One of the most obvious actions that proves the inherent anti-democracy authoritarianism that dominates the radical right GOP is its endless push to rig elections so that Republicans can vote, but Democrats can't. It's hard to get it right, because some GOP votes get suppressed, which is not what the Republicans want to do. So, we get to witness the GOP's trial and error effort to subvert elections. The NYT writes about the ongoing subversion campaign:
Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses
Party officials across the country have sought to erect more barriers for young voters, who tilt heavily Democratic, after several cycles in which their turnout surgedAlarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students.
In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly this month to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification.
Even in Texas, where 2019 legislation shuttered early voting sites on many college campuses, a new proposal that would eliminate all college polling places seems to have an uncertain future.
“When these ideas are first floated, people are aghast,” said Chad Dunn, the co-founder and legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. But he cautioned that the lawmakers who sponsor such bills tend to bring them back over and over again.
A wild card in the 2024 presidential elections will be the effectiveness of Republican election subversion laws. This could be a necessary factor in who wins and loses in 2024. This adds to the mountain of evidence of radical right Republican Party animosity toward two-party rule, democracy and the free and fair elections needed to keep democracy meaningful.
Students at the University of Texas at Austin lined up to cast their ballots
on campus during the 2020 primary. A new proposal would eliminate
all college polling places in the state.
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From the Corrupt Republican Politics Files: Daily KOS writes:
House Republicans demanding Bragg's evidence againstTrump have been coordinating with Trump himself
CNN is now confirming what we've all suspected for a while now: House Republican caucus and committee leaders have been in regular communications with the coup-attempting Donald Trump, keeping him personally up to date on the status of committees and investigations launched to help cover up Trump’s suspected crimes.
"Not only are Trump, his aides and close allies regularly apprised of Republicans’ committee work, they also at times exert influence over it," reports CNN. And those communications have "emerged as a crucial method for Trump to shape Republicans’ priorities in their newly-won House majority."CNN's report puts a new spin on it, however. It's not just that House Republicans have volunteered themselves as Trump's personal saboteurs. They've been coordinating with Trump himself, even two years after Trump left office following his attempted coup.
So, yes. Jim Jordan and other Republicans have been in constant touch with Trump as they formulated their attacks on Bragg. And yes, it does appear that there's a direct pipeline in place that will feed whatever confidential information about Bragg's case to Trump's lawyers and Trump himself. It's not obstruction of justice if Jordan does it!
This adds to the existing mountain of evidence that the GOP is completely morally corrupt. Radical Republicans in congress constantly tell us they are just investigating crimes by the Bidens and merely vindicating the rule of law. Instead, they have nothing but open contempt for the rule of law as it applies to Republican elites. For GOP elites, both the Christian nationalists and the brass knuckles capitalists, the rule of law is just a political tool to attack enemies and reward allies and the elites themselves. The GOP is authoritarian, not pro-democracy. This is solid evidence of that truth.
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About the 2024 election: Newsweek writes:
A poll showing 61 percent of Americans don't want Donald Trump to be president again has been displayed on Fox Business.
The survey, conducted by Marist National Poll for National Public Radio and PBS NewsHour, found only 38 percent of U.S. voters want the New York business tycoon to have another term in the White House.
Despite that, it seems clear by now that as long as Trump is healthy enough to run for president again, The GOP will nominate him in 2024. His core base remains loyal. No other contender has yet made major inroads. Republicans who say they would prefer Trump not to be president again will nonetheless vote for him against any evil socialist Democrat deep state tyrant. It does not matter who the Democrats run, the Dem candidate will be relentlessly and viciously smeared and slandered into a terrifying vision Satan's incarnated evil on planet Earth in 2024.
Really, who could vote for Satan?
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From the Brass Knuckles Capitalism (BKC) Files: Ars Technica writes about Google destroying inconvenient evidence in a lawsuit:
You can't do that! --Judge finds Google destroyed evidence and repeatedly gave false info to courtGoogle in trouble for auto-deleting chats needed as evidence in Epic Games case"After substantial briefing by both sides, and an evidentiary hearing that featured witness testimony and other evidence, the Court concludes that sanctions are warranted," US District Judge James Donato wrote. Later in the ruling, he wrote that evidence shows that "Google intended to subvert the discovery process, and that Chat evidence was 'lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation' and 'with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation.'"
"The Court has since had to spend a substantial amount of resources to get to the truth of the matter, including several hearings, a two-day evidentiary proceeding, and countless hours reviewing voluminous briefs. All the while, Google has tried to downplay the problem and displayed a dismissive attitude ill tuned to the gravity of its conduct. Its initial defense was that it had no 'ability to change default settings for individual custodians with respect to the chat history setting,' but evidence at the hearing plainly established that this representation was not truthful."
Apparently, Google gambles that its is better to take lumps from a judge than lose its defense case in court. By intentionally destroying evidence, Google evinces an poor, condescending attitude toward the rule of law that far too many BKC elites hold and act on. No senior executive at Google is going to go to jail. That's the beauty of the liability shield that routinely protects elite corporate criminals. All bad acts here are by the legal person named Google. That's Mr. Google to you, you puny human citizen.
What can the court do? No real humans are responsible. Send Google's official documents of incorporation to jail? That's who is responsible in the eyes of the law. The law blinded and neutered by BKC elites.
This is more evidence of how tenuous the rule of law can be and too often is. This is what the slow fall of the rule of law looks like in real time.
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