Politics

“Thank you again, thank you again,” Trump said, taking Roberts’s hand into both his own and shaking it vigorously. Then, as he began to step away, the president tapped Roberts on the arm in a gesture of buddy-buddy intimacy, and said: “Won’t forget.”

Supreme court watchers have wondered why Trump thanked the chief justice so effusively. Was it because the Roberts court had, exactly a year earlier, allowed Trump to stay on the electoral ballot even though he had inspired a violent mob attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021?

Could it have been that Roberts had written the ruling that immunised Trump from criminal prosecution for that January 6 insurrection and for any other criminal misdeed he might commit while in the White House?

Prosecutors have a great deal of discretion over how people are charged and sentenced; their policies shape their local court systems and the rates at which people end up in prison. That means that prosecutor races can be crossroads for local criminal justice policy, depending on who’s running and whether they’re proposing to shift the status quo.

Dozens of these races are unfolding even in the off-year of 2025; they’re largely concentrated in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Many drew just one candidate, or, like in Newport News, they were already resolved this spring in a party primary. But some contested races remain and will be decided on Nov. 4 in a general election.

With November fast approaching, Bolts today delves into the still-unresolved prosecutors’ races that feature some policy stakes.

To that end, Bolts reached out to all of the non-incumbent candidates in counties or cities of at least 80,000 residents, requesting an interview to learn about how they’d approach their new office if they were elected. Some of the candidates who replied relished getting to discuss their views, however most did not answer at all, echoing a broader silence about policy views on their campaign websites and other public materials.

Elections of note include Philadelphia, Seattle, Manhattan and Nassau County in New York, and the most populous cities in Virginia’s Hamptons Road region.

So far, in the 2025 primaries, reform prosecutors have held their own and are favored to keep the offices they already held, if not slightly expand their ranks—a turnaround from the progressive losses in California last year. Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner and Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg beat primary challengers who campaigned on cracking down on crime more aggressively, though each now faces a general election with the same script. In Norfolk, Virginia, reform prosecutor Ramon Fatehi survived a tough primary; he is now running unopposed and set to gain an ally in neighboring Newport News. Seattleites seem likely to oust their punitive city attorney come the fall.

Despite several headline races, Bolts analysis continues to show how rarely elected prosecutors face any contestation at all—a trend Bolts has covered for years, which neither the rise of “progressive prosecutors” nor any pushback has changed.

Of the 66 prosecutor races Bolts has identified this year, only 15 feature multiple candidates in November.

Nearly an hour into Friday night’s game between the Washington Spirit and Racing Louisville FC, a chant started to spread throughout the stadium that briefly silenced the television announcers for the women’s soccer match.

“Free D.C.! Free D.C.! Free D.C.!” the spectators chanted at the stadium in the southwest quadrant of the nation’s capital.

It was a response to Republican President Donald Trump’s militarized takeover of policing in the District of Columbia that began last week; it was also a nod to the women-founded grassroots movement that has been organizing Washington’s 700,000 residents to resist federal interventions during the early months of the second Trump administration: Free DC.

Free DC is the latest embodiment of a generations-long fight by District of Columbia residents to operate autonomously from the federal government. Its ultimate goal is statehood. In the 1870s, Congress dismantled the elected local government and installed federal commissioners. It wasn’t until the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1961 that people in the district could vote for president. The enactment of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in 1973 established that the city could again elect its own local government. To this day, the district does not have representatives who are able to cast votes in Congress despite having a larger population than Wyoming or Vermont — and all city-passed policy is reviewed by the same Congress.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/48388433

When the Trump administration announced massive cuts to federal health agencies earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was getting rid of excess administrators who were larding the government with bureaucratic bloat.

But a groundbreaking data analysis by ProPublica shows the administration has cut deeper than it has acknowledged. Though Kennedy said he would add scientists to the workforce, agencies have lost thousands of them, along with colleagues who those scientists depended on to dispatch checks, fix computers and order lab supplies, enabling them to do their jobs.

Done in the name of government efficiency, these reductions have left departments stretching to perform their basic functions, ProPublica found, according to interviews with more than three dozen former and current federal employees.

Food and drug facility inspectors are having to go to the store and buy supplies on their own dime so they can take swab samples to test for pathogens.

Some labs have been unable to purchase the sterile eggs needed to replicate viruses or the mice needed to test vaccines.

And less than five years after a pandemic killed more than a million Americans, scientists who study infectious diseases are struggling to pay for saline solution, gloves and blood to feed lab mosquitos.

The Trump administration has refused to say how many workers have been lost so far. But ProPublica’s analysis reveals the cuts in unprecedented detail.

Original article in archive.today: https://archive.is/UtFyS

[...]ICE is functioning as a de facto union-busting agency, like modern-day Pinkertons. Some of the protesters who have been out on the streets have been arrested and are facing federal charges, which has a chilling effect on everyone who wants to fight back against ICE and other militarized actions. By taking away some of the fighters, the administration is also taking away some of the best and most creative leaders. When people like Lelo are taken, it leaves a void that can take a long time to fill. Our union didn’t formally call for strikes or marches, but instead supported other organizations in those efforts. We supported rallies and protests outside the detention center, and talked to state labor counsel and other progressive unions. The local lawmakers and politicians who claim to be our allies were ineffective at getting him released or even slowing down detentions.

Farmworkers and people doing immigrant justice and worker organizing were frustrated at the movement, saying it wasn’t putting enough effort into the front lines and resistance on the streets. We realized the left-liberal alliance in Washington State, from civil rights law firms to grassroots immigrant groups, including our union, had gotten too reliant on looking to state agencies and our liberal governor and attorney general to protect us.

The professionalization of organizers is part of this problem. In our experience, nonprofit professionals who come from a more business- or capitalist-friendly environment don’t fully understand the needs of working people or our radical demands, like abolishing borders. But our union is led by workers; when we make demands, they reflect real-time needs and long-held desires. Milquetoast professionals focused on appeasing funders or meeting deliverables instead of organizing for power will not get us there. The professionalization of movements becomes almost a controlled opposition — it stops momentum and creates divisions, where we begin to shift the conversation from the movement to funding. In the movement community, careerism and fundraising have become the priority, not social change. Even as a strong grassroots organization committed to radical proposals, we fall into the trap of relying heavily on the political system that makes conditions hard. We need to recognize that our power is in the base and in our communities.

We knew we had to shift the terrain of the battlefield from statehouses and courthouses to the streets. Farmworkers want people to push back against ICE. It is a risk to come out and challenge ICE publicly, knowing that there is a high potential of being targeted, but at the same time we can’t let communities be terrorized. As one of the members of FUJ said of ICE, “We can’t give them the joy” of picking up people without resistance. There is only so much humiliation a community can take before fighting back. And when we win, it feeds others’ hope.

When democracy seems everywhere in crisis, it may sound paradoxical, to say the least, that the solution to our troubles is to scrap elections altogether. But that is precisely what political philosopher Alexander Guerrero proposes in his bold and illuminating book, Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections. We should select political officials not by voting, he contends, but by lottery from among the entire adult citizenry.

As radical as it sounds, the idea, indeed the reality, of “sortition”—using random selection to select political officials—is nothing new. Nor is it the prerogative of any particular political persuasion. The Athenians used such a system more than two thousand years ago. The Trinidadian Marxist C. L. R. James celebrated this system when he argued, echoing Lenin, that “every cook can govern.” The idea has seen something of a popular revival in recent years thanks to the writing and advocacy of people like political theorist Hélène Landemore and Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck. And it has been put into practice in a variety of deliberative and citizens’ assemblies, including in Europe and the United States. What sets Guerrero’s analysis apart is that he has thought through how such a system might work in modern societies in exhaustive detail. The result is a landmark argument that must be reckoned with.

Guerrero spends much of the book putting flesh on the bones of the abstract idea of lottocracy, presenting a picture sufficiently well specified for meaningful comparison with real-world electoral democracy. In the rest of the book, he makes the case for the relative superiority of lottocracy and offers ideas about how we might get there from here. The book’s central claim is not that lottocracy is perfect but that, for all its flaws, it is still preferable to other political systems.

Of course, there are many ways to compare political systems. One might ask how well they comport with political equality: the ideal that everyone should have, at some level, the same say over policy. Or one might ask how well they offer opportunities for participation: the ideal that everyone be able to contribute to making policy. Guerrero contends that lottocracy does as well if not better than other systems on these criteria. But his primary interest is different: how well a political system solves problems, whether it delivers the objectively correct policy (which he thinks exists). While the capacity of a political system to solve problems—to, among other things, make people’s lives better—may not be a condition of a system’s counting as democratic, Guerrero is certainly right that it is something that we should want.

The argument is superbly detailed, even relentlessly thorough. Guerrero offers a response to just about every objection a reader might think of. But ultimately, the case is not convincing.

In a recent interview with Israel’s i24 News, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly declared his support for the vision of “Greater Israel.” Asked by interviewer Sharon Gal if he subscribes to this controversial idea, Netanyahu responded without hesitation: “Absolutely.”

While the U.S. mainstream media has largely ignored the comment, the Israeli leader’s statement immediately drew condemnation from a coalition of Arab and Muslim states. For those unfamiliar with the term, it may seem like political jargon.

But in reality, Netanyahu’s words represent a dangerous watershed moment. To understand why, it is necessary to trace the history and meaning of “Greater Israel.”

The phrase “Greater Israel” gained political currency after Israel’s territorial conquests in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. But its ideological roots lie in the Revisionist Zionism of the early 20th century.

cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/33124173

In the previous post, we attempted to list all crimes committed during the Nakba of 1948 and glossed over the establishment of various militia forces in Palestine.

These forces, however, were a fundamental part for the Zionist entity to pursue its goals of a "national home" for the Jewish people in Palestine as stated in the Balfour Declaration 31 years before.

Before we dive into the crimes committed by these paramilitary forces, we need to describe a couple of terms and some context to understand why they arisen, what did they believe in and what was their goal.

I would like to start by separating the traditional orthodox Jews from the Zionists Jews who arrived later in Palestine. In literature 'the Hebrew settlement' are called Yishuv and we can divide them in two categories:

• Old Yishuv: Jewish communities in the continuation with the Diaspora life, during the Ottoman empire. The communities were located mainly in Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed. These religious, orthodox Jews centered their lives around the principles of halukka (collection and distribution of charity funds for Jewish residents), yeshiva and kollel (study of Rabbinic literature). In the late 19th century, the Old Yishuv comprised 0.3% of the world's Jews, representing 2–5% of the population of the Palestine region. [source]

• New Yishuv: from the 1880s new waves (Aliyah, more later) of zionist jewish started to arrive in Palestine. These Diaspora Jews were advocating for a reform of jewish tradition and identity, relying on labour rather then charity and economic independence rather then external help. These settlements were promoted and supported by zionists organization like the Lover of Zion or Bilu or Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, wealthy individuals like Edmond James and Alphonse James de Rothschild [source], Isaac Leib Goldberg, Reuven Yudalevich, Maurice de Hirsch and many more. If charity from Diaspora Jews was a fundamental rule for old Yishuv, for the new reformed Yishuv was a temporary solution to achieve independence in a newly founded nation in Palestine. The new Yishuv, promoted and supported by zionists ideals, was for all intents and purposes a colonization movement [source]. By 1914, the old Yishuv was a minority, and the New Yishuv began to express itself and its Zionist goals.

As we can see, these new Yishuv zionists had a specific ethnic nationalism, racial and colonization ideals. In order to achieve the goals of a land for the Jewish people they promoted a several waves of immigration in Palestine called Aliyah. From 1919 to 1948 there have been five Aliyah and many "uncounted" waves after, below you can see some interesting statistics:

100 years of Aliyah (immigration) to Mandatory Palestine and Israel, between 1919 and 2020

A map of cumulative aliyah numbers (since 1948, or before 1948 if pre-1948 data is available) by country. Israel is colored in blue.

Olim by source

Jewish immigration to Israel from 1948 to 2007

In this context, it seems only natural the creation of military and paramilitary forces aimed at protecting and expanding the newly founded settlers in Palestine. I would like to cover all the military organizations up to the creation of the state of Israel and the formation of the Israeli Defence Force (which requires a separate post). All these militia, as we can see, contributed and, in the end, merged with the IDF.

An important key figure is Israel Shochat a russian jew immigrated in 1904 in Palestine with the second Aliyah. Shochat was already politically active at that time, he founded some years prior in Europe (and soon expanded worldwide) the Poale Zion a national socialist party aimed at the "political independence of the Jewish People in this country [Palestine]." In 1906, Shochat recruited David Ben-Gurion with whom he shared some fundamental ideology like Hebrew over Yiddish and the segregation of the Jewish and Arab economies. Both of them used rigged election to acquire powerful position inside the party in order shape its manifesto and ideologies.

Later in 1907, with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi established Bar-Giora – a secret paramilitary organization committed to armed struggle.

Ben Zvi, Ben Gurion and Shochat

• Bar-Giora tactics were to act as a command cell and organize groups that could be manipulated towards the ultimate objective: to "form a Hebrew military force that would organize and implement an armed uprising to bring about its ultimate aim, the creation of an independent Jewish state.". They would focus on replacing Arab guards in the remote colonies in Upper Galilee and set up their own outposts. A team of shepherds was to undertake a detailed survey of the land. This militia was a first (successful) attempt limited to a few cities.

This clandestine organization lasted only a couple of years and Shochat in 1909 founded and merge it with Hashomer (lit. The Watchman), a bigger military group than Bar-Giora.

• Hashomer was the first attempt to provide an organized defence for all the Jewish communities in Palestine. In the autumn of 1911 it had “35 watchmen, 23 infantry and 12 cavalry”, and were guarding six colonies in Galilee as well as Hadera. By 1912, Hashomer was guarding fourteen Jewish settlements. In addition to guarding settlements, Hashomer secretly began conducting offensive acts, like the assassination of a Bedouin policeman, seeing itself as the nucleus of a future Jewish army. During the 10 years it was active it reached 100 members and established several settlements like Tel Adash, Tel Hai, and Kfar Giladi.

In 1920, after being deported to modern Turkey, Shochat came back to Palestine, joined David Ben-Gurion's political party Ahdut HaAvoda and, just like previously with Bar-Giora, Hashomer was closed to make room to a bigger, more capable organization called Haganah.

Haganah was a proper militia force, with roughly 21.000 members and it operated from 1920 to the establishment of Israel in 1948, under the command of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Compared to the other more radical militia, Haganah was considered moderated, following the strategic policy of havlagah (lit. 'self-restraint').

Irgun: in 1931 within the Haganah organization and in contrast to the havlagah discipline, fighters split and created a new force called Irgun. It was described as a terrorist organization by The New York Times, the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, prominent world figures such as Winston Churchill and Jewish figures such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, and many others. Irgun members began attacks on Arab villages around April 1936, thus ending the policy of restraint. These attacks were intended to instill fear in the Arab side.

The actions of the Haganah alone will never be a true victory. If the goal of the war is to break the will of the enemy – and this cannot be attained without destroying his spirit – clearly we cannot be satisfied with solely defensive operations.... Such a method of defense, that allows the enemy to attack at will, to reorganize and attack again ... and does not intend to remove the enemy's ability to attack a second time – is called passive defense, and ends in downfall and destruction ... whoever does not wish to be beaten has no choice but to attack. The fighting side, that does not intend to oppress but to save its liberty and honor, he too has only one way available – the way of attack. Defensiveness by way of offensiveness, in order to deprive the enemy the option of attacking, is called active defense.

Here is a complete list of crimes committed by Irgun between the 1937 and 1948 (when they merged in the official Israeli Defence Force) [source]

• March 1937, 2 Arabs killed on Bat Yam beach;
• November 1937, 10 Arabs killed in attacks around Jerusalem ("Black Sunday");
• April 1938, 2 Arabs and 2 British policemen killed by bomb in Haifa train;
• April 1938, 1 Arab killed by bomb in cafe in Haifa;
• May 1938, 1 Arab policeman killed on Jerusalem-Hebron road bus attack;
• May 1938, 3 Arabs shot and killed in Haifa;
• June 1938, 18 Arabs (including women and children) killed by bomb in Haifa marketplace;
• June 1938, 2 Arabs killed near Tel Aviv;
• June 1938, 7 Arabs killed by bomb in Jaffa;
• July 1938, 18 Arabs and 5 Jews killed by two simultaneous bombs in Haifa melon market;
• July 1938, 4 Arabs killed by bomb in Jerusalem;
• July 1938, 10 Arabs killed by bomb in Jerusalem marketplace;
• July 1938, 43 Arabs killed by bomb in Haifa marketplace;
• August 1938, 24 Arabs killed by bomb in Jaffa marketplace;
• February 1939, 33 Arabs killed in multiple bomb attacks in Haifa and Jerusalem;
• May 1939, 18 injured including Arabs and British police by mines in Jerusalem cinema;
• May 1939, 5 Arabs shot and killed during raid on Biyar 'Adas;
• June 1939, 5 Arabs killed by bomb at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem;
• June 1939, 1 British bomb expert killed trying to defuse bomb in Jerusalem;
• June 1939, 20 Arabs killed by explosives on donkey in Haifa marketplace;
• June 1939, multiple Arabs killed by shooting attacks around Jaffa;
• July 1939, several Arabs killed in various bomb attacks in Haifa, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and Rehovot;
• August 1939, 2 British police officers killed by roadside bomb in Jerusalem;
• September 1944, attacks on British police stations with unknown casualties;
• September 1944, 1 senior British police officer assassinated in Jerusalem;
• November 1945, bombs and attacks killing British policemen, soldiers, and others;
• February 1946, destruction of RAF planes at British stations;
• July 1946, 91 killed in King David Hotel bombing including civilians of multiple nationalities;
• October-November 1946, British guards and police killed in railway and embassy bombings;
• March 1947, 17 British officers killed in bombing of Goldschmidt Officers' Club;
• July 1947, attacks in Haifa killing British constable and others;
• July 1947, hanging of two kidnapped British sergeants;
• August 1947, bombings killing British policemen and injuring others;
• September 1947, British and Arab policemen killed in Haifa police headquarters bombing;
• December 1947 and early 1948, multiple bombings and attacks resulting in deaths and injuries among Arabs, British, and Jews in various places including Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa;
• April 1948, Deir Yassin massacre killing more than 100 Arabs and some Jewish militants;
• April 1948, attacks on British soldiers and Arab towns, including killings of British soldiers during an arms raid;

Lehi: in 1940, another split happen, this time within the Irgun and created a more extreme, radical, racist and supremacist wing of the jewish forces in Palestine. The group referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out acts of terrorism. It initially sought an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis, proposing a Jewish state based on "nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance". According to Yaacov Shavit, professor at the Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University, articles in Lehi publications contained references to a Jewish "master race", contrasting the Jews with Arabs who were seen as a "nation of slaves". Lehi advocated mass expulsion of all Arabs from Palestine and Transjordan, or even their physical annihilation.

An article titled "Terror" in the Lehi underground newspaper He Khazit (The Front) argued as follows:

Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: "Ye shall blot them out to the last man." But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier. We are particularly far from this sort of hesitation in regard to an enemy whose moral perversion is admitted by all.

Here is a list of crimes committed by the Lehi group [source]:

• April 1946, a unit attacked a car park in Tel Aviv occupied by the British 6th Airborne Division;
• September 1946, assassination of British CID sergeant T.G. Martin in Haifa;
• September 1946, explosion and collapse of the Food Control Office near Jaffa-Tel Aviv border, killing British men including Major John Doran;
• October 1946, bombing of the British embassy in Rome;
• October 1946, attacks on transportation networks (roads and rails), including dozens of military vehicles attacked;
• December 1946, car bomb attack on Sarafand military camp, many British soldiers killed or wounded;
• January 1947, members drove a truckload of explosives into a British police station in Haifa, killing four and injuring 140, in what has been called 'the world's first true truck bomb';
• February 1947, attack on Jerusalem-Ramle telephone lines in fourteen places;
• February 1947, shootings at British regional command post in Tel Aviv, bombing British shipping company, Royal Navy office, and Barclays Bank in Haifa;
• March 1947, attack on Goldsmith House Officers’ Club in Jerusalem, heavy explosion causing extensive damage and several deaths;
• March 1947, bombing the British Colonial Club in London;
• March 1947, bombing of Anglo-Iraqi oil refinery in Haifa, massive damage and fire, colony's petroleum tanks destroyed;
• April 1947 a bomb consisting of twenty-four sticks of explosives was planted in the Colonial Office, Whitehall;
• April 1947, bombing of the Sharona police fortress in Tel Aviv, several policemen and officers killed;
• May 1947, assassination of Assistant Superintendent of Police Albert Conquest in Haifa;
• May 1947, abduction and murder of Alexander Rubowitz by British units;
• May 1947, Acre Prison break by Lehi and Irgun members, many killed or injured during escape and subsequent fighting;
• May 1947, five alleged members were arrested in Paris with bomb making material including explosives of the same type as found in London; [source];
• November 1947, bombings and reprisal attacks in Tel Aviv killing several people after informer-related shootout;
• March 1948, Lehi mined the train near Binyamina, killing 40 civilians and wounding 60;
• April 1948, attack on Arab village Sheikh Munis, establishing it as Lehi base;
• April 1948, assaults on Arab villages Qanir and Biyar ‘Adas, demolishing houses and causing casualties.
• April 1948, Deir Yassin Massacre where about 110 Arabs were killed by Lehi and Irgun fighters;
• April 1948, Fighters were captured with a truck filled with explosives on his way to Nablus. Lehi fighters in return abducted four adult villagers and youth from al-Sheikh Muwannis with no connection to Ibzov's capture and threatened to kill them. [source];
• January to April 1948, multiple attacks including train bombings, bombing military vehicles, and attacks on British and Arab targets;
• February 1948, mined the train north of Rehovot, killing 28 British soldiers and wounding 35 [source];
• March 1948, failed car bomb attack on Nablus, followed by abduction of hostages from al-Sheikh Muwannis;
• April 1948, bombing of Barclays Bank in Tel Aviv, several successful raids stealing thousands of lira;
• May 1948, continued attacks on British soldiers during British evacuation;
• September 1948, assassination of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte by Lehi operatives;

Following Israel's Declaration of Independence, Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion issued an order for the formation of the Israel Defense Forces on 26 May 1948 including Haganah, Irgun and Lehi.

more source source source

We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached. So that all those who regard such an agreement as a condition sine qua non for Zionism may as well say "non" and withdraw from Zionism. Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population - behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach. That is our Arab policy; not what it should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky - The Iron Wall (1923) Founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Jewish Self-Defense Organization

The clownish Trump cabinet picks being clowns and creating distractions.

Which ultimately begs the question: where are the Epstein files?

Making it more difficult for the elderly to vote will certainly help the GOP (apparently, a sarcasm tag is needed, as that's their most loyal base). This is a dog catching a car in action.

I lived in Oregon off and on from 2003 to 2015, and I was Reuters' boots-on-the-ground guy at a county elections office in 2012 for updating tabulations via app.

For those unfamiliar with Oregon voting, there are no polling stations. Several weeks before the election, the secretary of State sent out a voter's guide. Candidates could provide a summary (though -- oddly -- many chose not to) of qualifications and goals, whereas anyone could buy space for either side of an initiative, with a nonpartisan summary of both social and economic effects opening the conversation.

A few weeks later, the ballot arrived in the mail. With nearly a month to review things, it could easily be done in bite-sized pieces ... city council tonight, school board tomorrow, initiatives that only got more absurd next week.

Without the need for any outside media, every single voter in Oregon could be armed with enough information to make rational decisions and seal them in so that voting itself was just an exercise of filling in the bubbles when the ballot arrived.

This sort of arrangement absolutely does not work for Trump, as he relies on bombast and making sure no one has accurate data.

The GOP is mask off and aware their policies can't win elections. Which is a big reason that the Big Disastrous Bill pushes some of the most devastating effects past the 2026 election.

Donald Trump on Monday announced that lawyers are drafting an executive order to eliminate mail-in voting, days after Vladimir Putin told him US elections were rigged because of postal ballots.

In a White House meeting alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump said: “We’re going to start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail in ballots because they’re corrupt.”

The push follows Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday, when the Russian president allegedly told him that the 2020 election “was rigged because you have mail-in voting”, according to Trump’s subsequent interview with Sean Hannity.

Trump falsely claimed that late former president Jimmy Carter opposed mail-in voting, saying: “Even Jimmy Carter with this commission, they set it up. He said, the one thing about mail in voting, you will never have an honest election if you have mail in it.”

I don't remember if Oregon used business-reply mail for the outer envelope, but I was never more than two miles from a drop box, and, well, it felt more like "voting" if I had to leave the house.

There were so many safeguards in place (as I said, I observed the tabulation one year) that fraud being more likely from mail-in voting than hackable machines is comically tone deaf.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/48188675

After months of degrading transgender athletes under the guise of protecting women’s sports, right-wing media weirdos are suggesting the WNBA “embrace” the sexualization of its players

MAGA media personalities can’t stop talking about the WNBA — not because of the players’ athleticism, but because people keep throwing adult toys onto the court during games. After degrading transgender athletes under the guise of protecting women’s sports, right-wing media weirdos are once again demonstrating their utter disdain for women athletes by mocking the incidents and suggesting the WNBA “embrace” the sexualization of its players.

As most any American who lived through the 1979-81 Iranian hostage crisis is likely to recall, 52 American embassy staffers were held prisoner by the Iranian government for a total of 444 days. It was a catastrophic foreign-policy failure that ultimately ended Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

What is not at all well known is that during much of that 14-month ordeal, the American government could find no trace of one of the hostages — and believed him to be dead. His name was Michael Metrinko.

“Not dead,” Metrinko quipped recently, “although there were times when maybe I wished I was.”

Now in his late 70s, the gregarious, acid-tongued Metrinko spent much of his decades-long Foreign Service career bouncing from one Middle East hotspot to another. Until the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, he’d spent much of the preceding 15 years advising American military officials there. “I think I worked with 19 different generals,” Metrinko said, “but at this point I’d be hard-pressed to tell you which one was the stupidest.”