A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Tuesday evening against a far-right group accused of intimidating voters in Arizona.
Voting rights groups filed two lawsuits against the group, Clean Elections USA, over the past few weeks after they organized members to surveil drop boxes throughout Arizona, seeking to prevent supposed “ballot fraud.” The federal judge merged the suits.
Continue reading “Federal Judge Bars Far Right Group Surveilling Drop Boxes In Arizona”I’ve never thought of myself as a down the line supporter of criminal justice reform. But many reformers (and others, including myself) have claimed that police departments have backed off enforcement in response to criticism of police or policy changes as a kind of silent strike or work stoppage. And new data from San Francisco adds real weight to these claims. As study conducted by economists from New York University’s Public Safety Lab in partnership with The San Francisco Chronicle found that after reform DA Chesa Boudin was recalled and replaced by mayoral appointee Brooke Jenkins, traffic stops rose by 30% and “public order” stops rose by 20%. The shift was more or less immediate.
Continue reading “Blue Flu”When pestered with questions about how and why they would gather conservative activists, ask them to masquerade as the real electors in the 2020 election, waiting in the wings to be called forth, acolytes of the former President constantly return to one argument: They didn’t know that creating fake elector slates was wrong.
Continue reading “The Chaos Is The Point: Get Ready For Legal Hell After The Midterms”House Jan. 6 Committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) said on Tuesday that the committee is “in discussions” with ex-President Donald Trump’s lawyers about their client testifying in response to the panel’s subpoena.
Continue reading “Jan. 6 Panel In Talks With Trump Lawyers About Testimony, Cheney Says”We’ve been noting that recent polling has been dominated by partisan GOP polls, both statewide polls and the national congressional generic poll. However, CNN has just released a new poll which also shows a strong shift in the Republican direction. It shows a four point Republican advantage on the generic ballot (GOP 51%- Dem 47%) versus a a three point advantage for Democrats one month ago (Dem 50% – GOP 47%). A new NPR/Marist poll, also released today, shows almost the identical result and a comparable shift from just a month ago — from D+3 to R+3 from early October to early November. Until this morning we really didn’t have premium polls confirming this shift. Now we do. Those are relatively small numerical differences but they translate into big numbers in control at least of the House.
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
It turns out that the U.S. Capitol Police’s surveillance cameras outside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) home caught the break-in in real time on Friday. Officers monitoring the department’s 1,800-odd cameras didn’t immediately notice the intruder. When San Francisco Police arrived at the Pelosi residence, flashing police lights appeared on the screen and caught the attention of Capitol Police, according to the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times.
The officer in D.C. quickly pulled up additional camera angles from around Pelosi’s home and began to backtrack, watching recordings from the minutes before San Francisco police arrived. There, on camera, was a man with a hammer, breaking a glass panel and entering the speaker’s home, according to three people familiar with how Capitol Police learned of the break-in and who have been briefed on or viewed the video themselves.
David DePape, the man who’s been charged with breaking into Pelosi’s home and assaulting her husband with a hammer, allegedly told first responders at the scene that he had planned on attacking a local professor and several state and federal politicians (plus their families), according to a new DOJ filing, which didn’t identify the targets by name.
A federal judge on Tuesday prohibited Clean Elections USA, a right-wing group that’s been monitoring ballot drop boxes in Arizona, from engaging in some of the surveillance methods that’ve led to voter intimidation and harassment.
Trump’s likely to get un-banned from Twitter now that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a supposed (but not really) free speech “absolutist,” officially has full control of the social media giant. But the ex-president repeated on Tuesday his previous claim that he “won’t go back” to Twitter even if he could because he prefers his knockoff app, Truth Social.
The Supreme Court rejected Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) bid on Tuesday to block the Fulton County district attorney’s subpoena for his testimony in her Trump election meddling probe in Georgia.
Far-right Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro finally broke his silence on Tuesday after left-wing challenger President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat him in Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday: The incumbent has agreed to transition to the new administration.
Tim Michels, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ (D) Republican rival, declared during a campaign event on Monday that Republicans “will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”
“They had secret abortions pre-Roe. Now they feel compelled to speak out.” – The Washington Post
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Former PM Benjamin Netanyahu appears poised to reclaim the Israeli Prime Ministership after yesterday’s election. Indeed, it looks likely to be by a significantly larger margin than expected. The reason has to do not with questionable polls but with the particular dynamics of the Israeli parliamentary system. Exit polls last night predicated that Netanyahu’s bloc would get 61 or 62 Knesset seats, an extremely tight margin (out of 120) but enough. That was in line with most polls. But he’s now predicted to get 65 seats, a critical difference. What changed is that Meretz, a left-wing party, appears to have fallen just below the parliamentary election threshold of 3.25%. If that holds they’re excluded altogether. So four seats suddenly get pulled out of the center-left bloc and go to other parties. That’s mostly what gets you from 61-62 to 65. It’s not a huge difference. But it’s a critical one and one that stands a good chance of breaking the electoral stalemate of the last four years.
A week ago, everyone who mocking Mehmet Oz’s suggestion that decisions about abortion should be left to the woman, her doctor and “local political leaders.” Now we have a Republican House candidate who’s actually trying to get concrete about how this works in practice. Bo Hines is a Madison Cawthorn-esque candidate who is the Republican nominee in North Carolina’s 13th congressional district. He’s Trump endorsed, with all you’d expect with that. But since getting the nomination he’s apparently been trying to come more towards the political center. Part of that has been trying to work out how the Oz proposal operates in practice.
Continue reading “GOP House Candidate Proposes New Post-Dobbs Rape Panels”Minor point. But worth noting. I want to draw your attention to how even very small shifts in voting support could produce huge potential swings in the battle for control of the Senate. The current polls make it entirely plausible that Republicans get a 53 or even 54 seat majority in the Senate. They also make at least 52 and quite possibly 54 seats for the Democrats just as plausible. According to 538’s averages there are 8 races which are within 4 percentage points and 7 within 3. By most standards those are all a coin toss.
Continue reading “Election Countdown #1”The Republican challenging Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers next week has openly fessed up to his plan to target elections administration in the purple state in a way that ensures Republicans permanently control it.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Wisconsin GOP Guv Candidate Is Saying The Quiet Part Very Loud And Clear”
