A month after Election Day, a lawyer working on Donald Trump’s bid to steal a second term in office was brutally honest — if only in private — about the effort to submit fraudulent slates of Electoral College votes from several states around the country.
Continue reading “Trump Advisors Were Brutally Honest In Private That Fake Electors Were, In Fact, ‘Fake’”The Filibuster Is a Direct Threat to American Democracy
TPM Reader PT notes — and rightly so — that it’s actually remarkable that there are only four Democratic senators expressing any real level of resistance to changing the filibuster rules. That’s a massive sea change from as little as four or five years ago. As I’ve noted, I fully expect Warner and King to give way in short order if their constituents press them. Its really just the two odd men (people) out: Manchin and Sinema. Today and going forward it is impossible for a Democratic candidate to be elected to the Senate anywhere in the United States while supporting the filibuster. It’s anathema among Democrats. But in this post I wanted to step back from the immediate necessity and partisan advantages of ditching or scaling back the filibuster to note how important it is for the future of civic democracy in the United States for the filibuster to be abolished.
Filibuster defenders now usually argue some future advantage. Senator King says that what seems like an obstacle today will be needed as a shield in the future. Filibuster opponents correctly respond that it is folly to believe that the current Republican Party would hesitate for a moment to ditch the filibuster if it represented any meaningful obstacle to getting anything they wanted. They took the wildly unprecedented step of refusing to entertain a Supreme Court nomination for an entire year to steal the seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia. They ditched the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments as soon as they had the chance to pack the Court under Trump. Everything we know about the current GOP tells us it’s folly to believe they’d hesitate.
Continue reading “The Filibuster Is a Direct Threat to American Democracy”Dem Sens Call On GOPers To Go On Record About Support For Right To Contraception
Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Ed Markey (D-MA) on Tuesday demanded that their Republican colleagues go on record about whether they support the right to contraception, a day before Democrats are set to push the Right to Contraception Act through the upper chamber.
Continue reading “Dem Sens Call On GOPers To Go On Record About Support For Right To Contraception”How Polio Crept Back Into The U.S.
This article was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
About a month ago, British health authorities announced they’d found evidence suggesting local spread of polio in London.
It was a jolt, to be sure. The country was declared polio-free in 2003.
But at least no one had turned up sick. The proof came from routine tests of sewage samples, which can alert health officials that a virus is circulating and allow them to intervene quickly. Based on genetic analysis of those samples, officials in the United Kingdom moved to protect the city’s children by reaching out to families with kids under 5 who hadn’t been fully vaccinated.
Polio’s first appearance in almost a decade in the U.S., confirmed late last week by health officials in New York, would play out quite differently.
Continue reading “How Polio Crept Back Into The U.S.”Report: Biden Mulling Extending Student Loan Pause And $10k Forgiveness
President Joe Biden is considering extending the freeze on federal student loan payments that are currently scheduled to resume next month, according to Bloomberg.
Continue reading “Report: Biden Mulling Extending Student Loan Pause And $10k Forgiveness”Five Points On What We Want To Know About Two Pence Aides’ Grand Jury Testimony
The subpoenas to aides of Vice President Mike Pence raise as many questions as they answer.
Continue reading “Five Points On What We Want To Know About Two Pence Aides’ Grand Jury Testimony”Boom!
We’ve got our first “Roe and Reform” score change. The office of Sen. Duckworth reached out to Kate Riga this morning to inform her of Senator Duckworth’s position change on Friday. She’s now in the Yes column. That means the “Keeping It Vague” group goes from 11 to 10 members.
House Members To Receive $10k To Beef Up Personal Home Security Systems
House Sergeant at Arms William Walker has recently developed a new program in which each House lawmaker is provided up to $10,000 to bolster their security systems at their personal residence.
Continue reading “House Members To Receive $10k To Beef Up Personal Home Security Systems”County DA Recuses Herself From Zeldin Attack Case After Scrutiny Over Ties To His Campaign
Monroe County district attorney Sandra Doorley will reportedly recuse herself from the case involving a man who allegedly tried to stab Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), New York’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, during a campaign event last week.
Continue reading “County DA Recuses Herself From Zeldin Attack Case After Scrutiny Over Ties To His Campaign”Five Points On Doug Mastriano’s Relationship With An Anti-Semitic Tech Founder
Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, has come under fire in recent days for a deal his campaign struck with Andrew Torba, the anti-Semitic founder of the social media platform Gab — though it’s not clear Mastriano cares.
Continue reading “Five Points On Doug Mastriano’s Relationship With An Anti-Semitic Tech Founder”