James.galbraith

Liz Truss, a Brexit convert, won the Conservative leadership contest and replaced Boris Johnson.

The United Kingdom’s next prime minister may be an even bigger Brexiteer than Boris Johnson.

Liz Truss, the former foreign secretary, won the Conservative Party’s leadership contest, and on Tuesday, officially took over as the UK’s prime minister, replacing Boris Johnson. Truss defeated Rishi Sunak in a race she was heavily favored to win, largely because she captivated the right-wing base of the Conservative Party, including its Euroskeptic wing.

How Truss achieved that is a somewhat remarkable political story. A former Liberal Democrat and Remain supporter, she fully embraced Brexit after the 2016 referendum, becoming one of its most ardent backers. As foreign secretary in Johnson’s government, she shored up her Brexit credentials with her confrontational stance toward the European Union.

Her reinvention allowed her to ascend to the top of her party, and now the premiership. That rise says a lot about where the UK’s Conservative Party (or Tory party) is right now: Even though the UK officially broke with Europe, Brexit has also ballooned into an entrenched domestic political and culture war issue. Truss is the embodiment of this, which also says a lot about how she may lead — when it comes to the European Union, and beyond.

Practically, that may mean even thornier relations between the UK and the EU at a time when the United Kingdom and the rest of the continent are dealing with inflation and energy crises and an ongoing war in Ukraine.

“A question that Liz Truss will basically have to face is: How far does she want to escalate with the EU?” said Nicolai von Ondarza, EU/Europe research group leader at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “And for the EU side: How fast and how strong does one want to retaliate?”

As the new British prime minister, Truss does have the opportunity for a reset, and given the economic and political challenges the UK is facing, it might make sense to attempt it. But Brussels, Paris, and Berlin are bracing for a rockier relationship. Because, as a Brexit latecomer, Truss may have even less room to maneuver than the guy she’s replacing.

The convictions of a Brexit convert

In 2016, Liz Truss warned of the perils of Brexit, saying leaving the EU’s single market would mean industries, like food and drink, would face additional costs getting their products to market. In 2022, during her Conservative leadership campaign, she said she was “wrong and I am prepared to admit I was wrong” about her past stance.

And Conservative Party members, whose votes she needed to win the leadership race, believed her. (Even more wild, Sunak, the candidate she defeated, voted Leave.)

Truss is, to borrow a phrase from the tabloids, a “born-again Brexiteer.” She says she believes in Brexit now because “disruption didn’t happen,” even though plenty of indicators show that those disruptions are very much happening.

Truss also used her tenure in government to build her Brexit bona fides. She served as International Trade Secretary in Johnson’s government, the public face of Britain’s post-Brexit efforts to secure trade deals all over the world. In 2021, she took on the high-profile job of foreign secretary, where she oversaw the post-Brexit portfolio with the EU.

Truss’s appointment last year came with some hope that she might be a bit more pragmatic and less ideological on Brexit. But she largely maintained a hardline approach when dealing with the EU, especially on issues relating to Northern Ireland, the eternal sticking point of Brexit.

Truss was one of the main architects of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill that, if it becomes law, would unilaterally rewrite sections of the Brexit deal the UK itself negotiated. Truss is committed to seeing that bill through as prime minister, even as the EU and UK are already in a legal battle over the implementation of the deal. During her campaign, Truss also promised to scratch all remaining EU law by 2023.

As von Ondarza said, “sometimes converts display the strongest faith.”

Kevin Featherstone, a professorial research fellow in the European Institute at the London School of Economics, said that toughness on the EU has transcended actual policy goals and is now a culture war issue. To go after bureaucrats in Brussels is to shore up your populist appeal. Being anti-EU is a vibe, whatever the policy stakes and fallout.

Truss channels the zeal of the party on this and on other key issues of the Tory base: free markets, deregulation, and a disdain for cultural “wokeness.”

“While Boris Johnson was a leading figure in the Brexiteer camp, he had a wider appeal, whereas Liz Truss’s power base is firmly within the hardcore Brexiteer part of the Parliamentary party, but also the wider Tory party — and so she has to be much firmer on the EU, but also on other economic questions,” von Ondarza said.

For that reason, she may not have as much political space to act, and may not have the domestic political capital to tamp down any tensions with the EU. Because Brexit isn’t actually done, and it could further strain EU-UK relations.

With the EU, will Truss have a “Nixon goes to China” moment or a trade war on her hands?

Yes, yes, they said it was done! But Brexit was always going to create new issues as trade and travel between the UK and EU fundamentally changed.

The status of Northern Ireland remains a key source of tension. Just to recap: Northern Ireland is part of the UK, and so left the EU with it. But as part of the Good Friday Agreement, a peace deal that ended decades of sectarian conflict, the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (which is part of the EU) is supposed to remain open and free from physical infrastructure. After Brexit, the UK left the EU institutions and was expected to diverge on trading rules, and so the UK and EU needed to figure out a way to conduct customs checks without undoing the peace deal and upsetting a politically sensitive border.

Johnson ultimately negotiated a Brexit deal that would mean some goods from the United Kingdom bound for Northern Ireland would have to undergo checks before they arrived there, over concerns they might end up in the EU single market. That is a source of tensions for unionists in Northern Ireland (who don’t want much distance between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK) and for the Conservative government, who say the deal is creating this divide and complicating commerce within the country.

But the EU says the UK isn’t implementing the deal as agreed, and has launched legal proceedings to get them to comply. The UK, meanwhile, with this Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, is threatening to tear up the entire agreement. Truss has also threatened to trigger a formal mechanism within the Brexit deal that can be invoked when “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist” come up — something the EU will be forced to respond to, if that happens.

Either way, it’s messy and could get messier, putting the UK and the EU on the path toward a possible trade war, even as the continent is already in crisis because of war and rising costs of food and fuel.

The Brexit deal isn’t perfect, but this escalation is of a political making. The EU has said it’s willing to talk, but within the framework of original protocol; the UK has indicated it wants more radical changes. “This is a problem which has to do with political culture, which is more winning, and less compromise,” said Georg Boomgaarden, German ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2008 to 2013. “But if we let the experts sit down together, have pragmatic and practical solutions for where there is a real problem, most of the problems Truss brought up are no problem at all.”

The question is will the experts sit down — and will Truss give them her blessing to do so? Featherstone and von Ondarza both mentioned the possibility of a “Nixon goes to China” moment, where Truss, bolstered by her win and the full-throated support of the Brexiteers, brokers a deal with the EU or appoints someone who will, and frames it as a victory over the EU, even if it involves some concessions along the way.

This would be a dream for Berlin, Paris, and Brussels, but the “Nixon goes to China” moment may be just that. Experts I spoke to were skeptical that Truss would use domestic political capital on a still-easy target — the EU — especially when the UK is dealing with plenty of crises at home, from inflation to labor strikes.

On issues like security, and on Ukraine, London and Brussels continue to cooperate. But Brexit remains largely stuck. Economic crises in both the UK and Europe might force the two sides to the negotiating table in earnest. That is the hope, at least, for the start of Truss’s tenure. As Boomgaarden said, Europe has no interest in Britain being another crisis center. “We need Britain,” he said. “And they may need Europe. But they may also need quite a lot of time until they acknowledge [it].”

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It’s equal parts funny, sad, and horrifying to watch Donald Trump concoct increasingly risible excuses for improperly storing government documents just inches from where he gets his deep-tissue McNugget sauce massages. The latest whopper? The government wasn’t looking for the top secret classified materials he stole—they were trying to find Hillary’s emails! (No, really. He actually said that.)

But while Trump appears to be crafting messages exclusively for the consumption of his base, the law remains unconcerned with the ongoing public relations kerfuffle, such as it is. He either broke the law or he didn’t (spoiler alert: he did), and his usual bloviating (read the transcript, which demonstrates a clear pattern of abuse of power!) is unlikely to help him this time—unless by some wild coincidence Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz are all called to serve on the same jury.

Honestly, it’s hard to believe anyone is still trying to defend this guy. The latest Department of Justice filing felt a bit like the police emptying out Jeffrey Dahmer’s freezers. What’s left to talk about other than how many victims/top secret documents are yet to be discovered once investigators put on enough hazmat gear to deal with the bracing stench of dozens of bodies/skeletonized luau pigs?

Indeed, even some ex-MAGA mites are starting to wake up.

Andrew Napolitano, a former Fox News legal analyst who was once so Trumpy he told friends the ocher abomination was considering making him a Supreme Court justice, is now stating what should be abundantly clear to everyone by now: Trump is going to be indicted. To be fair, when the Mueller report came out, Napolitano bravely risked his place in line at the Mar-a-Lago omelet station when he said Trump had committed obstruction of justice “at least a half-dozen” times.

Well, now Napolitano is continuing that fine tradition of being full-bore Trumpy right up to the point where one’s brain can legally file for emancipation. In a recent Washington Times column, he was as blunt as blunt can be. Donald Trump will be indicted, he predicts.

Even a cursory review of the redacted version of the affidavit submitted in support of the government’s application for a search warrant at the home of former President Donald Trump reveals that he will soon be indicted by a federal grand jury for three crimes: Removing and concealing national defense information (NDI), giving NDI to those not legally entitled to possess it, and obstruction of justice by failing to return NDI to those who are legally entitled to retrieve it.

Napolitano goes on to speculate that Trump decided to shout “declassified!” when the gendarmes were at the door because he thought (read: knew) that they were looking for classified materials. But the FBI outsmarted him, just like countless tic-tac-toe-playing chickens before them.

Unbeknownst to him, the feds had anticipated such a defense and are not preparing to indict him for possessing classified materials, even though he did possess hundreds of voluntarily surrendered materials marked “top secret.” It is irrelevant if the documents were declassified, as the feds will charge crimes that do not require proof of classification. They told the federal judge who signed the search warrant that Mr. Trump still had NDI in his home. It appears they were correct.

As Napolitano further explains, it simply doesn’t matter whether the documents Trump squirreled away were classified, “as it is simply and always criminal to have NDI in a non-federal facility, to have those without security clearances move it from one place to another, and to keep it from the feds when they are seeking it.” So “declassifying” those materials is simply a tawdry parlor trick, much like Trump’s original oath of office. Worse, his feckless fucknuttery led him right into the FBI’s trap!

Yet, misreading and underestimating the feds, Mr. Trump actually did them a favor. One of the elements that they must prove for any of the three crimes is that Mr. Trump knew that he had the documents. The favor he did was admit to that when he boasted that they were no longer classified. He committed a mortal sin in the criminal defense world by denying something for which he had not been accused.

And Napolitano isn’t just limiting this assertion to the written word. He went on Newsmax—Newsmax!—on Thursday, and said the same thing.

Oh, gee, we’ve been waiting years for Donald Trump to slip up … again … for like the thousandth time … hoping that someone will finally notice and decide to do something about it.

Of course, this isn’t a garden-variety Trump grift, like running a scam university or becoming president so he can steal my kidneys while I hibernate. The charges against Trump will likely be for the same crimes allegedly committed by former NSA employee Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ Julian Assange; as Napolitano helpfully points out, Trump argued that both should be executed.

Now, it’s far more likely that Trump will be electrocuted trying to make a Velveeta panini in his bathtub with a George Foreman Grill than that he’ll die in the electric chair, but none of this is a good look for the guy who breezed into office hyping a suite of far-less-serious accusations against Hillary Clinton.

So when will the rest of MAGA wake up? Hey, I get it. It’s hard to separate the art from the artist, and for some reason, lots of Republicans still like Trump’s “art.” (Though whenever anyone says they’re a fan of Trump’s policies, my mind invariably—and loudly—screams “What policies?!”) But most of us are able to jettison our heroes once we discover they’re irredeemable scoundrels. Who can appreciate the art of Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, R. Kelly, or Kevin Spacey in the same way anymore?

Hell, I can’t even separate Jared from the work of Subway’s sandwich artists.

That said, if there ever was a time to disembark from the Trump Train, it’s now—before it really gets embarrassing for them.

Your move, “patriots.”

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

It’s a testament to the cult power of Donald Trump’s Big Lie that an elected lawman who himself now faces investigation for tampering with voting machines will not only refuse to apologize, but proceed to double down. Another law enforcement official subscribing to the same authoritarian conspiracy theories is meanwhile threatening everyone within his fiefdom with repercussions if they don’t submit to his similar “investigations,” and setting the stage for his nakedly partisan deputies to patrol at polling places.

These cases, both involving the so-called “constitutional sheriffs” movement’s open embrace of Trump’s election denialism, reflect the challenge that awaits much of the country—particularly the rural areas where these sheriffs rule—when we head to the polls in November. Their well-financed campaign, coordinated with leading Trumpists, to overturn election results and seize voting machines they suspect of skewing the vote could wreak havoc with election results around the country if it continues to gain steam.

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Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Michigan’s Barry County, has played a leading role in the unfolding saga. It recently emerged that not only does Leaf insist that his dubious “investigations” of election outcomes in his county—based almost entirely on a fraudulent Dinesh D’Souza pseudodocumentary—are legitimate, but that he has continued to seek warrants to confiscate voting tabulators from election officials in townships throughout his county.

Leaf sought warrants to seize machines and search offices of the Barry County Clerk, as well as in Woodland Township and Irving Township, Bridge Michigan found through a Freedom of Information Act request. His affidavits could not cite any evidence justifying the searches, saying only that Leaf sought "evidence of the crime of election law violations."

The report found that Leaf wanted to seize "components of voting and election equipment"—tabulation machines, poll books, election reporting modules, as well as 2020 election paper ballots. He also demanded keys to unlock the devices.

Leaf’s intentions, the affidavits showed, were to have the voting equipment "forensically examined" by someone "who is certified and trained to conduct data extractions."

His involvement in seizing one such tabulator in 2021—which resulted in its being dismantled and examined, then returned with its seals broken—is part of a state investigation that involves not just Leaf, but the Republican nominee for Michigan’s attorney general, Matthew DePerno.

Last month, the current Democratic attorney general, Dana Nesso, filed a petition for a special prosecutor to handle that investigation since it involves her likely Republican opponent in the fall election. The petition indicated that state police investigators believed that DePerno was “one of the prime instigators,” along with Leaf and a state legislator, of a conspiracy to persuade Michigan clerks to allow unauthorized access to voting machines.

DePerno’s campaign issued a statement ridiculing Nessel’s petition as “an incoherent liberal fever dream of lies.”

Barry County Prosecutor Julie Nakfoor Pratt's office refused to sign off on the warrant requests because Leaf had not established "probable cause" to conduct the searches.

"There just wasn't anything in there that amounted to any fraud that I could see," she told Bridge Michigan.

Leaf’s efforts on Trump’s behalf began in December 2020, when he filed a lawsuit demanding Barry County’s voting machines be impounded—which was swiftly laughed out of court. He then embarked on an “investigation” of the machines by sending a deputy and a private investigator to grill township officials about their intricacies.

It was during one of these interrogations that the Irving Township clerk surrendered one of the town’s Dominion machines to Leaf’s team. “I’ve been told they took it (to the Detroit area) and tore it apart,” she told a local TV station, noting that when the machine was returned during a meeting in a parking lot, its security seal had been broken.

Dominion’s machines were the focus of a conspiracy theory popular after the election among the Trumpist right claiming that vote totals had been secretly manipulated to hand the presidency to Joe Biden. The theory was widely circulated on right-wing media such as Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax, all of whom now face multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits from the company.

Leaf was connected through his attorney, Carson Tucker, to a number of the leading Trump-loving conspiracists the former president employed, including ex-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood. “My client Barry County Sheriff and several other county sheriffs in Michigan would like to consider issuing probable cause warrants to sequester Dominion voting machines if there is evidence of criminal manipulation,” Tucker wrote to them in one email.

His claims made little sense in Barry County, where Trump won by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Rutland Charter Township clerk Ruth Hawthorne observed tartly: “They seem to think there was some kind of microchip in our tabulators that was throwing votes to Biden. But Trump won Barry County. He won by 65 percent of the vote, so I don’t know where they’re thinking that any kind of chips were in any of our machines or thinking that something had happened to them. The whole thing is nutty. It is nutty, totally nutty.”

Leaf’s extremism was well established before the 2020 election. He had appeared on stage at an anti-masking rally bashing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer with three of the “Patriots” who were later charged with plotting to kidnap and execute her. He first suggested to reporters that perhaps the plotters were only trying to make a “citizens arrest.” Leaf and other Michigan “constitutional sheriffs” also later refused to enforce a statewide ban on guns in Michigan polling places.

His “election integrity” campaign in Michigan caught the attention of Richard Mack, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Keepers Association (CSPOA), who then announced a nationwide campaign involving all of the country’s “constitutional sheriffs.”

In May, Mack called on sheriffs and police around the U.S. “to come together in pursuit of the truth regarding the 2020 election.” A CSPOA press release made clear that the basis of their “investigations” was D’Souza’s widely debunked pseudodocumentary, 2000 Mules:

Considering the persistent allegations of election fraud since even before the 2020 elections began, and as a response to the perpetual polarizing effect this has had on the American people, the CSPOA would like to put this issue to rest. Our constitutional republic and peaceful future as a free people absolutely depend on it.

In the opinion of the CSPOA, there is very compelling physical evidence presented by truethevote.org in the movie “2000 Mules” produced by Dinesh D'Souza. “Law Enforcement has to step in at this point,” asserts D'Souza, and we absolutely agree with him. Therefore, we are asking for all local law enforcement agencies to work together to pursue investigations to determine the veracity of the “2000 Mules” information.

In fact, D’Souza’s documentary has been repeatedly demonstrated to be utterly groundless garbage. It has been debunked by Reuters, the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, FactCheck.org, Politifact, and NPR, to name only a few of the outlets where its phony “facts” and false premises have been eviscerated.

In short order, the CSPOA had teamed up with Trump’s most fervent election denialists, True the Vote, which receives substantial funding from notorious pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. “Constitutional sheriffs” in other counties—including one in Kansas and another in Wisconsin—attempted similar “investigations” but came up empty-handed.

At a Las Vegas gathering organized by Mack and True the Vote in July, Leaf called the county prosecutor’s refusal to hand out the search warrants "ridiculous,” adding: “We think we have enough for search warrants and everything else,” Leaf said during the conference, which also featured speeches from Trump loyalists like Lindell. “We're gonna keep moving forward, folks. We’re not done with this.”

Leaf harkened to the “constitutionalist” claim that county sheriffs are the supreme law of the land, saying: “What that does, it gives you the power—and I don’t know if you’re gonna appreciate me saying this—if we can’t get anywhere, we’re looking at doing grand juries, at the common law.”

One of True the Vote’s partners in the “election integrity” campaign is another “constitutional sheriffs” organization called Protect America Now, run by Sheriff Mark Lamb of Arizona’s Pinal County. Lamb was a featured speaker at a Trump rally in Prescott in July, where he revved the crowd up with promises that the nation’s sheriffs would intervene on their behalf in future elections.

“We’re gonna make sure that we have election integrity this year,” Lamb declared. “Sheriffs are going to enforce the law. This is about the rule of law. It is against the law to violate elections laws—and that’s a novel idea, we’re going to hold you accountable for that. We will not let happen what happened in 2020.”

Lamb has plenty of local critics in Pinal County. At recent meeting of the county’s Board of Supervisors, he was accused by longtime residents of indulging in baseless fearmongering over election results.

Roberto Reveles, a longtime Arizona civil rights activist, told commissioners that Lamb was engaging in naked partisan threats: “I recently was subjected to the intimidation referred to by a previous speaker. Sheriff Mark Lamb walked up to me and pointed at me … and said, ‘You and your fellow Democrats are destroying our country.’”

Lamb defended himself shortly afterwards during an appearance on Newsmax. “Last week in the board meeting I had probably 8 to 10 Democrats show up and absolutely blast me because I believe in the ‘Big Lie,’” Lamb said.

“It clearly shows that these folks don’t care about election integrity,” he continued. “They’re happy that their guy is in power, and right now they should care more than ever because this guy in office, Joe Biden and his administration, is absolutely destroying America and freedom and they’re turning this into a country that we just don’t recognize.”

Local Democrats like Ralph Atchue, formerly a candidate for Arizona Senate, state that Lamb and his deputies will begin patrolling polling places. “I hear from everybody that the line is being crossed,” Atchue told Jessica Pishko of Bolts. “Completely blurred.”

Far-right election denialists in Seattle’s King County placed signs during the July primary at ballot drop boxes warning people that their actions were being recorded on camera. Ironically, the King County Sheriff’s Office is now investigating those actions at the behest of the county’s elections office.

“The specter of law enforcement at the polls is already enough to discourage people from going to the polls,” observes Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. “Moreover, the threat of surveillance of polling places and drop boxes proposed by groups like True the Vote is meant to intimidate voters, particularly people of color, and deter them from casting ballots.”

Donald Trump and his MAGA allies came close to overthrowing our democracy on January 6, and they will try again if they win in 2022. The best thing you can do is to help get out the Democratic vote for the midterms, and we need everyone to do what they can. Click here to find all the volunteer opportunities available.

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"Quiet quitting" as a catchphrase "took off on TikTok among millennials and Gen Zers," according to Business Insider. They describe it as "employees doing what their job expects of them, and not offering to do more than what they get paid to do." The Washington Post digs deeper: Quiet quitting looks to many like a reasonable retreat from the round-the-clock hustle culture. But to others, quiet quitting represents disengaged employees sandbagging and shirking all but the minimum effort, not expecting — or not caring — that their employers might fire them for it. But if we're going to accuse workers of quiet quitting, we should also acknowledge the phenomenon of "quiet firing," in which employers avoid providing all but the bare legal minimum, possibly with the aim of getting unwanted employees to quit. They may deny raises for years, fail to supply resources while piling on demands, give feedback designed to frustrate and confuse, or grant privileges to select workers based on vague, inconsistent performance standards. Those who don't like it are welcome to leave. Their article even provides an example. One reader (near retirement age) says their employer required them to return to the office for at least three days a week — "but those who left the area are allowed to continue to work fully remotely."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Harry Stevens, for The Washington Post, how simulations can be used to detect severely gerrymandered congressional districts. In the interactive, you play the role of concerned citizen with the task of proposing a map that more closely resembles the political leanings of the state as a whole.

Tags: gerrymandering, simulation, Washington Post

Donald Trump is a demagogue and a con man. He’s a bully who can never unite America. A race-baiting, xenophobic bigot. He’s a narcissist at a level the country has never seen before. A pathological liar who is utterly amoral. He’s a terrible human being whose statements are simply indefensible and disgusting. His behavior is atrocious and his actions are totally wrong.

None of those things came from President Joe Biden’s speech on Thursday evening. Those are the statements of Republicans in the House and Senate, who are now engaged in heavy-duty pearl clutching and pulling out the fainting couches to show how they take deep, deep umbrage at Biden pointing out a threat they recognized five years ago.

It’s not that Republicans don’t know that Trump is waging a war against both democracy and decency. It’s that they already surrendered. And now the Vichy GOP is going through the motions of pretending to be offended at Biden pointing out the threat of Trumpism. Because no one is more prickly, skittish, and hysterical, than people who know, right down to their bones, that they are on the wrong side.

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On Thursday evening, President Biden stepped outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia to deliver a compelling, heartfelt, and absolutely necessary speech addressing the greatest threat that has faced America at least since the end of the Cold War: The rise of fascism within our own borders. That threat has already generated violence in cities around the country, and a massive attack on the U.S. Capitol in which there was an attempt to murder members of Congress and overturn the government. It is, right this moment, driving a movement to corrode and destroy democracy by overtly attacking the mechanisms of elections.

The threat is real and the danger is present in candidates for county, state, and federal office who have all agreed that, to paraphrase what Biden said outside Independence Hall, there are only two outcomes to an election: They win, or they go to war. Russia is not a greater threat to the U.S. China is not a greater threat.

There are reasons why Sen. Lindsey Graham (“Trump is race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot”) is now rushing to defend him and calling out Biden to “stop lecturing.” 

Why Sen. Ted Cruz (“Trump is a pathological liar who is utterly amoral”) is crying out against Biden for being “divisive” and for “vilifying” Trump’s followers.

Why Rep. Kevin McCarthy (“Trump’s behavior is atrocious and totally wrong”) felt compelled to do a pre-buttal of Biden’s speech saying that Biden was “assaulting the nation’s soul.”

Biden gave a speech defending democracy, the sanctity of free and fair elections, and the need to fight the forces dragging the nation toward fascism. And Republicans feel compelled to attack that speech. Not because they have the fervor of converts, but because they have already given in. Already bowed. Already sold their souls for a “win” that proved both meaner and more costly than they had ever imagined. 

Now they have to pretend that they’re somehow the good guys, even as their leader is out there saying that, given the opportunity, he’ll pardon the people who erected a scaffold on the Capitol lawn. They have to find a way to claim they’re the real Americans, even as they campaign on erasing democracy.

"They see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections,” Biden said in his speech. “This time they are determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people."

Not only is this true, it’s not even something they are hiding. From Arizona to Pennsylvania, this is the theme of Republican campaigns.

"They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6 brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger at the throat of our democracy, but they look at it as patriots," said Biden. Not only are Republicans defending these insurrectionists, but several of the Republican candidates are these insurrectionists. The list includes gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who underscored his contempt for America by wearing a Confederate uniform, not in some distant period of adolescent confusion, but as an instructor at the U.S. War College just eight years ago. Mastriano is a white supremacist, racist, antisemitic traitor. He’s also the endorsed candidate of Donald Trump.

That’s who they are. That’s what they’re defending. That’s why all the people who saw the truth about Trump five years ago are squirming in their seats, and feeling uncomfortable under their bright red hats.

Republicans are angry because they embraced the darkness, and Biden is holding up a light. It’s not just that they’re on the wrong side of history and decency, it’s that they know it. 

Donald Trump and his MAGA allies came close to overthrowing our democracy on January 6, and they will try again if they win in 2022. The best thing you can do is to help get out the Democratic vote for the midterms, and we need everyone to do what they can. Click here to find all the volunteer opportunities available.

The draft document would enshrine unprecedented rights — and discard a Pinochet-era framework.

Chileans are in the process of deciding whether or not to approve a historic new constitution which would enshrine new protections for Indigenous people and the environment, as well as the right to an abortion, universal health care, and restrictions on the country’s mining industry.

Chile’s present constitution is a holdover from the rule of Augusto Pinochet, the military leader who took over the country after overthrowing democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973. That constitution, originally written in 1981, upholds the free-market policies which buoyed Chile’s economy. But according to opponents, it caused staggering inequality. That inequality, symbolized by a subway fare hike in the capital city of Santiago, ignited widespread protests in 2019; a year later, nearly 80 percent of the population voted to replace the constitution.

The vote is monumental in many ways; it’s a test of 36-year-old President Gabriel Boric’s leftist government, as well as of the constituent assembly, which wrote the new document. It’s also a reminder of the critical role that the plebiscite has played in Chile’s political history. And it could turn Chilean society from fairly conservative to one of Latin America’s most liberal should it pass.

Chile’s new constitution would uproot the remnants of its brutal dictatorship

The call for a new constitution solidified during Chile’s 2019 mass protests, which took place across the nation starting in October of that year. Leftist student groups demanding systemic change and ordinary Chileans suffering from the country’s severe economic inequality gathered in the streets for months, defying government curfews and sometimes clashing with police.

Although Chile has been fairly stable and economically prosperous in the latter part of the 20th century, that prosperity hasn’t touched everyone equally. The country scores high on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s inequality index, and its employment rate has been persistently lower than in most other developed countries, as has its public spending on primary and secondary education, according to a 2021 economic report from the OECD.

The country’s student movement has long been a powerful force in Chilean politics, starting under Pinochet and continuing under subsequent civilian presidencies to subvert government attempts to restrict their rights to protest, as well as the state’s public-private education model, which former President Sebastián Piñera endorsed during his first term. Widespread protests in 2011 against this model, which students said reinforced inequality, were led mostly by university and graduate students — including now-president Boric.

Protesters back in 2011 called for the abolition of government subsidies for private schools and more funding for public education; the new constitution, if approved, would guarantee the right to free education, as well as housing and health care.

It’s also, in a sense, a repudiation of Pinochet’s legacy. Under his brutal regime from 1973 to 1990, no meaningful political opposition was allowed. As many as 3,400 people were forcibly disappeared, tortured, and murdered by the state security services, according to the International Commission on Missing Persons, and tens of thousands more suffered severe human rights abuses, according to Chile’s National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. But Pinochet valued free-market principles and worked to make them a critical part of the Chilean economy.

According to a Congressional report issued in 1975 on the US’s covert actions in Chile, the US government, in a bid to keep Allende and his socialist policies out of power, sought to punish the Chilean economy to show how the global economy would react should Allende assume the presidency. It was in this landscape that, after a US-assisted coup, Pinochet took control and, in the 1980s, sought to reform the economy, lowering tariffs, inviting foreign investment, capitalizing on a copper boom, and joining trade agreements with other nations in the Americas.

Pinochet’s economic reforms and the relative prosperity they brought couldn’t possibly outweigh the horrors his regime committed against the Chilean people. In Chile’s 1980 constitution, Pinochet set out a plan for a 1988 plebiscite; on that date, people could vote on whether they wanted to keep him in office for a further eight years. A concerted national campaign and unified opposition defeated Pinochet, making way for the 1990 presidential election that finally pushed him out.

But many of Pinochet’s economic ideas persisted. After decades of growth, the economy stagnated in the 2010s, despite increases in basic expenses. By 2019, the poor had little access to high-quality health care and education, depending instead on underfunded state resources; the middle class, forced to pay for privatized services including water access and toll roads, risked crushing debt, as Richard Feinberg wrote for the Brookings Institution at the time.

Piñera, the right-wing, billionaire president then in his second term, called out the military and imposed a state of emergency, claiming, “We are at war against a powerful enemy, who is willing to use violence without any limits.” Though the protests did bring about some looting and violence — ultimately about 30 people were killed — they also brought about an agreement to vote on whether and how to adopt a new constitution.

The proposed constitution is an unusual document

On October 25 2020, the vast majority of Chileans voted to write a new constitution — and to elect the 155 people who would write it. The Pinochet-era constitution had been amended several times under democratic presidents, and former President Michelle Bachelet proposed a new constitution five days before the end of her term in 2018. But Piñera abandoned the project when he entered office — until he could no longer ignore people’s desire for change, and congress proposed the two-part plebiscite in 2019.

The new constitution was written by a constituent group elected by the Chilean people. The assembly had as its president first a linguist, then an epidemiologist, both women, and was primarily made up of liberal and independent members, hence the strong push for equality, gender parity, environmental protection, and social services. The assembly also had 17 seats reserved for members of Chile’s two million strong Indigenous population.

The final draft, submitted July 4 of this year, gives unprecedented rights to Indigenous communities, granting sovereignty over their territories and installing an Indigenous judicial system to try cases particular to those nations. The new constitution also enforces Indigenous representation at all levels of government, as well as gender parity in government and in both public and public-private enterprises, the Washington Post reports.

The new constitution is something quite revolutionary, particularly in comparison to its predecessor; it enshrines the right to “voluntary interruption of [a] pregnancy” in a country where abortion was illegal until 2017.

It recognizes the rights of LGBTQ people, ensures access to education, health care, water, and adequate housing, and seeks to broaden the reach of scientific and technological advancement across Chile. The new constitution also recognizes the rights of nature, providing a legal mechanism for environmental protection, even if people aren’t directly harmed by a particular environmental degradation.

“In a country where it seemed like nothing could change,” it is a monument to change, as constitutional assembly member Bárbara Sepúlveda told the Washington Post. But for some, the change may prove to be too much; because the assembly was overwhelmingly leftist and independent, no conservative voice or coalition was able to counter its progressive policies. Alberto Lyon, an attorney interviewed by the Post, voted for a new constitution but called the draft “a disaster” because “it changes the entire political system.”

Lyon also accused the draft constitution of being “indigenist”; other criticisms have been levied at that particular aspect of the new constitution, with some Chileans — even Indigenous Chileans — expressing concern about the Indigenous justice system and the constitution’s designation of the country as “plurinational,” recognizing Indigenous nations within Chile.

For others, misinformation has played a part in their distrust of the draft. According to Axios, some claims, including that people would no longer be allowed to own private property under the new constitution, and that people would be able to get an abortion into the ninth month of pregnancy, may have crushed support for the new document.

Polling has seen support for the new constitution drop to 37 percent, although it’s impossible to know how much social media misinformation and half-truths — as opposed to people’s fear of change — contributed to the polling numbers. Chileans are still at the voting booths, though, and this is a mandatory vote, meaning that the final numbers could be quite different.

Regardless of Sunday’s outcome, Boric promised in July that Chile will eventually get a new constitution, because citizens demanded it in the 2020 vote. At the time, he said in an interview that the process would start from scratch should Chileans reject the current proposal. “The constitutional process, if rejected,” he said, “has to continue by the terms decided by the people of Chile.”

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So Australia's foreign intelligence cybersecurity agency marked its 75th anniversary by collaborating with the Australian mint to release a special commemorative coin with a four-layer secret code. The agency's director even said that if someone cracked all four layers of the code, "maybe they'll apply for a job." A 14-year-old boy cracked their code "in just over an hour." Australia's national broadcaster reports: The ASD said the coin's four different layers of encryption were each progressively harder to solve, and clues could be found on both sides — but ASD director-general Rachel Noble said in a speech at the Lowy Institute on Friday that the 14-year-old managed it in just over an hour.... "Just unbelievable. Can you imagine being his mum? "So we're hoping to meet him soon ... to recruit him...." She also revealed on Friday that there was a fifth level of encryption on the coin which no one had broken yet.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PHILADELPHIA — With a stern warning about the future of the nation’s democracy, President Joe Biden commanded a prime-time stage Thursday in Philadelphia and singled out his predecessor as an example of the extremism that he believes “threatens the very republic.”

“As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault. We do no favor to pretend otherwise,” Biden declared. “We have to be honest with each other and ourselves: Too much of what is happening in our country today is not normal.”

“Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very republic,” Biden said in a rare moment of calling out his predecessor by his name. “Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated.”

In some of his sharpest language since taking office, Biden took square aim at the so-called MAGA Republicans who do not recognize the results of the 2020 election and who have espoused violence as a legitimate means of political discourse.

The moment created a stunning split screen with that movement’s leader.

Just hours earlier, the latest hearing played out in a Florida courtroom over the boxes of classified documents found in Trump’s Palm Beach estate. A federal judge indicated she would consider temporarily barring Justice Department investigators from reviewing seized materials. Hours before Biden forcefully addressed election deniers and the rise in political violence, his predecessor was defending Jan. 6 rioters. He vowed, should he run and be re-elected, to offer “full pardons” and a formal apology to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to overturn the results of the election and now face charges.

A senior White House official earlier had cautioned the night was not about any particular politician, including Trump, but Biden wasted no time repeatedly calling him out by name — something he was once loathe to do. He noted that not every Republican is a "MAGA Republican," but said "there’s no question the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to democracy."

Standing in front of Independence Hall, the cradle of American democracy, Biden told the crowd: “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”

“For a long time, we’ve reassured ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it is not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us,” Biden said.

Aides stressed that the speech, given just days before the unofficial Labor Day kickoff to the stretch run of the midterm campaign season, would not be overtly political. But it was difficult to read it as anything other than Biden’s attempt to frame the stakes of an election once again dominated by Trump after an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home turned up classified information and intensified talk of possible criminal charges for the former president.

And earlier in the day Trump turned the focus once again to Jan. 6 as he told a radio show he would support the very Jan. 6 rioters now facing charges. "I will look very, very favorably about full pardons. If I decide to run and if I win, I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons," Trump told the Wendy Bell show. “I mean full pardons with an apology to many.”

Trump said he met with Jan. 6 defendants earlier this week at his office and said he will be financially supporting some of them.

On Thursday, former New York Police Department officer Thomas Webster was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his violent assault of a Capitol police officer on Jan. 6. It was the most severe sentence handed down yet for any involvement in the insurrection.

In Philadelphia, Biden’s speech focused on the “continued battle for the soul of the nation,” the principle he cited as the animating force for launching his third — and ultimately successful — bid for the White House. Biden made clear that he believes some mainstream Republicans reject Trump’s ideology, those like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who lost a GOP primary after serving on the House Jan. 6 select committee. And the president urged others in the GOP to finally turn their backs on Trump.

Republicans are also turning to Pennsylvania to make their arguments for the midterms. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy gave a prebuttal to Biden’s speech in Scranton, and tried to flip the script by claiming Democratic policies are an “assault on Democracy.” On Saturday, Trump will hold a “Save America” rally in support of Republicans he endorsed, including gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and Senate candidate Mehmet Oz. Mastriano, a Trump loyalist, has particularly helped lead efforts in the state to overturn the 2020 race — a win by him would place an election denier in control of certifying a key battleground state's slate of presidential electors.

Biden, currently basking in the glow of a series of significant legislative wins, has ratcheted up his attacks on Republicans in recent weeks. He has denounced Republican support for the Jan. 6 rioters, deemed some in the GOP as “semi-fascists” and on Thursday roared that "there is no place for political violence in America. Period. None ever."

For Biden, the material and the setting were familiar.

Standing in front of Independence Hall, he had returned to Philadelphia for another landmark moment. He used it as the backdrop for the 2019 campaign kickoff that led him to the White House and visited again last summer for a fiery speech in defense of voting rights.

On this evening, a crowd of hundreds sat in front of what Biden deemed a “sacred place” that launched “the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known.” Biden called the current moment “an inflection point” that could determine the nation’s future, and the speech’s backdrop — alarm red lighting surrounding a president flanked by two U.S. Marines — matched his urgent tone.

The normally bustling tourist destination was mostly quiet with the exception of chirping crickets and Biden's voice echoing off the brick walls of the historic building, lit up in red, white and blue. At times, hecklers could be heard in the distance chanting “f- Joe Biden.” In a moment that drew applause, Biden addressed the protesters, saying they “have a right to be outrageous. This is a democracy!”

Republicans called Biden’s speech a message of division, and pointed to his campaign promise to bring the country together.

“Joe Biden is the divider-in-chief and epitomizes the current state of the Democrat Party: one of divisiveness, disgust, and hostility towards half the country,” Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.

Biden had originally not planned to run in 2020 but declared that he felt that the nation’s identity and core values were endangered by Trump’s conduct in office, including his equivocating response to the outburst of racist violence in Charlottesville, Va.

The phrase “battle for the soul of the nation” has dominated his rhetoric since, and Biden has declared that the foundation of his presidency was to prove that democracies could still deliver for their people and stand up to rising autocracies across the globe. He vowed to run to heal the wounds opened by Trump’s term and has grown deeply dismayed, aides said, by the political polarization and anger that has only deepened during his own time in the White House.

In recent days, Biden and his top aides have called out the Republican response to the FBI search of Trump’s Palm Beach home. They note how some GOP lawmakers called to defund federal law enforcement while others have warned that violence could follow a possible Trump arrest. To Biden, that was just the latest transgression from a Republican Party he has told aides he barely recognizes — one that has remained in the thrall of Trump and in support of the insurrection.

Terry Kelly, a Biden supporter and retired Union carpenter from King of Prussia, Pa., who came to hear the president speak, said Trump has tried to “overthrow this government. He tried to act like a king.”

“Washington is probably rolling in his grave,” Kelly said. “I say you gotta get the message out and get the truth out, as much as Trump tells lies, you need to get the truth out. That is a tough job.” The speech comes at a moment of surprising political promise for Biden.

In recent weeks, gas prices have fallen, the Covid crisis grew less urgent and his domestic agenda was gradually passed. And his winning streak culminated with the resurrection of a $740 billion reconciliation bill that fulfilled longtime Democratic priorities such as climate change, drug pricing and taxes on corporations.

The 79-year-old president’s poll numbers have risen to their highest point in months and Democrats have grown increasingly bullish about their chances about holding onto the Senate and potentially even the House.

Faruk Fatih Ozer, the founder and CEO of the now-defunct crypto exchange Thodex, has been arrested in the Albanian city of Vlore. PC Gamer reports: Ozer fled following the collapse of Thodex in April 2021: he initially claimed a halt in trading was due to cyberattacks, and that investors' money was safe, before disappearing. Almost immediately afterwards, Turkish police arrested dozens of Thodex employees and seized the firm's computers. It subsequently emerged that, in April 2021, Thodex had moved approximately $125 million worth of bitcoin to the established US crypto exchange Kraken. Given the number of investors in Thodex left with nothing, this looks like straightforward theft from a failing business. It's not the whole story, either. Cryptocrime analysis firm Chainanalysis addressed Thorex specifically in its overview of 2021, in the wider context of a total $2.8 billion worth of crypto scams over this year being 'rug pulls': wherein a seemingly legitimate business is set up, operates as normal for a while, then suddenly all the money is gone. It's large-scale fraud. "We should note that roughly 90% of the total value lost to rug pulls in 2021 can be attributed to one fraudulent centralized exchange, Thodex, whose CEO disappeared soon after the exchange halted users' ability to withdraw funds," says the Chainanalysis report. That works out at an estimate of around $2.5 billion of crypto. Six people have already been jailed for their role in Thodex, including family members of Ozer, while 20 other prosecutions are ongoing. The Turkish daily Harriyet reports that state prosecutors are out to set an example: "A prison sentence of 40,564 years is sought for each of these 21 people, including Ozer, as over 2,000 people are included in the indictment as complainants."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Republicans say they want to talk about inflation, but they flood the airwaves with inflammatory immigration rhetoric.

Traditional business cards -- dropping off for years -- might finally be folding given the Covid-19 pandemic, as many professionals worked from home, switched jobs and attended conferences and meetings virtually. From a report: Even now, with in-person schmoozing on the rise, many networkers are in no mood to return to what they see as the germ-swapping, environmentally unfriendly and laborious tradition of exchanging physical cards, only to manually input the fine print into phones later. Instead, they are turning to hybrid or fully virtual solutions: physical cards with QR codes, scannable digital cards or chips embedded in physical items that allow people to share contact details with a tap. Mr. Peterson [technology chief at Boingo Wireless; anecdote in the story] got his card from Dangerous Things, a human implant technology company whose chip can be inserted with a syringe -- the company suggests body piercers and other pros for the task. Mr. Peterson asked a neighbor with a medical degree. If, say, a phone number changes, the chip can be updated online. But the post-paper world is hardly friction-free. Atlas Vernier rejected paper business cards in favor of wearing an NFC ring with a chip inside. Once scanned, the 21-year-old's information pops up in the recipient's phone. Mx. Vernier, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, described often having to slightly move the ring around in search of the "sweet spot" of a phone's NFC reader. "That's the way technology works -- it always works until someone's looking." When an attendee at a recent racial-equity conference asked Robert F. Smith for his contact information, the private-equity billionaire furnished a white plastic card with a gold QR code printed on it. The guest held her phone above the card to scan it. Nothing happened. For the next minute or so, she positioned her phone at various distances from the card while Mr. Smith, the chief executive of Vista Equity Partners, tried different grips and angles. When that didn't work, Mr. Smith pulled out a different card with a black QR code. Success. Mr. Smith was unbowed. "I appreciate good sense tech solutions," he said in a written statement later. "I don't miss paper cards at all."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An abortion initiative got 730,000 signatures. Republican officials threw it off the ballot because of improper word spacing.

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This is thematically weirdly close to the kids' book I'm announcing in another month.

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Alaska election officials carried out the instant-runoff process Wednesday for the Aug. 16 special election for the state’s only House seat, and former Democratic state Rep. Mary Peltola has scored a dramatic pickup for her party by defeating Republican Sarah Palin 51-49.

Peltola, who will replace the late GOP Rep. Don Young, will be the first Democrat to represent the Last Frontier in the lower chamber since Young won his own special election all the way back in 1973. The new congresswoman, who is of Yup’ik ancestry, is also set to become the first Alaska Native to ever serve in Congress.

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The outcome was in doubt for so long because the state allows all mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received for another 15 days. Peltola went into Wednesday with 40% of the vote while two Republicans, Palin and businessman Nick Begich, took 31% and 28%, respectively. (Write-in ballots made up the balance.) While the two Republican candidates together outpaced Peltola 59-40, Democrats hoped that Palin wouldn’t pick up quite enough Begich voters to overtake the leader when their second-choice preferences were tabulated.

Everyone was kept guessing through Wednesday, especially the candidates, who appeared together at an Alaska Oil and Gas Association forum just before the results were announced. They learned there that, while the voters who listed Begich or a write-in as their first choice went for Palin 50-29, a crucial 21% didn’t express a preference for either finalist. All of this was just enough for Peltola to keep her edge in the final round of tabulations and give her party a crucial win in a state that Donald Trump had carried 53-43 just two years ago.

Peltola’s victory on such red turf, though, looked improbable before the polls closed two weeks ago. Indeed, national Democrats didn’t even commit serious resources to the contest, a decision the former state representative called “bizarre” just before Election Day. Peltola, however, benefited from voters’ lingering apathy toward Palin, whom the Anchorage Daily News last year described as "nearly invisible within the state" and "almost entirely absent from Alaska politics" since she resigned the governorship in 2009.

While Palin had Donald Trump’s backing for her comeback campaign, the 2008 vice presidential nominee showed little interest in reintroducing herself to her old constituents. Palin made only a few public appearances in the Last Frontier, while she used the weeks before Election Day to hold a Minneapolis fundraiser with far-right pillow salesman Mike Lindell and speak at CPAC's confab in Dallas.

Begich was only too happy to portray Palin as a terrible governor who only cared about being a celebrity, and he ran commercials showing photos of her 2020 appearance on The Masked Singer where she performed "Baby Got Back" disguised as a pink and blue bear. Palin herself hit back in the final days of the race by castigating Begich, who is the rare Republican member of Alaska's prominent Democratic family, for supporting relatives like former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich.

Peltola, by contrast, avoided attacking either of her GOP rivals, and neither Palin nor Begich went after her either: Both Republicans instead smiled in selfies with their Democratic opponent, and Palin even went so far as to call her a “sweetheart.” All of this made it harder for conservative leaders to make the case that Begich's and Palin’s supporters needed to look past their brutal intra-party fight and rank the other Republican in order to keep Peltola out of Congress.

Republicans, though, will have the chance to regain this seat in a few months. Peltola, Palin, and Begich, as well as Libertarian Chris Bye, will be on the ballot again in November for another instant-runoff election, and the dynamics could be very different for this second round. 

While Republicans try to overturn elections and make it harder to vote, volunteer to help save democracy by encouraging people to cast their ballots. Click here to view hundreds of local and national Get Out the Vote opportunities on the Daily Kos Mobilize feed, and sign up to volunteer on a national campaign or one near you.

A school board in Virginia has passed an anti-trans bathroom and locker room policy critics are calling “invasive and unnecessary” and “the most horrific bathroom policy ever.” The Hanover County School Board voted 5-2 to adopt the policy during a special session Tuesday night, which will make “trans and non-binary students jump through hoops simply to exist in schools,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. Under the new policy, trans students and their parents or legal guardians will be required to “submit a written request to the principal of the school where the stud…

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Two ballot initiatives in Michigan have secured enough petition signatures to qualify for November’s ballot, according to the state’s Bureau of Elections. Nonetheless, the sponsors of both—one to establish abortion rights and one to protect voting rights—are going to have to appeal to the state’s Supreme Court to actually appear on the ballot. That’s because the two Republicans on the Board of State Canvassers rejected democracy Wednesday and blocked the measures, a chilling preview of Republican intentions for 2024.

The four-person canvassing board, two Democrats and two Republicans, deadlocked on both. The abortion initiative would negate a 1931 state law that bans all abortions except those that would save the life of the mother. Forced birth proponents hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court’s overthrow of federal abortion rights would trigger that law back into force, but state courts have blocked its enforcement, citing the pending ballot initiative.

Reproductive Freedom for All, the group backing the measure, secured a record number of signatures to get it on the ballot—they needed 425,059 and got well over 730,000. The forced birth challengers to the initiative claimed that the petition wasn’t valid because one version of the form circulated had missing spaces and an extraneous word. The Republican canvassers seized on that technicality to reject the petition.

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“We had more than 730,000 people who read, signed and understood what they signed,” Darci McConnell, a spokeswoman for Reproductive Freedom for All, said following the deadlocked vote. “The board was supposed to do one thing today and affirm that we had the signatures, their own bureau said we did. So we’re still optimistic that we’ll be on the ballot in November” after a legal appeal, she added.

The Republican canvassers used a similar argument to block the voting rights expansion initiative Wednesday. The petition circulated by Promote the Vote, the voting rights advocacy group, didn’t list every section of the state constitution that would be affected by the proposal. The initiative language had been approved by the elections board before it was circulated and, like the abortion initiative, gained a few hundred thousand more signatures than necessary.

It would establish nine days of early voting in the state; require 24-hour ballot drop boxes in every municipality; require state-funded, prepaid postage for absentee ballot applications and those ballots; and allow voters to choose to vote by absentee ballot for all future elections. The state currently doesn’t have early voting beyond some absentee voting. The initiative also addresses Trump’s attempted 2020 coup, adding language to the state constitution that explicitly says election outcomes “shall be determined solely by the vote of electors casting ballots in the election.”

One battleground state—Arizona—has already seen an election protection initiative fail. The state Supreme Court, packed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey with the help of the legislature and that added two seats in 2016, invalidated the Free and Fair Elections Act measure by rejecting over half the signatures to conveniently leave it just 0.6% short of what it needed to qualify. With that measure kept off the ballot by Republicans, the fight turns to defeating three constitutional amendments Republicans have put on the ballot to further erode voting rights.

What these moves by Republicans prove is that democracy is on the ballot in every state this midterm cycle. They will do anything and everything in their power to subvert the will of the people.

There is no more effective way for you to help turn out infrequent but Democratic-leaning voters in key congressional districts and Senate swing states this year than Vote Forward. Sign up to write personalized letters to targeted voters from the comfort of your home, on your own schedule, using a statistically proven method and without ever having to talk to anyone at all.

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Activists collect record number of signatures for Michigan abortion-rights ballot measure

'We're pulling out all the stops' is something voters need to hear from more Democrats right now

Swing-state Democrats go on offense on abortion rights as Senate Republicans dive for the bunkers

That ebbing of a predicted red wave is very real—and growing. You can see that in the frantic revision of Republican campaign websites. What was a handful of candidates scrubbing their campaign websites of reference to their fealty to Donald Trump and the forced birthers has become standard operating procedure as the November election nears.

Even Arizona MAGAhead and Senate wannabe Blake Masters, a Trump favorite, has been backing away from both Trump and his “100% Pro-Life” opposition to abortion. His campaign insists that there’s nothing for Trump or the forced birth brigade to be concerned about here. They’ve updated the campaign website “post-primary to draw a sharp contrast with Mark Kelly’s radical left-wing views on a number of issues, including Kelly’s support for extreme no-limits abortion policies.”

That would be Sen. Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent who has endorsed codifying Roe v. Wade, which does indeed place limits on abortions. The Kelly campaign is not impressed. “If Blake Masters thinks that he can quietly delete passages from his website and disguise just how out of touch and dangerous his abortion stance is, he’s in for a rude awakening,” Sarah Guggenheimer, a spokesperson for Kelly’s campaign, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

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Masters might be the most extreme example in oh so many ways, but as the Post details, he’s got lots of company. Yesli Vega, running against Rep. Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, stripped all reference of her appointment to Trump’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity from her site. Asked about that by the Post, campaign consultant Sean Brown shot back, “Safe to say the story of Democrat candidates refusing to say whether they support Biden’s blatantly political tuition giveaway next?” Sure Sean.

Colorado state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, running in a newly created district in the Denver suburbs, used to tout herself as “The Conservative Fighter” who would “Defend the Sanctity of Life.” That section of her campaign website is now called “Colorado’s Choice” and says nothing about abortion. “Our campaign recently completed a complete redesign of Barb’s website. Instead of addressing many issues (abortion among them), we are focused on the three issues in which voters express the most interest,” said Alan Philp, a campaign consultant. Uh, huh.

Jim Bognet, the  Republican running in Pennsylvania’s 8th district against Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright, had nearly a dozen references to Trump on his campaign bio. That included a passage that read, “In 2020, I ran for Congress to fight against the Democrats’ witch hunt to remove President Trump from office. In that election, we saw Democrats break every rule they could to rig that election.” That, and a lot else, has been disappeared from his site. Now there are just two mentions of Trump in his online materials. His spokesman Joe Desilets told HuffPost it didn’t have anything to do with distancing the candidate from Trump. “You might also notice that Jim’s entire website was rebuilt and redesigned (I did it myself when I took over the campaign this summer),” he said. It was just entirely by chance that Trump got erased.

Bo Hines, the Republican running for the the 13th Congressional District in in North Carolina, apparently is no longer “100% prolife” and “100 % pro-Trump,” The 19th notes. The section of his site called “life and family” that once linked to a page stating his position “that life begins at conception and that we must protect the rights of the unborn” is just gone. As of Aug. 30, his website had no mention of abortion at all.

One former Trump official, who spoke to the Post anonymously “to speak candidly about GOP candidates,” says flat out that Trump’s continued dominance of the news cycle hurts Republicans. “I think you’re seeing some first-time candidates who realized maybe they weren’t very prudent during their primaries and now are trying to correct for that. They played the part in the primary, got the Trump endorsement, made calculations to win the primary that aren’t so great in the general,” the former Trumper said.

A Republican who would go on the record, John Brabender, a veteran GOP communications consultant, wants to pretend that Republicans have a choice here. “The more Republicans are explaining their position on the Supreme Court ruling, the more they are playing in the field of battle that the Democrats want,” he told the Post. “I do think we’re letting the Democrats frame the issue, and candidates are falling into that trap in too many of our races.” As if the the longstanding broad majority of the American electorate which continues to support abortion rights haven’t made this an issue all on our own.

He apparently wants Republicans to stay the course. “The moment it seems you have no core values, [voters] start to question everything that you’re doing,” he said. “You have to be extremely careful in how you’re doing this.”

Yes, Republican candidates, take that advice! Be as Trumpie as you can! Talk about how you think every pregnant person should be forced to carry that fetus to term, no matter the consequences. Let your “core values” shine! It would certainly be a service to the nation for voters to know exactly who they are in danger of electing.

Abortion rights, gun safety, and the our planet are all at stake in this election. We must persuade Democratic voters to turn out in November. Click here to volunteer with Vote Forward and write personalized letters to targeted voters on your own schedule from the comfort of your own home, without ever having to talk to anyone.

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A Louisiana sheriff's office determined that deputies shown on dash cam video beating a 12-year-old boy allegedly over how he rode a dirt bike were justified. The child’s attorney, Ryan Thompson, recently released video of the February incident on Instagram. 

Although the deputies’ vehicle blocked the bottom portion of the video, it appeared to show Plaquemines Parish Deputy Sheriff Anthony Dugas “violently” throwing the child on the ground and Deputy Joseph Francis kicking the child repeatedly, Thompson said.

The attorney and the child’s family are calling for Dugas and Francis to be fired.

RELATED STORY: 'They chased him': 13-year-old boy dies after police tried to stop him for riding a dirt bike

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Thompson said in the Instagram post that his client was riding his motor bike when deputies tried to stop the child, allegedly due to traffic violations.

"After pulling to the side of the road, stopping his bike and turning off the engine, Sgt. Dugas snatches my 5'4 135lbs 12 year old client off his bike and violently slams him to the ground," Thompson said. While Dugas reportedly laid on top of the child, Francis ran over to "violently" kick and stomp on the boy, "rendering him unconscious," the attorney added.

The Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s Office reported its version of what happened in a news release. Authorities alleged that deputies were responding to calls of multiple ATVs, four-wheelers, and an off-road dirt bike without functioning headlights "operating in a reckless manner endangering motorists" on Feb. 19. When deputies arrived to the scene on Woodland Highway, they allegedly tried to stop the ATVs using "visual and audible signals" and the drivers "refused to stop," the sheriff's office said.

It continued:

“During the course of the incident, all the four-wheelers and the dirt bike created a public safety hazard by blatantly disregarding numerous traffic laws designed for commuters to travel without fear of their safety. The actions committed by the operators of these vehicles include, but are not limited to - disregarding functioning traffic signals (red lights), crossing lanes into oncoming traffic, traveling after dusk without headlights, failure to yield to oncoming traffic, leaving the roadway onto the sidewalk and entering private property and disregarding speed laws. The actions by these individuals were compounded as they refused to comply to all reasonable demands to cease their actions by multiple deputies. Of the five ATVs involved in this incident, two apprehensions were made while the other three evaded deputies and exited the parish. On the day of the incident, this investigation was immediately posted on our social media platforms and was not reported by local media (see attached screenshot of PPSO post).”

Jaiques Wilson, one of the drivers, was accused of triggering a crash and running from police. He pleaded guilty to aggravated obstruction of a highway, aggravated criminal damage, and aggravated flight from an officer and was sentenced to probation, according to the sheriff's office.

As for the 12-year-old, the sheriff’s office said:

“The case is still currently in the adjudication process. Therefore, we are limited on the information that can be released.” 

The statement then proceeded to make a case for why beating the child was warranted. “The juvenile male, who was taller than most deputies that were on the scene and wearing a full-face helmet, was apprehended after his dirt bike became disabled despite his attempts to continue to flee from deputies,” the sheriff’s office said. “He refused reasonable demands to get off of the dirt bike which led to him physically struggling with deputies while avoiding attempts to be handcuffed.

“Deputies proceeded to use necessary force to effect the arrest. The juvenile was charged with two felonies, two misdemeanors including resisting arrest and traffic violations.”

Deputies took the child to lockup to be booked and did not have him taken to a hospital because, as the sheriff's office put it, he "did not complain of any injuries."

The child’s father said in footage released by Thompson: “I don’t think they should go to work every morning acting like they’re protecting and serving out here.”

Warning: This video contains violent footage that may be triggering.

It took a few months, but on Monday, Cincinnati city officials finally fired a 14-year-veteran of the police force who was caught on her body camera using the N-word in reference to Black teenagers.

WCPO-9 reports that (now former) officer Rose Valentino was on duty and in uniform on April 15 when she went on a racist tirade, calling people all kinds of horrific names. According to an internal investigation, Valentino was driving past a local high school and was irate about the traffic buildup of parents waiting to pick up their children. At one point, a Black teenager flipped Valentino off, and that’s when she went all KKK on him.

Here’s the transcription of the audio captured on Valentino’s body camera. Be warned: It’s not easy to read.

“F****** n****rs. I f****** hate ‘em. You gotta move. F****** ridiculous, f****** a*******. Is she gonna f****** just sit there? Oh, I f****** hate them so much, God, I hate this f****** world.”  

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Interim Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge told WCPO that Valentino's use of the N-word was "not only inexcusable and incredibly hurtful" but ruins the credibility of the Collaborative Agreement, a pact created and signed in 2017 between the city, the Fraternal Order of Police, the ACLU, and the Cincinnati Black United Front after the 2001 shooting death of unarmed Black man Timothy Thomas at the hands of a white police officer.

"Officer Valentino’s clear loss of her emotions and ready use of the racial slur tarnished her ability to work with any community member or member of the Cincinnati Police Department hurt by her hateful words … This significantly reduces, if not eliminates, Officer Valentino’s ability to be a productive member of the police department. I want to be clear; this type of hateful speech will not be tolerated by anyone who works for the Cincinnati Police Department, sworn or civilian,” Theetge said.

Iris Roley, one of the architects of the Collaborative Agreement, told WCPO, "If I had it my way, the first time a racial slur was used, you would be out of a job.”

Cincinnati NAACP President Joe Mallory said in a statement that Valentino "demonstrated that she is not fit to police our communities." He added, "We hope Ms. Valentino will take time to engage in anti-racism training, as well as counseling for her own mental health … She must address the bias, discrimination, and hatred that is in her heart. We invite Ms. Valentino to become involved with the Cincinnati NAACP."

A statement from Dan Hils, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said, “No Cincinnati police officer should use the N-word or any other racial slur, and anyone who does is wrong. The Fraternal Order of Police represents Cincinnati Police Officers throughout the disciplinary process as outlined in our collective bargaining agreement. Officer Valentino is entitled to challenge her termination if she chooses, and the FOP will represent her if she does.”

Younger voters are notoriously hard to turn out, especially in midterms. But motivation to vote among registered voters aged 18-35 in key battleground states has shot up since the Dobbs decision, according to a polling memo shared first with POLITICO by the liberal group NextGen America.

Forty-seven percent of those surveyed said they were very motivated to vote in November, while 44 percent fell into the “somewhat motivated” category. That is a jump up in motivation from a March NextGen poll, in which just 38 percent were very motivated and 51 percent were somewhat motivated to cast a 2022 ballot.

“The Dobbs decision has been a wakeup call for a lot of young people,” said Kristi Johnston, a spokesperson for NextGen. “Motivation is up because young people are dialed into what’s at stake.”

The survey, which was conducted by Global Strategy Group from late July through early August, polled 1,000 young voters across seven states: Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All of the states have a competitive race for governor or Senate — or both. The March survey also included Texas respondents.

The memo, which the organization said would serve as a roadmap for its messaging, found that protecting rights — including but not limited to abortion — is key to younger voters.

The group, which was initially founded as part of billionaire businessman Tom Steyer’s political operation, focuses on turning out young voters for Democrats. It has committed to spending $34 million this election cycle in the seven states that were polled, along with Texas.

NextGen’s memo argued that the Dobbs decision has “helped to awaken the youth vote in a difficult midterm,” with the survey finding that 2-in-3 of those polled said that the “decision has made them care more about what happens in November.”

It also found that young female voters were overwhelmingly opposed to the Dobbs decision. Just 18 percent of those polled supported it, while 76 percent opposed it. That was even true among young Republican women: In that subset, 36 percent supported the Dobbs ruling and 57 percent opposed it, with NextGen arguing that the Dobbs "decision is a massive wedge for the GOP when it comes to the youth vote."

The survey memo also points to the juggling act liberal groups and candidates have had to manage this year concerning President Joe Biden’s still-sagging popularity. While the group declined to share Biden’s specific approval ratings among young voters, the memo acknowledged that “young voters, like the rest of the electorate, are down on Biden … and they feel frustrated and disappointed with the state of the country.”

(The survey was fielded before some recent big moves from the White House, including the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act and Biden’s order to forgive some student debt.)

But the group pointed to young voters still supporting Democratic candidates downballot, finding that Democratic standing in a generic congressional ballot ticked up 3 points since March, to a 16 point advantage.

“For a lot of them, they don’t identify as Democrats, but they do care about progressive issues,” said Johnston.

Dashlane announced today that it's integrating passkeys into its cross-platform password manager. "We said, you know what, our job is to make security simple for users," says Dashlane CEO JD Sherman, "and this is a great tool to do that. So we should actually be thinking about ushering in this passwordless era." The Verge reports: Passwords are dying, long live passkeys. Practically the entire tech industry seems to agree that hexadecimal passwords need to die, and that the best way to replace them is with the cryptographic keys that have come to be known as passkeys. Basically, rather than having you type a phrase to prove you're you, websites and apps use a standard called WebAuthn to connect directly to a token you have saved -- on your device, in your password manager, ultimately just about anywhere -- and authenticate you automatically. It's more secure, it's more user-friendly, it's just better. The transition is going to take a while, though, and even when you can use passkeys, it'll be a while before all your apps and websites let you do so. Going forward, Dashlane users can start to set up passkeys to log into sites and apps where they previously would have created passwords. And whereas systems like Apple's upcoming implementation in iOS 16 will often involve taking a picture of a QR code to log in, Dashlane says it can make the process even simpler because it has apps for most platforms and an extension for most browsers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One poll shows that a striking 71 percent of Americans say they have a favorable view of unions. Democrats should capitalize on this.

When it comes to reporting on Texas, far too often liberals and progressives are tempted to shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, what did you expect? It’s Texas.” And I get it. But ultimately, it’s a harmful and painful response that doesn’t do much to truly help all of the folks who are stuck in a Republican-dominated state—much less the folks who want to be there, conservatives in power be damned. There are countless reasons why LGBTQ+ people, people of color, disabled people, and others historically marginalized by Republicans in power remain in “red” states, ranging from voter suppression to job opportunities to health care to family history. It’s complicated. 

With this in mind, a recent story out of Texas concerns yet another horrible but not terribly surprising move from the Carroll Independent School District (ISD) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In 2021, Republicans pushed ahead SB 797, a law that mandates public schools and colleges to display signs including the national motto (“In God We Trust”) and include the American flag if the signs come from donations. 

More recently, as reported by local outlet ABC 13, a parent tried to donate “In God We Trust signs”—written in Arabic. And features rainbow colors. Guess how that went?

RELATED: Both public and private school teachers and librarians could face up to a year in jail over books

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As reported by the outlet, Cameron Bryon, the president of the school board, initially told Srivan Krishna, the parent who wanted to donate the signs, that the school had enough posters. But Krishna pushed back on that obviously flimsy explanation and pointed out the law doesn’t say you have to stop at a certain number of donated signs.

“That is your decision to stop at one,” Krishna said during the school board meeting on Monday. “Why is more God not good? And are you saying you don't have like one square foot of space in our buildings?" He added that he thought it was “kind of un-American” for the board to reject posters of the national motto, per NPR.

It’s not as though the district had turned down other sign donations, either. As reported by local outlet WFAA 8, for example, the district had already accepted a number of “In God We Trust” signs from Patriot Mobile, a conservative cellphone company that had donated $500,000 in several school board races in the state—including Carroll ISD.

In fact, as pointed out by Ed Week, trustees of the board actually posed for photos with the donated signs when they came from Patriot Mobile. Funny how that works. 

"It’s very frustrating that we’re being excluded intentionally by our schools,” Krishna said per the outlet. “And that’s why it’s very frustrating for us.”

Now, it’s obviously outrageous that laws are inserting religious messages into schools. It’s additionally infuriating that conservative companies are dipping even further into school boards with their dollars. But kids—and even teachers and staff—can’t simply up and leave the state. They can’t just snap their fingers and live in a blue state where they wouldn’t have to worry about this.

That’s part of why I think Krishna’s point is so valuable and admirable; is anyone surprised these signs were rejected? Honestly, no. But is still important to try? Is it still valuable to make conservatives sweat? Is it still an opportunity to get people to realize the hypocrisy here? Yes, yes, and yes. 

Did I really expect signs like these to be displayed in public schools in Texas per this ridiculous law? No. But I’m still glad to see advocates are getting creative in getting their message across. 

You can check out some local reporting, as well as clips of Krishna holding the signs, below.

LGBTQ youth who currently have a parent in the military face “significantly higher rates” of suicide risk and mental health challenges, according to new data released Wednesday by the Trevor Project. Researchers with the nonprofit — the world’s largest suicide-prevention and crisis-intervention organization for LGBTQ and questioning youth — analyzed the mental health challenges faced by LGBTQ kids and young adults with military parents to determine the link between being part of a military family and symptoms of depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide. The data suggested that having a pare…

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