#I tried to get a mail in ballot multiple times

[fortunatefires]

I've been fucking shaking wirh anxiety all day. Living in the US is a nightmare

[archivalofsins]

Huh- wild week so far. Well, I guess this is less about this one week and more about the past three years.

On top of yesterday, I had a disability court hearing today. Something that had been stressing me out for a while in private.

That got postponed for later due to paperwork issues. Yet at that brief meeting it became abundantly clear to the judge, my mother, my sister, a friend, and their mom-

Yep, still disabled. Most definitely.

So, let's postpone until you get the representative paperwork that is required by law as of eight days ago in because you cannot do this without one.

Then after that my sister discovered that the psychiatrist who's been purposely blocking me from disability and accommodations for going three years as of 08/17/24. This woman is literally mentioned in the court document 334 times and the document itself is a total of 375 pages. Yeah that person became a limited liability psychiatric specialist. Something that means she is protected when it comes to cases of malpractice.

Neato. Love to see a bad bitch winning, gaslight, gatekeep, get legally protected from screwing over your patients by becoming limited liability~

That psychiatrist who I have mentioned here before was mentally abusive, dehumanized/infantilized me, withheld my diagnosis forms (for several months after testing completed), tried to get me institutionalized by claiming I was suicidal because I stated I was cutting ties with her after getting said forms, and retroactively changed my diagnosis after I cut ties while claiming I hadn't done that despite the fact I sent her a formal sign and dated letter stating I was doing that.

This is the state of american mental health care if you're black. I suppose-

Yet, some know-it-alls will still go if you have x why aren't you diagnosed. Prove it go on.

I've been in what can only be referred to as Schrodinger's diagnoses since 2022 because of this one woman. This one psychiatrist. Who for all I know is legally protected from the consequences of her actions now. Like the things she actively choose to do which includes lying Social Security Administration with malicious intent which is perjury.

Something that has led to several ever postponing court hearings based on her words alone. Each time going well maybe it will be over after this. Maybe, this will be the last time. Even worse I'm pretty sure if I was still living in the city where I was born (where it's difficult to even get a mail in ballot for some people), this may not have even gotten as far as being seen by a judge.

I genuinely thought well that's just how things are for African Americans for like the past several years. Because it is this lady's actions weren't new to me when she did it yeah it was terrible but I literally said multiple times well that's just how it goes.

Until this phone call today where several people went hey these are actually egregiously horrid circumstances and this bitch is insane.

She deserves to be sued. So, at this point, if anyone tries to act like early diagnosis isn't a privilege afforded to a lucky few- They can honestly kiss my whole ass. I don't have time to explain the intersectionality of race and class when it comes to the mental healthcare one is capable of obtaining be it through school, vocation, or familial intervention outside of what I'm typing right now.

Which is the most extreme case in my circle of associates. Even my mother was like "Oh my god she never told why didn't you explain in depth." to which I went oh yeah I forgot about that like it was just a casual thing.

Because everything else is fucking outlandish the therapist before her refused to test me because I could hold a conversation and believed critical race theory shouldn't be taught in schools which dates that interaction rather well. At that point the bar was in the fucking in the fucking ground I just wanted to get tested. That's not even touching on how most people only test children for the things I wanted to get tested for which was the issue with the critical race theory shouldn't be taught in schools psychiatrist.

My current therapist the one into Milgram has been like oh my gosh I'm just happy you wanted to continue therapy- Because this literally happened while I was seeing her. The person retesting me for adhd was like oh my gosh I'm just happy you're trying again. Meanwhile my ass has been here like it's not big deal shit happens no reason to give up on seeking treatment and lose faith in psychology as a whole. I like psychology people don't always use it right but it is a truly great field of study and tool for navigating life.

Which I still believe is a fair reaction but maybe not a strong enough one considering the last person who diagnosed me literally tried to have me arrested due to said diagnosis. Then went lol there's nothing wrong with her to a court of law in order to make it as difficult as possible for me to get disability or accommodations in any way.

Also learned my visual processing is slow and it's immensely understandable I'm not okay with driving and that's been my Tuesday. I have therapy at four pm.

In short fuck people who commit malpractice~

This shit is not fun to go through but at least I'm still alive. Next year I'll be thirty dealing with the fall out of something that happened when I was literally-

This shit is impressive. What the actual fuck is my life right now? I hope this ends soon but now my family, my friend and her mom are discussing suing this woman. Because got damn this is a lot... Fuck it. It happens to others too probably I don't know any others but like if it happened to me it's happening to someone else probably as I type this because,

Sources

Forbes Advisor: Medical Malpractice Statistics Of 2024 The Law Offices Of Jaroslawicz & Jaros, PLLC: When Can You Sue a Mental Health Professional for Malpractice? Lipkin & Apter: Types of Psychiatric Malpractice

Learning a lot today. Know your rights I suppose. Well I can take solace in knowing some of the prisoners experiences with this have been just as bad. Silver linings you know it's happen to more people because it's somewhat being represented in media for once instead of blatantly fucking ignored.

[iamnathannah]

I'm in Wisconsin and got my votes in last month already so most of the political mail I've received has been irrelevant and good for a laugh (and it's satisfying to shred 45 and Eric Hovde's stuff), but yesterday I got this flyer from a sketchy outfit in Houston called Badger Values PAC, which I'm sure is staffed by people who neither care about the environment or ever been north of the Tri-State (also I'm sure they're Cowboys fans).

This wasteful mailer claims that somehow, the Biden admin and Kamala will do absolutely nothing about lead in the water supply, and PFAs, a thing which is a boondongle in Madison (we have the funding approved, but Robin Vos and his cronies refuse to release it, and who literally yesterday called an effort by the state to give kids free meals "a political stunt", because it doesn't do anything for his precious Christian/Catholic school vouchers system. I'm sure that kid that's starving over $10 in lunch debt gives a fuck about your fiscal reasons for denying them a meal, Robin).

But this flyer basically asserts that Joe and Kamala will murder our kids and don't care about the environment, when the other party is holding back funds? And we literally had an event a week ago where Joe and Kamala will release funds to eradicate all lead piping in the water supply.

And somehow, only Dr. Stein can fix this issue.

With what, a strongly written letter to the fucking Boston Phoenix?

She knows she has no shot to win; she's not in enough states to win 270 electoral votes, and the Green Party she's a part of is three kids in a trenchcoat pretending to be a Green Party, when every actual Green Party in the world laughs at their existence (her folks in Nevada somehow fucked up so bad she was denied because her candidacy was submitted as a referendum question! That's like a mistake you make when you're first running for alderperson and very inexperienced, not for national office for the third time!). She would do more for Rachel Green in a Friends reboot than actually get anything green and environmental done. She gives more a fuck about being sad that RT got wound down than about anything to do with our water supply. The Greens got a ballot line in August for multiple offices in the state that was completely empty, a literal waste of paper and ink to prop up Jilly Bean, which is like the opposite of the actual party that she allegedly stands for (but has turned into a new Birch Society).

And it's pretty well known that Badger Values is likely a GOP cover op trying to sow uncertainty.

Remember; you cast a third-party ballot, you're doing worse than nothing. And you're likely just handing the election to that terrible man. Just ignore Jill; she's in it for the ego and to get back to her lunches with Vlad and the KGB once 45 gives the okay. Nothing more. And this flyer is something a sane Green Party in Europe would never even let get into their fucking Photoshop app, much less printed and sent to millions of homes the same as a goddamned Valpak.

Never forget, this is what Russia pays her to do.

[trumpwashere]

Still suspicious

Even though this is an old interview during Covid, it's strange that at no point during the interview do either of them mention that the numbers were being bumped up in order to make the Trump Administration look incompetent in handling the virus, and subliminally convince Americans to vote him out….and also somehow create a crack in the voting system to be able to cause false election results. I wrote this email to my family on May 13, 2020…"A few comments on Coronavirus. I predict the Liberal Democrats are going to pressure the government to keep the lockdown going until Election Day. That's their scheme to win the election. We'll see if it works. I do predict an upset though, the Trump might be taking a dive. I predict corrupt election results cause an upset"….

What did happen a few months before the election…We have three special needs daughters all allowed to vote. All three of them are registered Democrats and each of them received three mail-in ballots(I still have the pictures to prove it)….pipe down, they all voted for the Trump, In-Person at the voting booth in 2020…but I'm suspicious till this day as to how many other Democrats mailed in all three or more of the mail-in ballots they received. I have to assume a few million or more. FYI in the government research I've done over the past 4 yrs there isn't any way of verifying that you or anyone mailed three ballots in, and all will be counted. There also isn't any verification or tracking to prevent people from voting in multiple states. So a person can vote in all 50 states if they were capable of traveling that fast, and all 50 of your votes would count. Found that on a government website, individual States are only responsible for tallying the Votes in that State.

On another note. I have to mention this because I've posted this 20 or more times on various platforms and emailed CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC and other media outlets this information and to this day I've never received any response….I watched a story on local Miami news just 9 days before the election of 2020 that showed a pallet of 100,000 fake voter ID's that had been stopped at the Port or Miami. The story showed Miami Port officers standing around the pallet. Where were they being shipped to? Whose names were on the ID's? Were ballots cast linked to those ID's? Where are they now?

You can't even find that story online anymore. It's as if it was squashed and removed from history. I wish I recorded it that night because I would've shared it a thousand times by now. But not a peep on the internet about that story exists anywhere.

Can someone please find that story and find out where those Voter ID's are and get answers to the questions above?

Final note, to this day I still don't know one person that died of Covid. Nobody of the 120 old golfers I play golf with died. All over 60 yrs old. None of their family members. No one from my or my wife's family. None of my 100 old friends and classmates from NJ or anyone in their families. None of the 76 co-workers and their family members that I worked with at the airport. But we all caught Covid…..Elon Musk just said "I don't know anyone that died of Covid"

The statistics show that 1.2 million people died of Covid in the U.S. The population of Bangladesh is a little more than Half of the United States, but they live in an area the size of Illinois. They should've been emaciated by Covid, or minimally had half as many deaths as we had, yet they only had 29,479 deaths. I'm pretty sure we lied significantly regarding the impact of Covid in order to get President Trump out of office. It was a brilliant strategy on the part of Democrats and it worked. It will go down in History as the greatest covert manipulation of the American people. Job well done Democrats….but you might've created the greatest comeback in Presidential History….(although I'm pretty sure the Democrats will do whatever it takes to prevent the Trump from winning…they'll even pull the tri…..) Prayers for the Greatest Nation ever created. God bless America

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

In 2020, when Donald Trump questioned the results of the election, the courts decisively rejected his efforts, over and over again. In 2024, the judicial branch may be unable to save our democracy.

The rogues are no longer amateurs. They have spent the last four years going pro, meticulously devising a strategy across multiple fronts — state legislatures, Congress, executive branches and elected judges — to overturn any close election.

The new challenges will take place in forums that have increasingly purged officials who put country over party. They may take place against the backdrop of razor-thin election margins in key swing states, meaning that any successful challenge could change the election.

We have just a few short weeks to understand these challenges so that we can be vigilant about them.

First, in the courts, dozens of suits have already been filed. Litigation in Pennsylvania has begun over whether undated mail-in ballots are permissible and whether provisional ballots can be allowed. Stephen Miller, a former Trump adviser, has brought suit in Arizona claiming that judges should be able to throw out election results.

Many states recently changed how they conduct voting. Even a minor modification could tee up legal challenges, and some affirmatively invite chaos.

Any time a state changes an election rule or can be accused of not having followed one, someone with legal standing (like a resident of that state or a candidate or a party) can bring a lawsuit. Recently courts in Georgia and Pennsylvania protected voting rights, but these lower court decisions may be appealed within the state system.

Lawsuits will also make their way to federal courts. Federal judges have on occasion been known to act in political ways, and any one of the 1,200 of them could make a decision that plunges the nation into deep confusion. In regular times, the judicial system corrects for outlier judges through the appeals process, up to, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court. But here we are looking at a narrow window of time, and public confidence in the court is nearly at a three-decade low. No matter how nonpartisan the justices are, should the Supreme Court intervene, there is a high chance millions of Americans would see the decision as unfair.

Second, state officials and local election boards also can wreak havoc by refusing to certify elections, and this time they will have new tools to manufacture justifications for undermining democracy. A new Georgia law empowering local boards to investigate voter fraud offers a prime example. On its face, the law sounds laudatory or at least innocuous. But the law could be read to give an election board the power to cherry-pick an instance or two, claim the entire election illegitimate and refuse to certify the votes. This is straight out of the 2020 playbook, when Mr. Trump reportedly successfully pressured two Wayne County, Mich., election officials not to certify the 2020 vote totals. Fortunately, that tactic didn’t work. This year it might.

In 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, which tried to reduce the risk by stating that, unless the state designates another official in advance, the governor of a state, not a local board, must certify electors. But the governor may be in on the fix, too, or give in to a pressure campaign.

Third, there are state legislatures to contend with: They might make baseless allegations of fraud and interfere to get a different slate of electors appointed to the Electoral College, as happened in 2020. Last year, in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court put an end to many such tactics. (Disclosure: I argued the case in front of the court.) But a state legislature might ignore the law and try anyway, especially if the governor of that state is politically aligned and seizes on the alternative slate.

Fourth, the Congress has the power to swing the entire election. The rules are complex; even as a law professor, I can barely make sense of them.

The good news is that under the 2022 law, Congress has reduced the chance of mischief. The threshold for a member of Congress to object to the vote from any state is higher. It must be signed by at least 20 percent of the members of both houses for it to be taken up and perhaps debated and voted on. To pass, an objection must be sustained by a simple majority in both chambers. Only two categories of objections are permissible: if the vote of any electors was not “regularly given” or if the electors were not “lawfully certified.”

The bad news is that the rules are so complicated that they could be stretched, wrongly, to give Congress the power to select the next president by sustaining bogus objections. Don’t get me wrong: Such maneuvering is totally inconsistent with the 2022 law. But it can be attempted and create chaos. Likewise, if a governor certifies a fake slate, that will be hard for Congress to fix.

Before 2020, most Americans had no reason to fear this problem. Political parties largely acted in good faith, and most understood that our basic democratic norms were sacrosanct. In a world in which one party is still consumed by election fraud claims from 2020 (as JD Vance’s nonanswer in the debate underscored) and is prepared to claim the same in 2024, we have much to fear.

It does not require much imagination to see a member of Congress acting in bad faith to try to squeeze through bogus election fraud theories and plunge the country into uncertainty on Jan. 6. The 20 percent voting threshold is meant to avoid crackpot election fraud theories, but these days more than 20 percent of Congress might be inclined to support a crackpot theory. And some Republican strategists are gearing up to argue the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act is unconstitutional and invalid.

Here’s yet another wrinkle: If no candidate gets a majority of the Electoral College, either through mischief or a simple tie, then the Constitution sends the election to Congress. Mischief can occur on Jan. 6, for example, with Congress knocking votes of electors as not being “regularly given.” If for whatever reason no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, the House will decide the presidency, under arcane voting rules in which the states, not a House majority, pick the president.

The stark reality is that there are no immediate solutions to a potential election crisis. The personnel to trigger one — in the courts, legislatures and executive branches — are largely in place.

Two votes on Nov. 5 will matter tremendously to sidestepping the chaos. One is the presidential vote. If either candidate wins the Electoral College decisively, any dispute will be rendered academic.

The other is the vote for Congress. A key point here is that it is the new House and Senate, not the existing ones, that will call the shots on Jan. 6. Congress desperately needs principled people who will put democracy over self-interest and party politics.

Americans should vote for candidates who share a commitment to democracy and who will think critically before accepting election innuendo. The next month must be about ensuring continued rule by the people and for the people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/opinion/trump-election-crisis.html

[the-green-maiden]

Supernatural Fair Fight Livestream Recap with timestamps

(based off of the notes I took while watching live. any errors are mine and not the fault of the cast or abrams)

21:01 Panel Starts. Misha introduces panel- Stacey Abrams, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padelecki, Erik Kripke, Berto the ASL interpreter.

21:02 Stacey Abrams talks about how she got into SPN. Talks about running for governor(?) in California(?), having trouble gathering support/campaign funds. On a particularly bad day, ends up watching SPN in her hotel room. Loves it, ends up watching the whole show after this. Quotes “Even if it’s hard we can’t stop” and “who else is going to do this” and talks about keeping going.

21:05 Kripke: “Wow”

Ackles: “That’s one of the most beautiful interpretations of what we do, how we tell the story.”

21:06 Kripke: “Grateful we could provide inspiration” 

21:07 JarPad: *reiterates above* joke about how “Kripke’s writing is questionable at best.”

21:08 Misha: “The reason we tell stories is to inspire people” creates an allegory about the ‘invisible enemy’ of voter suppression with the invisible enemy trope common in storytelling. “As we made the show, we were taking inspiration from [Abrams]”

21:09 Kripke asks Abrams to tell more about Fair Fight

21:09 Abrams talks about a secretary of state(?) [whose name I didn’t catch but who JPad refers to as ‘Lucifer”] who was in charge of voter registries in Georgia who wrongfully removed thousands of voters from lists, closed essential polling locations, and prevented people from voting, which disproportionately impacted POC and youth voters, and led to 8+ hour wait times in remaining locations. Abrams tells of how her and FF acted to fix this and change the whole system for the better. “If this becomes about politicians, no one is going to care, but when it becomes about people’s [list of basic rights and essential services]...” “...Patriotic belief that democracy means that if you’re eligible to vote, you get to be heard. Fair Fight is committed to ensuring that every voter in the US has the right to vote, and we are pretty good at it.”

21:16 Misha voices concerns about Trump’s attempts to make the 2020 vote counts seem unreliable.

21:17 Abrams gives an in-depth history of voter suppression in the US, committed by both parties at various times, including restrictions on mail-in votes, ID laws, and something about the voting rights act.

21:18 A bunch more panelists join in, including Jake Abel, Felicia Day, and a number of other SPN cast members.

21:19 Abrams says that in Texas a gun license is a valid id to vote, but a college id is not. “Everyone should get to participate, not just the chosen.” Mentions that she has not seen the final 3 episodes yet, request no spoilers until she logs out.

21:22 Kripke thanks Abrams for her political work.

21:22 Felicia Day says she was very excited to meet Abrams at Dragon Con.

21:33 Misha and Kripke try to move panel along to comply with Abrams limited time availability.

21:24 Rachel Miner “We all admire you [Abrams], you’re our hero.”

21:25 JPad gives a long speech thanking Abrams that was too fast to write down verbatim. “It’s important that everyone have their own voice” says it’s an honor to meet Abrams.

21:26 Bob Singer asks a question about Purdue(?) not showing up to a debate.

21:27 Abrams gives a detailed answer about swing states, swing voters, the lack of swing voters in Georgia, and the relatively small impact that Purdue(?) missing a debate would have on his numbers. Long speech about mail-in voting.

21:29 Sebastian Roche asks a question about run-off votes. Abrams answers.

21:30 Rachel Miner asks a question about voter registration descrimination against people w foreign names.

21:31 Abrams talks about how this has happened and what Fair Fight is doing to combat it, and how Fair Fight’s legal actions have managed to significantly reduce the amount of mail-in ballots thrown out for having difficult to understand names on them.

21:33 Shoshanna Stern thanks Abrams for her efforts in making voting more disability accessible.

21:34 Abrams answers, gives more info on the subject and the importance of having accessible voting locations.

21:36 Jim Beaver says it’s wonderful to be able to talk to Abrams, etc.

21:37 Abrams realizes her time has just about run out, and says thank yous and good byes. Mentions that tomorrow is her birthday. Multiple members of the cast wish her a happy birthday. More goodbyes from everyone, and thank yous to and from Abrams. Abrams exits call.

21:39 Kripke and Misha encourage people to donate to FF

21:41 Misha and Jensen rib each other, joke about an open bar.

21:41 Misha “Now we’re just going to waste your time for half an hour now that she’s gone”

21:42 Curtis Armstrong tells a short story about his mother, who was a voter activist in Detroit and Switzerland, and how nice it was to see Abrams talk.

21:43 Trivia intro. Multiple jokes made at the same time about state capitals.

21:44 Jim Beaver “When my kid was 7, I asked her the capital of Vermont and she said V”

21:44 Kripke asks semi-serious question about what JPad wore as protection in the ball-crusher Japanese game show scene in Changing Channels.

21:45 JPad “A thimble. A mini-thimble. No, a cup.” says something else about the cup.

21:46 Ackles “Our special effects team likes to go above and beyond”

21:46 JPad comments about real fear in that scene

21:46 Misha tries to get trivia back on track. “Without powers, what does Dean say Cas is?”

------[Baby in a trenchcoat]

“Other name of the Impala?”

Julie McNiven guesses “A special place”. Someone calls out “baby”

-----[Metallicar]

“Name of Sam and Jess’s friend who goes with them to the bar in the pilot?”

Even JPad, who was in the scene, does not know. Kripke comments that it was named after an irl friend of his from Tiuanna, named LUIS.

“5 works Kripke ripped off for SPN?”

Everyone guessing at once, including: Animal House, On The Road, Good Omens, Constantine, Star Wars, and several others.

“What herpes medication does Sam have to do a commercial for?”

[Herpexia]

21:52 JPad and Julie rib each other about herpes meds, and argue whether the term is prescription or subscription for medication. One of them brings up the example of having a subscription to dog food.

21:52 Jake Abel “What if your dog has herpes?”

Misha “I only hope that Stacey Abrams has tuned in”

Seb makes another joke about state capitals, then asks JPad the capital of Albania.

Jared has no idea, guesses ‘new albania’

Seb “Tirana” talks about having lived on a boat, presumably near Albania.

Rob Benedict: “Thanks for tuning in”

Bob Singer asks who knows the story of Seb getting a massage at VAncouver airport.

Jared (paraphrased) “We all fly through Vancouver airport a lot. Just past security there’s a massage place [with the chairs where you face the floor].” One day JPad and Ackles went through security and saw Seb getting a massage. They go over, convince the masseuse [who knows them all at this point] to let JPad take over. Seb does not notice, despite the fact that the masseuse is a small woman and JPad is holding his hands weird to try to make them smaller. JPad says he put his hands down Seb’s back and up his shirt, and Seb still did not notice, just making a noise and saying ‘very nice’. JPad gets as far as groping Seb’s ass before Seb notices anything is up. This is still the middle of a busy airport.

21:58 Seb “It was strangely sensual. Thank you, Robert, for bringing that up.” “I was perturbed for the whole flight back.”

Ackles “Another highbrow story”

Seb “It’s really fun being on that set. It really is” Claims they are also serious sometimes, to which there is laughter in response.

Ackles “It going to be like that on The Boys, Krip?”

Kripke “No massages to completion”

Seb “Wait there was no completion”

Krip “Saw photos of [Ackles’s] supersuit today”

Multiple jokes from several people about Ackle costume for The Boys being assless, crotchless, entirely made of paint, and cowboy-themed.

22:01 Misha “time for about 5 minutes of outtakes”

Someone jokes about adding ‘give Seb a massage’ as a donation tier.

Misha thanks the fans, says he loves and misses all the cast. Asks Rob B to sing.

22:02 Rob B “tune into my radio show” [for singing]

22:03 Misha announced that $225,000 has been raised for charity so far in the stream.

More thank yous from everyone to everyone, including the zoom team.

22:04 Seb “Vote out Mitch McConnel:

Jensen “Such as British accent to tell us who to vote for”

Seb “I’m half French half Scottish”

Jensen and Seb joke about scottish and french alcohols, and how they can’t be mixed.

22:05 Kripke thanks the fans for 15 years. Everyone else joins in on thanking fans for 15 years.

Jake Abel “There was a big gap in there for me somewhere”

Seb asks if Jake was in the first season.

22:06 Jake “3rd, 5, and 15”

Seb gives long thank you speech.

Jensen talks about how the cast is sticking together “This group is not being dispersed”...”I take comfort in knowing this” jokes that they’re stuck together whether they like it or not.

Misha “Like herpes”

Felicia “Genital or otherwise”

22:07 gag reel begins, including Misha’s ‘on-camera finger, Jensen falling off a chair “furniture could use some work”, Jensen failing to pick a lock for a very long time and Jared asking ‘Cas” to open it, Jensen saying ‘hail misha’ instead of ‘hail mary’, Misha failing to keep a straight face while looking at Alex Calvert, Jensen eating something too hot(?), and more that someone has probably already uploaded in full anyway.

21:13 stream ends.

[lonniecox]

Lonnie Cox Galveston - Re-Elect Judge Cox

Re-elect Judge Lonnie Cox

 Judge Lonnie Cox is the judge of the 56th District Court in Galveston County.  The duties of the 56th District Court are to promote justice and to facilitate the scheduling of trials and the disposal of cases through trials or agreements.

 Elected in 2004, Judge Cox has been committed to serving his community with three goals; efficient justice, following the law, and keeping our community safe.

 Before becoming a judge, Judge Cox was an Assistant Criminal District Attorney for Galveston County for over 10 years, with assignments as Chief Felony Prosecutor and Chief of Misdemeanor.  As an Assistant District Attorney, he tried over 50 jury trials before his election to the bench.

 Before his legal career, Judge Cox worked for the Lubrizol Corporation, first as an operator and later working his way up to Customer Service Supervisor for two Texas plants.  Before Lubrizol, he was a musician with the Calgary Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, the Houston Grand Opera, and the Houston Ballet.  While working a full-time job and raising a family, he received a Master of Business Administration from Houston Baptist University and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence for the University of Houston Law School. He also has a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Houston.

 Recognized for his dedication and service, he has received two awards from Mothers against Drunk Drivers (MADD) as well as the Texas Gang Investigators Association Damn Good judge Award.  Judge Cox has a long history of service to his community as well. He has served as President of Communities in Schools, a director of the Galveston Employees Credit Union, President of the Kiwanis Club, President of the Rotary Club, President of the Optimist Club, President of the Gideon’s Camp, is currently the Vice President of M I Lewis Social Services, a member of the Propeller Club, Galveston Beach Band, and is a Deacon and Sunday School Teacher at South Main Baptist Church.

 He is also a member of numerous professional organizations.  He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, Texas Board of Legal Specializations in Criminal Law, the College of the State Bar of Texas, a graduate of the Texas Judicial College, the Galveston Bar Association (where he served as a Director and Secretary), the Pro Bono Committee for the years 2002 and 2003, the Judicial Section of the Texas State Bar, Chair of the Galveston County Community Supervision and Correction Board, Director of the Galveston County Juvenile Probation Board, member of the Advisory Board for Rules for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.  Judge Cox has been appointed twice as an MDL (Multi-District Litigation) Master (handling over 40,000 cases in addition to his regular case load).  Judge Cox has also been a visiting Judge on the 1st Court of Appeals.

 Judge Cox’s long list of accomplishments and multiple organizations with which he is affiliated have given him many life experiences which have helped him serve his community as Judge of the 56th District Court. His experiences and working with people in the private sector have given him a special insight and have taught him to be fair and courteous to all people.  He recognizes an even greater need when people are experiencing the stress of legal proceedings.  His courtroom is dedicated to maintaining those ideals.

 With his multiple years of experience in the courtroom, having the advantage of being involved in trying cases as Assistant District Attorney, and having the perspective of being on both sides of the bench, Judge Cox knows the importance of having an efficient courtroom that allows justice without unnecessary delay.  His experiences have shown him how to effectively move cases so that a fair and just outcome is achieved for all parties involved.  It’s that commitment that leads to effective outcomes.

 His involvement in the community has shown him every day how we must all work together for a safer community.  Judge Lonnie Cox understands how important a safe community is for the hard-working citizens of Galveston County and is dedicated to continuing his long record of working towards and achieving that goal.  He works and volunteers with multiple organizations with the goal of strengthening those ties to the community.  Local Police Chiefs and Law Enforcement Associations have routinely supported and continue to support Judge Cox and his fair but firm stance against crime.

 But, that goal cannot be achieved without your help.  The upcoming election that will be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, is critical.  Good, dedicated public servants like Judge Lonnie Cox will need your vote at the ballot box.  There are many important dates to observe in anticipation of Election Day.  Here are a few to keep in mind.  If you have not requested your ballot by mail, and are eligible to do so, PLEASE APPLY NOW!  Also, please note that if you are not currently registered to vote, the last day you can register is October 5, 2020.  The first day to vote early by personal appearance is Monday, October 19, 2020, and you can vote early at any Galveston Early Voting Center until the last day of Early Voting on Friday, October 30, 2020.

 There are many reasons to get out the vote on November 3rd and cast your ballot for Judge Lonnie Cox.  We need to keep experienced, dedicated judges that are concerned about what’s best for the citizens of Galveston.  We need courts that are run efficiently and justly.  Judge Lonnie Cox has a proven record of excellence serving in that position.

 But, most of all, Judge Cox is proud to be married to Alison and a proud father to six children, grandfather to 11, and great-grandfather to seven.  Both personally and professionally, his dedication and hard work have helped and contributed to making Galveston County a safer place for everyone.  Efficient justice, fairness to all concerned, following the law, and keeping the community safe – goals that have been the focus of Judge Cox’s service.

  2020 Re-elect Judge Cox

[solacekames]

Royce Reeves, Sr., has been driving a limousine borrowed from a funeral parlor to take poor or unmotivated residents of Cordele, Georgia, to the polls to vote early.

Are Police Targeting Get-Out-the-Vote Efforts in Georgia? 

By Charles Bethea November 1, 2018

On October 24th, Takeyla Singleton, a housekeeper at a Best Western hotel in Cordele, Georgia, posted a two-minute video to her Facebook account. Earlier that day, Singleton, who is African-American, like the majority of the town’s residents, had filmed Royce Reeves, Sr.—a forty-six-year-old barber and an elected city commissioner—receiving a ticket for illegally parking a limousine on Highway 19. Reeves, who is also black, had recently borrowed the vehicle to take poor or unmotivated residents to the polls to vote early. (I wrote about one such ride for this week’s issue of The New Yorker.) He twice voted for Barack Obama, then Donald Trump, and is now an outspoken supporter of Stacey Abrams, the African-American Democrat running for governor of Georgia; by November 6th, Reeves expected to assist as many as four hundred Abrams voters. Along the way, he often shouted out the window of the limo at passersby, which was out of the ordinary in a quiet town otherwise best known for its watermelons.

Moments after one state patroller engaged Reeves on the side of the highway, more law-enforcement vehicles began to show up. “It’s stupid. Look at them,” Singleton tells another observer in the video. “They called all that backup.” She went on, counting law-enforcement vehicles surrounding the white limo, which was on loan from the J. W. Williams funeral home. “One, two, three, four.” Someone else said, “Six cars!” Singleton went on, “Seven. . . . That’s a crying shame. On one little person. And the man driving the funeral-home car.”

Reeves told me he’d driven past the first patroller, who was ticketing someone else, then made a left and went a few blocks farther—beyond the view of the patroller—to talk to a man about his commissioner work. “They turned the lights on me,” he told me. ”And the guy, one of the troopers, when he got out of the car he spoke to me ugly. I said, ‘I’m not a criminal. If you’re gonna give me a ticket for being improperly parked, give me a ticket.’ They called in a bunch more troopers.” Reeves added, “They knew that that limousine was being used to haul people to the polls. They knew that. How many other people riding around town in a limousine?”

Serious claims of voter suppression have been made against Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor. As secretary of state, Kemp is in charge of elections and voter registration, which puts him in a position to referee his own contest. (For this reason, the former President Jimmy Carter, among others, has called on Kemp to resign from the position.) Kemp cancelled nearly one and a half million Georgia voter registrations, for various reasons, between the 2012 and 2016 elections, and more than half a million more in 2017. In August, an elections consultant linked to Kemp recommended the closure of seven of nine polling locations—many of them used by African-American voters—in a poor southwestern Georgia county. (The plan was voted down.) In another poor Georgia county, during Kemp’s tenure as secretary of state, an African-American grandmother, attempting to help a new voter use an electronic voting machine, was charged with the unusual crime of “improper assistance in casting a ballot.” Six years later, after two trials, the elderly poll worker was finally acquitted.

On Monday, a federal judge ruled against Kemp’s attempt to prohibit certain absentee ballots from being counted, writing, “The Court finds that the public interest is best served by allowing qualified absentee voters to vote and have their votes counted.” Perhaps the most significant suppression claim against Kemp, though, has focussed on a reported fifty-three thousand voters—some seventy per cent of them African-American—whose registration is “on hold” due to an “exact match” voter-I.D. law, which creates problems for voters who’ve changed their address or their name. A few weeks ago, Debra Roberts, a clerk at a warehousing company who moved to Georgia nearly two decades ago, told me, “When I moved here I changed my last name and they said everything went through. But every time I go to vote, they say, ‘No, your name isn’t right.’ This time it’s supposed to be changed, but I just don’t know if my vote is being counted.” (People like Roberts can still vote, with sufficient identification.)

But there is also concern that voters, particularly minorities, are being intimidated in other ways, at the local level—a few weeks ago, for instance, a bus full of black seniors was pulled over on the way to the polls in a rural Georgia county. The same is true of the Reeves incident, Seth Bringman, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia, argues. “Brian Kemp has hardly tried to hide his desire to see fewer people of color voting in Georgia,” Bringman told me, “and the culture of fear, intimidation, and confusion he has created statewide is pervasive at a local level as well,” as when “a black councilman is stopped while simply trying to provide members of his community with rides to the polls.”

I asked the Cordele Police Department about the incident. “Traffic stops are inheritably dangerous,” Andrew Roufs, an administrative lieutenant, wrote in an e-mail on Wednesday, “as the officer(s) conducting these stops have no prior knowledge of what may happen or what the stop may lead to. Typically, when multiple officers respond to any call for service, the officer(s) only intention is to ensure everyone’s safety and, in this case, this would include the driver, officer, and any bystanders.” He went on, “It is the policy of the Cordele Police Department to provide assistance, when requested, to an agency or officer as in this case.” Roufs, who wouldn’t say why the Cordele officers were called in the first place, referred me to the Georgia State Patrol.

On Wednesday, I received a response from Mark Perry, a public-information officer with the State Patrol. “One trooper conducted the traffic stop for illegally parking,” Perry wrote in an e-mail. “The driver was out of the vehicle with a small crowd,” he went on. “The trooper asked for a backup unit due to the number of people. One local trooper responded. Three other troopers assigned to I-75”—a nearby interstate—“from another region overheard the radio traffic and responded on their own. I have no knowledge as to why local police went to the scene. The driver was cited and released.” I asked Perry whether it was typical for five or more troopers to respond to a parking incident involving an unarmed individual. Perry explained, “It’s not unusual when a trooper is outnumbered by bystanders approaching a traffic stop.” (Asked to comment about the incident, Kemp’s press secretary did not immediately respond.)

As it happens, I was in the funeral limo earlier that day with Reeves. Hours before the illegal parking incident, Reeves took a phone call. “I’ve had the cops called on me twice today,” Reeves told the caller.“They say I’m campaigning too close to the polls, soliciting votes. I told the Sheriff, ‘We did no more in this campaign than we did for you.’ ” When he spotted a young black friend being pulled over in town by a white trooper (the young man hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt), Reeves angled the limo into a parking lot directly across the street. We got out and watched the stop unfold over a period of ten minutes. At one point, Reeves took out his smartphone and held it up as if he were filming the incident. (I did the same.) No additional troopers showed up to back up the ticketing officer in this instance, despite a small crowd of young black men close by. Reeves later told me that this same patroller was among those who showed up when he was pulled over later that day.

[lenbryant]

Why it takes so long in California

By Soumya Karlamangla California Today, Writer (NYTimes) The election was over a week ago, but we’re still anxiously awaiting the results of several key races.The winner of the tight contest for Los Angeles mayor has yet to be determined, and more than three dozen state legislative races remain undecided. As of Tuesday night, six of the nine uncalled U.S. House races were in California.Perhaps you’re wondering why the Golden State seems to take so long to count ballots. I was, too, so I asked some election experts for their insight.I had often heard that the delay was because California is an enormous state, with nearly 22 million registered voters. But while it’s true that we have more votes to count, we also have more election workers to help guide the process along, so volume probably isn’t the primary factor.The experts told me that the extra time it took to finalize results in California was more likely because state officials had tried so hard to make voting here as easy as possible.That’s a good thing, but it also means that voters have more time to turn in vote-by-mail ballots, the opportunity to correct errors in their ballots, and multiple ways to cast their votes — all of which slow the final tallies. As Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Marymount University law professor, put it, “We have prized turnout over speed.”Here are some of the reasons for the long wait:The rise of mail-in votingIn 2004, a third of California voters cast ballots by mail. In the June primary this year, that fraction had exploded to 91 percent, according to an analysis by the nonprofit California Voter Foundation.Continue reading the main storyADVERTISEMENTThe popularity of mail-in voting in the state had been growing for years when election officials decided to mail every registered voter a ballot in November 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. Now that’s standard in California for all elections.Mail-in ballots take longer to process than those cast in person. Before a ballot can be opened and fed into a counting machine, an election worker must verify that the signature on the envelope matches the signature on file, to both confirm the identity of the voter and check that the person didn’t also fill out a ballot at a polling place.It’s a tedious task that delays how long it takes to receive results, but it is done to make absolutely sure that the vote totals are accurate, said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.“That’s the ironic thing,” she said. “There are some people who are observing this and thinking there must be something questionable going on, when in fact what’s going on is election officials are ensuring the security and accuracy of the vote count.”Continue reading the main storyADVERTISEMENTSeven-day grace periodCalifornia allows seven days for ballots to make it to election offices, as long as they’re postmarked on or before Election Day. That means that ballots that were received through yesterday were included in the count.Most states require that absentee ballots get to county election offices by, or even before, Election Day, with no grace period. But California officials give ballots a week to arrive to make sure no votes are disqualified because of post office delays or errors.Ballot curingCalifornia counties are also required to contact voters with missing or mismatched envelope signatures so they can be given the opportunity to submit valid signatures and have their ballots counted.This process, known as ballot curing, is mandated in only about half of U.S. states. The rest of them don’t count ballots with these problems. Curing takes time, and further lengthens California’s vote-counting period.Continue reading the main storyADVERTISEMENT30-day count deadlineFinally, under California law, county election officials have 30 days to count every ballot. In many other states, the deadline is about a week.“California has always had this 30-day canvass period, at least as long as I can remember,” said Paul Mitchell, a vice president at Political Data Inc., a supplier of election data based in Sacramento. But as the popularity of mail-in voting has led to more ballots coming in after Election Day, he said, “it becomes much more apparent to people that ‘Hey, it’s taking a long time.’”On Tuesday evening, California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, warned that it could take several more days, or even weeks, to know all the results of last week’s elections. In 2020, it took California 11 days to report 95 percent of its votes.“This is normal,” Weber said in a statement. “We have a process that by law ensures both voting rights and the integrity of elections. I would call on everyone to be patient.”

[go-redgirl]

Mark Levin: ‘There Is More Evidence of Voter Fraud Than There Was Ever Evidence of Russian Collusion

Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” conservative talker Mark Levin argued there was voter fraud that occurred in the 2020 presidential election despite some Republicans demanding President Donald Trump back off the claims of fraud.

Levin pointed to last-minute rule changes by Democrat-controlled state governments and compared it to allegations of Russian collusion bolstered by Democrats from the 2016 presidential election.

Transcript as follows:

HANNITY: All right. Joining us now, the author of “Unfreedom of the Press”, “Life, Liberty, Levin”, I call him the great one every Sunday night, number one show, syndicated radio host, Mark Levin.

Did I read this correctly? Twitter banned the great one Mark Levin after you quoted —

MARK LEVIN, FOX NEWS HOST, “LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN”: No.

HANNITY: No?

LEVIN: They slapped me.

HANNITY: They slapped you?

LEVIN: I quoted the Constitution, and they slapped me.

(LAUGHTER)

LEVIN: Well, Twitter can go to hell, and Facebook can go to hell. Of course, they would. They don’t believe in the Constitution.

HANNITY: But you quoted the Constitution in a tweet, right? That’s what they —

LEVIN: Yes, yes.

HANNITY: We are in trouble, we are doomed.

LEVIN: Look, the reason Alito did what he did, and let’s pray to the Good Lord that there are five justices who are constitutionalists on the courts because Roberts clearly is not — it’s because of Article 2, Section One, Clause Two of the Constitution.

And the left and the Democrats hate this clause because, why? What does it say? Each state shall appoint in such manner as the legislature they are made direct and number of electors equal to the number of senators and their representatives.

This is really the only place in the Constitution where it where the framers of the Constitution and the ratifiers go into the federal constitution and say, not the state courts, not the federal courts, not the governor, not the bureaucracy, not Congress, but the states are going to make the election laws on determining how to choose the electors for president of the United States.

So, the Democrats have spent their careers trying to destroy that section of the Constitution, why? Because they want to win states like Pennsylvania.

The governor of Pennsylvania who is a left-wing kook Democrat tried to get the legislature to change the deadlines to move them out for mail-in voting. He wanted to get rid of the comparison on signatures. The secretary of state wanted to cure the ballots, go back and tell people how to fix their ballots, among other things. The Republican legislature said no.

So, the Democrats go where? To the Democrat-controlled and elected Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which is a rogue court as much as be Florida Supreme Court was a rogue court. And that court gives them what the legislator would not. In fact, that court said that the deadline among other things was unconstitutional because of the virus. It is an utterly rogue court.

The Democrats have gone into state after state after state — as a matter of fact, the Democrats have brought over lawsuits, and their left-wing friends brought over 300 lawsuits during this election to change the election rules and states, and they did change a lot of them.

The Biden campaign specifically brought 60 lawsuits beginning in August. So, what did they do? They wanted to change the rules.

So, let me answer Chris Christie and Alan Kinzinger, whatever the hell his name is, and all of the other Republicans who are out there saying, show me the evidence of fraud. I will show the evidence of fraud, boys. They changed the rules. Why did it take until 2:00 a.m. or 3:00 a.m. the morning after the election in 2016 to know who the winner is, but we’re still counting votes today?

Now, why were the rules changed by the Democrats? Because they believe in good government because they wanted to help Republicans? No, they fixed the rules to help Democrats. That’s why Alito and hopefully four other justices are saying, segregate those votes. Those were done by the state Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in violation of the federal Constitution of the United States.

Look, I have a lot more to say, but let me just say this before I lose my time. There is more evidence of voter fraud than there was ever evidence of Russian collusion. So, those who keep saying, let’s see the evidence, where the hell were you the last four years? You are nowhere.

The Democrats want earlier and earlier voting and later and later counting. Now, why do they want that? More time, more time to fix the system. I don’t mean to reform it — I mean fix it in their favor.

They believe in flooding the system, create chaos. They’ve done this in the number of places. Grab power, and then accuse your opponent of misbehavior.

Where does that come from? Two Marxist professors, Cloward and Piven, that was their ideology. The Democrats have embraced this for years and years.

Now, we’re supposed to have unity. Let me tell you something. I’m part of the new resistance, God forbid if our president doesn’t win. They didn’t give this man one minute of peace when he was president, not one minute. State criminal investigations, federal criminal investigations, congressional investigations, phony impeachment, coup attempts, the Obama- Biden administration with the FBI spies and all the rest — no time during the last four years did Joe Biden say, let’s unite around our president.

So, Mr. Biden, God forbid if you’re president, but I personally will treat you the way Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Jim Acosta, Fredo Cuomo and all the rest of them treated my president.

So, you’re not — I am not uniting around this man any more than they united around our man. But it ain’t over until it’s over. And let’s see what the Supreme Court does, and let’s see what happens in these other cases because they are vital.

And, by the way, in 2000 when we had the challenge, Al Gore had to 37 days in one state chasing. We have multiple states, the president needs more time. That’s it.

HANNITY: All right. Great one, Mark Levin, Sunday night, 8:00 Eastern, number one show on cable, “Life, Liberty & Levin” here on FOX.

[lodelss]

Three Missouri Voters Explain Why Everyone Should be Able to Vote by Mail in 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the world operates, but as the presidential election approaches, many states have failed to respond when it comes to voting. The safest way to vote during the pandemic is to vote by mail, but state restrictions block many voters from doing so. The ACLU has sued 10 states for restricting access, including Missouri, where the state legislature just voted to expand access in 2020. While the Missouri legislature win was a major step toward progress, the state is still restricting access by requiring most voters to notarize their mail-in ballots — which means they have to violate social distancing recommendations to vote by mail.  The ACLU is fighting the notarization requirement on behalf of voters like Cecil Wattree and Javier Del Villar — two Missourians who joined the original lawsuit because they wanted to exercise their right to vote by mail. Cecil, Javier, and fellow Missouri voter Kamisha Webb shared their stories with the ACLU to show why voting by mail should be accessible — and safe  — for all. 

Vote by mail to protect Kamisha

For Kansas City resident Kamisha Webb, going to the polls could put her life in jeopardy. Kamisha has asthma and a condition called hereditary angioedema, which requires her to use a nebulizer machine, various medications, and biweekly injections to manage her health. A cold or flu could land her in the ICU. Contracting COVID-19 could be fatal. Kamisha is doing everything she can to be safe. She stays at home on paid leave from her job because teleworking isn’t an option. She talks to her grandmother virtually, despite wanting to see her in person. But she’s worried she may not be able to take similar safety precautions when it comes to voting. 

“I feel like I have to choose whether to exercise my right to vote, or risk putting my life on the line,” she tells the ACLU. “And no one should have to mix the two, ever.”

Kamisha first learned about absentee voting when she overheard people signing up at a polling place during the 2018 midterm election. She learned that it was an option for people who are sick, for example, or have a disability that hinders their ability to vote in person. 

“I just thought, wow, that’s so cool to have a process in place for individuals to still vote if they’re not able to physically go to the polls,” Kamisha tells the ACLU. “It would be wonderful if we could take that same idea and make an exception due to COVID-19. Whether or not someone has a health condition, we have a deadly virus on the loose. We should all have the right to not only vote, but to be safe in doing that.”

People of color will likely be harmed most by restricting access to voting by mail. Voter suppression efforts already target people of color nationwide, and COVID-19 disproportionately affects people of color, particularly the Black community, to which Kamisha belongs. She attributes this to the prevalence of underlying health conditions, lack of access to health care and insurance, and discrimination in medical care. On the higher death rates in the Black community, Kamisha is “saddened, but not surprised.” Kamisha joined the Missouri lawsuit not only because she is at risk, but because she believes everybody should be able to vote by mail during the pandemic. If the court rules in her favor, she says she will be overcome with joy: “I’m kind of filled with emotion just thinking about it.”

Vote by mail to protect Cecil’s daughter

By the time she turned eight, Cecil Wattree’s daughter, Allyn, had gone through open heart surgery, multiple strokes, was placed on a ventilator, and was on a waiting list for a heart transplant — among other ailments and surgeries resulting from her being born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome.  “It’s a gift of God that she recovered to the point where she is able to function,” says Cecil. “But it still leaves her immunocompromised when it comes to her lungs and her heart.” That makes Allyn high risk to COVID-19. When the ACLU sued Missouri, he joined the lawsuit, explaining, “I’m in a unique position to be able to advocate for my daughter.” Cecil constantly worries about exposing his daughter to the virus, especially because he still has to go to work at a primary care clinic. The clinic has taken precautionary measures, and Cecil is being “super hyper vigilant” at home because of his daughter.  “When I come home, I have to pretty much take all my clothes off in the garage or the cellar and then run into the bathroom and take a shower before I even see Allyn,” says Cecil. “Even after that, it’s a struggle to be safe when you have a highly affectionate eight year old who wants to be in your arms. I always worry that I might have encountered the virus in some way.”

It doesn’t help that as a Black man, Cecil has to navigate a world where his race directly impacts his ability to stay safe. He thinks twice about visiting a store wearing a mask in a white neighborhood. And he’s seen discrimination in medical care firsthand with his own daughter: “When Allyn had a stroke, the doctors didn’t believe she had one, even though she showed symptoms. I had to advocate so hard just to get them to look at her and give her a CT scan.”  He worries about what this means when it comes to COVID-19, which has symptoms similar to the flu or cold: “How am I going to get them to take it seriously?”

Cecil wants to be as safe as possible and vote absentee in November — but having a vulnerable daughter, being Black, and being an essential worker doesn’t make you eligible in Missouri.  “A lot of people have fought and died for my ability to vote,” says Cecil on why voting is so important to him. “Being able to vote by mail would give me a sense of protection while also ensuring that I can exercise my right to have a say in the direction this country’s going.” No matter the outcome of the lawsuit, however, Cecil knows he’s privileged to have the option to vote in person when it comes down to the wire. “There are people who have no availability, no transportation, whose health is already compromised. To tell them to social distance while not allowing their voices to be heard is to take advantage of the current situation to suppress voters.”

Vote by mail to protect Javier’s community

As a 29 year old without pre-existing medical conditions, Javier is not considered by the CDC to be high risk to COVID-19. But Javier works for the national delivery service, making him an essential worker who comes into contact with the whole community on a daily basis.  “In delivery, I feel like I’m helping people get what they need, because we do a lot of medical supply deliveries,” says Javier. “So it feels good. At the same time, it feels uncomfortable just knowing that the people receiving those deliveries are often out of work, while I am working.” While millions of people have lost their jobs in the past few months, Javier’s work has gotten even busier, with longer hours and more packages delivered each day. He calls it “Christmas volume.” Due to stay-at-home orders in the community, he’s also encountering more people when he delivers packages to their homes. Often, they want to come out and talk to him. “You really get the vibe that people just want to talk and see someone and interact,” he says.  He’s noticed a range in responses to COVID-19 safety measures in the people he encounters. “Some customers wave through their window and then will come out with a bleach bottle and spray down the package I just left at their door. Parents will yell at their kids to not touch the package if they come running out. And then there are some people who will just pick up the package and take it inside like it’s any other day. Everyone’s handling it differently.”

Javier can’t control what others do, but he takes his own precautions like wearing latex gloves while working, even though it’s not required by his job. When a customer wants to chat, he tries to keep his distance. If he comes down with symptoms similar to COVID-19, like he did in March, he stays home. Javier does what he can to stay safe in all areas of his life, so he wants to do the same when it’s time to vote in November. 

He knew voting by mail would be the safest way to vote during the pandemic, but he was surprised to find out how restrictive Missouri’s absentee voting criteria are. He says it’s a concern for the people he encounters on his delivery route, too.  “I’ve talked to a good amount of people about it within the last two weeks,” he explains. He thinks that people will be more likely to vote if they can do it from home with an absentee ballot — especially considering the pandemic.  “Voting is a basic, fundamental part of a democracy and it needs to be viewed more as a celebration and an essential part of every American’s duty if you will, to vote or not vote, but it still should be looked at as like a national holiday.”   “I picture Missouri at the forefront of changing ideology in the United States,” says Javier. “If we’re able to do something progressive in Missouri, I think the rest of the country would be able to see that as a positive thing.”

The stories of Kamisha, Cecil, and Javier show why voting by mail is a necessary option for everyone, regardless of their circumstances. There have been bipartisan efforts to expand access to vote by mail in states including Alabama, Indiana, New Hampshire, New York, and West Virginia. States should take additional measures, such as expanding early vote periods, preparing for a surge in absentee ballots, and doing away with unnecessary requirements like getting a witness signature or having to pay for postage. At the same time, states must ensure safety for those who choose to vote in person as well as poll workers. Nobody should have to risk their health to vote. 

For information on how to vote by mail, see the absentee voting guide. 

Published June 8, 2020 at 10:12PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/3f5BUi6

[othert]

Ten Things You Need to Know to Stop a Coup

By Choose Democracy

1. Don’t expect results Election night.

Election season 2020 is shaping up to be very unusual. Many mail-in ballots may not be counted until days or weeks after Election Day. Since Democrats are expected to use them more frequently than Republicans, voter tallies are expected to swing towards Democrats post-election night (they call it a “blue shift”). A wave of confusion may unfold starting Election night.

During this time expect false flags and outlandish claims. Be very cautious with news. Don’t simply pass on whatever seems dramatic examples of wrongdoing — but take the time to check if it has been verified, already debunked, or from a source you don’t trust.

Encourage people in your community to prepare for some uncertain weeks. As election results start coming in the message needs to come through loud and clear: count all the votes.

2. Do call it a coup.

People who do power grabs always claim they’re doing it to save democracy or claim they know the “real” election results. This doesn’t have to look like a military coup with one leader ordering the opposition to be arrested.

We can know it’s a coup if the government:

Stops counting votes;

Declares someone a winner who didn’t get the most votes; or

Allows someone to stay in power who didn’t win the election.

Here’s just one possible scenario: the night of the election (November 3) no victor is determined. Ballots keep getting counted. Meanwhile, there are claims (likely with minimal evidence) the incoming mail-in ballots now being counted are fraudulent. On December 14 the delegates for the electoral college meet in the state capital. But if the results are being contested, Governors and State Legislatures may each send in different results — one reflecting the results from voters, the other claiming “it’s a fraud” and “we know best” — undermining the integrity of the voting process.

This set of differences has to get resolved on January 6 by the new Congress. And if the House and Senate don’t agree about the result, then a convoluted process unfolds where the newly seated House selects (one-state-one-vote) the President and the Senate (by Majority) votes for the new Vice President. (#ShutDownDC provides a very helpful break-down of these steps.)

In any scenario, if any of those three principles are violated, we have to declare loudly and strongly: this is a coup.

3. Know that coups have been stopped by regular folks.

Coup attempts have happened all over the world, and over half have failed. That’s because coups are hard to orchestrate. Because they are a violation of norms, they require quick seizure of multiple levels of institutions with a claim that they are the rightful heir.

Coups tend to fail when government institutions (like elections) are trusted, there is an active citizenry, and other nations are ready to become involved.

The role of citizenry is crucial. That’s because during the period right after a coup attempt— when the new government is claiming it is the “real” government — all the institutions have to decide who to listen to.

A failed coup in Germany 1920 gives an example. The population felt beaten down by defeat in World War I and high unemployment. Right-wing nationalists organized a coup and got the help of a few generals to seize government buildings.

The deposed government fled but ordered all citizens to obey them. “No enterprise must work as long as the military dictatorship reigns,” they declared.

Widespread nonviolent resistance quickly began. Printers refused to print the new government’s newspapers. Civil servants refused to carry out any orders from the coup. And leaflets calling for an end to the coup were spread by airplane and by hand.

There’s a story of the coup leader wandering up and down the corridors looking in vain for a secretary to type up his proclamations. The acts of resistance grew and eventually the democratic government (which still had grave problems) was returned to power.

The moments after a coup are moments for heroism amongst the general population. It’s how we make democracy real.

4. Be ready to act quickly — and not alone.

Typically power grabs are organized in secret and launched suddenly. Most campaigns that defeat coups do so in days: Soviet Union in 1991 took 3 days, France in 1961 took 4 days, and Bolivians in 1978 took 16 days.

It’s rare for any country leader to publicly admit they might not respect the results of an election. There’s some good news in that — because people who stop coups rarely have the chance to get training, warning, or preparation. In that way, we’re ahead of the game.

A group of DC insiders called the Transition Integrity Project ran multiple simulations on Trump attempting to hold onto power no matter what. In every simulation they concluded that a “show of numbers in the streets may be decisive.” Regular people make the difference.

To start preparing, talk to at least 5 people who would go into the streets with you — the safest way to take to the streets is with people you know and trust. Talk to people you know in civil service and various roles about how they could non-comply with coup attempts. Use this time to get yourself ready to act.

5. Focus on widely shared democratic values, not on individuals.

In Argentina 1987, a coup got started when an Air Force Major, resenting attempts to democratize the military and bring it under civilian control, organized hundreds of soldiers at his base.

While the civilian government tried to quietly negotiate a settlement, people took to the streets. Against the government’s pleading, 500 regular citizens marched to the base with the slogan “Long live democracy! Argentina! Argentina!” They could have spent time attacking the Major. Instead, they were appealing to their fellow citizens to choose democracy.

The Major tried to keep them away with a tank, but the protesters entered the base anyway, and he knew that open firing on nonviolent civilians would cause him to lose more credibility. Soon 400,000 people took to the streets in Buenos Aires to rally in opposition to the coup.

This gave strength to the civilian government (which had largely been absent). Civic organizations, the Catholic church, business groups, and labor unions united under a pledge to “support in all ways possible the constitution, the normal development of the institutions of government and democracy as the only viable way of life of the Argentines.” The coup plotters lost their legitimacy and soon surrendered.

This approach is different than protesters going in the street with a list of issues or a grievance against a vilified leader. Instead, it’s exalting widely-shared core democratic values. In our project we use the language of “choosing democracy.”

6. Convince people not to freeze or just go along.

Imagine that at your job a corrupt boss gets fired and a new one is brought in. Instead of leaving, your old boss says, “I’m still in charge. Do what I say.” A bunch of your co-workers say, “We only take orders from the old boss.” At that point, doubt arises.

That doubt is how coups succeed. Enough people freeze. Even when only a few people go along with the coup and act as though that’s normal, people may reluctantly accept it as inevitable.

In all the research on preventing coups, there’s one common theme: people stop doing what the coup plotters tell them to do.

In Germany, from military commanders to secretaries, they refused to obey the orders of the coup. In Mali they called a nationwide strike. In Sudan protestors shut down government-supported radio stations and occupied airport runways. In Venezuela all shops were closed.

Coups are not a time to just watch and wait until “someone else” figures it out. No matter who you are you can be part of choosing democracy.

7. Commit to actions that represent rule of law, stability, and nonviolence.

Stopping a coup is dependent on the size of mobilizations and winning over the center. It is really a fight for legitimacy. Which voice is legitimate? Some people will have already made up their minds. The aim then is convincing those who are uncertain — which may be a more surprising number than you expect.

But to swing to our side, that uncertain center has to be convinced that “we” represent stability and “the coup plotters” represent hostility to the democratic norms of elections and voting.

We prevent that possibility when we dehumanize potential defectors, make sweeping statements like, “the police won’t help”, never encourage people to join our side, and create chaotic scenes on the street.

Historically, whichever side resorts to violence the most tends to lose. In a moment of uncertainty, people pick the side that promises maximum stability, respects democratic norms, and appears to be the safer bet. It’s a contest of who can be the most legitimate.

Mass resistance to coups wins by using walk-outs and strikes, refusing orders, and shutting down civil society until the rightful democratically elected leader is installed. For mass movements to succeed against coups, they should refuse to do violence to the other side.

8. Yes, a coup can happen in the United States.

It may be hard to imagine that a coup could happen in this country. But whenever there is an order to stop counting votes, we call it a coup.

Even by the strictest definition of coups, there has been a militarized coup in the United States. In 1898 after reconstruction in Wilmington, NC, seeing the rise of a prosperous and successful Black population, white racists organized a coup. They gave rallying cries like, “We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes, even if we have to choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses.”

Despite a terror campaign before the election, Black turnout was high and a slate of Black candidates was voted in. Black power was met with white supremacist violence, with white squads killing 30 to 300 people, including newly elected officials. Over 3,000 Blacks fled this extreme violence, and the era of Jim Crow began.

9. Center in calm, not fear.

It’s scary to believe we’re having to talk about a federal coup in the United States.

And we know that fearful people are less likely to make good decisions. Let’s aim for calm and avoid hyperbole. Be a reliable source by double-checking rumors and spreading high-quality facts. Sure, read social media… but spend some time, you know, doing real things that ground you.

Breathe deeply.

Remember how you handle fear.

Play out scenarios, but don’t become captured by them.

We’re doing this to prepare, just in case.

10. Prepare to deter a coup before the election.

The best way to stop a coup is to never have one. People are doing lots of good work on issues of voting rights, urging turn-out, stopping repression, uncovering fraud, and getting people to commit to democracy. That may be enough.

One of the easiest things you can do is to sign the pledge to Choose Democracy and get a lot of people across the political spectrum signing the pledge as well!

Because the best way to stop a coup is to deter it.

[thisdaynews]

OPINION:War Of Words As Trump & Biden Square Off In First Presidential Election Debate.(Video)

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/opinionwar-of-words-as-trump-biden-square-off-in-first-presidential-election-debate-video/

OPINION:War Of Words As Trump & Biden Square Off In First Presidential Election Debate.(Video)

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Donald Trump and Joe Biden shouted over each other and insulted each other as moderator Chris Wallace lost control of the ‘dumpster fire’ that was the first Presidential debate on Tuesday night in Cleveland, Ohio.

Barely had the night begun when the two candidates began name calling and fighting, with Biden asking Trump to shut up and slapping him down as the president repeatedly interrupted his answers.

‘Would you shut up, man?,’ a visibly exasperated Biden said about 20 minutes into the debate after Trump interrupted him again as he tried to talk about the Supreme Court.

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And, about 15 minutes later during a discussion on the COVID pandemic, he told Trump again: ‘Would you just shush for a minute?’

The president tried to command the stage from out of the box, interrupting his rival repeatedly to make his point, counter Biden and push himself into the conversation.

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It happened so many times that Fox News’ moderator Chris Wallace stepped in, asking the president to let Biden finish his answer and chided him: ‘I’m the moderator of this debate and I would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer.’

‘Go ahead then,’ Trump said, later adding to Wallace: ‘I guess I’m debating you, not him. No surprise.’

The 90-minute showdown between the presidential contenders proved early on that it would a be a knock-out, drag-down match, as they squared off over the Supreme Court, handling of the coronavirus pandemic, mail-in ballots, Trump’s taxes, Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the Black Lives Matter movement.

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‘You’ll get to see it.’ Trump shrugs off controversy over his taxes, saying he paid ‘millions’ as Biden says President ‘pays less tax than a schoolteacher’

‘I paid $38 million one year, I paid $27 million one year. I went –’ the president said, but was interrupted by Biden.

‘Show us your tax returns,’ the former vice president insisted.

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‘You’ll see it as soon as it’s finished. You’ll see it,’ Trump said.

‘Oh,’ Biden sarcastically conceded. Biden said Trump ‘takes advantage of the tax code’ and ‘pays less tax than a schoolteacher.’

Trump shrugged off the attack, saying that all business leaders do the same ‘unless they are stupid.’

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Just hours before taking the stage in the battleground rust belt state Tuesday, Biden and his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris released their tax returns.

‘Stand back and standby.’ Trump’s response when asked to condemn white supremacists and militia groups

Trump skirted a question from Wallace about whether he was willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups.

‘I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not the right wing,’ Trump responded. ‘I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.’

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When pressed further, Trump said: ‘What do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name?’

Finally, he said: ‘Proud Boys — Stand back, stand by, but I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem….. This is a left wing problem.’

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Antifa followers have appeared at anti-racism protests, but there’s been little evidence behind Republican claims that Antifa members are to blame for the violence at such protests.

Trump infamously said there were good people ‘on both sides’ after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of a counter-protester.

Biden calls Trump a ‘racist’ when the two men debated race relations

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Trump was defending his decision to end racial sensitivity training for federal workers when his Democratic rival hit him with the ‘racist’ label.

The president said the training was resulting in ‘very sick ideas’ and teaching people ‘to hate our country.’

‘If you look at the people, we were paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach very bad ideas and frankly, very sick ideas. It really, they were teaching people to hate our country. And I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to allow that to happen. We have to go back to the core values of this country,’ Trump said.

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‘Nobody is doing that. He’s racist,’ Biden said.

He defended the training programs.

‘The fact is there is racial insensitivity. People have to be made aware of what other people feel like. What insults them, what is it demeaning to them. It’s important to people. Now, many people don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings, but it makes a big difference,’ he said.

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And then he pivoted it to emphasize his blue-collar roots and hinted Trump is a snob.

Biden said: ‘It makes a gigantic difference in the way a child is able to grow up and have a sense of self-esteem. It’s a little bit like how this guy and his friends look down on so many people and look down their nose on people like Irish Catholics like me who grew up in Scranton.

‘They looked down on people who don’t have money, they looked down on people who are of a different faith.’

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Race relations, like other debate topics, resulted in a furious back-and-forth, shouting over each other’s conversation between the presidential contenders.

As the two men bickered on race, Biden invoked the death of George Floyd, the African American man killed by a white police officer in Minnesota and the Black Lives Matter protests that sprung up in the wake. Trump invoked his ‘law and order’ presidency.

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The president has accused Biden on multiple occasions of wanting to defund the police, which Biden has said he would not do.

During the debate, the Democratic nominee said most police officers are ‘good’ but the bad ones need to be rooted out.

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‘The vast majority of police officers are good, they risk their lives every day to take care of us, but there are some bad apples and when they occur, when they find them they have to be sorted out,’ Biden said.

‘Cops aren’t happy to see what happened to George Floyd. These cops aren’t happy to see what happened to Breonna Taylor. Most don’t like it, but we have to have a system where people are held accountable. And by the way, violence and response is never appropriate. Never appropriate. Peaceful protest is. Violence is never appropriate,’ he said of protests.

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Trump hit back: ‘What is peaceful protest? When they run through the middle of the town and burn down stores and kill people all over the place? That is not peaceful protest.’

The president also has complained Biden hasn’t said he’s for ‘law and order,’ a phrase Trump has used to define his presidency.

‘They don’t want to talk about law and order. Are you in favor of law and order?,’ he asked Biden.

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‘I’m in favor of law,’ Biden said.

But he attacked Trump’s approach of handling racial unrest across America.

‘The point is that is why he keeps trying to rile everything up. He doesn’t want to calm things down. Instead of going in and talking to people and saying let’s get everybody together, figure out how to deal with this, what does he do? He just throws gasoline on the fire constantly. Every single solitary time,’ he said.

‘It is what it is’ Biden blasts Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic

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Trump and Biden fought over the coronavirus crisis by accusing each other of killing more people had the other been in office.

‘He panicked or he just looked at the stock market, one of the two, because guess what, a lot of people died and a lot more are going to die unless he gets a lot smarter, a lot quicker,’ Biden said onstage.

At another point Trump shouted it would have been Biden who’d have killed more – calling his response to swine flu pandemic in 2009 a ‘disaster.’

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Biden, who was serving as vice president at the time, hit back that 14,000 died not 200,000. ‘We didn’t shut down the economy. This is his economy that he shut down,’ Biden added.

‘If we would’ve listened to you, the country would’ve been left wide open, millions of people would’ve died. Not 200,000. And one person is too much. It’s China’s fault. It should’ve never happened,’ the president said.

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Biden shot back that the president ‘waited and waited’ to act when the virus reached America’s shores and ‘still doesn’t have a plan.’

Biden told Trump to ‘get out of your bunker and get out of the sand trap’ and go in his golf cart to the Oval Office to come up with a bipartisan plan to save people.

‘You’re the worst president America has ever had,’ Biden said.

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Trump snarled a response, declaring that ‘I’ll tell you Joe, you could never have done the job that we did. You don’t have it in your blood.’

‘I know how to do the job,’ was the solemn response from Biden, who served eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president.

Biden whacked Trump for coddling China in the early weeks of the pandemic, saying that the president didn’t push hard enough to letter American health experts in.

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‘He did not even ask Xi to do that. He told us what a great job Xi was doing, he told us we owe him a debt of gratitude for being so transparent with us,’ Biden said.

The ex-veep mocked Trump for saying the coronavirus would disappear ‘like a miracle.’

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‘And maybe you can inject some bleach in your arm and that would take care of it,’ Biden also offered.

‘That was said sarcastically,’ Trump shot back.

While discussing the importance of masks to protect against the virus, Trump defended himself for not wearing one all the time, before poking fun at Biden for wearing ‘the biggest mask he’s ever seen’.

Biden also pointed out Trump retorted ‘it is what it is’, as more than 200,000 Americans have died from the deadly virus.

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Biden’s son Hunter and late son Beau are brought into the debate

More than an hour into the angry clash, Biden said Trump ‘never keeps his word,’ and brought up comments that sources told the Atlantic Trump made about fallen troops – referring to them as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’ Trump again denied it.

Biden made an impassioned pitch for his late son Beau’s military service. He spent a year in Iraq serving in the National Guard.

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‘Speaking of my son, the way you talk about the military — the way you talk about them being losers and being, and just being suckers — my son was in Iraq and he spent a year there,’ Biden said.

‘He got the Bronze Star. He got the Conspicuous Service Medal. He was not a loser. He was a patriot. And the people left behind there were heroes,’ said Biden.

‘You talking about Hunter?’ Trump asked, rhetorically after Biden mentioned his son.

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Biden answered he was speaking of Beau.

‘I don’t know Beau. I know Hunter,’ Trump interrupted, then amped up his attacks.

‘He was thrown out, dishonorably discharged for cocaine use. And he didn’t have a job until you became vice president,’ Trump said.

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‘That’s not true. None of that is true,’ Biden responded.

‘He made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow, in various other places,’ Trump said.

Hunter Biden received an administrative discharge from the Navy in after failing a drug test for cocaine in 2013. He was seeking to be commissioned as a reserve officer. He did not receive a dishonorable discharge, but an administrative one, according to press accounts at the time.

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Biden responded: ‘My son, like a lot of people we know at home, he had a drug problem.’

‘He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it,’ Biden said. ‘And I’m proud of him.’

Earlier in the night, Trump hook yet another shot at Hunter, saying: ‘And no wonder your son goes in and he takes out billions of dollars to manage. He makes millions of dollars.’ It was a reference to business Hunter Biden did with his firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC.

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Trump brought up a Senate Republican report that claimed Hunter got $3.5 million from the wealthy wife of the former Mayor of Moscow. Hunter Biden’s lawyer has denied the characterization.

‘What did he do to deserve it?’ Trump asked.

‘My son did nothing wrong in Burisa,’ said Biden – after Trump expanded his attack to Hunter Biden’s lucrative seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm.

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It resulted in still more angry cross talk.

‘He doesn’t want to let me answer because he knows I have the truth,’ Biden said.

‘It’s hard to get any word in with this clown – excuse me, this person,’ Biden said after delivering the insult.

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‘His family we could talk about all night,’ Biden said, but it was difficult to see how he followed through as Trump talked over him.

Then, Biden faced the camera and delivered one of several lines he appeared to have prepared to deliver. ‘This is not about my family or his family. It’s about your family,’ he told viewers.

‘He doesn’t want to talk about what you need … The American people. That’s what we’re talking about here.’

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Battle over Supreme Court nominee

Trump defended his effort to swiftly fill a U.S. Supreme Court seat, saying ‘elections have consequences’ and he had the right despite Democratic objections.

‘I will tell you very simply we won the election, elections have consequences. We have the Senate and we have the White House and we have a phenomenal nominee respected by all,’ Trump said in defense of his nominee, conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

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‘… I think that she (Barrett) will be outstanding. She will be as good as anybody who has ever served on that court. We won the election and therefore we had the right to choose her.’

Biden, talking over frequent interruptions from Trump, said the seat of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg should be filled after the Nov. 3 election, when it was clear who the president would be.

‘We should wait, we should wait and see what the outcome of this election is,’ Biden said, adding a more conservative Supreme Court would endanger the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare.

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Trump won’t say if he’ll accept election results, claiming mail-in ballots will lead to ‘fraud like you’ve never seen’

President Trump refused to say during Tuesday night’s presidential debate if he would accept the election results.

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‘This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen,’ he said of the November vote, citing mail-in ballots.

Trump has repeatedly claimed mail-in ballots will lead to a ‘rigged’ election despite numerous studies showing that is the case.

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‘If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that,’ Trump said as many states have begun mailing out their general election ballots.

Joe Biden said the results of the election would be accepted by both sides.

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‘He has no idea what he’s talking about,’ Biden said. ‘Here’s the deal. The fact is I will accept it. And he will too. You know why? Because once the winner is declared after all the ballots are counted, all the votes are counted, that will be the end of it. That will be the end of it. And if it’s me, fine. If it’s not me, I will support the outcome.’

He defended mail-in voting.

‘It’s not been established at all that there is a fraud related to mail-in ballots – that somehow it’s a fraudulent process,’ he said.

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‘He’s trying to scare people into thinking it’s not going to be legitimate,’ he said of Trump.

The president said his supporters would be watching for possible voter fraud.

‘I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully,’ he said.

Petty spats over who is smarter

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The two men bickered about their intelligence. Trump has called himself a ‘very stable genius’ and bragged about how well he’s done on a cognitive test, challenging Biden to take one.

And when Biden said he need to get ‘a lot smarter’ or more people would die from COVID, Trump was quick to pounce.

‘Did you use the word ‘Smart?’ He said he went to Delaware State,’ he snapped of Biden. Trump went to the University of Pennsylvania. ‘He graduated the lowest or almost the lowest in your class. Don’t ever use the word ‘Smart’ with me.’

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Biden hit back.

‘Oh, give me a break,’ he said.

Trump replied: ‘There’s nothing smart about you. 47 years, you’ve done nothing.’

When Trump was pressed to reveal his health plan, he spoke about a Supreme Court ruling that struck down Obamacare’s mandate that people buy insurance: ‘Excuse me – I got rid of the individual mandate,’ Trump said.

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Wallace told him it was not a plan. ‘That is absolutely a big thing,’ Trump responded.

When Trump and Biden kept going at it, Wallace implored: ‘Mr. President I’m the moderator of this debate and I would like you to let me ask my question.’

Biden was determined not to be caught with only a knife in a gunfight.

‘You picked the wrong guy at the wrong night at the wrong time,’ he told Trump.

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Trump accused him of risking left wing wrath by distancing himself from Sanders.

‘You just lost the left,’ Trump told him.

The angry attacks carried over into the coronavirus.

‘And by the way maybe inject some bleach into your arm, that’ll take care of it,’ Biden said, mocking Trump’s comments about injecting disinfectant to cure the virus.

The 90-minute debate was divided into six segments, selected by Fox News’ Chris Wallace, who moderated. They included: the pandemic, the economy, the Supreme Court, election integrity, the candidates’ records, and ‘race and violence in our cities.’

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The candidates did not shake hands when they take the stage at 9 pm ET on Tuesday night because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead they stood at podiums that are socially distanced from one another while Wallace sits at a desk in front of them.

There was no opening statements and the first question went to Trump.

It is the first of three scheduled presidential debates. Vice President Mike Pence and California Sen. Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, will debate in October.

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Trump suggested in a tweet on Sunday that Biden will be on performance-enhancing drugs during the debate, which could be a prediction of how he’ll try and rattle Biden during their face off.

Biden and his aides had rehearsed for any possible attacks from the commander-in-chief and the Democratic nominee has said he hopes he won’t get thrown off by any Trump allegations.

The president has insisted repeatedly – and without proof – that Biden took performance enhancement drugs ahead of the Democratic debates. He’s challenged him to take a drug test ahead of their debate here while offering to take one himself.

‘Joe Biden just announced that he will not agree to a Drug Test. Gee, I wonder why?,’ Trump tweeted Monday morning.

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And the president said during a press conference at the White House on Sunday that he wasn’t joking.

‘No, I’m not joking. I mean, I’m willing to take a drug test. I think he should too,’ he said.

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On Sunday, when asked by reporters if he would take a drug test, Biden replied: ‘No, I have no comment.

And his campaign put out a statement saying if Trump ‘thinks his best case is made in urine, he can have it.’

[phooll123]

New top story from Time: Fearing Domestic Election Meddling, Racial Justice Demonstrators Work to Turn Protest into Votes

The tens of thousands of protesters who took to the National Mall Friday, marking the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington, showed the power of the movement against police brutality that has mobilized across America this summer. But the demonstration was tinged by concern that efforts to suppress and intimidate supporters will hamper their ability to turn protest now into votes in the fall.

Many demonstrators said their concerns start at the top with President Donald Trump. Trump has threatened to send law enforcement to the polls, raising accusations of voter intimidation. His administration pursued cost-cutting measures at the postal service that experts said could slow the delivery of mail ballots. He’s pursued lawsuits in multiple states over the expansion of vote by mail and drop boxes. He’s argued without evidence that the election will be full of widespread fraud. And he’s previously refused to commit to accepting the results.

In one recent survey by Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project, more than 40% of Americans said they had doubts about the fairness of the presidential election.

“If he can get enough people to mistrust the system by sowing seeds of doubt in the integrity of this coming election, then people won’t vote. People who would have otherwise voted [and] tried to vote him out will say, ‘Eh there’s no point in even bothering,’” says Abena Gyebi, a finance communications manager from New York City. Gyebi plans to vote in person.

Berthilde Dufrene, a nurse at a New York state prison who attended the march on Friday, says she is concerned her vote may not be counted. She has requested a ballot through the mail and plans to fill it out at home and deliver it to the ballot box on election day. “The Trump administration is a corrupt administration,” she says. “I see what they are doing with the Post Office and voter suppression, so I am concerned that they will cheat, they will steal, they will lie to keep this man in power.”

Jonathan Ernst—Pool/AFP/Getty ImagesRev. Al Sharpton, center, marches next to Yolanda King, Andrea Waters King and Martin Luther King, III during the “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” protest against racism and police brutality, in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 2020.

  The theme of the march matched those sentiments, with leaders urging the assembled protesters to remain focused on getting out the vote between now and Nov. 3.

“We didn’t come out and stand in this heat because we didn’t have anything to do,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the leaders of the march. “We came to let you know that we will come out by these numbers in the heat and stand in the heat. That we will stand in the polls all day long.” And he admonished the demonstrators to hold accountable lawmakers who have not responded to this summer’s protests by passing police reform measures. “Demonstration without legislation will not lead to change,” Sharpton said. With police reform bills deadlocked in Congress, Black men and women are among the voters with the most at stake in this year’s election.

Trump is not the only concern among those seeking to turn protest into votes. Across the country, voting-access advocates and election officials have also been realistic about the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic, by necessitating extraordinary adjustments to the nation’s patchwork election system, will further hamper voter turnout in the fall. Many of the primaries held after the surge of COVID-19 cases in March were riddled with problems.

The voting advocates’ and election experts’ advice to voters includes voting as soon as they know who they support in order to avoid a build-up at polling locations on Election Day, and having a plan in place for how they are going to cast their ballot.

For their part, many of the protesters appeared to have voting plans and several said they had already begun researching their options for how they would return their ballot. “What I think people should do is absolutely go and drop your ballot into the [drop] box, or go and take it to the election folks yourself. I do not trust anything about this post office at this point. Not the postal workers, but the folks who are in charge,” says April Dyson, a lawyer from Washington, DC, at the march. Dyson noted she hadn’t received mail in five days.

Ultimately, the motivation to vote may come not from the exhortations of Sharpton or voting advocates, however, but from the cause that sparked Friday’s march, titled Get Your Knee Off Our Necks, and the other organized demonstrations throughout the summer: continuing racial injustice and police brutality against Black Americans. “What we need is change. And we’re at a point where we can get that change, but we have to stand together. We have to vote,” said Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, one of the speakers at the march. Taylor, an unarmed Black woman, was shot by police in her Louisville home when they entered it on March 13 this year with a no-knock warrant.

The crowd erupted into call and response chants:

“Say her name.”

“Breonna Taylor.”

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[itsfinancethings]

New story in Politics from Time: Fearing Domestic Election Meddling, Racial Justice Demonstrators Work to Turn Protest into Votes

The tens of thousands of protesters who took to the National Mall Friday, marking the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington, showed the power of the movement against police brutality that has mobilized across America this summer. But the demonstration was tinged by concern that efforts to suppress and intimidate supporters will hamper their ability to turn protest now into votes in the fall.

Many demonstrators said their concerns start at the top with President Donald Trump. Trump has threatened to send law enforcement to the polls, raising accusations of voter intimidation. His administration pursued cost-cutting measures at the postal service that experts said could slow the delivery of mail ballots. He’s pursued lawsuits in multiple states over the expansion of vote by mail and drop boxes. He’s argued without evidence that the election will be full of widespread fraud. And he’s previously refused to commit to accepting the results.

In one recent survey by Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project, more than 40% of Americans said they had doubts about the fairness of the presidential election.

“If he can get enough people to mistrust the system by sowing seeds of doubt in the integrity of this coming election, then people won’t vote. People who would have otherwise voted [and] tried to vote him out will say, ‘Eh there’s no point in even bothering,’” says Abena Gyebi, a finance communications manager from New York City. Gyebi plans to vote in person.

Berthilde Dufrene, a nurse at a New York state prison who attended the march on Friday, says she is concerned her vote may not be counted. She has requested a ballot through the mail and plans to fill it out at home and deliver it to the ballot box on election day. “The Trump administration is a corrupt administration,” she says. “I see what they are doing with the Post Office and voter suppression, so I am concerned that they will cheat, they will steal, they will lie to keep this man in power.”

Jonathan Ernst—Pool/AFP/Getty ImagesRev. Al Sharpton, center, marches next to Yolanda King, Andrea Waters King and Martin Luther King, III during the “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” protest against racism and police brutality, in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 2020.

  The theme of the march matched those sentiments, with leaders urging the assembled protesters to remain focused on getting out the vote between now and Nov. 3.

“We didn’t come out and stand in this heat because we didn’t have anything to do,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the leaders of the march. “We came to let you know that we will come out by these numbers in the heat and stand in the heat. That we will stand in the polls all day long.” And he admonished the demonstrators to hold accountable lawmakers who have not responded to this summer’s protests by passing police reform measures. “Demonstration without legislation will not lead to change,” Sharpton said. With police reform bills deadlocked in Congress, Black men and women are among the voters with the most at stake in this year’s election.

Trump is not the only concern among those seeking to turn protest into votes. Across the country, voting-access advocates and election officials have also been realistic about the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic, by necessitating extraordinary adjustments to the nation’s patchwork election system, will further hamper voter turnout in the fall. Many of the primaries held after the surge of COVID-19 cases in March were riddled with problems.

The voting advocates’ and election experts’ advice to voters includes voting as soon as they know who they support in order to avoid a build-up at polling locations on Election Day, and having a plan in place for how they are going to cast their ballot.

For their part, many of the protesters appeared to have voting plans and several said they had already begun researching their options for how they would return their ballot. “What I think people should do is absolutely go and drop your ballot into the [drop] box, or go and take it to the election folks yourself. I do not trust anything about this post office at this point. Not the postal workers, but the folks who are in charge,” says April Dyson, a lawyer from Washington, DC, at the march. Dyson noted she hadn’t received mail in five days.

Ultimately, the motivation to vote may come not from the exhortations of Sharpton or voting advocates, however, but from the cause that sparked Friday’s march, titled Get Your Knee Off Our Necks, and the other organized demonstrations throughout the summer: continuing racial injustice and police brutality against Black Americans. “What we need is change. And we’re at a point where we can get that change, but we have to stand together. We have to vote,” said Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, one of the speakers at the march. Taylor, an unarmed Black woman, was shot by police in her Louisville home when they entered it on March 13 this year with a no-knock warrant.

The crowd erupted into call and response chants:

“Say her name.”

“Breonna Taylor.”

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New top story from Time: Fearing Domestic Election Meddling, Racial Justice Demonstrators Work to Turn Protest into Votes

The tens of thousands of protesters who took to the National Mall Friday, marking the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington, showed the power of the movement against police brutality that has mobilized across America this summer. But the demonstration was tinged by concern that efforts to suppress and intimidate supporters will hamper their ability to turn protest now into votes in the fall.

Many demonstrators said their concerns start at the top with President Donald Trump. Trump has threatened to send law enforcement to the polls, raising accusations of voter intimidation. His administration pursued cost-cutting measures at the postal service that experts said could slow the delivery of mail ballots. He’s pursued lawsuits in multiple states over the expansion of vote by mail and drop boxes. He’s argued without evidence that the election will be full of widespread fraud. And he’s previously refused to commit to accepting the results.

In one recent survey by Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project, more than 40% of Americans said they had doubts about the fairness of the presidential election.

“If he can get enough people to mistrust the system by sowing seeds of doubt in the integrity of this coming election, then people won’t vote. People who would have otherwise voted [and] tried to vote him out will say, ‘Eh there’s no point in even bothering,’” says Abena Gyebi, a finance communications manager from New York City. Gyebi plans to vote in person.

Berthilde Dufrene, a nurse at a New York state prison who attended the march on Friday, says she is concerned her vote may not be counted. She has requested a ballot through the mail and plans to fill it out at home and deliver it to the ballot box on election day. “The Trump administration is a corrupt administration,” she says. “I see what they are doing with the Post Office and voter suppression, so I am concerned that they will cheat, they will steal, they will lie to keep this man in power.”

Jonathan Ernst—Pool/AFP/Getty ImagesRev. Al Sharpton, center, marches next to Yolanda King, Andrea Waters King and Martin Luther King, III during the “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” protest against racism and police brutality, in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 2020.

  The theme of the march matched those sentiments, with leaders urging the assembled protesters to remain focused on getting out the vote between now and Nov. 3.

“We didn’t come out and stand in this heat because we didn’t have anything to do,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the leaders of the march. “We came to let you know that we will come out by these numbers in the heat and stand in the heat. That we will stand in the polls all day long.” And he admonished the demonstrators to hold accountable lawmakers who have not responded to this summer’s protests by passing police reform measures. “Demonstration without legislation will not lead to change,” Sharpton said. With police reform bills deadlocked in Congress, Black men and women are among the voters with the most at stake in this year’s election.

Trump is not the only concern among those seeking to turn protest into votes. Across the country, voting-access advocates and election officials have also been realistic about the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic, by necessitating extraordinary adjustments to the nation’s patchwork election system, will further hamper voter turnout in the fall. Many of the primaries held after the surge of COVID-19 cases in March were riddled with problems.

The voting advocates’ and election experts’ advice to voters includes voting as soon as they know who they support in order to avoid a build-up at polling locations on Election Day, and having a plan in place for how they are going to cast their ballot.

For their part, many of the protesters appeared to have voting plans and several said they had already begun researching their options for how they would return their ballot. “What I think people should do is absolutely go and drop your ballot into the [drop] box, or go and take it to the election folks yourself. I do not trust anything about this post office at this point. Not the postal workers, but the folks who are in charge,” says April Dyson, a lawyer from Washington, DC, at the march. Dyson noted she hadn’t received mail in five days.

Ultimately, the motivation to vote may come not from the exhortations of Sharpton or voting advocates, however, but from the cause that sparked Friday’s march, titled Get Your Knee Off Our Necks, and the other organized demonstrations throughout the summer: continuing racial injustice and police brutality against Black Americans. “What we need is change. And we’re at a point where we can get that change, but we have to stand together. We have to vote,” said Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, one of the speakers at the march. Taylor, an unarmed Black woman, was shot by police in her Louisville home when they entered it on March 13 this year with a no-knock warrant.

The crowd erupted into call and response chants:

“Say her name.”

“Breonna Taylor.”

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