Over the weekend, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) proclaimed to CNN’s Jake Tapper that even though there wasn’t any actual voter fraud, that Texas should pass the voter suppression bills to make people feel better. MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace shouted through her television at him saying that it was he and Republicans like him who created the insecurity they now cite a need to fix.
“I think the intent, and I’m not in the state legislature, is to restore confidence in the elections that fraud isn’t taking place,” McCaul told Tapper. “Now, you make a good point, and I’m a federal prosecutor and in a court of law, that hasn’t really been born to bear. This may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the American people. In my state, they actually do believe there was tremendous fraud.”
“They believe it because you all lied to them!” Wallace proclaimed. Continue reading.
The Federal Election Commission has fined the National Enquirer’s parent company $187,500 for “knowingly and willfully” violating election law by making a payment in 2016 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with former president Donald Trump years before he was elected.
The decision came in response to a complaint made more than three years ago by the nonprofit government watchdog group Common Cause, which was notified of the FEC’s findings Tuesday.
The group had alleged that the company’s $150,000 payment to McDougal months before the 2016 election was effectively an illegal in-kind corporate contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign. The payment allegedly benefited Trump’s campaign by suppressing McDougal’s story of an alleged relationship with Trump before voters went to the polls. Continue reading.
One big question about former President Trump now has an answer — and it’s an alarming one for his critics.
In the later days of his presidency, his foes debated whether politics would snap back to normal if he lost his bid for a second term.
Some feared he had wrought permanent change on the political landscape. Others viewed his tumultuous presidency as a toxic aberration that might be neutralized soon after he left the White House. Continue reading.
Arizona is taking steps to use hydrogen cyanide, the deadly gas used during the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis at Auschwitz and other extermination camps, to kill inmates on death row.
Corrections officials have refurbished a gas chamber that hasn’t been used in more than 20 years and have procured ingredients for the lethal gas, also known as Zyklon B, according to partially redacted documents obtained by the Guardian. Invoices show that the state purchased a brick of potassium cyanide, sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid, and a report details the considerable efforts taken to deem the gas chamber at a prison in Florence, Ariz., “operationally ready.”
Critics of the gas method say that in addition to hydrogen cyanide’s infamous use in the mass killings of Jewish people by the Nazis, it has produced some of the most botched, disturbing executions in the United States. Continue reading.
The partner of fallen U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick is speaking out to express her frustration with Republican lawmakers who voted against the establishment of a commission to investigate the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.
According to CBS News, Sicknick’s mother arrived on Capitol Hill last week with his former partner Sandra Garza. The two women hoped to lobby lawmakers to vote in favor of the Jan. 6 commission. However, her plea fell on deaf ears as Republican lawmakers ultimately blocked the measure.
The former president’s company previously considered selling the lease to its luxury Washington hotel before covid struck
Former president Donald Trump’s company has again hired a broker to sell the lease to its D.C. hotel, according to two people familiar with the discussions, a second attempt to unload the property after the pandemic thwarted a previous effort.
The Trump Organization previously listed the Pennsylvania Avenue hotel, in the federally owned Old Post Office Pavilion, in the fall of 2019. When covid-19 struck, many hotels closed either completely or partially due to government shutdowns, and the company pulled the property off the market.
Now, with Trump under investigation by prosecutors in New York and the economy beginning to take off, his company is trying again, hiring the brokerage firm NewmarkGroup to market the lease, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private business discussions. Continue reading.
President Biden on Tuesday traveled to Tulsa, Okla., to meet with the survivors of the city’s 1921 race massacre, unveiling a broad plan to drive racial equity throughout the country while holding up the city’s past as evidence of the pervasive effects of racism.
Monday and Tuesday marked the centennial of the race massacre in which an angry mob of white Tulsans burned and looted Tulsa’s thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood. Biden is the first president to visit the neighborhood in recognition of the massacre in 1921, a point he highlighted in his remarks.
The president spent a significant portion of his speech giving a historical recounting of the events of 100 years ago in Tulsa. The massacre has gained attention in recent years after being an often overlooked instance of racism and violence. Continue reading.
The Biden administration on Tuesday formally nixed the “Remain in Mexico” program, the latest in a series of moves to dismantle the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies.
The program, known formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), was a cornerstone of Trump’s border management policy; it forced potential asylum seekers to stay in Mexico to wait out the result of their case in U.S. immigration court.
In a memo ending the program Tuesday, Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the MPP did not help with enhancing the border management. Continue reading.
June 3, 4:30 PM — DFL Virtual Flounders Day Celebration, more information and tickets here.
June 5, 10:00 to 11:00 AM — Coffee with Hennepin County Commissioner LaTondresse, first Saturday of each month. Log in here.
June 9, 7:00 to 9:00 PM — CD3 DFL Virtual Convention, postcards being mailed to delegates and alternates. People registering will receive log in information.
June 10
7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD36 Virtual Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD48 Virtual Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
June 14 — Flag Day
7:00 to 9:00 PM – SD44 DFL Virtual Central Committee, contact them for more information
7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD49 DFL Virtual Central Committee, contact them for more information
June 16, 7:00 PM — REPLACED BY CD3 CONVENTION CD3 DFL Virtual Central Committee Meeting
June 19 — Juneteenth
June 20 — Father’s Day
June 27, 12:00 to 4:00 PM — SD45 DFL Community Picnic, 8130 Bass Lake Rd, New Hope, MN 55428, more information here.
June 28, 7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD47 DFL Virtual Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
July 1 — Somali Independence Day
July 3, 10:00 AM — Coffee with Hennepin County Commissioner LaTondresse, first Saturday of each month. Log in here.
July 4 — Independence Day
July 5 — Independence Day (observed)
July 7
6:30 to 8:30 PM — SD50 DFL Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD33 DFL Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
July 8
7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD36 DFL Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD48 DFL Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
July 12
7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD44 DFL Virtual Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
7:00 to 9:00 PM — SD49 DFL Virtual Central Committee Meeting, contact them for more information
Trump has reportedly told associates he hopes to be “reinstated” to the presidency by August. This entire line of thought is stark raving mad.
It was unsettling to see former White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn appear at a right-wing gathering over the weekend and endorse a military coup in the United States. Asked about Myanmar’s coup, the retired Army general specifically said, “I mean it, it should happen here.”
But a day earlier, attorney Sidney Powell appeared at the same event, and as the Washington Examinernoted, she went down a similarly outlandish path.
Attorney Sidney Powell, who is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for spreading allegedly defamatory claims about the 2020 election, insisted on Saturday former President Donald Trump could “simply be reinstated” as president and fill the rest of President Joe Biden’s term.
To the delight of attendees, Powell specifically declared, “It should be that [Trump] can simply be reinstated, that a new inauguration date is set.” Continue reading.
