babylonsister
babylonsister's JournalExclusive: 1 in 2 states at risk of "rigged maps," group warns
More examples of how elections can be stolen.
https://www.axios.com/gerrymandering-states-partisan-redistricting-elections-3ead2a0a-3876-4e85-aaa1-f80efd76daad.html
1 hour ago - Politics & Policy
Exclusive: 1 in 2 states at risk of "rigged maps," group warns
Stef W. Kight
More than half of the states in the U.S. are at "extreme risk" of congressional districts being drawn to unfairly favor one party, according to a new analysis of state redistricting processes by RepresentUs, a non-partisan advocacy group focused on election reform.
Why it matters: The states at risk of gerrymandering — a process the group says can produce "rigged maps" — include battlegrounds like Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin and North Carolina.
The big picture: This year's redistricting process is already more chaotic than usual. And the outcomes could boost one party's political candidates for a decade.
That's due in large part to Supreme Court rulings since the last census that block partisan gerrymandering lawsuits from federal courts and ended requirements for some states to get their maps pre-cleared by the Justice Department.
snip//
By the numbers: 11 states saw high risk of gerrymandering across all five categories.
Democrat-run and Republican-run states alike fell into the highest-risk and lower-risk categories.
What they're saying: The report highlights the need for changes to the redistricting process in many states and advocates for a sweeping election overhaul bill Democrats passed in the House last month.
Republicans have sharply criticized the bill, but Silver said given what’s at stake, it shouldn't be a partisan issue.
Expose on DeSantis/60 Minutes tonight?
Just received this...
Team Crist, Charlie Crist for Congress
Sun, Apr 4 at 1:31 PM
Crist for Congress
Happy Easter to you and yours!
Please mark your calendars for 7PM tonight on CBS. This 60 Minutes investigation into Governor Ron DeSantis is must-watch TV.
New Indictment Shows Oath Keepers' Flood Of Communications On Jan. 6
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/04/indictment-oath-keepers-jan-64/04/21 6:00am
New Indictment Shows Oath Keepers’ Flood Of Communications On Jan. 6
In their chaotic drive to the Capitol, Stewart Rhodes and his crew were busy, talkative fellas.
By David Neiwert
snip//
The indictment says Rhodes and his team—including an unnamed communications chief designated as “Person 10,” and three Oath Keepers who guarded Stone—engaged in “frequent and consistent communication leading up to the attack.” Overall, they exchanged 19 phone calls over three hours that day:
From 1:59 to 2:15 p.m., over a 17-minute span, “Person 10” spoke with Rhodes, and then exchanged five calls with James totaling about 6½ minutes, while Rhodes called Florida Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs—who led the “stack” formation—for 15 seconds. This was about the same time the doors to the Capitol were first being breached.
Rhodes then forwarded a message from “Person 10” telling the team that the mob had “taken ground at the capital[.] We need to regroup any members who are not on mission.” “Person 10” then called Meggs for 42 seconds.
Between 2:24 and 2:33 p.m., Rhodes spoke with “Person 10” for nearly 5½ minutes, after which “Person 10” and Meggs spoke. After James checked back with “Person 10,” he and Minuta jumped into the golf cart and headed toward the Capitol, where they began harassing officers outside the east doors of the building. At 3:15 p.m., the two men entered the building, pushing past police at the Rotunda doors.
Between 3:40 and 4:05 p.m., “Person 10” connected for three minutes with James, Minuta, and Rhodes for 3½ minutes. Shortly afterward, more than a dozen Oath Keepers, including many who had entered the Capitol, gathered around Rhodes just outside the building.
The communications within the team also indicated that the insurrectionists were following a previously mapped strategy. Jessica Watkins, one of the leaders of the group that entered the Capitol, texted: “We have a good group. We have about 30-40 of us. We are sticking together and sticking to the plan.”
“You are executing citizen’s arrest,” one person responded. “Arrest this assembly, we have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud.”
Watkins responded: "We are in the mezzanine. We are in the main dome right now. We are rocking it. They are throwing grenades, they are fticking shooting people with paint balls. But we are in here."
Another person told Watkins to stay safe, then added: "Get it, Jess. Do your fucking thing. This is what we fucking [unintelligible] up for. Everything we fucking trained for."
snip//
Rhodes has been portraying himself as a likely martyr. At an anti-immigration event in Texas last weekend, he told the audience: “I may go to jail soon. Not for anything I actually did, but for made-up crimes. There are some Oath Keepers right now along with Proud Boys and other patriots who are in D.C. who are sitting in jail denied bail despite the supposed right to a jury trial before you’re found guilty and presumption of innocence, were denied bail because the powers that be don’t like their political views.”
He also claimed innocence for his members. “If we actually intended to take over the Capitol, we’d have taken it, and we’d have brought guns,” Rhodes said. “That’s not why we were there that day. We were there to protect Trump supporters from antifa.”
Pete Buttigieg Speaks Slowly And Explains To Republicans That Humans Need Water To Live
https://www.politicususa.com/2021/04/04/pete-buttigieg-republicans-water.htmlPosted on Sun, Apr 4th, 2021 by Jason Easley
Pete Buttigieg Speaks Slowly And Explains To Republicans That Humans Need Water To Live
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explained to Republicans who oppose money for pipes in the infrastructure bill that humans need water to live.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1378723315825672199
Sec. Buttigieg said on ABC’s This Week:
That’s absolutely infrastructure, you know, you talk about roads and bridges, but also airports and ports. We need to make sure that we have broadband. I know that traditionally the internet wasn’t considered infrastructure because in the Eisenhower years, of course, it didn’t exist, but infrastructure investment has to include looking to the future. Railroads seemed futuristic, and then we actually built them. Now they’re considered traditional infrastructure. You could say the same about highways, and I’ve got a lot of respect for senator blunt, but I’m going to work to try to persuade him that electrical charging infrastructure is absolutely a core part of how Americans are going to need to get around in the future, and not the distant, far-off future, but right now.
There are places in this country at any given moment of the day that don’t have water due to problems with pipes. Flint wasn’t an isolated incident as far as lead poisoning is concerned due to dangerous water pipes.
The state and condition of America’s infrastructure is a disgrace.
a little more...
https://www.politicususa.com/2021/04/04/pete-buttigieg-republicans-water.html
Republicans' Plan to Sink Biden's Infrastructure Bill: Lots of Whining, No Solutions
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/republicans-plan-to-sink-joe-biden-infrastructure-bill-lots-of-whining-no-solutionsInfrastructure
Republicans’ Plan to Sink Biden’s Infrastructure Bill: Lots of Whining, No Solutions
The plan of attack, as usual, is to negotiate in bad faith—i.e. without real desire to reach a compromise. Luckily, Biden’s chief of staff has indicated that the administration has a very low tolerance for Mitch McConnell’s shenanigans.
By Eric Lutz
April 2, 2021
snip//
That approach was summarized neatly by his chief of staff, Ron Klain, in a Politico interview Thursday. Speaking about the first part of the infrastructure plan Biden announced Wednesday, Klain described the administration as open to collaborating with members of his party and Republicans to develop a proposal. “Let’s work together and see if there’s a way for us to deliver this,” Klain said. But in the next breath, he made clear that the administration would not mistake obstruction for the sake of obstruction—a hallmark of Mitch McConnell’s reign as the leader of Senate Republicans—for real negotiations. “The president was elected to do a job, and part of that job is to get this country ready to win the future,” Klain said. “That’s what he’s going to do.”
McConnell and the Republicans have, of course, already lined up against the plan. “I’m going to fight them every step of the way, because I think this is the wrong prescription for America,” the minority leader said in a news conference Thursday. “That package that they’re putting together now, as much as we would like to address infrastructure, is not going to get support from our side.” Part of the opposition will be based on characterizing Biden’s plans as a “‘kitchen sink’ of wasteful progressive demands,” as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy put it Thursday. Another part will be complaining that they’re being shut out of the process. “A Senate evenly split between both parties and a bare Democratic House majority are hardly a mandate to ‘go it alone,’” Mitt Romney tweeted Thursday. “The President should live up to the bipartisanship he preached in his inaugural address.”
But bipartisanship only works if each side is working in good faith. Biden’s American Jobs Plan may define “infrastructure” more broadly than some, particularly Republicans, might—and he may have to double-check some of the math behind it. But it puts forth real solutions to real problems facing the country, and would likely create real jobs along the way. “Let’s start on the areas where we agree,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week. “If people have alternative proposals, we’re happy to hear them.” So far, the Republican opposition seems to be shaping up to look a lot like their crusade against Obamacare: they had four years to do something about it but didn’t and are offering objections without any counter-proposals. “The Biden ‘infrastructure plan’ is not about improving America’s infrastructure,” Republican Senator Tim Scott wrote the day the president unveiled it. “It’s yet another Trojan horse for the far Left’s agenda.”
Biden’s bet is that the American people, including Republican voters, won’t see it that way. He was already proven right once: no Republican senators voted for his COVID package, but the American people—including a significant portion of Republican and Republican-leaning voters—overwhelmingly supported it, and the GOP lawmakers who tried to keep it from passing have nevertheless seemed eager to claim credit for it. With voters right now broadly in support of raising taxes on the wealthy to fund infrastructure improvements, the Biden administration is hoping that GOP opposition to the bill is limited to Capitol Hill. “We know it has bipartisan support in the country,” Klain said Thursday. “And so we’re going to try our best to get bipartisan support here in Washington.” The lesson for Biden over the last 12 years, under Obama and Trump, is: don’t count on it.
Republicans don't think Biden really wants to work with them
Gee, ya think? Why should he? That goes both ways.
Republicans don't think Biden really wants to work with them
By Alexander Bolton and Morgan Chalfant - 04/02/21 06:00 AM EDT
Republicans on Capitol Hill say President Biden’s infrastructure proposal is the clearest sign yet that the White House has no intention of working with them on big legislation.
The $2.25 trillion plan unveiled this week by Biden takes direct aim at former President Trump’s signature economic achievement by raising the corporate tax rate that Republicans lowered in their 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
“It’s pretty clear the way it is being crafted is far-left and goes after the marquis item that we passed on taxes,” said a Senate Republican aide.
Biden’s proposal “fundamentally takes the approach that government and government spending is the answer, and we strongly disagree with that,” the aide said.
Every single Republican who was in the Senate in 2017 voted for Trump’s tax plan, including the GOP lawmakers who are viewed as potentially working with Biden on infrastructure: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Jerry Moran (Kan.).
Senate Republican aides say it’s “highly unlikely” that any GOP senators will vote for Biden’s plan, noting that even a key moderate like Collins is allied with the party’s core position of favoring lower taxes.
more...
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/546106-republicans-dont-think-biden-really-wants-to-work-with-them
Eric Boehlert: Fox News just went 30 hours without mentioning the Matt Gaetz scandal
Fox News just went 30 hours without mentioning the Matt Gaetz scandal
Blackout
Eric Boehlert
2 hr ago
In an extraordinary attempt at GOP damage control, Fox News failed to make any mention, for more than an entire day, of the exploding sex trafficking scandal that's engulfing Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a close ally of the network. Opting instead for a total blackout, Fox News tried and failed to quell the raging controversy, which on Thursday night hit new heights with another round of explosive revelations.
But at Fox News, it's Gaetz who?
According to TVeyes, the 24-hour cable news monitoring service, Fox News mentioned "Matt Gaetz" just 17 times all day Wednesday and all day Thursday of this week. In fact, the network aired zero mentions of Gaetz on Thursday, and the final mention of him came Wednesday at 6:22 pm. That means for more than 30 hours, Fox News didn't reference the Congressman a single time. During that same period, CNN mentioned Gaetz 70 times, MSNBC more than 80 times.
Suffice it to say that if a prominent Democrat found him or herself at the center of a scandal as lurid as Gaetz's, who's under investigation in a federal sex trafficking probe involving a 17-year-old girl, Fox News would have hyped the story hundreds of times this week. Fox News would have been in nonstop scandal mode demanding answers, pressing for Congressional inquiries, and denouncing the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party.
But with one of its closest allies under federal fire, the best Fox News can do is pretend nothing is happening. Instead of opting for covering the story lightly, Fox News went straight to banning it.
Obviously an attempt to erase a story as big and breaking as the Gaetz scandal doesn't happen by accident. We're witnessing a deliberate, top-down attempt by Fox News to unplug an important political story simply because the man at the center is a Republican and a vociferous Trump loyalist who loudly claimed the 2020 election had been stolen. In fact, Gaetz owes his career to Fox News and the hundreds of appearances he's made on the network in recent years.
more...
https://pressrun.media/p/fox-news-just-went-30-hours-without
Inspector general report shows Capitol Police knew 'Congress itself is the target on the 6th'
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/4/1/2023924/-Inspector-General-report-makes-clear-what-we-already-knew-Capitol-Police-were-woefully-unpreparedInspector general report shows Capitol Police knew 'Congress itself is the target on the 6th'
Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday April 01, 2021 · 12:54 PM EDT
Investigations of what happened in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 are still ongoing in both the House and Senate. At the same time, hundreds of those involved in the assault on the Capitol have now been charged with crimes ranging from entering a restricted area to conspiracy against the United States.
But while the actions of the insurrectionists are being investigated, so are the actions of the police and other agencies involved in protecting the Capitol and everyone who works there. On Thursday, CBS News released portions of a report made by the inspector general for the Capitol Police. That report, which dates to March 1, doesn’t really have a lot of new information. However, it underlines the most critical points: The Capitol Police consistently downplayed the threat of violence on Jan. 6, appeared to ignore both FBI warnings and violence at previous events, and failed to develop a comprehensive plan for dealing with the day that ended in insurgency.
It’s a portrait of a department that was both inadequate for the task and unprepared. And the lack of concern about the potential for large-scale violence again raises concerns about how the authorities failed to take appropriate action, even when they knew white supremacists and militia groups were going to play a major role in Donald Trump’s “wild” event. Not only did police turn a blind eye to threats in violence in their own city, they completely ignored what had been happening across the nation in the months leading up to the insurrection.
snip//
But, somehow, despite this knowledge, leadership in the Capitol Police failed to create a unified plan for actions on Jan. 6. And even though they were being given exactly the opposite message in their own internal assessments, officers were told that "acts of civil disobedience/arrests" were "improbable."
In the wake of the insurrection, Police Chief Steven Sund resigned. However, since then Sund has said he regrets his resignation and complained that calls for his replacement were premature. But the inspector general report not only makes it clear that Sund failed to prepare his team or seek the necessary resources, it also makes serious allegations about the planning done by acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman, and about Pittman’s openness with Congress in discussing that planning.
Following the issue of the report, Pittman continued to insist: "Although we knew the likelihood for violence by extremists, no credible threat indicated that tens of thousands would attack the U.S. Capitol ...” But the nature of that threat should have been—and in fact was—obvious. This was a larger version of the state-level protests that had already demonstrated the willingness of armed white supremacist militias to assault police, push through security lines, smash doors and windows, and invade restricted buildings with the intent of disrupting government. They had already done all those things on a smaller scale. This was the big stage.
The violence on Jan. 6 was not an aberration. It was just the largest in a series of events that had, with Trump’s incitement and encouragement, raged across the nation for a year. To issue statements that violence was “improbable” or to complain that there was “no credible threat” … is incredible.
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