Search Results for: BID

Republican’s math problem: Why a minority faction uses White Supremacist terror to keep its power

In the early afternoon of August 26, a heavily armed, 21-year-old White Supremacist in a tactical vest and mask, who had written a number of racist manifestos and had swastikas painted on his rifle, murdered three Black Americans at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida. He had apparently intended to attack Edward Waters University, a historically Black institution, but students who saw him put on tactical gear warned a security guard, who chased him off and alerted a sheriff’s deputy. As David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo put it two days later, “America is living through a reign...

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Republican legislatures in states like Wisconsin accused of dirty tricks to keep hold on fading power

In 2020, North Carolina seemed the model of an evenly-divided swing state. Then-President Donald Trump barely won, beating Democrat Joe Biden by just over a percentage point. Meanwhile, the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, won reelection by a relatively comfortable 5 points. Even last year, as Republicans won two seats on the state Supreme Court, North Carolina’s congressional delegation split evenly between Democrats and the GOP. But it is the Republican Party that is making the decisions in the state, thanks to recent seat gains in the legislature and aggressive stances from GOP lawmakers. It has passed voting changes...

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House Republicans push for Social Security “Death Panel” in latest attack on Middle-Class Americans

Progressives on September 19 sounded alarm over a proposal tucked into a new House GOP budget blueprint that would establish a commission to review and propose legislative changes to Social Security and Medicare. Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, noted in a statement that “the White House has accurately labeled a commission as a “death panel for Social Security,” referring to a Biden administration spokesperson’s response earlier this year after House Republicans and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) floated the idea of a bipartisan commission for the program. House Republicans’ new resolution, unveiled by House Budget...

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Why a lack of affordable child care is pushing the American Dream farther from reach for most families

American families with children, and the American Dream they are trying to live, are about to face a serious crisis. Counterintuitively, the pandemic brought a child-care boon to working families with kids. This was in large part due to the extraordinary efforts of Nancy Pelosi in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, who got billions for expanded childcare funds to families in distress. Although these were technically emergency funds, they were similar to normal, routine programs offered by virtually every other developed country in the world. But when the pandemic was declared officially over, Republicans dug their...

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MAGA Republicans accused of trying to shut down Federal government to halt Trump’s prosecution

“The GOP has completely gone off its rocker, incapable of passing House spending, ranting and raving at AG, cooking up ludicrous and baseless impeachment, unable to greet Zelensky with joint session. This is not normal. This is egregious. You’d think the reporting would reflect it.” – Jennifer Rubin, September 21, “Washington Post” Indeed, the House Republicans remain unable even to agree to talk about funding the government, let alone actually passing the appropriations bills Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to four months ago. Right-wing extremists in the House blocked a procedural vote o September 21 over a Pentagon funding...

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An appeal to racists: Aggressive attacks by Trump follow a well-worn strategy against legal opponents

Donald Trump’s aggressive response to his fourth criminal indictment in five months follows a strategy he has long used against legal and political opponents: relentless attacks, often infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways that appeal to racists. The early Republican presidential front-runner has used terms such as “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black district attorneys. He has accused Black prosecutors of being “racist.” He has made unsupported claims about their personal lives. And on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump has deployed terms that rhyme with racial slurs as some of...

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