Politics

Livestreamed as well as in-person, and co-hosted by the Georgetown Center for Privacy and Technology and @DAIR@dair-community.social

"Our theme, “Surveillance / Resistance,” is broader and more ambiguous than the themes for previous years, and this is purposeful. What does resistance mean when surveillance isn’t just something that occurs in the environments where we live and work and play and think and create and struggle, but is actually the material with which so many of those environments are built? In a context of broad institutional corrosion and capture, in the face of proliferating global catastrophe, this is a question that remains open and difficult."

The previous workshops I've been to have been outstanding, and this one looks like it'll be great too!

so much for "free speech". it'd be almost impossible to find someone with thinner skin than The Donald.

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Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) announced on Wednesday anl initiative to foster collaboration with fellow governors in the U.S. to protect against threats to democracy and strengthen government institutions.

The nonpartisan coalition of governors, Governors Safeguarding Democracy (GSD), will “leverage the collective strength, experience, and institutional knowledge in governors’ offices across the country to craft laws and policies that protect the rule of law and serve the people of our great states,” according to the group’s website.

"By supporting state leaders with tools, knowledge, and resources to protect and strengthen state democratic institutions, GSD seeks to ensure that American democracy remains vibrant, resilient, and responsive to the needs of its people," the initiative writes continues.

[Edit typo.]

Archive.org link

Some key excerpts:

A contingent of Democratic lawmakers rallied Tuesday evening to vote down a controversial bill that would have granted President-elect Donald Trump broad powers to censor and punish his political opponents.

Despite previous bipartisan support, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act — which would allow the Treasury Department unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it designates as a “terrorist supporting organization” — hit a roadblock in Congress in the form of Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who led the charge against the bill in large part due to Trump’s reelection.

In a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, 145 Democrats and one Republican voted “nay” — barely enough to deny the bill the two-thirds majority it needed to pass under “suspension of the rules,” a procedure used to fast-track bills with broad bipartisan support.

An earlier version of the bill had passed the House with near unanimous support before it languished in committee in the Senate.

Under the provisions of the bill, the Treasury secretary would have been authorized to unilaterally designate any nonprofit group deemed to be a supporter of terrorism, giving the group just 90 days to respond to a notice. After those 90 days, if appeals were unsuccessful, the group would be stripped of its tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status. Such a measure would likely cripple any nonprofit, and even if an appeal was successful, critics said, it would leave a mark that could scare away donors.

In the run-up to the vote, a number of Democrats spoke out in opposition, including members of the Squad such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Cori Bush, D-Mo.

The majority of Democrats in the House agreed, despite most of them having supported the previous iteration of the bill. Just 52 Democrats wound up backing the bill

It’s unclear if or how the bill’s supporters — including its author, Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., and co-sponsor Brad Schneider, D-Ill. — plan to advance it. The bill could easily return in the next legislative session. But the rallying of Democratic opposition and the loss of a Democratic co-sponsor indicate that it is unlikely to enjoy its previous bipartisan backing, according to Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy counsel with the ACLU.

In every state where paid sick leave was on the ballot, voters approved it. On Election Day, measures in Missouri, Alaska and Nebraska passed by wide margins: In Alaska, 57 percent of voters approved it, in Missouri it was 58 percent and in Nebraska a whopping 74 percent.

The three new initiatives will give workers earned sick time depending on the size of their employer. If the business has 15 or more workers in Missouri and Alaska, or 20 or more in Nebraska, workers earn up to 56 hours of paid sick time a year. That’s equivalent to seven days if they work eight-hour shifts. Those who work for smaller businesses can earn up to 40 hours a year, or five eight-hour days.

The paid leave laws go into effect in May (Missouri), July (Alaska) and October (Nebraska).

While eyes have been on the presidential election, particularly results in key swing states, this election season also brought a blow to criminal justice reform advocates in California. Voters’ final decision on pivotal ballot measures Proposition 36 and Proposition 6 will shape both policing and the experiences of and opportunities afforded to currently incarcerated people across the state. Not only did voters approve increased penalties for theft and some drug offenses, but they also rejected a move to ban forced prison labor.

Archived version

The report by Taiwanese fact checkers is directly relevant to the election campaign, the voting and counting process, the candidates, their family members, the political parties of the candidates, or policies promoted by the candidates.

[...]

The report examines 40 Chinese false information narratives propagated on social media or websites during the election campaign. We observed that:

1. False information narratives focused the most on attacks on candidates, followed by misrepresenting policies, spreading suspicions about the election's integrity, and instilling fear about the outcome of the election if a specific candidate was elected.

2. The most common tactic utilized in disinformation claims was to distort the original information.

3. Pictures were the most popular format. In addition, we identified several cases in which information manipulators promoted AI-generated videos or photos.

[...]

Most of [the disinformation] targeting Harris and her vice presidential candidate Walz, appeared to be popular among Chinese supporters of Trump, influencers who frequently ridiculed US politics and society, and those who enjoyed the drama of American election campaigns. The comments accompanying the false claims questioned Harris and Walz's beliefs and ethics, as well as the Democrats' immigration policies that made the US more unsafe and US foreign policies that often meddle with international events. They warned of the ramifications if Harris was elected as the US president, including a loss of freedom, of course, and presented false evidence that the Democrats may have committed voting fraud.

[...]

There was also a false claim about China's meddling. For example, one false piece claimed that Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State, stated that China supplied fraudulent IDs to the US for those who were ineligible to vote in the presidential election. The truth was that Blinken never made the statement.

[...]

The majority of the false information pieces can be traced back to English social media posts. Some of them were even translated or adapted from X posts by Trump's allies, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who claimed that Harris wanted to shut X down) and Elon Musk (who promoted a video mocking Harris' campaign video).

One of the few exceptions was a piece suggesting Harris confirmed the US was involved in the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. This false claim was made by an official account linked to the Chinese government, which referenced the Russian state outlet Sputnik as its news source. However, Harris has never made such a statement.

[...]

Despite the outcome at the top of the ticket, races for state supreme courts across the country offered a much more mixed result, with Democrats and liberals scoring some important wins but also facing some setbacks. Below we catalog Tuesday's most notable races.

During Trump’s first term, the ACLU filed 434 legal challenges against his administration, successfully blocking some of Trump’s most egregious policies, like the Muslim ban and separating immigrant families. When Trump once again set his sights on the White House, the ACLU’s legal and advocacy experts drafted a roadmap to combat his administration head-on. On day one, we are prepared to:

• Defend against the Trump administration’s unlawful mass deportation plan through coordinated action at all levels of government. We’ll also work with states and localities to protect residents to the full extent possible and ensure that a Trump administration can’t hijack state resources to carry out its draconian policies.
• Provide legal defense to whistleblowers and critics who dare to stand up to Trump’s policies. We’ll also protect freedom of speech and the right to protest against Trump’s agenda.
• Use the courts to affirm that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under federal law. We’ll fight to invalidate Trump administration policies that permit discrimination across the federal government, and to shut down the administration’s efforts to require discrimination at the state and local levels.
• Challenge the Trump administration’s dangerous attacks on reproductive freedom, including any attempts to weaponize the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide or to take medication abortion off the shelves. We’ll also protect access to birth control and family planning services.

[...]

Archive.org link

Some key excerpts:

Up for a potential fast-track vote next week in the House of Representatives, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as H.R. 9495, would grant the secretary of the Treasury Department unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a “terrorist supporting organization.”

The resolution has already prompted strong opposition from a wide range of civil society groups, with more than 100 organizations signing an open letter issued by the American Civil Liberties Union in September.

“This is about stifling dissent and to chill advocacy, because people are going to avoid certain things and take certain positions in order to avoid this designation,” Hamadanchy told The Intercept.

The current version — which was introduced by Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., and co-sponsored by Brad Schneider, D-Ill., and Dina Titus, D-Nev. — is paired with a provision that would provide tax relief to American hostages held by terror groups and other Americans unjustly imprisoned abroad.

Hamadanchy said combining the two provisions was likely a ploy to push the nonprofit-terror bill through with as little opposition as possible.

The law would not require officials to explain the reason for designating a group, nor does it require the Treasury Department to provide evidence.

“It basically empowers the Treasury secretary to target any group it wants to call them a terror supporter and block their ability to be a nonprofit,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council Action, which opposes the law. “So that would essentially kill any nonprofit’s ability to function. They couldn’t get banks to service them, they won’t be able to get donations, and there’d be a black mark on the organization, even if it cleared its name.”

The bill could also imperil the lifesaving work of nongovernmental organizations operating in war zones and other hostile areas where providing aid requires coordination with groups designated as terrorists by the U.S.

If it proceeds, the bill will go to the House floor in a “suspension vote,” a fast-track procedure that limits debate and allows a bill to bypass committees and move on to the Senate as long as it receives a two-thirds supermajority in favor.

The new bill on terror designations for tax-exempt nonprofits, however, would slash through the pesky red tape — constitutional checks and balances — of due process, presumption of innocence, and other protections afforded to defendants accused in criminal court of providing material support to terror groups.

“The danger is much broader than just groups that work on foreign policy,” said Costello. “It could target major liberal funders who support Palestinian solidarity and peace groups who engage in protest. But it could also theoretically be used to target pro-choice groups, and I could see it being used against environmental groups.

Archived version

People For the American Way today announced the launch of its new campaign, Resist Project 2025, a roadmap for immediate resistance to an incoming Trump administration and for a strong pro-democracy movement for freedom and justice. The plan calls for assembling a unique coalition of young progressive officials, faith leaders and artists to take prominent roles in resistance and reform.

"Make no mistake, the election result is horrifying and we should not kid ourselves: Trump 47 will be worse than last time. He has signaled he intends to preside over a regime of fascism and bigotry on steroids, one that will be empowered by a MAGA Supreme Court. That means the resistance must start now,” said Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way.

[...]

[Edit typo.]

Archived version

[...]

Trump’s reëlection, his victory over Kamala Harris, can no longer be ascribed to a failure of the collective imagination. He is the least mysterious public figure alive; he has been announcing his every disquieting tendency, relentlessly, publicly, for decades. Who is left, supporter or detractor, who does not acknowledge, at least to some degree, his cynicism and divisiveness, his disrespect for selfless sacrifice? To him, fallen American soldiers are “suckers.” Many of his former closest advisers—Vice-President Mike Pence; his chief of staff John Kelly; Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—have described him as unfit, unstable, and, in the case of Kelly and Milley, a fascist. In the closing weeks of the campaign, Trump went out of his way to dismiss his consultants’ blandishments to moderate his tone. Instead, he pretended to fellate a microphone and threatened to direct the military against the “enemy from within.” He emphasized every rotten thing about himself, as if to say, “Forget the scripted stuff on the teleprompter. Listen to me when I go off-the-cuff. The conspiracy theories. The fury. The vengeance. The race-baiting. The embrace of Putin and Orbán and Xi. The wild stories. This is me, the real me. I’m a genius. I’m weaving!”

[...]

An American retreat from liberal democracy—a precious yet vulnerable inheritance—would be a calamity. Indifference is a form of surrender. Indifference to mass deportations would signal an abnegation of one of the nation’s guiding promises. Vladimir Putin welcomes Trump’s return not only because it makes his life immeasurably easier in his determination to subjugate a free and sovereign Ukraine but because it validates his assertion that American democracy is a sham—that there is no democracy. All that matters is power and self-interest. The rest is sanctimony and hypocrisy. Putin reminds us that liberal democracy is not a permanence; it can turn out to be an episode.

One of the great spirits of modern times, the Czech playwright and dissident Václav Havel, wrote in “Summer Meditations,” “There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.” During the long Soviet domination of his country, Havel fought valiantly for liberal democracy, inspiring in others acts of resilience and protest. He was imprisoned for that. Then came a time when things changed, when Havel was elected President and, in a Kafka tale turned on its head, inhabited the Castle, in Prague. Together with a people challenged by years of autocracy, he helped lead his country out of a long, dark time. Our time is now dark, but that, too, can change. It happened elsewhere. It can happen here.

Archived version

The former Democratic vice presidential nominee gave a concession speech on Friday in his state of Minnesota.

[...]

Walz reflected on his time traveling the country [during the U.S. presidential campaign], saying he recognized that "people want security" as well as the "freedom to live their lives the way they want to live it."

[...]

"I just want to acknowledge the moment. It's hard. It's hard to lose," Walz said. "It's hard to understand how so many of our fellow citizens ... wound up choosing the other path. If you're feeling defeated or discouraged today, I get it. Take some time. [Get back in this fight when you are ready.]"

[...]

[Walz's] postelection speech about vowing to fight is not unlike other Democratic governors. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy told reporters on Wednesday that his team had recently held a meeting to "war game" the prospect of a second Trump presidency.

[...]

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday called for lawmakers to convene a special session to bolster the state's legal resources to protect civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action and immigrant families.

[...]

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has convened a task force—called the Empire State Freedom Initiative—to "develop strategies for protecting New Yorkers from a variety of policy and regulatory threats that could emerge under President-elect Trump."

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, who filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump as the state's attorney general during his first term, has said that she expects litigation will be filed if Trump proceeds with plans for mass deportations.

"There's going to be a lot of pressure on states and state officials, and I can assure you, we're going to work really hard to deliver. I'm sure there may be litigation ahead," she said.

[...]

Archived version

"I know where I will be on day one of Trump’s presidency. I will be standing hand in hand with my undocumented community, proudly declaring that we are here to stay. This moment, however, begs the question of our allies: Where will they be on day one?"

"To those who are feeling despair at this moment, who are asking how it’s possible that a fascist, rapist and impeached former president has made it back to the White House, I say this: Let the rage you’re feeling catalyze you into action.

Voters in Southern California and the East Bay have ousted two of the boldest reform DAs to hold office since the “progressive prosecutor” movement began. In Los Angeles County, George Gascón lost his reelection bid to Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and 2020 Republican candidate for state attorney general who has vowed to undo all of Gascón’s changes to the role. In Alameda County, DA Pamela Price was recalled alongside Oakland’s mayor Sheng Thao after just two years in office. These defeats appear to be resounding: Initial results show that Hochman beat Gascón by a 23-point margin. Results have not been finalized in Alameda County, but as of publication support for Price’s recall was up by 30 points.

Archived version

Trump has always been a presence, not an absence: the presence of fascism. What does this mean?

When the Soviets called their enemies “fascists,” they turned the word into a meaningless insult. Putinist Russia has preserved the habit: a “fascist” is anyone who opposes the wishes of a Russian dictator. So Ukrainians defending their country from Russian invaders are “fascists.” This is a trick that Trump has copied. He, like Vladimir Putin, refers to his enemies as “fascists,” with no ideological significance at all. It is simply a term of opprobrium.

Putin and Trump are both, in fact, fascists. And their use of the word, though meant to confuse, reminds us of one of fascism’s essential characteristics. A fascist is unconcerned with the connection between words and meanings. He does not serve the language; the language serves him. When a fascist calls a liberal a “fascist,” the term begins to work in a different way, as the servant of a particular person, rather than as a bearer of meaning.

[...]

Fascism is a phenomenon, not a person. Just as Trump was always a presence, so is the movement he has created. It is not just a matter of the actual fascists in his movement, who are scarcely hiding, nor of his own friendly references to Hitler or his use of Hitlerian language (“vermin,” “enemy within”). He bears responsibility for what comes next, as do his allies and supporters.

Yet some, and probably more, of the blame rests with our actions and analysis. Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22316140

Despite national election results that have left environmentalists and their allies wary of what’s to come in the next four years, ballot initiatives related to climate policies fared well across the country on election day.

At least five of six ballot measures related to climate change resulted in what most environmentalists consider wins. But state legislative races across the country that could impact climate policy had more uneven results.

In particular, they're talking on Fox about the death penalty for Jack Smith, though the WaPo doesn't deign to tell us that.

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Bomb threats sent to polling places and ballot-counting locations in at least five battleground states across the U.S. Tuesday targeted mostly Democratic counties, an NBC News analysis has found.

The full extent of who received the bomb threats is not clear. None are believed to have been deemed credible.

[The] high-population Democratic counties include voting locations for Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Maricopa County, Arizona, which Biden won by a slim margin, has consistently been the subject of election denialism conspiracy theories. The other five — Michigan’s Wayne County, Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia County and Georgia’s DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties — were some of the largest Democratic strongholds in their respective states.

[...]

Much is still unknown about the threats, including the identity of who sent them. They do appear to have been designed to influence either the perception of the election outcome or the outcome itself, as all the threats known to NBC News were sent to the handful of battleground states widely believed by both parties to be crucial for winning the election.

[...]

“This is an extraordinary and very disturbing development,” said Larry Norden, the vice president of the elections and government program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Whether it’s a foreign or domestic actor that was involved, there needs to be repercussions for it.”

[...]

The FBI said in an emailed statement Tuesday that “many” of the threats “appear to originate from Russian email domains.” Some additional threats appeared to have been sent from a French service, a U.S. official briefed on the matter told NBC News. Anyone with unrestricted internet access can sign up for email services in other countries, making it difficult to deduce who actually sent the threats.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has openly blamed Russia for the threats since late Tuesday morning, though it’s not clear if he’s referencing the ones coming through a Russian email service or has access to additional intelligence.

[...]

Archived version

The presidential election this week marks a first in the history of the United States when Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris while awaiting sentencing on 34 criminal charges. The president-elect has faced criminal indictments in three other cases as well.

Justice Juan Merchan is scheduled to sentence Trump on those 34 charges on Nov. 26.

In an op-ed published by the Kansas City Star on Friday, journalist Bill Dalton argued that Judge Merchan can honor "the rule of law."

Dalton writes, "The American people did the unthinkable — they elected a convicted felon president. Judge Juan Merchan should now do what was once unthinkable — force a president-elect to take the oath of office in a jail cell."

[...]

Dalton continues, "That message needs to be sent because, after Inauguration Day, the rule of law will cease to exist for sitting presidents thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's immunity ruling. Trump proved Tuesday, aided and abetted by 72 million voters, that crime does indeed pay. He thumbed his nose at America's once respected system of justice. He made a laughingstock of prosecutors and the judicial process. He turned what used to be a political liability for candidates into a political asset for fundraising."

Dalton argued that Merchan "should sentence and jail Trump while he is still a private citizen, no better nor more privileged than any of the millions of people who voted for or against him."

"Merchan should show the same courage that Vice President Mike Pence showed on January 6 when he stood for the rule of law, risking his life and destroying his political career in the process," writes Dalton.

[...]

Well-crafted disinfo takes advantage of our emotions by getting us to amplify false and misleading messages. A specific example of post-election racialized disinfo that I'm seeing a lot of is weaponizing exit poll data to target Latinos, Black men, trans people, and other marginalized demographics.