Turning tide traumatizes tyrant

 

UPDATE 01:01 pm:

Virginia followingCalifornia

Virginia’s state Supreme Court will decide whether state Democrats’ gerrymander push can proceed after an appeals court on Wednesday pushed the case to the high court.

The state Circuit Court of Appeals, in a motion, stated that the case is of “such imperative public importance as to justify the deviation from normal appellate practice and to require prompt decision in the Supreme Court.”

The move comes after a court in Tazewell County last week blocked Virginia Democrats from going forward with gerrymandering, ruling that the Democrat-led Legislature had wrongly approved a constitutional amendment that would allow for mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts ahead of the midterms this fall.

  Politico

 

Heads up SCOTUS

A federal court ruled Thursday that Virginia’s lifetime voting ban for people with certain felony convictions violates federal law — a landmark decision that could restore voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Virginians, especially Black residents long targeted by the ban.

U.S. District Court Judge John Gibney, appointed by former President Barack Obama, ruled that Virginia’s constitution unlawfully strips voting rights far beyond what Congress allowed when it readmitted the state to the Union after the Civil War.

  Democracy Docket

New direction for Virginia

 

Shore up the states

 

SCOTUS strikes again

Is Alabama next?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 01:32 pm:

UPDATE 11/01/2024:

This Court let Alabama’s legislature get away with an unconstitutionally gerrymandered congressional district for two additional years, invoking the Purcell principle that said it was too close to the election to make any changes that time around. But now, they’ll permit Virginia to remove voters within the time period where federal law strictly prohibits it, not just an amorphous doctrine they invoke when it suits them. And, the state could have been working on these checks for the last few years. Whatever this Virginia decision is, it is not grounded in precedent or principle.

  Joyce Vance

But it's not too late to prevent officials from purging voters in Virginia?

MAGA

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Couldn't be more obvious

We will have no protests in favor of Palestinians (aka Muslims or not-Jews).

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 06:15 am:

Vindman for Congress

Eugene (Yevgeny) Vindman, Alexander's twin brother and fellow whistleblower on Trump's attempt to blackmail Ukraine, is running for Congress in Virginia.  Great candidate. 

Hero Dad

link

Of course

Lawmakers in at least three states this year have filed legislation meant to restrict access to gender-affirming health care for individuals as old as 26, an escalation of a battle waged nationwide last year over whether minors should be able to access certain prescription medications and procedures.

Bills filed this year in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia aim to bar state health care providers from recommending or administering treatments like puberty blockers, hormones and gender-affirming surgeries to patients younger than 21, signaling an aggravation in the fight over transgender health care.

Another Oklahoma bill filed this month would prohibit adults up to 25 from receiving gender-affirming care in one of the most extreme and restrictive bans introduced to date.

  The Hill

Republicans use children for political gains. They don't actually care about children. They're used as a jacket to hang on Democrats who don't go along. Children are merely a foot in the door to larger aims.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Symbols

Another day, another American mass killing

Six people have been killed in a shooting at a Walmart in Virginia.

[...]

“Chesapeake police confirm an active shooter incident with fatalities at the Walmart on Sam’s Circle. The shooter is deceased.”

The store in Chesapeake is likely to be closed for several days while the investigation continued, a police spokesperson, Leo Kosinski, said in the early hours of Wednesday.

[...]

“We are shocked at this tragic event at our Chesapeake, Virginia store,” Walmart said early on Wednesday.

  Guardian

Nobody should be shocked at any mass killing in this country ever again. It's what we're known for.

A Virginia state senator, Louise Lucas, said she was “absolutely heartbroken that America’s latest mass shooting took place in a Walmart in my district.

“I will not rest until we find the solutions to end this gun violence epidemic in our country that has taken so many lives.”

We have the solutions. We just don't implement them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Bless the kids

They are our hope for the future. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Youngkin will be a one-term governor

If he lasts that long.

The most important elections are local

Longtime Trump allies, chief among them Steve Bannon, have spread his Big Lie that voter fraud swung the 2020 election against him, and they are striving to take over these offices. In Pennsylvania, they recruited candidates in 2021 to run for “election judge,” a hyper-local and typically uncontested position, with some success.

Pennsylvania may be one of the country’s core swing states, but chances are you haven’t heard of its “election judges.” Even if you closely follow American politics, you likely do not know how their powers compare to those of the state’s county boards of elections, nor when and how any of those officials are selected. For people who hope to protect the election system from the Big Lie, this labyrinth of relevant offices can be a nightmare to navigate.

[...]

The bulk of election administration in the United States takes place at the local level, across thousands of counties and municipalities, as Trump and Bannon’s forces well know. Sleepy offices like county clerk or county auditor determine much of what goes into running elections—determining the number and location of polling places, appointing precinct officials, designing ballots, scheduling early voting options, and overseeing voter registration.

These local officials can ease access to the ballot, and Houston’s clerk drew widespread attention for such reforms in 2020. But they can also mar the election process via policies that close down polling locations, purge eligible residents from the rolls, or fuel long lines.

[...]

These local administrators also have clout in state or federal policymaking. They are often members of statewide associations that lobby legislatures.

[...]

Every state structures its system differently. Election administration can also vary wildly from county to county within a state. [...] To make matters more confusing, election administration is frequently split between different institutions even within a county. It pulls in officials like sheriffs and tax-assessors, whose formal titles do not reveal their responsibility for running elections.

[...]

Many states provide little if any centralized information about their systems or relevant offices, and it’s even harder to track down when administrators are selected or elected. Even if this was all readily available, the sheer number of election administrators make them a challenge to follow.

This decentralized election administration has a major benefit: It helps prevent any sort of widespread hacking. With so many offices in so many municipalities, it would be functionally impossible to rig a large-scale election. But this dynamic also creates layers of inequity. Depending on where they live, voters within the same state may face different rules.

[...]

A well-financed group’s concerted efforts to win such offices can remain largely under-the-radar, as in Pennsylvania in 2021. Voting rights activists seeking to expand access to the polls may comparatively struggle to organize inside opaque election systems that usually draw little public attention.

Today Bolts is publishing an original database that compiles, state by state, the local institutions that are responsible for administering elections at the county and municipal level.

[...]

And in almost every state, the process of tabulating, canvassing, and officially certifying the votes cast, is conducted in a separate process that may not always involve the same administrators but that has also come under conservative attack. Bolts will dig into these complexities in future work.

  Bolts

Texas has one of the most complex (and controllable by the major party) system, as you might imagine they would.  (Click the graphics for an enlarged view.)

And Pennsylvania's shows how difficult it might be to have a straightforward and honest election in that state.   

Compare those with Missouri's, which surprisingly seems to be fair and unassailable, except in those counties that don't have an election board. And, guess what? That's almost all of them, with the notable exceptions of Jackson (Kansas City) and St. Louis counties. Even the state's capitol county (Cole) has its elections run by the clerk's office.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Turn in your neighbor - the new America

First, the Texas turn in the person who aids anyone getting an abortion.  Now, Virginia...

Reminds me of another time in another country.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh, Florida

We're not actually fascist YET.

Floridians are not sending their best and brightest to their governing body.  Or, if they are, they're in deep shit.  You should be able to expect that your legislators know the law.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Florida, meet Virginia.  (Hey, that reminds me of the family with five daughters named: Virginia, Carolina, Georgia, Missouri and Alice.)

And Virginia had been doing so well

They tried coming out of the dark ages, but apparently they got "uncomfortable".

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Just shake your head and wonder

I wonder how Virginia's students fare in comparison to the other 49 states.

https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?221+ful+HB781

https://www.britannica.com/event/Lincoln-Douglas-debates

https://www.google.com/search?client=aff-maxthon-maxthon4&channel=t26&q=frederick%20douglass

UPDATE:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.