#2025 School Board Elections

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nathalie Baptiste at HuffPost:

Over the last few years, elections for public education officials have gone from overlooked and low-profile to heated and politicized affairs, a shift that’s due in large part to conservatives increasingly eyeing schools as places where they can wield significant influence and enact a specific agenda. Moms for Liberty, a far-right group that popped up in Florida during the COVID pandemic and has since campaigned nationwide for a variety of conservative causes, is a significant driver of this shift. The so-called “parental rights” organization has thrown its support behind school board candidates across the country who have gone on to ban books, pass policies that hurt LGBTQ+ kids, and limit what teachers can do and say in their classrooms. In 2022, more than half of the candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty won their races, with those in Florida seeing particular success. But the following year, the group’s high-profile attempts in Pennsylvania were largely a dud.

This year, the group said it has identified 77 candidates for endorsements but has not publicly released the list. “We continue to strive to have all voters across the country engage in their local school board elections and get to know the candidates because we know that change happens at the local level,” Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said in an emailed statement to HuffPost. “We have seen an incredible win rate the past two years that shows the power of our grassroots organization and we are excited to see that same kind of win rate this year.” But even as the group keeps a lower public profile than it has during previous elections, its impact is clear. Across the country, far-right extremists are looking to get on school boards and reshape public schooling.

The blueprint for a right-wing, Moms for Liberty-style candidate has been made, and conservatives are following it. These candidates typically rail against “critical race theory,” a college-level academic framework for understanding structural racism that has been co-opted by conservatives to mean talking about race at all and making white people feel uncomfortable. They falsely claim books about gender or sexual identity are inherently "pornographic". They may smear teachers as "groomers", and make sure transgender children are targeted and ostracized at school. Parental rights and fighting to keep trans kids from playing sports are now Republican talking points at all levels of government. “The work of Moms for Liberty hasn’t been as visible. But the rhetoric they use and their candidates are very much visible,” Tamika Walker Kelly, the president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, told HuffPost. In blue, red, and purple states alike, this election is shaping up to have dozens of hotly contested school board races that feature right-wing candidates going up against their more liberal counterparts and hoping to shape the next generation of public school students.

[...]

The state superintendent for public instruction oversees more than 2,500 schools in North Carolina and an $11 billion budget. The race is between Democrat Mo Green, the former superintendent of Guilford County schools, and Republican Michele Morrow, who homeschooled her own children. After defeating the Republican incumbent in March, Morrow made headlines when CNN discovered that she had attended the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection with her children. (There is no evidence that she entered the Capitol building or committed any crimes.) She has also called for the execution of prominent Democrats and made a video saying former President Donald Trump should use the U.S. military to stay in power after he lost the election in 2020. Morrow ran for school board in Wake County in 2022 and lost by 20 points. As a candidate for superintendent, she has lobbed homophobic and transphobic attacks at Green and vowed to rid the state’s schools of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and censor what teachers can say in the classroom.

Far-right extremist school board candidates across several states, campaigning on “parental rights” themes such as anti-LGBTQ+ inclusion and book bans, could reshape the next generation of schooling if they are successful.

In recent elections, far-right school board candidates have largely failed to win their races due to their focus on being culture warriors first.

[thebookworm0001]

anyway hi stop fucking saying voting doesn’t matter because as a public school English teacher in Texas it absolutely fucking does

[justahumblememefarmer]

Putting some positivity out there about the election

Harris has raised a record amount of money from small donors after Biden dropped out, in addition to being able to access all the funds from their campaign they already had

Trump is deeply unpopular and people have already seen the chaos that 4 years of his presidency would bring. A lot of people have been energized to vote against him, even if they're not fond of Dems

Polling showed a red wave for Republicans in the 2022 midterms, and yet they only barely had control of the House, and couldn't even agree on a Speaker for a historic amount of time. Dems also increased their lead in the Senate. Historically, midterms favor the opposition party and have lower turnout, so this is a good sign for the House in 2024

Dems are fighting back in swing states. PA and GA both put in Democratic senators in the midterms

In my home state of PA, I am from Bucks County, which is a swing county for the state. Moms for Libery took over the school board and used it to attack queer students, enact book bans, and funnel money to themselves and the superintendent. At the most recent election, Dems turned out and took back every single open seat, ousting the board and superintendent. Worry about similar takeovers in surrounding school boards also increased turnout

Abortion rights are on the ballot in many states, which has been a winning issue for Dems and increased turnout

Republicans were prepared to attack a feeble old Biden who isn't the strongest speaker. I don't think they expected him to actually drop out, and they now have to put an 78 year old convicted felon up against a prosecutor

Awareness of Project 2025 and it's contents has entered the public sphere and is being much more openly discussed on the news. While Trump has insisted he has nothing to do with it, most of the authors worked in his administration and Trump has worked closely with the Heritage foundation

Feel free to add more things on this thread, but the most important thing is to get out there and VOTE

Vote for President

Vote for Senators

Vote for Congresspeople

Vote in your local elections

Vote Blue down ballot

[simply-ivanka]

Democrats, Blame Yourselves

Voters on Tuesday repudiated the results of progressive policies.

By The Editorial Board Wall Street Journal

If Democrats want some sage counsel on how to recover from their electoral drubbing on Tuesday, we suggest they recall that classic relationship breakup line from Seinfeld’s George Costanza: “It’s not you; it’s me.”

The temptation after a defeat this humiliating is to hunt for scapegoats—fading Joe Biden, untutored Kamala Harris, Russian disinformation, benighted and racist voters. They’d be wiser to look in the mirror.

The defeat was less a resounding endorsement of Mr. Trump than a repudiation of progressive governance. America rejected the consequences of left-wing policies. Democrats lost ground from 2020 across many demographic groups, according to the exit polls. Even women moved percentage points closer to Mr. Trump. How could Democrats possibly lose like this to a man they think is Hitler? Allow us to offer a list for liberal reflection:

• The failure of Bidenomics. Democrats once understood that private business drives growth and higher incomes. Sometime in the 21st century, they came to believe that government spending creates wealth—via the “Keynesian multiplier” and other nostrums.

Thus they passed, on a party-line vote, a $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief bill that wasn’t really needed, fueling the highest inflation in decades. This robbed millions of workers of real wage gains, which haunted Democrats on Tuesday as two-thirds of voters said they were unhappy with the state of the economy.

• Cultural imperialism. Democrats took their 2020 victory as an invitation to turn identity politics into woke policy. They stood with transgender activists instead of parents who don’t want boys to play girls sports or elementary teachers to pass out pronoun pins. Republicans hammered Democrats with ads that attacked Democratic votes against tying federal funds to transgender school policies.

Democrats also began using the term “Latinx,” which sounds to many Spanish-speakers like illiterate cultural imperialism from elites. Could that and other woke policies have played a role in Mr. Trump winning 46% of the Hispanic vote and 55% of Latino men, according to the exit polls?

• Regulatory coercion. In pursuit of their climate obsessions, Democrats pushed coercive mandates, including an EPA rule effectively saying that by 2032 only 30% of new car sales can be gas-powered models. The EV mandate caused layoffs among auto workers in Michigan that Mr. Trump attacked in TV ads and on the stump.

• Lawfare. Democrats used Mr. Trump’s divisiveness to escalate against him at every turn. After calling him a Russian stooge and impeaching him twice, Mr. Biden labeled him a “fascist” and Democrats tried to bar him from the ballot.

They criminally indicted Mr. Trump—four times—and targeted his family business with a civil suit. They convicted him in New York, under an elected Democratic prosecutor who stretched the law to turn misdemeanors into felonies, in a case that wouldn’t have been brought against another businessman.

The strategy turned Mr. Trump into a martyr to GOP voters and cemented his support in the Republican primaries.

• Breaking democratic norms. Democrats decided to use taxes from plumbers and welders to forgive college loans for lawyers and grad students in grievance studies. When the Supreme Court struck Mr. Biden’s effort down as an abuse of power, he tried again and taunted the Court to stop him.

Democrats tried to override the Senate filibuster to seize control of the nation’s voting laws and impose practices such as ballot harvesting, as Mr. Biden raged that his opponents were creating “Jim Crow 2.0.”

They tried to override the filibuster to pass a national abortion law that would go beyond Roe v. Wade. They promised to override the filibuster in 2025 to bulldoze the High Court. They ran Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema out of the party for disagreeing.

All of this and other progressive preoccupations caused Democrats to lose sight of the larger public interest. They came to believe, backed by the mainstream press, that voters would tolerate it all because Mr. Trump was simply unacceptable.

This opened the door for Mr. Trump to remind voters that they were better off under his policies four years earlier. Mr. Trump won more than 72 million ballots. He improved his standing with minority voters. He gained votes even in Democratic states.

Voters were telling Democrats on Tuesday that the party has wandered into ideological fever swamps where most Americans don’t want to go. Winning those voters again will require more than firing back up the anti-Trump “resistance.”

[thosemotivationalquotes]

Voting resources for the 2024 U.S. Election

Voting and Voter Registration

General voter registration

Absentee ballot info

Update your registration

Voter registration deadlines - by state

Check to make sure you are registered

Early voting - by state

Info for college students living in a different state than where they are registered

Info for unhoused voters

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Info for voters living in another country

Options for people concerned about missing work to vote

Does your work have to give you time off to vote - by state

Voter ID requirements by state

Detailed info for voting guides - by state

Where is my polling place

Resources for non-English speakers

What to expect when voting at a polling place

Track your mail in ballot

Deadlines to mail in your ballot - by state

Information on Political Candidates

Project 2025 overview

Donald Trump political overview

Agenda 47 - full document

JD Vance - Republican VP pick

Kamala Harris political overview

Tim Walz - Democrat VP pick

Senate race overview

Governor elections

School board elections

Other Election/Voting Resources

Swing states map

Abortion related ballot measures

What is a primary election?

What are electoral votes?

What is a provisional ballot?

Discounted rides for Lyft and Lime

What congressional district am I in?

Ranked choice voting

I will add more resources as I find them!

I will also be using the tag ‘Kenzie talks election 2024’ to talk about election stuff starting 11/4

[whenweallvote]

In case you thought we left voting behind in 2024, here’s your reminder that EVERY year is an election year. 👀🗳️ According to our friends Ballot Ready, there are more open seats on the ballot in 2025 than in 2024! 

This year, voters across the country will decide more than 100,000 local races including governors, mayors, school board officials, city council members, and more. From education to the environment, all of these people make decisions that impact us close to home. 🏡

Looking for one way to change your community? Make sure you are registered and ready to vote now at WeAll.Vote/check.

[redfoxwritesstuff]

Hi, I'm so worried about what's going to happen in the future. I love fanfic but project 2025 has got me scared. I'm worried that I will lose your stories.

I need everyone to take a breath, gather around all my lil foxkits and take a seat with momma Kit.

It's okay. I mean, it's *not* but it is. The sun rose today. And it will tomorrow. Yes, something very bad happened last night. Yes, it's lookin like things will turn out perfectly for the oppressors. We lost multiple battles last night.

But the war isn't over until we breathe our last breath.

Fanfic and written porn, small noncommercial creations are not currently in danger. We have to trust AO3 to do what they have to, up to relocating if needed, to protect their cause. They're worried about mainstream money makers who could potentially be a lobbying force.

Project 2025 has far bigger priorities than us playin dolls with words on AO3

Yes, shit sucks. But changes don't happen overnight. Yes, burning the house down is easier, it's quicker but it still takes time.

Cry, scream, do what you must but go out and vote. Vote in school board elections, vote for minor local political roles, vote for mayor, vote for governor. It's slow but you *can* flip your local politics and that will push change up.

Don't stop fighting.

Don't give up.

[ikiyou]

Thoughts about democracy and my blog

So I hadn't really planned on continuing a lot of 'political' posts past the election...had the outcome been different.

But here we are, and some of the intentions in Trump's Project 2025 might become reality.

And anyone who follows me probably knows how I feel about the election, given all my posts today. I'm sure a large percentage of my followers feel the same way.

It is our civic duty - all of ours - to stand up for democracy and human rights in whatever way we are capable. Since I live overseas, I cannot join my local school board or help my local library.

The only thing I can do is continue to post where I have an audience, so that people can remain educated.

However, I never intended that this blog be anything but a BSD haven. And I don't want that to change. But to start a blog for 'political' purposes would undermine the efforts of democracy and education, because only politically minded people would follow such a blog, and I would be posting in a useless echo chamber.

But in deference to the people who follow me, you likely do so only for BSD content. So if I make other posts, I will probably give them a tag, like democracy, or something, so you can filter them out if you don't want to see them.

But to those who are interested, many probably also believe in the same things I believe: human rights, democracy, creative freedoms. Speaking to you would also be speaking to an echo chamber.

The problem with democratic activism is finding a way to speak to those who don't share your beliefs. And, like a business, you either need to sell them what they want, or convince them they want what you're selling.

In Harris's case, that would have meant convincing voters that the economy would be great again under the Democrats.

Talking about the more important issues, like human rights, isn't of interest to the people whose votes really matter.

And yet, it is still vitally important to document and explain actions, impacts, and trends of what has been happening and what may happen.

And further still, some of those actions may target our creative and fandom freedoms. Voices like Trump's want to silence dissent, LGBT topics, and other creative expression (whump, dark fic, etc). The possibility exists for freedom of speech to be attacked. A03 is only protected as long as we protect freedom of speech and creativity.

So, these democratic issues have an impact on us as members of the BSD fandom. If BSD has meaning for you, so too does democracy and freedom.

So, I will probably continue to write about the things that will happen in the US when able, or to reblog better written and timely posts about it. I am well aware these posts will get little to no traction here - not only is it an echo chamber, those posts never do well. But then again, most of what I post gets little engagement.

But the only thing we can do is try.

[keep-both-eyes-on-trump]

Trump Watch #9

Trump has named the following: 

Linda McMahon as secretary of education. 

McMahon is a wrestling billionaire and co-founder of WWE. 

She has long been a supporter of Trump and served in his first administration as leader of the Small Business Administration. 

She has served on the Connecticut Board of Education and the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. 

She supports charter schools and school choice. 

Scott Bessent for treasury secretary.

Bessent is a billionaire who advised Trump on economic policy during his campaign; he has experience founding and working for hedge funds.

If confirmed he will be the first LGBTQ+ Senate-confirmed cabinet member in a republican administration. 

He supports extending Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation.

He also supports Trump’s embrace of the crypto industry. 

Russell Vought for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Vought held the same position during Trump’s first term. 

He is a key architect from Project 2025 writing the chapter on the Executive Office within which he takes aim at federal regulatory agencies that are not under control of the White House..

He is a strong advocate for recess appointments of Trump’s nominees. 

Lori Chavez-Deremer as labor secretary.

Chavez-Deremer was the first Latina congresswoman of Oregon; she lost re-election in November. 

She co-sponsored the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would make it easier for workers to unionize. 

She has strong support from unions. 

Pam Bondi as attorney general.

Bondi is the Florida attorney general and is the first woman to hold the position. 

As FL state attorney general she brought cases against the Affordable Care Act and fought to maintain FL’s ban on same-sex marriage. 

She is a longtime ally of Trump, served as a chairwomen of America First Policy Institute, and defended Trump during his first impeachment trial. 

She received a $25,000 donation from Trump’s charitable foundation and subsequently her office dropped a suit against Trump’s company for fraud stating there were insufficient grounds to proceed. A prosecutor assigned by then-Gov. Rick Scott determined there was insufficient evidence to support bribery charges. 

Brook Rollins as secretary of agriculture

Rollins is a co-founder and president of think tank America First Policy and served as assistant to the president for intergovernmental and technology initiatives during Trump’s first administration. 

She is a lawyer with an undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University in agricultural development. 

Dr Marty Makary as Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

Makary is a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University. 

He supports RFK Jr. as Trump’s pick for HHS. 

He worked with the first Trump administration on transparent billing in health care. 

He opposed COVID vaccine mandates and was a critic of public health measures during the pandemic. 

Dr Janette Nesheiwat for Surgeon General.

Nesheiwat is a physician, medical director at CityMD, and former Fox News medical contributor. 

She is a supporter of vaccines. 

Dave Weldon to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Weldon is a physician, Army veteran, and former Republican Florida representative. 

As a congressman he introduced the Weldon Amendment which provides protections for health care workers and organizations that do not provide or aid in abortions.

Scott Turner for secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Turner previously served in the Texas House of Representatives; he is a NFL veteran and motivational speaker. 

He led the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term and currently works as chair of the Center for Education Opportunity at America First Policy Institute. 

Republicans also announced plan to create a GOP-controlled subcommittee, Delivering on Government Efficiency, to work with the Department of Government Efficiency on cutting government waste; the committee is to be chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

[thashining]

joyannreid

Tick tock… . Repost from @whenweallvote • In case you thought we left voting behind in 2024, here’s your reminder that EVERY year is an election year. 👀🗳️ According to our friends @BallotReady, there are more open seats on the ballot in 2025 than in 2024! This year, voters across the country will decide more than 100,000 local races including governors, mayors, school board officials, city council members, and more. From education to the environment, all of these people make decisions that impact us close to home. 🏡

[booksinmythorax]

Hey so uhh. If you live in the US, your local library probably needs a lot of help. Some ways to show up for public and school libraries and librarians right now:

-Show up to library board meetings and school board meetings and say you're in favor of freedom to read. If you can't show up to the meetings, write letters and make phone calls. Bonus points if you're a parent and say you want to defend your right to decide what your child is allowed to read.

-Keep track of local and state news regarding libraries around you and inform the appropriate elected officials of your stance in favor of freedom to read. Here, phone calls are best, but emails and letters are also ok. The Literary Activism newsletter from BookRiot is my favorite roundup of censorship and library news around the US.

-Call your federal Congressional representative and tell them to support the Fight Book Bans Act.

-VOTE in local elections and look out for dog whistles like "parental choice" and "protecting children's innocence" in candidate platforms.

-VOTE Democrat in state and national level elections so we don't have to deal with these people (direct quotes from the article above):

"Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page ideological blueprint for a potential second Trump administration, declares in its opening pages that “pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children,” should be stripped of First Amendment protection and outlawed."

"In May, after two religious conservatives who had sought to remove books from the libraries won seats on the [Post Falls, Idaho] library board, its members began overhauling the library’s policies on collections. A draft, viewed by The New York Times, seeks to ban materials containing “any description, exhibition, presentation or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse,” including “buttocks with less than a fully opaque covering.”"

⬆️ The word "description" means this policy could remove nearly every book from the library in question.

What we're looking at here is fascism attacking public access to information. It needs to be taken seriously and dealt with as a real threat.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Cecilia Nowell at The Guardian:

On the campaign trail this year, Donald Trump routinely criticized US media. The president-elect called for CBS to be stripped of its broadcast license after it aired an interview with Kamala Harris, refused to participate in an interview with 60 Minutes and routinely called journalists the “enemy of the people”. But perhaps no American media has attracted as much ire from the president-elect as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – a non-profit corporation created by federal law in 1967 to distribute funding to public media organizations like PBS and NPR.

“NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in April. “THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!” As the Trump prepares to take office next month, public media organizations – such as NPR and PBS, which have aired longtime favorites such as Curious George and All Things Considered – are readying themselves for funding cuts and other attacks against their programming. After Trump was re-elected in November, NPR member stations circulated a report warning that “it would be unwise to assume that events will play out as they have in the past” where funding is concerned, the New York Times reported Friday, and PBS board members received an update from political consultants earlier this month. Trump and his allies have repeatedly called for the federal government to cut all funding to public media. In March 2017, Trump called for Congress to cut all funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the first proposed budget of his presidency – a call he repeated throughout his presidency.

In response to a 2020 effort to defund public media, the PBS president and CEO, Paula Kerger, issued a statement noting that “PBS and our member stations have earned bipartisan Congressional support because of the vital role that public television plays in homes and communities across the country. For 50 years, PBS has served as a trusted source for educational and thought-provoking programming, including school readiness initiatives for children, support for teachers and caregivers, public safety communications and lifelong learning across broadcast and digital platforms.” But the conservative playbook Project 2025 has continued echoing conservative calls to cut funding to PBS and NPR, stating that the new Trump administration should strip public media of federal funding and licenses for noncommercial education stations.

[...] In November, shortly after Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Musk coauthored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with Vivek Ramaswamy (the two have been tasked with leading a “department of government efficiency”, an agency Trump claims he will create). In it, the pair identified the $535m Congress allocates each year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as one line item they would cut to reduce federal expenditures. As recently as this week, Musk posted on X that “legacy media must die”. Although these attacks against public media are growing more concerted, they’re not new. Every Republican administration has aimed to defund public media since the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was founded. American public media traces its origins to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, passed under Lyndon B Johnson’s administration. A public-private partnership, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting connects 1,190 public radio stations and 356 public television stations with federal grants, allowing those stations to maintain editorial independence and also raise funds from members and sponsorships. Today, 99% of the US population lives within listening range of at least one public media station.

The attacks on NPR and PBS should worry us all, as it is part of Donald Trump's authoritarian war on press freedom.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Kevin (KAL) Kallaugher

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 23, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 24, 2024

On Thursday, Moody’s Analytics, which evaluates risk, performance, and financial modeling, compared the economic promises of President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Authors Mark Zandi, Brendan LaCerda, and Justin Begley concluded that while a second Biden presidency would see cooling inflation and continued economic growth of 2.1%, a Trump presidency would be an economic disaster.

Trump has promised to slash taxes on the wealthy, increase tariffs across the board, and deport at least 11 million immigrant workers. According to the analysts, these policies would trigger a recession by mid-2025. The economy would slow to an average growth of 1.3%. At the same time, tariffs and fewer immigrant workers would increase the costs of consumer goods. That inflation—reaching 3.6%—would result in 3.2 million fewer jobs and a higher unemployment rate. 

Trump’s proposed tariffs would not fully offset his tax cuts, adding trillions to the national debt. 

Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said that Trump’s tariff policy “would be bad for workers and bad for consumers.” Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi said: “Biden’s policies are better for the economy.”   

In the New York Times today, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute at the Yale School of Management, debunked the notion that corporate leaders support Trump. Sonnenfeld notes that he works with about 1,000 chief executives a year and speaks with business leaders almost every day. Although 60 to 70 percent of them are registered Republicans, he wrote, Trump “continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party.”

Among Fortune 100 chief executives, who lead the top 100 public and private U.S. companies ranked by revenue, Sonnenfeld notes, not one has donated to Trump this year. 

While they might not be enthusiastic Biden supporters, unhappy with his push to enforce antitrust laws and rein in corporate greed, the president has produced results they like: investment in infrastructure, repair of supply chains, investment in domestic manufacturing, achievement of record corporate profits, and transformation of the U.S. into the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. 

In contrast, they fear Trump. The populist plans that thrill supporters—like hiking tariffs and taking financial policy away from the independent Federal Reserve Board and putting it in his own hands—are red flags to business leaders. Such positions have more in common with the far left than with traditional Republican economic policies, Sonnenfeld says. Those policies reflect that Trump has surrounded himself with what Sonnenfeld calls “MAGA extremists and junior varsity opportunists,” while the more senior voices of his first term have been sidelined. 

On Saturday, Trump spoke in Philadelphia with a message that The Guardian’s David Smith described as “light on facts, heavy on fear.” He appears to be trying to overwrite his own criminal conviction with the idea that Biden’s immigration policy has brought violent undocumented migrants to the United States, creating a surge of crime. He told rally attendees that murders in their city have reached their highest level in six decades, while in fact, violent crime in the city is the lowest it’s been in a decade. 

In February, Trump pushed Republican lawmakers to reject a strong bipartisan border bill so he could use immigration as his primary issue in the election. That focus on immigration was key to the rise of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to power, and it is notable that Trump’s picture of the United States echoes the rhetoric of the authoritarians hoping to overturn democracy around the world.  

On Friday, during a podcast hosted by venture capitalists, Trump blamed Biden for starting Russia’s war against Ukraine by calling for Ukraine’s admission to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that resists Russian aggression. This statement utterly rewrites the history of Trump’s support for Russia’s annexation of the same Ukrainian regions it has now occupied: as Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort testified, the Kremlin helped Trump’s 2016 campaign in exchange for the U.S. permitting Russian incursions there.

More significant in this moment, though, is that Trump, who is running to become the leader of the United States, is siding against the United States and parroting Russian propaganda. Mark Hertling, a retired lieutenant general of the United States Army who served for 37 years and commanded U.S. Army operations in Europe and Africa, wrote: “This statement is—to put it mildly—stunningly misinformed and dangerous.”

Trump told host Sean Spicer that the U.S. is a “failing nation,” claiming that airplane flights are being delayed for four days and people are “pitching tents” because their flight is never going to happen. In reality, as Bill Kristol pointed out, with 16.3 million U.S. flights, 2023 was the busiest year in U.S. history for air travel, and the cancellation rate was below 1.2%. This was the lowest rate in a decade. 

Trump is insisting at his rallies that crime is skyrocketing under Biden. In reality, crime rose rapidly at the end of Trump’s term but is now dropping. From 2022 to 2023, according to the FBI, the only crime that went up was motor vehicle theft. Murders dropped by 13.2%, rape by 12.5%, robbery by 4.7%, burglary by 9.8%. The first quarter of 2024 showed even greater drops. Compared to the same quarter in 2023, violent crime is down 15.2%, murder down 26.4%, rape down 25.7%, robbery down 17.8%, burglary down 16.7%. Even vehicle theft is down 17.3%. 

Trump’s negative picture might play well to his die-hard supporters, but portraying the U.S. as a hellscape has rarely been a recipe for winning a presidential election.

President Biden and Trump are scheduled to debate on Thursday, June 27, and Trump’s team is trying to lower expectations for his performance. He became so incoherent in Philadelphia that the Fox News Channel actually cut away while he was talking. The Biden-Harris team has taken simply to posting Trump’s comments, prompting Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo to note: “It’s pretty bad when one candidates rapid response account just posts the other guys quote verbatim with no explanation at all.”

After months of insisting that Biden is mentally unfit, now Trump and his surrogates are saying Biden will perform well in the debate because he will be on drugs. There is no evidence that Biden has ever used performance-enhancing drugs, but curiously, Trump’s former White House physician Ronny Jackson (whom Trump repeatedly misidentified as Ronny Johnson last week) gave Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo a very detailed list of drugs that could sharpen attention and clarity. One of the ones he mentioned, Provigil, was on the list of those widely and improperly distributed by the White House Medical Unit in the Trump White House. 

Jackson said that he was “demanding” that Biden take drug tests before and after the debate. A White House spokesperson responded: “[A]fter losing every public and private negotiation with President Biden—and after seeing him succeed where they failed across the board, ranging from actually rebuilding America’s infrastructure to actually reducing violent crime to actually outcompeting China—it tracks that those same Republican officials mistake confidence for a drug.”

With the evaluation that Biden is better for the economy and Trump’s apocalyptic vision of the U.S. is not based in reality, it jumps out that on Thursday, a filing with the Federal Election Commission showed that the day after a jury convicted former president Donald Trump on 34 criminal counts, billionaire Tim Mellon made a $50 million donation to one of Trump’s superpacs. Since 2018, Mellon has contributed more than $200 million to Republicans, giving $110 million to Republican candidates and funding committees in the 2024 election alone. He has also given $25 million to independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. 

In a 2015 autobiography, Mellon embraced the old trope that “Black Studies, Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, they have all cluttered Higher Education with a mishmash of meaningless tripe designed to brainwash gullible young adults into going along with the Dependency Syndrome,” saying that food assistance, affordable health care “and on, and on, and on” had made Americans on government assistance “slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam.” “The largess is funded by the hardworking folks, fewer and fewer in number, who are too honest or too proud to allow themselves to sink into this morass,” he wrote. 

It is this trope that the Biden administration has smashed, returning to the idea that the government should answer to the needs of all its people. The last three years have proved the superiority of this vision by creating a roaring economy; rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, supply chains, and manufacturing; cutting crime rates, and reinforcing international alliances. 

As Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and chief executive officer of the energy company Canary, told Wall Street Journal reporter Tarini Parti about Mellon: “He’s clearly terrified of Biden remaining the president.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[whitegownsandflowercrowns]

Hey guys, so I know a lot of people are freaking out about Project 2025 (and rightfully so) but I want us all to take this as a call to action, rather than a defeating hopelessness.

Look, I know that “vote” isn’t going to magically fix everything, but in this case, it can seriously help. When you see the goals of Project 2025, I want that to serve you a reminder to GET OUT AND VOTE. VOTE in the presidential election. VOTE for your senators and house representatives. VOTE for your mayors. VOTE for your school board. VOTE for people who are in favor of trans rights. VOTE for people who are anti-censorship. VOTE for people who support access to abortion. VOTE for your own best interests. Vote for America.

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Laphonza Romanique Butler

On October 1, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom chose well-known labor organizer and political strategist Laphonza Butler to be the next US Senator from California, following the death of long-serving Senator Dianne Feinstein on September 29, 2023. Butler, who was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris at the US Capitol on October 3, 2023, is the first openly LGBT Senator from California, the first Black lesbian in the US Senate, and the second Black woman to represent California in the Senate, following Vice President Kamala Harris. California must hold two concurrent Senate elections in March 2024: a special election to fill out the rest of Feinstein’s term in spite of there being an appointed Senator, and another election for the full six-year term beginning in January 2025.

Senator Butler’s career path includes labor, corporate, academic, and political engagement. Social justice has been her focus within these varied endeavors. Born in Magnolia, Mississippi, in 1979, Butler comes from a working-class family. Her father was a small business owner who died of a terminal illness when Butler was in high school. She saw her mother become the household’s sole provider for three children, working as a classroom aide, a home care provider, a security guard, and a bookkeeper.

Butler earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Jackson State University in 2001. After graduation she began a career as a labor organizer in several states, working with nurses, custodians, and hospital workers. In accepting her appointment, Butler said that she would strive to honor Feinstein’s legacy by “committing to work for women and girls, workers and unions, struggling parents, and all of California.” Her previous job as President of Emily’s List, which helps elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, means it is likely abortion rights will be an important part of the Democrats’ election strategy in 2024.

In 2009 Butler moved to California where she organized nurses as well as in-home caregivers, and became President of SEIU (Service Employees International Union) Local 2015 of United Long Term Care Workers; she also served as President of the SEIU State Council. Butler has served on the board of the Children’s Defense Fund, the political action committee BlackPAC, and the Bay Area Economic Council Institute think tank. In addition, she is the former director of the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve System, and a former Regent of the University of California.

Butler is married to Neneki Lee. The couple has an 8-year-old daughter. Lee is the National Division Director for Public Services at SEIU. When she became President of Emily’s list in 2021, Butler and her family moved to Maryland while maintaining their home in Los Angeles. As of October, 2023, they have re-domiciled to Los Angeles and Butler has re-registered to vote in California.

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/laphonza-romanique-butler-1979/

[meret118]

The system red states are constructing works by empowering extreme ideologues and partisans to impose their will on their communities, whatever level of popular support they happen to enjoy. Dissenters get the right to set public health and educational policy, overriding the judgment of elected school boards and expert regulators. Anti-abortion vigilantes and anti-LGBTQ+ extremists are empowered to surveil their neighbors and rewarded for bringing legal proceedings against them. Lax open-carry laws, immunity from criminal prosecution, promises of kid-glove treatment from police and prosecutors, and pardons when “leftist” prosecutors try to crack down on right-wing thuggery signal to militias and other reactionary radicals that they can engage in political violence with near impunity.

Examples abound. This year, Indiana’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, launched a website with the Orwellian name “Eyes on Education.” The website invites informants to report on teachers who share “objectionable curricula, policies, or programs”; it also posts personally identifying information that can easily be used to dox or harass educators. Among the “objectionable” materials reported through the site is an email from a superintendent who vowed to “address societal injustice in our classrooms” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. After Florida enacted its Safety in Private Spaces Act, banning transgender people from using state-owned bathrooms that match their gender identity, transgender and cisgender residents alike have reported being assaulted by bystanders claiming that they “don’t belong” in public restrooms. Localordinances designed by Jonathan Mitchell, the lawyer behind Texas’ anti-abortion bounty-hunter scheme, use vigilantes to target individuals who cross state lines to secure abortions. Georgia is implementing changes to its electoral rules that practically invite hardcore partisans to disrupt the certification of election results, a strategy with origins in the 2000 presidential election that MAGA leaders returned to in 2020 and 2022.

. . .

one of the most widely reported proposals in Project 2025 is its threatened “campaign to enforce the criminal prohibitions” of the Comstock Act “against providers and distributors of abortion pills.” That law, enacted in 1873 amid a sexual-purity crusade, purports to make it illegal to mail any “article or thing … intended for producing abortion.” For decades, federal agencies under both Republican and Democratic administrations interpreted the Comstock Act narrowly, to apply only when the person mailing an article or thing intended that it be used unlawfully. Reversing this long-standing position would trigger not only a wave of federal criminal prosecutions, as speakers at the Democratic National Convention stressed. It would also kick off a surge of vigilante lawsuits under local laws that authorize ordinary citizens to enforce federal abortion restrictions.

More at the link.