#gubernatorial appointments

[townpostin]

BJP stalwart Santosh Gangwar appointed Jharkhand Governor

Political veteran among nine new gubernatorial appointments Former Union minister and BJP leader Santosh Gangwar takes on new role as Jharkhand Governor, part of a major reshuffle across nine states announced by President Murmu. RANCHI – President Droupadi Murmu has named former Union minister Santosh Gangwar as Jharkhand’s new Governor in a late-night reshuffle. President Droupadi Murmu’s…

[deadpresidents]

Did you watch the pbs documentary on the vice presidents yet and what did you think? And what vp that never became president do you think would have been best qualified to be president?

Yes, I was very much looking forward to PBS American Experience's "The American Vice President," and watched it as soon as it was released. I'm basically the target audience for documentaries like that, so I always appreciate and enjoy them. I will say that I thought that there were a lot of missed opportunities in it, however. I was really hoping that there would be some short biographical pieces on the various Vice Presidents, particularly many of the earlier VPs that nobody knows anything about. There are some really fascinating stories that could have been told about them, so I was a little bummed we didn't get that.

For the most part, the episode focused on the idea of the Vice Presidency as opposed to individual Vice Presidents. And it spent a lot of time on succession and the 25th Amendment. Now, that is no surprise -- that's basically the reason the Vice President exists in the first place. But at times it felt more like a documentary on continuity of government than the Vice Presidency, and I just wish there would have been more time spent on the personalities who have served in the position over the past 235 years.

As for the second part of your question, I'm going to do what the documentary largely did and answer based on the Vice Presidents since World War II. Once the nuclear age was upon us, the Vice Presidency became a more important role for those continuity of government reasons, and the quality and experience of most Vice Presidential candidates has improved during that time because it was more necessary to choose a running mate who was capable of actually taking over as President than balancing the ticket regionally or ideologically.

Since World War II, I think the Vice President who was best equipped to become President but never did was obviously Al Gore. I have always been shocked that Gore never made another run for the White House after 2000, but I also imagine that it must be an absolutely soul-crushing experience to run for President, seemingly win (and definitely win the popular vote), only to have the Presidency awarded to your opponent by a party-line decision of the United States Supreme Court.

Another post-World War II VP who never became President in his own right but probably would have been good in the job was Nelson Rockefeller. Because of the circumstances and brevity of his time as Vice President, Rockefeller is often forgotten about, but he was considered a real contender for the Presidency on numerous occasions before he was appointed to fill the Vice Presidential vacancy created when Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon in the White House after Nixon resigned. Rockefeller won four elections as Governor of New York, all by comfortable margins, and he never achieved his Presidential goal because the timing was just never right for him. His best bet as a Presidential candidate should have been 1964 or 1968, but after JFK's assassination, few Republicans wanted to run against LBJ less than a year later (and with good reason, LBJ's popular vote landslide was huge). And by the time the 1968 election rolled around it became clear that Richard Nixon had spent his years in political exile following his humiliating loss in the 1962 California Gubernatorial race building a powerful campaign machine that helped sweep him into office. But when it comes to experience, few VPs were better qualified than Vice President Rockefeller.

If you haven't seen "The American Vice President" from PBS's American Experience, I would definitely recommend checking it out. You can watch it (and many of American Experience's other excellent documentaries) on the PBS website. It's also currently available to watch for free via the PBS feed on YouTube.

[mariacallous]

Republicans are thrashing around trying to get themselves out of the abortion ban they have tried to win for so many decades. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was the first. In the fall of 2022, just months after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, he proposed legislation calling for a national abortion ban after 15 weeks. So far, this bill has gone nowhere. Then, in 2023, gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin of Virginia put the 15-week abortion ban at the center of his campaign to help the GOP take full control of the Virginia legislature. Rather than holding one house and picking up the other, he lost both. Recently, former President Donald Trump—who often brags about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who made possible the repeal of Roe v. Wade—offered his own way out of the thicket by applauding the fact that states now can decide the issue for themselves. And in Arizona, the Republican Senate candidate, Kari Lake, is trying to rally the party around the notion of a 15-week ban instead of the 1864 near total ban their court just affirmed, even though she’s facing criticism for this on the far right. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal came out with a poll showing that abortion was the number one issue—by far—for suburban women voters in swing states.

In each instance (and there will be more) we find Republicans desperately trying to find a position on the issue that makes their base and the other parts of their coalition happy.

It doesn’t exist, and here’s why—abortion is an integral part of health care for women.

Since 2022, when the Supreme Court eviscerated Roe in the Dobbs case, we have been undergoing a reluctant national seminar in obstetrics and gynecology. All over the country, legislators—mostly male—are discovering that pregnancy is not simple. Pregnancies go wrong for many reasons, and when they do, the fetus needs to be removed. One of the first to discover this reality was Republican State Representative Neal Collins of South Carolina. He was brought to tears by the story of a South Carolina woman whose water broke just after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Obstetrics lesson #1—a fetus can’t live after the water breaks. But “lawyers advised doctors that they could not remove the fetus, despite that being the recommended medical course of action.” And so, the woman was sent home to miscarry on her own, putting her at risk of losing her uterus and/or getting blood poisoning.

A woman from Austin, Texas had a similar story—one that eventually made its way into a heart-wrenching ad by the Biden campaign. Amanda Zurawski was 18 weeks pregnant when her water broke. Rather than remove the fetus, doctors in Texas sent her home where she miscarried—and developed blood poisoning (sepsis) so severe that she may never get pregnant again. Note that in both cases the medical emergency happened after 15 weeks—late miscarriages are more likely to have serious medical effects than early ones. The 15-week idea, popular among Republicans seeking a way out of their quagmire, doesn’t conform to medical reality.

Over in Arkansas, a Republican state representative learned that his niece was carrying a fetus who lacked a vital organ, meaning that it would never develop normally and either die in utero or right after birth. Obstetrics lesson #2—severe fetal abnormalities happen. He changed his position on the Arkansas law saying, “Who are we to sit in judgment of these women making a decision between them and their physician and their God above?”

In a case that gained national attention, Kate Cox, a Texas mother of two, was pregnant with her third child when the fetus was diagnosed with a rare condition called Trisomy 18, which usually ends in miscarriage or in the immediate death of the baby. Continuing this doomed pregnancy put Cox at risk of uterine rupture and would make it difficult to carry another child. Obstetrics lesson #3—continuing to carry a doomed pregnancy can jeopardize future pregnancies. And yet the Texas Attorney General blocked an abortion for Cox and threatened to prosecute anyone who took care of her, and the Texas Supreme Court ruled that her condition did not meet the statutory exception for “life-threatening physical condition.”

So, she and her husband eventually went to New Mexico for the abortion.

Obstetrics lesson #4—miscarriages are very common, affecting approximately 30% of pregnancies. While many pass without much drama and women heal on their own—others cause complications that require what’s known as a D&C for dilation and curettage. This involves scraping bits of pregnancy tissue out of the uterus to avoid infection. When Christina Zielke of Maryland was told that her fetus had no heartbeat, she opted to wait to miscarry naturally.

While waiting, she and her husband traveled to Ohio for a wedding where she began to bleed so heavily that they had to go to an emergency room. A D&C would have stopped the bleeding, but in Ohio, doctors worried that they would be criminally charged under the new abortion laws and sent her home in spite of the fact that she was still bleeding heavily and in spite of the fact that doctors in Maryland had confirmed that her fetus had no heartbeat. Eventually her blood pressure dropped, and she passed out from loss of blood and returned to the hospital where a D&C finally stopped the bleeding.

These are but a few of the horror stories that will continue to mount in states with partial or total bans on abortion. As these stories accumulate, the issue will continue to have political punch. We have already seen the victory of pro-choice referenda in deep red conservative states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio; and in swing states like Michigan and in deep blue states like California and Vermont. In an era where almost everything is viewed through a partisan lens, abortion rights transcend partisanship.

And more referenda are coming in November. The expectation is that at least some, if not most, of the pro-choice voters likely to be mobilized by the abortion issue will help Democrats up and down the ballot. As a result, Democratic campaigns are working hard to make sure the public knows that Republicans are responsible.

[dosomethingplease83]

I’m a quite tipsy right now, because election night and my birthday are the only occasions when I drink, so please excuse the spelling errors and inconsistency/inaccuracy in my reasoning.

It hasn’t been called yet, but it looks like Harris is going to lose this election. Fuck.

I think the Supreme Court is going to be conservative (and not *moderate, Mitt Romney-esque conservative*) until I’m at least my dad’s age. Again, Fuck. (Unless there’s some major Supreme Court reform in the next decade or so, but even then, it’s not going to happen in the next four years).

The House and Senate also went Republican, so Republicans (and Trump-Republicans) will be able to push through any right-wing legislation they want with no one to stop them. FUCK!

On top of that, it’s not like 2016 where Trump lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College. Trump’s winning the popular vote too! I thought that since the first disastrous Trump presidency was in recent memory, non-Trump Republicans and undecided/swing voters would remember how awful it was and either abstain from voting for Trump or vote for Harris. I was wrong, I guess Trump is like a Faustian bargain for moderate Republicans. When Biden was still running, the messaging was that we were voting for him because of the administration he would appoint, regardless of his own incompetence. I guess the moderate Republicans reasoned the same way.

I can’t think of a worse outcome. And I can’t pinpoint a singular point where the Harris campaign went wrong. Were they too pro-Israel? Were they not pro-Israel enough? Was it the time where she said that she wouldn’t do anything different than Biden? Was it Biden’s fault for promising to be a transitional president, and then running for a second term, and then waiting until July to drop out and endorse Harris? Was it the fact that Harris is a woman (and a woman of color at that)? I think picking Walz was a good choice, I’ve never seen anything negative said about him, but it wasn’t enough to save the campaign. “She has to be flawless, he gets to be lawless” indeed.

Even my solidly-blue state of Minnesota went purple this year. I know it’ll turn out blue by morning, but it’s still very disappointing.

If I had to give a piece of advice to the Democratic Party, it would be, “stop running female candidates for president.” America just isn’t ready. I don’t think many people were motivated to vote for her because she’d be the *first woman president*. Sure it’d be historic, it would be a good sign of progress for women in this country, but democrats/leftists of voting age don’t really care about the candidate’s gender. Look, Harris (and also Hillary Clinton) is WAY more qualified to be president than Trump, but America is too sexist to get past the fact that Harris is a woman, and the presidency is way to important to risk. We tried it twice, almost in a row. And the second time, American voters knew what a Trump presidency would look like! And even a mediocre candidate like Biden, who promised to be a transitional president (read: just vote for me to get rid of the awful other guy) won easily! Yeah, it’s wrong to discriminate on the basis of sex/gender, but if we want to win a presidential election (or a difficult, non-incumbent congressional or gubernatorial election), the best bet is a man. And winning is what counts, what saves lives, what changes policy and laws.

Right now, my thoughts are with my nephew, who is to be born in about two weeks. What kind of world will he grow up in? What will his homeschool education teach him about this point in history, and the decade that lead up to it? Will he be glad he was born in this time and country, or at all?

My own public-school was lacking. “World history” was about the classical era around the Mediterranean, and then medieval-WW1 in Europe. In the next few years, I should quit picking up on odd tidbits of history from Tumblr and actually learn world history on my own somehow. I despair when I think of my own life; I have to learn stuff for him, so I can be the cool aunt who teaches him stuff (like how gay people and Muslims aren’t the spawn of Satan).

I’m unemployed because of a yet-to-be-diagnosed disability that means about 80% of my daily energy is spent on survival, and I live with those aforementioned Mitt-Romney-esque Republicans who held their nose and voted for Trump because of the people he would appoint, so I don’t think that attending a protest or joining some activist group is in my near future. But I will focus more on the education that I missed (because I was basically narcoleptic in 11th and 12th grade, sleeping through half of my classes every day. I only passed because I’m very good at test-taking).

I don’t know how we crawl out of this. I’ll survive, many won’t. I don’t know when the 2016 election cycle will finally end. I just know that everything does, eventually, end. Even if not all of us will see it.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sam Levine at The Guardian:

North Carolina Republicans are on the verge of pushing through a bill that would give them more power over elections in the state. The changes were tucked into a bill dealing with Hurricane Helene relief aid at the last minute and passed by the state house of representatives on Tuesday, hours after it was made public. The bill would strip the governor of the power to appoint members of the state board of elections, charged with overseeing voting in the state, and instead give that power to the state auditor. A Republican won control of the state auditor race this fall for the first time in more than a decade.

It also would give voters less time to request a mail-in ballot and to cure any issues with them once they are cast. North Carolinians currently have more than a week to fix any issues – like providing voter ID or proof of residence. The bill would shorten that period to two and a half days. “The bill is moving now because the people in control of the legislature don’t like the results of the recent election in North Carolina,” said Liz Barber, policy director of the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s just a shameful power grab.” The measure is expected to clear the GOP-controlled senate on Wednesday, and would then go to the governor, Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is expected to veto the measure. Republicans currently have a supermajority to override a gubernatorial veto, though it is unclear whether they will be able to in this case.

[...] Republicans are advancing the bill after losing the gubernatorial election and being poised to lose a supermajority in the state legislature. The move also comes amid a recount in an extremely close state supreme court race; Democrat Allison Riggs narrowly leads Republican Jefferson Griffin by just more than 600 votes. Riggs had trailed by 10,000 votes on election night but overtook Griffin as counties tallied provisional ballots and mail-in ballots that arrived on election day.

[...] The latest bill would also give Republicans more control over local election boards in the state’s 100 counties. Currently, the state board appoints four members of each local board and the governor picks the chair. The new law would have the auditor-picked state board select local members and then have the auditor pick the local chairs. The bill would also curb some of the powers of the incoming attorney general, Jeff Jackson, also a Democrat. It prohibits the attorney general from taking any position “that is contrary to or inconsistent with the position of the General Assembly” and prohibits him from participating in any litigation outside the state that could invalidate any North Carolina statute. In 2016, when Cooper was elected governor, Republicans also used a lame-duck special session to curb his powers.

Republicans doing what they do best: rig and change the election rules.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

November 17, 2023

Brother-in-law of Stacey Abrams charged with human trafficking

Brother-in-law of Stacey Abrams, federal judge Leslie Abrams' husband charged with human trafficking.

Jimmie Gardner is married to Leslie Abrams, a Georgia Federal Judge appointed by Obama. Leslie Abrams is on Joe Biden's short list for a judicial appointment.

Gardner lives and works in Georgia where he served as a motivational speaker and emotional intelligence trainer for students for those formerly incarcerated. 

Jimmie Gardner spent 27 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting an elderly woman.

TAMPA, Fla. — The brother-in-law of two-time Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and the husband of Georgia Federal Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner is facing human trafficking charges.

On Friday, Jimmie Gardner, 57, was arrested in Tampa, Florida after a 16-year-old girl said she had been involved in sexual acts with him inside a hotel room.

Tampa police say the teenage girl told them that Gardner contacted her just before 1:45 a.m. and invited her to his hotel room and she accepted.

Once there, Gardner reportedly offered the girl money for sex. She initially agreed, but when she changed her mind, she said he became angry and began choking her.

After he stopped and left the hotel room, she called 911.

By the time police arrived, Gardner was gone. He was arrested just a few hours later, according to jail records.

He’s charged with human trafficking, lewd or lascivious touching of a minor and battery.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The political earthquake in Florida.

On Monday, the Florida Supreme Court issued three decisions that will reshape the landscape of personal liberties in Florida. In the process, a state supreme court dominated by DeSantis appointees may have put Florida in play in the presidential and US Senate elections.

In brief, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a six-week abortion ban signed by Ron DeSantis, approved a reproductive liberty amendment to the Florida constitution to appear on the November ballot, and approved an initiative legalizing marijuana to appear on the November ballot.

The ruling approving the six-week ban is effectively a replay of the reasoning in Dobbs—except worse. Five DeSantis appointees overruled a 35-year-old precedent that held the privacy clause in the Florida constitution protected reproductive liberty. What changed under Florida law to justify overturning decades of precedent?

Nothing.

Except that the members of the Florida Supreme Court changed by gubernatorial appointment. If the law is entirely dependent on the personal political views of the justices, there is no certainty, predictability, or rationality in jurisprudence. As Mark Joseph Stern writes in Slate,

“What’s exasperating about the Florida Supreme Court’s decision is that, unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Florida constitution explicitly guarantees a right to privacy.”

The decision is devasting for the women (and men) of Florida. It will become effective in 30 days. Although SB 300 says that abortions are prohibited “after the gestational age of 6 weeks,” an earlier law states that gestation is calculated “from the first day of the pregnant woman’s last menstrual period.”

In effect, the ruling prohibits terminations of pregnancy only��two weeks after most women recognize they have not started menstruating “on schedule” (in parenthesis to recognize that there is no single “schedule” for all women).  

For a discussion of the Florida Supreme Court’s decision, see Chris Geidner, Law Dork, Florida high court upholds abortion ban — and puts abortion on the ballot. As usual, Chris takes a deep dive into the majority opinion by the Florida Supreme Court—and some of the objections in the dissenting opinions.

But the decision may be short-lived. The same court approved a voter-led initiative to amend the Florida constitution to enshrine reproductive liberty—setting up an epic battle between a DeSantis-packed court and the people of Florida. See Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, Florida will now be ground zero for the abortion wars in 2024.

Stern writes,

But a bare majority [of the Florida Supreme Court] also let Florida voters have the final say on reproductive freedom, teeing up a momentous battle over personal liberty in a presidential election year. If that were not enough, the majority also defied DeSantis’ crusade to prevent marijuana legalization from going to the voters, giving residents the chance to greenlight recreational sales long after many other states have made the move.

Florida remains a red state dominated by Republican lawmakers and judges. And the consequences for women in Florida and the surrounding area will be horrific in the coming months. But Democrats could not have asked for a better set of issues to campaign on.

Indeed, within hours of the Florida Supreme Court’s trio of rulings, the Biden-Harris campaign released a memo saying that it believes it can win in Florida. See NBC News,  Biden campaign says it sees Florida as 'winnable' in 2024.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[antoine-roquentin]

corollary to the prior post:

The New Yorker article notes that William Newsom III, the father of the current governor, was also advisor to the son of the richest man in the world in the 1950s, Gordon Getty. In fact, Gordon and William (and John Paul Getty Jr.) grew up together and went to the same Jesuit prep school, St Ignatius. 4 years above them was future San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, 4 years below was future California governor Jerry Brown. Newsom III owed his appointment as judge to Brown in 1975 a year after Brown’s electoral win, where he quickly made good on the governor’s hippie style by ruling the Bohemian Club in violation of anti-discrimination statutes by not hiring women as employees, calling to mind Nixon’s famous remarks (the Grove is the Club’s yearly camp).

William Newsom III in turn owed his fortunes to his father, William Newsom II’s, patronage of a young Pat Brown, Jerry’s father, whose 1943 run for San Francisco District Attorney he financed to the tune of $5,000 obtained from his construction magnate father. In turn, he was Pat Brown’s campaign manager for his 1962 victory over Richard Nixon. This was a repayment for the 1960 transferal of expensive land in the Squaw Valley from the state to Newsom II, which Brown engineered with his gubernatorial powers.

Another St. Ignatius classmate was Paul Pelosi. His brother Ron ended up marrying Newsom III’s sister, Barbara, while he, of course, married the scion of a prominent Baltimore political family, Nancy D’Alesandro. Over the decades, these families became quite intertwined, sharing board memberships on charities and companies around the state. In turn, Billy Getty, son of Gordon, became quite close with current California governor Gavin, who was his best man at his wedding and opened a wine store with him. The duo are seen here with another Getty grandchild, Peter:

And while Gavin was mayor of San Francisco, he was a patron of then-District Attorney Kamala Harris, godmother of Billy Getty’s son.

Of course lots of people have discussed monopoly capitalism and interlocking boards of governance and how they restrict the functioning of creative destruction. It’s a straightforward contradiction that capital becomes more closely tied in a few hands even as it spreads outwards and decimates traditional social relations. However, I do think it’s important to talk about in the context of an article that gives the impression of the Getty family and the California government as opposed when in fact they are closely aligned in numerous hypocritical ways.

[rjzimmerman]

Who Is Lee Zeldin? (Sierra Club:

Excerpt from this story from the Sierra Club:

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection to lead the Environmental Protection Agency is, in a word, unexpected. The appointment announced on November 11—in which the Trump transition team erroneously referred to the EPA as the “Environmental Protective Agency”—was not an energy industry lobbyist like Andrew Wheeler or a MAGA insider like Mandy Gunasekara, who authored the EPA chapter of Project 2025. Instead, Trump chose Lee Zeldin, a little-known former Republican congressman from Long Island, New York, whose background on environment and energy issues is relatively skimpy. 

So, then: Who is this person who will be in charge of the federal agency tasked with protecting the environment and public health?  

Zeldin is a politician and military officer who grew up in New York’s Suffolk County. From 2015 to 2023, he represented New York’s First District (eastern Long Island) in Congress, where he sat on the House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committees. Before that, he served for four years in the New York state senate. In 2022, he ran for governor of New York against Democrat Kathy Hochul, a race that he lost by six points. 

He’s a booster of fossil fuels and promises to unleash “energy dominance.”

In his run for governor of New York, Zeldin campaigned on expanding fossil fuel extraction. He called for allowing “the safe extraction of natural resources in the southern tier” of the state, approving new pipelines, and repealing the gasoline tax. He also was a staunch opponent of New York’s ban on fracking and ran on ending it. “[Zeldin] has a record of being pro-fracking, and that’s a record I think he’s going to clearly carry forward into the Trump administration,” Eric Weltman, a senior organizer in Food and Water Watch’s New York office, told Sierra. 

Zeldin has mentioned pursuing “energy dominance” as one of three top priorities in heading up the EPA. “It is an honor to join President Trump’s cabinet as EPA administrator. We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI,” Zeldin said in a statement on X.

He has taken more than $410,000 from the oil and gas industry, and he questions the scientific consensus on climate change.

According to Climate Power, Zeldin has received over $410,000 from the oil and gas industry in his election campaigns, including over $260,000 while running for Congress and more than $150,000 in his gubernatorial run. He has taken more than $60,000 from Koch Industries over the course of his political career, according to Open Secrets data. 

His voting record in Congress is mostly anti-environment, with an LCV lifetime score of just 14 percent.

Zeldin unsurprisingly has an overall poor voting track record, as scored by the League of Conservation Voters. “Trump made his anti–climate action, anti-environment agenda very clear during his first term and again during his 2024 campaign. During the confirmation process, we would challenge Lee Zeldin to show how he would be better than Trump’s campaign promises or his own failing 14 percent environmental score if he wants to be charged with protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink, and finding solutions to climate change,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, LCV’s senior vice president for government affairs, said in a statement. 

He supported a few conservation efforts for his district.

While in Congress, Zeldin backed several conservation initiatives for his district in Long Island. According to the campaign website for his gubernatorial run, he helped save Plum Island—a tiny island off the eastern tip of Long Island—by securing repeal of a 2008 law requiring it to be sold to the highest bidder. He also worked with the Army Corps of Engineers to “protect our coastlines, advancing the ambitious Fire Island to Montauk Point project,” a climate resiliency coastal risk reduction project to help safeguard Long Island’s prized beaches. 

He appears to be against clean energy funding and tried to gut public transit funding in New York.

In addition to voting against the IRA and its massive clean energy investments, Zeldin early on in his political career attempted to divert funding away from clean energy programs in New York and undermine the New York City area’s transit system, according to Environmental Advocates NY. The New York environmental organization bestowed its “Oil Slick” award in 2011 on Zeldin, a rookie state senator at the time who led an effort to try to weaken public transit. He sponsored a bill that would have defunded the MTA, resulted in service cuts and fare increases, and discouraged public transit use. The bill would have also diverted $100 million away from clean energy programs to “plug holes in MTA’s finances.”

[townpostin]

Jharkhand Governor Departs for Maharashtra Role

CM Soren bids farewell at airport; Santosh Gangwar to be sworn in July 31 Governor CP Radhakrishnan leaves Jharkhand to assume new role as Maharashtra Governor, with CM Hemant Soren extending best wishes. RANCHI – Governor CP Radhakrishnan departed from Jharkhand on Tuesday to take up his new position as Governor of Maharashtra. Chief Minister Hemant Soren bid farewell to Radhakrishnan at Birsa…

[dertaglichedan]

Trump's EPA pick may be a nail in the coffin of federal climate alarmism

Lee Zeldin appears keen to resume the work of the previous Trump administration of making life more affordable for Americans.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Monday that he will appoint former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin (R) to run the Environmental Protection Agency. With Zeldin at the helm, the EPA will likely drop its climate alarmist outlook, maintain meaningful environmental standards, and get out of the way of American innovation.

"Lee, with a very strong legal background, has been a true fighter for America First policies," Trump said in a statement. "He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet."

Trump noted further that Zeldin will "set new standards on environmental review and maintenance that will allow the United States to grow in a healthy and well-structured way."

Zeldin, who came within seven points of winning the 2022 New York gubernatorial race, noted, "It is an honor to join President Trump's Cabinet as EPA Administrator. We will restore US Energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water."

[mariacallous]

Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving senator from California, has died at age 90, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News on Friday.

The Democrat’s passing marks the end of a boundary-pushing political career that spanned more than half a century, studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.

Feinstein had planned to retire at the end of her current term in 2024.

Feinstein’s death leaves vacant her powerful Senate seat, requiring Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor.

A San Francisco native, Feinstein cleared a path for women in politics as she rose the ranks of leadership. After two failed bids for mayor, she was elected president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors in 1978, becoming the first woman to hold the title.

Feinstein was made acting mayor of the city later that year, after then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, her colleague on the board of supervisors, were assassinated by Dan White, a former member of the same board.

In later interviews, Feinstein recalled finding Milk’s body and searching for a pulse by putting her finger in a bullet hole.

Feinstein was the first to announce the murders to the press. She was appointed mayor a week later, again becoming the first woman elevated to the office.

The tragedy had the side effect of jumpstarting Feinstein’s political career, but the trauma of the day stuck with her even decades later. 

“I never really talk about this,” Feinstein said with a sigh when asked about the murders in a CNN interview in 2017.

Her streak of firsts continued at the national level. Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid in 1990, but two years later won a special election to the U.S. Senate, becoming California’s first female senator.

Weeks later, the state’s second female senator, Barbara Boxer, was sworn into office, making California the first state in the U.S. to be represented in the Senate by two women. 

Their 1992 elections helped define the “Year of the Woman,” in which four Democratic women were newly elected to the Senate — more than doubling the chamber’s female representation.

In the Senate, Feinstein clinched some of her biggest legislative achievements. She wrote and championed the 1994 assault weapons ban, both a landmark bill and a continuation of a career-long effort to enact stricter gun controls. 

The legislation passed Congress and was signed by then-President Bill Clinton, albeit with major compromises including a 10-year sunset provision. The ban expired in 2004 during the administration of George W. Bush.

She also sponsored bills that protect millions of acres of California’s desert, worked to create a nationwide AMBER alert network, helped reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and fought for the release of a lengthy report detailing the CIA’s torture practices, among other accomplishments.

[banji-effect]

“The time for racial discrimination is over,” you said at your gubernatorial inauguration in 1971. Your audience audibly gasped, but for the rest of your political career, you worked to even the playing field for Black Americans. As president, you saw all the ways government could improve the lives of Americans. You appointed more women and attorneys of color to the federal bench than all the earlier presidents combined. You pardoned Vietnam War draft dodgers. You brokered an unlikely peace deal in the Middle East. And when it was time to leave Washington, you went home to Plains. ...I can’t help but wonder where the world would be now if Americans had embraced the environmental policies you initiated nearly 50 years ago. Much of what you worked to do for the environment during your presidency was nothing less than visionary. Using executive powers, you protected a vast swath of the Alaskan wilderness, in the process doubling the size of the national parks system. You directed federal funds toward the development of renewable energy and installed solar panels on the White House. You began an enormous federal effort to bring the country to energy independence and tried to lead us by calling on our own better angels to make it through the crisis in the meantime. “I’m asking you, for your good and for your nation’s security, to take no unnecessary trips, to use car pools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit and to set your thermostats to save fuel,” you said. “Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense. I tell you it is an act of patriotism.” As it turns out, we weren’t the patriotic citizens you believed us to be then, and we’ve become less so in the decades since. But your example remains a shining monument to what it means to be a good American and a good citizen of the earth.

[nicklloydnow]

“Donald trump should have seen it coming. He arrived on May 25th at the Libertarian Party’s national convention in Washington, DC, hoping to expand his support, but the crowd mostly responded with boos. Attendees lacked enthusiasm for a protectionist who added $8.4trn to America’s national debt. They also spent the weekend squabbling among themselves. After losing presidential races for more than half a century, the Libertarian Party is facing an identity crisis.

(…)

The most intense divisions are about strategy. The hardline Mises Caucus (named after Ludwig von Mises, a pro-market Austrian economist) has dominated the party’s leadership since 2022 and adopted populist rhetoric. The group was responsible for inviting Mr Trump, as well as Robert F. Kennedy junior, an independent candidate, to speak at the convention. The debate about whether to invite the outside candidates at times seemed more heated than the Libertarians’ own presidential-nomination fight. On May 24th, the convention’s first day, one attendee yelled into the microphone, “I would like to propose that we go tell Donald Trump to go fuck himself!” The crowd cheered.

“I would rather us focus on the Libertarian candidates,” said Jim Fulner, from the Radical Caucus. “I’m fearful that come later this summer, when I’m working the county fair, someone will say, ‘Oh, Libertarians, you guys are the Donald Trump people.’” Nick Apostolopoulos, from California, welcomed the attention Mr Trump’s speech brought—and said his presence proved “this party matters, and that they have to try and appeal to this voting bloc.”

Few believed that Mr Trump won much support. He promised to appoint a Libertarian to his cabinet and commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, who is serving life in prison after founding the dark-web equivalent of Amazon for illegal drugs. The crowd responded positively to Mr Trump’s nod to a Libertarian cause célèbre, but booed after he asked them to choose him as the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee. Mr Trump hit back, “If you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.”

Mr Kennedy was more disciplined, tailoring his speech to the crowd by highlighting his opposition to covid lockdowns. Even so he received a cool reception. Libertarians want a candidate who will promise to abolish, not reform, government agencies.

The reality is that Libertarians are more interested in positions than personalities. The exception may be the broad admiration for Ron Paul, a retired Republican congressman whom many cite as their lodestar. But at 88 Mr Paul has achieved the difficult feat of being considered too old to plausibly run for president.

(…)

But the party is far from unified. Given the choice between Mr Oliver and “none of the above”, more than a third of the delegates preferred no one. It remains uncertain whether the party’s candidate will appear on the ballot in all 50 states, as several previous nominees have. If the Libertarian candidate has any influence on the presidential election this year, it will be as a spoiler in a close-run swing state.

Mr Oliver’s victory marked a rare defeat for the Mises Caucus. But the re-election of Angela McArdle, a Mises Caucus member, as the national party chairperson is perhaps more important to the future of the movement. Ms McArdle faced criticism for her decision to invite outside candidates to speak. Controversy over the Mises Caucus had led several state delegations to split, and much of the convention’s floor time was eaten up over fights about whom to recognise. The rise of the Mises wing of the party has led more pragmatically minded members to largely give up on the project of advancing libertarian ideas by building a political party.

The party struggles on big stages, such as in presidential, gubernatorial or Senate contests. Yet it occasionally wins municipal elections, leaving some to wonder whether national activism is pointless or even counter-productive. Why would Libertarians invest time in a hopeless race for president when they could direct their energy to fighting a local sales tax or antiquated laws restricting alcohol sales?

(…)

The party faithful believe that national and local activism are not mutually exclusive. Elijah Gizzarelli won fewer than 3,000 votes when he ran for governor of Rhode Island as a Libertarian two years ago, but he argues that the party has a long record of success—so long as the definition of success expands beyond winning elections. He says the party succeeds by shifting the “Overton window”, or the spectrum of political ideas that are generally considered acceptable.”

[thestarlense]

Nicholas Gumbo Appointed Chairperson of Kenya Sugar Board

President William Ruto has appointed former Rarieda MP Nicholas Gumbo as the Chairperson of the Kenya Sugar Board. Gumbo, who previously vied for the Siaya County gubernatorial seat in the 2022 General Elections, will serve a three-year term starting November 22, 2024. The appointment was officially communicated through Gazette Notice No. 15335 issued on Friday. “Under the powers granted by…