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batboyblog · 5 months

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2024 Senate Elections: You'd Better VOTE!

Yes it's election year yet again in America! but not just for President, almost as important will be the US Senate!

I'm not gonna lie this is a rough map for Democrats, we're playing a lot of defense in some pretty red states with even our best hopes for a pick up being pretty long shots. But even with narrow control of the Senate we've managed the biggest climate bill in American History a huge infrastructure bill thats bring high speed rail to America capped the price of insulin changed the law to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices bring savings to everyone, and put over 160 federal judges on the bench, 2/3rds of whom are women and/or people of color the first time white men haven't been the majority of nominees by a President. So let's keep progress going by voting for, supporting, donating, and volunteering for the following candidates in the races that will decide the US Senate this year.

Arizona

Ruben Gallego (Hold)

After frustrating Democrats by repeatedly voting against major Democratic priorities, supporting the filibuster and putting donors over voters, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic Party to become an independent in 2022. Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego was running to primary Sinema before she left the party and is now the likely Democratic nominee to unseat her and give Arizona the Democratic Senator it deserves. Gallego is a former Marine, combat veteran, Harvard grad, a former state representative, and since 2014 a member of Congress. Gallego is a member of the Progressive Caucus and is known for his blunt and combative style standing up to Republicans. In Congress Gallego has been a strong supporter of native rights advocating for tribes on health care and child welfare issues. Gallego is also the sponsor of a bill to bring about nation wide, free, all-day kindergarten which isn't available in many states. If elected Gallego would be Arizona's first hispanic Senator. Republicans hope that the Democratic vote will split between Sinema and Gallego allowing them to win this important seat. The Republican front runner is conspiracy theorist and Trump super fan, Kari Lake. Lake rose to national fame in 2021 for pushing conspiracy theories about Trump having won the 2020 election, as well as anti-mask and anti-vaccine Covid conspiracies. Lake was the Republican nominee for Arizona governor in 2022. During that campaign she ran on an aggressive anti-LGBT platform, saying she'd ban drag, and was against trans rights. Lake also is against Abortion in all cases. After losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs, Lake refused to concede, and still pushes the conspiracy theory that she's the rightful governor of Arizona. If you live in Arizona please make sure you vote, but more if you have any time between now and November, volunteer to help Gallego! and if you don't live there you can still Donate or buy a pro-choice shirt from his campaign!

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Florida

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Flip)

Florida's current Republican Senator Rick Scott is a right wing extremist pushing dangerous ideas even by the standards of the Modern GOP. During his first term as Senator Scott has pushed to defund the IRS, and the Department of Education. He's sponsored bills to punish schools that allow students to use preferred pronouns, to ban affirmative action, bans teaching critical race theory, and ban trans people from women's sports. Scott is against abortion in all cases. Most alarming Rick Scott proposed a radical plan that would "sun-set" ANY and all federal laws after 5 years, including Social Security and Medicare, Scott would place all federal programs and agencies on the chopping block every 5 years for a radical Republican minority to block their renewal and leave us without Social Security, or the EPA, to name just two examples. The likely Democratic nominee is former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Born in Ecuador, Mucarsel-Powell immigrated to the US when she was 14 and had work to help support her family. When she was elected to Congress in 2018 she became the first South American born immigrant and first person of Ecuadorian heritage to be elected to Congress. In Congress Mucarsel-Powell was a member of the Progressive caucus, she fought to expand medicare, and secured $200 million for Everglades restoration. After a narrow defeat in 2020 Mucarsel-Powell joined the gun control advocacy group Giffords to fight for gun control a personal issue for her after her father was murdered when she was 24. If you're in Florida please make sure you vote, and Volunteer to help remove on of the most extreme Senators, If you're not in Florida you can help Debbie win by donating.

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Michigan

Elissa Slotkin (hold)

Long time Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow is retiring this election, so there will be a tough fight for control of this important swing state Senate seat. The likely Democratic nominee is Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. Slotkin is a former CIA analyst, after retiring from the CIA she worked in the State and Defense departments during the Obama administration. Slotkin was first elected to Congress in 2018 winning and being re-elected in a tough swing district. In Congress she's fought for common sense gun control, supported the cap on insulin prices and Medicare drug price negotiation, she helped pass a law on drug price transparency, she championed the CHIP act to bring high tech manufacturing jobs back to America, and was a big supporter of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Slotkin is centering a pro-choice message in her campaign as well as gun control and bring down medical costs. Who the Republicans will pick isn't totally clear, it seems like it's between Former Congressman Mike Rogers and former Detroit Police chief James Craig. Craig ran for Michigan governor in 2022 before he was disqualified for fraudulent signatures on his nominating petition. Craig has listed cutting off US support to Ukraine as one of his top priorities, and endorsed Trump's 3rd run for President early in the primaries. Mike Rogers is also trying to win over Trump voters and has attacked the rights of LGBT students in schools calling it "social engineering". If you live in Michigan make sure to get out and vote, and also volunteer! And for everyone outside the state you can donate or buy some merch.

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Montana

Jon Tester (re-elect)

In most contexts Montana is a deep red state going for Trump in 2020 57% to 40%. This makes the reelection of Montana's only Democratic member of Congress and only statewide elected Democrat, Jon Tester maybe the toughest election for Democrats this year. A Senator since he was first elected in 2006 Tester has won a series of upset wins in Montana over the years. A 3rd generation farmer Tester has been as strong for small farmers and ranchers in Washington. Tester has always been a champion of accountably and transparency in government pushing ethnics and campaign finance reforms. Tester is rated one of the most effective senators and managed to pass more bills last year than any one else in Congress. He's never been afraid to stand up for the Democratic side even if it'd be an unpopular vote in Red Montana. Tester voted to impeach Trump twice, and he voted against all 3 of Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court. He supported President Obama on The Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank, and has supported President Biden on the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Republicans seem likely to nominate right wing influencer and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy. Sheehy promises to get drag queens out of schools and the Lord's Prayer in to the classroom. He also hopes to repeal Obamacare calling for a "total privatization" of health care and made statements against the very idea of health insurance, insisting people should pay full price at point of use. If you're a Montanan make sure to vote to re-elect a champion of the little guy, and also volunteer! if you're not please think of donating what you can, if you can only give to one campaign this cycle this one, or Ohio are the most important!

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Nevada

Jacky Rosen (re-elect)

First elected to Congress in 2016 Jacky Rosen moved up to the Senate in 2018. In her first term as a Senator Rosen has championed green energy for Nevada. Together with fellow Democratic Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Rosen has gotten millions for solar manufacturing in Nevada as well as millions to replace the state's school buses with electric, and programs to study new groundbreaking green technology. Senator Rosen has been a supporter of gun control, is in favor of banning assault weapons. She sponsored a bill, the Background Check Expansion Act, that would require background checks for all gun sales closing loopholes for on-line sales and gun shows. Rosen is pro-choice and has sponsored a bill to protect doctors from being prosecuted across state lines for providing reproductive care, and is a co-sponsor of a bill to codify Roe V. Wade into federal law. Rosen will likely face Republican celebrity and army veteran Sam Brown. Brown ran and lost a race for the Texas State House in 2014 and ran and lost for Nevada's other Senate seat in 2022. Brown stated he was in favor of getting rid of the Departments of Education, Transportation, and Energy. Brown is against Red Flag gun laws that allow police to temporarily remove fire arms from the home of someone deemed a danger to themselves or others. Brown also has refused to say if he supports a national abortion ban, but does say he's pro-life and wouldn't support any judges that weren't. If you live in Nevada make sure to get out to vote and volunteer to protect the state's green future and the right to reproductive care. If you're not in Nevada consider donating or buying some merch.

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Ohio

Sherrod Brown (re-elect)

Ohio together with Montana represents the toughest re-elect for Democrats this year. The state went for Trump twice, elected a right wing radical, JD Vaince, to the Senate in 2022 and has had a Republican governor since 2010. To complicate thing more Democrat Sherrod Brown is one of the most progressive members of the Senate, regularly scoring along side Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for the most left wing in the Senate. From the time he was first elected to Congress in 1992 Brown refused to take the Congressional Health Insurance until all Americans could be covered. Brown first supported a Medicare for all bill in 2006 and has supported different efforts to expand Medicare and health coverage. He was a key supporter of the Children Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Brown is a strong supporter of unions and has struggled his whole career to protect unionized manufacturing jobs in Ohio. He was one of the first Senators out on the picket line during the UAW strike of 2023. Brown's hard work has help make Ohio the center of a new booming lithium battery manufacturing in America, a green manufacturing future for the state. Republicans look likely to nominate former used car dealer and father-in-law of Republican Congressman Max Miller, Bernie Moreno. Moreno's main qualification seems to be having been endorsed by Donald Trump. He lists among his priorities "End Socialism in America" and "End Wokeness and Cancel Culture". If you're in Ohio make sure to vote to re-elect a progressive giant and volunteer too! If you live out of Ohio donate, if you're looking for the race where your dollar will matter the most, this one or Montana guys.

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Pennsylvania

Bob Casey Jr. (re-elect)

First elected in 2006 Bob Casey famously beat incumbent Republican homophobe Rick Santorum by 17 points. Since first entering the Senate Casey has moved leftward on a number of issues. First elected as a pro-Gun Democrat since 2012 Casey has sponsored a number of bills to expand background checks, ban assault weapons, ban extended magazines, and well as supporting mental health funds for victims of gun violence. For a number of years Casey was called the last pro-life Democrat in the Senate, however in 2022 he came out in support of Roe V Wade and voted twice on bills that would have codified the right to an abortion into federal law. Casey voted against all 3 of Trump's Supreme Court picks and has long supported Planned Parenthood's contraception efforts with federal funds, seeing easily available birth control as key to reducing the number of abortions. In 2021 Casey published a plan he called "The Five Freedoms for America's Children" modeled after FDR's famous speech. He proposed automatically enrolling all kids in Medicaid, an expanded child tax cut, a federally supported college fund for all kids who's parents make under $100,000, expanded free school meals, more funds for head start and abuse prevention programs. Republicans are rallying behind Mitch McConnell's hand picked candidate, hedge fund CEO David McCormick. McCormick worked for the Bush administration during Bush's second term. McCormick's wife Dina Powell also worked for the George W. Bush administration and was a senior aid to Trump as well. If you're in Pennsylvania make sure to get out and vote for a solid Democrat out to solve child poverty in America and keep the Hedge Fund guy from Connecticut out, and Volunteer if you can. Remember you can donate where ever you are.

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Texas

Colin Allred (flip)

Texas is currently represented by likely the most hated man in Washington, Ted Cruz. Republicans hate him, Democrats hate him more, he has a very punchable face, he might be the zodiac killer (thats a joke and meme). From shutting down the government in 2013 to try to overturn Obamacare, to leading the charge in Congress to overturn the 2020 election on January 6th Ted Cruz is a greatest hits of the worst parts of the Republican Party of the last 10 years. When Texas lost power in the middle of a historic ice storm in 2021 Ted Cruz and family ditched the state to go on vacation in Mexico, classy. Cruz in the Biden years has cast himself as a culture warrior fighting against "woke" publishing a book "Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America" in 2023 to kick off his re-election campaign. Texas is a traditionally red state but things are starting to shift and in 2018 Cruz narrowly won re-election over Beto O'Rourke. Democrats hope with the right candidate they can turn Texas blue and beat the most hated Senator in America. Democrats think Congressman Colin Allred is the man for the job. Allred is a former NFL Linebacker for the Titans. After the NFL he went on to get his law degree from UC Berkeley, and work in the Obama administration. Allred was first elected to Congress in 2018, unseating a Republican who'd been in office since 1997 and becoming the first Democrat to represent the area in Congress since 1968. In Congress Allred has supported bills to expand voting right and protect abortion rights, as well as gun control. In the Senate he promises to address Texas' shaky power grid and make sure Texas is never left in the dark again with its leaders missing. Lets do this Texas, make blue Texas a reality if you live in Texas remember to vote and volunteer, if you're an American who hates Ted Cruz you can donate to make in unemployed.

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Wisconsin

Tammy Baldwin (re-elect)

When Tammy Baldwin first ran for Congress in 1998 she was the first openly gay person elected to the US House and the first open Lesbian to serve in Congress. In 2012 she became the first openly gay person elected to the US Senate and the first Lesbian to be a Senator, she is still the only openly gay Senator. Through out her time in office Baldwin has been a tireless voice for LGBT rights, in 2022 she helped spear head the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act to help protect gay marriage, she's also a sponsor of the Equality Act to protect all LGBT people from discrimination. Baldwin is a progressive who was a member of the House Progressive caucus, opposed the Iraq War and supported impeaching Dick Cheney. In the House she introduced bills for a single payer healthcare system in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2005. In the Senate Baldwin is regularly listed as one of the most progressive members, voting against tax cuts for the rich, supporting a bill to require companies to have workers on their boards, she sponsored a bill to create a public option in Health Care, and has supported gun control efforts. The Republican field to challenge Senator Baldwin is uncertain, but former Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke dominates the polls if he decides to run. Clarke's sheriff's department is accused a number of human rights violations from his time as sheriff, including allowing a prisoner to die of dehydration after 6 days without water in the Milwaukee County Jail. Clarke is a Trump super fan who has pushed conspiracy theories about mass shootings being fake, attacked Black Lives Matter, called Planned Parenthood "Planned Genocide", and called for the mass detention without trial of Americans because he believed there were a million ISIS supporters in America. If you're in Wisconsin make sure to get out and vote for a trailblazing icon and also volunteer if you can, all Americans can donate and support Baldwin wherever they are.

VOTE VOLUNTEER DONATE SHOP

If you're an American citizen and will be 18 years old (or older) by November 5th 2024, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! make sure you're registered to VOTE please check Vote.Org to find out what you need to do, what deadlines there are and act NOW

If you're an American living outside the US, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE. Please checkout Vote From Aboard they have literally all the information you need to get registered and get your ballot wherever in the world you are, and Check out Democrats Abroad to take part in the global primary

Where ever you live in the US, there is an important life changing election happening! Get off your phone or computer and get involved, There are Events happening all around you right now Volunteer

Finally if you're a US citizen of any age any where on earth you can donate, donate to elect Biden/Harris donate to elect Democrats to the Senate, To the House, to Governorships, to local office

and the smallest thing you can do is reblog this very long post, thank you!

#2024 elections #politics #american politics #us politics #voting #democrats #Joe Biden #Republicans #donald trump #go vote

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porterdavis · 1 year

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Ryan Shead (The Villain)

@RyanShead

Donald Trump was the first president…

In 28 years not to serve a second term. In 45 years not to release his tax returns.

In 89 years to lose the presidency, Senate, and House in one term.

To have zero public service before being elected.

To be taped detailing how he sexually assaulted women.

To have 26 sexual assault allegations.

To marry a porn model.

To be married three times

To be impeached twice

To begin their term with a negative approval rating.

To never reach an approval rating above 50%.

To ask for and receive election assistance from a known foreign enemy.

To refuse conceding after losing.

To tell Americans the election they lost was a fraud.

To incite an insurrection resulting in hundreds being charged and convicted.

To have 81 associates charged with crimes.

To lose their security clearance after leaving office.

To have home raided by FBI for espionage.

#trump will die in jail

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robertreich · 1 year

Video

youtube

Does the Constitution Ban Trump from Running Again?

Donald Trump should not be allowed on the ballot.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits anyone who has held public office and taken an oath to protect the Constitution from holding office again if they “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States.

This key provision was enacted after the Civil War to prevent those who rose up against our democracy from ever being allowed to hold office again.

This applies to Donald Trump. He cannot again be entrusted with public office. He led an insurrection!

He refused to concede the results of the 2020 election, claiming it was stolen, even when many in his inner circle, including his own attorney general, told him it was not.

Trump then pushed state officials to change vote counts, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to pressure his vice president into refusing to certify the Electoral College votes, had his allies seek access to voting-machine data, and summoned his supporters to attack the capitol on January 6th to disrupt the formal recognition of the presidential election results.

And then he waited HOURS, reportedly watching the violence on TV, before telling his supporters to go home — despite pleas from his staff, Republican lawmakers, and even Fox News.

If this isn’t the behavior of an insurrectionist, I don’t know what is.

Can there be any doubt that Trump will again try to do whatever it takes to regain power, even if it’s illegal and unconstitutional?

If anything, given all the MAGA election deniers in Congress and in the states, Trump is less constrained than he was in 2020. And more power hungry.

Trump could face criminal charges for inciting an insurrection, but that’s not necessary to bar him from the ballot.

Secretaries of State and other chief election officers across the country have the power to determine whether candidates meet the qualifications for office. They have a constitutional duty to keep Trump off the ballot — based on the clear text of the U.S. Constitution.

Some might argue that voters should be able to decide whether candidates are fit for office, even if they’re dangerous. But the Constitution sets the bar for what disqualifies someone from being president. Candidates must be at least 35 years old and a natural-born U.S. citizen. And they must also not have engaged in insurrection after they previously took an oath of office to defend the Constitution.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has already been used to disqualify an insurrectionist from continuing to hold public office in New Mexico, with the state’s Supreme Court upholding the ruling.

This is not about partisanship. If a Democrat attempts to overthrow the government, they should not be allowed on ballots either.

Election officials must keep Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024.

Democracy cannot survive if insurrectionists hold power in our government.

#youtube #video #videos #Donald Trump #politics #election

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erik-even-wordier · 2 years

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I really don’t owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of Trump these last several years, and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, Trump wasn’t that bad…………..other than when:

1. he incited an insurrection against the government,

2. mismanaged a pandemic that killed a million Americans,

3. separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy,

4. tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,

5. tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,

6. got impeached,

7. got impeached again,

8. had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,

9. pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,

10. fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,

11. bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,

12. took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,

13. diverted military funding to build his wall,

14. caused the longest government shutdown in US history,

15. called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”

16. lied nearly 30,000 times,

17. banned transgender people from serving in the military,

18. ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,

19. vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,

20. refused to release his tax returns,

21. increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,

22. had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,

23. called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,

24. coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,

25. refused to concede the 2020 election,

26. hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,

27. walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,

28. called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”

29. suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,

30. abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,

31. pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,

32. incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,

33. withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,

34. withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,

35. withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,

36. insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,

37. pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,

38. failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,

39. called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,

40. called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”

41. claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,

42. forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,

43. believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,

44. berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,

45. suggested the US should buy Greenland,

46. colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,

47. repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”

48. claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,

49. violated the emoluments clause,

50. thought that Nambia was a country,

51. told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,

52. called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution,

53. nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,

54. nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,

55. nominated a corrupt head of HHS,

56. nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,

57. nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,

58. praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,

59. refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,

60. insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,

61. spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,

62. falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,

63. called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”

64. falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,

65. considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,

66. mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,

67. locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,

68. used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”

69. hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,

70. pardoned several of his shady associates,

71. gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories,

72. got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),

73. had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,

74. forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,

75. botched the COVID vaccine rollout,

76. tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,

77. charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,

78. constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,

79. claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,

80. called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”

81. used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,

82. opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,

83. got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,

84. claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,

85. ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,

86. blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,

87. redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,

88. got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”

89. threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,

90. botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,

91. threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,

92. pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,

93. thought that the Virgin islands had a President,

94. drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,

95. allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,

96. rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,

97. pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,

98. rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,

99. held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,

100. tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,

101. refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,

102. nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,

103. threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,

104. attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,

105. promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),

106. allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,

107. struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,

108. called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”

109. threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,

110. went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,

111. claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

112. seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,

113. demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,

114. praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,

115. completely gutted the Voice of America,

116. placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,

117. claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,

118. suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,

119. suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,

120. overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,

121. reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,

122. insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,

123. gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,

124. named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,

125. eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,

126. used soldiers as campaign props,

127. fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,

128. demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,

129. hired a shit ton of white nationalists,

130. politicized the civil service,

131. did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,

132. falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,

133. claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,

134. insulted reporters of color,

135. insulted women reporters,

136. insulted women reporters of color,

137. suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,

138. attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,

139. summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election,

140. spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,

141. refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,

142. hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,

143. tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,

144. acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,

145. attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a prominent lady who accused him of sexual assault,

146. held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,

147. didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,

148. stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,

149. “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,

150. led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,

151. claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,

152. tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,

153. suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,

154. suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,

155. said that he had a special aptitude for science,

156. fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,

157. blurted out classified information to Russian officials,

158. tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,

159. fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,

160. hired notorious racist Stephen Miller,

161. openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,

162. interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,

163. abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,

164. tried to get Russia back into the G7,

165. held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,

166. seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,

167. lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,

168. falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,

169. shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,

170. still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,

171. still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”

172. forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,

173. told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”

174. fucked up the Census,

175. withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,

176. did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”

177. allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,

178. seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,

179. stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,

180. constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump,

181. claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,

182. said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,

183. claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,

184. claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,

185. created a commission to whitewash American history,

186. retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,

187. claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,

188. hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims,

189. had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,

190. bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,

191. apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,

192. stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,

193. falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police,

194. said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,

195. tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,

196. gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,

197. tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,

198. said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,

199. deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,

200. claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,

201. touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all,

202. retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,

203. forced through security clearances for his family,

204. suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,

205. suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,

206. tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender,

207. suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,

208. nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,

209. retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden

210. had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,

211. hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,

212. accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,

213. claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,

214. mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,

215. obsessed over low-flow toilets,

216. ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,

217. called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),

218. hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,

219. took advice from the MyPillow guy,

220. claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,

221. said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,

222. never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,

223. falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent,

224. announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,

225. insulted the leader of Canada,

226. insulted the leader of France,

227. insulted the leader of Britain,

228. insulted the leader of Germany,

229. insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),

230. falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,

231. blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,

232. continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

233. said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,

234. left a NATO summit early in a huff,

235. stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,

236. called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,

237. refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise.

238. Don’t forget that he took many classified & top secret documents with him when he left the White House, many of which have not been recovered & may have been compromised.

I’m sure there are a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

Plz copy and paste. Whoever wrote this deserves credit but I don't know who it is.

#donald trump #popular #long post

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anamericangirl · 2 months

Note

According to a new bombshell poll from CNN, 74% of Americans think that Trump will simply refuse to concede if he loses the election.

For comparison, only 55% of Americans in August 2020 believed that he would not concede, and they were right.

In other words, 3/4 of the country expects another insurrection attempt if Joe Biden wins reelection.

If Trump loses, would you accept the results?

Can't believe you're citing CNN lol

#anon #answered #I'll accept it if it's legit

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progressivepower · 11 months

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Republicans Say Trump's Attempts To Undo An Election Should Be Litigated In Another Election. GOP lawmakers want the cases against Trump "decided at the ballot box," not in court. Democrats essentially did that in 2020, and he still refused to concede. http://ow.ly/PbWj104Rh4P

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 11 months

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Michael de Adder, Washington Post :: [Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

Letters From An American

Tonight, just before midnight, the state of Georgia indicted former president Donald J. Trump and 18 others for multiple crimes committed in that state as they tried to steal the 2020 presidential election. A special-purpose grand jury made up of citizens in Fulton County, Georgia, examined evidence and heard from 75 witnesses in the case, and issued a report in January that recommended indictments. A regular grand jury took the final report of the special grand jury into consideration and brought an indictment.

“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost” the 2020 presidential election, the indictment reads, ”and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.”

The indictment alleges that those involved in the “criminal enterprise” “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.”

That is, while claiming to investigate voter fraud, they allegedly committed election fraud.

And that effort has run them afoul of a number of laws, including the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which is broader than federal anti-racketeering laws and carries a mandatory five-year prison term.

Those charged fall into several categories. Trump allies who operated out of the White House include lawyers Rudy Giuliani (who recently conceded in a lawsuit that he lied about Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss having stuffed ballot boxes), John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeffrey Clark, Jenna Ellis, and Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Those operating in Georgia to push the scheme to manufacture a false slate of Trump electors to challenge the real Biden electors include lawyer Ray Stallings Smith III, who tried to sell the idea to legislators; Philadelphia political operative Michael Roman; former Georgia Republican chair David James Shafer, who led the fake elector meeting; and Shawn Micah Tresher Still, currently a state senator, who was the secretary of the fake elector meeting.

Those trying to intimidate election worker and witness Ruby Freeman include Stephen Cliffgard Lee, a police chaplain from Illinois; Harrison William Prescott Floyd, executive director of Black Voices for Trump; and Trevian C. Kutti, a publicist for the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.

Those allegedly stealing data from the voting systems in Coffee County, Georgia, and spreading it across the country in an attempt to find weaknesses in the systems that might have opened the way to fraud include Trump lawyer Sidney Powell; former Coffee County Republican Committee chair Cathleen Alston Latham; businessman Scott Graham Hall; and Coffee County election director Misty Hampton, also known as Emily Misty Hayes.

The document also referred to 30 unindicted co-conspirators.

Trump has called the case against him in Georgia partisan and launched a series of attacks on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Today, Willis told a reporter who asked about Trump’s accusations of partisanship: “I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law. The law is completely nonpartisan. That's how decisions are made in every case. To date, this office has indicted, since I’ve been sitting as the district attorney, over 12,000 cases. This is the eleventh RICO indictment. We follow the same process. We look at the facts. We look at the law. And we bring charges."

The defendants have until noon on August 25 to surrender themselves to authorities.

Letters From An American

Heather Cox Richardson

#Robert Scott Horton #Washington Post #Michael de Adder #political cartoon #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Fani Willis #RICO #Georgia #Indicted #TFG

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 17 days

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By: Julian Adorney and Mark Johnson

Published: Jun 10, 2024

There’s a sense that the liberal order is eroding.

What do we mean by that? By “liberal order” we mean three things: political liberalism, economic liberalism, and epistemic liberalism.

Politically, it’s tough to shake the sense that we’re drifting away from our liberal roots. Fringes on both sides are rejecting the liberal principle that all human beings are created equal and that our differences are dwarfed by our shared humanity. On the left, prominent activists are endorsing the idea that people with different immutable characteristics (race, gender, etc.) have different intrinsic worth. For instance, in 2021, Yale University’s Child Study Center hosted a psychiatrist who gave a speech titled, “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind,” where she compared white people to “a demented violent predator who thinks they are a saint or a superhero.” In response to Hamas’ brutal attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, Yale professor Zareena Grewal tweeted, “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.” Across the political aisle, Dilbert comic creator Scott Adams called black Americans a “hate group” whom white Americans should “get the hell away from.”

If a core component of political liberalism is that all human beings are created equal, then many prominent voices are pushing us rapidly toward an illiberal worldview where one’s worth is determined by immutable characteristics.

Increasingly, members of both parties seek to change liberal institutions to lock the opposition out of power. Their apparent goal is to undermine a key outcome of political liberalism: a peaceful and regular transfer of power between large and well-represented factions. On the right, prominent Republicans have refused to concede Trump’s loss in 2020, and many are refusing to commit to certifying the 2024 election should Trump lose again. “At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump,” Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) said in response to repeated questions about whether or not he would accept the election results. On the left, prominent Democrats advocate for abolishing the Electoral College, partly on the grounds that it favors Republicans; and for splitting California into multiple states to gain more blue Senate seats. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tina Smith (D-MN), among others, have called for expanding the Supreme Court explicitly so they can pack it with Democrats.

This disdain for democratic norms isn’t limited to political elites on right or left; it is permeating the general populace. According to a 2023 poll, only 54 percent of young Americans (aged 18-29) agree with the statement, “Democracy is the greatest form of government.”

Economic liberalism is also under attack. In 2022, Pew found that only 57 percent of the public had a favorable view of capitalism. Those numbers are even worse among young Americans; only 40 percent among those aged 18-29 had a positive view of capitalism. By contrast, 44 percent of the same age group reported having a positive view of socialism. Faced with the choice of which system we should live under, it’s unclear whether young Americans would prefer economic liberalism over the command-and-control systems of socialism or communism. And while young people typically hold more left-of-center views and often become more conservative as they age, the intensity of young peoples’ opposition to capitalism should not be discounted. From 2010 to 2018, a separate Gallup poll found that the number of young Americans (aged 18-29) with a positive view of capitalism dropped by 23 percent.

Epistemic liberalism is on the ropes too. As the Harper’s Letter warned, “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” In recent years, even prominent intellectuals have been terrified of being canceled for daring to write outside of the lines set by a new and predominantly left-wing orthodoxy, adversely affecting out discourse. Again, this disdain for liberalism is more acute among young people: a 2019 survey found that 41 percent of young Americans didn’t believe that the First Amendment should protect hate speech. Furthermore, a full majority (51 percent) of college students considered it “sometimes” or “always acceptable” to “shout down speakers or try to prevent them from talking.”

As Jonathan Rauch argues in The Constitution of Knowledge, a necessary precondition of epistemic liberalism is that everyone should be allowed to speak freely, a precondition increasingly unmet in recent years.

In their book Is Everyone Really Equal?, Robin DiAngelo (of White Fragility fame) and Özlem Sensoy even challenge the foundation of epistemic liberalism itself: the scientific method. This method mandates that hypotheses be tested against reality before acceptance. “Critical Theory developed in part as a response to this presumed infallibility of scientific method,” they write “and raised questions about whose rationality and whose presumed objectivity underlies scientific methods.” Of course, once we jettison the principle that ideas should be tested by holding them up to reality, all we have left are mythologies and accusations. One of the great triumphs of the Enlightenment was giving us the scientific tools to more accurately understand the world, but those tools—like other facets of liberalism—are increasingly under attack.

So, what went wrong? Why do so many Americans, particularly young Americans, harbor such disdain for our liberal order? Why have we seen the rise of widespread social censorship, and why do books telling us that not all humans are created equal become mega-bestsellers? We believe a key reason is that too many proponents of the liberal order (ourselves included) have failed to defend our ideals vigorously. In the face of our complacency, a small but impassioned minority intent on dismantling the pillars of liberalism has been gaining ground, both within institutions and within the hearts and minds of the younger generation.

Why haven’t many of us stood up for our ideas? We posit two reasons. First, there is a sense of complacency: a lot of us look at illiberalism and think, “It can't happen here.” The United States was founded as an essentially liberal country. We were the first country to really seek to embody Enlightenment ideals (however imperfectly) from our birth. Throughout our 250-year history, despite fluctuating levels of government intervention in Americans' social and economic lives, we have never lost our political, economic, or epistemological liberal foundations. This long track record of resilience has led many of us to overlook the rising threat of illiberal ideals, assuming our liberal system is too robust to be torn down.

Adding to this complacency is the fact that many threats to our liberal social contract are largely invisible to those outside educational or academic circles. Cloaked in the guise of combating racism, Critical Race Theory takes aim at the liberal order; however, most people who haven’t been inside the halls of a university in the last 10 or so years may not be aware of this aspect. Critical Theory—including Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Post-Colonial Theory, and others—generally opposes Enlightenment thinking, but its arguments are wrapped in jargon and mostly live in academic papers. For example, the book Is Everyone Really Equal? criticizes political, economic, and epistemic liberalism, but it’s not a mainstream bestseller; instead, it’s a widely-used textbook for prospective teachers. What begins in the academy often seeps out into schools and eventually permeates the broader society, and many teachers and professors of these ideologies explicitly describe themselves as activists or as scholar-activists whose goal is to turn the next generation onto these ideas. The threat is real, but the more anti-liberal facets of these ideologies aren’t exactly being shouted by CNN, which makes it easy to miss.

Second, as humans, we often abandon our ideals in the face of social pressure. Consider an organization consisting of ten people: one progressive and nine moderates. In 2020, each member starts to hear about Black Lives Matter (BLM). The progressive enthusiastically supports BLM, and loudly encourages his colleagues to do the same. What happens next illustrates how prone we are to jettison our ideals if doing so brings social rewards.

The first moderate faces a choice. He could thoroughly research BLM by investigating police violence nationwide, examining the evidence of systemic racism or system-wide equality, exploring BLM’s proposed program and what they actually advocate for, and making an informed decision about whether or not he supports the organization. But that’s a lot of work for not a lot of return. After all, his job doesn’t require that he understand BLM; the only immediate consequence is his colleague’s opinion of him. Consequently, he engages in what Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman calls “substitution.” As Kahneman explains in Thinking, Fast and Slow, “when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.” For example, when participants were asked how much money Exxon should pay for nets to prevent birds from drowning in oil ponds, they did not perform an economic calculation. Instead, what drove their decision-making process was emotion: “the awful image of a helpless bird drowning, its feathers soaked in thick oil.”

Thus, the moderate engages in substitution. Instead of tackling the complex and difficult question “What do I think of BLM?” he asks himself an easier but more emotional question: “How much do I care about black people?” For any decent person, the answer is “quite a lot”—and so he signs on with his progressive colleague. The fact that he’s now supporting an illiberal ideology—one of BLM’s co-founders said in 2019 that “I believe we all have work to do to keep dismantling the organizing principle of this society"—never occurs to him.

When the next moderate is asked the same question about whether he supports BLM, he has the same incentive as his colleague to engage in substitution, but with added social pressure: now two of his nine coworkers support BLM, and he risks losing social capital if he does not. As humans, we are social animals. Sociologist Brooke Harrington explains that we often value others’ perception of us more than our own survival, as social ostracism in our distant past often meant death anyway. As she puts it, “social death is more frightening than physical death.” And so, motivated by the social rewards for supporting BLM and the fear of social punishment if he does not, one coworker after another agrees to support BLM.

Adding to our social calculus is the fact that we all want to be seen as (and, even more importantly, see ourselves as) empathetic. In the example of BLM, we don’t want to be perceived as racists. If this means going along with an organization that says that police “cannot [be] reform[ed]” because they were “born out of slave patrols,” then that’s a small price to pay. This same desire to be seen as empathetic (again, especially by ourselves) holds when we are called to cancel a professor for saying something insensitive, or to condemn cultural appropriation, or to read and praise books and articles claiming that liberalism has failed marginalized people and that a new, totalitarian system is necessary for their salvation.

But why shouldn’t we be complacent? Why shouldn’t we go along to get along, and let our values bend here and there so we can fit in with the new illiberal crowd? One reason is that the stakes are no longer trivial. There is nothing magical about the liberal order that guarantees it will always triumph. History shows us that liberalism can give way to totalitarianism, as it did in Nazi Germany; or to empire, as in ancient Rome. In England, new rules regulate what people are allowed to say, with citizens facing fines or imprisonment for saying something the political establishment does not like. In Canada, a new bill supported by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would criminalize speech that those in power consider hateful. The United States is not immune to these dangers. Our Constitution alone is not a sufficient defense, because laws are downstream from culture. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights can be interpreted by illiberal justices (and have been in the 20th century); and when this happens, our rights can erode very rapidly indeed. Our freedom is sustained not by our geography or even our founding documents, but by our willingness to fight for liberalism—to defend it in the court of public opinion.

If we’re going to preserve the freedoms we cherish, that is what it will take. We must find the courage to stand up for our ideals—to speak and act based on principle alone. We must be open to new evidence that might change our views, but at the same time resist having our minds changed for us. We must prioritize truth over popular opinion.

In essence, we must think and act more like August Landmesser.

[ Source: The Lone German Man Who Refused to Give Hitler the Nazi Salute (businessinsider.com) ]

About the Authors

Julian Adorney is the founder of Heal the West, a Substack movement dedicated to preserving our liberal social contract. He’s also a writer for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). Find him on X: @Julian_Liberty.

Mark Johnson is a trusted advisor and executive coach at Pioneering Leadership and a facilitator and coach at The Undaunted Man. He has over 25 years of experience optimizing people and companies—he writes at The Undaunted Man’s Substack and Universal Principles.

Whatever its flaws, every alternative to liberalism is a nightmare.

#Julian Adorney #Mark Johnson #liberalism #liberal values #liberal ethics #liberal society #secularism #secular liberalism #classic liberalism #Enlightenment #Enlightenment values #The Enlightenment #political liberalism #economic liberalism #epistemic liberalism #epistemology #religion is a mental illness

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month

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David Edwards at Raw Story:

An animated Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) raised his voice and refused to say he would accept the outcome of the 2024 election on Sunday. During an interview on Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker asked the senator if he would accept a loss by former President Donald Trump in this year's presidential election. "Will you accept the election results of 2024, no matter what happens, Senator?" Welker asked. "No matter what happens? No," Rubio insisted. "No matter who wins?" Welker pressed.

"Well, why don't you, I think you're asking the wrong person," Rubio shot back. "The Democrats are the ones that have opposed every Republican victory since 2000." "It's Hillary Clinton who said it," he continued. Welker pointed out that "no Democrat has refused to concede," including Clinton. [...] "Democracy is held together by people's confidence in the election and their willingness to abide by its results," Welker recalled. "So by your own definition, are Donald Trump's claims undermining Americans' confidence in democracy, given that he has not conceded the last election?" Rubio, a possible vice presidential nominee, refused to condemn Trump.

Senator and potential Vice President candidate Marco Rubio (R) went on NBC’s Meet The Press yesterday, in which he shouted over the show’s host Kristen Welker and espoused election denialist sentiments by refusing to accept a potential Donald Trump loss in the election.

From the 05.19.2024 edition of NBC's Meet The Press:

youtube

#Kristen Welker #Marco Rubio #2024 Presidential Election #Election Denialism #2024 Elections #NBC #NBC News #Meet The Press #Election Fraud #2024 Veepstakes

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mariacallous · 6 months

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The man charged with administering Arizona’s elections isn’t concerned about the state’s ability to securely hold elections. But he’s going to have to persuade millions of other people to feel the same way.

Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, was elected Arizona’s secretary of state in 2022. A lawyer who previously worked as a prosecutor in Colorado and Arizona, and served as the Maricopa County Recorder before taking office, Fontes must now take on the role of convincing the state’s voters that its elections are legitimate.

Arizona is possibly the market leader in ridiculous election conspiracies and deniers. After former president Donald Trump falsely claimed fraud following the 2020 election, a sham audit to investigate claims of election fraud was conducted by Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity firm hired by the Arizona state Senate. Cyber Ninjas falsely claimed that 300 dead people voted; the firm shut down after refusing to release public records to comply with a court order.

In 2022, Arizona election workers faced violent threats, and Trump used technical glitches to stoke fear about the legitimacy of election results. Kari Lake, a prominent election denier who received Trump’s endorsement for governor, refused to concede after losing the election, and made multiple attempts to get the courts to overturn the result. (Lake is now running for Senate.)

Fontes already has his hands full in the lead-up to the 2024 election. In November, two Republican Arizona county officials, Peggy Judd and Terry Crosby, were indicted by the Arizona attorney general on felony charges of conspiracy and interference with an election officer. The charges stemmed from their alleged efforts to delay the certification of votes in the 2022 general election, citing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. (An attorney for Crosby told Reuters there was no crime and that his client will be vindicated. Judd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

In an interview with WIRED, Fontes spoke about his plans to protect election workers in 2024, his thoughts on generative AI and deepfakes, and what he thinks of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk’s knowledge of Arizona’s elections.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

WIRED: What is keeping you up at night?

Fontes: Well, the most critical things that are keeping me up at night don't have anything to do with the technology. It has to do with a lot of the unknowns out there. Human error being blown up by election denialists, by social media.

That's what's bothering me more than anything else. Our systems are quite good, we've got lots of checks and balances, we have a relatively decent grasp on what [threats] AI could pose. We're gonna stick with the basics in our trainings. We're gonna keep it as simple as possible for our voters so they can follow the instructions as easily and cleanly as possible.

At the end of the day, we've got to be ready for just about anything. So there's no one particular thing that's really keeping me up. It's sort of the universe of concerns that are kind of bouncing off of each other.

WIRED: I was at the Turning Point USA event this weekend, and Charlie Kirk [the founder of Turning Point USA] said onstage that elections in Arizona had become less secure. I'm wondering what you'd say to that?

Fontes: Charlie Kirk doesn't know shit about Arizona's election. So I don't know what he's talking about. Our elections are far more secure than they even were in 2020, which were the most secure elections that we've had. I'd like to hear why he thinks that. Where does he get his information from? What facts does he have to support that statement? Who has he actually spoken to in the election administration world? And why does he think that by increasing our security profile, working more closely with federal, state, and local law enforcement and technology officials, how that all makes our elections less secure?

Charlie Kirk is a grifter, who only stirs the pot for his own profit. And what he's doing is eroding the trust that Americans have in one another. That's his MO and he's free to do that under the First Amendment. But he's not paying any of the price and the consequences. He personally is shielded in his privilege, from the erosion of our democracy, from the lack of trust, and the fact that we've lost a lot of people because of the threats that his rhetoric brings to bear. So I think he should reconsider. Maybe potentially just supporting his assertions with some facts, that might be a good start.

WIRED: Can you explain why Arizona in particular attracted so many election conspiracy theories?

Fontes: One of the things that is important [to] realize about Arizona is that we are historically a place where, I will kindly say, free thinking is kind of a normal thing. You know, we don't have generations-long institutions that have really locked themselves into power for long periods of time. We don't have any royal families who made millions and millions of dollars here locally, and then invested locally. We are an amalgam of people from all over the country and all over the world. And when you have this really diverse soup of different ways of thinking and looking at things, folks might gravitate toward one space or another. And that free thinking sometimes becomes, you know, a good breeding ground for some of these conspiracy theories. It can go off the rails a little bit, once in a while. But that's okay. American democracy requires a diversity of thought. And it's our intellectual freedom that is one of our biggest strengths.

Now, we still have to agree on the outcomes of elections. That's the golden thread that holds the entire fabric of our society together. And that's the one piece of our civic culture that is now being attacked. That's different than what we've seen in the past and the conflicts that we've seen issue by issue, whether it's immigration, or abortion, or the economy or gas prices, or whatever.

WIRED: Talk to me about the relationships you have with your peers in the Arizona state government. How cooperative are they with you? And do you have any fear that they may try to undermine the results of the election?

Fontes: We have very good relationships, even with people who find themselves in the election denialism space. There are some things that we very much agree on. For example, Representative Alex Kolodin—one of the biggest election denialists, who has actually sued me several times and who was just recently disciplined by the state bar—he and I have actually worked very closely together on some issues. We disagree on a lot of stuff, but he's going to be sponsoring one of the bills that we're bringing forward to help us better and more frequently train our election officials here in Arizona. But you know, when we're sitting in a conference room behind closed doors, and the lights and cameras are not on us, generally speaking, we can find common ground when it comes to the pragmatic application of skillsets regarding the operation and administration of our elections. It's when the cameras get turned on that people sometimes go astray a little bit.

WIRED: How do you plan to protect election workers? And do you have any fears of violence at the polls or other places?

Fontes: Political violence has become a part of the regular conversation here in America. And I think that's shameful. At the end of the day, if you're threatening violence or committing acts of violence to achieve a political end, that's terrorism. To protect our election workers, we're working very closely with state, local, and federal officials. We've been increasing our security funding. We've been hardening our physical security, personnel security, information technology security, networking security across the board, working closely with CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency].

We are sending folks from that agency to every one of our counties, and they are doing surveys, they're looking at the counties to advise them. We're working with the National Guard day in and day out, to help monitor the circumstances online and in other spaces. We now have four security personnel working in different spaces in the secretary of state's office to monitor and alert when we see activities out there that might be problematic or might need further investigation. At this stage, we're doing everything we can to bring as much information to law enforcement as possible. God willing, the violence and threats of violence will go away soon, so that we can get back to the notion of just running elections as we have done for the past several generations.

WIRED: Are you personally prepared to become a target of Donald Trump and his supporters?

Fontes: Well, I'm already a target. I've already been threatened, my family's already been threatened. We are already struggling to meet my personal security needs and the security needs of my own family. This is already a reality for me, but our democracy is worth it.

When I volunteered to give my life to be a United States Marine, I didn't think that after being honorably discharged, I would continue to have to live under threat. And it's a sad day in America, where civilian officials doing civilian jobs have to suffer these kinds of threats and these kinds of violence. Is this the country that we want to live in? Do we want regular civilian activities to be the target of threats of violence or actual violence? These are Americans who were bringing it here and that's embarrassing.

WIRED: What has it been like to experience the attacks on your family and safety?

Fontes: Well, thankfully, so far, it's just been threats. And we really are grateful to law enforcement, who continue to monitor the internet and other communication channels to make sure that we stay safe. It's not pleasant. And you know, my partner, my children, we're all very cognizant of it. And it's not something that I would wish on anybody else.

WIRED: You ran a tabletop exercise [a simulation of potential scenarios in the upcoming elections] over the past few days. Was there anything that stuck out to you or surprised you?

Fontes: I think the advancing technology and generative AI really was brought home for a lot of folks in the room. One of the deepfakes [at the exercise] was created with only base information from the internet and then some free tools. They created a deepfake of me and of another elected official in Arizona, using that person's permission and some footage that they took. And that one was strikingly better. And they actually had that official speaking German, speaking Chinese, in what appeared to be really, really well-placed lip movements, eye movements, all that stuff. In another six to eight months, those technologies are going to improve.

People have always been able to lie, but the effectiveness of those lies is now augmented and significantly increased. So AI doesn't present new threats. It presents broader and deeper threats that we're already working to deal with.

WIRED: The Colorado Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Trump can't be on the ballot. Can you talk about why you have defended Trump's right to be on the ballot and what you make of the Colorado decision?

Fontes: My position is that Arizona statute obliges me to put Donald Trump on the ballot where he has already qualified for the ballot in two other states. So my position is in defense of Arizona state law and our order under the rule of law, and whether or not I think Mr. Trump ought to be on the ballot is irrelevant. I have a duty to execute the law. As for Colorado, that's a Colorado question. And I have a feeling that the United States Supreme Court will have to step in at some point.

WIRED: What would you say to an average voter who believes that elections in America and elections in Arizona are rigged?

Fontes: I would ask them if they're hearing that from elected officials who were elected in the same system that they're questioning. If you're hearing it from someone who is currently in office, they got there because they got elected, because people voted for them. And those votes actually counted. The burden has been shifted to the defender of the system instead of the person trying to accuse the system of being problematic. I want to know why. I want to see the facts that have allegedly been kept from public view, I want to see the actual evidence that has never surfaced in any state anywhere, to show that there's some kind of widespread fraud or that elections are fickle.

I want to see the facts just like [speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives] Rusty Bowers wanted to see the facts. Just like [Georgia secretary of state] Brad Raffensperger wanted to see the facts. Just like sensible Republicans and Democrats across the country have wanted to see the facts. The burden should rest on the accuser. And if someone is accusing our systems of being corrupted, they need to show us the facts that they're using to come to that conclusion. Otherwise, their accusations are empty.

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ivan-fyodorovich-k · 7 months

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Maresuke Nogi was always his own toughest critic. Emperor Meiji trusted him and appointed him to high military posts in Japan: general in the imperial army, governor-general of Taiwan. But we all make mistakes, and Nogi’s lapses gnawed at him. Twice he requested the emperor’s leave to commit ritual suicide. Each time, the emperor refused. In Nogi’s home, now a quiet shrine in a Tokyo meadow, you can see pictures of Nogi reading the newspaper on September 13, 1912, the morning of his boss’s funeral. No one was left to stop him. Near the photo you can see the sword he used later that day to disembowel himself.

I raise the example of General Nogi to encourage present-day leaders (military, political, educational) to take a much more modest step. They should offer to resign—often, and both in times of trouble and in times of calm. This weekend, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, did the honorable thing, and the chair of Penn’s board, Scott Bok, followed his kōhai’s example shortly after. Magill resigned because she, along with Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth, performed abysmally under questioning in Congress. Their inquisitor, upstate New York’s Elise Stefanik, a Republican, asked them whether chanting genocidal slogans violated their universities’ policies. It depends on the context, they all said, on the advice of counsel and the worst PR teams money can buy. Within days, Magill and Gay conceded that their answers had not been ideal. Gay is facing calls for her resignation, too.

Resign. Resign. Everyone: resign. Resignation has come to mean failure, something one does when cornered, caught dead to rights, incapable of continuing for even another day. It should be an act of honor—a high point in a career of service. It isn’t shameful. It is noble. It is the first and sometimes only step in the expiation of shame, and (ironically) the ultimate sign of one’s fitness for office.

No one demonstrates the value of these traits better than those who lack them entirely. I thought of Nogi’s katana, flashing from its scabbard, last week when the House voted to expel George Santos, Stefanik’s colleague in New York’s Republican delegation. The House almost never kicks anyone out, mainly because those facing expulsion have in the past tended to resign rather than weather the indignity of an expulsion vote. Santos is taking his ouster well and posting prolifically on TikTok. A psychologically normal person would have resigned the instant his tower of lies showed signs of wobbling. To let it crash down, then dance around the rubble of that tower until the orderlies arrive and pull you away, is truly mad behavior, and a demonstration of unfitness for the job, or indeed any job other than TikTok star.

I cannot prove this, but I believe the tendency to stick it out rather than resign started roughly when Representative Anthony Weiner (New York again, this time a Democrat) called a press conference to discuss whether he had, in fact, tweeted a picture of his penis, tumescent in his underwear. He could have just quit, and eventually he did (but lived to humiliate himself another day). But that pause to hold a press conference broke the seal on something dangerous, the idea that one can talk one’s way through a mortification. To take the podium and subject oneself to hostile questioning under those circumstances bespoke a delusionary chutzpah.

It soon became clear that anyone socially defective enough to persist through a scandal has a good chance of surviving it. By the time then-candidate Donald Trump (Republican, guess where) appeared on the Access Hollywood tape, describing his hobby of sexually assaulting women, it ceased to be obvious that at some point one should tap out and go home. If you have no shame, and you refuse to go, there might not be anyone out there who can make you. Mechanisms exist, as the Santos case shows. But the mechanisms were devised to govern people from another time, sensitive to ridicule and guffaws.

One should be ready for criticism, both earned and unearned. But resignation—more precisely, the offer of resignation—is an expression of confidence, both in oneself and in one’s employers or constituents. A board can reject a resignation. Voters can turn out in the streets to beg you to reconsider, or can turn out at the ballot to vote you back in. In fact, the more defensible one’s position, the greater esteem we should show for the one who offers to leave it. Call this the Nogi rule.

Harvard’s Claudine Gay evidently believed that she’d erred, because she reverted immediately to damage-control mode after leaving Washington. The next day, she told the Crimson that her testimony did not represent “my truth”—that is, that she disapproves of genocidal anti-Semitism. (This is an extreme example of the political axiom “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”) Her original answer before Congress lacked any visceral disapproval of anti-Semitism, certainly none to match Harvard’s recent record of condemning speech deemed offensive to historically disadvantaged groups. Her affect was robotic, neutral. She showed no signs of concern at all.

But her neutrality was born of an honorable principle, well worth defending. It reflected the values of free expression in a modern interpretation of the First Amendment, under which anyone can say just about any foolish thing, as long as saying it isn’t about to cause someone else to break the law. If the “context” of a genocidal chant is a nonviolent rally, the university shouldn’t stop anyone from chanting. (It should examine its soul. But that is another matter.) If the context is a crowd of protesters with bricks in hand, running at a group of Jews, the university should expel or fire every demonstrator there, whether armed with a brick or a bullhorn. All three presidents should have said this, then added a note of contrition over their universities’ failure to uphold these principles of free expression in the past.

But I’ll say it again: Gay should resign. To offer her neck to Harvard’s Board of Overseers would show her confidence that its members, like Emperor Meiji, would see past her error and ask her to endure in her position. It would also demonstrate her willingness to own that error, to acknowledge it publicly and unselfishly. Maybe the board would accept her resignation, and maybe it would not. Either of these fates is better than the one she is courting. At the moment she is trying to wriggle out of her error, and clinging to her job as if her dignity depended on keeping it. Better to teach by example that the reverse is often true, that dignity depends on leaving a job—and that staying suggests that one has nothing else, once it is gone.

The greatest legacy a resignation leaves is the creation of a culture of resignation. One institution that, up until now, has had such a culture is the Israeli defense establishment. A few weeks ago, I spoke with a former Mossad official who assured me that the entire leadership of the Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces would, as soon as the Gaza war reached a satisfactory pause, resign from their positions. They would do so, he said, because resignation was the only honorable response to their failure to foresee and prevent Hamas’s attack on October 7. Their predecessors did so in 2006, after the very messy war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and after several other episodes of modest failure in Israeli history. That they might stick around, slinking back to their offices as if hoping everyone forgot about their mistakes, would be inconceivable. In this context, one understands better the popular rage against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in whom the spirit of General Nogi is extinct: To this day, he is making the case to the Israeli right for his remaining their leader indefinitely.

One can’t get far in politics without a dogged willingness to destroy one’s critics and step on their corpses to reach the next height. But this is a minimal qualification for success, and everyone who attains high office, having climbed up from decades in the Senate or in departmental meetings, has it to an unusual degree. To persist is just to do what comes naturally for these people. To give up at the right moment—that is a quality against type, and a virtue possessed by the greatest of leaders. It is nevertheless available even to those who have hitherto shown no signs of greatness at all. Let it be said of them what is said in Macbeth of the Thane of Cawdor: that nothing became them in public service like the leaving it.

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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With 2016, people just don’t understand how everything works. Getting the popular vote isn’t how the game is played, getting the electoral vote is. The popular vote doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because candidate’s strategies would completely change if they were trying to get the popular vote rather than win individual states. Did I vote for Hillary? Yes. Do I still think she didn’t approach the vote with the right strategy and played it for the popular vote rather than the electoral vote and lost as a result? Also yes.

Okay, but you do get how that's a flawed metric for an argument, right? Hillary DID win the popular vote by three million plus, and in any sane system, that would have been enough to net her the presidency. "Hillary ran a flawed campaign" is to some extent, a true statement, as is "Hillary didn't focus enough on Michigan/Wisconsin/Pennsylvania because the Democrats assumed she had them on lockdown and didn't take into account the amount of Midwestern white people voting for Trump because of white backlash against Obama." But that is something that a) only became clear in hindsight and b) yet again, in any sane universe, should not have decided the election. Because:

Hillary was, and is, possibly the single most qualified presidential candidate the Democrats have ever had;

Voters were predisposed to hate her not because she "wasn't likable" or was "too corporate," but because the Republicans had been running literal decades of virulent smear campaigns against her to poison the well for this very eventuality;

The media almost never bothered to point this out at all and spent endless airtime on BUT HER EEEEEEEMAILS and doing sympathetic pieces about Trump voters, implying that their vote for Trump was a justified or moral protest against Both Sides Badism, and this was even the so-called "mainstream" media;

Fox News, of course, pumped out endless hit pieces and then some, all of which was echoed in some degree by those outlets;

James Comey announced TEN DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION that suddenly oops, he was investigating her emails again;

Even though there was nothing there and it is absolutely small potatoes compared to the much worse things Republicans are doing on the regular, because SELLING NUCLEAR SECRETS TO FOREIGN ENEMIES is okay as long as it is Trump doing it;

America is still so fucking racist and misogynistic that even after Trump spewed off terrible things about every non-white group, scapegoated Mexicans and Muslims and black people, and was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by the pussy, this didn't actually make much of an impact on people planning to vote for him, because they evidently figured it "wasn't real" or "he would change" once he became president, while for others, the open hatred was the main attraction;

Bernie refused to concede until the actual convention, implied that if you couldn't vote for him, you shouldn't vote for anyone, and generally fanned the kind of I'll Take My Pony and Go Home rhetoric that is a poison in "progressive" online circles today;

Almost 10% of Bernie voters voted for Trump instead of Clinton;

Gary Johnson and Jill Fucking "Russian Asset" Stein were somehow treated as valid "protest vote" options, even while Hillary was warning everyone left and right about how much Trump sucked, how much SCOTUS (AND SPECIFICALLY ROE) was at risk, and how much democracy would be damaged if he won, which -- GUESS WHAT -- happened exactly as she predicted;

Speaking of the Russians, they were interfering the hell out of it, whether through Wikileaks/the DNC email hack, social media psyops, organized troll farms, or anything else they could think of;

And on and on. Against the backdrop of sheer and unmitigated fuckery that was the 2016 election, and the fact that so many people couldn't be bothered to vote for Hillary because she was a Smart Woman who was Too Corporate when the alternative was literally Trump, "Hillary didn't campaign enough in MI/WI/PA" is.... hardly a valid way to explain or excuse the many, many bad-faith actors, bad choices, and general lethargy, misinformation, deliberate destruction of faith in democracy, racism, Russian interference, misogyny, and white fragility that fucked us over and continues to do so.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #hillary clinton was right about everything: the redux redux redux

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schraubd · 1 year

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A Statutory "Green Book" After 303 Creative

In 303 Creative, the Supreme Court held that at least in some circumstances a business's free speech interest in avoiding producing expression it disagrees with constitutionally must trump the application of anti-discrimination law in areas of public accommodation, notwithstanding the admittedly "compelling state interest" the latter type of law protects.

It was not so long ago that minorities in America had booklets they carried to let them know which businesses it was safe for them to patronize, knowing that in certain places and communities they could not simply assume that a hotel, restaurant, or shop open to the general public would be open to them. The Jewish Vacation Guide was one example, the Negro Motorist Green Book was another. In circumstances where discrimination was lawful, these resources served several important needs.

First, of course, they let their readers know where certain services simply would be unavailable. One does not want to travel through or move into a town where the only hotel or restaurant will refuse to serve you.

Second, and almost as importantly, they enabled readers to avoid shops which would refuse to grant them service. This is distinct from the first injury, because there is a severe dignitary harm in being refused service on account of one's identity even if a competing business across the street that will happily take one's dollars. One feature of public accommodations law is precisely that one doesn't have to "run the risk" that in entering a storefront on Main Street you'll endure the indignity of being asked to leave because you're the wrong skin color, religion, or sexual orientation. Absent that guarantee being fully enshrined into law, resources like the Green Book enabled travelers to know in advance which storefronts to avoid so they wouldn't have to face that sort of humiliation.

In keeping with that tradition, I wonder if one way of balancing 303 Creative's First Amendment protections with the again conceded-to-be-compelling interest in robust antidiscrimination protections is via the time-tested policy of disclosure. States can pass laws which require any business that wishes to claim a First Amendment exemption from all or part of an anti-discrimination statute to publicly announce and display that choice; and the state can likewise maintain a list of businesses which make such claims. The law would be a sort of statutory Green Book, letting patrons know what businesses are at least claiming an ability to discriminate (and by extension assuring them that businesses not on the list remain safe to patronize).

Here's my very rough crack at some model legislative language:

Sec. XXX -- Exemptions

(a) Registration. Any business which seeks to claim a First Amendment exemption from all or part of the [this state's anti-discrimination law] ("a business seeking an exemption") must, at least thirty days prior to asserting any claim for such an exemption,

(1) Register with the Secretary of State their intent to claim an exemption, including specifying which portions of the law they assert they will not comply with.

(2) The Secretary shall publish the names and addresses of all businesses who register their intent to claim an exemption under this subsection on a publicly available website, including which provisions of the law they claim exemption from.

(b) Public display. Within thirty days of receiving a filing under Sec. (a)(1), the Secretary shall issue a notification to the business seeking an exemption stating that "WARNING: THIS BUSINESS HAS FILED FOR A FIRST AMENDMENT EXEMPTION FROM THIS STATE'S ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAWS", including specifying which portions of the law the business claims exemption from. Unless otherwise inapplicable, the text of this notification shall be conspicuously displayed in

(1) The front window or doorway space of any physical location of the business that is open to the general public or the businesses' regular customers; and

(2) The front page of any webpage or social media account controlled by the businesses and through which it advertises its business to the general public;

(3) Notwithstanding any other portion of this subsection, if a business claiming an exemption has neither a physical storefront under subsection (b)(1) or a webpage under subsection (b)(2), the text of the notification shall be displayed in any reasonable location where it will be conspicuous for the average customer considering patronizing the business.

(c) Presumption of sincerity. Any business which complies with the provisions in this section shall be deemed to have established, as a rebuttal presumption, the sincerity of their belief that compliance with [this state's antidiscrimination] conflicts with their own expressive beliefs.

(d) No entitlement to, or expansion of the scope of, exemption. Except as detailed in subsection(c), compliance with the provisions of this Section shall not entitle the business seeking an exemption from antidiscrimination law to any relief from the requirements of antidiscrimination provisions beyond that which is constitutionally required under the First Amendment; nor does it immunize the business seeking an exemption from any public or private proceeding seeking to enforce anti-discrimination provisions that would not otherwise violate the First Amendment.

The basic idea of this provision is simple: if you want to claim a First Amendment right to discriminate, you have to claim it publicly, in advance, so that people who would be denied service can plan accordingly. By creating a master list of discriminators, and by requiring businesses who seek to assert a right to discriminate to prominently display their intent on their storefront, it is far less likely that customers who would end up being excluded will on accident patronize the business.

The law would have some other salutary effects as well. By creating a reasonably comprehensive list of businesses asserting a right to discriminate, the state can learn of the existence of any "dead zones" where members of certain marginalized groups may be severely restricted or entirely unable to obtain services -- data that could be very useful for future legislative action. As reflected in subsection (c), the law also I think would aid in dividing the actual true believers from the opportunists -- I assume that only those who really, truly believe in their discriminatory impulses will be willing to announce in advance to the world "I am a discriminator" (as the 303 Creative plaintiff, to her "credit", was willing to do).

What are some potential drawbacks? One possibility is that it will be assumed that a law like this will enable more businesses to discriminate than otherwise would be licensed to do so by 303 Creative; I wrote subsection(d) to try and forestall that risk. Under this statute, registering a claim for an exemption is just that -- a claim, and the claim does not guarantee success. A business that registered but whose activities were not protected under 303 Creative's umbrella would still be liable, notwithstanding their registration.

Another possible problem is the argument that a law like this itself constitutes compelled speech. On face, the requirement that the business post the "WARNING" placard in its store to me doesn't seem any different than requiring a restaurant to display the health inspection notice. But there might be something different here insofar as the broader thrust of the statute would be to force businesses to "go public" with their intention to discriminate. While there's something instinctively odd about claiming a free expression right to avoid expressing one's deeply-held beliefs, there are circumstances where such a claim makes sense -- NAACP v. Alabama is the obvious template here. Alabama in the 1950s sought to require that the NAACP disclose the names and addresses of its members; the NAACP, unsurprisingly, did not wish to make this information public and claimed a First Amendment right to keep their membership data private. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NAACP (incidentally, NAACP was perhaps unsurprisingly a key precedent relied upon by the Griswold Court regarding the existence of a right to privacy). The NAACP had obviously reasonable fears that disclosure of their membership would render them vulnerable to harassment and violence; the discriminating businesses might claim fears of a similar vulnerability.

NAACP is clearly distinct, however, for a simple reason: the NAACP did not simultaneously seek to keep its "expression" quiet and claim that its expressive activity entitled it to a governmental benefit (I've always found the Little Sisters of the Poor style claim -- wanting an exemption, but also being outraged at being forced to actually ask for the exemption -- to be utterly ridiculous). With regards to its membership information, the NAACP truly wanted nothing more than to be "let alone"; there was never a circumstance where the organization would wield its membership data as a sword against the state. By contrast, by stipulation the discriminators do wish to go public regarding their beliefs when they tell the state "you can't enforce your anti-discrimination law against me because I believe X". At most, what they want is to be able to hide their beliefs until the last minute. But that's a far less pressing claim -- at some point, the business seeking the right to discriminate will have to go public with its claim, and so it does not seem unreasonable to insist that the pivotal moment occur before an unwitting customer is humiliated and denied service.

And on the subject of harassment: certainly, violence and vandalism are never justified. But often in this context, "harassment" means nothing more than a consumer counter-boycott -- the company refuses to do business with certain groups because of its beliefs; many other consumers decide accordingly that they will no longer patronize the business in protest of that discrimination (ex: the Jewish community members who no longer are purchasing from a Kosher bakery that decided it couldn't bake "pride" treats). That is not harassment, that's counter-speech. And in that register, I'd argue that under 303 Creative's logic enabling customers to know "this business asserts a right to discriminate" is free speech facilitative, not chilling.

One of the virtues of public accommodations law is that it dissipates, under normal circumstances, the inference that basic business transactions are expressive. I very much prefer a world where the bakery that bakes a cupcake for a client isn't seen as sending some sort of message of approval towards the client and the client that eats the baker's treat isn't sending a message of approval toward the baker (beyond "this cupcake is delicious"). That, to me, seems a far more pleasant space to live in than one where every turnip and widget we buy or sell can be taken as some sort of sweeping moral approval for our business partners.

But the Supreme Court did not agree. And once we open the door to saying that ordinary business transactions should be perceived as expressive, then customers as well as businesses have a strong interest in knowing the political and social views of who they're transacting with so they can assure themselves that values align, and can redirect their dollars where they do not. This is one reason I think a consequence of 303 Creative will be to supercharge "cancel culture" -- the more businesses are allowed to say "we don't serve your kind", the more customers must be allowed to say in return "well then we don't buy from your kind". The only thing worse than cancel culture is unidirectional cancel culture. If businesses can "cancel" customers for supporting gay rights, then customers should be equally empowered to cancel businesses for asserting a right to discriminate.

Again, the model language I've written above is rough. But I'm curious what First Amendment scholars and other interested parties think of the idea. We may have to tolerate certain businesses asserting a constitutionally-protected right to discriminate. But customers have rights too. One of those rights is to have confidence that one can walk into a storefront and be served as an equal. Another right is to be able to avoid patronizing businesses who insist they have a deeply held commitment to discriminating against you, your family, or your loved ones. This statute, it seems, can help bring these clashing interests into balance.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/9X0UOKh

#anti-semitism #discrimination #First Amendment #free speech #gay rights #homophobia #racism

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