Welcome to the Monday night edition of Progressives Everywhere!
Donald Trump is under yet another investigation, this time for bank and insurance fraud. It would probably bury any other president but will likely go nowhere. In fact, the story is below the fold on the NY Times’ front page.
OK, without further ado, here is the news!
Elections (and Future Elections) and Voting Rights
President Obama released his first round of endorsements today and he must be a Progressives Everywhere reader because he had quite a lot of our candidates on his list!
I’m proud to endorse this diverse and hopeful collection of thoughtful, empathetic, and highly qualified Democrats. If you’re in one of their districts or states, make sure you vote for them this fall. And if you can, vote early—by mail or in person. medium.com/@BarackObama/f…Here are the candidates that he endorsed and I interviewed:
Sharon Hirsch (featured in yesterday’s edition!)
We’ve also raised a lot of money for a number of his other chosen candidates, especially the ones in Texas and North Carolina. All told, we’ve raised money for 15 of his candidates. Not bad!
As I’ve been documenting here at Progressives Everywhere, Trump’s relentless and lie-filled attacks on mail-in voting has discouraged his supports from requesting ballots and put the GOP at a serious disadvantage (see North Carolina and Florida). It’s gotten to the point that state Republican Parties are just straight-up doctoring Trump’s tweets about it.
The Washington Post has this story about the panic that Republicans are experiencing right now — they generally do quite well with mail ballots and with COVID-19 likely to continue into the fall (and perhaps get worse by November), Trump’s tweets may finish them off. They speak with officials in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Alabama, all of which have competitive elections this fall.
Relatedly… hahahaha:
Minnesota judge cites Trump tweet about delaying the election in approving consent decree to ease Minnesota mail-in voting restrictions. "As the Defendant noted at argument, the President’s own tweets suggest a recognition that voter safety will be compromised in November."This is for the general election; Minnesota’s primary takes place tomorrow. Over half a million voters in the state requested an absentee ballot for tomorrow’s election
A whopping two million voters requested absentee ballots for the Michigan primary election, which takes place tomorrow. Though state officials have been encouraging people who haven’t sent in their ballots to deposit them at drop boxes since late last week, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is warning that it may be a little while before the results are clear. Unless states can start counting them before election day, we probably won’t know the results in November on election night, either.
Iowa is one of three states to permanently disenfranchise former felons — Florida is still the subject of a legal battle — and after the legislature failed to pass an amendment in June, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said that she would sign an executive order that restored their voting rights.
More than a month and a half later, she still hasn’t done so or even announced when it might happen. Now, nonpartisan county auditors are asking her to hurry it up because they need to get everything in order for an election that will likely be the messiest in decades (even more so than this year’s Iowa Caucus — remember that?!). The sooner the better, because activists have to reach out to these new potential voters and get them registered, which will be even more difficult in the current conditions.
In June, Colorado Democrats passed a law requiring employers to provide up to six days of sick leave to employees. It’s looking like this fall, voters in the state will decide via ballot initiative whether to add paid family leave to those benefits.
That organizers are on pace to get the initiative on the ballot is impressive, given the whole deadly pandemic thing. As I noted previously, Gov. Jared Polis tried to allow them to gather signatures online, but the state Supreme Court smacked that down.
Remember that disastrous primary in Georgia back in June? Election officials in Fulton County, where a majority of the problems happened, are racing to get their act together — especially important because Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will not be sending out absentee ballot applications this time around. They’ll get some practice on August 11th, when the state is holding its primary runoffs.
A Texas GOP official promised to resign after making an outrageously racist Facebook post featuring an MLK quote against a photo of a banana. Instead, he just got promoted to head of the Republican Party in the third most populous county in the country. Now, his fellow Republican leaders aren’t happy about it, but I’d imagine that’s because he said the quiet part extremely loud. I’m sure they’re all going to vote for Trump, after all.
COVID-19 and Related Drama
School is starting this week in a handful of states, including Florida, where the COVID-19 outbreak continues to rage. I just hope we don’t see a huge spike in cases in a few weeks.
On the bright side, new cases are starting to decline in Florida. Again, let’s hope the in-person school instruction doesn’t reverse that progress.
Trump is still on that hydroxychloroquine kick, presumably because he either secretly owns stock in it or he just hates being wrong so much that he’s perfectly willing to let people die instead of admitting it. Really could be either!
Wait, before you go!
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