Rethugs Say It Out Loud: Save Party By Stopping Students From Voting. People of a certain age (mine) no doubt recall how Rethugs used this tactic to keep kids who went to school out of state from voting at their college addresses. In my case, Rockefeller. They’re trying again:
The presentation — which had more than 50 slides and was labeled “A Level Playing Field for 2024” — offered a window into a strategy that seems designed to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups, including students and those who vote by mail, both of which tend to skew Democratic.
For MAGAts, ‘a level playing field’ means disenfranchising as many legal voters as possible. Been the case since at least 1968.
Rethugs Say It Out Loud: Abortion’s A Losing Issue For Us. Let’s Keep It Off The Ballot:
The biggest and most immediate fight is in Ohio, where a coalition of abortion rights groups is collecting signatures to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that would prohibit the state from banning abortion before a fetus becomes viable outside the womb, at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. That would essentially establish on the state level what Roe did nationwide for five decades.
Organizers were confident that the measure would reach the simple majority needed for passage, given polls showing that most Ohioans — like most Americans — support legalized abortion and disapprove of overturning Roe.
But Republicans in the state legislature are advancing a ballot amendment of their own that would raise the percentage of votes required to pass future such measures to a 60 percent supermajority. The measure has passed the Ohio Senate and is expected to pass the House this week.
The Republican measure — which would require support from only 50 percent of voters to pass — would go before voters in a special election this August.
“There are a lot of elected officials leading state legislatures that are being unapologetic, brazen, relentless — choose your adjective — about the fact that they don’t care what voters think on this issue and that their ideological stance on this is going to dictate the outcome,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which supports citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives across the country as a check on gerrymandered state legislatures.
Republicans in Ohio have said openly that their efforts to make ballot amendments harder to pass are aimed at blocking abortion rights. They are putting their measure on the ballot in August, typically a time of low turnout. It will not include the word “abortion,” which abortion rights supporters say will make it hard to engage their voters.
“Block The Blue”: Musk’s Latest Nightmare. It’s great that these people are using their power for good instead of EE-VIL!!:
“99% of twitter blue guys are dead-eyed cretins who are usually trying to sell you something stupid and expensive, and now they want to pay a monthly subscription fee to boost their dog shit posts front and center,” Twitter user @dril told me in an email when I asked about his thoughts on the #BlockTheBlue campaign.
“Blocking them and encouraging others to do the same on a massive scale is the complete opposite of what they want,” he continued. “Its funny.”
That’s big coming from @dril. Part of the “Weird Twitter” subculture of funny shitposting accounts, @dril is a legend on Twitter and his reach goes far beyond any niche community. His tweets are regularly used as replies and memes. Screenshots of his tweets often spread on other platforms. His content empowered him to co-create an Adult Swim show. @dril has built a following of more than 1.76 million followers just with his funny Twitter posts over the years and he’s done it almost completely anonymously – he finally confirmed his identity just earlier this month.
“I am actively rooting for the downfall of twitter,” @dril tells me. “I hope to sabotage their efforts to become profitable, no matter how futile, in the hopes that they will eventually close up shop and release us all from this toilet.”
Despite 15 years of apparent neutrality, @dril was one of the earliest – and certainly biggest – Twitter users to encourage those on the platform to block anyone with a paid bluecheck. This account that was once all about pure comedy is now at the center of a protest movement.
“absolutely block on sight,” @dril tweeted back in November, when Musk’s Twitter Blue first launched. Included in the tweet was a screenshot of the label Twitter use to put on Blue subscribers in order to differentiate the paid checkmarks from the old “legacy verified” users.
But, @dril is far from the only big Twitter user to follow this new unwritten “Block the Blue” rule on the platform. NBC News reporter Ben Collins, Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic’s Alejandra Caraballo, and countless other Twitter have accounts have already shared their intention to block all Twitter Blue subscribers.
In response, Musk is trying to block the blockers. Good luck, pal.
Texas Senate Votes To Destroy State Universities By Eliminating Tenure. You can probably guess why:
Patrick’s push to end tenure in Texas started more than a year ago after some University of Texas at Austin professors passed a nonbinding resolution defending their academic freedom to teach about issues like racial justice. The resolution came as Republicans hinted that they wanted to extend restrictions on how race is discussed in K-12 classrooms, which were approved by the Texas Legislature in 2021, to the state’s public universities.
Faculty and higher education experts broadly said Republican senators are mischaracterizing tenured professors as untouchable and ignoring the mechanisms that already exist to hold them accountable.
Tenured faculty already undergo annual performance reviews and other periodic evaluations. They can still be fired if they violate university policies, and tenure can be revoked in certain circumstances, like when someone is accused of plagiarism, sexual harassment or research misconduct.
Faculty and higher education experts say tenure is a vital protection of academic freedom at a university that guards faculty pursuing new ideas or controversial work from being fired or punished. It gives them job security as they conduct research that can sometimes take more than a decade to see results.
Without the ability to award tenure, university leaders have said it would be very difficult to attract top faculty and research stars to the Lone Star State.
“Removing tenure would not only cripple Texas’ ability to recruit and retain great faculty members, it would also hurt Texas students, who would not be able to stay in state knowing that they will be learning from the very best in the country,” said UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell in response to Patrick’s declaration last year. “It would also increase the risk of universities across the state making bad decisions for the wrong reasons.”
Donald Trump-Rapist. Hey, no question mark required. He bragged about groping women. However, in the legal sense:
“One of the things that happened because of Trump’s election in 2016 was this collective outrage from women across the country for a whole host of reasons, but in many ways encapsulated by that video of him talking about grabbing women by their genitalia. There was this moment for many women who thought it would not be possible for someone caught saying that to ever become president of the United States. And then he was,” she said.
“This case brings all that up and in some ways adds to that outrage that women feel about him. He has been accused of this kind of behaviour so many times and he’s never been held accountable. This time it seems like he may in fact be held accountable.”
The former president told the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, that he would not be attending the hearing as he did not want to disrupt New York’s traffic with his motorcade. Kaplan scoffed at that explanation.
But Carroll will give testimony along with the two friends who corroborate her account that she sought their advice immediately after the alleged assault.
Walsh said this could be a dangerous moment for Trump because Carroll is likely to make a highly credible witness.
“It’s not that you hear this story from her, and you go, ‘Oh, that couldn’t be. That’s not him.’ It fits a pattern with him,” she said.
Is Speaker Pete–Up To Something?:
At Wednesday’s Joint Legislative Council meeting, Speaker of the House Pete Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach, spearheaded discussion on the structure of the General Assembly.
His main concern was the “no man’s land” time period between an election and the start of the first year of a legislative session.
“Who runs the place, who pays the bills?” he said. “I assumed taking over paying the bills for the House of Representatives during that period of time, and I don’t really know that I actually had … the legal right to do it or not.”
To mitigate any potential legal troubles, Rep. Schwartzkopf suggested having an organizational, in-session vote sometime before the start of session.
However, both Senate President Pro Tempore Dave Sokola, D-Newark, and Division of Research Director Mark Cutrona noted that it was not the founders of the Delaware Constitution’s intent to hold a “lame duck” session between the election and start of session.
Schwartzkopf became Speaker around 2011. He just thought of this? I can’t help but wonder if this is tied into the promise he made to the House Democratic Caucus to resign both as Speaker and as a member of the General Assembly at the end of the 2023 legislative year. There are a lot of people who haven’t forgotten that promise, especially since reports have surfaced that the promised ‘kinder, gentler’ leadership team is still throwing their not-insubstantial weight around against defenseless targets. Schwartzkopf and Longhurst remain unrepentant bullies. They are the lone impediment to a more progressive House.
What do you want to talk about?