History was made Tuesday night as democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani carried out a stunning upset and defeated Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. As the results became clear Tuesday night, Cuomo conceded and called Mamdani to congratulate him. The New York state assemblymember will now be the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City in November’s general election. “Tonight we made history,” Mamdani told supporters. “In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is done. My friends, we have done it.”

Moe Mitchell, national director for the Working Families Party, says Mamdani’s campaign helped “create a multiracial working class alignment against authoritarianism [and] for a type of politics that is hopeful, that is visionary, that says we want something, we don’t simply want to fight against something.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Today’s mayoral primary in New York City features two very different frontrunners, the scandal-ridden former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and the young Democratic Socialist state assemblymember, Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani’s ascendant grassroots campaign has taken the Democratic establishment by surprise. He last appeared on Democracy Now!in October, as he launched his campaign centered on bringing down the high cost-of-living for working-class New Yorkers. On the campaign trail today, he joins us again as polls place him neck-and-neck with Cuomo, to share why his campaign and candidacy has resonated with so many. “This race is one way in which we can show that we can actually deliver a city that New Yorkers can afford, and we can do so by building a movement the city has never seen before.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Janine Jackson interviewed Cal Poly Pomona’s Farrah Hassen about criminalizing homelessness for the June 12, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Janine Jackson: In 1999, then–New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared that “streets do not exist in civilized societies for the purpose of people sleeping there. Bedrooms are for sleeping.” He added that the right to sleep on the streets “doesn’t exist anywhere. The Founding Fathers never put that in the Constitution.”

That absurd out-of-touchness, the failure, not merely of empathy, but of knowledge? Our guest reports that still seems to undergird much of what we are told are policies and laws meant to address homelessness, including at the highest levels.

Farrah Hassen has been tracking the issue for years. She’s a writer, policy analyst and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona. She joins us now by phone from Sacramento. Welcome to CounterSpin, Farrah Hassen.

Farrah Hassen: Hi, Janine. Thanks for having me.

Other Words (6/4/25)

JJ: I want to ask you about Grants Pass v. Johnson, last year’s Supreme Court case that you wrote about recently for OtherWords, but I’d like to start, as you do, with the acknowledgement that ought to anchor every story we see: that a person who works full time and earns a minimum wage cannot afford a safe place to live almost anywhere in the United States. That’s the reality, that’s the understanding that any of our responses ought to take on board, or to be judged by, yes?

FH: That’s correct. I mean, we have to consider that backdrop if we are going to talk about the growing problem of homelessness, and the related housing crisis. And, unsurprisingly, homelessness has increased as our government has diminished social safety nets. And we have to consider that when we think about how people fall into homelessness.

JJ: So rather than respond with a commitment to housing and social services, and job and wage growth, what we’ve seen is criminalizing. I couldn’t find it, but I remember Rudy Giuliani saying that he hoped that his crackdown on unhoused people would lead to them just going away, just sort of disappearing. And that seems to be some of the thinking behind, if not the Grants Pass ruling, some of the support for it. So tell listeners a little about what Grants Pass, that decision, did, and then, what didn’t it do?

FH: A year ago, on June 28, in the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court ruled that local governments can criminalize people for sleeping outside, even if there is no available shelter. The Supreme Court overturned the 2018 Martin v. Boise precedent that had been decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had said that the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause prohibits cities from penalizing unhoused people for sitting, sleeping or lying outside on public property unless they have access to adequate temporary shelter.

And so, for some context, in Grants Pass, like other cities across the United States, the number of people living unhoused easily exceeds the number of available shelter on any given night. Debra Blake was among those Grants Pass residents who were forced to live outside—in her case, for eight years—after losing her job and housing. Moreover, her disability disqualified her from staying in the town’s only shelter. And the city had these anti-camping ordinances that prohibited people like Debra Blake from sleeping or camping in the public, and they interpreted “camping” to even include the use of bedding, like a blanket, to stay warm in the cold.

Anyone who violated these ordinances in the city could be ticketed, could face fines, even subject to criminal prosecution. And the Grants Pass City Council themselves revealed that the underlying goal of these ordinances was to “make it uncomfortable enough for unhoused people in our city so they will want to move down the road.”

Cal Matters (2/27/25)

And so in Debra Blake’s case, after being banished from every park, accruing thousands in fines, she sued the city of Grants Pass as part of this class action suit, for violating unhoused residents’ constitutional rights. And the Oregon District Court agreed in 2020 that the city’s actions constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

But, sadly, Blake never got to see the results. And the city of Grants Pass ended up appealing this decision all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the city’s favor.

And which brings us back to today. And I should also note, going back to the Supreme Court’s decision, that, importantly, it did not say, “Therefore, state and local governments must now criminalize homelessness.” But because the high court found Grants Pass’s anti-camping ordinances constitutional, many jurisdictions, unfortunately, including in California where I live, have used the court’s decision as a green light to crack down on people living unhoused, including by passing these “anti-camping ordinances,” similar to Grants Pass, which broadly criminalized the act of sleeping or pitching tents or other structures on publicly owned property.

JJ: It’s clear that the issues of homelessness involve many societal factors other than housing. And, at the same time, there’s an Occam’s razor at work here. There’s a reason that “housing first” lands as a call, isn’t there? For people who think, “Well, it’s very complicated. It’s about mental health, it’s about family structure” or whatever, housing first makes a lot of sense, if folks would just think of it that way, yeah?

Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (6/23)

FH: That’s absolutely correct. There is a misconception that homelessness is primarily caused by addiction and mental illness—which is not to say, to be clear, that there are not people suffering from mental illness and addiction among our nation’s unhoused population.

But there was this landmark study in June 2023 by the University of California San Francisco that focused on California, and it found that poverty and high housing costs are, in fact, the driving forces of homelessness. And that’s just more confirmation that housing unaffordability is the primary cause of homelessness, as other research and experts have long noted.

And that’s why, therefore, using the findings of this evidence, punitive fines, arrests, sweeps of encampments do not address the root of the problem, which is, again, the absence of permanent, affordable and, I might add, adequate housing. And so there are more things our country can do instead of criminalizing homelessness, which only traps people into these cycles, these endless cycles of poverty and homelessness, not to mention criminal penalties being inhumane to begin with.

And so housing first, as you mentioned, is one proven, evidence-backed solution here. It prioritizes providing permanent housing as soon as possible to individuals and families experiencing homelessness, without preconditions. It’s in contrast to what some people want, which is treatment first, or treatment only. Housing first also is coupled with voluntary supportive services to help improve housing stability and well-being, especially for those people who may need additional support, additional treatment.

And housing first has had strong bipartisan support for decades. It’s been supported by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies. And there’s so much evidence that shows that housing first actually works, including in places like Houston, Texas, which notably reduced homelessness by nearly two thirds over a decade. So that’s just yet another example of why, instead of kicking people while they’re down, housing support, combined with other voluntary services, really helped to lift people back up.

JJ: I’ll just only ask you, finally, Farrah Hassen, if you see a particular role for news media here, either for good or for ill, in terms of consideration of this question, which I want to ground folks in the statement that you have in the piece, “Homelessness is solvable in our lifetime.” It’s not bending laws of nature, it’s just informed effort. And I wonder what role you think news media might play there.

Farrah Hassen: “We have to look at this as a government failure, instead of constantly pointing back at people living unhoused, and blaming them for their plight.”

FH: Oh, thank you. I really do appreciate that question, because underlying that question is, I believe, a larger narrative of how we talk about housing in this country. And you would never know that it’s actually a well-defined and internationally protected fundamental human right that all people—not people who have to be means-tested, or meet certain qualifications—all people are entitled to. Why? Because we all know innately, looking at our own lives, that housing is essential to life, to health, to well-being, but in the United States, it has primarily treated housing as a commodity, and it’s failing to protect this right for large numbers of people.

Homelessness itself, the sheer fact that over 770,000 people last year experienced homelessness, a record high, directly violates this right to adequate housing. So we have to look at this as a government failure, instead of constantly pointing back at people living unhoused, and blaming them for their plight, as if there are not larger structural factors at play that contribute to housing remaining perpetually unaffordable for more and more people living in this country.

And so obviously the US doesn’t recognize housing as a human right, but I believe we should talk about it more, like we do about the need for Medicare for All, which is rooted in healthcare for all. We need these economic, social and cultural rights, along with civil and political rights, to really be able to live our lives to the fullest. And, fundamentally, that means transforming our nation’s approach to housing policies, and to remember that people shouldn’t be punished as well, as we look back on homelessness, for living in public spaces. People should not be punished for existing.

JJ: I’m going to end on that note. We’ve been speaking with writer, policy analyst and adjunct professor at Cal Poly Pomona Farrah Hassen. Thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

FH: Thanks so much, Janine.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

The Democratic primary for the seat representing part of metro Atlanta on the Georgia Public Service Commission appears to be headed to a runoff. In the other competitive race in this week’s PSC primaries, Republican incumbent Tim Echols won his party’s primary in district two in east Georgia.

The commission oversees utilities, including Georgia Power, the state’s largest electric provider and a subsidiary of one of the largest utilities in the country. The PSC commissioners have final say over Georgia Power’s plans and rates – meaning they make decisions that affect millions of Georgia households’ finances, as well as how the state responds to climate change. 

State utility commissioners across the country have a substantial impact on climate action because they oversee electric utilities and have final say over how those utilities generate energy — one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. 

In states like Georgia, where monopoly utilities dominate, the power of commissioners is magnified.

This year’s election came with more scrutiny than usual because it was the first election in five years and in that time Georgia Power bills to the consumer have increased repeatedly with the current commission’s approval. It was also the only statewide race on Georgia’s ballot this year. 

Two of the five seats on the commission are on the ballot this year.

No Democrat got 50 percent of the vote in the crowded race for the party’s nomination in district three, the one representing metro Atlanta.

Top vote-getters Peter Hubbard, an energy advocate, and Keisha Sean Waites, a former state lawmaker, will compete in a runoff election scheduled for July 15. 

The winner will face Republican incumbent Fitz Johnson in November, who was unopposed in the primary.

In district two, located in east Georgia,  Echols defeated challenger Lee Muns in the Republican primary. In the general election, he’ll face Democrat Alicia Johnson, a community advocate with a background in nonprofit work, who had no opposition in the primary.

This race is the first PSC election in Georgia in years, after a voting rights lawsuit delayed two election cycles. 

Three commissioners – Echols, Fitz Johnson and Tricia Pridemore – continue to vote on critical decisions about Georgia Power’s rates and energy plans despite not facing voters as originally scheduled. Pridemore will be up for reelection next year.

The PSC has signed off as Georgia Power bills have gone up six times in the past few years. 

Next week, commissioners will consider a proposed freeze on raising rates further, though the plan carves out the potential for a bill increase next year to cover damage from Hurricane Helene. 

The commission is also currently considering Georgia Power’s long-term energy plan as the utility looks to pause plans to close coal-fired power plants, make upgrades to nuclear and hydropower facilities, build more solar farms and upgrade energy infrastructure.  

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Georgia, a runoff looms for Democrats after primary results for public utility commission seat on Jun 18, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emily Jones.

Fielded from April 18–20, the poll surveyed more than 4,100 politically active progressive and Democratic-leaning voters. The results show deep frustration with Democratic Party leadership and growing momentum to transform the party from within—by electing bold, grassroots challengers who reject corporate PAC money and are ready to take the fight directly to Trump and his enablers.

“The voters we organize with are sounding the alarm: they want fighters, not placeholders,” said Joseph Geevarghese, Executive Director of Our Revolution. “If the party establishment continues to sleepwalk through this crisis, they’ll be replaced by a new generation of leaders who aren’t afraid to take on the fight of our lives.”

Key Findings:

• 92% support primarying establishment Democrats who lack grassroots energy or urgency
• 87% say the Democratic Party has lost its way—up from 76% just months ago
• 88% say the DSCC and DCCC should stop automatically protecting incumbents
• 96% support Our Revolution’s efforts to transform the party by electing progressives at every level
• 82% want the Democratic Party to stop accepting Big Money from billionaires and corporations
• 70% say they are not confident Democratic leaders will do what’s necessary to stop Trump
• 72% support abandoning a cautious, centrist approach in confronting Trump and the far right
  

The results come days after DNC Vice Chair David Hogg announced a $20 million effort to support younger progressive candidates, including primary challengers to incumbents, through his PAC, Leaders We Deserve. While the announcement sparked fierce backlash from party insiders, Our Revolution polling shows Hogg’s sentiment is shared by a large majority of engaged progressive voters.

Geevarghese added, “This is not about division—it’s about transformation. The time to protect the status quo has long passed. Our response to Trump’s assault on our democracy and billionaire takeout of our government is to make the party reflect the people it claims to serve.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

As voters in several states cast their ballots in primary elections Tuesday, we look at one of the most high-profile races between Missouri Congressmember Cori Bush and St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell, who is challenging her for the Democratic nomination. Bush, a member of the progressive “Squad,” is one of the most outspoken advocates for Palestine in Congress, and the powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC has poured over $8 million into the race in an effort to defeat her. “It’s all meant to push out someone who stands up for Palestinian rights,” says Michael Berg, a Bush supporter, whose recent essay in The Nation is titled “I’m a St. Louis Jew. Here’s Why I’m Backing Cori Bush.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Family members keep silent on the issue of violence in Fiji and individuals continue to be the victims, according to Jonathan Veitch, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative to the South Pacific.

While raising his concern on the issue at Nasinu Gospel Primary School on Friday, he said 83 percent of children in Fiji had reported some level of violence, either in their family or in school over the past six months.

“This 83 percent rate is far too high, and it’s not acceptable,” he said.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji reports

“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”

Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victim to deal with the trauma.

Speaking during a student-led press conference at Nasinu Gospel Primary School, Veitch expressed his concern about the alarming rate of violence against women and children in Fiji, whether physical or sexual.

“You (Fiji) do have high rates of violence against children,” Veitch said.

“This (83 percent rate) is far too high, and it’s not acceptable.

‘Curtain of silence’
“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”

He said it was common in Fiji for family members to keep silent on the issue of violence while individuals continued to be victimised.

“If that particular person has to be stopped, we have to deal with it in our village.

“So, it’s not just UNICEF and the Government; it’s also the village itself.”

Veitch said significant pillars of communities must be involved in key conversations.

“We really need to talk about it in our churches on Sundays; we have to have an honest conversation about it.

“These kids shouldn’t be hurt; they shouldn’t be punished physically.”

Multifaceted approach
He said the issue should be dealt with through a multifaceted approach.

Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell expressed similar concerns and called for a change in norms.

“It requires government leadership and good laws,” she said.

“It requires the government to come together and say that this is a priority where violence against children is unacceptable.”

She said conversations regarding the matter needed to focus on changing the norms of what was acceptable and unacceptable in a community.

“A lot of times this issue is kept in the dark and not talked about, and I think it’s very important to have those conversations.”

She said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victims to deal with the trauma.

She added that society played a role in condemning violence against women and ensuring they were safe in their homes and in their communities.

Russell said while most cases were directed at men, there was a need to train the mindset of young boys to change their perspective of using violence as a solving mechanism.

Sainimili Magimagi is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Photograph Source: U.S. Department of Defense – Public Domain

I grew up in northern Westchester County, New York. Nearly twenty years ago I came to DC, thinking it’d be for just a few months. Instead, I got swept up in DC’s activist scene and haven’t left the area.

First as an activist, then as a journalist, my focus was on the city’s local power structure, the DC Council in particular. But with Congress right here, I’d occasionally visit the Capitol and sit in on random committee hearings.

No hearings frustrated me more than those of the House Foreign Relations Committee, where the panel’s top Democrat, Congressman Eliot Engel, seemed to back every war, while opposing diplomatic advances like President Obama’s Iran deal.

But what made me angriest about Engel was that he represented, in addition to a sliver of the Bronx, the southern half of my home county of Westchester. And I knew that most of Engel’s constituents had no idea that he was misusing his powerful post to push for more war.

So in 2020, when Engel drew a serious primary challenge, I was thrilled. Even if the first-time candidate, a Black middle school principal named Jamaal Bowman, had no chance of winning, at least Engel wouldn’t waltz into his seventeenth term without a fight. Then the impossible happened, and Bowman won.

In the ensuing three-and-a-half years, Bowman has proven to be every bit as peaceful on foreign policy as Engel was bellicose. And for that, Bowman is a marked man – particularly by AIPAC and its right-wing donors.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been around over 60 years, but it only began intervening in Democratic primaries in a big way last election cycle. AIPAC’s move came on the heels of a string of corporate Democrats losing primary contests to progressive “Squad” members, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, and Bowman two years later.

To stop this trend, AIPAC – backed by millions from Republican donors – quickly became the top outside spender in Democratic primaries, dropping $26 million in 2022. This year, AIPAC plans to spend a cool $100 million, and the group’s top target is Bowman, whose primary is Tuesday, June 25.

“[I]n barely a month, an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC has spent $14.5 million — up to $17,000 an hour — on the race, filling television screens, stuffing mailboxes and clogging phone lines with caustic attacks,” the New York Times reported. “With days to go, the expenditures have already eclipsed what any interest group has ever spent on a single House race.”

Tellingly, AIPAC’s ads rarely mention Bowman’s views on Israel, which are thoughtful and nuanced, and supported by many progressive Jews. “Calling for cease-fire does not mean we support Hamas, does not mean we support the killing of Israelis or Jews, does not mean we support antisemitism,” Bowman said at a protest outside the White House late last year. “We are calling for cease-fire because we don’t want anyone else to die.”

Of course, Bowman isn’t perfect. He infamously pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol Building, reportedly to delay a vote, which led to his censure. And he follows a wide array of folks on social media, including some conspiracy theorists. AIPAC, however, isn’t targeting him for these reasons, but because of his views on Israel and Palestine.

While too much airtime has been given to Bowman’s imperfections, not enough has been given to those of his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who AIPAC helped recruit to run.

Latimer’s cheating on his wife with his longtime girlfriend “has been an open secret in Westchester politics for years,” Talk of the Sound, a local blog, reported in 2021, and 2017. While that’s Latimer’s personal business, he made it the county’s when he quietly gave his girlfriend a six-figure job in his administration. Just imagine the salacious headlines we’d be reading right now if Bowman had tried to pull that off.

And that’s not all. When Latimer’s unpaid parking tickets grew so numerous that he was prohibited from driving his own car, he borrowed a subordinate’s. We know this because Latimer proceeded to crash his staffer’s car, injuring another driver in a 2017 accident.

During this period when Latimer was legally barred from driving his car, he thumbed his nose at the law and did so anyway. Questioned about this by The Journal News, Latimer claimed he’d only taken the car on a quick “loop” to keep the engine healthy – and get some coffee.

There’s been radio silence in the media about these incidents, which wouldn’t be the case if Bowman was the scofflaw in question. But as concerning as these transgressions are, it’s Latimer’s earlier political choices that trouble me more.

Yonkers

I was just a kid when my Uncle Len issued his landmark 1985 ruling. The only impact it had on me was that, when visiting Uncle Len and Aunt Ann for a swim in their delightfully cool pool, I now might see US Marshalls in the driveway, which seemed pretty cool at the time.

When my great uncle wasn’t poolside, it turned out he was a federal judge. And Judge Leonard Sand had managed to piss off a lot of people when he required the city of Yonkers to desegregate its housing. (HBO’s mini-series Show Me a Hero dramatizes these events.)

While this may seem like ancient history, it didn’t feel that way as I read Branko Marcetic’s recent story for Jacobin, “George Latimer’s History of Slow-Walking Desegregation.”

Yonkers, after years of foot-dragging, finally came around to the idea of building substantial amounts of affordable housing, as Uncle Len’s ruling required. Only to do so, the city sought to use four-and-a-half acres of local parkland – but Latimer, an up-and-coming legislator at the time, was determined to prevent this.

“Latimer was one of the eight county legislators who narrowly defeated a push in March 1997 to hand the parkland over to the city for housing,” Marcetic wrote. “A month later, he was on the losing end of a 12–3 vote to transfer the parkland, voting alongside two Republicans on the majority-GOP board.”

For several years after that, including as board chairman, Latimer still carried on his fight. “Latimer fought the city’s attempt to abide by a federal desegregation order to the bitter end,” wrote Marcetic, “even when it put him to the right of his own party leadership and much of the New York political establishment, Republicans included.”

Close to home

There’s a final reason why the Bowman-Latimer race hits close to home for me. As a Jew, it’s infuriating to watch AIPAC unleash millions of dollars in attack ads against yet another progressive Black candidate.

While AIPAC boasts of being the top donor to Congressional Black Caucus members, the fact remains that nothing animates the group quite like taking out Black progressives.

I watched this up close two years ago, when AIPAC’s super PAC spent $6 million to stop former congresswoman Donna Edwards from representing her Maryland district abutting DC. And after AIPAC is through with Bowman, its next target is Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush, whose primary is August 6.

“‘Shut up or else’ is the message [AIPAC]… is sending to Black lawmakers in America who are critical of what’s happening in Gaza,” Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah wrote in regards to the onslaught Bowman is facing.

“It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Bowman vs. Latimer showdown for progressives… it is a test of how far America’s right wing will go to crush progressive movements. No one should be surprised that a Black politician is the canary in the coal mine.”

The post Tuesday’s Jamaal Bowman Primary Hits Close to Home for Me appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Pete Tucker.

Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois says “big money in politics” is a threat to U.S. democracy, pointing to Jamaal Bowman’s primary race as an example of how deep-pocketed interest groups can impact election contests. Bowman is a progressive “Squad” member facing a tight nomination race in New York’s 16th Congressional District against his Democratic challenger George Latimer, who has the backing of groups affiliated with the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which have pumped millions of dollars into the primary. Bowman was one of the first lawmakers to call for a Gaza ceasefire after October 7. “They are literally trying to purchase that election because he dared to stand for peace and justice,” says Ramirez.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

For years, Idaho has been at the vanguard of the culture wars that are playing out in conservative states across the country.

It was the first state to attempt to restrict transgender girls and women from competing on women’s athletic teams, passing legislation that became a model for states across the country. It was among the first to explicitly ban “critical race theory” from public schools and target diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in public institutions. And the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a far-right Idaho political group, took an early lead in a nationwide campaign to remove books from libraries based on their content.

But Idaho Republicans have increasingly disagreed over how far to take these efforts. Capitol police in Boise had to intervene in a 2022 fight over proposed “parental freedom” legislation that, among other things, would have created a $1,000 fine if a school didn’t give parents what they want. This year, two prominent far-right Republicans were recorded quarreling over the party’s direction — an exchange that InvestigateWest said illustrates “a fracture among key far-right figures in Idaho politics, in a state where many races turn on contests of conservative purity.”

The Idaho Republican primary on May 21 continued the Legislature’s march to the right. Candidates who were aligned with the highly conservative Idaho Freedom Foundation picked up a net of eight seats, according to the group’s own tally. And in a state with so few Democrats, GOP primary winners are typically all but a lock to win in November’s general.

Yet these GOP purists fell short of one important milestone: enough members to outright control the legislative agenda. Some moderates fended off challengers from the right. Some incumbent hard-liners lost their seats.

The primary results were the latest reminder that Idaho Republicans remain far from united. And there are signs that the rift is leading frustrated Idaho voters to reject incumbents in general — conservative and moderate alike.

Here are some takeaways, based on local news reports and ProPublica’s interviews with experts in Idaho politics.

A surprising number of incumbents were knocked out of office in May. Almost all of the 87 Republicans in office were on the ballot. Of the 47 who faced challengers, 15 lost their seats.

It wasn’t the largest-ever purge, but it included the historic takedown of the GOP Senate leader by a newcomer to Idaho with no legislative experience.

Ron Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, wrote in a blog post that the primary was “a good night for friends of liberty and a bad night for establishment good-old-boys.”

He noted that 11 of the ousted GOP incumbents had F grades on the group’s “Freedom Index,” while three of the losing incumbents had an A grade going into the election.

But this apparently resounding victory for the group’s ideas seems less so considering that prior to the election, the Freedom Foundation gave F’s to 47 Republicans who were on the ballot and A’s to only 10. In other words, about 23% of the foundation’s least-favorite lawmakers lost reelection races, while 30% of its favorites lost.

At least some of this housecleaning may reflect voter disgust with both warring camps in the Legislature.

“There’s a lot of people who are just frustrated, and so some of it kind of went into an anti-incumbent” wave, said Jaclyn Kettler, associate professor of political science at Boise State University.

Kettler pointed to a recent survey of about 1,000 Idahoans. Although it found that a majority of Republicans thought Idaho was headed in the right direction, a substantial minority — 30% — said it was on the wrong track.

Some of the most important losses for moderates happened in the populous Treasure Valley region, home to Boise and its fast-growing suburbs.

It’s one of few parts of Idaho where Democrats and middle-of-the-road Republicans have traditionally held power, but its electorate has changed with the arrival of more and more right-leaning voters from California.

Sen. Chuck Winder, R-Boise, the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate with eight terms of service, lost his seat to Josh Keyser, who was raised in Southern California and moved to Boise in 2018. Keyser’s website said he was vice principal at a Christian school.

Winder had clashed with legislators to his right and was a critic of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which has pushed to slash government spending across the board, worked to repeal the Idaho Medicaid expansion that was enacted by voters, claimed that Idaho’s schools are indoctrinating children into leftist politics, and more.

Stephanie Witt, professor of public policy, administration and political science at Boise State University, told ProPublica the upset for Winder and other Boise-area incumbents illustrated a stark new reality.

“It’s hard to overstate the number of California relocations and their interest,” Witt said.

"We’ve had people that were good legislators, very conservative, in the Treasure Valley,” she said, “but they’re being painted like they’re Bernie Sanders acolytes.”

Winder noted the changing politics of Idaho in an interview with the Idaho Press after the election.

“I think we’ve had a huge influence from out-of-state people moving here,” he told the publication. “All in all, Idaho is going to be fine, but good mainline Idaho people are going to have to get more involved in the party.”

In contrast to the wins for right-wing candidates in the capital city and its suburbs, several legislators far from Boise won reelection by wide margins, despite attacks from their county GOP committee claiming they failed to support the Republican platform.

East Idaho, known for agriculture, a national nuclear laboratory and a large membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also narrowly voted to oust a hard-line conservative incumbent. Julianne Young, an East Idaho Republican who introduced legislation to make “gender” and “sex” synonymous in state law, trailed her opponent by two votes, though she says she will request a recount.

In rural North Idaho, voters kicked out Sen. Scott Herndon, a conservative firebrand whose legislative agenda included making abortion illegal for rape victims. Herndon lost to former legislator Jim Woodward, who said he wants to see some health-related exceptions to the state’s abortion ban, according to Politico.

This year’s results revealed that some conservative Idahoans went into the voting booth with a “traditional Idaho trait: that you don’t like to be pushed around,” said Jim Jones, a Republican who previously served as attorney general and chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court.

Jones, an outspoken critic of polarized Republican politics, is pushing for a ballot initiative this fall that would replace party primaries with a single, nonpartisan primary. The top vote-getters would then face off in a ranked-choice vote in the general election. Jones says the initiative would take power away from the fringes and put a premium on appealing to all voters.

The outcomes also offered a partial verdict on one of the most explosive issues in America’s culture wars.

Idaho’s GOP last year held a no-confidence vote against 14 legislators statewide who in 2023 failed to support letting parents sue libraries over books considered “harmful to minors.” (The no-confidence vote also swept in Idaho’s Republican governor.) Nine of the 14 survived the GOP primary.

Kettler said the state and local Republican Party members who condemned incumbents over the library issue might be “more ideologically extreme” than most voters.

Idaho GOP Chair Dorothy Moon did not respond to interview requests from ProPublica. According to the Idaho Statesman, Moon said in her election night speech, “I think we’re fighting for the heart and soul of the party and the heart and soul of Idaho."

The Idaho Public Policy Survey — the survey of about 1,000 residents conducted in November — found overwhelming support for libraries. About 62% of the 374 self-identified Republicans who responded said they trust the choices of libraries and librarians.

Of the lawmakers who survived the primary despite their party’s censure of their library vote, about half were from East Idaho.

“My view is that, in eastern Idaho, the voters were sick and tired of all of the culture war fighting,” said Jones.

One of the highest-profile losses for incumbents was a Boise-area Republican who thwarted tax-funded vouchers that would allow parents to send their children to private school using public funds — a central policy goal of right-wing purists who describe it as “school choice.”

Julie Yamamoto led Idaho’s House Education Committee when it rejected voucher legislation. Challenger Kent Marmon, who embraces school choice, painted Yamamoto as a liberal.

A Virginia-based political action committee called Make Liberty Win produced fliers saying Yamamoto voted to support “porn in school libraries being shown to minors,” Idaho Education News reported, a claim she called “garbage.”

The losses for voucher foes like Yamamoto weren’t uniform. The Senate’s education chair, who has questioned the benefits of voucher proposals, retained his seat. And the Senate lost a key voucher supporter in Herndon, the North Idaho Republican; his challenger has spoken out against public support for private education, according to Idaho Education News.

It is unclear what the outcome portends for Republicans when they take up school spending issues next year.

Idahoans regularly list public education as a top priority. In sparsely populated parts of Idaho, which often lack private schools, the public schoolhouse is a gathering place for football games or performing arts — the “heart of the community,” as Jones says.

But advocates for “school choice” in Idaho appear to be finding an audience.

The recent state policy survey found that 60% of Republicans favored letting Idaho parents use $8,000 of public school money to enroll their student in private or religious school. About twice as many Republicans said they “strongly favor” that idea as “strongly oppose” it.

Kettler said national conservative groups seized on that sentiment and spent heavily on Idaho’s primary races this year, seeing Idaho as a place to advance conservative school policies such as vouchers.

These groups decided, Kettler said, that “it’s worth investing.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Audrey Dutton.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

• Super Tuesday Primary elections held in 16 states and one territory today, biggest primary day of the year.
• Independent Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema announces she’s not running for re-election this year.
• President Biden announces new rule capping credit card late fees at $8.
• The UN issues report on severe food shortages in Gaza.
• Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoes bill that would forbid non-citizens from crossing border illegally.
• Alabama lawmakers move legislation to protect IVF in the state.

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This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• Supreme Court rules Trump’s name can remain on Colorado primary ballot.
• French lawmakers pass a bill codifying abortion rights in French constitution.
• Haiti descends into chaos as armed gangs of escaped prisoners run wild.
• UN report says reasonable grounds to believe Hamas committed widespread sexual violence on October 7.
• EU fines Apple $2 billion in antitrust ruling over limiting music streaming competition.
• Sierra Mountain residents get a break, but more heavy snow on the way.

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This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Given that the Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, it makes sense that they would enter Donald Trump,  their leading candidate in 2024, in the Supreme Court primary, where only nine people can vote and a majority of them are in the bag for the former president. As they say, making it sound like Dixville Notch, New Hampshire: “As the Supreme Court goes, so goes the nation.”

+ The second is Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which legalized segregation across the United States, provided that “separate” facilities were “equal,” a fiction alive only in the minds of the racist justices who voted 7-1 in favor of American apartheid.

The post The Supreme Court Primary appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Matthew Stevenson.

President Joe Biden won the Michigan Democratic primary on Tuesday, but over 100,000 voters cast their ballots for “uncommitted” in an organized campaign protesting U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. The major battleground state is home to one of the largest Arab American populations in the country, but the movement to vote “uncommitted” is now expected to spread to other states, including Minnesota and Washington. “I’ve rarely seen such an organic and authentic movement come together,” says former Democratic congressmember from Michigan Andy Levin. “We really need actual change in policy, and I think we sent that message strongly last night.” President of the Arab American Institute James Zogby says that Democratic voters need a reason to come out to the polls. “We gave them a reason with 'uncommitted.' Joe Biden’s got to give them a reason in November,” says Zogby. “There is genocide unfolding. People want it to end. The president either is going to have to act decisively to end it, or it’s going to have an impact in November.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The post The Pacifica Evening News 02-20-24 Nikki Haley vows to stay in the GOP presidential nomination race beyond Saturday’s South Carolina primary. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

At a Black History Month event in New Rochelle over the weekend, George Latimer said Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., whom he is challenging in a Democratic primary, was taking money from the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terror organization. On Tuesday, Bowman’s campaign threatened to sue Latimer for defamation over the remarks and demanded he retract them.

Latimer’s comments came when a constituent, who requested anonymity for personal safety, approached the Democratic challenger with two questions: Why was he running, and why was he taking money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee? AIPAC had recruited him to run for the congressional seat and, as The Intercept previously reported, is Latimer’s largest campaign funder.

When the constituent said Latimer was “taking money from the devil,” Latimer responded that Bowman was too — that the incumbent was “taking money from Hamas.”

The incendiary charge came in a Democratic primary where AIPAC is playing an outsized role in trying to oust a progressive member of the Squad. The flagship Israel lobby’s quest to unseat Democratic incumbents and replace them with centrist and moderate candidates who vigorously support Israel has become the most prominent theme of the 2024 primary season.

“It’s outright disturbing and dangerous that he has doubled down on his Islamophobic comments,” Bowman said in a statement to The Intercept. “He should apologize to a community he continues to vilify and endanger, not double down on hatred.”

Latimer had offered his broadside against Bowman with little proof. Challenged on the comment, which was first reported by the website Black Westchester, the constituent asked Latimer to offer proof and Latimer took their email. AJ Woodson, who runs Black Westchester and wrote the article, confirmed the constituent’s account of the remarks, which Woodson witnessed from several feet away.

Latimer later sent the constituent a link to an article from the right-wing news website Washington Free Beacon with the headline “They Endorsed Hamas Terrorism. Then They Hosted a Big-Ticker Fundraiser for Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.” While the article points to controversial remarks made about the October 7 Hamas attack by groups with ties to the campaign donors — one organization, for instance, said acts of resistance should not be condemned — it does not allege that any of the fundraiser’s participants are linked to Hamas in any way.

When asked by the press about his allegation, Latimer did not deny the remarks and again sought to tie Bowman to Hamas. “Let me set the record straight – my opponent takes money from those who endorse Hamas’ terrorism, those who try to justify the murdering of children, the kidnapping of civilian hostages, and the raping of women as acts of ‘resistance,’” Latimer said in statement to City & State. (Latimer did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.)

Republicans for Latimer

Latimer’s comments were part of a strategy by his campaign and AIPAC to stoke fear about Bowman among Westchester’s Jewish residents, said the constituent who confronted the candidate.

“It’s sort of like the northeast version of the southern strategy.”

“It’s sort of like the northeast version of the southern strategy,” they said. “Now the Latimer strategy, or more like the AIPAC strategy, is to link progressives who may want a ceasefire and that recognize what’s in Gaza is terrible, to link them in a racist way to Hamas, when that is not what they’re engaged in.”

Woodson, the Black Westchester writer, was a vendor at the New Rochelle event and said he also spoke to Latimer about frustration that his campaign was courting Republican voters.

AIPAC endorsed Latimer’s campaign just days after he held a fundraiser hosted by a Republican donor who supported former President Donald Trump. An AIPAC donor has also encouraged Jewish Republicans to switch parties to vote in the primary against Bowman.

“I’m against the Republicans telling all their members to register as Democrats so they can vote against Bowman in the Democratic primary,” Woodson said. “If Democrats feel that Latimer is the right candidate, then they should be free to vote for him without outside interference from hundreds or thousands of Republican voters in the Democratic primary.”

AIPAC has ramped up its attacks on members of Congress who have criticized U.S. military support for Israel and voted for a ceasefire resolution introduced in October. Bowman is one of AIPAC’s main targets this cycle, along with other members of the Squad including Reps. Cori Bush, D-Mo.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

The Israel lobby group has played a bigger role in congressional elections in recent cycles and launched a Super PAC that plans to spend $100 million against the Squad this year. During the 2020 cycle, AIAPC endorsed more than 100 Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

Image Source: www.nflcommunications.com – Fair Use

In a normal political week, that a Federal District Appellate Court ruled Donald Trump to be immunocompromised would be the news, but instead the lead is that Joe Biden is losing the Super Bowl primary, which is about the only contest remaining on the presidential calendar.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Matthew Stevenson.

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When Sarah Lee Hooper’s mail-in ballot for Nevada’s presidential primary arrived last month, the Las Vegas Republican was utterly confused.

The candidate she wanted to vote for, Vivek Ramaswamy, wasn’t included. Neither were Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and, most notably, former President Donald Trump. The only name she recognized was former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

“What the heck? This is weird,” she remembered thinking. “Are they trying to convince people Nikki is the only option?”

A quick internet search turned up the answer: The Nevada Republican Party opted to eschew the state-run presidential primary on Feb. 6, in favor of running its own caucus two days later, which will decide who wins Nevada’s delegates to the national GOP convention. Presidential contenders who participate in the primary are prohibited by the party from also being candidates in the caucus.

While legal, the party’s decision to host a competing nominating contest in the state has confused and angered GOP voters.

Hooper had no idea there would also be a caucus or that Ramaswamy opted to participate in it instead of the primary before dropping out of the race.

“If you don’t want me to be a conspiracy theorist, then be transparent,” Hooper said. “Send me all of the information at once.”

Since Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, supporters have cultivated an ecosystem of confusion around election processes through unfounded claims of voter fraud, demands for paper ballots and hand counts, and state-by-state efforts to subvert the 2020 results.

Leaders of the caucus effort are among those who tried to keep Trump in power. Three caucus overseers face felony charges for their roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Others running the caucus have been on the vanguard of those pushing unfounded election fraud allegations in the state.

These Republicans claim the caucus will serve as a model for how to run a more secure election — a claim disputed by election experts who note the drastic differences between a caucus, which attracts a fraction of the electorate to decide a single race, and elections, where many more voters cast ballots for local, state and federal offices.

The primary election is run by state election officials and adheres to Nevada’s voting laws — which allow for mail-in ballots, early voting and same-day registration. The Nevada Republican Party’s rules for its caucus reflect some GOP leaders’ efforts to limit voting. Participation requires registering as a Republican 30 days in advance, arriving at a set location and time, and presenting identification.

The confusion created about how elections work, including fraud allegations and now around how Nevada will choose who it backs in the Republican primary, has provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories and misinformation to take hold, experts say, causing a greater share of voters to distrust election results and democratic institutions.

“It does make the misinformation environment more dangerous,” said Gowri Ramachandran, deputy director of elections and government for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program. “These information gaps about voting, how it works, that sort of thing, can get filled in by incorrect information.”

“It’s clear from Jan. 6 that when that kind of misinformation spreads, it has a negative impact on people’s trust in elections and willingness to abide by the results,” she added. “It’s had a negative effect on democracy over the years.”

When primary ballots absent Trump’s name began hitting mailboxes, Republicans across the state reacted with angry bewilderment.

Some thought he had been kicked off the ballot by a court because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, as happened in a Colorado case that is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. (A judge in Nevada rejected a similar challenge.) Others latched on to a false rumor that an inept campaign staffer forgot to file paperwork to get Trump on the ballot. Voters also wondered whether they could participate in both contests, or if casting a primary ballot and caucusing would constitute an illegal attempt to vote twice. (Nevada’s attorney general and secretary of state have assured voters they are free to participate in both.)

“I haven’t heard anybody who is happy with this unless they are with the state party and the county parties,” said Assemblywoman Danielle Gallant, R-Las Vegas, who has spent recent weeks explaining the situation to her constituency of mostly older voters.

The Nevada Republican Party’s decision to force candidates to forgo the primary if they wanted to be included in the caucus will likely hand the state’s 26 convention delegates to the former president. (At this point only one other obscure candidate remains in the caucuses.) It also foreclosed on any of Trump’s opponents building momentum from a strong showing in the state’s primary even as the field has shrunk since Iowa and New Hampshire, leaving Haley and a handful of lesser-known contenders.

Trump’s allies in the state, including Nevada’s popular Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, have urged GOP voters who participate in the primary to mark “none of these candidates” on the ballot rather than vote for a candidate. They hope to avoid Haley emerging with a larger vote total in the primary than Trump receives in the caucus, a possibility because more voters are expected to cast a ballot in the primary than attend the caucus.

In a Jan. 27 campaign visit to Las Vegas, Trump urged supporters to skip the primary entirely, describing it as a “con job” and a “meaningless event.” The caucus, he said, “is the right way and the legitimate way.”

“Don’t go on Tuesday, Feb. 6,” he told the crowd. “Don’t do it. Don’t use the mail-in ballot.”

Because of the primary-caucus confusion, candidates and the national political press have largely ignored Nevada’s “First in the West” contests despite the state’s early spot on the presidential nominating calendar. Trump is the only candidate to visit the state more than once since August.

Democrats have worked since 2007 to establish Nevada as an important early primary state. The effort was spearheaded by the late U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who used caucuses as a party-building exercise. Since then, both parties have held early caucuses with varying success at making them relevant and competitive.

A couple of years back, that looked to be changing. With the caucus process coming under fire for hindering participation, the Nevada Legislature passed a law in 2021 to create this year’s presidential preference election. Although that effort was led by Democratic lawmakers, Republicans had tried years earlier without success to swap the caucus for a primary.

The Nevada GOP rejects the notion that by holding a caucus it has rigged this year’s contest for the former president. But Trump has been actively preparing to secure the nomination for the past year, including courting party insiders across the country. Those efforts extended to Nevada. Early last year he wooed GOP leaders — including Nevada Republican Chairman Michael McDonald, National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid and Bruce Parks, chairperson of the second-largest county party — at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

McDonald, DeGraffenreid and Jim Hindle are under indictment for acting as fraudulent electors for Trump in his effort to overturn the 2020 election — charges to which they’ve pleaded not guilty and are arguing to have dropped. Hindle, as Storey County clerk, is responsible for administering elections, putting him in the novel position of overseeing parts of both the primary and the caucus.

“I’m just doing the job I was elected to do,” Hindle said.

Despite claims of neutrality, McDonald has referred to Trump as the “next president of the United States.” At Trump’s January rally, McDonald stated his intentions more explicitly, referring to Trump simply as “the president.”

“When I talked to the president, I said, ‘I guarantee you Nevada will show up and we will deliver you 100% of the delegates for the state of Nevada to Donald J. Trump,’” he said.

While the caucus favors Trump, the party was transparent with Republican voters and GOP presidential candidates in creating it, McDonald argued.

McDonald blamed the state’s lack of a voter identification requirement for the party’s decision to run a caucus, saying Republican voters don’t trust the system without it.

Parks, chairperson of the party in Washoe County, home to Reno, has also been a leading voice in promoting unfounded election fraud allegations. Under his leadership, the county party adopted a resolution in 2022 declaring Joe Biden’s presidency to be illegitimate. Trump endorsed Parks in his reelection bid for county party chair last year, which Parks described as “one of the proudest moments of my life.”

In an interview with ProPublica, Parks said the party’s central committee decided not to participate in Nevada’s new presidential preference primary election because it wants to demonstrate what he contends is the proper way to run an election: required identification, paper ballots and hand-counting with results reported on the same day.

“There was much discussion — the pros and cons were weighed and measured — and in the end, the people decided we are going to do a caucus because it is more secure and more transparent than a universal mail-in system that does not require ID,” he said.

“Anybody who wants to observe is welcome to,” he said before catching himself. “Let me rephrase that: Anybody who is a Republican and can participate in the process is welcome to observe.”

Until ProPublica raised the issue with the state party, Parks said he wouldn’t allow the news media into Washoe County sites. Now, he said he will allow a few reporters into a single caucus site. McDonald said each county’s chairperson decides whether reporters can observe the proceedings. In the past, reporters have not been barred from observing caucuses held by either party in Nevada.

When asked why the GOP was changing its policy, Parks said, “For obvious reasons. There seems to be a shortage of honest reporters. We’re not going to open the doors and allow a particular narrative to be put out there that is not truthful. That is just not going to happen.”

Anyone who disagrees with the way the caucuses are being run can register with the party and keep an eye on things themselves, he said. “You want to make sure everything is above board? Get involved. Most importantly, change your registration and become a Republican,” he said.

Counting caucus results is not the same as counting election results, Ramachandran said. Hand-counting an election with hundreds of thousands of voters and dozens of races is neither efficient nor accurate.

“It’s really important when people are looking at those issues not to make the mistake of comparing apples to oranges,” she said.

How the confusion and resulting disinformation from the presidential nominating process will influence general-election voter behavior is difficult to forecast. Ramachandran said it’s challenging to study how disinformation affects turnout.

“It’s hard to know who’s been subjected to that confusion or has become susceptible to misinformation, and it’s really hard to tie that to impact on turnout or specific candidates,” she said.

Gallant, who is running for reelection to the Assembly this year, isn’t so sure. Beliefs about unfounded voter-fraud accusations kept Republican voters home in 2020, she said, describing it as “oops, we screwed up.” Polling has backed that up, with surveys showing claims of fraud have made Republicans less likely to vote.

“We’ve done a lot of reeducation around that,” Gallant said, referencing the national party’s “Bank Your Vote” campaign that now encourages Republicans to vote early and by mail.

Jeremy Hughes, a Republican political consultant who is not involved in any of the presidential campaigns this year, said too much is being made over the caucus confusion.

“Donald Trump would have won the primary and he will win the caucus, so the mode of voting isn’t going to matter,” he said. “I have zero concern with it affecting voting behaviors.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Anjeanette Damon.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

During a speech at the Supreme People’s Assembly Monday,  Kim articulated the need to revise the North Korean constitution, proposing the idea to include provisions for the “occupation, subjugation, and annexation” of South Korea into North Korea in the event of a conflict on the Korean peninsula. 

“I believe it is right to revise the relevant articles that we will intensify our education and enlightenment efforts to firmly regard the Republic of Korea as the primary and immutable enemy,” Kim said, referring to South Korea’s formal name, as cited by the North’s state-run daily Rodong Sinmun Tuesday.

“Since we have defined the Republic of Korea as a completely separate and hostile nation, abandoning the established notion of it being a partner in reconciliation and reunification, it’s necessary to establish legal measures to precisely define the sovereign territory of our Republic,” Kim said, referring to the North, adding that he no longer sees South Koreans as the same ethnic people.

Hours later, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol dismissed Kim’s speech, saying that Seoul would “punish” the North if it continues provocations. In a cabinet meeting convened Tuesday, Yoon said that North Korea’s threats are no longer effective, indicating his hardline stance against Pyongyang’s “intimidation.” 

The trade of barbs came as North Korea ramped up tensions on the Korean peninsula over the weekend, firing a hypersonic intermediate-range, solid fuelled, ballistic missile off its eastern coast Sunday.

Pyongyang had already announced that it had developed a new high-output solid fuel engine for its new IRBM in November. The North’s IRBM, including its Musudan missiles, can reach Guam, where United States strategic assets, including B-52 strategic bombers, are located.

North Korea has also been raising tensions in the Yellow Sea, with it firing some 200 artillery shells into waters off its western coast earlier this month at the inter-Korean de facto maritime border of the Northern Limit Line, or NLL. The area is near South Korea’s Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands.

In the latest speech, Kim continued issuing threats in the Yellow Sea and thereby over the South Korea-controlled islands.

“Since our nation’s southern border is clearly defined, we cannot accept any other boundaries, including the Northern Limit Line, as lawful,” Kim said. “If the Republic of Korea encroaches on our territory, airspace, or territorial waters by even 0.001 mm, it will be regarded as an act of war provocation.”

The NLL was established by United Nations Command in 1953 following the Korean Armistice Agreement. North Korea initially did not dispute the decision, but nor did it officially recognize the border. 

Since September 1999, North Korea has claimed a more southerly  “West Sea Military Demarcation Line,” which Pyongyang claims is based on international law delimitation decisions​, and thus the area has been a frequent flashpoint for naval skirmishes between the two Koreas.

On Nov. 23, 2010, for instance, the North shelled Yeonpyeong island, killing four South Korean nationals and injuring 19, while causing severe damage to the entire island. 

Wang Son-taek, director of the Global Policy Center at Seoul-based Han Pyeong Peace Institute, saw Kim’s speech as an expression of dissatisfaction with Seoul’s North Korea policy.

“It appears to be a violent and aggressive complaint about North Korea’s South Korea policy not progressing as desired,” Wang said. “Specifically, North Korea wants South Korea to accept a reunification under the federal system where both governments exist under the banner of ‘one nation but two systems,’ to not label North Korea as the main enemy, and to refrain from attempts of reunification by absorption.”

Failing this, the speech seems to imply an intention to forcefully bring South Korea in line with North Korea’s wishes, Wang added.

“Paradoxically, the speech implies that if South Korea complies with these demands, dialogue and the possibility of restoring the fraternity in inter-Korean relations could still take place. This potential reconciliation, however, is being communicated in a notably harsh manner.”

Last week, North Korea removed the concept of “one people” shared with South Korea from its media outlets, redefining South Korea as a separate entity instead of “the same Koreans.” This change in stance was followed by a complete shutdown of these media outlets shortly thereafter.

Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Jeong-Ho for RFA.

Members of Young Israel of New Rochelle synagogue in suburban Westchester County, New York, received an email Thursday afternoon from a group of congregants. 

“We are all looking to do what we can to help Israel in its time of need,” the email said. “I am part of a group in our shul which is focused on one singular thing we can all do—and that is helping to defeat our current Congressman Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary which will take place on June 25, 2024.”

“It is critically important that if you are a registered Republican, at least for this election you should re-register as a Democrat so you can vote in the primary (against Bowman).”

Bowman, whose New York district includes the Bronx and parts of Westchester County, is being targeted in his primary next year for criticisms of Israel and calls for a ceasefire in its war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. His challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, is being backed by pro-Israel groups, including the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

The congregant who wrote the email to the New Rochelle synagogue, Jonathan Harris, was urging the synagogue’s Republican members to change parties before the primary so that they can vote for Latimer.

“If you are a registered Republican voter, you are not eligible to vote in the all-important Democratic primary,” says Harris’s email, a copy of which was obtained by The Intercept. “It is critically important that if you are a registered Republican, at least for this election you should re-register as a Democrat so you can vote in the primary (against Bowman).” 

Harris and the congregants responsible for the email went on to lay out three other ways synagogue members could help defeat Bowman. They urged New Israel congregants to donate to Latimer’s campaign against Bowman — asking that they give money through a portal set up by AIPAC. (Neither AIPAC nor Latimer’s campaign immediately responded to a request for comment.)

“Any pledge you can make to support him in the primary will be extremely helpful,” Harris wrote. “Please let me know what you are willing to contribute so I can add it to the list being generated for our shul. Please process the amount of your pledge on the website AIPAC has created to gather donations to Latimer.”

In an interview with The Intercept, Harris said he did not have a “direct connection” with the Latimer campaign. When asked about an indirect connection, he asked to go off the record. Harris declined to answer more questions on the record and did not answer multiple follow-up calls. 

The Young Israel of New Rochelle synagogue denied any knowledge of the email. “Please note that the referenced Harris email and solicitation was not done by or on behalf of the Young Israel of New Rochelle or its leadership,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Over the past three years, Harris has donated $10,500 to AIPAC’s political action committee, according to public election finance records.

AIPAC Versus Bowman

AIPAC has said it plans to spend upwards of $100 million to oust members of the Squad, a group of progressive Democratic members of Congress who have been critical of Israel’s human rights violations. AIPAC and allied groups have become the central players in Democratic Party primaries — a dynamic that kicked into overdrive with Israel’s war on Gaza. 

The email from Harris to his fellow congregants is the latest effort to mobilize voters upset with Bowman’s criticisms of Israel.

AIPAC’s super PAC began recruiting Latimer over the summer, around the same time Bowman boycotted a congressional address from Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Despite AIPAC, which bills itself as a single-issue venture, spurring on his candidacy, Latimer is seeking to draw attention away from his Israel stance. Instead, he has billed himself as a progressive.

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack launched the latest Gaza war, Bowman has been especially vocal in condemning what he sees as a disproportionate response from Israel and joining in protests outside the White House.

Harris’s email also urges congregants to act on a looming decision from the New York State Appellate Court that will result in the congressional lines being redrawn.

“If this happens and the Jewish community is divided amongst different districts, it will highly increase Bowman’s chances of being re-elected,” the letter reads. “Attached here is the text of a form letter you can use to object to redistricting.”

Latimer’s deputy in Westchester County, Ken Jenkins, leads the redistricting commission. Earlier this month, Latimer told City and State that he doesn’t discuss the redistricting with Jenkins, but told Gothamist a day later, “He and I have talked about it a couple times, that’s it.”

New York’s congressional map was redrawn prior to last cycle as well, and it kicked off a long, tumultuous midterm season that left the Democratic Party with four fewer seats than it started out with. Bowman was one of the only members in the tristate area who represents a solidly blue district. He won his primary by nearly 30 points, with 54 percent of the vote. 

To Bowman’s north, Mondaire Jones is running to unseat Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y. Jones and Bowman used to do campaign events together, but since announcing his latest bid, Jones — who has said he has a “great relationship with AIPAC” — has declined to endorse Bowman when asked. 

Latimer, for his part, just returned from an AIPAC-funded three-day trip to Israel, where he met with leaders including Herzog, the Israeli president. Herzog has said that it is the “entire nation” of Palestine that bears responsibility for the October 7 attacks.

On the latest war in Gaza, where about 1,300 Israelis and more than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed, Latimer told the New York Times that he did not know enough to judge whether Israel’s counteroffensive violated international law.

He said, “I’m not a secretary of state.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Timmy Facciola.

After visiting Israel last week, Westchester County Executive George Latimer on Monday filed paperwork to launch a primary challenge against Democratic New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a critic of the Israeli government and its devastating war on the Gaza Strip.

The 70-year-old county executive, who previously served in the New York State Senate and Assembly, has been openly considering a run for the 16th Congressional District—which Bowman has represented since 2021, after successfully primarying former Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel.

Latimer suggested to The Washington Post early last month that if he ran against Bowman, "it might be that this becomes a proxy argument" between "the left and the far left." He later told Politico that Israel would be a "big issue" but "not the whole issue," and his campaign would focus on his record as "the most progressive" county official in the state.

— (@)

Bowman is the fourth "Squad" member to face a serious primary challenger for 2024, joining Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). They are all among the eight progressives who in October voted against a bipartisan House resolution expressing unconditional support for Israel's government as it waged war on Gaza.

The four of them also support a resolution demanding a cease-fire in Gaza. While the number of House members calling for a cease-fire has grown to more than four dozen as Israeli forces have killed thousands of Palestinians over the past two months, as The Intercept highlighted last week, "a closer look at some lawmakers' statements raises questions about whether they are truly pushing for an end to the violence."

Latimer does not support a cease-fire. As Politico reported on his trip:

The county executive and former state lawmaker said that his time with Israelis, such as meeting with President Isaac Herzog, taught him that there is "no animosity directed toward the Palestinian people."

"There's people that are protesting that they're pro-Palestine, as if the Israeli position is anti-Palestinian," he said in an interview while waiting to board his return flight at Ben Gurion Airport.

"There wasn't a 'let's go get those bastards' kind of mindset," he said. "The anger and fear is directed at Hamas as the terrorist organization that runs the country and that's a differentiation you don't often pick up."

Since declaring war in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israel has killed nearly 15,900 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded another 42,000 in airstrikes and raids, according to health officials in the besieged enclave. At least hundreds of those killings have come after the seven-day pause in fighting that ended late last week.

— (@)

Responding to Latimer's filing on Monday, Slate's Alex Sammon said, "There it is: after weeks of unnecessary hemming and hawing (during which he stockpiled an extra helping of cash from the Israel lobby), George Latimer is challenging Jamaal Bowman, aiming to [replace] one of the party's rising stars as a 70-year-old white freshman congressman."

It was Sammon who reported in mid-November that the lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is set to "spend at least $100 million in 2024 Democratic primaries, largely trained on eliminating incumbent Squad members" including Bowman, Bush, Omar, Lee, and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who had a U.S. Senate candidate reject an offer of $20 million if he instead primaried her, the only Palestinian American in Congress.

Ocasio-Cortez's 2024 campaign said in a Monday email that "AIPAC's top recruit to challenge Jamaal Bowman officially filed his candidacy" and asked supporters to "please chip in right now to help us defend Jamaal and our progressive values."

Along with stressing his support for a cease-fire in Gaza, her campaign pointed out that Bowman is "his district's first Black representative" and "one of the only members of Congress with actual experience working in public education."

Westchester's News 12 reported Monday that while Latimer "is preparing a video announcement over the next 24 hours and will formally launch his campaign by Wednesday," he is not Bowman's only challenger—Democratic "Dobbs Ferry investment banker Martin Dolan also plans to run."

While the contest is considered a test of whether politicians can survive criticizing Israel, some observers noted Monday that in March 2021, as many elected officials—including Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez—called on then-Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign over outrage about his Covid-19 pandemic response and sexual misconduct allegations, Latimer said the claims should be taken seriously but also drew a comparison to Emmett Till, which he later retracted.

— (@)

Who wins the next primary for New York's solidly Democratic 16th District could depend on an effort to replace the GOP-friendly map drawn by a court-appointed expert for the 2022 election cycle. City & State reported last month that a new order could mean "the Independent Redistricting Commission—which is led by Latimer's deputy, Ken Jenkins—will have the opportunity to change the boundaries."

"The district currently includes much of Westchester and a sliver of the northern Bronx and is home to many Jewish voters who have turned against Bowman," the outlet explained. "Should the district lines change, it will change the dynamics of the race."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

We speak with analyst Matt Duss, former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, about the U.S. political response to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The third Republican presidential debate on Wednesday saw candidates pledge unwavering support for Israel with “rhetoric that was frankly barbaric,” according to Duss. “This is just knuckle-dragging hawkishness to feed their base,” says Duss, who comments on Congress censuring Palestinian American Rashida Tlaib, Bernie Sanders’s stance on a ceasefire, and the parallels between Ukraine and Palestine. “As a Ukrainian American, I also stand in solidarity with people under occupation.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Free Speech For People (FSFP) and Mi Familia Vota Education Fund (MFVEF) issued letters today to Secretaries of State and chief election officials in five states, urging them to abide by the US Constitution and bar former President Donald Trump from the ballot. According to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, also known as the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause, by swearing an oath to uphold the Constitution and subsequently inciting and facilitating the violent January 6th attack on the Capitol, Trump is ineligible to run for office again.

Free Speech For People and Mi Familia Vota Education Fund sent letters to New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The organizations delivered a similar letter to chief election officials in 10 other states between April and July 2023 including Nevada, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

Free Speech For People also forwarded to New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella its letter to New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan. Secretary Scanlan recently asked the New Hampshire Attorney General to review the applicability of Section Three against Trump in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

Enacted in the wake of the Civil War, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment disqualifies from public office, regardless of a prior criminal conviction, any individual who has taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and then engages in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or gives aid or comfort to its enemies. Trump’s involvement in the violent attack on Congress to prevent the certification of democratic election results disqualifies him from holding any future public office.

“[S]ince 1868, the qualifications for eligibility for the presidency—in addition to natural-born citizenship, age, and residency—have also included not having engaged in insurrection against the United States after having taken an oath to support the Constitution,” the letters read. “And Trump does not meet that qualification.”

FSFP and MFVEF also argue that state election officials have the power to enforce the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause without express permission from Congress. They note that nothing in the text, original public meaning, or the Reconstruction-era history of Section 3’s implementation suggests that states need authorization from Congress to implement this part of the Constitution. During Reconstruction, states repeatedly enforced Section 3 in exactly that circumstance, and two different states (Georgia and New Mexico) heard Section 3 challenges against those involved in the January 6th insurrection in 2022. These challenges did not need any special federal legislation, relying on standard state legal procedures for challenging a politician’s constitutional eligibility for office.

“While the US Justice Department, along with state and local authorities, must hold Donald Trump accountable for all crimes that he has committed, secretaries of state and chief election officials across the country must carry out their responsibility to follow the mandate of the Constitution and the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause and bar Trump from any future ballot,” said Free Speech For People President John Bonifaz. “Criminal prosecutions will establish Trump’s liability under the law. But the enforcement of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against Trump will ensure that our republic is protected and that this insurrectionist-in-chief is forever disqualified from holding any future public office.”

“The evidence is overwhelming that Donald Trump incited and mobilized the insurrection on January 6, 2021 at our nation’s Capitol,” said Alexandra Flores-Quilty, Campaign Director for Free Speech For People. “The US Constitution is clear that anyone who takes an oath of office and then engages in insurrection is forever barred from holding public office again. Election officials must carry out their duty, follow this constitutional mandate, and bar Trump from the ballot.”

Irving Zavaleta, Mi Familia Vota National Programs Manager said: “Secretaries of State and state election officials are well within their authority to bar former President Donald Trump from the ballot. We all know that Donald Trump incited an insurrection to stop the certification of the 2020 election. Under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, anyone who has taken the oath of office to defend the Constitution and then engages in an insurrection is disqualified from holding future public office. Trump is disqualified, and we strongly urge election officials to bar him from the ballot.”

Free Speech For People has called for applying the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause to Donald Trump since June 2021. The organization, in partnership with Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, launched the Trump is Disqualified campaign following Trump’s announcement of his 2024 presidential bid in November 2022. Click here for more information on the campaign.

Read the letters here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

In what is described as a “significant relief”, seven Papua New Guinea teachers and their families were rescued from an attempted kidnapping in the remote Mt Bosavi region in Hela Province.

Hela Education Director Ronny Angu said the teachers and their families were rescued safely by the Hela Education Division from their attempted kidnappers.

He said the teachers are from the Wagalu primary school, the same primary school where 17 school girls were recently kidnapped, raped and held hostage for ransom.

• READ MORE: PNG gunmen ‘kidnapped, raped’ 17 schoolgirls before freeing them
• Other PNG law-and-order reports

Angu said the teachers and their families have escaped from an organised kidnapping and potential harm by criminals after a successful rescue operation, executed with the help of key stakeholders that demonstrated “unwavering commitment and collaboration”.

He said the “heroic efforts” from Hela police and Moro police, the Hela Provincial government and the Hela Education Division, ensured that the teachers and their families were successfully relocated to safety.

“Their dedication and selflessness significantly contributed to the success of the rescue mission,” he said.

“To commemorate the safe return of the teachers and their families and for God’s guidance and protection, the Hela Education Division organised a welcome party. It was a moment of immense joy and relief, where experiences and challenges were openly discussed, and tears were shared.

Support for healing
“Hela Education Division is committed to providing the necessary support to the staff members to help them settle back into their respective homes.

“We aim to provide an opportunity to the teachers to reconnect with their families and begin the process of healing from the traumatic experiences they endured.

“The success of the rescue mission is a powerful testament to the unwavering commitment of the education division to serve the community and provide quality education in Hela Province.

“The division expressed sincere gratitude to those who supported and made the rescue operation successful, especially the Hela police, Moro police, Hela Provincial government, and Hela Education Division,” Angu said.

“This successful rescue operation is a significant relief to Hela Province. The safe return of the teachers and their families after such a perilous experience cannot be more relieving news.

“We wish all of them a speedy recovery from their ordeal.”

Jeffrey Elapa is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Daycare centres have been shut down in American Samoa following confirmation of an eight-year-old girl with measles.

The territory’s Department of Health (DOH) said samples from the child, who was seen at a community centre with symptoms on March 27, were sent for testing in California and returned positive.

Day cares are now closed to protect babies from being exposed to the virus, as infants under six months are not eligible for the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine.

• READ MORE: Other measles reports

Kanana Fou Elementary School in Tafuna, where the girl attends, has also been closed.

The Health Department will monitor the situation as to whether more schools will be closed, said Director of Health Motusa Tuileama Nua.

“This is is highly contagious disease and can spread quickly and poses a serious threat to individuals who are not vaccinated or who have weakened immune systems,” Nua said.

“We are working closely with healthcare providers, local officials, and other stakeholders to coordinate our response efforts and provide necessary support to those affected,” he said.

“We will continue to monitor for any other cases and provide updates as necessary.”

The Department of Health has the names of children who have not received the first and second measles vaccinations and will be contacting their parents to get them immunised.

Parents have been urged to check on their children’s measles vaccination.

Symptoms of measles include a fever, a rash, runny nose, and reddening of the eyes.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Sen. Bernie Sanders warned Monday that without swift congressional action, the $5.8 billion in federal funding relied on each year by community health centers around the United States will expire on September 30, resulting in a devastating "primary care cliff."

"Congress can and must avoid" such a scenario, says a statement from the Vermont Independent's office.

Sanders announced that the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee he chairs is scheduled to hold a hearing this Thursday at 10:00 am ET titled, "Community Health Centers: Saving Lives, Saving Money."

Millions of people in the U.S. currently receive lifesaving services from community health centers in thousands of neighborhoods nationwide.

“In America today, community health centers are providing cost-effective primary medical care, dental care, mental health counseling, and low-cost prescription drugs to 30 million people regardless of a person's bank account or insurance status," said Sanders.

"Not only do these health centers save lives and ease human suffering," Sanders continued. "They save Medicare, Medicaid, and our entire healthcare system billions of dollars each year because they avoid the need to go to expensive emergency rooms and hospitals."

"In the midst of a broken and dysfunctional healthcare system, I will be doing everything I can to expand community health centers so that every American has access to the primary care that they need and deserve," he added.

According to the senator's office:

Nearly 100 million Americans live in a primary care desert, nearly 70 million live in a dental care desert, and some 158 million Americans—nearly half the country's population—live in a mental healthcare desert. Today, 85 million people are uninsured or under-insured, over 500,000 people go bankrupt each year because of medically related debt, and more than 68,000 people die each year because they cannot afford the healthcare they desperately need. Expanding community health centers will begin to address this urgent crisis.

The following individuals are scheduled to testify at the hearing: Amanda Pears Kelly, chief executive officer of Advocates for Community Health and executive director of the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved; Ben Harvey, chief executive officer of Indiana Primary Health Care Association; Robert Nocon, assistant professor at Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine; Sue Veer, president and chief executive officer of Carolina Health Centers; and Jessica Farb, managing director at the Government Accountability Office.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

The Hill (2/17/23) turns a 3-point change in the margin between Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump—11 months before the first Republican nomination contest—into a headline.

The Hill (2/17/23) announced last week, “DeSantis Approval Drops in GOP Primary: Poll.” The article, by Max Greenwood, went on to say:

A new Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll released Friday exclusively to The Hill shows Trump leading DeSantis 46% to 23%. That marks a 5-point drop in support for DeSantis since last month, when he trailed Trump by 20 percentage points in the same poll.

In fact, the poll showed no significant differences between January and February in that multicandidate matchup. (For poll information noted below, see a compilation by 538.) The actual difference in Trump’s lead between the two polls was just 3 points—48% to 28% in January (a 20-point margin), 46% to 23% in February (a 23-point margin). Yes, DeSantis’ support fell by 5 points, but Trump’s fell by 2 points, for a net marginal change of just 3 points. Such a small poll difference hardly proves DeSantis is losing support.

Later in the article, the author indicates that “perhaps more alarming for DeSantis” were results showing the Florida governor with only 39% support, when Trump was excluded from a matchup that included Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo, Marco Rubio and Tim Scott. In a similar poll the previous month, DeSantis had 49% support.

Yes, there was a 10-point decline, in part because Pence and Haley picked up 8 points between them. Still, the results were hardly “alarming.” Taking any of these early polls seriously is foolish.

11 months in advance

Early polling (Extra! Update, 6/07) told us that the 2008 presidential race would be between Rudy Giuliani (above) and Hillary Clinton—rather than John McCain and Barack Obama, the eventual nominees.

Should we really pay attention to national primary polls 11 months ahead of the first contest?

The obvious answer, of course, is no. A year from today, Trump may well have been indicted on one charge or another—and could conceivably be convicted, though even getting a case to trial will require navigating a long appeals process. How an indictment, much less a conviction, would change the political landscape is anyone’s guess.

Apart from that, it’s unclear which Republicans will run for president and, more importantly, how each individual will fare in the campaign. While DeSantis is clearly among the better known candidates, other than Trump, he has yet either to declare his candidacy, or to begin campaigning in the first two states in the delegate selection process—Iowa and New Hampshire. The potential challengers to the former president have yet to prove they are ready for the intense media scrutiny that comes with being a presidential candidate.

The current national primary polls thus reflect mostly name recognition of the candidates challenging Trump. Even then, the national polls don’t tell us what voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are thinking, though those two states can have an outsize role in screening out candidates and launching others into frontrunner status.

There is a long history of early polling being next to useless in predicting the results of competitive primary races (Extra! Update, 6/07). Still, looking at how news outlets read these tea leaves can tell you something about the media’s own preferences in political campaigns.

DeSantis the new frontrunner?

Over a year and a half ago, the GOP Daily Brief (6/21/21) jumped on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bandwagon, announcing: “Republican 2024 Race Gets Fresh Frontrunner—Donald Trump Is No Longer Leading, Now Governor DeSantis Is.”

A PJ Media column (11/12/22) promoted DeSantis as the “greener pastures” Republicans were said to be looking for.

It took the GOP’s disappointing showing in the recent midterm elections, when Trump’s candidate endorsements mostly hurt the GOP, for Matt Margolis—conservative commentator and columnist for PJ Media (11/12/22)—to come to the same conclusion. “There’s a New Frontrunner for the 2024 Presidential Nomination,” blared his headline. “Many Republicans,” he wrote, “are starting to wonder if there are greener pastures for the GOP with someone like Ron DeSantis, according to a new poll from YouGov.”

That new YouGov poll (11/11/22) was a national survey of potential Republican primary voters that pitted DeSantis vs. Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup. The Florida governor got 42% support, Trump 35%. The most recent Yahoo/YouGov poll (2/8/23) shows little change over the intervening three months, with DeSantis still beating Trump in a head-to-head matchup, 45% to 41%.

Perhaps the strongest advocate for DeSantis’ frontrunner status is Aaron Blake of the Washington Post (1/14/23), who listed the Florida governor as the most likely among ten possible GOP candidates to be the Republican nominee for president, a position DeSantis has occupied on Blake’s list for several months. Blake’s principal evidence consisted of national primary polls that included only DeSantis and Trump.

He downplayed the multi-candidate polls that did not support his theory. The vast majority of polls that matched Trump against several candidates simultaneously found Trump getting the most support, often by double digits.

That led Nathaniel Rakich of 538 (1/10/23), who analyzed the December 2022 polls, to write that “DeSantis is polling well against Trump—as long as no one else runs.” A recent poll by Yahoo News/YouGov (2/8/23) reaffirmed that conclusion: “DeSantis leads Trump for 2024 GOP nod—but not if Haley and others split the vote.”

But this new version of the conventional wisdom is not completely supported by the data either.

Head-to-head polls

Below is a list of all the national polls in January and February (as of this writing) compiled by 538 that report on a head-to-head matchup between Trump and DeSantis.

What’s most striking is the wildly contradictory pattern of results, which vary from a DeSantis advantage of 26 points (Marquette) to a 23-point advantage for Trump (Big Village)—a 49-point variation in the lead.

If the results are averaged (including the most recent results of Big Village, Premise, Harris/Harvard CAPS and YouGov, but excluding their earlier results, so they do not get disproportionate weighting), DeSantis averages 45.8%, Trump 44.3%—a 1.5 percentage point DeSantis advantage, not too far from a tie.

Misreading polls

It would be a mistake to interpret these results as though there is a volatile GOP electorate.

The only polling organizations that polled a head-to-head matchup in both January and February showed no significant change from one month to the next. YouGov/Yahoo News gave DeSantis a 3-point advantage in mid-January, and a 4-point advantage in early February. Harris/Harvard CAPS reported Trump with a 10-point advantage in mid-January and a 12-point advantage a month later. And Big Village recorded just a 1-point decline in Trump’s advantage from January to February, from 23 to 22 points.

NBC‘s subhead (1/26/23) told readers that “GOP voters slightly prefer Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over former President Trump”—even as the story reported that Republican and Republican-leaning voters “preferred DeSantis as the eventual Republican presidential nominee over Trump by 28 percentage points.”

In addition, some polls conducted in the same or close time frames produce conflicting results. In fact, the most extreme numbers for the two candidates are produced in virtually the same time period. Big Village’s January poll ends on January 20, and shows Trump with a 23-point margin over DeSantis. Marquette’s poll ends on the same date and shows a DeSantis advantage of 26 points—a 49-point discrepancy.

Another example: YouGov/Yahoo News and On Message both show DeSantis in the lead (by 4 points and 15 points, respectively), at virtually the same time that Premise finds Trump in the lead by 20 points.

Opinion simply does not change that quickly.

The large fluctuations shown in the table thus reflect mostly the polling organizations themselves—their particular methods of sampling, question wording and data analysis. And it is indeed surprising, if not shocking, that polls of supposedly the same electorate, conducted over roughly the same time, should come to such contradictory findings.

The most obvious conclusion to draw from this table: We simply can’t trust any of these polls this early in the campaign to tell us which candidates might prevail in a head-to-head matchup—not “if the election were held today,” much less when it will actually be held many months from now.

The earliest polls that may have some meaningful results about the GOP candidates for president will be polls of the electorates in the four earliest states to choose delegates—the Iowa caucuses, and the primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. But again, not for months, until shortly before the Iowa caucuses. Until then, arguing about the meaning of the latest national primary poll will have much in common with determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

That will not deter the media from its obsession with early polls. Just in the past week and a half, several new national primary polls and poll stories have been reported—at Fox (2/20/23),  NBC (2/16/23), Newsweek (2/19/23)  Forbes (2/13/23) and PBS/NPR (2/22/23), among others.

But just because they are there doesn’t mean we have to waste our time reading them.

The post Early Polling Tells You Little About Next Year’s GOP Primary appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by David W. Moore.

Former journalist Gwyneth Ho, a 2019 protest movement activist, former nursing student Owen Chow and labor unionist Winnie Yu are among those to stand trial in front of three government-picked national security judges and no jury.

It is the most high-profile trial to be brought under the draconian law, which was imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party as a response to the 2019 protest movement.

The 16 are standing trial after pleading not guilty to charges of "incitement to subvert state power" linked to their participation in a democratic primary that the authorities said was a bid to subvert the government by winning a majority of seats in the Legislative Council.

The remainder, including pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, Occupy Central founder Benny Tai and journalist-turned-lawmaker Claudia Mo, have pleaded guilty. All defendants could face life imprisonment.

Hundreds of people, including friends and relatives of defendants, stood in line early on Monday morning outside West Kowloon Magistrates Court to gain a public seat at the trial, as police in bulletproof vests with dogs patrolled the area, where taller security fencing had replaced the usual waist-height traffic barriers. A bomb-disposal truck was also parked at the scene.

A helicopter labeled on a flight-tracking app as belonging to the Hong Kong Government Flying Service hovered above the court building at around 8.30 a.m., circling the area at least twice.

Paid to stand in line

Some elderly people standing in line told Radio Free Asia that they had been paid HK$150 (US$19) an hour to stand in line for "just listening in for three or four hours," but said they had no idea what the case they were observing was.

Others responded that they didn't know what the trial was about or refused to answer questions, while some reportedly told other media outlets that they were getting paid to stand there, prompting speculation they had been sent to occupy seats to prevent supporters of the defendants from getting in.

Around 100 of those in line had brought seats and even sleeping bags with them, but brushed off reporters' questions with "I came here by myself," or "I don't know," or "I was bored" when asked why they were waiting for one of the 400 public gallery seats at the trial.

Meanwhile, Chan Po-ying, who heads the pro-democracy League of Social Democrats and deputy Dickson Chau held up a banner outside the court that read: "A democratic primary isn't a crime! Shameful suppression!" while calling for the release of the 47 political prisoners.

Chau was taken away by police for taking off his mask – which are still mandated in public places in Hong Kong – and fined HK$5,000 (US$637).

‘No crime to answer’

Before opening statements began, the 16 defendants entered their "not guilty" pleas, with Chan's husband and veteran activist Leung Kwok-hung telling the court: "There's no crime to answer. It is not a crime to act against a totalitarian regime."

Judge Andrew Chan responded by calling for "respect" from the defendants and members of the public.

As the trial, which is expected to last up to 90 days, got under way, prosecutor Jonathan Man told the court that four of 47, all of whom were arrested more than two years ago, would testify against the 16 now on trial.

The four defendants turned witness for the prosecution were former pro-democracy lawmaker Au Nok Hin, former district councilors Andrew Chiu and Ben Chung, and businessman Mike Lam, Man said.

Prosecutor Anthony Chau said the 2020 democratic primary was a "conspiracy" to undermine the government.

"This case involves a group of activists who conspired together and with others to plan, organize and participate in seriously interfering in, disrupting or undermining the performance of duties and functions ... by unlawful means with a view to subverting the state power," Chau said.

Thirteen of the 47 defendants were granted bail in 2021, while the other 34 – including 10 who pleaded not guilty -- have been in pre-trial custody for more than two years despite international criticism.

‘Evil will grow more rampant’

Chow, a frontline protester in 2019 who later stood in the primary on a "localist" platform aimed at preserving Hong Kong's unique identity, wrote on his Facebook page on Monday: "Evil will always grow more rampant when goodness lapses, so we must insist on what is right."

Gwyneth Ho rose to local fame for her live reporting on the 2019 protests, in particular her live footage of white-clad government supporters attacking democracy activists and passers-by at the Yuen Long MTR station on July 21, 2019, which included footage of them attacking her.

Amnesty International Deputy Regional Director Hana Young called for the charges to be dropped altogether, saying the activists were forced to choose between pleading guilty to "a non-existent crime" in the hope of more lenient treatment, or to stand trial with almost no hope of acquittal.

“With this mass trial, the Hong Kong government is attempting to shut off all meaningful political participation in Hong Kong,” Young told the Associated Press.

Following the democratic primary in 2020, the government postponed the Legislative Council elections the primary was preparing for and changed the electoral system so that pro-democracy candidates couldn't run.

The subsequent "election" of chief executive John Lee in a poll in which he was the only candidate wiped out any distinction between the city and the rest of mainland China, commentators said at the time.

More than 10,000 people have been arrested and 2,800 prosecuted in a citywide crackdown on the 2019 protest movement, mostly under public order charges.

Around 230 have been arrested under the national security law, which criminalizes public criticism of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, as well as ties and funding arrangements with overseas organizations deemed hostile to China. 

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ng Ting Hong and Lee Yuk Yue for RFA Cantonese.

Ahead of the Democratic National Committee's annual Winter Meeting in Philadelphia, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called on the party to end super PAC spending in primary races, saying the Democrats should take the event as an opportunity to show their commitment to protecting democracy.

Twelve years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Vermont Independent senator wrote, the last election cycle illustrated how the "disastrous" decision is "undermining American democracy," as super PACs spent roughly $1.3 billion on campaigning—including more than $460 million spent by Democratic groups.

Millions of dollars were spent by billionaires "against progressive candidates in competitive primaries," Sanders wrote, with super PACs funding "outrageous and dishonest attack ads."

"When we talk about billionaires buying elections, this is exactly what we are talking about."

Notably, a super PAC created by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent millions of dollars in competitive races in North Carolina, Texas, and Pennsylvania last year, running attack ads against progressives who are critical of the United States' support for Israel's violent anti-Palestinian policies. One ad accused Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) of being disloyal to the Democratic Party.

"When we talk about billionaires buying elections, this is exactly what we are talking about," wrote Sanders, who caucuses with Senate Democrats.

The 2010 Citizens United ruling allowed corporations and special interest groups to create super PACs, which can accept unlimited donations and spend unlimited money on campaigns. The ruling has been condemned for years by Democratic lawmakers including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who earlier this month introduced legislation to overturn Citizens United.

The party could make clear that it opposes the corporate takeover of campaigning by banning super PAC spending in its primaries, said Sanders, noting that the issue was not permitted to come up for a vote at last year's DNC meeting when he proposed it there.

"Virtually all Democrats talk about the need for campaign finance reform," wrote Sanders. "Talk is easy. Now it's time to walk the walk. Let's stand up for democracy."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

First came the devastating flash floods in Auckland on Friday night. Then came the huge effort to help families evacuate to community shelters. And finally the ongoing clean-up operation.

We’re saddened by this unprecedented extreme weather that has impacted on some of our communities in Aotearoa. It was great to see the community come out to support and help evacuate flooded-out people to the community shelters. We were going door-to-door to help families as the flood waters were rising.

Special thanks to the volunteers who came out yesterday to help clean up at the NZ Ethnic Women’s Trust in Mt Roskill which was impacted by the flooding. Volunteers at the Wesley Primary School helped families with food, clothes and hot meals.

• READ MORE: Other Auckland flood reports

Thanks to the school leaders who opened the space to give shelter to families.

A massive thanks to the volunteers that worked alongside me to distribute food today in Albert-Eden and Puketāpapa. We distributed food and needed information door to door on O’Donnell Avenue in Mt Roskill to families and the church affected by the flood.

We also reached out to affected families in Fowlds Avenue, Kitchener Street and Lambeth Avenue.

About 80 meals delivered to 30 families — thanks to Humanity First International for the meals and to the Whānau Community Centre and Hub’s Nik Naidu.

All over Auckland, volunteers were doing a great job.

• Need help, please contact these numbers:
  Accommodation support: 0800 222 200
  Clothes, bed, and blankets etc: 0800 400 100

Auckland's flash floods

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This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The post Progressive Democrats Welcome a Primary Challenge to Biden appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Marcy Winograd.

"It is no secret that ultra-right agitators in Brazil and the United States are coordinating efforts," the lawmakers continued. "In the wake of the October 30th Brazilian elections, Brazilian Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro met directly with former President Trump, along with former Trump aides Jason Miller and Steve Bannon, who encouraged Bolsonaro to contest the election results in Brazil. Bannon was recently convicted of two criminal charges for failing to comply with a subpoena for his role in the January 6th insurrection. Soon after the meetings, Bolsonaro's party sought to invalidate thousands of votes. All involved must be held accountable."

The statement was signed by prominent progressive members of Congress in the U.S. including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), as well as Brazilian lawmakers Rodrigo Agostinho, Chico Alencar, Tabata Amaral, Sâmia Bomfim, Guilherme Boulos, and Camilo Capiberibe.

"Democracies rely on the peaceful transfer of power," the lawmakers said. "Just as far-right extremists are coordinating their efforts to undermine democracy, we must stand united in our efforts to protect it. In order to save democracy in our two countries and around the world, we urge all elected officials in our two countries, regardless of party, to join our calls."

The statement came as authorities in both countries continued to investigate the anti-democratic assaults, both sparked by Trump and Bolsonaro's incessant lies about election fraud.

Reutersreported Thursday that U.S. and Brazilian lawmakers are "looking for ways to cooperate on an investigation" into the violence in Brazil on Sunday, "sharing lessons from inquiries into the attack on the U.S. Capitol."

"U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the recently dissolved House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is one lawmaker whose office is discussing collaboration," Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the ongoing discussions. "Brazil's Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco has also discussed the idea of such an exchange with the top U.S. diplomat in Brasília."

More than two years after the January 6 insurrection, Trump has yet to face criminal charges over his role in the attempted coup as a U.S. Justice Department investigation continues.

Bolsonaro, meanwhile, is still in Florida, where he traveled days before the inauguration of leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Like Trump, Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat and attempted—unsuccessfully—to challenge his election loss in court.

Facing mounting extradition demands by U.S. lawmakers, Bolsonaro toldCNN Brasil on Wednesday that he intends to return to his home country soon as Brazilian authorities moved to freeze his assets and issued arrest warrants for pro-Bolsonaro officials accused of aiding Sunday's attacks on government buildings.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Progressive criticism of President Joe Biden's move to make South Carolina the first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential primary was given a boost Wednesday when More Perfect Union launched a petition imploring the Democratic National Committee to pick a diverse swing state instead.

"If we really want to pick a diverse primary electorate, look to South Carolina's neighbor to the north—an actual battleground state."

Biden's proposal to raise South Carolina to the first spot on the party's presidential primary calendar was approved by the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee last Friday but is still months away from receiving a green light from the entire panel. If Biden's plan is rubber-stamped by the full DNC, voters in New Hampshire—currently home to the nation's first primary contest following the Iowa caucuses—would be second in line, casting ballots on the same day as their counterparts in Nevada.

In its petition, More Perfect Union applauded other changes sought by Biden, including his proposed elevation of Nevada, Georgia, and Michigan—three general election battleground states that were among the 10 closest races in his 2020 victory over then-President Donald Trump.

The biggest flaw in the president's plan is that he "chose South Carolina to go first and ahead of all those battleground states," said the progressive media outlet. "Biden's proposal to elevate South Carolina to the front gives it incredible power to shape the race."

Doing so would be problematic, More Perfect Union contended, because:

South Carolina is not a battleground state: Donald Trump carried it by double digits in 2020. It is way more ideologically and culturally conservative than the Democratic Party and the rest of the nation. It's also one of the fiercest anti-union, anti-labor states in the country. In fact, South Carolina is already first in the nation with the terrible distinction of being the lowest-density union state in America.

If Democrats are serious about winning the working-class vote, South Carolina isn't the state to get it done.

While Biden has portrayed his preferred reshuffling of the Democratic Party's presidential primary calendar as an attempt to foreground voters of color, the progressive advocacy group RootsAction recently characterized the president's move as "an inappropriate, self-serving intervention dressed up in noble rhetoric."

Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign manager Jeff Weaver, meanwhile, warned Thursday in The Nation that "the schedule put forward by the White House empirically and dramatically diminishes the influence of Latinos on the Democratic presidential nominating process."

"In doing so, this proposed gerrymander will give Republicans more fodder for convincing Latino voters that the Democratic Party is not a home for them," Weaver argued. "Given the erosion of Democratic Party support among the fastest-growing segment of the American population, that's a problem."

Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign manager and current adviser Faiz Shakir—the founder of More Perfect Union and a DNC delegate—has vowed to reject Biden's effort to promote South Carolina, which he sees as a transparent attempt by the White House to reward Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) for his influential endorsement in the last presidential contest.

While Shakir agrees that Iowa should no longer go first, he argued in a New York Times opinion piece published Monday that pushing South Carolina, a GOP stronghold, to the front of the line "would be comical if it weren't tragic."

"We all know why South Carolina got the nod," wrote Shakir. "President Biden, Rep. Jim Clyburn, and many of his top supporters were buoyed by their campaign's comeback in February 2020 when the state delivered Mr. Biden his first victory of the season—and a big one at that."

"The media attention from that victory, and the consolidation of the Democratic field that it yielded, helped catapult him to winning a majority of the following Super Tuesday states," Shakir continued. "And when Covid spread through the nation shortly after, the rest of the primary contests were effectively quarantined, and Mr. Biden iced his victory. None of that story is a reason to put South Carolina first, however."

Soon after the piece was published, DNC Chair Jamie Harrison appeared to baselessly accuse Shakir of disrespecting Black voters. In an ensuing interview with Politico, Shakir said that "it's a very insulting approach to suggest that somehow we don't care about Black voters because we think South Carolina shouldn't go first."

In his essay, Shakir wrote that "if we really want to pick a diverse primary electorate, look to South Carolina's neighbor to the north—an actual battleground state."

More Perfect Union's petition also advocates for prioritizing racially diverse swing states: "As one of the strongest voting blocks in the Democratic coalition, it is essential Black voters get their say early and often throughout the nominating process. Yet Georgia has significantly more Black voters than South Carolina. So do Florida and North Carolina, two more battleground states. In fact, 14 states have larger Black populations than South Carolina."

"Our first priority must be to select states early in the process that help produce the strongest Democratic nominee consistent with our working-class values and agenda," says the petition. "South Carolina isn't even trending in any way toward the Democratic Party."

"Just two years ago, Jaime Harrison—now the chair of the Democratic National Committee—spent the eye-popping sum of $130 million to try to defeat [Republican] Sen. Lindsey Graham. After out-raising and outspending Mr. Graham, Mr. Harrison still lost the 2020 Senate race decisively," the petition adds. "Let's not compel all other Democratic campaigns to waste more money that could be better spent building coalitions in states Democrats need to win."

Adolph Reed Jr., professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an organizer with the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute's Medicare for All campaign in South Carolina, told Common Dreams that the notion that the South Carolina primary serves as corporate Democrats' so-called "firewall" has "only worked that way because Democratic elites have interpreted it that way when it's been in their interest to do so and because the news media have colluded with them in that view."

"It's just as important to note that South Carolina is a state no Democrat is going to win in November," said Reed, "and that Black voters in South Carolina are not identical to Black voters in Michigan, Illinois, or New York, that there's no such thing as 'the Black vote,' and that South Carolina Black voters' inclinations are shaped significantly by political dynamics within the state as are those of those voters in other states."

Shakir, for his part, called it a "special honor" to go first. "The state chosen for the task is rewarded in myriad ways. Iowa's economy has benefited greatly over the years from the high level of campaign spending and travel. Aware of the process' economic power, many of our Democratic campaigns employed union-friendly hotels, restaurants, and vendors when we were active in Iowa. Good luck finding that in South Carolina."

As RootsAction's Don't Run Joe campaign—an effort to dissuade the incumbent from seeking reelection in 2024—noted last week in a statement:

Biden received a mere 8% of the vote in the 2020 Democratic primary in New Hampshire, finishing fifth. Now he wants to dislodge New Hampshire from its long-standing first-in-the-nation primary role. On the other hand, Biden was the big winner of the South Carolina primary in 2020. Now he wants that state to go first.

Biden's decision to intrude into the Democratic National Committee's painstaking process for setting the 2024 presidential primary schedule appears to be a sign of anxiety in the White House about potential obstacles to his winning renomination. The president has indicated repeatedly that he plans to run again, so how ethical would it be for the DNC to allow a contestant to determine key rules of the game before the race begins?

South Carolina is a state that Biden obviously sees as vital to a renomination bid, but—unlike all other states under consideration for early primaries—it is not a battleground state. Everyone knows that the Democratic ticket will not win the deep-red state of South Carolina in 2024. Georgia, on the other hand, is one of the most important battleground states, and is more racially diverse than South Carolina. If Biden's proposal to supplant the New Hampshire primary as first-in-the-nation were truly about diversity and not about improving his own prospects for renomination, he would be promoting a state other than South Carolina to be first.

The group called on Biden to stop trying "to manipulate the Democratic primary schedule for his own narrow political purposes."

That message is echoed in More Perfect Union's petition, which tells Biden and the DNC: "Don't make South Carolina the first state to vote in the 2024 Democratic primary. Make diverse, battleground states that Democrats need to win in the general election, like Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan, first instead."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

The post Biden Wants to Prevent a Strong Primary Challenge. He Shouldn’t Get Away With It. appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

President Joe Biden has directed the Democratic National Committee to reduce the danger that progressives might effectively challenge him in the 2024 presidential primaries. That’s a key goal of his instructions to the DNC last week, when Biden insisted on dislodging New Hampshire—the longtime first-in-the-nation primary state where he received just 8 percent of the vote and finished fifth in the 2020 Democratic primary. No wonder Biden wants to replace New Hampshire with South Carolina, where he was the big primary winner.

The White House and mainstream journalists have echoed each other to assert that Biden would face no serious challenge to renomination if he runs again. But his blatant intrusion into the DNC’s process for setting the primary calendar is a sign of anxiety about potential obstacles to winning renomination.

Unlike all other states under consideration for early primaries, South Carolina is not a battleground state. Everyone knows that the Democratic ticket won’t come close to winning in deep-red South Carolina in 2024. But that state—which Biden obviously sees as vital to his renomination—has a party apparatus dominated by Biden’s powerful corporatist ally, Congressman James Clyburn.

A president is not a party's king...

The Biden plan to reorder the 2024 schedule “includes a subtle but effective ploy to minimize the chances that he’d face a left-wing challenger in the primaries if the 80-year-old president, as expected, seeks a second term,” centrist Walter Shapiro wrote approvingly in The New Republic. “More than that, Biden has created a template beyond 2024 to lessen the odds that future versions of Bernie Sanders will get liftoff in the early Democratic primaries.”

But serious public discussion from candidates with a range of outlooks is badly needed in the process of selecting the presidential nominee. From health care, extreme economic inequality, labor rights and racial justice to military spending, foreign policy and the climate emergency, voters in Democratic primaries need to hear crucial issues debated.

The current prevailing attitudes are retrograde. While Democratic politicians and pundits weigh in on whether Biden should run for president again, his party’s voters are presumed to be little more than spectators. But the decision on whether Biden will be the nominee in 2024 shouldn’t be his alone. A party that has been emphasizing the importance of democracy should not be so eager to short-circuit it in the presidential nominating process.

Very few congressional Democrats have been willing to publicly depart from the party line that Biden would be a fine standard-bearer. The few dissenting voices among them are usually furtive. The New York Times reported after the midterm election that a House Democrat—speaking “on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the White House"—said that "Biden’s numbers were ‘a huge drag' on Democratic candidates, who won in spite of the president not thanks to him."

Fears of antagonizing the White House have sealed Democratic officeholders inside a bubble that carries them away from the party's grassroots base. This fall began with most Democratic voters not wanting Biden to be the party's nominee next time. Even amid post-midterms euphoria among Democrats, they are now evenly split on the question. But Democrats on Capitol Hill and other party leaders remain frozen in place, rarely casting any doubt on the wisdom of renominating this president.

The disconnect from the party's base is in sync with a refusal to acknowledge the facts indicating that Biden at the top of the ticket would be an albatross around the necks of Democratic candidates in 2024. While voters are evenly divided between the two major parties, Biden's public-approval deficit has exceeded 10 percent almost all of this year. Nine out of 10 young adults—a key cohort for Democratic prospects—don't want him to run for re-election. In midterm exit polling, two-thirds of voters said they didn't want Biden to run. Yet, when asked about those survey results, the president fell back on "watch me" bravado.

We're told that smoke-filled rooms are a thing of the past in national politics. But when a president wants to run for re-election, the anticipated mode is not much better. Looking ahead, the only way to inject participatory democracy into the Democrats' nominating process for 2024 is to insist that the nomination should be earned with the party's voters, not bestowed from on high.

If President Biden decides to seek the Democratic nomination, as now seems likely, credible primary challengers could enliven an otherwise stultifying process, making it robust instead of a bust. The corrosive effects of stagnated assumptions should be held up to disinfecting sunlight. New ideas should be discussed rather than suppressed.

Conventional wisdom insists that a president has the divine political right to be the party's nominee for a second term. But a president is not a party's king, and he has no automatic right to renomination.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Norman Solomon.

Haryana’s former BJP IT Cell chief Arun Yadav tweeted these images on September 3, with the caption, “ये प्राईमरी स्कूल उत्तर प्रदेश के जिला संभल में है” (Translated: This is a primary school is located in Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh). His caption further reads, “अगर ये दिल्ली की तस्वीर होती तो अंतराष्ट्रीय अखबारों में सुर्खियां बनाई जाती” (Translation: Had it been a picture of Delhi, headlines would have been made in international newspapers). (Archived link)

ये प्राईमरी स्कूल उत्तर प्रदेश के जिला संभल में है
अगर ये दिल्ली की तस्वीर होती तो अंतराष्ट्रीय अखबारों में सुर्खियां बनाई जाती .. pic.twitter.com/DRAKNFe5f2

— Arun Yadav (@beingarun28) September 3, 2022

User Tanmay Shankar also tweeted these images. His caption reads, “योगी सरकार में काम दिखावे के लिए नहीं बल्कि प्रदेश को आगे बढ़ाने के लिए होता है।” (Translation: Work is not done for show but for the progress of the state in the Yogi government). (Archived link)

प्राईमरी स्कूल, असमोली, जिला संभल उत्तर प्रदेश
का ये कुछ फ़ोटो हैं।

योगी सरकार में काम दिखावे के लिए नहीं बल्कि प्रदेश को आगे बढ़ाने के लिए होता है।

वो तो ग़नीमत है दिल्ली में ऐसा शायद ही कोई सरकारी स्कूल हो वरना दिल्ली के मालिक NYT में खबर छपवा देते। pic.twitter.com/EjODkdT0Rg

— Tanmay Shankar(तन्मय शंकर) (@Shanktan) September 3, 2022

Standing counsel in the Supreme Court of India for Goa, Prashant Umrao also tweeted these images on September 4 with the caption, “ये प्राईमरी स्कूल उत्तर प्रदेश के जिला संभल में है” (Translation: These are pictures of primary schools in Uttar Pradesh), thus indicating that the images are representative of government primary schools in Uttar Pradesh in general. (Archived link)

उत्तर प्रदेश के सरकारी प्राइमरी स्कूल। pic.twitter.com/WNoma63buS

— Prashant Umrao (@ippatel) September 4, 2022

Several users including Politician Sadhvi Prachi also shared these images on Facebook with the same claim.

Fact-check

Upon a keyword search with the name of the school on Google, Alt News found a OneIndia article dated October 19, 2016, containing the same viral images of the school in Sambhal district of UP. The report is an account of how the condition of the school building, its maintenance, overall administration and even students’ attendance  improved drastically once Principal Kapil Malik took office in 2015. (Archived link)

We found a video interview of principal Kapil Malik by The Lallantop uploaded on February 7, 2017, where he takes the interviewer around the campus and gives a detailed account of how the school functions. In that interview, at the 10:00 mark, the interviewer asks Malik how much money he receives from the authorities and the government, to which Malik replies, “We don’t get any money from the authorities. Everything you see around was funded by me, from my own salary. The greenery, the bathrooms and other necessities were funded by me. I also pay for the maintenance of the school and spend around Rs. 5000 every month.”

Alt News reached out to the principal of the school, Kapil Malik, who said, “We get around Rs. 75,000 every year from the government for maintenance purposes, but that amount does not suffice. I have spent approximately Rs. 20-25 lakhs from my pocket for the construction of the present building. At present, I spend around 50,000 every year”.

He further said, “Before I got associated with the school in 2010, the school had an enrollment of only 30 students approximately. Now there are 300 students enrolled in our school. We have to refuse admission to many due to a lack of seats”.

When asked when the viral images were clicked, Malik replied, “They were taken in 2015”. It must be noted that the BJP government under Yogi Adityanath came into power in Uttar Pradesh in March, 2017.

The school was recognized as “the cleanest school” in the state in 2017. Malik received the award from Yogi Adityanath. Malik had also uploaded an image of him receiving this award on Facebook.

To sum up, the viral posts on social media along with images of a shining government primary school in Uttar Pradesh and the demand that the Yogi Adityanath-led UP government be acknowledged by international media for the “improvement of government schools in UP” are misleading.

Principal of Prathmik Vidyalaya, Itayla Mafi, Kapil Malik informed us that the government provides little funding for the school. Malik himself spent around Rs. 20-25 lakhs for the construction of the present building. He spends around Rs. 50,000 every year for maintenance. He also told Alt News that the viral photos were clicked in 2015, much before Yogi Adityanath came to power.

The post Fact-check: Viral images of well-maintained UP primary school are from 2016 appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

Democratic Party establishment insider Rep. Sean Partick Maloney and multi-millionaire Dan Goldman secured wins in their respective battles in New York's primary on Tuesday, dashing hopes of more progressive challengers in a turbulent year upended by redrawn congressional districts in the state.

Maloney, chair of the powerful Democracy Congressional Campaign Committee, which controls the party's election year war chest for House candidates, fended off progressive challenger state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi in the 17th District who said as she launched her campaign that the Democratic Party "should be led by fearless champions—not selfish, corporate politicians."

While Biaggi was endorsed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and numerous left-leaning advocacy groups, Maloney took 67% of the vote compared to her 33%.

In New York's 10th District, a crowded field of progressive candidates—including state assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, U.S. Congressman Mondaire Jones, and city council member Carlina Rivera—split progressive-leaning voters to give Goldman, a prosecutor, former legal analyst for MSNBC, and wealthy heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who spent millions on his own campaign, a narrow victory over Niou.

In a speech to supporters late Tuesday night, Niou—who received 24% of the vote compared to Goldman's 26%—said that topping the crowded progressive field in the district showed why her approach—"betting on people"—was key, even in a narrow defeat to the self-funded campaign by an ultra-wealthy candidate who had the controversial blessing of the New York Times editorial board. "We have shown them why betting on people is always the right choice," Niou said.

As it looked clear Tuesday night that Goldman would pull out a win, the Super PAC funded by the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC announced it was glad to have spent hundreds of thousands dollars to help defeat Niou's progressive campaign.

The complexity and contentiousness of this year's primary in New York was largely due to redestricting which led many, including several incumbents like Jones, moving districts and facing large fields of candidates. For his part, Jones opted not to face off against Maloney in the 17th, which opened the door for Biaggi's challenge, but ended up coming in behind both Niou and Goldman in the 10th.

As progressive columnist Ross Barkin noted on social media, "The big loss of the night is probably for Mondaire Jones, who will see his one term in Congress come to a close but not in a holy war that would've united the left against Sean Patrick Maloney. Instead, he'll probably be blamed for cutting into Yuh-Line Niou's votes."

Many on the left had openly worried about progressives running in the 10th splitting votes and giving Goldman a path to victory, and just two weeks before the primary Niou and Jones held a rare joint press conference in which they accused Goldman of using his vast wealth to "buy" the congressional seat.

While Niou's supporters express disappointment in her narrow loss in the Democratic primary, it was already being suggested that she may still have a path to win the 10th District's congressional seat if she was willing to take Goldman on in the general election as a Working Families Party candidate. The WFP endorsed Niou in the primary and retains a ballot line in federal elections in the state so that it can run candidates when it chooses.

Alexander Sammon of The American Prospect explored this idea ahead of the Tuesday's results and explained:

The stakes are high enough for the progressive groups backing these candidates to force this sort of post-August realignment. And if the WFP does put up Niou on their third-party line in November, it would be the highest-profile instance of this since 2003, when Letitia James, now New York's attorney general, ran against Democratic nominee Geoffrey Davis in Brooklyn's 35th City Council District, and won.

There are understandable reasons why this course of action by the WFP has been used sparingly. But if that option isn't pursued in this case, it would be hard to see why the party fought so hard to keep its ballot line in the first place.

Niou's performance on Tuesday led many in her camp to conclude that she has everything it takes to win on a more level playing field against Goldman in November.

Winnie Wong, senior advisor on the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign and vocal backer of Niou, made her position clear after seeing the available results Tuesday evening.

"The WFP should run YLN against Dan Goldman in the general," Wong tweeted. "That's my final answer."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jon Queally.

Primaries in New York’s redrawn congressional districts have led to heated battles within the Democratic Party that could have national implications. In the newly created 10th Congressional District, Dan Goldman, a conservative Democrat and heir to a multimillion-dollar Levi Strauss fortune, is running against a diverse field of candidates that includes Mondaire Jones, Yuh-Line Niou, Carlina Rivera and Elizabeth Holtzman. The New York Times endorsed Goldman without noting its publisher’s connection to the millionaire. Many congressional seats have been “thrown into chaos by redistricting” and seem to favor more conservative candidates, says Alex Sammon, staff writer at The American Prospect who has been closely following local races.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Becca Balint, a former public school teacher and current president of the Vermont Senate, notched a victory for progressives on Tuesday when she won the Democratic primary for the state's lone seat in the U.S. House.

"Hunger is a policy choice. Homelessness is a policy choice. We can make different choices."

Supported by democratic socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders—Vermont's most popular and influential political figure—Balint soundly defeated Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, who was backed by the state's retiring U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a corporate Democrat. With nearly all of the ballots counted, Balint is beating Gray by a margin of 60.6% to 37%.

"I'm humbled and honored by this victory," Balint tweeted Wednesday morning. "This was only possible because of people from every corner of Vermont who banded together to work and vote for a brighter future. This is your victory, because this has always been a movement by and for all VTers. Together we made history."

"The challenges we face are immense, and too many people still live on the margins, struggling with homelessness, growing inequality, climate catastrophe, and a healthcare system that puts corporations before people," she continued.

"I will never, as long as I live, accept the unconscionable wealth gap in this country," said Balint. "Hunger is a policy choice. Homelessness is a policy choice. We can make different choices. The work is not easy, but it can be joyful."

Balint, the first woman and openly gay person to be elected president of the Vermont Senate, added that the state "has chosen a bold vision for the future, and I will be proud to represent us in Congress."

"We can preserve democracy, tackle climate change, bridge inequality, and make the healthcare system work for all of us," said the fierce social justice advocate who supports the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, among other progressive priorities. "I know that we will."

After winning what many considered a proxy battle between the Democratic Party's egalitarian and neoliberal wings, Balint is poised to become Vermont's first woman member of Congress. She is seeking the seat left open by Rep. Peter Welch (D), who is running to replace Leahy in the upper chamber.

A Republican has not been elected to Vermont's at-large House seat since 1988. Balint, who will face GOP nominee Liam Madden in November's midterms, is heavily favored to retain the seat for her party.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben, a Vermont resident, applauded Balint for running a "brilliant campaign." Assuming that Balint wins her upcoming contest, the U.S. will "have a new and powerful voice for rural progressivism!" he added.

Sanders also congratulated Balint, describing the candidate he endorsed as "the kind of person we need in Washington to tackle the countless crises we face, from the existential threat of climate change to affordable housing and healthcare."

"To the volunteers who knocked on doors, who made phone calls, who donated to our campaign," Balint wrote on social media, "I cannot thank you enough."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Becca Balint, a former public school teacher and current president of the Vermont Senate, notched a victory for progressives on Tuesday when she won the Democratic primary for the state's lone seat in the U.S. House.

"Hunger is a policy choice. Homelessness is a policy choice. We can make different choices."

Supported by democratic socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders—Vermont's most popular and influential political figure—Balint soundly defeated Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, who was backed by the state's retiring U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a corporate Democrat. With nearly all of the ballots counted, Balint is beating Gray by a margin of 60.6% to 37%.

"I'm humbled and honored by this victory," Balint tweeted Wednesday morning. "This was only possible because of people from every corner of Vermont who banded together to work and vote for a brighter future. This is your victory, because this has always been a movement by and for all VTers. Together we made history."

"The challenges we face are immense, and too many people still live on the margins, struggling with homelessness, growing inequality, climate catastrophe, and a healthcare system that puts corporations before people," she continued.

"I will never, as long as I live, accept the unconscionable wealth gap in this country," said Balint. "Hunger is a policy choice. Homelessness is a policy choice. We can make different choices. The work is not easy, but it can be joyful."

Balint, the first woman and openly gay person to be elected president of the Vermont Senate, added that the state "has chosen a bold vision for the future, and I will be proud to represent us in Congress."

"We can preserve democracy, tackle climate change, bridge inequality, and make the healthcare system work for all of us," said the fierce social justice advocate who supports the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, among other progressive priorities. "I know that we will."

After winning what many considered a proxy battle between the Democratic Party's egalitarian and neoliberal wings, Balint is poised to become Vermont's first woman member of Congress. She is seeking the seat left open by Rep. Peter Welch (D), who is running to replace Leahy in the upper chamber.

A Republican has not been elected to Vermont's at-large House seat since 1988. Balint, who will face GOP nominee Liam Madden in November's midterms, is heavily favored to retain the seat for her party.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben, a Vermont resident, applauded Balint for running a "brilliant campaign." Assuming that Balint wins her upcoming contest, the U.S. will "have a new and powerful voice for rural progressivism!" he added.

Sanders also congratulated Balint, describing the candidate he endorsed as "the kind of person we need in Washington to tackle the countless crises we face, from the existential threat of climate change to affordable housing and healthcare."

"To the volunteers who knocked on doors, who made phone calls, who donated to our campaign," Balint wrote on social media, "I cannot thank you enough."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

U.S Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday narrowly fended off a Democratic primary challenger whose campaign was bankrolled in part by a GOP operative, corporate lobbyists, and prominent Minnesota businessmen.

Omar, a stalwart progressive who has been a frequent target of racist right-wing attacks and death threats, prevailed by fewer than 3,000 votes, a far closer contest than her 2020 primary. Her opponent, former Minneapolis City Council Member Don Samuels, conceded the race.

"Tonight's victory is a testament to how much our district believes in the collective values we are fighting for and how much they're willing to do to help us overcome defeat," Omar, the whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said late Tuesday after the race was called in her favor. "This win is for them and everyone who still believes that regression will not be the legacy of the Fifth."

Omar, who has also repeatedly been thrown under the bus by the Democratic establishment, overcame a torrent of outside opposition spending, including from a newly created super PAC financed with donations from Kelly Doran—a Minnesota businessman and commercial real estate developer with a history of donating to Republicans—and Vance Opperman, the head of a private investment firm.

The Drain the DC Swamp PAC, a far-right outfit aligned with former President Donald Trump and GOP election-deniers, also spent against Omar in the primary for Minnesota's solidly blue Fifth Congressional District.

The Intercept reported earlier this year that Samuels, who was previously elected to the Minneapolis school board with the support of right-wing privatization advocates, attended an April fundraiser "headlined by developers, lobbyists, and business leaders, including at least one Republican operative and donor, Andy Brehm; Jonathan Weinhagen, the president and CEO of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce; Steve Cramer, the president and CEO of the MPLS Downtown Council, an organization of more than 450 Minneapolis businesses; a former U.S. ambassador to Morocco; and a former City Council president."

Jeremy Slevin, Omar's senior communications director, noted on Twitter earlier this month that "close to 40%" of Samuel's campaign donations "were more than $200 in the first quarter of 2022 (notably they did not disclose the percentage in the second quarter)."

"This is extraordinarily high," Slevin wrote. "By comparison, 99% of Ilhan Omar's donors were less than $200 in the same time period."

In a statement late Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that "llhan Omar has faced some of the ugliest attacks of any elected official and had hundreds of thousands of dollars spent against her."

"Despite this, she won her primary once again," said Sanders. "Like Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush, these progressive champions have shown that they persevere and deliver for their constituents despite the well-funded, nasty attacks upon them."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Wisconsin's progressive Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes handily won the state's Democratic U.S. Senate primary on Tuesday, advancing to take on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in a November matchup that could play a key role in determining which party controls the upper chamber next year.

"This is the honor of a lifetime," Barnes said following his landslide victory, which was expected after his top Democratic rivals dropped out last month.

"Now, we take the fight to Ron Johnson," Barnes declared on social media. "We're going to the Senate to rebuild the middle class. We're going to protect the right to choose. We're going to fight to make the American Dream an American reality. Are you with me?"

Barnes, a supporter of Medicare for All, won the backing of high-profile lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who celebrated the lieutenant governor's victory as a win for efforts to reshape a chamber that has long stood as an obstacle to progressive change.

"We need strong progressives like Mandela in the Senate to fight for an agenda that looks out for the working class of this country, not billionaires and corporations," Sanders tweeted. "On to November!"

A survey conducted ahead of Tuesday's primary showed Barnes leading by two percentage points in a hypothetical general election matchup against Johnson, a Trump loyalist who recently said he would favor turning Social Security and Medicare into "discretionary spending" programs, further opening the door to cuts.

"Wisconsinites pay into Social Security through a lifetime of hard work, and they're counting on this program and Medicare—but Ron Johnson just doesn't care," Barnes said in response to Johnson's remarks last week.

Along with Pennsylvania, where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is taking on ultra-rich ex-TV personality Dr. Oz, Wisconsin is one of several states where Democrats are looking to flip Senate seats in their bid to maintain control of the chamber and expand their razor-thin margins.

Analysts consider the Wisconsin race a toss-up, and progressives voiced confidence Tuesday that Barnes will succeed in denying the Republican incumbent a third term.

"Even before he got in the race, we knew Mandela was the candidate who could build a winning coalition to take on Ron Johnson," said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. "All his life, Mandela has been bringing people together across race and place. Tonight is the starting gun for what may be the make-or-break election of the year."

"If Mandela succeeds, we can change how the Senate works—and who it works for," Mitchell added. "We've been with Mandela from day one, and we'll be with him through November."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

In Arizona Tuesday night, state Rep. Mark Finchem became the sixth Republican who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election results to win a state secretary of state primary race, bringing him a step closer to overseeing Arizona's elections—and posing "a danger to our democracy," as one critic said.

"To protect our elections and freedom to vote, we must defeat them up and down the ballot, from county clerk to secretary of state."

Finchem was present at the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, although he says he did not enter the Capitol building where the House was certifying the election results.

He is a member of the far-right, anti-government extremist group Oath Keepers, which recruits law enforcement and former military members and has confronted antiracist protesters in Ferguson, Missouri and Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as patrolling polling places.

Finchem's official website features a petition that supporters can sign to push for the decertification of the 2020 election results in Arizona, and he sponsored legislation earlier this year to "set aside" the results in Yuma, Maricopa, and Pima Counties, claiming there is "clear and convincing evidence that the elections in those counties were irredeemably compromised" despite the fact that no such evidence has been found after recounts and investigations.

Considering Finchem's background, the Arizona Republican primary for secretary of state was "one of the scariest races" that took place Tuesday, said Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali ahead of the election.

"Just in case voter suppression doesn't work, Trump and Republicans are banking on Arizona congressman Mark Finchem to help them throw out the state's electoral votes if, God forbid, the state votes against Trump in 2024," predicted Ali.

Endorsed by former President Donald Trump, Finchem has vowed to end early voting in Arizona, baselessly claiming it leads to fraud, and to pull Arizona out of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the nonprofit group which helps states to maintain accurate voter rolls and increase voter registration access to eligible voters. Both Republican and Democratic election officials have said ERIC helps to prevent election fraud.

Finchem also wants the state to switch to paper ballots and has supported a proposal that state legislatures should be able to appoint their own presidential electors if they believe an election was fraudulent.

As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, Finchem is one of several election-denying secretary of state candidates whose campaigns have been funded partially by dark money groups.

Promoters of Trump's "Big Lie" have also won Republican secretary of state primaries in Michigan, New Mexico, Alabama, Nevada, and Indiana.

Secretary of state primaries are also scheduled to take place in states including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Massachusetts in the coming weeks, with one pro-Big Lie candidate who has argued "machines controlled" the 2020 election and one who has called for Wisconsin's results to be decertified.

The success of election deniers in GOP primaries is "a five-alarm fire for our democracy and our freedom to vote," said Sean Eldridge, founder and president of Stand Up America.

"To protect our elections and freedom to vote, we must defeat them up and down the ballot, from county clerk to secretary of state," said Eldridge.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

As the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) invests millions in Democratic primaries to defeat progressives who support Palestine, we speak to one of the candidates: Michigan Congressmember Andy Levin, whose primary is on Tuesday. He is a self-described Zionist who supports a two-state solution, but earlier this year a former president of AIPAC described him as “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the U.S.-Israel relationship.” “What you have here is a real threat to the Democratic Party being able to choose our own nominees that we send to the general election in November,” says Levin. Levin was among 17 House Democrats arrested Tuesday in a pro-abortion protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We speak to Maryland Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin, member of the House January 6 select committee, about the pro-Trump Republican who won Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary in the state and helped organized buses to the insurrection. Dan Cox is the latest in a slate of Republicans across the U.S. to advance in the party after supporting Trump’s election lies. If elected, Cox has vowed to conduct a forensic audit of the 2020 election. He also wants to ban abortion in Maryland and end what he describes as “sexual indoctrination” in schools. “He obviously speaks to an extreme-right faction in our state that has swallowed Trumpist indoctrination,” says Raskin. “You could not have a purer distillation of dangerous extremist ideology than what is propounded by Dan Cox.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Pro-Israel lobby groups have spent “shocking” amounts of money to change the course of multiple Democratic congressional primaries over the past year alone, reports our guest Peter Beinart. The latest is in Maryland, where former Congressmember Donna Edwards is being outspent sevenfold by corporate attorney Glenn Ivey in her bid to win back her old seat in the state’s 4th Congressional District. Beinart, the editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, says the AIPAC-led PACs disguise their attack ads with local issues but in reality are designed to oust candidates who take stances in support of Palestinian rights and working people.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Hundreds of protesters marched toward the Supreme Court in Washington on Thursday morning to send a message to President Joe Biden: He is not doing enough.

Demonstrators minced no words when it came to the five justices who had voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and issued sharp criticisms of a Republican Party that spent years securing a majority on the court extreme enough to reverse 50 years of precedent. Yet the anger that got many of the activists out on the street was aimed at the Democratic Party that many of the marchers hold partially responsible.

“The Democrats act as if the worst will never happen. And the worst keeps happening.”

Reverend William Barber II is detained by Capitol Police for blocking an intersection with abortion rights demonstrators in Washington, D.C., on June 30, 2022.

Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“We are here because Republicans have attacked Roe for 50 years and Democrats have done nothing.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Austin Ahlman.

State Rep. Delia Ramirez trounced Chicago Alderman Gil Villegas in the Democratic primary for Illinois' newly drawn and solidly blue 3rd Congressional District, besting an influx of spending by billionaire-backed organizations working to defeat progressive candidates nationwide.

"Tonight, the Illinois 3rd Congressional District has spoken—we are rooted and we are ready," Ramirez said after she was officially declared the winner. As of this writing, Ramirez leads Villegas by a margin of 65.8% to 23.7%.

"She's the type of fighter we need to defeat MAGA extremism."

Democratic Majority for Israel, a billionaire-funded political action committee with ties to AIPAC, spent more than $157,000 on the race in an attempt to defeat Ramirez, a Medicare for All and Green New Deal supporter endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.), and other prominent progressives.

Ramirez also faced opposition spending from the Mainstream Democrats PAC, a group funded by billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman. The organization has invested large sums to beat insurgent progressives and boost right-wing Democrats—including Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas)—in midterm primary races across the country, with mixed success.

The Charter Schools Action Fund and the National Association of Realtors also delved into the race on Villegas' side.

"In our corrupt political system, billionaires and their super PACs are spending millions to defeat progressive candidates," Sanders said earlier this week. "They want a 'two party' system in which everyone is owned by wealthy donors. They have the money, but we've got the people."

Ramirez, who vowed to reject corporate PAC money, benefited from significant outside spending by progressive groups such as the Working Families Party, which poured nearly $638,000 into the race on her behalf.

"Delia Ramirez has already proven what a Working Families Democrat can do in office, and now she's going to bring that leadership to Congress," Natalia Salgado, director of federal affairs at the Working Families Party, said in a statement late Tuesday. "In just three years as a state legislator, she led successful efforts to codify abortion rights, pass Medicaid coverage for everyone over 42, and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in rental and mortgage relief for people across Illinois."

"Delia has always shown up for her community and tonight, voters showed up for her," Salgado added. "We were proud to back Delia on day one, and we're looking forward to partnering with her in Congress to pass a working families agenda."

Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the Indivisible Project—which also supported Ramirez—said that "we're ecstatic a true, grassroots progressive is well on her way to Congress, ready to fight for her community."

"It's clear that Democratic voters want authentic community leaders like Delia, even if Republican mega-donors might disagree," said Greenberg. "Delia is a model of bold, principled leadership and we've been proud to stand behind her... She's the type of fighter we need to defeat MAGA extremism."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

State Rep. Delia Ramirez trounced Chicago Alderman Gil Villegas in the Democratic primary for Illinois' newly drawn and solidly blue 3rd Congressional District, besting an influx of spending by billionaire-backed organizations working to defeat progressive candidates nationwide.

"Tonight, the Illinois 3rd Congressional District has spoken—we are rooted and we are ready," Ramirez said after she was officially declared the winner. As of this writing, Ramirez leads Villegas by a margin of 65.8% to 23.7%.

"She's the type of fighter we need to defeat MAGA extremism."

Democratic Majority for Israel, a billionaire-funded political action committee with ties to AIPAC, spent more than $157,000 on the race in an attempt to defeat Ramirez, a Medicare for All and Green New Deal supporter endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.), and other prominent progressives.

Ramirez also faced opposition spending from the Mainstream Democrats PAC, a group funded by billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman. The organization has invested large sums to beat insurgent progressives and boost right-wing Democrats—including Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas)—in midterm primary races across the country, with mixed success.

The Charter Schools Action Fund and the National Association of Realtors also delved into the race on Villegas' side.

"In our corrupt political system, billionaires and their super PACs are spending millions to defeat progressive candidates," Sanders said earlier this week. "They want a 'two party' system in which everyone is owned by wealthy donors. They have the money, but we've got the people."

Ramirez, who vowed to reject corporate PAC money, benefited from significant outside spending by progressive groups such as the Working Families Party, which poured nearly $638,000 into the race on her behalf.

"Delia Ramirez has already proven what a Working Families Democrat can do in office, and now she's going to bring that leadership to Congress," Natalia Salgado, director of federal affairs at the Working Families Party, said in a statement late Tuesday. "In just three years as a state legislator, she led successful efforts to codify abortion rights, pass Medicaid coverage for everyone over 42, and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in rental and mortgage relief for people across Illinois."

"Delia has always shown up for her community and tonight, voters showed up for her," Salgado added. "We were proud to back Delia on day one, and we're looking forward to partnering with her in Congress to pass a working families agenda."

Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the Indivisible Project—which also supported Ramirez—said that "we're ecstatic a true, grassroots progressive is well on her way to Congress, ready to fight for her community."

"It's clear that Democratic voters want authentic community leaders like Delia, even if Republican mega-donors might disagree," said Greenberg. "Delia is a model of bold, principled leadership and we've been proud to stand behind her... She's the type of fighter we need to defeat MAGA extremism."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Republican voters in Nevada on Tuesday chose Jim Marchant, a former state legislator who continues to baselessly deny the 2020 presidential election was legitimate, as the party's nominee for Nevada's top election official.

Marchant has said he ran for secretary of state at the urging of Juan O. Savin, a QAnon influencer, and that if he had been in office in 2020 he would have refused to certify the presidential election results.

"Marchant doesn't want to institute substantive improvements so much as he wants to make it harder for Nevadans to vote and harder for people like him to lose."

As a candidate, Marchant is pushing for a shift to hand-counting election ballots and decertifying voting machines that were used in 2020. Election experts warn hand-counting votes would open up the tallying process to far more errors. Marchant has also called for the elimination of voting-by-mail and early voting.

Ahead of the primary election, a column in The Nevada Independent called on voters to reject the "conspiracy theorist" running for one of the state's most powerful positions.

"Marchant doesn't want to institute substantive improvements so much as he wants to make it harder for Nevadans to vote and harder for people like him to lose," wrote Hyla Winters, a former Republican. "There's a word for this: rigging."

Marchant also ran for Congress in 2020 and, like former President Donald Trump's, claimed that his loss was fraudulent. He eventually lost a lawsuit challenging the election, which he lost by 16,000 votes.

In a debate during the primary, Marchant told the audience that the state's and country's entire election systems are illegitimate, asserting, "Your vote hasn't counted for decades. You haven't elected anybody."

Marchant is the fourth so-called "America First" candidate to win a Republican primary; the slate of candidates includes supporters of QAnon and people who deny that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

"Election deniers are on the verge of winning offices that run elections," tweeted New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Offering her endorsement to New York state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi on Tuesday in the state's 17th district, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on her supporters to "continue building progressive power" in Washington by helping Biaggi defeat Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, current chair of the Democrat's congressional fundraising arm.

In a fundraising email, Ocasio-Cortez noted that Biaggi, who has served in state Senate since 2018, "knows what it takes to go up against powerful opponents and win," having unseated former state Sen. Jeffrey Klein of the Republican-aligned Independent Democratic Conference.

"New Yorkers deserve fierce champions in Washington, and that's why I'm so proud to receive the endorsement of one of the bravest fighters I know."

Biaggi announced in late May that she would challenge Maloney, who earlier said he would run to represent the 17th district instead of the 18th, which he has represented since 2013.

The boundaries of Maloney's district changed when a court ordered the state's congressional map to be redrawn, with the new 17th district giving him a potential advantage with voters.

The decision of the well-funded Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chair to run in the 17th district pushed progressive incumbent Rep. Mondaire Jones out of the race and prompted Biaggi to take on Maloney, calling him a "selfish corporate Democrat" who had abdicated his responsibility to ensure the party keeps its House majority.

In her email announcing her endorsement, Ocasio-Cortez said the race would be "competitive and expensive" but that Biaggi is "ready to take her leadership to Congress where I know she'll continue fighting for working people" and suggested the state senator is well-prepared to take on Maloney.

"As a state senator, Alessandra arrived in Albany to a government plagued by gridlock—one caused by conservatives in our own party, rampant corruption, and cronyism at the highest levels," said the congresswoman. "Through hard work, Alessandra and our progressive allies across New York were able to break through and deliver a series of wins—including codifying Roe statewide and expanding voting rights."

Maloney dismissed Ocasio-Cortez's statement, claiming the popular congresswoman's vote of confidence would make little difference in the race, while former Obama administration advisor Jim Messina claimed the endorsement was "counter-productive" and denounced Biaggi for running against a "committed progressive."

Biaggi thanked Ocasio-Cortez for her endorsement, saying she is "running for Congress to challenge inaction and political cowardice."

"New Yorkers deserve fierce champions in Washington, and that's why I'm so proud to receive the endorsement of one of the bravest fighters I know," she added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner was officially declared the winner Friday in the Democratic primary for Oregon's 5th Congressional District, ousting right-wing incumbent and Blue Dog Coalition member Rep. Kurt Schrader, a leading obstructionist in the U.S. House.

In interviews throughout the primary campaign, McLeod-Skinner dubbed Schrader the "Joe Manchin of the House," pointing to his initial vote against the American Rescue Plan and his opposition to congressional Democrats' efforts to lower sky-high prescription drug prices.

President Joe Biden endorsed Schrader in the race despite the right-wing Democrat's role in thwarting elements of the Build Back Better package, which died in the U.S. Senate largely thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

Schrader, a close ally of the pharmaceutical industry, opposed his party's widely popular effort to allow Medicare to negotiate prices directly with drug companies, a policy that McLeod-Skinner says she supports.

"You have gone so far to the right that running to the left of you simply means I'm a Democrat," McLeod-Skinner told Schrader during an April debate.

In a social media post on Friday following confirmation of her victory—which was delayed due to barcode issues on ballots in Oregon's third-largest county—McLeod-Skinner wrote that she is "honored to be elected as Oregon's Democratic nominee for Congress in OR-5."

"From Sellwood to Sunriver, Oregonians never stopped believing we can protect our families, our climate, and our civil rights," added McLeod-Skinner, who was endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). "Oregonians—this is your victory."

McLeod-Skinner, who was declared the winner with a lead of 57% to 43%, will face Republican nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer in November.

Progressive advocacy groups hailed McLeod-Skinner's victory as evidence that Democratic voters are increasingly fed up with lawmakers who prioritize their donors' interests over those of their constituents.

"This is a David and Goliath moment," said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, which backed McLeod-Skinner in the race. "This win proves that voters are hungry for leaders who will fight for working families, not billionaires and Big Pharma."

David Mitchell, a cancer patient and founder of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, said in a statement Friday that "drug price reform figured prominently in Oregon's 5th Congressional District primary, where Rep. Kurt Schrader tried to reinvent himself as pro-patient and anti-Big Pharma when he in fact led the effort to weaken legislation allowing Medicare negotiation."

"Voters saw through his lies, and for the first time in 42 years, an incumbent member of Congress lost his job in an Oregon primary," Mitchell added. "The result sends a clear message to Democrats and Republicans alike: Americans want Congress to pass legislation to lower drug prices, and those who stand in the way or fail to deliver on their promises will be held accountable by voters at the ballot box. More talk won't do. Fake solutions won't do. No more excuses."

Schrader is the second member of the so-called "unbreakable nine"—a group of House Democrats that helped tank the Build Back Better Act—to be ousted in a primary this year.

Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.), also a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, lost her primary race earlier this week to fellow Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.).

"The Broken Nine," People for Bernie mockingly tweeted Friday.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The Washington Post (5/24/22) reported that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s GOP primary win “threatened Trump’s reputation as GOP kingmaker.”

The country’s centrist corporate media have decided what this year’s primaries are mainly about: Donald Trump.

In the wake of an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and continued efforts by the Republican Party to undermine democratic processes, corporate media remain fixated on Trump’s role in the party, seeing the 2022 primaries as a series of referenda on Trump and his role as kingmaker. But the focus on Trump obscures the even more important story that Trump represents: the GOP assault on democracy, which is being carried out only marginally less aggressively by many of those “defeating” him.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is the perfect example of this. After this week’s state primaries, most corporate media made their lead story the losses of Trump-backed candidates, in particular to Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who both played very public roles in refusing to bow to Trump’s demands to “find” votes for him in Georgia in 2020.

The Washington Post (5/24/22) declared, “Kemp, Raffensperger Win in Blow to Trump and His False Election Claims.” A New York Times (5/24/22) subhead read, “The victories in Georgia by Gov. Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, handed the former president his biggest primary season setback so far.” At Reuters (5/24/22), the top “takeaway” subhead read: “Trump Takes Lumps.”

These are stories centrist media like to tell: The voters are sensibly rejecting extremists from their party, so the “moderate” candidates are taking the right path. Journalists tell this story over and over in coverage of Democratic primaries, with “move to the center” stories encouraging the party to reject its progressive candidates. The problem is, candidates like Kemp and Raffensperger are not moderate, except in comparison to Trump—and painting the story as one centrally about Trump obscures the anti-democratic nature of those who defeated his hand-picked candidates.

The Boston Globe (5/24/22) noted that “Kemp had not beaten back the 2020 doubts of voters [who thought that election “stolen”]; he simply found a different way to champion them than Trump.”

The Globe‘s Jess Bidgood reported:

Kemp’s easy win over Perdue on Tuesday may seem to suggest that the former president and his baseless insistence that fraud and irregularities cost him the election have lost their iron grip on the Republican Party….

Even though he stood up to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Kemp found other ways to assuage the GOP base’s unfounded doubts about the issue. He signed a voting bill that added new hurdles to absentee voting and handed some election oversight power over to the Republican-controlled legislature. He spoke of “election integrity” everywhere he went, while Raffensperger leaned into the issue as well.

But even this didn’t go nearly far enough in describing Kemp and Raffensperger’s histories of attacking voting rights. As Georgia’s secretary of state, Kemp for years vigorously promoted false election fraud stories and made Georgia a hotspot for undermining voting rights. He aggressively investigated groups that helped register voters of color; in 2014, he launched a criminal investigation into Stacey Abrams’ New Georgia Project—which was helping to register tens of thousands of Black Georgians who previously hadn’t voted—calling their activities “voter fraud.” His investigation ultimately uncovered no wrongdoing (New Republic, 5/5/15).

Kemp oversaw the rejection of tens of thousands of voter registrations on technicalities like missing accents or typos (Atlantic, 11/7/18) and improperly purged hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls prior to the 2018 election (Rolling Stone, 10/27/18), disproportionately impacting voters of color (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3/12/20). He refused to recuse himself from overseeing his own race for governor against Abrams, drawing rebukes from former president, Georgia native and fair elections advocate Jimmy Carter (The Nation, 10/29/18), among others. Kemp ran that governor’s race as a “Trump conservative.”

None of Kemp’s history as anti–voting rights secretary of state was mentioned in any of the next-day election coverage FAIR surveyed. (There was an opinion piece on CNN.com on May 26 that detailed “Kemp’s appalling anti-democracy conduct.”)

As governor, Kemp has further eroded voting rights in Georgia, as mentioned by the Globe (a story that the media managed to both-sides at the time—FAIR.org, 4/8/21). He has also taken a hard-right stance on many other rights issues, signing into law a bill to prohibit “divisive concepts” from being taught in schools, a bill to ban abortions as early as six weeks and a bill discriminating against transgender kids in sports.

Like Kemp, Raffensperger was an early supporter of Trump who pushed election fraud stories and voter suppression tactics. As FAIR (3/5/21) pointed out at the time, centrist media fawned over Raffensperger for standing up to Trump in the 2020 election, ignoring his “support of the little lies that made the Big Lie possible.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1/4/21) editorialized that Georgia Secretary of State Brad “Raffensperger deserves kudos from all Georgians for continuing a principled stand for what is right,” weeks after reporting (12/17/20) that “the secretary has helped fuel suspicions about the integrity of Georgia’s elections.”

For instance, just weeks before an uncritical editorial (1/4/21) praising him, the local Journal-Constitution published a front-page investigation (12/17/20) that found Raffensperger was touting “inflated figures about the number of investigations his office was conducting related to the election, giving those seeking to sow doubt in the outcome a new storyline.” Those claims helped propel the state’s 2020 bill restricting voting rights.

Like Kemp, he launched vote fraud investigations into progressive voter registration groups (AJC, 11/30/20), and oversaw the purge of nearly 200,000 voters, mostly people of color, from the rolls before the 2020 election (Democracy Now!, 1/5/21).

During his re-election campaign, Raffensperger had gone on national television (CBS, 1/9/22) to push for a constitutional amendment prohibiting noncitizens from voting in any elections, as well as to praise photo ID requirements for voting and oppose same-day voter registration. He has also called for an expansion of law enforcement presence at polling sites.

In their obsession with Trump’s win/loss record and their desperate search for “moderate” Republicans, journalists whitewash GOP candidates who paved the way for Trumpism and, ultimately, seek the same end—minority rule—by only slightly different means.

Featured image: Reuters (5/24/22) depiction of Donald Trump illustrating the takeaway, “Trump Takes Lumps.”

The post Press Makes Trump, Not Voting Rights, the Primary Issue appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

Clinging to a 177-vote lead, nine-term Rep. Henry Cuellar declared victory early Wednesday in the closely watched Democratic primary runoff for Texas' 28th Congressional District as Jessica Cisneros, his progressive challenger, said the contest remained too close to officially call.

Cuellar, an anti-abortion Democrat with ties to the fossil fuel industry, currently leads Cisneros by a margin of 22,694 votes to 22,517, less than a percentage point.

"The votes are in, the margin will hold. We have won by 177 votes," the incumbent's campaign tweeted, an assessment that leading election analyst Dave Wasserman tentatively echoed.

But Cisneros, a human rights attorney backed by prominent progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups, wrote in the early hours of Wednesday morning that "this election is still too close to call, and we are still waiting for every ballot and eligible vote to be counted."

"Thank you to every single voter that came out to support our campaign," wrote Cisneros. "This fight isn't over."

Despite his right-wing policy positions and voting record on climate, abortion, immigration, and gun control—he has received an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association—Cuellar enjoyed the unwavering support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the top three Democrats in the U.S. House.

Pelosi, who helped push Cuellar over the finish line in his first contest against Cisneros two years ago, recorded a robocall for the 2022 primary describing the Texas incumbent as "a fighter for hard-working families"—even as he opposes House Democrats' flagship labor rights bill and a $15 federal minimum wage.

Cuellar specifically expressed gratitude to Clyburn, who campaigned for the right-wing Democrat in the final stretch of the runoff race, which saw billionaire-funded super PACs such as AIPAC's United Democracy Project spend heavily against Cisneros. Cuellar's fossil fuel industry allies also pumped money into the race.

"This primary was a hard-fought battle and I'd like to thank my supporters, who were instrumental in this victory," said Cuellar, who will face Republican Cassie Garcia if his lead holds. "And of course, I could not do this without the tireless support of my wife and daughters. I also want to thank Whip Clyburn for his steadfast support."

Earlier this month, following the leak of a draft opinion indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade, Cisneros called on Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn to drop their support for Cuellar, who has been described as one of the last remaining anti-abortion Democrats in Congress. The Democratic leaders refused to do so despite publicly touting the importance of electing pro-choice lawmakers.

Cuellar's position on gun control also came under renewed scrutiny following the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday.

Cuellar has previously refused to return NRA donations in the wake of mass shootings.

"If Cuellar pulls this out," The American Prospect's Alex Sammon wrote sardonically, "national Democrats can be proud that their exceptional efforts and first action in the wake of this shooting in Uvalde that has killed at least 19 children will be to send a politician from the region with an 'A' rating from the NRA back to Congress."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Last summer, a group of Democrats organized by New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer derailed President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda by successfully decoupling it from a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The group was dubbed the “Unbreakable Nine.”  The bill, known as the Build Back Better Act, was paid for in part by tax increases on the wealthy and on private equity, and was opposed by the dark-money group No Labels, funded by private equity moguls and the extreme rich.

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

Progressive New York state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi on Tuesday formally announced a primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose recent decision to run in a safer district and effectively boot out a progressive incumbent sparked Democratic ire.

"The Democratic Party should be led by fearless champions—not selfish, corporate politicians," Biaggi tweeted Tuesday. "I'm launching my campaign to take on Sean Patrick Maloney."

The announcement from Biaggi followed the release of newly drawn maps and Maloney's controversial decision to run in the state's 17th Congressional District rather than the 18th, which he currently represents.

The 17th is currently represented by Rep. Mondaire Jones, who has subsequently announced his intention to run in the newly drawn 10th district, not the 16th, which is represented by another Black progressive Democrat, Rep. Jamaal Bowman.

In an interview with The New York Times published Monday in which Biaggi called Maloney "a selfish corporate Democrat," she said, "What hurt the party was having the head of the campaign arm not stay in his district, not maximize the number of seats New York can have to hold the majority."

As The Intercept reported Saturday:

Underneath the district shuffling and refuge seeking is a dire warning for Democrats: Maloney is the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. His entire job is to make sure that Democrats hold their narrow House majority or else the Biden legislative agenda will be completely dead. When the new lines were released, Maloney's district became one that Joe Biden had carried by 8 percentage points. Jumping into Jones's district gave him just an extra 2-point advantage. The DCCC chair signaling nervousness about his own district is less than confidence inspiring. [...]

Maloney's move may be the most brazenly selfish district hop in American political history. That's not said lightly, given that Maloney is operating in an industry—politics—that is populated almost exclusively by some of the most craven, attention-seeking people in our society.

Biaggi has previously bested a more conservative Democrat; in 2018, as a first-time candidate, she defeated state Sen. Jeffrey Klein of the GOP-aligned Independent Democratic Conference despite being massively outspent.

With her new bid to represent New York's 17th in the U.S. House, she says on her campaign website that she's running "to protect and defend our democracy, to halt the climate crisis, to grow our supply of affordable housing, and to transform our government and economy to serve us all."

"New Yorkers need a new generation of strong, fearless, and relentless leaders in Washington," Biaggi adds. "And that's exactly what they can expect from me."

The primary election is set for Aug. 23.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Andrea Germanos.

Labor’s win in Saturday’s election heralds real change in health policy. Although Labor had a small-target strategy, with limited big spending commitments, its victory represents a value shift to a party committed to equity and Medicare, and, potentially, a style shift to a hands-on, equity-oriented health minister.

Labor’s health spokesperson, Mark Butler, is expected to be the new health minister, subject to a reshuffle caused by two Labor shadow ministers losing their seats.

Butler is very different from his predecessor. He was Australia’s first minister for mental health and ageing in the Gillard government.

• READ MORE: Scott Morrison defeated – Labor to govern in minority or majority
• Other Australian federal election reports

He also held the equity-focused ministries of housing, homelessness, and social inclusion. He has written a book about ageing in Australia, published by Melbourne University Press.

The new minister faces two urgent policy priorities: primary care and covid.

Fixing primary care
Outgoing health minister Greg Hunt released an unfunded strategy paper on budget night. It aimed to improve primary care — a person’s first point of contact with the health system, usually their GP or practice nurses. The paper had languished on his desk for months and was the result of years of consultation and consensus-building.

One of the largest and most important Labor commitments during the campaign was almost A$1 billion over four years for primary care reform, about A$250 million in a full year.

The funding commitment is cast broadly, promising to improve patient access to GP-led multidisciplinary team care, including nursing and allied health and after-hours care; greater patient affordability; and better management of complex and chronic conditions.

Presumably, a key way this will be effected will be through voluntary patient enrolment. A patient would enrol with a practice, and the practice would get an annual payment for that enrolment. This was promised for people over 70 in the 2019–20 budget but not delivered.

This new policy is a welcome start for reform in primary care and signals the importance that a Labor government attaches to the sector.

The Strengthening Medicare Fund was only sketched out in broad terms before the election, and provides insight into the new ministerial style. The details of the policy will be thrashed out in a taskforce which will include key stakeholders.

Most importantly, the taskforce will be chaired by the minister — no hiding behind consultants; he or she will hold the hose.

Reducing covid deaths
Another crucial early challenge for the minister will be addressing the continuing covid pandemic.

Covid deaths continue: three times as many people have died this year than in the previous two. The Coalition delegitimised any form of action, including mask wearing and vaccine mandates, as part of its undermining of state public health measures, especially action by Labor states.

The prevalence of third dose vaccinations, necessary for adequate protection from omicron, sits at about two-thirds of the over-16 population, much lower in the under-16s, meaning that many in the population are not protected.

Public hospitals are bursting at the seams, with staff overwhelmed. This needs urgent attention, and the Coalition strategy of ignoring it and saying it was someone else’s problem, must be dumped.

Labor vowed to “step up the national strategy” late in the election campaign.

“The Australian people have voted for change.”

Labor leader Anthony Albanese told his supporters in Sydney on Saturday after leading his party to victory ending nearly a decade of conservative gov’t https://t.co/ufTwpZ1FXA pic.twitter.com/YdEqshEWRC

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 21, 2022

Aged care support
Hopefully Labor’s shadow aged care minister, Clare O’Neil, will continue in this role post-election. She proved more than a match for her hapless opponent, Richard Colbeck.

Labor made big commitments in aged care, creating a significant point of difference with the Coalition, despite the Coalition’s investments in the 2021–22 budget.

In addition to the Coalition commitments, Labor promised 24/7 registered nurse coverage in residential aged care facilities, and to support a wage rise for aged care workers. The latter is particularly important because without a wages uplift, the staff shortages in the sector will continue.

A new approach
Labor won’t engage in climate denialism or use climate policy as a political wedge.

Recognising and addressing climate change is an important issue for the health sector and, of course, the community more broadly as the teal surge and the Greens’ wins demonstrated.

Labor has committed to establishing a centre for prevention and disease control, which should provide a framework for addressing social and economic determinants of health.

Potentially as important in terms of policy style are Labor’s public service policies. The “consultocracy” which thrived under the Liberals will be shown the door, replaced by public servants doing the job the public service has always been available to do.

Obviously, a new Labor government will not be able to be meet all the community’s pent-up aspirations in a single term.

Nevertheless, it is disappointing Labor did not commit to phasing in universal dental care – the crucial missing piece of Australia’s universal health coverage.

Butler and his colleagues have a huge agenda on their plates. Starting with primary care is a good first focus, as without those foundations in place, the whole system cannot work well.

Dr Stephen Duckett is honorary enterprise professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Defenders of Social Security and Medicare are rallying behind Rep. Lucy McBath as she takes on fellow Democratic Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in Georgia's 7th Congressional District, a primary contest spurred by the state GOP's aggressive—and, according to rights groups, illegal—redistricting scheme.

After her district was redrawn by the state GOP to heavily favor Republicans, McBath opted to run against Bourdeaux in the 7th District in the May 24 Democratic primary instead of staying in the 6th District and facing likely defeat.

"When Carolyn Bourdeaux said in an interview that she has 'exactly the same plan as Lucy McBath,' she isn't telling you the truth."

While the two Democratic incumbents have been characterized as similar in their policy positions, the Social Security Works PAC—which endorsed McBath last week—challenges that narrative, pointing specifically to Bourdeaux's support for bipartisan legislation that could result in cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

The Social Security Works PAC noted in a statement that after flipping a Georgia House seat from red to blue in 2020, Bourdeaux "became one of a tiny handful of Democrats, along with [Sens.] Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, to co-sponsor a bill called the TRUST Act."

The legislation is the brainchild of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah.), who during his 2012 presidential run proposed raising the Social Security retirement age and privatizing Medicare.

If passed, Romney's bill would require the Treasury Department to produce a report on the federal government's "endangered" trust funds and institute a mandate for Congress to craft legislation that "restores" them—vague language that advocates say opens the door to cuts.

"This is a Republican concoction designed to create yet another 'bipartisan commission' to go behind closed doors and figure out how to cut Social Security and Medicare," said Jon Bauman, president of the Social Security Works PAC.

The organization also said that when it sent Bourdeaux a questionnaire about her views during her 2020 congressional run, she expressed support for means-testing Social Security and "pejoratively referred to the programs as 'entitlements.'"

"When Carolyn Bourdeaux said in an interview that she has 'exactly the same plan as Lucy McBath,' she isn't telling you the truth," Bauman said. "Lucy McBath is not a co-sponsor of the TRUST Act. Neither are the vast majority of House Democrats. Carolyn Bourdeaux is way out of the Democratic mainstream."

McBath, by contrast, is "a proven leader who will fight to protect and expand Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, while also working to lower the outrageous cost of prescription drugs," Bauman argued.

"We can always count on her to stand up to congressional Republicans, who are relentless in their attacks on the earned benefits our nation's seniors have worked hard for and rely on," he added.

Progressives backing McBath have also called attention to Bourdeaux's alignment with a group of right-wing Democrats that threatened to tank an early framework of the Build Back Better package, which has since died in the U.S. Senate thanks in large part to Manchin's obstruction.

"Our country can't afford to have lawmakers like Henry Cuellar and Carolyn Bourdeaux making decisions anymore."

Last August, Bourdeaux and eight other House Democrats—including Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), who is on the verge of losing his seat—penned a Washington Post op-ed demanding that their party's leadership advance a deeply flawed bipartisan infrastructure bill before moving ahead with Build Back Better, which the nine lawmakers would not commit to supporting despite its substantial proposed investments in climate action, healthcare, and other Democratic priorities.

The House Democratic leadership ultimately adopted the right-wing group's suggested approach with the eventual backing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which had previously warned that approving the bipartisan infrastructure bill first would free conservative Democrats to kill the Build Back Better package—and that's precisely what happened.

"Our country can't afford to have lawmakers like Henry Cuellar and Carolyn Bourdeaux making decisions anymore," Erica Payne, president and founder of the Patriotic Millionaires, said in a statement earlier this year.

Patriotic Millionaires, which supports higher taxes on the rich, included Bourdeaux on a list of 15 incumbent Democrats labeled "The Problem." In January, the progressive group endorsed primary challenges against the 15 lawmakers and vowed to provide financial support to their opponents.

"Their outright sabotage of President Biden's Build Back Better Agenda, likely done on behalf of their donors, left us with no choice—it's time to draw a line in the sand," Payne said. "It's time for the American people to expect better from Democrats, and for the party to hold its elected officials to a higher standard."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the leader of House Democrats' campaign arm tasked with protecting incumbents, has come under fire this week after declaring his intention to run against first-term progressive Rep. Mondaire Jones in a newly redrawn New York congressional district—a move that critics have slammed as cowardly and potentially harmful to the party's efforts to keep control of Congress.

Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), announced his plan to mount a primary challenge against Jones less than an hour after a New York court released a draft of the state's new congressional districts, which are expected to be made official on Friday.

"Maloney selfishly put Jones in a bad spot."

"If the newly announced maps are finalized, I will run in New York's 17th Congressional District," Maloney, who currently represents the 18th District, wrote Monday on Twitter. "NY-17 includes my home and many of the Hudson Valley communities I currently represent."

Despite the fact that Jones currently represents three-quarters of the 17th District, Maloney's decision to run against the incumbent in New York's August 23 primary received the blessing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and some other high-ranking Democrats.

The 17th District, which President Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020, is slightly more friendly to Democrats than the 18th District, which he won by eight points and where many commentators believe Maloney should run for re-election instead.

Calling Maloney's behavior "embarrassing" and "disgraceful," Indivisible co-executive director Ezra Levin criticized the DCCC chair for "running from a fight he's supposed to be leading."

After being blindsided by Maloney's announcement, Jones' only viable options—assuming New York's draft redistricting plan hasn't been significantly revised—are to take on the DCCC chair or challenge fellow first-term progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the 16th District.

"Maloney selfishly put Jones in a bad spot," Daily Kos political director David Nir noted on social media.

According to Huffpost, some House Democrats "are privately discussing ousting Maloney" as DCCC chair less than six months before the pivotal midterm elections. Such a move is unlikely, however, given that Maloney has Pelosi's support.

In addition, "progressive members are not-so-silently criticizing [Maloney] for suggesting he's a better 'fit' to represent a mostly white suburban district," Huffpost reported.

"The thinly veiled racism here is profoundly disappointing," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), another first-term lawmaker, wrote Wednesday on Twitter. "A Black man is ideologically ill-suited to represent a Westchester County District that he represents presently and won decisively in 2020? Outrageous."

If Jones were to run against Bowman in the 16th District, House progressives would lose a key member in the process. Instead, progressive advocates say, Jones should seek re-election in the 17th District.

"Leadership and corporate donors may want two progressive Black men to scrap it out, but that doesn't serve working people's interests," Max Berger, a co-founder of Justice Democrats, tweeted Wednesday. "A progressive vs. progressive primary would be a debacle with no winners."

"If Mondaire jumps into Jamaal Bowman's district, the progressive movement will be united against him," wrote Berger. But if Jones "takes on Sean Patrick Maloney in his current district, the progressive movement will be united behind him."

An even better option, the Sunrise Movement's New York City branch argued Thursday, would be for Maloney to run in the 18th District.

"We are disappointed that DCCC Chair Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney appears to have chosen to primary a climate champion like Congressman Jones and potentially sacrifice the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives in the process," the chapter said in a statement. "We strongly urge Congressman Maloney to reconsider his decision."

"Jones currently represents approximately three-quarters of the new 17th District, which includes his hometown of Spring Valley, while Maloney only represents a quarter of it," Sunrise NYC continued. "This district has a strong foundation of progressive politics... and its voters benefit greatly by being represented in Congress by a climate leader such as Jones."

"Congressman Maloney must take his responsibility as the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seriously," the group said. "Instead of seeking personal political advantage, he should fight to keep NY-18 in Democratic control this year."

Sunrise NYC emphasized that "we cannot pass meaningful climate legislation with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives."

"Progressive coalitions must organize to keep NY-18 blue and retain incumbent climate champions in NY-16 and NY-17," the branch added. "Sunrise NYC feels that Congressman Jones is the best possible candidate to advance the fight for crucial climate legislation in the 118th Congress on behalf of his community in the newly-created NY-17."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

We look at Tuesday’s primary elections across five states, which could set the tone for this year’s midterm elections in November. Progressives won in some primary elections despite opposition from within the Democratic Party, as well as deep-pocketed outside groups. “What you’ve seen is a surprising backlash at the voter level to all of the money that flooded in,” says investigative journalist David Sirota of The Lever. “It’s been a pretty good night for progressive candidates, despite all that money.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Summer Lee declared victory late Tuesday in the Democratic primary race to represent Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District in the U.S. House, voicing confidence that the remaining uncounted votes will favor her campaign over corporate attorney Steve Irwin's.

"We built a movement in Western Pennsylvania that took on corporate power."

With 93% of precincts reporting, Lee holds a 446-vote lead over Irwin, a former Republican U.S. Senate staffer who benefited from super PAC cash that poured into the district in the contest's final stretch. Irwin has not conceded defeat as the race remains too close to formally call.

United Democracy Project (UDP), a super PAC founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), spent nearly $3 million in recent weeks boosting Irwin and attacking Lee, a progressive state representative who supports Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and Palestinian rights.

"The people took on the corporations and the people won," Lee said in a statement. "We built a movement in Western Pennsylvania that took on corporate power, stood up for working families, and beat back a multimillion-dollar smear campaign."

"This was never about one candidate—it was about the people of this district who have been left behind by corporations who put their profits over our lives," she added. "Today is a new way forward for everyone in the Commonwealth with no one left behind."

PA United, a group that ran a major field operation for Lee alongside Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party, said Wednesday morning that "as a long time leader of the progressive movement and the first Black woman to be elected as a state representative from Western PA, Summer's campaign energized a strong multiracial, working class base and overcame the political machine yet again."

"Summer Lee proved that money is surmountable when you organize and run on a progressive platform."

"PA United is proud to have helped Summer Lee overcome massive spending by her opponents and AIPAC and help supercharge her ground game," the organization added. "The supercharged field program is likely to have provided the margin of victory—knocking more than 30,000 doors, calling more than 35,000 people, and sending 25,000 texts to help ensure a victory. PA United will continue to stand by Rep. Lee through the November election and as she gets to work in Congress next year."

The youth-led Sunrise Movement, which also led a turnout operation in support of Lee in Pennsylvania's 12th District, declared in a statement that "this election pit people power against millions of dollars, and... Summer Lee proved that money is surmountable when you organize and run on a progressive platform."

"Young and working people were able to defeat Super PACs through local organizing," said Varshini Prakash, the group's executive director. "We showed our power, we knocked on doors, we called voters, and we decided this election."

If her victory is confirmed, Lee will face off against Republican Mike Doyle, the council president of Plum, Pennsylvania who ran unopposed in the GOP primary.

"We got here because of the power of the people," Lee said during her election party Tuesday night.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman handily defeated Rep. Conor Lamb in the Democratic primary for the battleground state's open U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday, pitting the progressive against whichever right-wing candidate prevails in the deadlocked GOP contest between Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick.

"We're going to win in November the same way we won tonight—by fighting for every county, and every vote."

In a statement following his 33-point victory over Lamb, whose campaign was endorsed by right-wing Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and bankrolled by Wall Street financiers, Fetterman thanked his supporters for sticking with him, particularly after he suffered a stroke just days before the election.

"The fact that so many of you entrusted me with your vote means the world to me, and it's something I'll never take for granted," said Fetterman, who underwent successful pacemaker implant surgery on Tuesday. "I'm feeling better every day, and I'm going to be back on the campaign trail to thank you all in person soon."

Fetterman—who has vowed to be a decisive Senate vote in favor of abortion rights, pro-labor legislation, and abolishing the filibuster—went on to emphasize the stakes of the upcoming contest between him and the Republican nominee, a race that will determine who fills the seat left open by Sen. Pat Toomey's (R-Pa.) retirement.

The winner, Fetterman noted, could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate next year.

"This is the most important race in the country," he declared. "Control of the Senate is going to come down to Pennsylvania, and we have to flip this seat. We have a hard fight ahead of us—but Pennsylvania is worth fighting for. We're going to win in November the same way we won tonight—by fighting for every county, and every vote. Because every place matters, and no place deserves to be written off."

Conceding defeat, Lamb promised to do "everything I can to help Democrats win" in the general election.

"Our entire democracy is on the line in November," said Lamb. "Democrats need to be unequivocally united in our defense of this democracy, and we will be. John's vote in the Senate is essential to protect this democracy, and he will have my vote in November."

President Joe Biden, who stayed on the sidelines in the closely watched Pennsylvania race, said in a statement that Democrats "are united around John, who is a strong nominee, will run a tough race, and can win in November."

Meanwhile, the GOP primary race between Dr. Oz—a television personality widely viewed as a crank and a peddler of dangerous misinformation—and McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, is likely headed for a recount as the latest tally showed Oz leading by just 0.2 percentage points with 94% of the vote counted.

Kathy Barnette, a far-right GOP candidate with a long history of bigoted rhetoric against Muslims and gay people, surged in the final weeks of the Senate campaign but ultimately fell behind Oz and McCormick, ending up with just under 25% of the vote.

"John is the perfect candidate for 2022—regardless of who the Republicans nominate tonight."

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Dr. Oz in the race, claiming that "people love him, otherwise he wouldn't have been on air for 18 years."

Fetterman's small-donor-funded campaign said late Tuesday that no matter who emerges as the Republican nominee, the lieutenant governor and former Braddock mayor is well-positioned to win in November.

"In a tough midterm election in which traditional Democrats are going to struggle, John doesn't have to convince people he’s not like other Democrats or other politicians—they can see it for themselves," the campaign said in a statement. "John is the perfect candidate for 2022—regardless of who the Republicans nominate tonight."

"To win in 2022, Democrats will have to do things differently," Fetterman's team added. "It won't just come down to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Margins in rural areas will matter. Democrats will have to focus on turning out voters across the state—in rural towns and cities."

Speaking at an election-night rally as the Democratic nominee continued his recovery in the hospital, Fetterman's wife Gisele told supporters that the November contest is "a race for the future of every community across Pennsylvania."

"For every small town, for every person who calls those small towns home, and for every person who's considered leaving because they didn't see enough opportunities," she added. "It's a race for a better Pennsylvania and for a better country."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

As Oregonians awaited the final vote tally early Wednesday morning, former Blue Dog Coalition chair Kurt Schrader appeared poised to lose to his primary opponent, Jamie McLeod-Skinner.

A Schrader loss would be stunning: The incumbent pulled in $2 million in outside super PAC support, half of it from the pharmaceutical industry he served in Congress, compared with McLeod-Skinner’s roughly $340,000 from the Working Families Party and Indivisible. Adding in his own spending, Schrader outspent his opponent 10-to-1 — and will likely still lose.

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Austin Ahlman.

Charles Booker—the progressive former Kentucky state lawmaker with a plan to tackle rampant inequality—cruised to victory in Tuesday's U.S. Senate Democratic primary, setting up a November contest against two-term Republican incumbent Rand Paul in which the challenger is vowing to "make history."

"I'm fighting for issues regardless of party because at the end of the day, putting food on the table, keeping your lights on—doesn't matter what your party is."

"We're going to beat Rand Paul. And let me be clear with you: We're going to blow Rand Paul out," Booker said during an appearance on The Young Turks. "We're gonna do it by doing two things. One, [by] inspiring a vision that encourages people to believe things can be better."

Booker touted his Kentucky New Deal, a plan to curb runaway inequality "which is really about us fighting for family, pushing the partisan divides aside, lifting up our common bonds, and really doing issue-based organizing."

"We're gonna work our asses off," the 37-year-old Louisvillian vowed.

"But on the second side of it, we're gonna beat Rand Paul by naming Rand Paul," he said. "A lot of people don't know what he does; he's a crisis actor, he's a contrarian, he's a fake libertarian, he stokes conspiracy theories."

"We're gonna help people see that he's blocking disaster relief, that he's blocking investments in infrastructure, that he's opposing expanded healthcare—he called it akin to slavery—that he opposed the Civil Rights Act," Booker continued.

"He doesn't believe that we should invest in our home or that we should support our allies abroad," the nominee added. "He's a joke, and we're gonna call him out."

In a separate interview with Lex 18, Booker said he believes his campaign can reach Kentucky voters on both sides of the aisle.

"I'm fighting for issues regardless of party because at the end of the day, putting food on the table, keeping your lights on—doesn't matter what your party is," asserted.

If Booker defeats Paul in November, he will be the first Black U.S. senator in Kentucky history. He would also be the first Democrat from the commonwealth to win a U.S. Senate contest in 30 years.

Kentucky Democratic consultant Kim Geveden told McClatchy that Democrats in the commonwealth "have exactly what they’ve clamored for and deserve—a unified party behind the most progressive candidate we've ever nominated for statewide office."

However, speaking of Booker's campaign, she contended that "unless they get their own house in order, they have a steep uphill battle."

"Most, if not all of the top level staffers who were with Charles in his 2020 primary campaign... have left," Geveden continued. "For whatever reasons, they are no longer involved and it shows."

"To have any meaningful chance to win," she added, "the campaign has a lot of work to do, starting from within."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Charles Booker—the progressive former Kentucky state lawmaker with a plan to tackle rampant inequality—cruised to victory in Tuesday's U.S. Senate Democratic primary, setting up a November contest against two-term Republican incumbent Rand Paul in which the challenger is vowing to "make history."

"I'm fighting for issues regardless of party because at the end of the day, putting food on the table, keeping your lights on—doesn't matter what your party is."

"We're going to beat Rand Paul. And let me be clear with you: We're going to blow Rand Paul out," Booker said during an appearance on The Young Turks. "We're gonna do it by doing two things. One, [by] inspiring a vision that encourages people to believe things can be better."

Booker touted his Kentucky New Deal, a plan to curb runaway inequality "which is really about us fighting for family, pushing the partisan divides aside, lifting up our common bonds, and really doing issue-based organizing."

"We're gonna work our asses off," the 37-year-old Louisvillian vowed.

"But on the second side of it, we're gonna beat Rand Paul by naming Rand Paul," he said. "A lot of people don't know what he does; he's a crisis actor, he's a contrarian, he's a fake libertarian, he stokes conspiracy theories."

"We're gonna help people see that he's blocking disaster relief, that he's blocking investments in infrastructure, that he's opposing expanded healthcare—he called it akin to slavery—that he opposed the Civil Rights Act," Booker continued.

"He doesn't believe that we should invest in our home or that we should support our allies abroad," the nominee added. "He's a joke, and we're gonna call him out."

In a separate interview with Lex 18, Booker said he believes his campaign can reach Kentucky voters on both sides of the aisle.

"I'm fighting for issues regardless of party because at the end of the day, putting food on the table, keeping your lights on—doesn't matter what your party is," asserted.

If Booker defeats Paul in November, he will be the first Black U.S. senator in Kentucky history. He would also be the first Democrat from the commonwealth to win a U.S. Senate contest in 30 years.

Kentucky Democratic consultant Kim Geveden told McClatchy that Democrats in the commonwealth "have exactly what they’ve clamored for and deserve—a unified party behind the most progressive candidate we've ever nominated for statewide office."

However, speaking of Booker's campaign, she contended that "unless they get their own house in order, they have a steep uphill battle."

"Most, if not all of the top level staffers who were with Charles in his 2020 primary campaign... have left," Geveden continued. "For whatever reasons, they are no longer involved and it shows."

"To have any meaningful chance to win," she added, "the campaign has a lot of work to do, starting from within."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

At the end of March, EMILY’s List, the Democratic organization that backs women candidates who support abortion rights, commissioned a poll to test the state of the U.S. House race in Pennsylvania’s 12th District. What they found heartened them: The group’s pick, state Rep. Summer Lee, enjoyed a commanding 25-point lead over her closest competitor, attorney Steve Irwin, drawing 38 to his 13 percent. When voters were presented with more information about the candidates, Lee drew 49 percent of respondents’ support to Irwin’s 21, and a third contender, University of Pittsburgh law professor Jerry Dickinson, got 15. The poll, conducted by GQR, also found Lee holding a comfortable +29 approval rating among likely primary voters.

For Irwin, a former Republican U.S. Senate staffer, it would take something of a miracle to turn numbers like that around in the six weeks that remained. But ahead of Tuesday’s contest, Irwin’s backers have attempted to close the gap with something else: a tsunami of outside spending, funneled through two major pro-Israel organizations that have made it their mission to undermine progressive Democrats in contested primaries.

In less than a month, the United Democracy Project — the political action committee for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC — poured more than $1 million into ads in Pennsylvania’s 12th District. The bulk of the messaging attacked Lee, though just over $100,000 went to materials supporting Irwin. In total, United Democracy Project has spent more than $2.3 million on the race so far.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at the 2019 American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 2019.

Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images

“Almost $3 million was spent trying to stop Pennsylvanians from electing their first Black Congresswoman — imagine if that money was instead being used to protect Democrats’ majority in November.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has surpassed 200,000 individual donors since he launched his bid for the key battleground state's open U.S. Senate seat, his campaign announced Friday.

"Our campaign will always be funded the right way. No dirty money. No corporate PACs."

"From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank each and every one of the 200,000 people who have donated to our campaign," Fetterman said in a statement. "Every day, our grassroots support across the commonwealth continues to grow. We are proud of the campaign we have built, and we'll keep fighting for every supporter and vote heading into Tuesday's primary."

Fetterman has dominated recent polls ahead of next week's May 17 primary. The progressive Democratic candidate currently holds double-digit leads over his two closest rivals—the corporate-friendly Congressman Conor Lamb and State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, also more aligned with the party's establishment wing.

While Fetterman's "dominance may seem surprising," wrote Christian Paz at Vox this week, "behind it is his success in addressing two pressing problems Democrats have struggled with nationally."

Those problems, according to Paz, are that the party's "primary voters tend to favor progressive policies more than general election voters, and their party seems unable to clearly define what it believes and who it's for: It wants to advance progressive ideas without being branded as leftist, and to strike a balance between elite priorities and blue-collar concerns."

Paz suggests Fetterman threads the needle in a unique way and the campaign makes a similar argument that the Lt. Governor has broad, crossover appeal.

"He's going everywhere," Joe Calvello, the campaign's communications director, told Vox. "John is a different type of Democrat, who can appeal to people in these forgotten towns—places that used to vote Democrat, but that Democrats don't even visit anymore. He can appeal to these people, because he shows up, and he listens."

According to his campaign, Fetterman has received more than 582,000 contributions from 200,000-plus individuals—the most in-state donors of any Pennslyvania primary candidate.

Long an outspoken advocate for economic, environmental, and social justice, the former 14-year mayor of Braddock—a Pittsburgh-area steel town hard-hit by deindustrialization—has received donations from every one of Pennsylvania's 67 counties and over 88% of its zip codes.

Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during his 2016 and 2020 runs for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Fetterman is harnessing the power of thousands of ordinary working-class donors to take on the neoliberal establishment.

The average donation to Fetterman is $29. As a result, said his campaign, more than 99% of donors "have not given the maximum contribution and can give again and again."

Fetterman is the only candidate in the race who has won statewide in Pennsylvania. After defeating sitting Lt. Gov. Mike Stack in the 2018 Democratic primary, Fetterman joined Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf's ticket for the general election and helped beat their Republican opponents by 17 percentage points.

Moreover, with Fetterman as his running mate, Wolf garnered almost one million more votes than he did in 2014. In addition, the pair was victorious in Beaver County, Berks County, Cumberland County, Erie County, and Luzerne County, all jurisdictions that Democrats have struggled to win in recent years.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

The Trump-backed candidate J.D. Vance won the Ohio Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, while former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign co-chair Nina Turner lost the Democratic primary election for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District after massive outside spending and attacks by super PACs. We speak with Andrew Perez of The Lever about what Ohio’s elections mean for the future of the Democratic Party if it actively suppresses candidates like Turner who are critical of the establishment. Given that a majority Democratic Congress and sitting Democratic president have not delivered on campaign promises such as canceling student debt, protecting Roe v. Wade and passing Build Back Better, the party will be in jeopardy in the upcoming elections, says Perez.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist who garnered national acclaim with his book Hillbilly Elegy, won the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Ohio on Tuesday, riding an endorsement from former President Donald Trump and a large infusion of campaign cash from billionaire Peter Thiel.

Having decisively beaten Republican rival Josh Mandel, a fervent Trump loyalist who vied unsuccessfully for the former president's backing, Vance will face off against Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) in November, a key race in the fight for control of the closely divided Senate.

"He rose to fame on a tale of white culture in crisis and moved further rightward along with the rest of the GOP after Trump gave them permission."

"Vance is an out-of-touch millionaire who's made a career of bashing the working class and is the worst possible choice to represent Ohio," Ryan tweeted late Tuesday after handily winning the Democratic Senate primary over progressive candidate Morgan Harper. "We're currently beating him in the polls and need your help to widen the gap."

Before launching his political career, Vance—who was often portrayed by corporate media outlets as an authority on Appalachian life and the white working class more broadly—pilloried Trump as "cultural heroin" and warned that he was "leading the white working class to a very dark place."

But Vance has since changed his tune, hailing Trump as "the best president of my lifetime" and putting to work what critics have denounced as overtly "fascist rhetoric" to advance his political career in an increasingly authoritarian GOP.

"We are in a late republican period," Vance told Vanity Fair, remarks that went to press days after Trump endorsed his Senate campaign last month. "If we're going to push back against it, we're going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with."

In his victory speech late Tuesday, Vance painted himself as the "voice" of "people who are caught between the corrupt political class of the left and the right," comments reminiscent of Trump's acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

"They need a representative," Vance continued, neglecting—for obvious reasons—to mention that his campaign was bolstered by $15 million in donations from Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal.

Speaking at a rally in Nebraska over the weekend, Trump confused Vance with his rival Mandel, declaring: "We've endorsed—J.P., right? J.D. Mandel, and he's doing great. They're all doing good. They're all doing good. And let's see what happens."

New York magazine's Sarah Jones, who has tracked Vance's rise since the publication of Hillbilly Elegy, argued in a recent column that "Vance and Trump always had more in common than the author's long-ago public statements implied."

"The proof is in Hillbilly Elegy, a fundamentally conservative, even reactionary work. At a high-school job, Vance writes, he learned 'how people game the welfare system,'" Jones noted. "Customers would 'buy two-dozen packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash,' he asserts."

Such passages, wrote Jones, "should have raised the alarm for any reader who is interested in lifting Americans out of poverty."

"Scratch lightly at the surface of Hillbilly Elegy and right-wing themes become apparent," Jones continued. "Vance's characterizations of the poor only repackaged myths about welfare queens and the terminal laziness of the disadvantaged. But since Vance branded himself as a graduate of the working-class Appalachian experience, liberals graded his commentary on a sliding scale."

"He rose to fame on a tale of white culture in crisis and moved further rightward along with the rest of the GOP after Trump gave them permission to do so," Jones added. "Trump has now rewarded him for his dedication. If that shocks liberals, they can ask themselves what they once found so compelling about Vance and Hillbilly Elegy. J.D. Vance is who he's always been. The signs were present from the start."

Days ahead of the Ohio primary contests, The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner slammed Vance as a "fake populist" and wrote that "Democrats nationally have a shot at defeating Trumpism and incipient fascism only if they succeed in refocusing debate on the downward slide that is behind so much of the voter anger, and demanding bold measures to reverse it."

"That will not be accomplished by private equity guys wielding cultural hates," Kuttner wrote.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday made an 11th-hour endorsement of Ohio congressional candidate Nina Turner, calling the former state senator and Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign co-chair a "powerful voice" for working people and progressive policies.

"Nina is exactly the kind of progressive leader we need more of in Congress."

"Nina is exactly the kind of progressive leader we need more of in Congress," Ocasio-Cortez's team wrote in a fundraising email sent on the eve of Tuesday's primary and first reported by The New York Times. "She has spent her entire career advocating for working people—on the Cleveland City Council, in the Ohio state Senate, and on Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns."

"She will be a powerful voice for policies that will make a meaningful difference in the lives of working people across this country—like Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, and a Green New Deal," the email added. "We need her alongside Alexandria in Congress in the fight for racial, economic, social, and environmental justice."

Turner is running in Ohio's 11th Congressional District Democratic primary for the second straight time. She lost last August to the current incumbent, Rep. Shontel Brown, in a special election to fill the House seat vacated by former Rep. Marcia Fudge's appointment as U.S. secretary of housing and urban development.

Last month, the Congressional Progressive Caucus—which counts both Brown and Ocasio-Cortez among its members—controversially endorsed the incumbent despite her strong support from corporate lobbyists, conservative Democrats, and a pro-Israel super PAC funded by a fossil fuel billionaire.

President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), and other centrist and right-wing Democrats have also endorsed Brown.

In an April 26 Washington Post op-ed, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, called Brown "a standard-issue establishment Democrat backed by the corporate-money wing of the Democratic Party that operates through outfits such as the D.C.-based think tank Third Way and various dark-money PACs."

Turner's endorsements include Sanders, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, various progressive organizations including Our Revolution—the Sanders-affiliated political action group she formerly chaired—and the editorial board of Ohio's largest newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Some progressives expressed dismay over the timing of Ocasio-Cortez's endorsement, with political commentator Krystal Ball tweeting, "Better later than never I guess?"

"At least AOC checked the box unlike the others," she added, referring to the conspicuous absence of progressive endorsements for Turner this time around. "But what will an endorsement 12 hours before Election Day voting starts actually accomplish? The abandonment of Nina by 'progressives' is an incredible betrayal."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

With just over a month to go until Pennsylvania's primary election, progressive state Rep. Summer Lee holds a 25-point lead over her two Democratic opponents in the race to succeed Rep. Mike Doyle in the 12th Congressional District.

"It's clear the voters of PA-12 are fired up and ready to send a working-class champion from their community to Washington, D.C."

In a poll commissioned by EMILY's List, which supports pro-choice women running for office, 38% of respondents said they supported Lee, while corporate attorney Steve Irwin and University of Pittsburgh professor Jerry Dickinson received 13% and 7% of the vote, respectively.

Lee was elected to the state House in 2018 after working as a labor organizer with the Fight for $15 movement and leading voter mobilization efforts for the state Democratic Party. As a legislator, she has stopped a fracking proposal in her home district and supported proposals to provide healthcare to striking workers and prohibit late fees on rent payments during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She supports Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and free, universal pre-kindergarten.

"Summer Lee is the bold and inspiring leader we need to secure victory of the must-win open seat," Laphonza Butler, president of EMILY's List, said in a statement. "With five weeks to go until the Democratic primary, it's clear the voters of PA-12 are fired up and ready to send a working-class champion from their community to Washington, D.C. and make history by electing the state's first Black congresswoman."

Along with EMILY's List, Lee has garnered endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), among other groups.

Irwin, who came in second in the poll taken between March 26 and 31, has received funding from corporate lobbyists and the CEO of a fossil fuel company, according to Federal Election Commission records.

In contrast with Lee's background as a labor organizer, Irwin has defended companies against fair wage and discrimination lawsuits as well as Americans With Disabilities Act claims. He is currently a lawyer with Leech Tishman, a firm which has provided union-busting services to companies.

"Voters need to read and see that Steve Irwin built his career as a corporate lawyer putting corporations and profits first," Lee's website says.

Irwin is trailing Lee, according to the recent poll, despite leading the field in fundraising.

"Summer Lee can win," Winnie Wong, former advisor to Sanders, tweeted last week.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

Bernie’s original sin was to commit himself wholeheartedly to the Democratic party, after endorsing Hillary Clinton and refusing to run as an independent in 2016. Having joined the leadership ranks, he was compelled to be a participant in their counterproductive distractions, namely Russiagate, Mueller and impeachment, while simultaneously gearing up for a 2020 campaign based on the purity of ideas. He unilaterally disarmed himself against the most devious strategies deployed against him, with the DNC tipping the scales so heavily for its favored establishment candidate, aided by voter suppression even more blatant and widespread than in 2016.

How do you advance a political revolution after positioning yourself as a leading member of the party that is the antithesis of the revolution?

The coronavirus is a divine intervention that can yet help Bernie straighten his course. It’s a total reset in a fast-moving era when a campaign needs to reinvent itself several times over within the same cycle. Trump expertly ran at least three different campaigns to win, yet Bernie has run the same one, focused on maximizing voter turnout from typically non-voting populations. That campaign definitively ended on Super Tuesday, though the warnings were there even in earlier states, when rural white voters went for Buttigieg in Iowa, the winning margin in New Hampshire sharply eroded from 2016, and Biden came in second in Nevada. Some constituencies, such as young Latinos, were dramatically solidified, along with young voters in general, while others—including African Americans, older white voters and rural voters—receded.

By no means is this campaign over—not by a long shot. On the contrary, the coronavirus is a transcendent opportunity to finally put the Sanders campaign of the past three years behind us (until parts of it can be resurrected for the general election) and to aim fire directly at those responsible for the last economic crash and the terrible mismanagement of its aftermath.

And in Joe Biden, Bernie has the perfect foil. Before the coronavirus escalation, Biden leaked Jamie Dimon’s name as possible treasury secretary. Dimon is one of the all-time great Wall Street crooks, with JPMorgan Chase, the bank he heads, fined $13 billion for irregularities leading to the crash. Biden’s coziness with Dimon crystallizes the ignominious collusion of the Democratic party with plutocratic interests. It shows that the establishment continues to stay in lockstep with the fomenters of crises that ruin working people’s lives.

The immediate strategic task now is to freeze the primaries where they stand, deploying resources beyond the formal electoral process, at rough parity between Sanders and Biden. How can next Tuesday’s primary contests in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio possibly go forward when Louisiana has chosen not to go ahead and later states will probably fall in line? Are we meant to go through with a half-hearted exercise, campaigning having essentially ended? Would the party be as enthusiastic to short-circuit the primary if the coronavirus crisis had occurred two weeks earlier when Bernie was ascendant?

The Sanders campaign should float the idea of postponing all the remaining primaries to a month before the convention for a national primary day. It is critical to ask for this before next Tuesday’s primaries go ahead anyway and allow the party the opportunity to prematurely end the process.

Meanwhile, the Sanders campaign is acting brilliantly in letting obvious side-by-side contrasts develop between Trump’s initial MAGA response to the “foreign virus” and Biden’s knee-jerk neoliberal reliance on personal responsibility, both of which starkly stand out against Bernie’s unmistakable message of compassion embodied in rejuvenated dedication to public goods and values.

It might help if the Sanders campaign were to release not only their preference for vice president but potential cabinet members as well and deploy them all over the airwaves, in what needs to become a prolonged digital campaign for the next three months. They can all defend the Sanders philosophy of social welfare, for which the coronavirus provides the ideal test case.

Before the coronavirus intensification, I would have suggested Tulsi Gabbard as Sanders’s vice president, to inject some much-needed appeal to white rural and working-class voters, some of whom have perhaps been lost permanently to Trump. The anti-war message was a strong part of Sanders’s 2016 appeal, but it has faded because of closer party affiliation. Gabbard should still be a critical part of the leadership, yet someone like Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley suits the bill much better at the moment. A progressive with the bona fides to fight the kinds of Wall Street giveaways we’re likely to see more of from Trump and Biden, as well as the bearing to reassure suburban and rural voters, Merkley can be a powerful surrogate. Before Super Tuesday I would have recommended Rep. Barbara Lee of California, but the time for that seems to have passed.

Merkley and Gabbard, along with Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia or Rep. Raúl Grijalva as potential point people for coordinating the combined health and security crisis, should help return Sanders to his more resonant 2016 message. To listen now to his debates with Hillary Clinton is to realize how different Sanders sounds today. With his calls for fighting corruption, enacting campaign finance reform, contesting the influence of big money, creating 13 million new jobs in infrastructure rebuilding, implementing paid family and sick leave, breaking up big banks, and creating jobs, jobs, and jobs with little mention of democratic socialism, Sanders sounded more like a conventional progressive Americans know from our history. He sounded more like Elizabeth Warren, who stole that lane from him for 2020, than today’s confused millennial socialists.

It was Sanders’s decision to be so loyal to the party that permitted the rise of Elizabeth Warren, who copied some of his 2016 platform, yet sharply diluted it by adding neoliberal means-tested elements to Sanders’s universality. Yet the path is clear now to return to an anti-war and pro-civil liberties language, of which vigorous opposition to ongoing voter suppression is certainly a huge part. Sanders had the same ideas in 2016 as he does in 2020, but the plainspokenness has sometimes been lost to a fashionable socialism beloved of urban hipsters.

The coronavirus should easily play into the idea that Biden is not electable, Sanders’s best bet for his own case. He should explicitly reject the idea that Biden is electable, not just suggest that he’s more electable. Sanders’s loyalty to the party has gotten in the way so far, but he should go all-out to argue that when Biden was vice president, the administration bungled its response to the economic crisis and that Biden already shows every sign of repeating the error, with even graver consequences.

Nobody is more closely associated with the loathed Wall Street bailout of 2008 and thereafter, which involved, according to the audit demanded by Sanders, $16 trillion in secret loans, instead of investing in reconstructing America. Because of Biden’s enthusiasm for the assault on Iraq, trillions were invested in futile wars rather than strengthening America’s capacity to respond to health and economic crises. Biden’s lifelong support for financial deregulation unleashed Wall Street on poor people, creating an inequality and debt burden that assured collapse, which seems to be happening again. The inadequate response, in the form of a half-hearted Dodd-Frank bill that has already been eviscerated by Trump, didn’t go nearly far enough to prevent another, even greater, crash. And the Affordable Care Act is deficient precisely in meeting a crisis like coronavirus, leaving 27 million people uninsured and 87 million more underinsured.

During the course of what will hopefully turn into a prolonged opportunity to take a fresh look at the two remaining candidates while the real-time crisis unfolds, Sanders should continue promising guaranteed health care for all Americans as soon as he takes office. He should swear to make it his first order of business because his experts have already figured out how much it will cost and who will pay for it—namely, the very people Biden wants to run yet another de facto Wall Street administration.

The coronavirus is a kind of divine intervention bringing everything down to earth. The Sanders movement had, unfortunately, become too invested in fanciful terminology rather than relying on the plain language of compassion, care and love which was always its strength, certainly in 2016 when the establishment’s heartlessness was exposed. To have become involved in demonizing Trump, which has been the Democratic party’s entire raison d’être for the last four years, has sidetracked Sanders from appealing to voters who should really still be his, not Biden’s.

To freeze the primary where it stands, at formal delegate parity, and to extend the contest until the convention, provides Sanders the opportunity to make the case that the coronavirus and a possible economic crash are exactly why we can’t indulge in the bout of fake nostalgia Biden represents. Sanders’s grassroots political revolution, at last, has a chance to play out in real-time, with actual rather than rhetorical stakes.

“We are now in the season of actually selecting delegates,” said Elaine Kamarck, a presidential election scholar and member of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee from Massachusetts. “How that will happen is an open question.”

“The issue is that we are beginning the season where a lot of county and congressional district conventions are taking place to actually select people for the delegate slots,” she said. “That’s complicated because those are large meetings. States are busy trying to figure out what do they do with these [events]. Do they postpone them? How do you do these? By and large, we do not have actual people selected as delegates. We just have [candidate delegate] allocations.”

The national health emergency surrounding the eruption of the coronavirus has raised many questions about how 2020’s forthcoming elections will be held. In the four states that will be holding primaries on March 17—Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio—state officials have been taking last-minute steps to minimize exposing voters. Those steps include moving polling places away from senior centers and regularly wiping down touch screen computers used by voters to cast ballots.

So far, government officials in only one state, Louisiana, have postponed their primary from early April to late June due to the virus. In Congress, Sen. Ron Wyden has proposed allocating funds to help states to vote by mail in the fall, as a way to lessen exposure to the virus during the voting process.

However, the next big events in the Democratic Party’s nominating process are the county-level conventions—starting in Iowa on March 21, moving to congressional district conventions on April 25 and a state convention on June 13. Attendees of these conventions tend to be the party’s activists, organizers and elected officials.

Ironically, some states holding these conventions are eyeing the use of electronic voting systems—even after digital systems failed or delayed the results in some important early 2020 contests—namely party-run caucuses in Iowa and Nevada, and the government-run primary in Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest voting jurisdiction. Democrats in Virginia were eyeing systems used by unions and trade associations in their elections, according to DNC officials following that process.

Stepping back, ex-Vice-President Joe Biden’s emergence as the Democratic frontrunner and the national health emergency have DNC officials hoping that the nominating season will begin to wind down after the March 17 primaries. (So far, the DNC has not made a decision to cancel their national convention in July.)

November Election Still on Track

The uncertainties unleashed by the pandemic have raised many questions about whether the 2020 national election will be held as scheduled—or how the voting would be done. The decision by Georgia’s Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, to cancel a state Supreme Court election and appoint a conservative justice, followed by Louisiana’s postponement of its 2020 primary, has underscored that concern.

However, party primaries, state-level contests and federal general elections are all different legal exercises, said Ned Foley, director of the election law program at Ohio State’s law school and author of Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States. The parties always get to pick their nominees, he said, citing U.S. Supreme Court precedents. Governors, on the other hand, have varying powers under state law to intervene in state elections.

For example, New York’s GOP Gov. George Pataki rescheduled voting after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, struck on a state primary day. In 2008, Florida Democratic Gov. Charlie Crist extended early voting to accommodate African American voters. Kemp’s move, in contrast, is a power grab amid a major public health crisis. But Foley’s main takeaway was that presidential elections have never been delayed.

“There was no delay in the [1864] election in the Civil War, and I think that’s very important,” he said. “The point here is not whether but how. America is going to have a 2020 election. America is committed to the idea of popular sovereignty—‘We the People’ as expressed in the Constitution—the question is how we do that in difficult times.”

Foley and other experts said that there still was time to plan for fall voting.

“We may need to make adjustments,” he said, citing Louisiana’s move. “The mere fact that an election has been postponed because of emergency health considerations is not a subversion of voter choice. It may be the best way to effectuate voter input and the right of the voters to choose who governs.”

But shifting to a vote-by-mail system isn’t necessarily a cure-all, said Ion Sancho, who for nearly three decades was supervisor of elections in Leon County, Florida, where the state capital is located.

“Mail ballots are the most labor-intensive [way to count votes], and the switch to them in 2020, as you well know, is causing delays in final results,” he said. “That is becoming increasingly evident. And that runs counter to one of the Republicans’ main goals, which is trying to end the election on election night. That is certainly their goal in Florida.”

Sancho, like others contacted, said that the county was in a period of great uncertainty, including how 2020’s elections will be conducted. But no expert said that the process would not continue. The question was what changes would be necessary, starting with 2020’s remaining primaries and the Democrats’ nominating process.

“We’re in such uncharted territory,” said Kamarck.

“I suppose we could try to do an electronic ballot,” she said, thinking aloud about what some state parties were now studying. “The Russians have no interest in who the delegates are at the [national] convention, frankly. I don’t think they would particularly care to mess with who is the delegate from the first congressional district of Virginia.”

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.

The undemocratic and incompetently run Iowa caucuses remind me of a vampire — hard, if not impossible, to kill. While the process is unrepresentative and undemocratic, national political reporters and Iowa businesspeople will never let it die.

The first contest in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination ended in confusion. The messy result cast a shadow of mistrust over the nominating contests that will follow.

Chance didn’t bring us to this point. Pack journalism combined with the booster attitudes and greed of Iowa entrepreneurs is responsible. Because of them, the questions raised by the Iowa caucus failures extend far beyond the boundaries of that small Midwestern state.

Among the questions: Can we trust the vote counters in the many state contests ahead? Will fake posts on the internet, combined with the Iowa failure, add to the suspicion and mistrust now endemic to American politics? And, will each contest offer President Donald Trump a chance to portray as a fake every result not to his liking?

These developments could not have occurred to anyone when I first covered the Iowa caucuses in 1976. The caucuses had captured media attention four years before when Sen. George McGovern’s second-place finish there helped propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination. Four years later, the little-known Georgia governor, Jimmy Carter, having observed McGovern’s accomplishment, concentrated on winning the Iowa caucuses, succeeded, and won the nomination and the presidency.

That campaign cemented the unhealthy relationship between the national political reporting corps, who fell in love with Iowa, and the Iowa businesspeople, enamored with the reporters’ expense accounts and the publicity they gave the state.

In 1976, while working for the Los Angeles Times, I found a colorful change of scene in Iowa, and the flat geography made for easy travel — except when it snowed. Like other national reporters, I ate and drank well on the company’s tab and bunked at the best hotels. Iowans were friendly to us journalists. We were putting their state on the map and money in their pockets. It was, I observed, one of the few places in the country where people actually seemed to like to talk to reporters.

By 2008, I had retired from the Times and was covering the caucuses for Truthdig. No longer part of the mainstream journalism pack, I viewed the caucuses as an outsider, which permitted me to see the events for what they were.

“The caucuses are a travesty of the American political system,” I wrote in a 2007 column several days before the election. “They are … undemocratic, unfair, unrepresentative and overly complicated.” A few days later, with the caucuses fast approaching, I urged the media “to try to shed light on the process instead of helping Iowa keep this promotional device alive. Unmask the wizard, journalists, and set America free from the shackles of the Iowa caucuses.”

Of course, no one listened. The lure of the state’s rural geography, small towns, and eager-to-please Iowans was too irresistible to the press corps. So was the possibility of good assignments and promotions that often followed completion of an Iowa assignment the bosses liked.

So the media followed its usual pattern, trailing candidates from school auditoriums to coffee shops, interviewing prospective voters (whose answers seemed increasingly canned) and following the polls as if they were the Daily Racing Form.

Apparently, only a few of the most tech-minded paid attention to the most boring — and most important part — of an election, how the votes were counted.

Even more complications were added this year to the incomprehensible process I chronicled in 2008. A barely tested app was handed out to caucus chairs, purportedly to speed reporting of each caucus result. It proved difficult to download for the incompletely trained volunteers who run the caucuses. The app’s reporting capabilities were problematical. Days passed with no final results.

This has thrown the press into unknown territory. The scenario of a winner being crowned in Iowa, then heading into New Hampshire and other contests, has been shattered. Utter media confusion reigned Monday night through Wednesday.

More important than the inconvenience Iowa caused the press, however, is what the state means to public perception of the many U.S. primary elections, not to mention the big one in November, when the nation selects a president.

I live and vote in the most populous county in the nation, Los Angeles, which has more than 10 million residents. The county has long been afflicted with slow vote counts due to its size and to snafus by the vote tallying equipment installed by one of the few companies that do such work.

For this election, the county has created its own voting system, with voters given two options: voting by mail or going to a polling place and marking computer screens or hand-marking paper ballots. And, instead of using familiar local polling places, people who vote in person must travel to centralized voting centers.

The Los Angeles registrar-recorder, Dean Logan, and his staff have been working hard to make the new system work. But Libby Denkmann, who has been tracking the system, reported on LAist that “the county must meet a stack of requirements before primary election voters get their hands on the machines Feb. 22.”

I have watched enough elections and used computers long enough to know that, more likely than not, something will go wrong. The same is true for the other primary elections coming up around the country.

So let’s drive a stake into the heart of the Iowa caucuses. Let them die.

But reporters and their editors should not forget the real lesson of Iowa. The story of the 2020 election may end up being found in the back offices of voting officials and among the techies who create their voting systems. Reporting on them is tedious and complex. But it is the kind of journalism that is more important and necessary than chasing candidates around Iowa.

Democracy is at stake. More elections such as the one in Iowa will further erode the faith many Americans have in democratic institutions. If nobody believes election results, democracy, which is under assault every day, will whither and die.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday scored a landslide victory in a primary race for leadership of the ruling Likud party, giving the embattled leader an important boost ahead of the country’s third election in less than a year.

The strong showing by Israel’s longest-serving leader could give him another opportunity to form a government following the March election, after falling short in two previous attempts this year. By easily fending off Likud lawmaker Gideon Saar, Netanyahu also kept alive his hopes of winning immunity from prosecution after being indicted last month on a series of corruption charges.

“A giant victory,” Netanyahu tweeted early Friday, just over an hour after polls closed.

“Thanks to the members of Likud for the trust, support and love,” he added. “God willing, I will lead Likud to a big victory in the coming elections.”

In a tweet, Saar congratulated Netanyahu and said he would support the prime minister in the national election. “I am absolutely comfortable with my decision to run,” he added. “Whoever isn’t ready to take a risk for the path he believes in will never win.”

Official results released by Likud showed Netanyahu capturing 41,792 votes, or 72%, compared with 15,885 votes, or 28%, for Saar.

While removing any doubts about Netanyahu’s standing in the ruling party, the primary is likely to prolong Israel’s political uncertainty. Netanyahu will remain at the helm of Likud through the March elections, and his lingering legal troubles could again scuttle efforts to form a government after that.

In September’s election, both Likud and its main rival, the centrist Blue and White party, were unable to secure a parliamentary majority and form a government on their own.

The two parties together captured a solid majority of parliamentary seats, leaving a national unity government as the best way out of the crisis. But Blue and White has refused to sit in a partnership with Netanyahu when he is under indictment.

Opinion polls predict a similar outcome in the March election, raising the possibility of months of continued paralysis. The country already has been run by a caretaker government for the past year.

Netanyahu, who has led the country for the past decade, maintained his position atop the political right by cultivating an image as a veteran statesman with close ties to U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders.

His refusal to make any concessions to the Palestinians was rewarded after Trump took office, as the U.S. began openly siding with Israel on several key issues, validating Netanyahu’s approach in the eyes of many Israelis and adding to his mystique.

Netanyahu’s hard-line approach to Iran has also proved popular. He was a staunch opponent of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which has unraveled since Trump withdrew from the agreement. A wave of Israeli strikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq has burnished Netanyahu’s claims to having protected Israel from its enemies.

His fortunes have nevertheless waned over the past year, after he was unable to form a government following the unprecedented back-to-back elections in March and September. His party came in second place in September, leading many observers to view the vote as the beginning of the end.

In November, Netanyahu was indicted on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes, the culmination of three long-running corruption investigations. Netanyahu vowed to remain in office, dismissing the indictment as an “attempted coup” by hostile media and law enforcement.

Reuven Hazan, a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the victory for Netanyahu would have no impact on the general election.

“It simply means that he’s managed to maintain control of the party,” he said. “It just means that the faithful have circled the wagons. It means nothing for the elections except that he looks good. He looks strengthened.”

Netanyahu appeared rejuvenated in recent weeks as he hit the campaign trail, doing several live events a day where he rallied supporters in small gatherings and face-to-face meetings.

“The Likudniks have witnessed an astonishing event play out in the past two weeks, in which a 70-year-old leader who has had his fill of terms in office has thrown himself at every last registered party member,” Israeli columnist Ben Caspit wrote in the Maariv daily.

The approach appears to have paid off and may serve as a template for a more effective general election campaign. In the meantime, Israel will remain in limbo for at least another two months.

Netanyahu, who also served as prime minister in the late 1990s, is desperate to remain in office, where he is best positioned to fight the corruption charges. Israeli law requires public officials to resign if charged with a crime. But the law does not apply to sitting prime ministers.

As long as he remains in office, Netanyahu can use the position as a bully pulpit to criticize his prosecutors. He also can offer political favors in hopes of rallying a majority of lawmakers who favor granting him immunity from prosecution.

“His game is to be prime minister because that is a shield from indictment,” Hazan said.

Despite the victory, Netanyahu has many hurdles ahead.

The Supreme Court is set next week to begin considering whether an indicted member of parliament can be tasked with forming a new government. Its decision could potentially disqualify Netanyahu from leading the next government. It’s not clear when a ruling would be handed down.

The political uncertainty has led the Trump administration to delay the release of its long-anticipated Mideast peace plan.

The Palestinians have already rejected the plan, saying the administration is hopelessly and unfairly biased toward Israel. They point to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, to cut off virtually all aid to the Palestinians and to reverse longstanding opposition to Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 war.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has said Israel is on the cusp of securing U.S. support for the annexation of large parts of the occupied West Bank — but only if he remains in power.

That would virtually extinguish the Palestinians’ hopes of one day establishing an independent state, but it would cement Netanyahu’s legacy as perhaps the most successful right-wing leader in the country’s history.