Early voting has started. So, um, vote early.
Stephanie Bolden: ‘It’s Not My Problem’. It’s a story about squalid conditions as the Windsor Apartments. It’s also about Stephanie Bolden–and Michelle Booker:
For the past week, residents of a Wilmington apartment for seniors have publicly called on their building’s management to fix what they say are horrible living conditions that have persisted for the past year.
At a protest last Friday and during subsequent news interviews, the older residents have said their homes within the Windsor Apartments — a 14-story high-rise that offers low-income units — have lacked consistent hot water for about a month.
They also said that the Walnut Street building has been infested with bed bugs, cockroaches, and mice for several months.
“We’re tired of paying our rent and living like this. They don’t want to do anything,” resident Jane Morrow said.
The residents say they will take their grievances to the Wilmington City Council, which has scheduled a discussion of “ongoing issues impacting seniors in high-rises” for its council meeting on Wednesday.
Wilmington City Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo told Spotlight Delaware that the elected body had been planning the meeting for the past three weeks after hearing years of similar concerns about other publicly supported apartments in the city, separate from Windsor.
He said the council had hosted meetings before to discuss such problems, but Wednesday’s will be the first that will include the Wilmington Police Department, the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections, and the Wilmington Housing Authority.
But what about Stephanie Bolden and Michelle Booker, you ask?:
The demonstration was organized by Michelle Booker, a political candidate running to represent the 2nd District in the state legislature, and her husband, Mahkieb Booker, a community advocate.
Michelle Booker said she decided to organize the protest after knocking on residents’ doors as part of her campaigning and hearing resident concerns.
“I wouldn’t want nobody to treat my family like that. We got people in here on oxygen and all kinds of stuff,” Michelle Booker said.
Booker’s primary election opponent, state Rep. Stephanie Bolden (D-Wilmington), said she regularly hosts events at Wilmington’s senior housing facilities, including the Windsor Apartments. She said residents have not raised concerns with her.
She also said the issue is primarily a matter for local government rather than the state legislature, asserting that there are state-level issues lawmakers need to focus on.
You know what ‘representative’ means, representative? It means being a voice for your constituents. You’ve never been a voice for your constituents. Something like this is precisely why your constituents deserve a voice other than yours.
Trump On Data Centers:
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday morning.
Old Guys Can Still Win–If They’re Progressive:
Massachusetts Democrats just put progressive ideals ahead of age concerns.
Octogenarian Sen. Ed Markey, 80, defeated 47-year-old Rep. Seth Moulton on Tuesday in a bruising Senate primary that put Democrats’ preference for like-minded ideology over generational change on full display — and gave progressives another victory in their yearlong battle with moderates.
Massachusetts Democrats just put progressive ideals ahead of age concerns.
Octogenarian Sen. Ed Markey, 80, defeated 47-year-old Rep. Seth Moulton on Tuesday in a bruising Senate primary that put Democrats’ preference for like-minded ideology over generational change on full display — and gave progressives another victory in their yearlong battle with moderates.
The primary flipped the script on other anti-incumbent clashes this cycle in which younger, progressive challengers ousted older, more moderate incumbents.
Markey, who’s served in Congress for nearly a half-century, leveraged his left-wing bona fides as a Green New Deal coauthor and Medicare for All champion to fend off the more-moderate six-term representative and military veteran who argued it was time for a new generation of leadership. He got an assist from a number of progressive luminaries, with endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Yep, The Post Office Is In Cahoots With Trump:
Top U.S. Postal Service officials tasked with issuing new regulations on mail voting expressed concerns in internal meetings about how the rules they were drafting could delay or block ballots from reaching large swaths of eligible voters for the upcoming midterms, but the rules moved forward anyway, ProPublica has learned.
The revelations about the discussions, from someone familiar with the rulemaking process, come as a separate anonymous federal employee filed a whistleblower disclosure with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, warning that the new system is untested and error-prone, and could lead to mass disenfranchisement in the upcoming election. The whistleblower described the entire process as “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.”
In a March executive order, President Donald Trump directed the Postal Service to create the new rules, including requiring states to give USPS a list of all voters eligible to receive a ballot in the mail and requiring USPS to use those lists to determine which ballots get sent to voters. USPS officials were tasked with crafting the details of how the new system would work, including the creation of a new portal for states to upload their voters’ information and the back-end software that would allow mail delivery sites and local post offices to track, and potentially block, ballots entering into the mail on their way to voters.
Voting rights organizations, state officials and Democratic political groups filed lawsuits challenging the new rules, and a federal court has temporarily blocked the requirements for states. The merits of the new rule are expected to reach the Supreme Court before the November election. Even if the Supreme Court allows the plan, though, election officials and experts say that the new system could not be ready in time for this election, given that ballots for people who are in the military or overseas must be sent out this month.
Right. And the Trump Administration would never violate the law.
During meetings in which top USPS officials discussed how to comply with the executive order, there was much discussion about the controversial nature of what they needed to do, according to the person familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The focus was on limiting the impact to voters while also complying. One repeated concern regarded how to avoid invalidating an entire batch of ballots if one voter among thousands couldn’t be confirmed as eligible. Some in the meetings recommended trying to limit harm to voters by not rejecting the entire batch, according to the person familiar with the discussions. Despite that, according to the whistleblower who contacted Blumenthal, the directive to reject entire batches if they included just one unverified ballot moved forward.
“As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state — effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters,” the whistleblower wrote.
Absolute Corruption–Fox Guarding Henhouse Edition:
Donald Trump this month announced plans to rescind a landmark rule that has protected old-growth forests in the US for 25 years. If finalized, the rollback is expected to benefit the companies that Tom Schultz, chief of the US Forest Service, represented in his previous roles as a timber industry lobbyist and executive, according to research by consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, more commonly known as the “roadless rule,” was adopted in 2001 to limit development in roughly 45 million acres of national forest. Industry interests and Republican representatives have long lobbied for the rule’s rescission, which would open up those swaths of untouched land to road construction, drilling and logging.
In a statement, Schultz described the move as “the best way to restore the balance, reduce wildfire risk, and secure the long-term health of our forests and neighboring communities.” But studies suggest it could put 400 threatened and endangered species at risk and imperil ecosystems.
What do you want to talk about?
