Politics
Thanks to a user for calling this term to attention. It's going on full force right now. I think a way to counteract it is to call attention to the debates and/or good things from the other side. > There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, “Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!” In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.[1]
“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” Walker wrote, granting a request for a temporary restraining order. A hearing for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for later this month. The ruling puts a temporary halt to one of DeSantis’ most brazen attempts to defeat Amendment 4, which would overturn the six-week abortion ban he signed into law. On Oct. 3, the Florida Department of Health sent letters threatening to criminally prosecute television stations if they did not stop running an ad that features a woman named Caroline who was diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago while pregnant with her second child. In the ad, the woman says Florida’s six-week abortion ban would have prevented her from receiving a potentially life-saving abortion.
www.bbc.com
"If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute - or appear to be - election interference," she wrote in her ruling. Much of the newly-released evidence is heavily redacted - but it does include then Vice-President Mike Pence's formal announcement that he would not overturn the 2020 election results. This new tranche of documents comes after a separate 165-page evidence brief was released earlier this month by special counsel Jack Smith. That contained a trove of new information about Trump's alleged activities during the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021. [Read: Jack Smith’s redacted evidence in Trump's Jan. 6 case (almost 2000 pages)](https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/read-trump-january-6-jack-smith-evidence-document-pdf-rcna176109)
www.motherjones.com
The lawsuits have been flooding in for months from the Republican National Committee—now part of the family firm under the co-chairmanship of Trump’s daughter-in-law—and allied groups. The list includes lawsuits to purge voting rolls, disqualify significant numbers of absentee and mail ballots, and to make it easier for local officials to refuse to certify elections. On the other side, a coalition of nonpartisan national voting rights groups—including the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Brennan Center for Civil Rights, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the Fair Elections Center, and the Southern Poverty Law Center—have been coordinating and preparing for two years to protect people’s right to vote and to have their vote counted.
arstechnica.com
Today, federal safety investigators opened a new investigation aimed at Tesla's electric vehicles. This is now the 14th investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and one of several currently open. This time, it's the automaker's highly controversial "full self-driving" feature that's in the crosshairs—NHTSA says it now has four reports of Teslas using FSD and then crashing after the camera-only system encountered fog, sun glare, or airborne dust. Of the four crashes that sparked this investigation, one caused the death of a pedestrian when a Model Y crashed into them in Rimrock, Arizona, in November 2023. NHTSA has a standing general order that requires it to be told if a car crashes while operating under partial or full automation. Fully automated or autonomous means cars might be termed "actually self-driving," such as the Waymos and Zooxes that clutter up the streets of San Francisco. Festooned with dozens of exterior sensors, these four-wheel testbeds drive around—mostly empty of passengers—gathering data to train themselves with later, with no human supervision. (This is also known as SAE level 4 automation.)
[Trump again trying to buy Stormy Daniels' silence, documents and recorded phone call suggest](https://www.salon.com/2024/10/17/again-trying-to-buy-stormy-daniels-silence-documents-and-recorded-phone-call-suggest/?in_brief=true)
www.theguardian.com
Harris’s comments went significantly further than her previous day’s attack on Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rhetoric, when she called him “unstable and unhinged” and “dangerous” in response to his branding of Democratic opponents as “the enemy within”. Trump had also advocated using the military against opponents he accused of plotting “chaos” on election day, although – as an opposition candidate – he has no power to do so. A newly published book by the journalist Bob Woodward quotes the retired chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, as calling Trump a “total fascist” and “a fascist to the core”.
www.nbcnews.com
The Nebraska Supreme Court court ruled that convicted felons who served their sentences are allowed to vote, after the state's top election official sought to keep them from casting ballots ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Nebraska has historically restored the voting rights of former felons two years after they completed the terms of their sentences. Earlier this year, state legislators voted on a bipartisan basis to eliminate the two-year waiting period. Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers later argued that only the state’s board of pardons could restore voting rights, and Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen ordered local registrars to stop letting all people with previous felony convictions vote, arguing the laws enfranchising them were unconstitutional.
A group of anti-abortion advocates is trying to force Florida’s abortion amendment off the ballot this November or void any votes cast for it, citing a report from the DeSantis administration that said there was “widespread” fraud in the petition gathering for the effort. A lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Ninth Judicial Circuit argues that the sponsors behind Amendment 4 failed to meet the required signature threshold to get on the ballot when that alleged fraud is considered. The anti-abortion plaintiffs are being represented by former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson. Amendment 4 proposes protecting abortion access until viability, about 24 weeks of pregnancy, and would undo the state’s ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed to defeat the initiative.
abcnews.go.com
One day after a Georgia judge invalidated the state's controversial "hand count" rule, a separate judge Wednesday evening invalidated even more rules that were passed by the Republican-led state election board, declaring them "unlawful and void." Fulton County Judge Thomas Cox ruled after an hours-long hearing to invalidate seven rules total, including the hand count rule, finding in part that the board did not have the authority to enact them.
www.nbcnews.com
The Biden administration announced a milestone Thursday in its effort to cancel Americans' student debt: It has provided relief to more than 1 million borrowers who work in public service. Through the Education Department's Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, the administration approved about $4.5 million in additional student loan relief for more than 60,000 borrowers, bringing the total relief through that program to $74 million for more than 1 million people. That brings the total amount of student debt relief under the administration to $175 billion for more than 4.8 million borrowers over the nearly four years President Joe Biden has been in office, the department said.
www.cbsnews.com
The original public health order in September 2023 ignited a furor of public protests, prompted Republican calls for the governor's impeachment and widened divisions among top Democratic officials. It also sought to strengthen oversight of firearms sales and monitor illicit drug use at public schools through the testing of wastewater — before expiring on Saturday without renewal. "I have decided to allow the public health order to expire, but our fight to protect New Mexico communities from the dangers posed by guns and illegal drugs will continue," Lujan Grisham said. 1722182413229.png New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on "Face the Nation" on July 28, 2024. CBS News Gun rights advocates filed an array of lawsuits and court motions aimed at blocking gun restrictions that they say would deprive Albuquerque-area residents of 2nd Amendment rights to carry in public for self-defense. The implications for pending lawsuits in federal court were unclear. The standoff was one of many in the wake of a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision expanding gun rights, as leaders in politically liberal-leaning states explore new avenues for restrictions.
Now, a new U.S. rule will require retailers, gyms and other businesses to make canceling subscriptions as easy as enrolling in them, and to make the subscription process more transparent. The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday released a final rule called "click to cancel," which says online subscriptions should require the same number of clicks to end as they do to sign up, and in-person signups should have an option to cancel online or over the phone. The new rule also directs companies to give people a clearer idea of the exact terms before they sign up, so they don't feel "tricked or trapped into subscriptions," as FTC Chair Lina Khan has told NPR.
www.propublica.org
The parallels were more than coincidence. The company was being run by former Santander executives who had left that bank amid the investigation. By 2020, most of Exeter’s corporate leadership — including its CEO and its operations chief — was composed of people who had overseen Santander during the period that the state attorneys general said it was “misleading, failing to disclose material information, or otherwise confusing consumers.” Those elected officials, however, have taken a decidedly different approach with Exeter. In fact, in 12 states that participated in the Santander agreement, officials have taken little or no action in dozens of cases alleging nearly identical behavior, according to a ProPublica investigation.
www.scotusblog.com
The Supreme Court on Wednesday left in place a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in May to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by power plants. In a brief order, the justices turned down a request from states, energy companies, and other industry groups to put the rule on hold while their challenge in a federal appeals court moves forward. Defending the rule, the EPA says that it would lead to significant reductions in carbon pollution over the next two decades – “equivalent to preventing the annual emissions of 328 million gasoline cars.” And that in turn, the EPA argues, could provide nearly $400 billion in benefits to the climate and public health.
www.cnn.com
Trump said: “Are you ready? John Deere, great company. They announced about a year ago they’re gonna build big plants outside of the United States. Right? They’re going to build them in Mexico … I said, ‘If John Deere builds those plants, they’re not selling anything into the United States.’ They just announced yesterday they’re probably not going to build the plants, OK? I kept the jobs here.” But a search of news articles and corporate press releases showed nothing about any such John Deere announcement the day prior. And in response to Trump’s story, a John Deere spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News that it had not changed its plans or announced any such changes.
www.bbc.com
A Texas judge has blocked the execution of the first man to be put on death row in the US for murder charges related to "shaken baby syndrome", less than two hours before the capital punishment was due to be carried out. Robert Roberson, 57, was sentenced to death in 2003 for the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, after a post-mortem examination concluded she died of injuries from abuse. Roberson and his lawyers have long maintained the child died of complications from pneumonia. Roberson's lawyers have also argued that his autism - which was undiagnosed at the time of Nikki's death - was used against him after police and medical staff became suspicious at the lack of emotion he displayed. Autism can affect how a person communicates with others.
www.bbc.com
Critics said the rule would have allowed election board members to delay or deny the state's certification of the election results. In his ruling, Judge McBurney said the "11th-and-one-half-hour implementation of the hand count rule" would diminish public confidence in the outcome. "This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 [US Capitol attack] have not faded away, regardless of one's view of that date's fame or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public," he wrote.
www.nbcnews.com
At least 50 false narratives have been launched this way since last fall, according to a count NBC News assembled with researchers. The narratives aim to diminish Western support for military aid in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, a contentious issue in Congress. The videos also back the re-election of Donald Trump, who has pledged to halt military aid to Ukraine, while painting the former president as a victim of a “deep state.” And they attack Vice President Kamala Harris.
The lawsuit centers on cease-and-desist letters the Florida Department of Health sent Oct. 3 to at least two Florida TV stations, telling the stations to take down an ad in favor of the amendment and threatening prosecution if the stations did not. The ad features a woman, Caroline, who was diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago while pregnant with her second child. In the advertisement, the woman said that if she did not get an abortion, she would not be able to receive cancer treatment and could have died and been unable to be there for her daughter.
As polls show his race tightening, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is lashing out at national Republicans for not doing more to help him in his battle against Democrat Colin Allred. Cruz told Fox News he’s being massively outspent by Allred on the airwaves and couldn’t even afford to get his own ads on TV until three weeks ago. And he complained U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t spent a penny on the race even though his PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, is sitting on millions of dollars meant to fight for a GOP majority.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced a lawsuit Tuesday against CNN over its recent report alleging he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory. The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a television report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. Robinson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh.
Nevada incarcerates about 10,000 people. All prisoners in the state are required to work or be in vocational training for 40 hours each week, unless they have a medical exemption. Some of them make as little as 35 cents hourly. Voters will weigh the proposals during one of the most historic elections in modern history, said Jamilia Land, an advocate with the Abolish Slavery National Network who has spent years trying to get the California measure passed. “California, as well as Nevada, has an opportunity to end legalized, constitutional slavery within our states, in its entirety, while at the same time we have the first Black woman running for president,” she said of Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic bid as the first Black and Asian American woman to earn a major party’s nomination for the nation’s highest office.
www.msnbc.com
With this in mind, it’s a big deal that McBurney ruled that Georgia law requires certification, and the matter is not discretionary for members of local election boards.
www.vox.com
While collecting signatures, some canvassers from the Protect Women and Children campaign misrepresented themselves as being in favor of expanding abortion access, leading hundreds of Nebraskans to erroneously sign their petition. Upon realizing their mistake, more than 300 of those voters signed affidavits to have their names removed from the anti-abortion petition, marking the highest number of removal requests in the state’s history. (Over 205,000 people signed the anti-abortion petition in total.)
www.wired.com
A trove of leaked internal messages and documents from the militia American Patriots Three Percent—also known as AP3—reveals how the group coordinated with election denial groups as part of a plan to conduct paramilitary surveillance of ballot boxes during the midterm elections in 2022. This information was leaked to Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a nonprofit that says it publishes hacked and leaked documents in the public interest. The person behind these AP3 leaks is an individual who, according to their statement uploaded by DDoSecrets, infiltrated the militia and grew so alarmed by what they were seeing that they felt compelled to go public with the information ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
abcnews.go.com
"Recently in the mountain region, there have been threats made against them," Ashe County Sheriff Phil Howell posted on Facebook regarding the alleged threats against FEMA employees. "This has not happened in Ashe County or the surrounding counties," Howell added. "Out of an abundance of caution, they have paused their process as they are assessing the threats."
The Biden-Harris administration announced plans Tuesday to provide up to $750 million in direct funding to Wolfspeed, with the money supporting its new silicon carbide factory in North Carolina that makes the wafers used in advanced computer chips and its factory in Marcy, New York. Wolfspeed’s use of silicon carbide enables the computer chips used in electric vehicles and other advanced technologies to be more efficient. The North Carolina-based company’s two projects are estimated to create 2,000 manufacturing jobs as part of a more than $6 billion expansion plan.
www.nbcnews.com
During remarks in St. Pete Beach, a barrier island city off of St. Petersburg, Biden said nearly $100 million of the money would go toward improvements to Florida’s power system. He noted it was his second time visiting the state in two weeks. “Thankfully the storm’s impact was not as cataclysmic as we predicted,” Biden said. “But for some individuals, it was cataclysmic. All those folks who not only lost their homes, but more importantly, those folks who lost their lives, lost family members.”
More than 4,500 square miles of ocean will soon be protected by the federal government off the Central California coast. The Biden administration is creating a new national marine sanctuary, which will be the third largest in the U.S. The sanctuary is also the first to be led by Indigenous people. It was nominated by members of the Northern Chumash Tribe, who drove the effort for more than decade to protect the rugged coastline that is their historical homeland. Going forward, the new Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary will be managed in partnership with tribes and Indigenous groups in the area, who will advise the federal government. It marks a growing movement under the Biden administration to give tribes a say over the lands and waters that were taken from them.
abcnews.go.com
I want to go back to what former president Trump said. He said, they're going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. There is no truth to that, and on staging, Pentagon officials say that active duty troops were staged and ready to go before being called upon and were instantly out the door. So President Trump -- former president Trump is saying things that aren't true about that money being withheld from Republican areas.
www.motherjones.com
Vice President Kamala Harris had an appendectomy when she was three. She is up-to-date on preventative care screenings, like colonoscopies and mammograms. She has managed seasonal allergies and sporadic skin reactions with a nasal spray and Claritin, and she treats mild nearsightedness with contact lenses. At her most recent physical in April, Harris had a normal blood pressure reading of 128/74 mmHg; her heart rate was a healthy 78 beats per minute.
As a result, voters, advocacy groups and the two main political parties have filed lawsuits over everything from the location of polling places to voter registration procedures. Worobec, after being approached by the state's branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed to join six other voters from Washington County, near Pittsburgh, who sued their election board. The Republican Party intervened to defend the case and in August a judge ruled that voters must be notified if a mail-in or absentee ballot has an error so voters can mount a challenge or cast a provisional ballot at their polling place. The case has been appealed to the state's supreme court.
www.seattletimes.com
A Way Home Washington launched in 2015 with funding from some of the biggest names in regional philanthropy — Raikes, Schultz, Campion, Ballmer and Gates. It was the private sector’s counterpart to the state’s efforts on youth homelessness that began with the creation of an Office of Homeless Youth. Those efforts by the state and philanthropies were largely successful, resulting in a 40% reduction in youth and young adult homelessness in Washington between 2016 and 2023, by some measures. A Way Home Washington announced in a statement Oct. 5 that it was preparing to shut down the organization after private funding had run out. However, state officials say they plan to continue some of the work started by the organization with state funding and new partners. The organization plans to operate until the end of the year to make that handoff. A Way Home Washington has about 20 employees who will be laid off.
Burying the lede again: Trump used similar language on Friday, when he visited Aurora, Colo. Trump has promised to launch a deportation program called “Operation Aurora” to dismantle “illegal migrant criminal networks” operating in the United States, under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. **The law was last invoked during World War II to intern immigrants of Japanese, German and Italian descent.** Trump vowed to remove members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan gang. Aurora officials, including the Republican mayor, say authorities there have arrested eight people linked to Tren de Aragua but dispute the gang has “taken over” apartment buildings, as Trump repeatedly claimed. > Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/ExoQ1
The U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday it sued the state of Virginia for violating the federal prohibition on systematic efforts to remove voters within 90 days of an election. On Aug. 7, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order requiring the commissioner of Department of Elections to certify that the department was conducting "daily updates to the voter list" to remove, among other groups, people who are unable to verify that they are citizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles. U.S. citizens who were identified and notified, and did not affirm their citizenship within 14 days would be removed from the list of registered voters, the Justice Department said. It said this practice has led to citizens having their voter registrations canceled ahead of the Nov. 5 election. "By cancelling voter registrations within 90 days of Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate," said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.
www.independent.co.uk
According to Woodward, a senior Department of Justice lawyer said at the time that Milley’s sit-down with Garland might have been the first-ever meeting between a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the country’s top civilian law enforcement official. He writes that the general asked for the meeting because he was “deeply convinced” that Trump remained “a danger to the country” even though he had been forced from office after Biden’s election win. “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country,” he said. “A fascist to the core,” Milley repeated.