President Biden and his team have reportedly been planning to have the President deliver a speech on protecting democracy ahead of the midterms for some time. But the recent uptick in threats and political violence as we get closer to the election — including the very high profile attack on the husband of the woman second in the line of secession — expedited the urgency of the message.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: What You’ll Hear In Biden’s Speech On Democracy Tonight”What Paul Pelosi’s Alleged Attacker Has Already Admitted
Following last week’s attack on Paul Pelosi — husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — both the Department of Justice and the State of California have moved to prosecute the alleged attacker, David Wayne DePape, who was arrested at the scene and who has pleaded not guilty to state charges.
Amid conflicting early reports, conspiracy theories from the far-right and smears against the Pelosi family, it’s easy to overlook the fact that the alleged attacker already confessed to police, according to court filings in the state and federal cases against him.
What he’s admitted to, these filings show, lay to rest wild conjecture that has accompanied the case.
Continue reading “What Paul Pelosi’s Alleged Attacker Has Already Admitted”Emails Show Eastman’s Central Role In Allegedly Fraudulent Lawsuit
Trump attorney John Eastman expected that filing a Big Lie lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia might just lead to criminal investigation, new messages show.
Continue reading “Emails Show Eastman’s Central Role In Allegedly Fraudulent Lawsuit”Election Countdown #3
Until today, there was a dearth of quality polling over the last 10 days on the congressional generic ballot as well as in key Senate races. That changed today. Multiple, high quality polls confirm a significant shift in the national race in favor of Republicans. Sometimes there is systematic polling error across multiple pollsters. Indeed, it’s happened a couple times in recent years, albeit in the opposite direction. But if these polls are broadly accurate they tell a clear story.
Continue reading “Election Countdown #3”DeSantis’s Florida Pitstop
One of the many questions arising out of Ron DeSantis’s migrant airways stunt two months ago was how his administration justified flying migrants out of Texas when the law explicitly mandated that funds could only be used to fly migrants out of Florida. Newly released documents answer the question.
Continue reading “DeSantis’s Florida Pitstop”The Israeli Electoral College
As I noted earlier, Benjamin Netanyahu is headed back to being Prime Minister. There’s still some question about how many seats he’ll have. But he’ll be PM either way. Title notwithstanding, Israel does not have an electoral college. But I use that headline because this article in the Haaretz notes something with a comparable effect. The pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps both got roughly the same number of votes, both just over 49%. But Netanyahu’s bloc will likely get as many as 65 out of 120 seats — a comfortable majority by recent standards.
So how did this happen?
Continue reading “The Israeli Electoral College”Jan. 6 Panel To Eastman: We’re Keeping the Documents
On Sunday, John Eastman — one of the key architects of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — complied with a federal district judge’s order and turned in eight emails to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. But as he turned them in, he also asked committee members to refrain from looking at the documents till he got a chance to file an appeal for the judge’s order.
Continue reading “Jan. 6 Panel To Eastman: We’re Keeping the Documents”Federal Judge Bars Far Right Group Surveilling Drop Boxes In Arizona
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”Blue Flu
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”The Chaos Is The Point: Get Ready For Legal Hell After The Midterms
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”