Jessica Corbett, Staff Writer - truthdig / Common Dreams
Stephan:
White MAGAt men filled with hate, resentment, and grievances are seriously threatening violence in the coming election and, I think, particularly in Red states this may happen. I just don’t think most Americans really comprehend that we have one party that is seriously thinking about violence as the way to keep themselves in power. Would you be concerned if you were called for jury duty in any of the trials to try criminal Trump for any of his 91 felony indictments? If your name got out would you feel safe? Would your family be safe? This is the country we have become.
White MAGAt men display open carry firearms at a Second Amendment Protest in response to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s recent public health order suspending the conceal and open carry of guns in and around Albuquerque for 30-days, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023, in Albuquerque, N.M. Credit: Roberto E. Rosales / AP
A report released Monday highlights how state laws across the U.S. fail to protect voters and election workers from the “growing risk of gun violence” tied to increasing firearm deregulation and sales as well as American political leaders fomenting distrust in democracy.
“The 2024 election will unfold in a transformed legal environment,” warns Guns and Voting, the new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and Giffords—a gun violence prevention group founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who survived being shot in the head.
The publication explains that “in 2010, only two states let people carry concealed firearms in public without a permit or background check. Now, 27 states allow ‘permitless carry.’ While other states have strengthened gun […]
Do you have young children? Do you want them to be well-educated on the basis of facts? Well, if the Republicans have their way, that’s not going to happen. In fact, your kid’s school may not even be able to hire enough teachers to be able to have properly sized classes, and adequately stocked libraries. The Republicans don’t want educated Americans, they want indoctrinated easily manipulated peasants.
As House Republicans move closer to shutting down the federal government at midnight on Friday the details of their spending cut demands are becoming clearer, including their largest single target: the U.S. Department of Education, and specifically, a program that funds schools for low-income children.
As Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann explains, “Republican hardliners are pushing the government toward a shutdown so that they can force frontline members of their party to take a symbolic vote in favor of cutting federal funding for low-income public schools by 80%.”
Calling Tuesday “a big test for House Republicans,” The Washington Post reports the House “will vote on a procedural motion — a rule — to advance four of the 11 remaining individual spending bills the House hasn’t passed. If the vote fails, the chamber’s Republicans will seem even more unable to govern.”
“The vote is a last-minute play to appease a small group of hard-line Republicans and demonstrate that the party is working to enact deep, year-long spending cuts — but it will do nothing to prevent a […]
Donald Trump leaves after speaking to supporters during a political rally while campaigning for the GOP nomination in the 2024 election on July 29, 2023, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Credit: Jeff Swensen / Getty
Former President Donald Trump has achieved a unique status in United States history. He is the first president to be indicted for conspiring to overturn a presidential election, defraud the U.S. and obstruct official proceedings by attempting to subvert the peaceful transfer of power.
It’s now a matter of public record that Trump faces four indictments and 91 felony counts for his criminal behavior. As Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman point out in TheNew York Times, the charges clearly depict how “Trump promoted false claims of fraud, sought to bend the Justice Department toward supporting those claims and oversaw a scheme to create false slates of electors pledged to him in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.” And Special Counsel Jack Smith has shown that Trump’s lies played a central role in his “unprecedented assault” on the U.S. Capitol and […]
Sean Morales-Doyle, Robyn Sanders, Allison Anderman, and Jessica Ojeda, Director of the Brennan Center Voting Rights Program | Counsel with the Democracy Program’s Voting Rights and Elections Team | Senior Counsel and Director of local policy, Giffords Law Center - Brennan Center for Justice
Stephan:
The MAGAts particularly in the states controlled by Republicans are literally trying to scare America’s democracy out of existence. Contact your state representatives and senators and demand that they make it illegal to carry weapons anywhere near an election voting site. If you don’t make an effort to ensure a fair election, don’t be surprised if it isn’t. These people are threatening violence, and if not stopped will act.
Illustration by Dan Bejar
Over the last 20 years, several distinct developments have increased the risk of gun violence in American elections. A marked shift in the U.S. Supreme Court’s approach to the Second Amendment and an aggressive pro-gun movement have caused significant deregulation of guns in some states and cast a shadow of legal uncertainty on strong gun regulations in others. Moreover, as the political system has grown more polarized and prone to violence, politicians have spread disinformation about voting rules to sow distrust in our democracy.
The result: voting and elections have become the targets of threats and intimidation just as the nation faces a proliferation of guns, more frequent gun violence, and fewer legal protections. This is a toxic combination. Still, most states’ laws do not adequately protect voters or the election system.
The 2024 election will unfold in a transformed legal environment. In a majority of states, gun advocates have successfully pushed deregulation of firearms in legislatures and the courts. In 2010, only two states let people carry concealed firearms in public without […]
If you look at its social outcome data Oklahoma is a rather pathetic state run my MAGAts who don’t even seem to understand how American government was set up by the Founders. The separation of church and state was a major issue to the Founders many of whom had been persecuted by the Anglican church in a Britain where church and state were linked through the monarch who was no only the head of government they were also head of the Protestant Church, thanks to Henry VIIIth. But, as this article describes I doubt people like Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters even know that, and being christofascists they would like their strange version of Christianity to become the formal state religion. This is significant but little discussed trend shaping America today.
State Superintendent and MAGAt Ryan Walters Credit: Oklahoma state government
Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters on Tuesday vowed to bring Christian prayer back into his state’s public schools and suggested that the notion of church-state separation in the United States was a “myth.”
Writing on Twitter, Walters linked to a story about a recent speech he delivered to the “Pray, Vote, Stand” summit in Washington D.C. where he called for bringing back prayer in schools and argued that “there is no separation of church and state in the constitution or declaration of independence, it doesn’t exist.”
Commenting on this speech, Walters wrote, “We will bring God and prayer back in schools in Oklahoma, and fight back against the radical myth of separation of church and state.”
In fact, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution explicitly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
In addition to this, American founding father Thomas Jefferson elaborated on the First Amendment in a letter sent […]
