#2024 US House Elections

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ed Kilgore at NY Intelligencer:

As you probably know, we’re beginning the final week of a dead-even presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, with Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes being the most desperately sought prize by both campaigns. Team Trump is already having a difficult week in the Keystone State thanks to a crude racist joke about Puerto Rico that one of Trump’s comedian buddies told at his wild Madison Square Garden rally, which is not going over well among the pivotal bloc of Puerto Rican voters in northeastern Pennsylvania. Now, Harris has gotten a helping hand in the same vicinity from none other than House Speaker Mike Johnson, as NBC News reports:

[House Speaker Mike Johnson took a dig at Obamacare during an event in Pennsylvania on Monday, telling a crowd there will be “massive” health care changes in America if Donald Trump wins the election. “Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,” Johnson, R-La., said in Bethlehem while campaigning for GOP House candidate Ryan Mackenzie, according to video footage obtained by NBC News. “No Obamacare?” one attendee asked Johnson, referring to the law Democrats passed in 2010, also known as the Affordable Care Act. “No Obamacare,” Johnson responded, rolling his eyes. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”]

Health care is not at all an issue Trump wants Republicans talking about. The effort to repeal Obamacare was one of the less popular initiatives of his presidency and, not coincidentally, one of his biggest failures. It’s also one of the areas where Harris has outpolled him. He added to his problems during the September debate with his rival when he could cite only “the concepts of a plan” for replacing Obamacare despite having allegedly spent many years on his own yet-to-be-revealed proposal.

Worse yet, Johnson’s remarks very strongly suggest two things that are potentially dangerous to Trump in the eyes of swing voters: (1) He plans to make repealing Obamacare an immediate priority if Trump wins and Republicans control Congress, which likely means it would be rolled into a gigantic budget-reconciliation bill and steamrolled through to passage if possible, and (2) his party’s designs on health-care policy are radical, meant to replace the regulations central to Obamacare’s coverage guarantees with “free market” provisions almost certain to return the health-care system to the days when insurers aggressively discriminated against anyone old, sick, or poor. Johnson’s rhetoric will also give Democrats an opportunity to remind voters that the last “repeal Obamacare” package aimed to decimate Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for poor people and a key part of the country’s social safety net

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) if the Republicans get a trifecta. This is a wakeup call to vote Democratic, especially in the House and the Presidential race.

[deramin2]

ID: Destiel Confession breaking news meme. Castiel says, I love you. Dean Winchester replies, "Sarah McBride to become first openly transgender member in Congress. End ID.

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #24

June 21-28 2024

The US Surgeon General declared for the first time ever, firearm violence a public health crisis. The nation's top doctor recommended the banning of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, the introduce universal background checks for purchasing guns, regulate the industry, pass laws that would restrict their use in public spaces and penalize people who fail to safely store their weapons. President Trump dismissed Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in 2017 in part for his criticism of guns before his time in government, he was renominated for his post by President Biden in 2021. While the Surgeon General's reconstructions aren't binding a similar report on the risks of smoking in 1964 was the start of a national shift toward regulation of tobacco.

Vice-President Harris announced the first grants to be awarded through a ground breaking program to remove barriers to building more housing. Under President Biden more housing units are under construction than at any time in the last 50 years. Vice President Harris was announcing 85 million dollars in grants giving to communities in 21 states through the  Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO) program. The administration plans another 100 million in PRO grants at the end of the summer and has requested 100 million more for next year. The Treasury also announced it'll moved 100 million of left over Covid funds toward housing. All of this is part of plans to build 2 million affordable housing units and invest $258 billion in housing overall.

President Biden pardoned all former US service members convicted under the US Military's ban on gay sex. The pardon is believed to cover 2,000 veterans convicted of "consensual sodomy". Consensual sodomy was banned and a felony offense under the Uniform Code of Justice from 1951 till 2013. The Pardon will wipe clean those felony records and allow veterans to apply to change their discharge status.

The Department of Transportation announced $1.8 Billion in new infrastructure building across all 50 states, 4 territories and Washington DC. The program focuses on smaller, often community-oriented projects that span jurisdictions. This award saw a number of projects focused on climate and energy, like $25 million to help repair damage caused by permafrost melting amid higher temperatures in Alaska, or $23 million to help electrify the Downeast bus fleet in Maine.

The Department of Energy announced $2.7 billion to support domestic sources of nuclear fuel. The Biden administration hopes to build up America's domestic nuclear fuel to allow for greater stability and lower costs. Currently Russia is the world's top exporter of enriched uranium, supplying 24% of US nuclear fuel.

The Department of Interior awarded $127 million to 6 states to help clean up legacy pollution from orphaned oil and gas wells. The funding will help cap 600 wells in Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, New York and Ohio. So far thanks to administration efforts over 7,000 orphaned wells across the country have been capped, reduced approximately 11,530 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions

HUD announced $469 million to help remove dangerous lead from older homes. This program will focus on helping homeowners particularly low income ones remove lead paint and replace lead pipes in homes built before 1978. This represents one of the largest investments by the federal government to help private homeowners deal with a health and safety hazard.

Bonus: President Biden's efforts to forgive more student debt through his administration's SAVE plan hit a snag this week when federal courts in Kansas and Missouri blocked elements the Administration also suffered a set back at the Supreme Court as its efforts to regular smog causing pollution was rejected by the conservative majority in a 5-4 ruling that saw Amy Coney Barrett join the 3 liberals against the conservatives. This week's legal setbacks underline the importance of courts and the ability to nominate judges and Justices over the next 4 years.

[thashining]

WATCH: Protesters in Raleigh dropped off letters at the state legislature Monday denouncing a post-election Republican power grab that seizes powers held by offices that Democrats won in November. Senate Bill 382 was supposed to be a hurricane relief bill for western North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene in September. But it mostly contains attacks on the powers held by offices like the governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction — which were all won by Democrats in November’s election. It also takes oversight of elections away from the governor’s office. Demonstrators during the “Moral Monday” protest in Raleigh likened it to a “coup,” saying that it undermines the will of the voters. Gov.-elect Josh Stein has condemned the bill. So has outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper and former Gov. Pat McCrory — a Republican. Cooper vetoed the bill, but Republican lawmakers in the House are expected to consider overriding the governor’s veto Wednesday in Raleigh. Stay tuned to @cardinalandpine for updates.

[scarletcarmensmith]

Q: What's your message to Joe Biden?

Union Worker: “F*ck you.”

🔥

[worstamericangrl]

“you block people over politics?” i block multiple ppl a day for denying rhaenyra targaryen’s claim to the iron throne

[originalleftist]

ATTENTION IF YOU KNOW ANYONE VOTING IN GEORGIA 11!

Please share this far and wide! Thank you.

Also, if you are voting in GA 11 and planning to write in Tracey Verhoeven, please pay attention to how her name is spelled and make sure to spell it correctly, as noted above. Otherwise your write-in vote will be tossed.

[alasforsooth]

Ain’t that the truth, Bill.

[thurisazsalail]

Millions of votes are uncounted. YOU can do something about it!

Take less than 10 minutes to register your protest.

Tell the White House to investigate election fraud. There is a sample statement in this post.

Bitching on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter will not help. If you are an American who is old enough to vote, please take the 10 minutes to do this. Post it on your Facebook, Twitter, whatever you have.

Bomb threats called into 32 polling places

Ballot boxes burned in Vancouver WA and Portland OR; hundreds of ballots damaged, casters unable to be contacted. The city had issued a request for anyone who dropped off their ballots after the previous collection time to come forward.

Ballots declined for spurious, questionable reasons, like physical signatures not matching the shitty electronic pad ones.

These 4000+ were in Pennsylvania alone.

An unprecedented number of mail-in ballots were denied, in fact.

Major disasters along the SE means entire CITIES displaced, and someone can only vote at their polling places. With documents. So what happened to thousands of people who don't have ANYTHING? And what happened with polling places that do not exist? Entire TOWNS that don't exist? "Record numbers" DID vote in NC, but there are *other places?* What happens to people who don't have transportation? Many states do NOT have protected days off for voting. Many places do not HAVE transportation to polling places.

y'all, there was a dude not far from me who went after people at a polling place with a fucking machete. cops did something right and took his ass to jail. motherfucker went after a 70 year old?? wow u r so brave

Voter intimidation has been rampant. People here in Tampa FL were wearing piles of Trump merch while voting, which btw is illegal, but of course they weren't turned away in a red county. And some of the cops here are KNOWN white rights members so who tf you going to call.

KNOWN Russian propaganda, such as the vote fraud video "in Georgia" was rampant and convincing people to not vote or that voting polls were rigged

Don't have energy to come up with your own writing? Think like a high school essay. Include some specific bullet points.

You MUST put your REAL NAME and ADDRESS (or temporary/registered address, whatever you have.) This shows that you are a REAL PERSON and not some fucking bot. Yes, you need to do this EVERY TIME you contact a government official, or you will not be counted.

Include both investigation reasons AND recount reasons. Weird shit like bomb threats and Russian propaganda should trigger an investigation.

I shouldn't have to tell you this but keep the fucking anger out of it. Do NOT make ANY veiled, passive aggressive, or even potential threat to ANYONE. jfc.

"I urge you to investigate the 2024 election on grounds of (reason, like Russian propaganda influence) and (reason, like bomb threats preventing us from exercising civil rights.) Domestic terrorists have burned ballot boxes, attacked voters at polls, and intimidated voters. An unprecented number of ballots have been thrown out or called into question for reasons such as signature mismatch, which is not something a ballot counter should know anyways. Those ballots must be cured, the caster not simply notified of an issue through e-mail. I am greatly concerned that foreign influence has especially changed the nature of our elections. This is a matter of national security. It determines who owns weapons and who can use our nuclear codes, while calling into question the integrity of the American people. I urge the United States Government to demand an investigation into these issues and to ensure that everyone has been counted. Thank you."

I'm not saying "wahhh, wahhhhh, my guy didn't win!!1" I'm not demanding election investigation because I didn't Like the Results. I'm demanding an investigation because people's lives were threatened, our civil rights were widely disenfranchised, and we cannot have a clear idea of who REALLY won (regardless of who) until we remedy this national issue.

This is a matter of national security. Now act like it.

original post @sunnys-aesthetic ; tumblr won't allow Blazing.

[kiralou02]

A small boy asks his Dad, "Daddy, what is politics?"

Dad says, "Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I'm the breadwinner of the family, so let's call me Capitalism.

Your mom, she's the administrator of the money, so we'll call her the Government.

We're here to take care of your needs, so we'll call you the People.

The nanny, we'll consider her the Working Class.

And your baby brother, we'll call him the Future.

Now, think about that and see if that makes sense." So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said. Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his diaper. The little boy goes to his parents' room and finds his mother sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father having sex with the nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed.

The next morning, the little boy says to his father, "Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now." The father says, "Good, son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about." The little boy replies, "Well, while Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is sound asleep, the People are being ignored and the Future is in Deep Shit."

[the-bensolos]

It’s so important, so important to see what has happened in a little under a week because of the vile things Tr*mp has said about the immigrant community in Ohio, bomb threats and schools shut down, innocent people afraid of a place they once called home, if he wins in November that’s life for at least the next 4 years and who knows after that because he’ll turn our democracy into a dictatorship and that’s not hyperbole at this point it’s real and it’s terrifying!!!! So please if you live in the US do the right thing, the empathetic thing, the hard thing and vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Talk to people in your life that could help change this election, especially if you live or know people in a swing state. This election is to important to sit out, real lives and people and families are at stake, the soul of America is at stake. The world isn’t going to stop just because we’re angry with righteous rage, we need to channel that into action and that action is voting and then demanding better because the other side is NOT going to stop they are going to keep playing and keep rigging the game so we have to vote and we have to fight. Donate, sign up to volunteer, talk to people who may not know better. Every voice counts every vote matters. Please vote with kindness and care not just for yourself but for others so so so so much is on the line. I’ll get off the soap box now thanks.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Daniel Marans at HuffPost:

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) lost her Democratic primary on Tuesday, shrinking the ranks of the House’s left-wing “Squad” and delivering another major victory to the pro-Israel and business-friendly groups that backed her challenger. Wesley Bell, the St. Louis County prosecutor, defeated Bush. Since Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, which includes all of St. Louis and many of its northern and western suburbs, is overwhelmingly Democratic, Bell is all but assured of a seat in Congress come November.

Bell’s victory over Bush marks the second “Squad” member in recent months to fall to a challenger heavily funded by pro-Israel groups. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who, like Bush, ousted an incumbent in 2020, lost his race to Westchester County Executive George Latimer this past June. Justice Democrats, the left-wing group that backed Bush’s first successful run, cast the race as yet another referendum on the power of big money to decide elections. “This race is about the future of our democracy and the soul of our Democratic Party, frankly,” Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, told HuffPost on Monday. “This is a question about whether we want to let a handful of Republican mega-donors dictate the outcome of Democratic primaries, or do we want to move forward to elect more nurses and everyday people to represent the community’s best interests.”

Bush, an ordained pastor and registered nurse, indeed faced a massive fundraising deficit. As Andrabi noted, Bell had the support of some local Republican donors — and many national megadonors from both parties, through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Super PACs supporting Bell outspent those supporting Bush by a more than 3-to-1 margin. Spending by pro-Bell groups included about $8.6 million from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, $1.5 million from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s Mainstream Democrats PAC, $1.4 million from the crypto-industry-backed FairShake PAC, and nearly $500,000 from the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. Bush made national waves with her July 2021 sit-in on the U.S. Capitol steps to draw attention to the expiration of the federal government’s COVID-19-era eviction moratorium. Her action got results; President Joe Biden responded by extending the policy, though the Supreme Court stopped it a few weeks later. Later that year, in a bid to shore up support for abortion rights, Bush spoke on national television — and in a House hearing — about her experience getting an abortion after being raped at age 17.

Bush’s allies — and she retains the support of many local elected officials — see her as an authentic tribune of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was born in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014. Unlike many other Democrats in Washington, Bush continues to embrace calls to “defund the police.” Bell, who also got his political start during the Ferguson protests and unseated a more conservative incumbent prosecutor in 2018, has, by contrast, disappointed many of his former fellow activists. They fault him for declining to prosecute Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown, and for not more rapidly reducing the county’s jail and prison populations, even as he points to the creation of a conviction review unit and the expansion of drug diversion programs.

[...] Finally, Bush has been among the most outspoken critics of Israel in Congress, particularly after Israel invaded Gaza in response to Hamas’ terror attack on Oct. 7. She was not only an early advocate for a ceasefire, but has also accused Israel of genocide ― a charge that remains highly disputed. And in an interview with The New York Times out on Monday, Bush expressed ambivalence about describing Hamas as a terrorist group, though her campaign later walked it back. “Would they qualify to me as a terrorist organization? Yes,” Bush told the Times. “But do I know that? Absolutely not.” Bush’s stances cost her the support of Susan Talve, a progressive St. Louis rabbi who leads the only synagogue in Bush’s district. But they also unsettled some other allies who see her national profile as a distraction from the needs of the high-poverty, majority Black district.

In the battle of activists rising from the Ferguson protests in #MO01, incumbent Rep. Cori Bush (D) goes down in defeat to AIPAC-backed St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell (D) in the Democratic Primary. Bell is favored to win this November.

[dragon-creates]

Contact The White House.

People have been using this link to contact the white house to demand a recount and investigation to be launched for fraud and tampering from Donald Trump

Use the format here for what to say, and this can also be done by people outside of the US as well.

Your voice matters.

So scream.

[gryficowa]

Seriously, I don't mind watching anything, and it must be said that I am a cartoon fanatic

Yes, this is currently happening

That's why we won't stop talking about Gaza, so fuck you

[scarletcarmensmith]

ULTRA MAGA GO FOR IT👊

[sankta-wraith]

You know it’s bad when Game of Thrones starts predicting the future.