NBC NEWS: Substitute teacher accused of re-enacting George Floyd murder in Minnesota classroom

Substitute teacher accused of re-enacting George Floyd murder in Minnesota classroom
The teacher was removed from the classroom and barred from “stepping foot on any district property.”

Read in NBC News: https://apple.news/A-_m7o1GwQwSZCEKHR6dtcg

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THE HILL: Why Harris is happy with that confrontational Fox interview

Why Harris is happy with that confrontational Fox interview
Vice President Harris and Fox News host Bret Baier battled Wednesday evening in a 30-minute encounter that looked more like a debate at times than an interview.

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US Justice Department says Virginia is illegally striking voters off the rolls in new lawsuit

Republicans know their idea are unpopular and people don’t want their polices.  So instead of changing to do the will of the people are they are hired / elected to do, they simply remove voters who won’t vote for them.  Very democratic.  They demand to rule over the people not represent the people’s will.  Hugs.

Across the country, conservatives have challenged the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during a news conference at the state Capitol in Richmond, Va., on Jan. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
 

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Virginia election officials Friday that accuses the state of striking names from voter rolls in violation of federal election law.

The lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria says that an executive order issued in August by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin requiring daily updates to voter lists to remove ineligible voters violates federal law. The National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of elections for the maintenance of voter rolls.

“Congress adopted the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period restriction to prevent error-prone, eleventh hour efforts that all too often disenfranchise qualified voters,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy and the Justice Department will continue to ensure that the rights of qualified voters are protected.”

A similar lawsuit was filed earlier this week by a coalition of immigrant-rights groups and the League of Women Voters.

In its lawsuit, the Justice Department said the quiet-period provision reduces the risk that errors in maintaining registration lists will disenfranchise eligible voters by ensuring they have enough time to address errors before the election.

On Aug. 7 — 90 days before the Nov. 5 federal election — Youngkin’s order formalized a systemic process to remove people who are “unable to verify that they are citizens” to the state Department of Motor Vehicles from the statewide voter registration list.

Virginia election officials are using data from the Department of Motor Vehicles to determine a voter’s citizenship and eligibility, according to the filing. The lawsuit alleges the DMV data can be inaccurate or outdated, but officials have not been taking additional steps to verify a person’s purported noncitizen status before mailing them a notice of canceling their voter eligibility.

In a statement on Friday, Youngkin said that state officials were properly enforcing state law requiring the removal of noncitizens from voter rolls.

“Virginians — and Americans — will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy,” Youngkin said of the Justice Department’s lawsuit.

“With the support of our Attorney General, we will defend these commonsense steps, that we are legally required to take, with every resource available to us. Virginia’s election will be secure and fair, and I will not stand idly by as this politically motivated action tries to interfere in our elections, period,” Youngkin said.

Across the country, conservatives have challenged the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The Republican National Committee, newly reconstituted under Trump, has also been involved in efforts to challenge voter rolls before the November election.

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By OLIVIA DIAZ Associated Press/Report for America

 

Trump, after mocking Harris over teleprompter use, stops rally to remove sign that fell on his

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-teleprompter-harris-reno-rally-b2628157.html

With maga every accusation is a confession.  Hugs.

Former president often mocks Kamala Harris for using a teleprompter

Video at link above.  
 

After mocking Vice President Kamala Harris over her teleprompter, Donald Trump’s rally in Reno, Nevada, ground to a halt as he was was forced to fix his on-stage after a campaign sign fell on it.

“Thank god I don’t use teleprompters too much,” Trump told rally goers after the sign fell on the teleprompter, causing the script to stop being projected. “I look at the teleprompter, it’s totally gone. I say ‘What the hell happened.’ The sign fell on top of it.”

Former president Donald Trump removed signage that fell on top of his teleprompter at a rally in Reno, Nevada
Former president Donald Trump removed signage that fell on top of his teleprompter at a rally in Reno, Nevada (AP)
 

The irony of the incident comes to light when reflecting on the number of times the former president has accused Harris of relying on a teleprompter and mocking her for it.

 

Trump told supporters on Friday he would “level” with them, and admitted to his teleprompter usage, yet still asserted Harris uses one more.

“Isn’t it nice to have a guy that doesn’t need a teleprompter, a president, a potential president that doesn’t need a teleprompter?” Trump asked supporters moments after fixing his teleprompter.

He went on to, again, falsely accuse Harris of using one during her town hall with Univision on Thursday.

Both the Harris campaign and Univision have confirmed to CNN that the vice president did not use a teleprompter during her town hall. A teleprompter that was seen in a photo from the event was in Spanish and meant for the moderator, not Harris.

 

Trump and his allies have previously accused Harris of using a teleprompter in interviews when she did not. In instances where the vice president has used a teleprompter, they have mocked her and insinuated she needs one because she is not intelligent.

Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, boasted about not needing a teleprompter during a rally in August claiming, “I’ve actually got thoughts in my head. Unlike Kamala Harris.” At that same rally, he misspoke about a terrorist event in Afghanistan.

 

Similarly, Trump told supporters on Friday night that “there’s something wrong with [Harris]” for using teleprompters.

He added: “I don’t use them that much. The concept I use but I don’t like it.”

He then embarked on a hard-to-follow rant about making speeches.

“When you can’t get up and make a speech, like, normally, like – when all the work we do, you’d think you could for 40 minutes – well she makes very short speeches too. Have you ever noticed they’re like 10 minutes,” he told the crowd at Reno.

 

“Threatening to cancel votes”: Florida officials allege fraud to kneecap abortion rights amendment

https://www.salon.com/2024/10/12/threatening-to-cancel-votes-florida-officials-allege-fraud-to-kneecap-abortion-rights-amendment/

The last-minute report threatens to “cancel” votes for an amendment to restore abortion rights in the state

By Griffin Eckstein

News Fellow

Published October 12, 2024 2:06PM (EDT)

Abortion rights advocates participate in a protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on June 24, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Abortion rights advocates participate in a protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on June 24, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

In a last-minute effort to kill a proposed ballot amendment that would restore abortion rights in Florida, state officials are accusing a group that gathered signatures to get the amendment on this year’s ballot fraud.

Florida Deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay claimed in a 348-page report released on Friday night that Floridians Protecting Freedom paid out-of-state petition circulators to harvest fraudulent signatures. That group that gathered nearly 1 million signatures for the abortion rights effort. The report alleges the Department of State has been flooded with complaints about potential fraud, and that it had opened over 100 criminal investigations.

“The allegations included reports of paid FPF petition circulators signing petitions on behalf of deceased individuals, forging or misrepresenting elector signatures of petitions, using electors’ personal identifying information without consent, and perjury/false swearing,” the report claims, noting that “more than 20” of the 911,000 signatures were from now-deceased Floridians.

Florida law allows voters to add amendments to the state constitution directly, if 60% of voters agree with a given proposal. Though the election is just three weeks away and ballots have been printed, challenges to the amendment could invalidate votes cast for the initiative. 

Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration has worked hard to kneecap the rights-restoring proposal, reportedly sending state troopers to interrogate petition signers and threatening to prosecute television stations that run ads supporting the measure. On Thursday, state’s Supreme Court ruled DeSantis was not abusing his powers in his attacks on the amendment. 

Florida Democrats warn that the report is just another tactic aimed at killing the effort to repeal the state’s DeSantis-enacted six-week abortion ban.

“DeSantis is so obsessed w/ending reproductive freedom in FL that he has weaponized every state agency against us, is spending PUBLIC $ to campaign against [the ballot initiative] & now — while we’re recovering from a hurricane  — releasing late night reports, threatening to cancel our votes,” Democratic state Representative Anna V. Eskamani wrote in a post to X.


MORE FROM Griffin Eckstein

We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/12/trump-racist-rhetoric-immigrants-00183537

A POLITICO analysis of more than 20 of his rallies and campaign events shows Trump has demonized minority groups in all of them.

 
 
 
 
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Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.

Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”

He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.

 
 

In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks.

“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said.

His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.

“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who writes about authoritarianism and fascism and has been outspoken about the dangers of a second Trump administration.

 

“So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us,” she continued. “That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”

The Trump campaign said while the “media obsesses over rhetoric,” the former president is responding to voters’ concerns.

“The American people care about results that impact their lives. President Trump will take action to deport Kamala’s illegal immigrants and secure the border on day one. That’s what Americans want to hear,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to POLITICO.

Trump has long deployed racist attacks for political gain, including spreading conspiracy theories about whether former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was born in the United States. And when he launched his first campaign in 2015, Trump said Mexico was “not sending its best,” calling immigrants from the country “rapists” who are bringing in crime and drugs. He also promised that day to build a “great big wall.”

But times have changed, and so has he.

The country has moved to the right on immigration — including the Democratic Party and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Trump repeatedly bashed Harris as “dumb,” questioned her racial identity and has called her a “DEI” candidate — perpetuating the idea that women and people of color can only be in positions of power because of quotas and preferential treatment.

Harris has touted her record prosecuting transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers and has promised strict enforcement at the Southern border — an effort to appease Americans’ concern about illegal migration. The vice president has vowed to go even further than the Biden administration’s crackdown on asylum.

 

As the political conversation around immigration has shifted, Trump has not only intensified his rhetoric, but his policy plans.

He has increasingly targeted specific communities, including Springfield, Ohio, Charleroi, Pennsylvania and Aurora, arguing that immigrants are destroying American towns and cities across the country and using those examples to call for large-scale federal response. Trump has spent the last month on the trail elevating the claims about those communities — even as local officials have been denying these allegations and asking the Republican nominee to stand down.

Trump on Friday used false stories about gang takeovers in Aurora as he announced he would remove migrants connected to gangs under an “Operation Aurora” based on presidential wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act. (While police in Aurora have encountered some gang activity tied to a Venezuelan group, there has been no gang takeover in Colorado.)

“Efforts to blame outsiders, a politically voiceless group, which Trump is an expert at doing, has led to atrocities in the United States — everything from Japanese internment to Operation Wetback,” said Ediberto Román, a Florida International University law professor who studies xenophobia and immigration.

Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. women and girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.

But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”

“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”

 
 
 
 
 
 

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TEEN VOGUE: The Supreme Court Just Signaled How the Next President Could Impact Abortion Access — No Legislation Needed

The Supreme Court Just Signaled How the Next President Could Impact Abortion Access — No Legislation Needed
The Supreme Court’s rejection this week of the Biden administration’s appeal to weigh in on a dispute over emergency abortion care in Texas foreshadows how the next president could protect or restrict abortion access without signing — or vetoing — federal legislation.

Read in Teen Vogue: https://apple.news/AWtqwv1VITlKbwXqwiCIeng

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BBC NEWS: ‘I had to bulldoze my house’ – Palestinians face spike in Israeli demolition orders in East Jerusalem

‘I had to bulldoze my house’ – Palestinians face spike in Israeli demolition orders in East Jerusalem
Human rights groups say the number of homes demolished has nearly doubled since 7 October 2023.

Read in BBC News: https://apple.news/A5KmkwhGYRDeMt95GJj6mIg

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REUTERS: Burned Palestinian’s relatives describe aftermath of Israeli attack

Burned Palestinian’s relatives describe aftermath of Israeli attack
The family of a Palestinian man seen being burned to death in footage broadcast around the world of a blaze in tents after an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital compound recounted their indescribable feelings as flames engulfed the camp.

Read in Reuters: https://apple.news/AJNjhRFaLQkufRTv2Uz8apg

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THE GUARDIAN: US demands proof that Israel does not have starvation policy in northern Gaza

US demands proof that Israel does not have starvation policy in northern Gaza
Pressure grows on Israel to allow in more aid, as UN ambassador says US ‘will be watching’ its actions on the ground

Read in The Guardian: https://apple.news/ApkT960p5RqGFcukH4x92Gw

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