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In a shock to absolutely no one, Richard Spencer serving as his own lawyer has proven pretty terrible for, well, Richard Spencer. The glass-jawed Nazi known for barely being able to take a punch (among other undesirable traits) was forced to represent himself in a civil lawsuit after his real lawyer dropped Spencer for failing to pay up and adhere to his legal advice.

Spencer has spent a full week pretending he has any grasp of the law as one of 25 defendants who had a hand in the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Surprisingly, he is just one of two overconfident white dudes representing themselves in this case, the other being Christopher “Crying Nazi” Cantwell.

Cantwell’s had his fair share of bafflingly stupid moments, including losing his own witness list and preparing for trial by watching Tucker Carlson, but Spencer’s idiocy outshone him on Thursday. Over the course of a full day in the witness stand, Spencer was endlessly smacked down by his own words as attorney Michael Bloch pulled up transcripts and audio clips pushing back against the many denials Spencer offered for his own behavior.

Unicorn Riot’s live tweets of Thursday’s proceedings provide an incredible account of Spencer getting in his own way. His role as a witness absolutely undermined his own ability to successfully make a case for himself as his own lawyer.

The Sines vs. Kessler civil lawsuit was brought forth on behalf of nine Charlottesville residents who were injured during the “Unite the Right” rally and surrounding events. They’re hoping to receive compensatory and statutory damages from the defendants, whom they allege conspired to incite violence. Spencer certainly helped make the plaintiffs’ case today. Spencer spent hours perjuring himself in an effort to distance himself from his conduct before, during, and after the rally.

Bloch, who represents the plaintiffs, pulled up frequent instances in which Spencer either outright called for violence or agreed with someone else who did. James Kolenich, the white nationalist attorney representing many of the folks named as defendants, later took the time to throw Spencer under the bus on behalf of his clients during cross-examination. The lawyer pushed a theory that Spencer attempted to take over an alt-right organization in the run-up to the rally and played more of an active role in the “Unite the Right” event than he let on. As if that weren’t enough, Kolenich also brought up an instance in which Spencer’s credit card was declined for a $4 purchase.

Proceedings concluded with Cantwell just beginning to cross-examine Spencer, which Cantwell will continue doing on Friday. The trial initially began on Oct. 25 and is calendared for four weeks, according to the civil rights nonprofit Integrity First for America. Spencer likely won’t earn any accolades for being an amateur lawyer, a la Ted Bundy, but he certainly found one hell of a way to become the alt-right’s new favorite scapegoat.

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Imagine for a moment House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy leisurely sipping on his morning coffee when he suddenly sees the news that the select committee investigating Jan. 6 has interviewed more than 150 people already in their probe.

Fun, right? That heart-attack-inducing moment may have actually occurred Thursday when Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming dropped a bomb.

“We’ve had, actually, over 150 interviews with a whole range of people connected to the events, connected to understanding what happens, so that just gives you a sense,” Cheney, the panel’s vice-chair, told Politico. “It is a range of engagements—some formal interviews, some depositions … There really is a huge amount of work underway that is leading to real progress for us.”

In other words, the Jan. 6 panel has been burning through witnesses even as they face reluctance from a handful of holdouts close to Donald Trump. It’s been known that the committee has interviewed some Trump officials, like former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah and former Trump Department of Justice officials like Jeffrey Clark and Richard Donoghue. But by the sounds of it, the committee’s work is proceeding urgently and at a break-neck pace. As the other GOP member of the Jan. 6 panel, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, noted last weekend on ABC’s This Week, Republicans will surely kill the Jan. 6 probe if they retake control of the chamber in next year’s midterms.

The Justice Department has yet to act on a two-week-old criminal referral from the House for Steve Bannon after defying a congressional subpoena. That surely hasn’t helped the committee’s bid to secure testimony from other Trump confidants, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, and former national security and Defense Department aide Kash Patel.

But the committee’s efforts could soon be getting a real boost nonetheless in the form of a treasure trove of information from the National Archives. Trump has sought to block congressional investigators from obtaining key call records, visitor logs, and sensitive files of his inner circle. But the federal judge who heard arguments in Trump’s legal challenge Thursday, Judge Tanya Chutkan, appeared to take a very skeptical view of his executive privilege claim.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly rejected Trump’s assertion of executive privilege. Politico reports that unless the court intervenes, Archivist David Ferriero plans to ship the first batch of information to lawmakers on Nov. 12.

A rejection of Trump’s privilege claim could also light a fire under the Justice Department on the matter of Bannon’s criminal referral. Bannon has also claimed he is shielded from complying with investigators based on executive privilege, but his claim is even weaker than Trump’s is. So an official rejection of Trump’s claim by Judge Chutkan could deal a final blow to Bannon’s already flimsy argument in the eyes of Justice Department officials.

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The Justice Department is suing Texas over the voter suppression law signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in September, following its lawsuit against Texas for the punitive abortion ban that went into effect in September.

“Our democracy depends on the right of eligible voters to cast a ballot and to have that ballot counted,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The Justice Department will continue to use all the authorities at its disposal to protect this fundamental pillar of our society.”

The lawsuit charges that parts of Texas Senate Bill 1 violate Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act by making it harder for people who have disabilities or cannot read or write to vote. Under the Texas law, people would be barred from offering assistance to those voters to, for instance, answer questions about the ballot, clarify translations, or check to be sure that a visually impaired person’s ballot matches their intent. Additionally, the Justice Department says the Texas law violates Section 101 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by requiring elections officials to reject mail ballots and mail ballot request forms for mistakes that “are not material to establishing a voter’s eligibility to cast a ballot.”

“The Civil Rights Division is committed to protecting the fundamental right to vote for all Americans,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. “Laws that impair eligible citizens’ access to the ballot box have no place in our democracy. Texas Senate Bill 1’s restrictions on voter assistance at the polls and on which absentee ballots cast by eligible voters can be accepted by election officials are unlawful and indefensible.”

The Justice Department’s complaint addresses only some parts of the sweeping Texas law, which also bans 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting—both of which were disproportionately used by voters of color in 2020—as well as giving partisan poll watchers new powers to intimidate voters and election officials. The Justice Department also weighed in on supporting a lawsuit brought by other groups to challenge SB 1 on racial discrimination grounds.

Abbott was predictably defiant on Twitter, also predictably without addressing the substance of the complaint.

The Justice Department previously sued Georgia over its massive voter suppression law. Both lawsuits are likely to run into the Trump-packed courts’ hostility to voting rights.

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“This is a low, low point in the history of this body,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared Wednesday afternoon, after Senate Republicans again blocked voting rights legislation. On this vote, only Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski broke ranks. Just 15 years ago, on July 20, 2006, the Senate passed the Voting Rights Act reauthorization unanimously. Every Republican—including current Sens. McConnell, Grassley, Shelby, Inhofe, Collins, Cornyn, Graham, Burr, Thune—voted for it.

For some unknowable reason, Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin believe those nine senators are still willing to strengthen voting rights. Remarkably, they seem to believe that by continuing to allow them to have the filibuster, Republicans will be thankful and extend the hand of bipartisanship instead of using that filibuster to make sure Republicans can pass state voting laws to ensure Democrats never have a majority in Congress or can gain the White House again. After 11 months of Republicans spitting on that hand of friendship, they’re keeping it out there. Maybe they’re masochists. Maybe being humiliated again and again by Republicans is more fulfilling to them than restoring democracy.

The two are essentially standing alone. Noted moderate Sen. Tom Carper, of Delaware, made that clear Thursday in an op-ed in The News Journal. “Right now, in statehouses across the country, state legislators are enacting a wave of voting restrictions with the sole purpose of making it harder to vote,” Carper writes. “In this year alone, 19 states have enacted 33 laws to restrict voting, oftentimes specifically targeting Black Americans. Meanwhile, many elected officials are embracing the Big Lie as justification to strip away voting rights and weaken our non-partisan electoral process.”

“This is wrong. In response, Congress must act with the same urgency as it did in 1965,” Carper continues. “I do not come to this decision lightly, but it has become clear to me that if the filibuster is standing in the way of protecting our democracy then the filibuster isn’t working for our democracy. […] No barrier—not even the filibuster—should stand in the way of our sacred obligation to protect our democracy.” Carper might, just might, be someone Manchin would listen to, so one would hope that Carper is indeed talking to him and not just to the rest of us. Because pretty much everyone else who matters has been convinced. Sinema is unlikely to want to stand alone if Manchin turns—she’s got the most electorally to worry about.

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Schumer’s floor speech on Wednesday also pointed the way and tailored a message for Manchin. “This is an old, old fight in this chamber. Over 100 years ago, the great Senator of Massachusetts, Henry Cabot Lodge, said that ‘to vote without debating is perilous, but to debate and never vote is imbecile.’” Not that he’s calling Manchin an imbecile, but, well. Anyway, “To vote without debating is perilous, but to debate and never vote is imbecile,” Schumer continued.

“We should heed those words today, and explore whatever paths we have to restore the Senate so it does what its framers intended: debate, deliberate, comprise, and vote.” The focus on debate suggests that Schumer is working on a talking filibuster reform, which is far more than reasonable. “This is too important,” Schumer continued, then inching toward filibuster reform. “We will continue to fight for voting rights and find an alternative path forward, even if it means going at it alone, to defend the most fundamental liberty we have as citizens.”

He’s said “everything is on the table” before, multiple times. Maybe this time, since he said it on the Senate floor right after Manchin’s 10 good people on the Republican side failed to show, maybe this time it’s real and he’s actively trying to make it happen.

Maybe President Joe Biden is helping, or at least open to it. Remember he said last month, “We’re going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster,” adding that it “remains to be seen exactly what that means in terms of ‘fundamentally’—on whether or not we just end the filibuster straight up.”

Biden said he was worried about losing “at least three votes” on the Build Back Better reconciliation package if he started whipping on the filibuster now. That was an exaggeration—only Manchin and Sinema would possibly try to pull that one.

At this point, just because of that reconciliation bill and then funding the government and raising the debt ceiling and churning through the record-breaking judicial nominations, another stab at voting rights and at eliminating the filibuster—even if just for the issue of voting and elections reforms (along with the 161 other filibuster carve-outs) isn’t imminent. But it still needs to be fast-tracked, and with it, not just the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, but also the Freedom to Vote Act Republicans blocked a few weeks ago.

Democracy can’t wait much longer.

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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● NC Redistricting: North Carolina’s Republican-run legislature passed new congressional and legislative maps on Thursday, meaning they are now law because redistricting plans do not require the governor’s approval under state law. All three are extreme GOP gerrymanders designed to lock the party into power for years to come, despite the state’s perennial tossup status.

With North Carolina gaining a seat due to redistricting, the congressional map would create 10 safely red districts and just three that would be safely blue, with one swing seat currently held by a Democrat that’s been trending hard to the GOP. By comparison, the map used in last year’s elections—which Republicans had to repeatedly redraw thanks to intervention by the courts—sent eight Republicans and five Democrats to D.C.

Note that the map has been entirely renumbered, so we’ve put together our best assessment of where each current incumbent might seek re-election at this link, while statistics for past elections can be found on Dave’s Redistricting App. Below are some of our key take-aways:

• GOP lawmakers sought to pack as many Democrats as possible into just three ultra-Democratic districts based in Charlotte (the 9th) and the region known as the Research Triangle (the 5th in Raleigh and the 6th in Durham/Chapel Hill). By doing so, they’ve ensured that nearly all of the surrounding districts will remain safely Republican.
• By contrast, they cracked the blue cities of the Piedmont Triad into four separate districts that sprawl across the state into unrelated rural areas, even though Republicans united the Piedmont in a single district after a state court blocked their prior map as an illegal partisan gerrymander in 2019.
• This includes splitting Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning’s home county of Guilford between three districts, stranding her in a dark-red 11th District with GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx. This region’s cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point in particular have a large Black population that was previously united in Manning’s district but is now split four ways under the new map.
• Republicans also chopped up the Sandhills, a politically swingy region that includes Fayetteville and rural counties to its west and south along the state’s border with South Carolina that have large Black and Native populations (particularly the Lumbee tribe). The area, which was split between two districts under the previous lines, is now divided between three, all of which are majority white and Republican.
• The lone competitive seat would be the 2nd, which is home to Rep. G.K. Butterfield, an African American Democrat. The district, which takes in a heavily Black stretch of North Carolina’s rural north as well as some Raleigh exurbs, would have voted 51-48 for Joe Biden, compared to Biden’s 54-45 margin in Butterfield’s current district, the 1st. But the trendlines here have been very unfavorable for Democrats, and Butterfield could very well lose in a tough midterm environment.
• Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s seat (now numbered the 14th) would move a little to the left, though it would still have gone for Donald Trump by a 53-45 margin, compared to 55-43 previously. It would have gone for Republican Dan Forest by a narrower 50-48 margin in last year’s race for governor, but few North Carolina Democrats in recent years have enjoyed the electoral success that Gov. Roy Cooper has.
• Given the double-bunking of Manning and Foxx, it’s difficult to say which district qualifies as North Carolina’s “new” seat, but both the 4th and 13th would be open, solidly red seats. The 7th will be open as well, though were GOP Rep. Ted Budd not running for the Senate, that’s where he’d likely seek re-election.

No state has seen more litigation over redistricting in the past decade than North Carolina, and that’s not going to change: A new lawsuit has already been filed in state court over the legislative maps. The chief attack on maps centers on the fact that Republicans say they ignored racial data in drawing their lines, in contravention of the Voting Rights Act, with Republicans baselessly claiming that the VRA no longer applies. Democrats may also find success in once again challenging the map on the grounds that it engages in impermissible levels of partisan gerrymandering, a practice that state courts ruled violates the state constitution’s guarantee of free and fair elections in 2019.

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P.S. Why can’t North Carolina governors veto redistricting plans? It turns out that until 1997, they couldn’t veto anything at all! This state of affairs, however, rankled Republicans, who would occasionally win the governorship even though Democrats always held the legislature. That finally changed after Republicans took the state House in 1994 and, together with Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, pressed Democratic lawmakers to support a gubernatorial veto.

Democrats relented, but they demanded a carve-out for redistricting—likely figuring they’d regain their lock on the legislature even if the governorship would still sometimes fall into Republican hands. A 1996 amendment to add veto power to the state constitution passed by an overwhelming 3-1 margin.

Democrats, however, misjudged badly: While they retook the state House in 1998, Republicans narrowly won several state Supreme Court races that year and in 2000 heading into redistricting. The court then struck down Democrats’ legislative gerrymanders before the 2002 elections, resulting in relatively nonpartisan maps that helped Republicans capture both chambers of the legislature in 2010, giving them total control over the remapping process despite the fact that Democrats held the governor’s office during both this redistricting cycle and the last one. (However, Democrats now hold a 4-3 majority on the court).

Redistricting

● AL Redistricting: Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has signed Alabama’s new congressional and legislative maps, a day after lawmakers in the GOP-run legislature gave them their final approval. The congressional plan preserves the state’s current delegation—which sends six Republicans and one Democrat to Congress—by leaving in place just a single Black district, the 7th. Alabama could, however, easily create a second district where Black voters would be able to elect their preferred candidates, given that African Americans make up nearly two-sevenths of the state’s population, but Republicans have steadfastly refused to. Two lawsuits have already been filed on this issue.

● DE Redistricting: Democratic Gov. John Carney has signed Delaware’s new legislative maps, just a day after they were passed by lawmakers. Democrats currently control both the state House and Senate and will almost certainly remain in charge in this solidly blue state that voted for native son Joe Biden 59-40 last year.

● NH Redistricting: New Hampshire Republicans have released a draft congressional map that, as they’ve been promising since they re-took control of state government last year, gerrymanders the state’s two House seats to make the 1st District considerably redder.

New Hampshire’s congressional boundaries have changed remarkably little in the 140 years since the state dropped from three districts to two ahead of the 1882 elections, but the GOP’s plan would impose a dramatically redrawn gerrymander that would shift the 1st from a seat that supported Joe Biden 52-46 to one that backed Donald Trump about 50-48. (The 2nd would become heavily contorted and correspondingly bluer.) The end-goal is to oust sophomore Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas—either at the ballot box, or by convincing him not to seek re-election.

Governors

● MA-Gov: Charlie Baker has been playing a game of “Will he or won’t he?” all year long, and the game’s not about to end: Asked once again this week whether he’ll seek a third term next year, Massachusetts’ Republican governor would only say, “We’ll get back to you guys soon on this, I promise.” NBC Boston’s Katie Lannan points out that when Baker formally kicked off his first (and so far only) re-election bid in 2017, he did so on Nov. 28 of that year, but he bristled when asked whether he might follow a comparable timeline this fall, saying, “I don’t understand why you’re in such a big hurry for me to make a decision about this.”

● NE-Gov: Former Republican Gov. Dave Heineman, who previously said he’d “take most of the rest of the summer and the fall” to decide whether he wants to seek his old job, has now pushed his timetable off further, saying he won’t make up his mind until “probably early January.”

House

● MT-02: Former state Rep. Tom Winter, who’d reportedly been considering a bid, said this week that he’ll run for Montana’s new 2nd Congressional District. Last year, Winter campaigned for what was then the state’s lone, at-large House seat but was defeated in the primary by 2018 nominee Kathleen Williams in a 89-11 landslide. The contours of Montana’s congressional map have yet to be finalized, but both Democrats and Republicans on the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission have proposed lines that would divide the state into an eastern district and a western one. The commission must decide on a final map by Nov. 14.

● TX-35: Austin City Councilman Greg Casar announced on Thursday that he’ll run in the Democratic primary for Texas’ 35th Congressional District, an extremely gerrymandered seat that gathers in as many Democratic voters as possible by linking Austin and San Antonio via a thin rail that runs along Interstate 35. Casar is the first Democrat to kick off a campaign, but several other notable candidates are eyeing the race. The 35th is open because Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who represents its current iteration, recently said he’d run in the new Austin-based 37th District, which Republicans created to serve as a Democratic vote-sink.

● TX-37: Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, who hadn’t ruled out a bid for Texas’ new 37th District, says she’ll run for re-election to the legislature instead. So far, the only person running for this safely blue seat in Austin is Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who currently represents the 35th.

Legislatures

● NJ State Senate: Conservative Democrat Steve Sweeney, who has served as president of New Jersey’s Senate since 2010, has lost in a major upset to Republican Edward Durr, a truck driver who reported spending a total of $153 on his campaign. The AP called the race on Thursday morning for Durr, who won by a 52-48 margin. Sweeney, however, has yet to concede, saying he wants to wait until all votes are counted.

Despite the loss, many Democrats—and progressive activists in particular—will be happy to see Sweeney gone, particularly since the party retained control of both chambers of the legislature in Tuesday’s elections. With two races uncalled, Democrats have won 23 seats and Republicans 15 in the Senate, while each party leads in one more district apiece. If those leads hold, that would represent a minimal change from the 25-15 advantage Democrats enjoyed heading into the election. The Assembly remains safely in Democratic hands as well, though with a somewhat reduced majority.

Sweeney has long opposed many progressive priorities, earning the ire of teachers’ unions and repeatedly crossing Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. But the most salient factor in Sweeney’s defeat is probably that he’s the lone Democratic senator to sit in a district that Donald Trump carried. Trump’s 50-48 margin in the 3rd District was, in fact, quite similar to Durr’s.

But while Sweeney’s collapse may have come as a shock, it’s no surprise that Durr has a history of bigoted postings online—which seem to have only emerged after Election Day. Given the lean of his district, though, none of that may matter to his political future.

Mayors

● Atlanta, GA Mayor: Former Mayor Kasim Reed conceded in his comeback bid to once again run Atlanta on Thursday, falling just short of the second slot for the Nov. 30 runoff. City Council President Felicia Moore finished first in Tuesday’s officially nonpartisan primary with 41%, while City Councilman Andre Dickens surprisingly edged out Reed 23.0% to 22.4% for the crucial second-place spot, a margin of just over 600 votes. In a statement acknowledging his loss, Reed did not endorse either candidate.

Obituaries

● Former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, who in 2000 became the first woman elected to serve as governor of Delaware, has died at the age of 86. Minner was a legislative staffer when she first won a seat in the state House in 1974 as a local version of that year’s “Watergate babies”—reform-minded Democrats elected in the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation. She later rose to the state Senate, then in 1992 was tapped by Rep. Tom Carper as his running-mate during his successful campaign for governor and served as lieutenant governor for eight years.

Minner sought the top job herself when Carper faced term limits in 2000, easily winning the race to succeed her old boss. (That same year, Carper was elected to the Senate.) Her final contest was by far the closest of her career, a 51-46 win over Republican Bill Lee in 2004.

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It’s not looking too good for the U.S. leading the world on the climate front. President Biden announced some measures at the recent COP26 climate conference but not what he hoped to unveil. The centerpiece of the climate portion of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda has been gutted.

. . . All thanks to one Democratic senator who has made millions in the coal business. West Virginia would reap much more benefit from the Biden agenda than from propping up an industry that has been dying for years. Unfortunately for the planet and countless species on it, Senator Joe Manchin made around $500,000 from the coal business just last year.

U.S. climate leadership around the world and legislation at home is being blocked by one compromised senator from West Virginia. At this point, it looks like the fate of the globe rests in the hands of one selfish coal fiend from a town with a population of 375 people.

Be sure to also visit me over on Patreon, where you can support my work, see behind-the-scenes videos and get prints!

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EJ Dionne/WaPo:

Democrats have only themselves to blame

There was only one good thing for Democrats in Tuesday’s elections: A defeat so comprehensive and disastrous does not leave room for excuse-making, blame-shifting or evasion.

President Biden and his party can respond with urgency, or they will surrender the country to a Republican Party still infected by Trumpism.

Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson/NY Times:

Republicans Are Going to Use Dog Whistles. Democrats Can’t Just Ignore Them.

Before Tuesday night, conventional wisdom held that racially coded attacks could well spur higher white turnout but that those gains would be offset by losses among minority voters. Mr. Youngkin proved this assumption false. He significantly outperformed other Republicans among white voters, especially women: In 2020, Joe Biden beat Mr. Trump among white women in Virginia by 50 percent to 49 percent, but according to exit polls, Mr. Youngkin beat Mr. McAuliffe among them by 57 percent to 43 percent. At the same time, Mr. Youngkin suffered no major drop-off among minority voters — if anything, he appeared to slightly outperform expectations.

This should terrify Democrats. With our democracy on the line, we have to forge an effective counterattack on race while rethinking the false choice between mobilizing base voters or persuading swing voters.

These results support the ‘folks are fed up with incumbents’ hypothesis.

Noah Lanard/Mother Jones:

New York Cabbies’ Hunger Strike Ends With a Huge Victory

Mayor de Blasio agreed to slash drivers’ crippling debts.

In a course reversal, de Blasio has agreed to have the city serve as a backstop for the debt past administrations loaded onto drivers. That will allow the cabbies, many of whom still owe more than $500,000, to reduce their debts to $170,000 at most. Their loan payments will also be capped at about $1,100 per month. So far, the agreement covers drivers who owe money to Marblegate, which became the largest holder of medallion loans after the bubble burst.

Ronald Brownstein/Atlantic:

What Democrats Need to Realize Before 2022

And how the president’s party fell victim to history

The Republican victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race and the unexpectedly close result in New Jersey’s—both states Biden won comfortably last year—don’t guarantee a midterm wipeout for Democrats in 2022. Rather, the sweeping Republican advance in both states more likely previews the problems Democrats will have next November if the political environment doesn’t improve for Biden.

Huffpost:

Brad Raffensperger Refused Trump’s Attempt To Steal Georgia. Now He’s Doomed.

Raffensperger’s primary campaign, against a promoter of Trump’s lies, offers a view of the GOP’s anti-democratic future.

Brad Raffensperger believes Republicans can win elections by promoting an “uplifting vision for the country.” The Georgia secretary of state is a national name because he pushed back on former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, and refused Trump’s repeated attempts to “find” votes to overturn the results.

Brad Raffensperger is also politically doomed.

He is seeking reelection in Georgia, where a crowded field of primary candidates have lined up to dethrone a man now considered public enemy No. 1 by adherents of the MAGA movement. Almost nobody thinks he can win.

“He’s dead in the water,” Jay Williams, a Georgia GOP consultant, told HuffPost.

Zachary D Carter/Atlantic:

The Democratic Unraveling Began With Schools

Republican victories in Virginia show how COVID-19 has fundamentally changed American politics.

The unraveling began at the schools. COVID-19 has been terrible for everyone, and it has been especially hard on parents. Unpredictable school closures didn’t just screw up parents’ work schedules; they drove millions of parents, including 3 million women, out of the workforce altogether. Remote learning doesn’t work well for most kids and has been accompanied by rising levels of depression and anxiety among students. From April to October last year, the nationwide share of doctor visits that were related to mental health spiked 24 percent for kids ages 5 to 11, and 31 percent for kids ages 12 to 17. Existing disparities in learning got worse, with the biggest hits coming to kids with disabilities, kids from low-income families, and kids from Black and Latino families—all demographics that Democrats expect to do well with at the ballot box.

Most students in Northern Virginia public schools went almost a full year without in-person schooling, and both teachers and teachers’ unions pretty consistently supported keeping the schools closed in the name of public health. Whether these decisions were ultimately reasonable is hard to measure—but the governor was largely absent on school policy at a time when a lot of parents were really angry.

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

Why did the Democratic coalition fracture so quickly?

“We’re going to see an army of mini-Youngkins in 2022 running the parental control playbook in attempt to tap into anxiety over local schools,” Leopold told me. “Voters are anxious, including over schools — and every Democratic candidate needs a plan to address that.”

In truth, all these factors probably played some role. But I confess to being taken by surprise at how quickly the Democratic coalition frayed, only one year after coming together against Trump.

All of which suggests two very unsettling conclusions.

The first is that Republicans appear to be reaping the positive consequences of the deep polarization along educational lines unleashed by Trump while evading the negative ones.

…

Which leads to another point. If this result does signal a Democratic loss of the House and possibly the Senate in 2022 — and GOP strength in the New Jersey gubernatorial race also underscores this — we may be staring at the third time a Democratic president had a window of only two years to clean up a major mess left behind by Republicans.

Very interesting thread, you can also see it here.

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In the news today: Proving again that even participating in an orchestrated attempt to topple constitutional government isn’t enough to sour Republican voters on you, eight Republicans who attended Trump’s January 6 rally to nullify his election loss won elections last Tuesday. You sure can pick ’em, Republicans.

Elsewhere, yet another political scandal grows in Florida as the powers-that-be insist that university professors are not allowed to give expert testimony that conflicts with the views of Florida’s Republican-run government—at least, not if they want to get paid. And the U.S. military is nearing full vaccination for all service members, just a few months after a Biden order directed them to do so—and without the sort of widespread refusals that anti-vaccine theorists vowed would result from the mandate.

Here’s some of what you may have missed:

• Eight GOP candidates who were present at Jan. 6 insurrection won their elections on Tuesday

• Muzzling of three Florida professors over anti-voting testimony explodes into a political battle

• U.S. military close to universal vaccination as actual vaccine hesitancy again proves ephemeral

• New York welcomes five new members to city council, marking highest AAPI representation yet

• What are voters most dissatisfied with? Civiqs asked, and here’s their top 10 list of concerns

Community Spotlight:

• Trickle-Down Necronomics

• The political realignment that conjoined religion, racists, and the GOP…

• So what happens when your community illegalizes you?

Also trending from the community:

• Some things I need to get off my chest

• “Youngkin cucked Trump!” A conversation with a swing voter in Virginia

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No matter how worthless a white person’s opinion is, the media will eventually seek it out. On a recent episode of CBS News Originals’ Reverb series, the network sent a reporter to find out what the fuck is up with critical race theory.

Because we white folk are apparently the snowflakiest hominids in the history of bipedalism, the media feel compelled to take our pulse from time to time (i.e., always). “Let’s go to another crappy, colon-maiming diner and ask people which stupid reason for supporting Donald Trump they’re trotting out today! ‘He’s a businessman and gets things done’? ‘He doesn’t talk down to me’?” Yeah, there’s a reason for that: It’s because he can’t.

As you reflect on the serial depredations of critical race theory—which currently upsets more conservative white people than actual racism—I implore you not to look into this vacuous woman’s eyes. You will either see through time to the heat death of the universe, or feel overwhelmed by an unslakable thirst for pumpkin spice lattes and Sam’s Club slurpin’ mayonnaise. To paraphrase the great Nigel Tufnel: “How much more white could she be? And the answer is none. None more white.”

But what is it about this phony bugbear that has so many people riled up? You have to see what CBS News found to believe it.

This clip is from The Trials of Critical Race Theory, a deep dive into critical race theory and the febrile persecution fantasies of the deludenoids who are alarmed by it. Even though, you know, it’s taught in basically no public elementary schools anywhere. In the clip, reporter Adam Yamaguchi interviews Moms for Liberty Williamson County (TN) Chair Robin Steenman, who is apparently determined to keep (white) kids from learning about racism until after they’ve heard their uncle casually use the N-word about 400 times during Thanksgiving Day football broadcasts.

Partial transcript!

STEENMAN: “Martin Luther King and the March on Washington, a story that should be told. It’s an example of how the curriculum chooses to teach the history is you’ve got this photo of the fireman spraying the Black children. And it’s a different voice is exercised, and it goes through three points of view …”

YAMAGUCHI: “The first point of view that you have highlighted here, the issue is this is violence and it’s just not appropriate for second graders?”

STEENMAN: “Right.”

YAMAGUCHI: “And the second POV you have highlighted, ‘We have to protect our citizens.’ Our white citizens, that is. What’s the issue there?”

STEENMAN: “Well, it’s highlighting racism, you know, that a police officer would discriminate based on skin color. Most kids would have no idea that a police officer could or would do that. Then you’re teaching that this policeman is and has no problem with violence against children.”

YAMAGUCHI: “So is this an objection based on age appropriateness?”

STEENMAN: “Yes.”

YAMAGUCHI: “So could a sixth grader read this?”

STEENMAN: “I’m not sure where the line is but, yeah, an older child absolutely could.”

YAMAGUCHI: “So this is highlighted.”

STEENMAN: “Yeah, they took issue with that because it’s saying Black and white people are still not treated equally. ‘There’s been no slavery for a long time, but does that mean they’re treated equally? No.’ And we feel that that’s too heavy for a second grader.”

YAMAGUCHI: “And we don’t want them to …”

STEENMAN: “I don’t want them to see racism yet, to engage in it, to learn racism. I mean, they can learn history, but let’s not teach racism.”

Okay, that’s all pretty absurd, but here’s the bit that jumped out at me like a coked-up spider monkey: “Well, it’s highlighting racism, you know, that a police officer would discriminate based on skin color. Most kids would have no idea that a police officer could or would do that.”

Uh-huh. You know who does want their kids to learn about police discrimination based on skin color? Any Black parent who would like their kid to live past the age of 10. But God forbid we let children know about the history of racism in our country. Those firehoses were real. Those traumatizing photos are genuine. And those experiences—awful as they were—were nothing compared to actual slavery. 

Is that too “heavy” for a second-grader? Well, it’s better than teaching them that genocidal maniac Christopher Columbus was a hero, because that’s an egregious lie, and lies make the baby Jesus cry.

And, hey, news flash! Black people and white people still aren’t treated equally. That’s just obvious. Teaching kids that undeniable fact isn’t teaching them how to be “racist.” It’s teaching them perspective and compassion, and perhaps how to do better with intention.

I fear for our future if people are so delicate they can’t even accept self-evident truths about our country’s history.

This is also a great point:

Yeah, me neither. Why is that, you think?

Oh, and this, too:

Listen, I grew up in a pretty racist town in Wisconsin. Sadly, it was fairly representative of other Wisconsin towns, and I can only assume, based on further observation, that it was fairly typical of other predominantly white small towns in America. There’s no age that’s “too young” to teach kids about racism. They’re already learning it—only the lessons they’re getting at home and on the playground are decidedly not worth learning.

If we don’t teach them about Jim Crow, Bull Connor, and the Middle Passage when they’re young, they’ll already be well on their way to internalizing racist attitudes before they can absorb more responsible lessons.

And then we all lose—all people alike.

Oh, hey there! To celebrate the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s defenestration, three of Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s e-books are available for the super-low price of 99 cents each. Get Goodbye, Asshat, Dear F*cking Moron, and Dear Pr*sident A**clown now as part of this Amazon Countdown deal. Look back on Trump’s awful reign of error—and laugh!

This post was originally published on this site

by Lakshmi Gandhi

This story was originally published at Prism.

Last week, activists and organizers from Amazon’s Staten Island distribution center traveled to their regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) office to deliver the signatures needed to formally request a vote to form a union. Shortly after the signatures were delivered, Natalie Monarrez noticed an instant change in the moods of her coworkers.

“The people that want the union are really happy for us,” said Monarrez, one of the employees organizing for a union. “The people who are still unsure about it, I think are still in shock that we actually got to the point after six months of being able to file [the paperwork].”

The independent Amazon Labor Union was first created by former and current Staten Island-based Amazon employees in April. Employees have been working for months to collect the signed union cards necessary to call for a union vote by the NLRB. Unlike other efforts by Amazon workers to collectively organize, the New York union is an independent union in that it is not affiliated with a larger, more established organization.

Working at JFK8, a warehouse on Staten Island that serves as the only fulfillment center for all of New York City, is exhausting work, employees say, that requires them to be constantly on their feet as they create the thousands of packages that depart the warehouse each day. Speed and timing are also two of the biggest markers when it comes to employment with the company: Workers are evaluated on how many items or units they process per hour and the speed it takes a worker to process one item. Workers and union proponents say the constant pressure to work faster is a major factor when it comes to workers getting injured on the job.

Seth Goldstein, a labor lawyer working pro bono with the union organizers, says he has often heard concerns from Amazon warehouse workers about working conditions and their fears of getting injured on the job.

“There have been constant worker safety issues, OSHA violations, and issues about people not being able to go to the bathroom” at Amazon warehouses across the country, he said. “And that was before the pandemic. After the pandemic [started], those issues didn’t go away, they became much worse.”

Despite the rigors of the job, wages at JFK8 for hourly workers are about $18-$19 an hour, according to job advertisements and data posted on aggregated careers websites like Glassdoor. While that is above New York City’s minimum wage, workers say it is not enough to afford the region’s cost of living, especially for those with families to support. Amazon warehouse workers at JFK8 are overwhelmingly people of color. Internal documents from 2019 obtained by The New York Times revealed that 60% of the Staten Island workforce was either Black or Latino. The workforce at JFK8 is also sharply divided by race when it comes to those on the associate level and those in management. That same Times piece notes that managers at the Staten Island distribution center were 70% white or Asian. If the union vote passes, the Amazon Labor Union will be the company’s first-ever union and the first time the notoriously anti-union company would have to collectively bargain with employees over wages and other benefits.

Monarrez, 52, has been working for Amazon for four years as an associate, first at a distribution center in New Jersey and now at JFK8. As she has talked to coworkers about the benefits of a union and the ways collective organizing could improve working conditions at one of the country’s busiest distribution centers, she observed that those against or hesitant about a union almost always had the same major concerns.

“A lot of them are really intimidated by Jeff Bezos,” she said, adding that many employees are concerned about being terminated if the push to unionize succeeds. “So many of them have families to take care of and because the economy is what it is. It’s not as simple as it was a few decades ago to get a job and then to keep that job for a long time.”

The Amazon workers on Staten Island are aware of what happened when their counterparts in Bessemer, Alabama, called for a union vote in April. The Alabama-based workers voted strongly against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union after months of anti-union messaging from the retail behemoth. CNBC reported that Amazon’s union-busting tactics in Alabama included text messages about the harms of unionizing, fliers in bathrooms and other common areas about how expensive union dues are, and meetings with workers during their shifts that featured PowerPoint presentations meant to quell pro-union sentiment. Monarrez says many of those same tactics, particularly messaging about union dues and fliers in common areas, have been utilized at JFK8 for months.

“It’s just ridiculous. It’s basically fear tactics and intimidation and a lot of misinformation and lies,” she said.

In public statements, Amazon has maintained that unionizing is not in the best interest of their workers. A spokesperson for the company told The New York Times on Oct. 25 that the company was “skeptical that a sufficient number of legitimate employee signatures has been secured to warrant an election,” despite the fact that representatives for the NLRB determined that at least 30% of the workers were represented in the signatures collected.

But many pro-union workers believe the instability of working at an Amazon Fulfillment Center along with the often dangerous working conditions will push many workers based in Staten Island to support the union.

The working conditions at JFK8 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City were actually a key factor in the recent push for unionization. Former Assistant Manager Christian Smalls was so concerned that Amazon was not doing enough to protect workers from the coronavirus that he led a walkout at the Staten Island fulfillment center in March 2020. He was fired from the company that same day.

Since his dismissal, Smalls has been a key organizer on behalf of the potential new Amazon union and currently serves as its president.

“We know the ins and outs of the company. A lot of the lead organizers have been around Amazon for three-plus years—some of them even four, five, six, or seven years,” Smalls told Jacobin about the decision to form an independent union. “They’re all seasoned Amazon workers. They’re veterans. They have a lot of influence in the building.”

Goldstein compared the organizing by Smalls and other workers against Amazon to the Biblical story of David and Goliath, and also notes that they are part of a growing push of workers pushing for better working conditions.

“These Amazon workers are also tech workers. They’re not software developers or engineers, but they are tech workers,” Goldstein said. “Amazon, like other tech companies, was experiencing a lot of labor unrest before the pandemic, but after the pandemic I think that it became more substantial, especially with worker safety issues.”

Experts say the unionization push in Staten Island needs to be viewed as part of the larger push for safer working conditions and better pay and benefits at warehouses, factories, and farms across the country in the wake of the pandemic.

“There is a national mood shift where more and more workers are participating in strikes and other labor actions,” said Kent Wong, the director of the UCLA Labor Center. “It is in this environment that there’s a lot of discontent among Amazon workers. Regardless of what happens with this Staten Island union campaign, we can anticipate that there will be many more organizing attempts at Amazon facilities across the country.”

Lakshmi Gandhi is a reporter, editor, and social media manager based in New York City. She is currently a freelance journalist who specializes in literature, identity, and pop culture. 

Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.