Tag Archives: Georgia

World Leaders Urged to ‘Stand Up for Democracy’ and Refuse to Meet With Pompeo After He Denies Election Outcome

“We cannot normalize Pompeo’s threats to democratic legitimacy and the principles of a peaceful transition of power,” stressed Serra Sippel of the Center for Health and Gender Equity.

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 11-11-2020

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is being accused of hypocrisy for castigating and sanctioning nations for “undermining democracy” while ignoring the legitimate results of the U.S. presidential election. .Photo: kremlin.ru

Responding to alarming remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denying the results of the 2020 presidential election, the head of an international health organization on Wednesday urged world leaders to refuse to meet with Pompeo until he acknowledges President-elect Joe Biden’s legitimate victory.

A day after the White House directed federal agencies to refuse cooperation with Biden’s transition team, Pompeo raised eyebrows and ire on Tuesday after asserting that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” Continue reading →

Trump lost the election, but he won the online disinformation war

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Social media platforms have allowed US conservatives to delegitimise the election and sow mistrust of democracy.

By Peter Geoghegan. Published 11-9-2020 by openDemocracy

Screenshot: WNCT

In late August, roughly five weeks before Americans went to the polls, a story appeared in The New York Times reporting new data about the reach of fringe US conservative outlets on Facebook. The numbers were staggering.

Posts by far-right news site Breitbart had been shared three times as often as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the US senate combined in the previous 30 days. Conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro had chalked up 56 million interactions, more than the main pages of ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR put together. Continue reading →

Trump’s Pennsylvania lawsuits invoke Bush v. Gore – but the Supreme Court probably won’t decide the 2020 election

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Steven Mulroy, University of Memphis

The Trump campaign has filed two lawsuits in federal court over ballot counting and voting deadlines in Pennsylvania, threatening to take the election to the Supreme Court. Both consciously echo the two main legal theories of Bush v. Gore, the infamous Supreme Court case that decided the contested 2000 presidential election.

But this race is not likely to be decided by the Supreme Court.

There are several reasons, sitting at the intersection of law and politics, why the ghosts of Florida past won’t rise again in Pennsylvania. As a law professor who’s authored a book on election reform, I rate success in Trump’s efforts to wrench back Biden’s lead through litigation as a real long shot, though not out of the question. Continue reading →

‘Haul Louis DeJoy in Front of a Criminal Grand Jury’: Outrage After Postal Service Misses Court-Ordered Election Day Deadline

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“It’s how we all thought they would do it. It’s what they said they wouldn’t do. And it’s exactly what they are doing.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 11-3-2020

Photo: Complete Colorado

Election experts and other critics of voter suppression responded with alarm Tuesday after the United States Postal Service failed to meet a court-ordered afternoon deadline to conduct sweeps at mail processing facilities to “ensure that no ballots have been held up and that any identified ballots are immediately sent out for delivery.”

Earlier Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia had ordered the sweeps between 12:30 pm and 3:00 pm ET, and set a 4:30 pm ET deadline for facilities to file a status update. John Kruzel, a reporter at The Hill, tweeted Tuesday afternoon that the USPS failed to comply, in spite of saying this week that about 300,000 ballots had entered the mail sorting system but lacked a delivery scan. Continue reading →

In Effort to ‘Cultivate Hopelessness,’ Trump 2016 Campaign Used Facebook for Deterrence Operation Targeting Millions of Black Voters

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The social media giant, said one critic, “is the newest frontier in a long history of suppression of the Black vote.”

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-28-2020

Photo by Ben Combee from Austin, TX, USA (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign sought to persuade 3.5 million Black voters in key battleground states to stay home on Election Day by targeting them with negative Facebook ads about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to a Monday report on Britain’s Channel 4 News.

A massive data leak obtained by the U.K. outlet shows that four years ago Trump’s digital campaign team compiled files on 198 million American voters, which included information about their domestic and economic status obtained from market research companies. An algorithm then divided the voters into eight categories, called “audiences,” so they could be targeted with tailored ads on Facebook and other social media platforms. Continue reading →

Think Trump and Republicans Wouldn’t Try to Cancel an Election? Look at What GOP in Georgia Just Pulled Off

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“Having NO election is rigging an election.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 5-19-2020

Brian Kemp takes the oath of office becoming the 83rd Governor of the state of Georgia Jan. 14, 2019 at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Photo: Georgia National Guard/CC

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp will be permitted to hand-pick the state’s next Supreme Court Justice after that same high court ruled last week that a special election set for Tuesday could be canceled.

Kemp and his Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, moved to cancel voting in the state earlier this year after state Supreme Court Justice Keith Blackwell announced he would step down after his six-year term expires at the end of 2020. Continue reading →

With 14 ‘Billion-Dollar Disasters’ and Record-Breaking Heat in Alaska and Across South, 2019 Was a Year of Climate Extremes for US

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“Americans are put at risk by the serious consequences of the climate crisis.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 1-8-2020

A fire burns near the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Screenshot: ABC News

Underscoring the need for urgent climate action, a new report on the climate of the United States in 2019 sheds light on numerous weather and temperature extremes that were observed throughout the year and the record amounts of money spent on weather disasters.

Alaska was among the states which recorded unusually high temperatures in 2019, according to an annual summary released Wednesday by NOAA ahead of its full U.S. Climate Report, which is scheduled to be released next week. Continue reading →

‘This Is Just Cruelty and Exclusion’: Amid Trump’s Attack on Poor, One Million Fewer Kids Receiving Medicaid and CHIP

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“This is not people reaching self-sufficiency,” warned Rep. Pramila Jayapal.

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-22-2019

The Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to monitor who is benefiting from government assistance programs have had what critics say is their desired effect—pushing more than a million children off Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in less than two years.

Between December 2017 and June 2019, according to the New York Times, about three percent of children enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP were dropped from the program. Continue reading →

After Supreme Court decision, gerrymandering fix is up to voters

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The Supreme Court is empty days before the justices vote to on the U.S. gerrymandering case. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

John Rennie Short, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court has ruled that partisan gerrymandering is not unconstitutional.

The majority ruled that gerrymandering is outside the scope and power of the federal courts to adjudicate. The issue is a political one, according to the court, not a legal one.

“Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority decision. “But the fact that such gerrymandering is incompatible with democratic principles does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judiciary.” Continue reading →

No African American has won statewide office in Mississippi in 129 years – here’s why

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John A. Tures, Lagrange College

Mississippi is home to the highest percentage of African Americans of any state in the country.

And yet, Mississippi hasn’t elected an African American candidate to statewide office since 1890.

That’s 129 years. Continue reading →

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Tag Archives: Georgia

With 14 ‘Billion-Dollar Disasters’ and Record-Breaking Heat in Alaska and Across South, 2019 Was a Year of Climate Extremes for US

“Americans are put at risk by the serious consequences of the climate crisis.”