A voting rights group issued a “pre-litigation” demand to four Georgia counties that they extend polling place hours as voters waited in line for several hours to cast ballots Tuesday.
Continue reading “Long Lines Prompt Lawsuit Threats To Keep Georgia Polling Places Open Later”
Former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), the former Senate majority leader, was abruptly fired from one of D.C.’s top lobbying firms on Monday. But it’s still not clear what prompted the break between the former top Senate Republican and lobbying arm of Squire Patton Boggs.
Continue reading “Still Not Clear Why Trent Lott Was Fired From Squire Patton Boggs”
This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
The top official at the U.S. foreign aid agency defended three political appointees whose past social media posts and writings include attacks on LGBT people and Muslims, saying they were “committed to enacting the policies of President Donald J. Trump.”
ProPublica reported on Friday that Merritt Corrigan had recently taken up a prominent position at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Corrigan has a history of online posts denouncing liberal democracy and feminism, and she has said the United States is in the clutches of a “homo-empire” pushing a “tyrannical LGBT agenda.”
News of Corrigan’s appointment as deputy White House liaison sparked outrage among current and former USAID officials, as well as congressional inquiries and an online petition calling for her firing.
In addition, ProPublica reported that Bethany Kozma, previously an anti-transgender activist who wrote in 2016 that transgender girls are boys “claiming gender confusion,” had taken a new position as USAID’s deputy chief of staff. And The Washington Post reported last month that Mark Kevin Lloyd, a Tea Party activist with a history of making and sharing anti-Islamic comments on his personal social media profiles, would be the agency’s new religious freedom adviser.
In a statement issued late on Monday, Barsa condemned what he called “unwarranted and malicious attacks” on the three officials, while also making clear they had been chosen by the White House.
“Political appointees are appointed at the discretion of the White House to carry out the President’s foreign policy agenda at USAID,” Barsa said. “USAID is honored to have Bethany Kozma, Merritt Corrigan, and Mark Lloyd serve at the agency. They are committed to enacting the policies of President Donald J. Trump.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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President Trump reportedly came close to firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the Pentagon official broke with the President over invoking the Insurrection Act to quell the violence that emerged during nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Continue reading “Trump Came Close To Firing Esper After He Broke With POTUS On Insurrection Act”
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace admitted during an interview on “The View” Tuesday that President Trump had — to put it lightly — a “very bad week” last week.
The last few months have been challenging for voter registration groups that rely on in-person operations to help people get on the rolls.
Continue reading “COVID Wrecked 2020 Voter Registration Efforts But Then Came The BLM Protests”
Police abuse of minority communities in the United States is a story stretching back decades and centuries. The militarization of American policing is a much more recent phenomenon though the two phenomena have overlapped and compounded each other. Much of this debate over militarization has focused on the Pentagon’s 1033 Program which charges the Secretary of Defense with donating surplus military hardware to the nation’s thousands of police departments. (The photo above is of an MRAP, a vehicle designed to withstand IEDs and guerrilla ambushes. Numerous US police departments have them.) But there is another dimension of the story that has only partly made its way into the national conversation about policing and violence. The United States has been in a constant state of war since the end of 2001 and in many ways since the Gulf Crisis of 1990. Through numerous channels this has led to a broad militarization of life in the United States. Policing and military hardware is only the most obvious manifestation.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Tuesday fired back at President Trump for baselessly suggesting that an elderly protester — who was shoved to the ground by two Buffalo police officers during an anti-police brutality protest last week — could be part of the amorphous anti-fascist movement known as “antifa.” Continue reading “Cuomo Blasts Trump For ‘Reprehensible And Dumb’ Tweet On Elderly Protester”
The 75-year-old peace activist who Buffalo police shoved to the ground, causing him to bleed from his ear, wasn’t just a “provocateur” — he was also a sophisticated hacker who attempted to “black out” police communications!
Holding a national general election during a pandemic would be difficult in the best of circumstances.
Continue reading “Will 2020 Bring A Repeat Of The Post-Election Legal Mess of 2000?”
