#Municipal election 2020

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil elects record-high number of Indigenous mayors, vice mayors & councilors

In Brazil, 256 Indigenous people were elected mayors, vice mayors and city councilors, the highest in the country’s history and an 8% increase compared with 236 elected in the 2020 ballot.

With 1,635,530 votes, Indigenous candidates were the only group that recorded growth in votes this year, compared with candidates who self-declared white, pardo (brown), Black and yellow, which saw a reduction of around 20% altogether, according to a survey from the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the country’s main Indigenous association, which used data from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

Increasing representation of Indigenous people elected in municipal ballots is a key move to ensure the fulfillment of Indigenous rights and should pave the way to increase the number of Indigenous people elected in the 2026 state and federal ballots, advocates and activists say.

However, the municipal election results also showed a gender gap: Indigenous women accounted for just one mayor of a total of nine Indigenous mayors elected, four vice mayors of a total of nine, and 36 of a total of 234 councilors.

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[lboogie1906]

Judge Frederick Wayman “Duke” Slater (December 9, 1898 – August 14, 1966) was a football player and judge. He was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 and was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Centennial Class in 2020.

He played college football for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Playing the tackle position on the line, he was a first-team All-American and a member of the Hawkeyes 1921 National Championship Team. He joined the NFL becoming the first Black lineman in league history. He played ten seasons in the NFL for the Milwaukee Badgers, the Rock Island Independents, and the Chicago Cardinals, garnering six all-pro selections.

He earned his JD and began to practice law as a Chicago attorney. He was elected to the Cook County Municipal Court, becoming just the second African American judge in Chicago history. He served as a Chicago judge for nearly two decades until his death.

He was born in Illinois to George Slater, a Methodist minister. He somehow picked up the name of the family dog, Duke, as a personal nickname, and he would carry it with him all his life. When he was 13 years old, he moved to Clinton, Iowa.

His father forbade him from trying out for football at Clinton High School, believing it to be a sport played by “roughnecks.” He went on a hunger strike for several days, and his father acquiesced on the condition that he must be careful to avoid injury.

He played three seasons of football for Clinton High School. Clinton claimed two Iowa state championships in 1913 and 1914, and the school compiled a 22-3-1 record in his three years there. He led Clinton in scoring as a senior, rushing for six touchdowns from the fullback position.

While playing in the NFL, he returned to Iowa in the off-seasons to attend law school. He earned his JD from the University of Iowa’s College of Law. He practiced law in Chicago while playing for the Cardinals. After one year as a high school coach and athletic director in Oklahoma City, he turned to Chicago as an attorney.

He married Etta Searcy (1926-62) until her death, they had no children. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #kappaalphapsi

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Early voting is now underway in the 2024 Halifax Regional Municipal election. There are nearly 335,000 eligible voters in the HRM this year and already 7.2 per cent have cast their ballot either online or by phone. HRM clerk and returning officer Ian MacLean says the early turnout is consistent with previous elections. MacLean said in the 2020 election almost 80 per cent of all votes were cast early, either online or by phone.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[randomnoteforfuturereference]

Okay, so a reason some folks abstain from voting is because they think the whole system needs to get thrown in the trash. Some of even accelerationists who deliberately want a Trump presidency because they believe he'd push things to the tipping point.

Setting all the initial issues of that ideology aside, let's say you do have your glorious revolution. The ruling class have been guillotined or chased out.

What now?

Initial overthrows tend to consist of a broad base, followed by a powerful faction being the one to ultimately come on top (Russia, China, Iran, etc). The very few times you have a relatively peaceful revolution followed by relatively peaceful transition (Velvet Revolution, dissolution of Soviet Union, etc), you have a structures intact and a populace largely on the same page.

But what if you have competing ideologies?

It's pertinent to look at the makeup of this country. In 2020, African Americans number at around 47 million or 14% of the population, and combined Native Americans/Alaskans/Hawaiians number at 10.5 million or 3%. A Gallup poll in 2023 determined that roughly 7.2% of adults identified as LGBT, with 7% not responding. In contrast, the number of people who voted for Trump was 74.2 million or 22%.

When you look at other revolutionary governments, the ones that acknowledged previously marginalized communities did so because they were a good chunk or majority of their population (eg Cuba); even in those cases you may still have marginalized groups. Whereas for most post-revolutionary governments, you either get more of the same marginalization/discrimination (eg Vietnam) or, worse, systematic targeting/genocide (eg Cambodia).

So with all that in mind, are you able and willing to fight to secure your "egalitarian paradise" and keep it from becoming Gilead? I'm not asking metaphorically.

Among the various partisan factions in the US there are armed left-wing militia groups, but guess which side is way more armed. So are you dispensing any talk of gun control and instead buying all the military-grade hardware? Are you learning how to use that rifle and basic combat tactics? Are you willing to use that gun on another human being?

If you are not prepared for that or the effect of infrastructural collapse, you could actually participate in this imperfect system by voting for a president that you may not like but can function better as damage control. All while you not only focus on your senators and representatives, but also your state government, to continue pushing the needle and making it easier for progressive causes to get passed and stay in place. All while you make sure to vote in municipal elections to have school boards that reflect your views. All while you actually reach out to communities you may not agree with to at least try and dissuade them from reactionary populism.

But if you want to burn it all down, you best also be prepared for the war that rises out of the ashes.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Molly Redden at HuffPost:

Wesley Bell, a St. Louis prosecutor who is mounting a formidable Democratic primary challenge against Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), is campaigning as someone who will produce more tangible results for the district while sharing many of her same left-leaning values. But one line on Bell’s political resume is at odds with his promise to champion a progressive agenda. In 2006, Bell managed the campaign of a conservative Republican running for the same seat Bell is seeking today. The candidate, Mark J. Byrne, ran as a fierce abortion opponent and gun rights crusader. “I intend to protect the rights of the unborn,” his campaign website read. “I believe that there is no greater job for elected representatives.”

He ultimately lost to incumbent Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., who remained in office until Bush successfully challenged him in 2020. “Nearly 20 years ago, Wesley helped a longtime friend by volunteering with his campaign, in spite of their differences in political affiliations and positions on many issues,” said Anjan Mukherjee, a spokesperson for Bell’s campaign. “Wesley has been a progressive prosecutor, working to overturn wrongful convictions and refusing to prosecute women for abortions, and he will be a progressive member of Congress who works with President Biden.” Byrne, who is now a municipal judge in a neighboring county, said Bell ran his campaign as a friendly favor. The two met as young lawyers in St. Louis County, he recalled, and became friends over years of poker nights. “He didn’t run a Republican’s campaign, he ran a friend’s campaign,” Byrne said in an interview this week with HuffPost. “He and I didn’t see eye to eye on political issues, but he did the best that he could to try to help me get elected.”

[...] As of May, Bell has raised more than $65,000 in contributions from donors who normally give to Republicans. They include a former GOP speaker of the Missouri House, the billionaire hedge fund founder Daniel Loeb, and the former finance chair for Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) presidential super PAC. At the end of the last fundraising quarter, Bell reported having about twice as much cash on hand as Bush. Bell has also benefited from more than $300,000 in ads paid for by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC. While AIPAC backs candidates of both parties who support U.S. military assistance for Israel, progressive critics have noted the PAC’s top contributors are GOP megadonors. Bush is one of AIPAC’s top targets in the 2024 elections. “The fact that my ‘Democratic’ opponent’s entrance into politics was managing a Republican congressional campaign for a far-right, anti-abortion extremist is strikingly consistent, and it should tell voters everything they need to know,” Bush said in a statement. “He can’t be trusted to protect our reproductive freedoms and abortion rights, secure our democracy, and stand up to the MAGA Republican extremists in Congress.”

St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell is claiming to run as a progressive to unseat incumbent Rep. Cori Bush (D) in MO-01, but in 2006, he helped manage a GOP campaign for House candidate Mark J. Byrne.

[mariacallous]

Election workers in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, are not destroying mail-in ballots cast for former president Donald Trump. The Department of Defense did not issue a directive last month giving US soldiers unprecedented authority to use lethal force against Trump supporters who riot if the former president loses next week. And no, 180,000 Amish people did not register to vote in Pennsylvania—given there are only 92,600 Amish living in the state, including minors. Ron DeSantis never said that Florida would not use Dominion Voting machines in next week’s election. And municipalities in California are not allowing noncitizens to vote in this year’s presidential elections.

These are just a small sample of the flood of voting-related disinformation narratives that are being seeded and spread on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook in the build up to November 5.

The election denial movement never left, and it’s bigger than ever.

In the weeks before the 2020 vote, Trump and his allies had already begun to spread claims that the election would be stolen, but those allegations were vague and unorganized. Over the past four years, however, a well-funded network of election denial groups across the US have worked tirelessly to marshal their supporters and drum up conspiracy theories about voting machines flipping votes in the middle of the night, votes being shredded by the bagful, and “mules” stuffing drop boxes with ballots.

These conspiracy theories are being shared by right-wing election denial networks, the Trump campaign, and Russian propaganda groups. With a week left to go before the historic vote, fully formed conspiracy theories about threats to voting are being pushed to audiences that have been primed to believe everything they hear.

Many of these narratives are spreading virtually unchecked on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook, where those in charge have all but abdicated their responsibility to fact-check information around one of the most critical votes in US history—and have also made it harder for everyone else to see what is going on.

“What worries me most about this year is that we have a much more opaque window into the penetration of these lies, no matter where they come from,” says Nina Jankowicz, the former Biden administration disinformation czar who is now CEO of the American Sunlight Project. “Social media platforms have by and large stopped moderating such content, and just as worryingly have cut off researcher access to data streams that allowed us to objectively report on the scale of these campaigns, all due to political pressure on disinformation researchers and social media platforms.”

So when voters in Oregon heard earlier this month that the state’s Democratic secretary of state, LaVonne Griffin-Valade, had removed Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, from her website, they believed it was part of a plan to undermine Trump. The narrative was boosted by right-wing influencers and Trump supporters on platforms like X and Instagram and gained so much traction that Griffin-Valade’s office was forced to shut down its phone lines.

The reality is that the Trump campaign had decided not to provide a statement to Oregon’s Online Voter’s Guide, unlike the Harris campaign, which is why the vice president’s name was on the guide.

“Society as a whole is much less equipped to be proactive in the face of election lies,” says Jankowicz.

Similar conspiracy theories about down-ballot races have spread across the country. “It may not be altogether surprising, but it is striking that we have already seen election fraud narratives reminiscent of those we saw four years ago,” Sam Howard, NewsGuard's politics editor, tells WIRED. “A baseless claim about machines switching votes started spreading in Tarrant County, Texas, on the first day of early voting. A similar false narrative about vote-switching took off during the first week of early voting in Georgia. The narrative in Georgia even involved Dominion Voting Systems.”

Last week, a viral video emerged claiming to show election workers in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, destroying mail-in ballots cast for former Trump, the very behavior that pro-Trump networks have spent years claiming happened in 2020.

Days after the video went viral, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and he Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint statement saying they had determined that the video was part of Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the election.

“This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans,” the agencies said. “In the lead-up to election day and in the weeks and months after, the [intelligence community] expects Russia to create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans.”

Many of these new conspiracy theories about voter and election fraud have emerged from activists at a local level, whose accounts are then amplified by the coordinated network of election denial groups that have emerged in the wake of the 2020 election. These groups have continued to grow and establish strong connections to other national groups run and supported by some of the powerful figures in the conservative world.

The Election Integrity Network, an election denial group run by former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, has spent months holding online seminars to push disinformation around voter rolls and the baseless claim that millions of illegal immigrants will vote in the election. In the days ahead of the election, the group has produced a social media posting guide for its members on the best tactics to get these messages to the widest audience possible.

“Be SASSY but don’t say anything on social media you wouldn’t say in front of your grandma,” the guide’s authors write, adding that the best time to post is between 10 am to 4 pm on a weekday. “ALWAYS use graphics—and brains love faces.”

The guide, reviewed by WIRED, points users to mainstream platforms like Facebook and X, as well as fringe pro-Trump networks like Truth Social, Gettr, and Rumble.

True the Vote, an election denial group that pushed the bogus “ballot mules” conspiracy in 2020, even created its own social media platform that is dedicated to sharing election fraud conspiracy theories.

The Heritage Foundation, a group which has been at the forefront of election denial content in recent years, has been paying for ads on X to promote an ebook called 5 Shocking Cases of Election Fraud, which seeks to further undermine trust in elections by citing alleged fraud cases in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, and California.

The proliferation of disinformation has helped create a fragmented information ecosystem where voters can find “proof” for almost any election-related conspiracy. And tech companies and their refusal to adequately moderate their platforms has made the situation much worse.

“This has created an environment where anyone can find content online that proves their beliefs to be true, no matter if it’s rooted in reality or not,” says Nicole Gill, the cofounder and executive director of Accountable Tech. “The public has fewer options to anchor themselves in truth and reality, and there’s no denying that Big Tech absolutely played a role in that.”

[racefortheironthrone]

In a hypothetical situation where Moris Hilquit wins the 1917 mayoral election by a plurality, how do you think the ideal socialist for successful dentists would have performed as mayor of new york?

That is a tricky scenario to pull off, as alternate histories go.

In "original timeline" New York City, Morris Hillquit (SPA-NYC) got 145,000 votes for mayor, which is impressive....for third place, with the Democratic nominee (John Francis Hylan, a man who had impressively worked his way up from railroad laborer to engineer and then to lawyer, and who managed to win the support of both Tammany Hall and William Randolph Hearst) winning 314,000 votes, and incumbent reform mayor John P. Mitchel (having largely alienated his Fusion alliance) winning 155,000.

So the first thing that would have had to happen was Mitchel not running and splitting the anti-Tammany vote. However, Hillquit and Mitchel together would still be 14,000 votes short - and you know what happens when there's a close mayoral election and Tammany Hall is on the ballot.

So the second, and arguably more important thing that would have to happen is for Hearst to run against Tammany, like he did in 1905 (as a "Municipal Ownership League" candidate, no less!) and 1909, splitting the Democratic vote. (Words cannot describe what a weird guy William Randolph Hearst was politically. Depending on what part of his life you're talking about, he was an imperialist or an isolationist, a supporter of the New Deal or an outright Nazi.)

As for how Morris Hillquit would have done as mayor of New York City, I think he would have faced a pretty unrelentingly uphill battle on a lot of fronts. Hillquit was running as an anti-war candidate at a time when the country as a whole was starting to shift in a pro-war and anti-socialist direction - which would ultimately see five Socialists ejected from the New York state legislature in 1920. (Note that it would take until 2020 for New York socialist electoral politics to reach its former high-water mark.) Mayor Hillquit might well have joined them as a casualty of the First Red Scare.

While I think that Hillquit's support for municipal ownership of the subway and other utilities, women's suffrage, and the Socialist Party's proposal for government food-purchasing to help deal with the crippling cost-of-living crisis would have been quite popular, I think he would have had a very hard time getting socialization of the subway through the Board of Alderman.

Whatever its temporary woes in mayoral or gubernatorial races, Tammany was always strongest in the legislative branch (in no small part because that's where the money was) - and Tammany's empire of corruption rested upon a foundation of bribes and kickbacks paid by private companies looking to get "franchises" (i.e, private monopolies) for water, gas, electricity, commuter rail, and subways. They would have fought tooth and nail to stop Hillquit from taking these utilities under public ownership and stopping their gravy train, so Hillquit would have had to win a majority on the Board of Aldermen as well.

So I think that Tammany would have tried to do to Hillquit the same thing they did with reform mayors like Seth Low and John P. Mitchel: wait him out. (Incidentally, this is what made Fiorello LaGuardia a terrifying enemy to Tammany Hall: he was the first reform mayor to ever get re-elected, which gave him the time he needed to push through a new charter that abolished the Board of Aldermen, essentially permanently crippling Tammany.)

[peninsulaisms]

Call for ban on developer donations - MP News

MORNINGTON Peninsula Shire councillors have united in imploring the state government to immediately ban all donations from property developers, gambling businesses, and politicians to candidates running for local councils.

Councillors voted unanimously in favour of the move at their 28 January meeting after Cr David Gill led a motion to end the three streams of financial contributions for candidates, as well as set a cap of $500 for all other donations ensuring the process is “transparent and it is accountable”.

“The state government has the power to make these changes,” said Gill, who has made similar pushes in previous years. “It’s not about individuals. People who have accepted donations in the recent election have done so legally, and I’m not arguing with that. “What I’m saying is the process needs to improve and asking the state government who are the only ones that can make the improvement to act. “And it needs to come from lots of councils and from the Municipal Association [of Victoria] so we get to the stage where it is transparent, and it is accountable.”

In supporting the motion, councillors also voted that disclosures of donations are to be made “in real time” up until election day, which Gill believed was only in “fairness to the voter” so “people know about it when they’re voting”. This included the period up to “councillors being sworn in and that all donations to councillors be banned from the time of being sworn in”. Additionally, the shire will also call on the state government to set up a statewide donor register so all donations are tracked by name “and not just by company or any other mechanism that may conceal knowledge about the donor”.

The Victorian Electoral Commission has a campaign donation register, which lists donations made to political parties, candidates and members of parliament for state elections. But there is currently no statewide register for local government elections, which Gill said was needed. “What we’re asking for is a level playing field for local government also”.

Cr Kate Roper said transparency was critical, noting Operation Sandon, which held public examinations in 2019 and 2020 into allegations of serious corrupt conduct in relation to planning and property development decisions at the City of Casey, had “really caused a lot of mistrust to the public about councils and what goes on in the background and how people can influence them”.

Deputy mayor Cr Paul Pingiario said he “wholeheartedly” supported the motion to improve transparency and “to make sure that everyone is playing with the same rules”. “We need to make sure that when we do put these things forward and we do lobby for policies that they are integral to our integrity and they play a massive part in how we move forward as a democracy,” he said.

The shire will now write to the state government calling for all measures to be acted on in the motion. The move comes as just over $30,000 was donated to four Mornington Peninsula Shire candidates, including two who were elected, by a private organisation called the Friends of the Peninsula, which is run by a property developer Ari Lakman, according to records from the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.

As reported by The News last month, Friends of the Peninsula gave donations to newly elected councillors Cam Williams ($5,055.16) and Bruce Ranken ($7,136.12) while unsuccessful candidates Peter Clarke and Susan Bissinger received $14,065.72 and $8,873.31 respectively.

Under the Local Government Act council candidates have 40 days after election day to complete a campaign donation return including a record of donations and gifts for the Local Government Inspectorate. Failure to submit a return or providing false or misleading information can result in prosecution and fines exceeding $11,090.

Council Watch president Dean Hurlston welcomed the push by the shire, saying the “key is getting to the source of donations, not the web of companies or associations that they are hidden through”. “As far as we’re concerned, all donations should be real time so that voters, when they vote, know who’s funding candidates,” he told The News.

Hurlston added donations of more than $500 from political parties should also be banned “because a political party is the ultimate hidden funding source; you don’t know who’s donated to that political party and what those funds are made-up of”.

[deadpresidents]

I found out recently that William Harrison was a Presidential Elector and was wondering if any other Presidents or Vice-Presidents ever served as Electors?

Yes, it's actually much more common than you might imagine. The people chosen to serve as Presidential electors by the political parties in each state are often leading figures in that party -- from local party chairs and municipal office holders to incumbent and retired major elected officials. Just for example, Bill Clinton was an elector in New York in 2016 and 2020 (Hillary was a 2020 elector, too).

[beardedmrbean]

NEW YORK (AP) — Six people were charged Friday in an alleged scheme to divert tens of thousands of dollars in public funds to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign months before his election.

The indictment announced by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg does not implicate Adams or any other city employees. Rather, it describes a straw donor scheme orchestrated by individuals with business before the city who hoped to maximize their donations to the future mayor in exchange for political favors.

“We allege a deliberate scheme to game the system in a blatant attempt to gain power,” Bragg said in a statement. “The New York City Campaign Finance Board program is meant to support our democracy and amplify the voices of New York City voters. When the integrity of that program is corrupted, all New Yorkers suffer.”

Prosecutors said the scheme was led by Dwayne Montgomery, a former NYPD inspector currently listed as the director of integrity for the Teamsters Local 237, which represents municipal workers.

According to the indictment, Montgomery recruited friends and relatives to take advantage of the city’s generous matching funds system, which provides an eight-to-one match for the first $250 donated by a city resident.

In addition to Montgomery, the indictment names as defendants Shamsuddin Riza, Millicent Redick, Ronald Peek, Yahya Mushtaq, and Shahid Mushtaq.

According to prosecutors, between 2020 and 2021, those who made donations in their own name were reimbursed by Montgomery, who provided more than $40,000 of his money. He worked with a string of co-defendants to help recruit donors, including Riza, who indicated he was hoping to secure work from the city.

“FYI ! This is the one I want , Safety , Drywall , and Security one project but we all can eat,” Riza wrote in a July 2021 email to Montgomery, sending along the information for a construction project called Vital Brooklyn, prosecutors allege.

Montgomery also worked alongside a campaign representative to organize a virtual fundraiser for Adams in August, 2020, prosecutors contend. The representative is not named in the indictment.

None of the defendants could immediately be reached for comment.

Adams' campaign released a statement denying any involvement in the alleged scheme.

“There is no indication that the campaign or the mayor is involved in this case or under investigation,” a spokesperson for Adams’ campaign, Evan Thies, said in a statement. “The campaign always held itself to the highest standards and we would never tolerate these actions.”

The defendants each face charges of conspiracy, attempted grand larceny, and offering a false instrument.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Study shows higher Covid mortality in pro-Bolsonaro cities

Cities with a high percentage of voters for former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro recorded higher mortality during the peaks of the Covid pandemic, according to a study published on Monday in a Brazilian journal on public health.

The study focused on the peaks of excess mortality during the pandemic, in August 2020 and April 2021. “Excess mortality” measures the increase in the number of deaths during a certain period compared to a previous average and includes deaths from all causes. For a period in late March 2021, Brazil reported over 3,000 Covid deaths per day.

“Considering the 2018 election results, we observed a strong association between excess deaths at the two peaks of the pandemic,” the authors wrote.

“In general terms, each 1 percent increase in municipal votes for Bolsonaro from 2018 to 2022 corresponded to a rise of 0.48 percent to 0.64 percent in municipal excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic peaks,” they added.

Continue reading.

[lboogie1906]

Attorney Fani Taifa Willis (October 27, 1971) is an attorney. She is the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, which contains most of Atlanta. She is the first woman to hold the office.

She was born in Inglewood. Her father was a member of the Black Panthers and a criminal defense attorney.

She graduated from Howard University with a BA in Political Science, cum laude. She moved to Atlanta to attend Emory University School of Law, graduating with a JD. She spent 16 years as a prosecutor in the Fulton County district attorney’s office. Her most prominent case was her prosecution of the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal. She went into private practice. She ran for a seat on the Fulton County Superior Court and lost. In 2019, she became chief municipal judge for South Fulton, Georgia.

In 2020, she was elected district attorney for Fulton County, defeating a six-term incumbent and her former boss.

On February 10, 2021, she launched a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s attempts to influence Georgia election officials—including the governor, the attorney general, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger via a telephone call—to “find” enough votes to override Joe Biden’s win in that state and thus undo Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

In January 2022, she requested a special grand jury to consider charges of election interference by Trump and his allies. In May, a 26-member special grand jury was given investigative authority and subpoena power and tasked with submitting a report to the judge on whether a crime was committed.

On April 24, 2023, she announced the decision to charge Trump and his associates during the Georgia Superior Courts.

In May 2022, her office indicted Young Thug for 56 counts of gang-related crimes under Georgia’s RICO statute and felony charges for possession of illicit firearms and drugs that were allegedly discovered after a search warrant was executed. The rapper has been held in Cobb County jail since his arrest.

She married Fred Willis (1996-2005). They have two daughters together. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Philip Lewis at HuffPost:

Residents in a small Alabama town will be able to vote in their own municipal elections for the first time in decades after a four-year legal battle. A proposed settlement has been reached in the town’s voting rights case, allowing Newbern, a predominantly Black town with 133 residents, to hold its first legitimate elections in more than 60 years. The town’s next elections will be held in 2025. The settlement was filed June 21 and must be approved by U.S. District Judge Kristi K. DuBose. For decades, white officials appointed Newbern’s mayor and council members in lieu of holding elections. Most residents weren’t even aware that there were supposed to be elections for these positions.

[...] The settlement will reinstate Patrick Braxton as the mayor of Newbern, the first Black person to hold the position in the town’s 170-year history. Capital B News had first reported about Braxton’s fight. Braxton was the only candidate who filed qualifying paperwork with the county clerk in 2020, so he won the mayoral race by default. The incumbent, Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, hadn’t even bothered to fill out the paperwork to run again. Haywood Stokes Jr., his father, had previously been mayor of the rural Black Belt town. After Braxton assumed office, he faced several obstacles. He discovered the locks to the town hall had been changed, and that the town council had held a secret special election in which they simply reelected themselves. They then reappointed Stokes III as mayor of Newbern in 2021. He has been acting as mayor ever since.

Newbern, Alabama will be set to hold elections for its municipal officers next year for the first time in over 60 years as a result of a proposed settlement over the majority-Black town's residents being deprived of their voting rights. This settlement also reinstates Patrick Braxton to the Mayor post.

[mariacallous]

Far-right Golden Dawn supporters have sent letters to at least two MPs from the ruling New Democracy party, vowing to continue targeting them until they are ousted from parliament because they voted for legislation last month that legalised civil marriage for same-sex couples.

New Democracy MP Anna Eythymiou said that after receiving the Golden Dawn letter by email, she then saw it taped to the wall outside her office in Thessaloniki in northern Greece.

“On Tuesday 5/3/2024 I received the attached letter in my email. This morning, upon arriving at my law office, I found that the letter was stuck on the wall at the entrance of the apartment building next to my professional sign with my name and my legal role,” Eythymiou said in a statement.

She called for condemnation of the incidents, which she described as “acts of intimidation and thuggery”.

The letter was signed by the ‘Youth Front of the People’s Association – Golden Dawn’. It said that similar actions will continue against MPs who voted for the same-sex civil marriage bill until they are removed from their parliamentary seats.

The letter describes the vote in favour of the bill as “a direct insult to the values of Hellenism and the principles of the Orthodox Faith”, which “exposes an uncontrolled number of vulnerable, underage members of Greek society to immediate danger and brutally affects their fundamental rights”.

“Finally, we pledge that we will do our utmost to remind the Greek people of your aforementioned value choice until you are removed from any public elected office,” the letter concluded.

Stratos Simopoulos, another New Democracy MP in Thessaloniki, who also voted in favour of the bill, received the same threatening letter.

“‘Ghosts’ of the past are trying to come back,” said Simopoulos – a reference to the banning of Golden Dawn in 2020 under a court verdict that branded the far-right party a criminal organisation.

He said that the letter “also includes threats [targeted at] my appearance at events of a religious and political character”, and called on the Greek Orthodox Church to condemn the incident and stand behind MPs who voted in favour of the bill.

Despite strong opposition, parliament voted last month to legalise civil marriage and childbearing for same-sex couples. The Greek Orthodox Church criticised the legal change, saying it was a step towards the abolition of traditional parenting and the “disappearance” of gender roles.

In April last year, mask-wearing members of Golden Dawn’s youth wing forced their way into an exhibition by artist Sergej Andreevski from neighbouring North Macedonia at a gallery in Thessaloniki’s Kalamaria municipality, accusing him of celebrating past massacres of Greeks.

The far-right activists verbally attacked the artist and later bragged on the internet that they had shut down the exhibition.

[bllsbailey]

Gabbard Announces Revocation Of Security Clearances For Numerous Biden Admin Officials

Tulsi Gabbard is sworn in as Director of National Intelligence in the Oval Office at the White House on February 12, 2025 in Washington, DC.

U.S. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard stripped security clearances and access to classified information briefings from officials affiliated with the Biden administration, including Antony Blinken, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Jake Sullivan — among others.

“Per @POTUS directive, I have revoked security clearances and barred access to classified information for Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Mark Zaid, Norman Eisen, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, and Andrew Weissman, along with the 51 signers of the Hunter Biden ‘disinformation’ letter. The President’s Daily Brief is no longer being provided to former President Biden,” Gabbard wrote in an X post on Monday.

The initiative involves revoking security clearances for individuals accused of “weaponizing” the justice system against President Donald Trump, as well as those contracted by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller initiated an investigation to try and depict Trump as an agent of Russia, claiming that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

However, Special Counsel John Durham found that the FBI “acted too hastily and relied on raw and unconfirmed intelligence when it opened the Trump-Russia investigation,” AP News reported. Durham’s investigation found no evidence of Russian interference.

Andrew Weissman served as the chief prosecutor within Mueller’s investigation, while Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer, represented the whistleblower during Trump’s first impeachment inquiry.

“Hmmm, so where are my due process protections? You are familiar with Executive Order 12968, are you not? Still in effect!” Zaid responded to the announcement, citing a 1995 presidential order that established policies and procedures for granting security clearances to government employees and contractors needing access to classified information.

The revocations will also affect individuals like New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. They have both been accused of engaging in a politically-motivated “witch hunt” against Trump in order to stop him from winning the most recent presidential election, among other goals — ultimately intending to bring him down.

James, the former public defender and municipal councilwoman, attacked Trump the night she was elected in 2018.

“He should know that we here in New York – and I, in particular – we are not scared of you [Trump],” she warned. She also vowed to shine “a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn,” insinuating that none of his business dealings were legitimate — as reported by the BBC.

Trump also recently revoked former President Joe Biden from his intelligence briefings, as Biden did the same to him back in 2021.

Additionally, on his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order directing the revocation of security clearances of 51 former intelligence agents who signed a 2020 letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story held “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” This claim ended up being false and was later debunked, as the Russians were not involved whatsoever.

“In your letter, you claimed that the laptop story was ‘Russia trying to influence how Americans vote.’ I ask you to respond publicly to one simple question: if you knew then what you know now about the laptop, would you still have signed the October 19, 2020 letter?” U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) questioned, in a letter to those former agents.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for James issued a statement following Trump’s announcement of the revocation of her security clearance, responding: “What security clearance? Anyway, this is just another attempt to distract from the real work the Attorney General is doing to defend the rights of New Yorkers and all Americans.”

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