Tag: GOP now the fascist party

Democrats confront reality on voting rights: Congress probably isn’t coming to the rescue

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Asked about the path to enact new voting-rights laws, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly offered a pat reply: “Failure is not an option.”

Faced with a barrage of new state laws aiming to restrict voting outside Election Day — pushed by Republican legislatures egged on by former president Donald Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud — most Democrats agree with Schumer that the need for a federal backstop is essential.

But failure is very much an option — it is, in fact, the most likely one. Continue reading.

The soul of the post-Trump GOP isn’t in D.C., it’s in the nation’s statehouses

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WASHINGTON — If you really want to see today’s post-Trump Republican Party in action, don’t look at Washington.

Instead, take notice of what’s happening in GOP-controlled state legislatures across the country.

They’re passing new restrictions on voting, even in states Trump won in 2020. “Florida’s Legislature [on Thursday] passed an election bill Thursday that includes restrictions on drop boxes and voting by mail,” NBC’s Ben Kamisar writes. Continue reading.

An ugly picture is coming into focus as the state-level GOP attempt to strangle dissent

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As we passed the one-year mark of the pandemic lockdown, the media was flooded with assorted lookbacks, memorials for the dead and even quizzes designed to remind people of what the country and the world were like before the coronavirus descended.

One suggested that you look at the photos stored in your mobile phone and find the last picture taken before everything went to hell. For me, it was a shot of some anemone blossoms near the Georgia shore, that last trip before travel became untenable. (And the first photo after the lockdown began also was floral—the Callery pear trees that blossom every spring in my neighborhood, regardless of plague or politics.)

Looking through my 2020 photos, I noticed something else. Seventh Avenue, the street that runs below my downtown Manhattan apartment, is a frequent thoroughfare for demonstrations (and during the pandemic, platoons of motorcycles, ATV’s and the other day, a gaggle of black-outfitted ninja wannabes on electric skateboards. I am not making this up.). Continue reading.

Republicans who backed Trump impeachment see fundraising boost

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The majority of House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Trump in January saw fundraising gains in the first three months of the year despite intense backlash from members of their own party, according to new financial disclosures.

Most of the Republicans who publicly went against Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol saw their 2021 first quarter hauls increase from their 2019 hauls during the same period. Two of Trump’s most high-profile critics in the House received a major financial boost in particular: House GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (Wyo.) raised $1.5 million at the start of 2021 compared to $321,000 during the same period in 2019, while Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) brought in $1.2 million during the first three months of the year compared to $326,000 in 2019. 

The fundraising hauls come amid a growing divide within the party, as Trump and his allies threaten to support primary challengers against those who voted to impeach him — some of whom are also raking in money. Continue reading.