wing New Popular Front alliance and 20 to 21 percent for Macron's centrist camp. If the RN wins an outright larger part, Jordan Bardella, Le Pen's 28-year-old protégé, might gotten to be Prime Serve, coming about in a strained "cohabitation" with Macron. Polling and Projections Many observers foresee a hung Assembly, which might lead to political gridlock and instability. Macron's decision to hold a snap election following the RN's good result in the European Parliament elections startled both supporters and opponents, adding to uncertainty in Europe's second-largest economy. In June, the Paris Stock Exchange experienced its largest monthly slump in two years, falling 6.4 percent. Implications and Reactions In an editorial, French daily Le Monde urged citizens to mobilize against the far right, warning, "Yielding any power to it means nothing less than taking the risk of seeing everything that has been built and prevailed over more than two and a half centuries slowly being fixed." Activists and ordinary residents have expressed their alarm. Feminist activists demonstrated on Saturday at Paris' Trocadero, chanting anti-extremist chants. In addition, more than 100,000 people marched in Paris for LGBTQ Pride, with some holding signs aimed at the far right. "It's more important now to fight against hatred in all its forms," said Themis Hallin-Mallet, a 19-year-old student. The campaign has seen an increase in hate speech, intolerance, and bigotry. A viral video showing RN supporters verbally attacking a black woman has exacerbated tensions. Macron has condemned all forms of racism and anti-Semitism, highlighting the importance of this election. Analysts link Le Pen's efforts to improve the RN's image with the party's growing popularity. The RN's platform focuses on increasing purchasing power, reducing immigration, and improving law enforcement. Despite the tense political climate, Macron has defended his choice to hold emergency elections, saying that a far-right or hard-left victory may start a "civil war." As France votes, the outcome is undetermined, with the second round on July 7 to determine the country's future route. Read the full article

[novumtimes]

Trump Endorses Sam Brown in Nevadas Key Senate Race

Former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday said he was endorsing Sam Brown, the Army veteran who is leading the crowded Republican primary field in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race. “Sam Brown is a fearless American patriot,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, adding that Mr. Brown would “fight tirelessly” to protect the border and improve the economy. The endorsement, though belated — the primary is on June 11 and early voting has already ended — solidifies Mr. Brown’s standing as the front-runner and heavy favorite to advance to November’s general election against Senator Jacky Rosen, the Democratic incumbent. He has raised more money than his primary rivals, received the endorsement of the state’s Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, and led by double-digits in every recent poll of the race, though most were commissioned by his own campaign. Mr. Trump’s opinion was the sole remaining question mark. Though he is campaigning as a strong supporter of the former president, Mr. Brown was late to formally back Mr. Trump’s bid for a second term, and his primary rivals sought to capitalize from the right. Jeff Gunter, a wealthy dermatologist and Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Iceland, staked out a position as a MAGA candidate, slamming Mr. Brown in television advertisements as he angled for a possible endorsement from Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump has shared images promoting Mr. Brown’s dominance in Nevada polls on Truth Social, and he praised both Mr. Brown and Jim Marchant, a former state assemblyman and prominent election denier who is also running for Senate, in an interview with a local television station in late May. In a post on X, Mr. Brown said he was “honored” to have Mr. Trump’s endorsement. “I look forward to working with you to bring a better future to every Nevadan and American when we both win in November,” Mr. Brown said. Ms. Rosen’s campaign assailed the endorsement from Mr. Trump on Sunday. “Nevadans want a Senator who will work across party lines to deliver for our state, not a MAGA extremist like Sam Brown who will always put partisan politics and pleasing Trump ahead of doing what’s right,” said Johanna Warsaw, a spokeswoman for Ms. Rosen’s campaign. In a statement, Mr. Gunter said, “Mitch McConnell money wins, the American people lose,” referring to his recurrent line of attack — that Mr. Brown is the pick of the Washington establishment. “Rinse and repeat,” Mr. Gunter added. Mr. Brown, a former Army captain, was nearly killed in Afghanistan in 2008 when his vehicle ran over an explosive device set by the Taliban. Severely burned, he was evacuated to a burn unit in the United States and underwent more than 30 surgeries during a three-year recovery. The injury left him permanently scarred. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives in 2014, before moving with his wife to Reno in 2018. In 2022, he lost in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate to Adam Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general. Mr. Laxalt was defeated in the general election by Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, whose victory allowed Democrats to keep control of the chamber. Assuming Mr. Brown advances to the general election, he could be buoyed by Mr. Trump’s strong numbers in Nevada, which has not voted for a Republican at the presidential level since 2004 but is shaping up to be one of President Biden’s shakiest states in November. Nevada’s economy, heavily reliant on tourism, was slower to recover from the coronavirus pandemic than other states were, and Ms. Rosen has sought to distance herself from Mr. Biden as she tries to retain her Senate seat. Source link via The Novum Times

[head-post]

Immigration to be major issue in UK election

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promises to reduce immigration, one of the major issues, if his Conservative Party wins next month’s election.

Sunak hopes the issue will allow him to distinguish himself from the opposition Labour Party, which is currently ahead of him by more than 20 points in opinion polls.

Immigration has long been a major political issue in Britain, with voters expressing concern that the large influx of migrants is putting undue pressure on housing, education and the state-run National Health Service. In 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron promised to bring net migration back to tens of thousands a year. However, the target has never been met.

Ending the free movement of people into the UK from other European countries was a major factor leading to the 2016 vote to leave the European Union. However, net migration, which reached 329,000 in 2015, continues to rise.

According to the latest official figures for May, the provisional total net immigration for 2023 was 685,000, up from a record high of 764,000 in 2022.

Read more HERE