Get the women and children and the maple syrup to safety.
Julie Nolke, Canadian
When Trump Invades Canada (Julie Nolke)
Category: Politics
-
When Trump Invades Canada
-
Will Republicans Steal the North Carolina Supreme Court Election?
The State Board of Elections’s final count shows Justice Allison Riggs, the Democratic incumbent in the race, to be the winner, by a margin of 734 votes out of the more than 5.5 million ballots that were cast. But Judge Griffin, the North Carolina Republican Party and conservative election deniers have embarked on an extraordinary effort to wipe away that result, and throw out tens of thousands of ballots that were submitted by mail or in early voting.
…
On Tuesday, the State Supreme Court blocked state officials from certifying the outcome of the race. Later this month, pending the outcome of legal battles over whether the issue should be heard in state or federal courts, the North Carolina court could decide, in effect, whether a Democrat or a Republican will hold the seat.
Eduardo Medina and Michael WinesIn North Carolina, Republicans Try to Reverse a Supreme Court Election Loss (The New York Times)
The Supreme Court of North Carolina has been asked to rule on a bizarre request from Jefferson Griffin, the losing Republican challenger for an Associate Justice seat on that same court. Last week, the Griffin campaign filed a request for the state’s highest court to toss out 60,000 votes, thus reversing the outcome of the election which Griffin lost. In doing so, Jefferson Griffin’s crusade against the voters of North Carolina is not only anti-democratic, but anathema to the rule of law.
Simply put, this is a grim preview of North Carolina’s political future. Should Griffin’s request be granted, North Carolina’s already threadbare democracy could be irreparably torn. Overturning the will of the voters in a valid election is a major escalation from ordinary partisan politics, and should be roundly condemned across the political spectrum.
Carolina Forward Research StaffA choice of democracy (Carolina Forward)
Democracy Docket has an interview with Justice Allison Riggs about this situation that you can watch here:
The GOP is Trying to Steal a North Carolina Supreme Court Seat (Democracy Docket)
If you’re in North Carolina and want to check if your vote is one of the votes that Jefferson Griffin is trying to disqualify, Apex Council Member Terry Mahaffey has made a tool to allow you to check: https://terrymah.github.io/challenge/
-
A Second Gilded Age
Now, more than a century later, America has entered a second Gilded Age.
Monopolies are once again taking over vast swaths of the economy. So we must strengthen antitrust enforcement to bust up powerful companies.
Now another generation of robber barons, exemplified by Elon Musk, is accumulating unprecedented money and power. So, once again, we must tax these exorbitant fortunes.
Wealthy individuals and big corporations are once again paying off lawmakers, sending them billions to conduct their political campaigns, even giving luxurious gifts to Supreme Court justices. So we must protect our democracy from Big Money, just as we did before.
As it was during the first Gilded Age, voter suppression is too often making it harder for people of color to participate in our democracy. So it’s once again critical to defend and expand voting rights.
Working people are once again being exploited and abused, child labor is returning, unions are being busted, the poor are again living in unhealthy conditions, homelessness is on the rise, and the gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else is nearly as large as in the first Gilded Age.
So once again we need to protect the rights of workers to organize, invest in social safety nets, and revive guardrails to protect against the abuses of great wealth and power.
Robert ReichFrom the Robber Barons to Elon Musk: Will History Repeat Itself? (Robert Reich)
-
Ranked Choice Voting would be good for North Carolina
Let’s talk about Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). It’s a voting system that’s making elections fairer for millions of Americans—nearly 20 million, in fact! But what’s so great about it? Here are a few key benefits:
- Winners need majority support: With RCV, winners have to get over 50% of the vote. That means they can’t just squeak by with a small slice of support.
- Better campaigning: Candidates can’t just play to their base—they have to appeal to more people. This means fewer nasty attack ads and more focus on real issues.
- No more “spoiler” candidates: Ever felt like voting for your favorite candidate might “waste” your vote or hurt your second choice? RCV fixes that. You rank your choices, and if your top pick doesn’t win, that candidate is eliminated, and your vote can still count for your next choice. This enables broader discussion from a wider range of candidates.
- Saves money and increases turnout: RCV skips the need for costly runoffs, which often have low voter participation.
Ranked Choice Voting would be good for North Carolina (NC Newsline)
-
Elon Musk, the Right, and Wikipedia
Similar attacks on speech are becoming only more common throughout the American right, with president-elect Trump’s longstanding hostility to the media escalating at a rapid clip. In recent months, Trump has suggested he wouldn’t mind if reporters were shot, threatened to jail journalists, editors, and publishers who refuse to reveal confidential sources, threatened to investigate or pull broadcasting licenses for news organizations that reported on him unflatteringly, and filed SLAPP suits of his own against news publications and pollsters.
This hostility to information sources outside their control extends far beyond the media. Right-wing groups have launched coordinated campaigns to ban books from schools and libraries, particularly those discussing race, gender, or LGBT topics. They’ve pushed legislation like the “Kids Online Safety Act” that, while framed as protecting children, would require platforms to restrict access to information deemed “harmful” or “inappropriate for minors”, which is likely to include resources for LGBT youth and information about reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare, sexual education, or mental health. And they’ve supported state-level laws requiring internet platforms to implement age restrictions that threaten privacy and are vulnerable to weaponization against content deemed “obscene”. The common thread connecting these efforts is not protecting children or promoting “family values,” but controlling what information people can access.
Molly WhiteElon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia (Citation Needed)
-
My Doctor Emailed Me Back
Here we reach the crux of the matter and the source of the distrust many trans people have for the NHS. We tell them we are trans, we want to transition. But that information about who we are and what we want counts for nothing unless we also have their permission. The system denies that we are reliable bearers of fundamental truths about ourselves. Our lack of trust in that system is just the equal and opposite reaction: they don’t listen to us, so we don’t listen to them.
Abigail ThornMy Doctor Emailed Me Back (Trans Writes)
-
A System Built to Eat People Never Stops Eating
So I live in a nation, and so do you, maybe. Nations are made-up things, but they are wicked popular these days. They’re literally everywhere. Mine is called “The United States of America,” and growing up I was told that it was the greatest best country in the whole world and of all forever times, and I believed it, too. There was even a rumor going around that God loved us most, which even as a kid seemed fishy to me, but damn if a lot of people didn’t believe it.
…
This nation was founded in the traditional belief that creating wealth by consuming human beings—owning them and using them and murdering them—was not only good, but goodness; generative, nurturing, sustaining. This nation was founded in the belief that the proof that winners are noble is that they had won, and the proof the losers are savage is that they had lost, and so the winners should have not only wealth but all exoneration, while the losers should have not only poverty but all consequences.
A. R. MoxonA System Built to Eat People Never Stops Eating (The Reframe)
-
The 10 Biggest Myths About Our Economy
We cannot separate what has happened to working people over the last five decades from the dangerous lure of Trumpism. To build a path forward, we must debunk these 10 destructive myths about our rigged economy.
Robert ReichThe 10 Biggest Myths About Our Economy (YouTube – Robert Reich)
Scott Boehmer 