August 6, 1890 At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison.William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes.
As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead.
August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM Anniversary of Hiroshima
The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. Hiroshima ruins An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops. The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets.Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings Hiroshima survivor Found watch stopped at the time of explosion Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb On August 6, 1995, up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
August 6, 1957 Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site.
August 6, 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote. It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states. The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times. Introduction to the Voting Rights Act
August 6, 1990 George Galloway The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions“ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .” When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96) Were Sanctions Worth the Price? by Christopher Hayes
August 6, 1998 Nearly 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing which killed nearly 200,000 Japanese with a single weapon. The headlines when it happened
August 6, 1998 Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.
Let’s hope 2024 will be the year that “both sides” fact-checking as a journalistic genre grows up.
The comically bad “fact-checking” that came out of the Democratic National Convention should be a wake-up call for anyone who cares about the truth.
Example: Kamala Harris received a “Mostly False” when she said that, through Project 2025, Donald Trump “plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.” Politifact explained that “Project 2025 doesn’t mention a ‘national anti-abortion coordinator.’ The document calls for a ‘pro-life politically appointed Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families.’”
That’s like saying it’s untrue to suggest a diner serves ketchup when it merely offers catsup.
Trump’s Firehose of Falsehoods
These attempts to parse “tomato” from “tomah-to” might make some sense in a reality that didn’t include Donald Trump, whose complete rejection of the truth thrives when the press falls into the trap of suggesting “both sides” as equally flawed. The perennial GOP nominee lies about everything from hurricane warnings to his historically bad jobs record.
Even the idea that Trump can be fact-checked helps Trump. It falsely suggests there are times when he might be constrained by the truth when he, like all authoritarians, is “cognitively irresponsible,” says rhetoric scholar Jennifer Mercieca. He uses his words almost solely to reject the idea that he’s accountable to anyone or democracy itself.
The combination of Trump’s firehose of falsehoods and the media’s agenda to appear even-handed has always yielded toxic slop. But “fact checkers’” do accidentally reveal two truths:
As Dr. George Lakoff has explained for years, accepting someone else’s framing spreads that framing, even if you’re debunking it.
The whole fact-check genre could be called “Don’t Think of this Thing I Think is Wrong.” Whether it’s Richard Nixon saying, “I am not a crook,” or the AP telling us that JD Vance didn’t technically mate with furniture, the idea you’re trying to dispel is spread far more than it can ever be debunked. A fact check tends to be the opposite of a truth sandwich, which Dr. Lakoff proposed to minimize the spread of blatant lies.
The press still has no idea how to treat Trump, one of the worst liars in American history.
Many of the worst fact checks – like the suggestion Trump doesn’t want to repeal Obamacare – rely on Trump’s constant contradictions of himself, often in the same sentence. This loads in the presumption that Trump uses language the way typical politicians do instead of as a super salesman/demagogue.
Lakoff categorized Trump’s tweets to make it easier to analyze Trump’s linguistic vandalism:
Trump is also an expert in paralipsis, which Mercieca describes as his way of asserting something without taking responsibility for saying it himself. It’s his game of “I’m not saying/I’m just saying.” He does this by retweeting particular noxious notions or images he’s trying to spread or framing his assertions with “many people are saying.” It’s a repulsive hack that renders fact-checks useless.
Fact checks in the Trump era have begun to operate a bit like the “Community Notes” scam on Elon Musk’s version of Twitter. Sure, you occasionally get a gem that exposes an obvious scam – like a faked Trump rally photo or a Republican bragging about an infrastructure program he opposed. But think about where those notes don’t appear. They’re never on Elon’s tweets, which are saturated with right-wing propaganda, AI-generated disinformation, and neo-Nazi conspiracy theorizing. So, in essence, they’re vouching for every lie he spreads.
Can Fact Checks be fixed?
Donald Trump depends on journalism’s failed conventions to continue to normalize his unprecedented attack on American freedoms. That’s why editors must pursue multiple strategies to ensure they don’t mislead anyone into thinking Trump’s dishonesty is comparable to his opponent’s or any relevant American political figure.
We need information to debunk lies, yet there should be a greater sense of responsibility when dealing with blatant untruths. That starts with recognizing that lies change brains, even when debunked. They are like toxic spilloff or nuclear waste that must be tracked, contained and cleaned up as much as possible. The best way to do that is to lead with the truth whenever possible, the exact thing Trump is trying to bury with his lies.
Readers also need a sense of Trump’s lies’ unprecedented scope, recurrence and purpose. One strategy is to annotate a typical rally speech with facts and reality checks. Then, compare it to a typical Harris speech. Another is to track his most-repeated lies. And, as Dr. Lakoff has suggested for decades, journalists should also analyze the rhetoric’s frames to give voters a sense of the information war being waged for their brains.
The problem with all of these strategies is that the press would be required to do something that they seem to do their best to avoid: Call out Trump’s lies directly. The best we can hope for is a “falsely claims” in a headline or two, which is better than nothing.
Fact checkers should stop pretending they are the be-all and end-all of determining a fact’s value. Since their jobs do not seem to depend on their reputations or track records, they should bring in experts whose careers depend on accuracy to take on Trump’s most repeated lies.
Publications that care about the truth need to show they understand the seriousness of this moment. Democracy and journalism face an unprecedented attack from Trump and MAGA that threatens the future of these two pillars of a free society.
Cowering to Trump will, at best, buy you more opportunities to cower to Trump, who will never be satisfied – not until he can imprison anyone who displeases him by suggesting he alone isn’t in charge of deciding what is true.
Benjamin Netanyahu is as obtuse as Donald Trump Read on Substack
Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu killed a ceasefire and hostage release agreement last July. The report is based on a document the newspaper obtained. Bibi killed the deal by proposing a raft of new demands at the 11th hour.
Among those demands was that Israel retain control of the Egypt-Gaza border area – a condition Netanyahu has since portrayed as non-negotiable, including at a press conference on Wednesday.
Last week, the Israeli Defense Force found six dead Israeli hostages. Yedioth Ahronoth also reported that at least three of the six hostages, Carmel Gat, Aden Yerushalmi, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin were due for release as part of the May draft agreement.
The other three hostages murdered are Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, and Alex Lobanov.
An Israeli source familiar with the talks said Netanyahu’s demands were to blame for the deaths of the hostages over the weekend. Netanyahu, who’s already a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court, is responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 Palestinians. I have to look the number up every time I write about this because it keeps rising.
Much like Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu bombs civilian targets.
The inside source told CNN that when Netanyahu put the obstacles up and said no to the deal, “The hostages died because he insisted.”
The Hostages Families Forum said the deaths are a “direct result of Netanyahu’s thwarting of the deals.”
Donald Trump does not care about people who died for our nation. When he visited Arlinton National Cemetary, he stood next to graves for a political photo-op of him giving his patented thumbs-up. Trump saw dead soldiers as a tool for his campaign.
Netanyahu, who’s as fascist, corrupt, heartless, and as selfish as Trump, sees dead hostages as a tool for his campaign…his campaign of war. Bibi refuses to end this war. In the current round of ceasefire negotiations, one of Bibi’s demands is that he can resume indiscriminately bombing Gaza anytime he wants. It’s a ceasefire for only one side to cease firing.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. We can’t forget that they’re murderers and kidnappers. There wouldn’t be any hostages to negotiate for if Hamas hadn’t kidnapped them. But we also can’t forget that Hamas is NOT Palestine. Palestinian civilians shouldn’t be cannon fodder for Netanyahu.
When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year, it was a gift for Netanyahu.
Drawn in 30 seconds: (go watch it on his page, linked here and up above.)
Read it sometime when you have a few minutes. It’s a fine little break from school shootings, etc. I was surprised by some new ideas for movies, and am looking forward to seeing a couple of these, at least.
The seasonal differences of the movie calendar have eroded a little bit with time. Neither of the last two Oscar juggernauts — “Oppenheimer,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — opened in the fall, the traditional launching pad of Academy Awards hopefuls.
And just the same, f all tends to be nearly as stuffed as summer is with sequels, horror thrillers and would-be blockbusters. Still, some of the old rules still apply. A large percentage of 2024’s best movies are set to unspool in the coming months.
So with that in mind, here are some of the most anticipated films of this fall, from large to small and everything in between. (Snip-there are many-scroll on through on the page while enjoying a nice cool/warm drink of something, and/or some ice cream.)
By DAVID KLEPPER Updated 11:56 AM CDT, September 3, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — When he first emerged on social media, the user known as Harlan claimed to be a New Yorker and an Army veteran who supported Donald Trump for president. Harlan said he was 29, and his profile picture showed a smiling, handsome young man.
A few months later, Harlan underwent a transformation. Now, he claimed to be 31 and from Florida.
New research into Chinese disinformation networks targeting American voters shows Harlan’s claims were as fictitious as his profile picture, which analysts think was created using artificial intelligence.
As voters prepare to cast their ballots this fall, China has been making its own plans, cultivating networks of fake social media users designed to mimic Americans. Whoever or wherever he really is, Harlan is a small part of a larger effort by U.S. adversaries to use social media to influence and upend America’s political debate.
The account was traced back to Spamouflage, a Chinese disinformation group, by analysts at Graphika, a New York-based firm that tracks online networks. Known to online researchers for several years, Spamouflage earned its moniker through its habit of spreading large amounts of seemingly unrelated content alongside disinformation.
“One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations — an operation run by Chinese state actors — has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and to sway U.S. political conversations ahead of the election,” Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s chief intelligence officer, told The Associated Press.
Intelligence and national security officials have said that Russia, China and Iran have all mounted online influence operations targeting U.S. voters ahead of the November election. Russia remains the top threat, intelligence officials say, even as Iran has become more aggressive in recent months, covertly supporting U.S. protests against the war in Gaza and attempting to hack into the email systems of the two presidential candidates. (snip-More)
Last night the Boston Globe published a leaked email from a top volunteer with the Trump campaign, former Massachusetts Republican Party vice chair Tom Mountain, telling volunteers that the Trump campaign “no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable” and is “pulling back” from that important swing state. He urged volunteers to turn their attention instead to Pennsylvania. After the story dropped, the Trump campaign cut ties with Mountain.
Stephen Collinson of CNN and Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Marianne LeVine of the Washington Post reported today that Trump’s team has given up on trying to get Trump to talk about the economy and other issues voters care about. The former president has decided to spend the rest of the campaign attacking Vice President Harris to destroy her popularity and drive voters away from her, rather than trying to attract them to himself. The Washington Post reporters noted that likely voters view Trump unfavorably and his team has concluded that while he can’t improve his own standing, he can damage hers.
Collinson dubbed Trump’s plans a “feral political offensive.”
It is not clear that this will work. As Collinson notes, Harris has refused to get dragged into the gutter with Trump, and Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who studies focus groups, notes that voters appear to want to put the nastiness of the past several years behind them. Still, the media-tracking company AdImpact reported that between August 23 and August 29, 57% of the total television spending for political ads was on Republican attacks on Harris.
Trump also continues to demand that Republicans support his attempt to suppress voting. Having failed to pass any of the necessary appropriations bills before going on August recess, Congress will be in a rush when it comes back into session next week. It needs to fund the government before the end of the fiscal year on September 30 in order to prevent a partial shutdown. Last Thursday, Trump told right-wing podcast host Monica Crowley that he would “shut down the government in a heartbeat” unless the government funding package includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act—which would give credence to the idea that noncitizens are voting in national elections despite the fact it is already illegal—and a bill restricting legal immigration.
Zeeshan Aleem of MSNBC today took public notice of Trump’s “deteriorating ability to clearly communicate.” His speeches “seem to be growing more discursive and difficult to comprehend by the day,” Aleem wrote. “Those speeches are making it hard, if not impossible, for people listening to them to understand what he wants to do with his power in office, and they’re reportedly turning off voters.” A reporter for The Guardian pointed out that attendees at Trump’s rallies are leaving as he rambles for nearly two hours, and complaining that he is “babbling.”
For his part, Trump says his wandering speech is deliberate. He calls it “the weave.” I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
Aleem notes that this less-focused, less-capable Trump would be exceptionally dangerous in office a second time. And yet, he was dangerous enough the first time. Today Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman of Just Security released a study showing at least twelve times that Trump used the power of the presidency to retaliate against his political enemies. They note that there is no evidence that President Joe Biden or anyone else at the Biden White House ever took similar actions.
John McCain’s son Jimmy today announced that he has switched his voter registration from Republican to Democrat and will work to elect Vice President Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz in 2024. The younger McCain enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17 and is now an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment of the Arizona Army National Guard. He said he is speaking out because Trump’s conduct at Arlington National Cemetery was a “violation.”
Last Friday, just before the long weekend, Trump announced that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would essentially enshrine in the Florida state constitution the abortion rights formerly protected by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. When Trump had bowed to popular support for abortion rights and expressed uneasiness at the state’s current six-week ban—a cutoff reached before most women know they’re pregnant—antiabortion activists launched fierce attacks on him. So, on Friday, Trump switched his position and announced he would vote against restoring access to abortion in Florida.
That announcement has given wings to the Democrats’ messaging about Republicans’ determination to end abortion rights. It did not help the Republicans that more videos have been unearthed in which Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said that “a childless elite” is ruling the country. He went on to excoriate this elite for what he claimed was their pride that they didn’t have children and that they had abortions, and said “they look down on people who invest their time and their future in their children. And that is a dangerous place to live as a country.” Even a right-wing Newsmax interviewer suggested that he was “painting this group with perhaps a broad brush?”
On October 1, in Louisiana, a law will go into effect that reclassified the drug misoprostol as a controlled dangerous substance. Misoprostol can be used for abortion. It is also used for routine reproductive care and during medical emergencies to treat postpartum hemorrhage. It is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medications, a list containing those medications that are the most effective and safe to meet a health care system’s most important needs. After antiabortion activists targeted the drug, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry signed a law reclassifying it as a controlled dangerous substance. The reclassification means that the drug will no longer be easily available on obstetric hemorrhage carts.
“Take it off the carts?” one doctor said to Lorena O’Neil of the Louisiana Illuminator. “That’s death. That’s a matter of life or death.”
The Harris campaign said: “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is the reason Louisiana women who are suffering from miscarriages or bleeding out after birth can no longer receive the critical care they would have received before Trump overturned Roe. Because of Trump, doctors are scrambling to find solutions to save their patients and are left at the whims of politicians who think they know better. Trump is proud of what he’s done. He brags about it. And if he wins, he will threaten to bring the crisis he created for Louisiana women to all 50 states.”
Vice President Harris’s campaign started its “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour today in Palm Beach, Florida, where it drove past the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago club. The bus will make at least 50 stops across the country.
Pollster Tom Bonier today continued his examination of new registrants to vote. This time his focus was North Carolina. The pattern he has found across the country continues: “surges in registration are being driven by women.” In North Carolina, he writes, the number of registrants was almost 50% higher during the week of July 21 than in the same week in 2020, and the gender gap was +12 women, compared to +6 women in 2020. The new registrants were +6 Democratic, and 43% were younger than 30.
The Harris-Walz campaign today joined the Democratic National Committee in announcing a transfer of nearly $25 million to support Democratic candidates in down-ballot state and federal races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will get $10 million each in hopes of supporting a Democratic majority in each chamber of Congress in the new administration.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the organization devoted to winning state legislatures, will receive $2.5 million. The Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will get $1 million each.
Finally, today, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump campaign from playing the song he likes to dance to at his rallies: “Hold On, I’m Coming.” The estate of Isaac Hayes Jr., the artist who co-wrote the song, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump, his campaign, and a number of his allies, noting that they have never obtained a public performance license for the song although they have used it at least 133 times.
First, it is absolutely a promotion for 9Lives kitty stuff and the shelter charity to which they’re contributing. I’m mainly posting this for the video; the ad ran while a mahjong game was loading on Shockwave. I’d never seen it before, and it’s cool, even though it’s an ad. Scottie’s kitties might also like it, along with anyone else kitty- or not kitty-related. I always loved Morris! To skip the blahblahblah and see the video, just scroll down.
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If your cat or dog is chosen to be Morris’ Vice President, you’ll choose which animal shelter will receive a $35,000 donation, estimated to be worth half a million 9Lives meals
LAKEVILLE, Minn., Aug. 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Earlier today, Morris, the legendary 9Lives spokescat, announced he’s once again running for President of the United States of America. He has already run for President on three separate occasions in 1988, 1992 and 2012. Fourth time’s the charm! Morris believes that meow is the time to bring his presidential hopes back into the spotlight and put renewed focus on the importance of pet adoption.
Morris the 9Lives spokescat is uniting everyone in the animal world – even cats and dogs – to help shelter pets during his presidential run. Photo Credit: 9Lives
As he spreads his message of paws-itivity, Morris is eagerly on the hunt for a running mate – any cat or dog who shares his belief in The Good Life is invited to apply! If you think your pet has what it takes, visit www.MorrisforPresident.com to submit your nomination.*
The winner will receive a $1,000 prize and the chance to choose which animal shelter will receive a $35,000 donation from 9Lives – estimated to be worth half a million 9Lives meals. Internet sensation Doug the Pug will be serving as Morris’ Campaign Manager to help with his VP search.
As a bona fide rescue cat success story himself, Morris is an advo-cat for pets in need. In fact, he’s conceived five paw-licies to help all pets live The Good Life:
RIGHT TO PROSPURR Every pet deserves a good home, good health and good food. “Meow’s the time” to find fur-ever families for all shelter pets.
BE PAW-SITIVE Morris envisions a world where anything is paws-ible – even cats and dogs getting along.
DOMESTIC PAW-LICY Morris promises to keep the “CAT” in DOMESTI-CAT-ED. How will he do it? By taking cat naps 24/7.
DECLAW RIDICULOUS CAT LAWS Morris will declaw every law that stops cats from living their best nine lives. “No yowling after 9pm?” You gotta be kitten me.
THE RIGHT CATITUDE Morris believes in fostering a world of purrrr-fect harmony for all pets.
“Since becoming the 9Lives spokescat in 1968, my true purrrrr-pose in life has been to promote cat adoption and make it easier for humans to give cats a comfortable life with plenty of tasty, nutritious food,” said Morris the Cat. “I was a shelter cat myself before my rise to stardom. As President, I won’t quit until every cat out there is living The Good Life!”
For more information about Morris the Cat and 9Lives, head to www.9Lives.com. (snip)
About a month before Arizona’s July primary, Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly and her older sister Elisa Cázares were driving around Three Points, a rural community between Tucson and where they grew up on the Tohono O’odham Nation, dropping off flyers for the recorder’s reelection campaign. Some 5,000 people live in Three Points, which leans conservative. The properties, an assortment of mobile homes and ranch-style houses, are separated by chain link fences, but their yards blend into the Sonoran desert landscape of mesquite trees, saguaros and chollas.
They stopped at a trailer whose address popped up on a canvassing app on Cázares-Kelly’s phone, programmed to scan voter rolls and identify homes of registered Democrats who voted in the last election. Old Volkswagens were rusting in the yard. There was a “beware dog” sign attached to the fence. No one came out to greet them, so Cázares-Kelly left her campaign materials wedged outside. Her sister made a note of it on the phone as a “lit drop.”
At the second stop, Cázares-Kelly — dressed in tennis shoes, distressed jeans and a black shirt that says “Elect Indigenous Women” in big white letters — had just tucked fliers under a car’s windshield wiper when a little girl opened the door of the house, followed by a woman sporting a slightly wary expression.
“Hi. My name is Gabriella. I’m actually the county recorder. I’m running for reelection and just sharing some information about my campaign,” Cázares-Kelly said warmly through the fence, the sun beating down on her long black hair.
Cázares-Kelly, who is Pima’s first Indigenous person to hold a countywide seat, quickly explained that part of her job is to be responsible for early voting, mail-in voting and voter registration. She was there soliciting voters for herself and also canvassing for her best friend April Ignacio, who was running for a Pima County Board of Supervisors seat. They grew up together on the Tohono O’odham Nation and got into politics to bring more rural and Indigenous representation to a county where about 4 percent of the residents identify as Indigenous and whose votes could help decide a closely-contested November election in a battleground state.
Over the loud barks of two dogs, the woman explained that she can’t vote because she has felonies on her record. Cázares-Kelly’s demeanor shifted as she began talking about her favorite subject: voting rights. She told the woman about a free legal clinic provided by the county’s public defenders where she might be able to restore her voting rights and that all the information is on the recorder’s website.
“Oh really?” the woman responded, her eyes lighting up. “That’s the only reason I haven’t is because it costs so much money.”
“They’ll help you fill out the paperwork,” Cázares-Kelly said reassuringly.
Cázares-Kelly headed back to the car and reported to her sister about the possible voter education win. “That was cool,” she said.
Her sister noted the interaction in the app and looked for the next address.
Most stops resulted in lit drops at homes whose residents don’t seem to trust strangers walking up to their doors. At one, Cázares-Kelly was already on the front steps when the word “shotgun” on a sign caught her eye. She turned to the Ring camera and explained why she was there before briskly getting off the porch, entering the car and telling her sister to book it.
To Cázares-Kelly, each conversation feels like a small victory. It’s rare to have politicians canvas in these harder-to-reach communities, including those on Indigenous lands; almost everyone perks up once she explains who she is and what she’s doing.
Gabriella Cázares-Kelly goes through old Pima County records at her offices in Tucson, Arizona. (Ash Ponders for The 19th)
She doesn’t really need to get the vote out to be reelected; in solidly Democratic Pima County, it’s extremely unlikely that a Republican would flip her seat. But as a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose broad territory extends along 62 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, she knows the obstacles to participating in elections. It’s the whole reason she ran in 2020: to represent people who were being ignored by the democratic system and denied the right to vote.
But Indigenous voters can swing election results in this battleground state, home to 22 federally recognized tribes. In 2020, President Joe Biden won Arizona by just 10,457 votes. That year, Democrats garnered 10,657 more votes from inside Native American reservations than they had in 2016.
Now, as a presidential election draws near, Cázares-Kelly is working to ensure that every eligible resident has a chance to cast their ballot.
At one of the last homes she approached that day, an older woman named Ann Gail opened the front gate to chat, her eyes shielded by dark sunglasses. She said she stopped believing in mail-in ballots after the fake narrative of a stolen election pushed by former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies took hold in 2020. When it comes to her own ballot, she said, “I feel like it needs to be counted and I need to see it.”
Cázares-Kelly tried to reassure her. “Vote by mail is very safe,” she said. “But I absolutely respect your decision to vote on Election Day.”
“As an elected official, and as a candidate, we need people to trust in the system and to recognize it’s non-partisan,” Cázares-Kelly continued. “Today I’m here on a partisan basis, but when I’m working, it is not partisan. It is about everybody voting.”
Gail assured her that she’ll be voting and will “get everybody in my neighborhood” to vote, too,” she said. “It’s so important. My grandson turns 18 in July, and I’ve told him, ‘You have to vote.’”
Cázares-Kelly jokes that she got into voting rights work by accident. In 2016, she was an academic adviser at the Tohono O’odham Community College when her friend and colleague Daniel Sestiaga, a member of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, approached her about a favor. He had been recruited by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which represents the interests of tribal colleges across the country, to register students to vote. He asked Cázares-Kelly if she could help. She knew all the students by name and was “just like a changemaker on campus,” he said.
On the first registration day, Sestiaga got pulled into a meeting, so Cázares-Kelly had to do the work by herself. Despite not having any training, she thought, “It’s probably not that hard. I’ve registered myself and other people. Like, it’ll be fine.”
Instead, she recalled, “It turned out to be really hard.”
One of the challenges is that voter registration isn’t set up for the realities of tribal land. “The problem on the reservation is if you’re asked for your physical address, you just kind of make it up,” she said. “Because there is nothing you can really reference.” Instead of a street name, one might describe where they live in relation to a landmark or a mile marker. For example, the college’s address was Highway 86, milepost 125-and-a-half, she said.
The form also includes a spot to draw where you live. “Well, my nation is the size of Connecticut,” Cázares-Kelly said. “Are you asking for the shape of my nation and a star? Like, what are you looking for here?”
All of this can create confusion for residents who sometimes just list their PO boxes, which don’t count as physical addresses. That will delay their registration, Cázares-Kelly said.
Non-native students had issues, too, particularly if they were from out of state. Some students didn’t have driver’s licenses. “Every single person’s situation was so completely different,” she said. “It ended up being incredibly complex.”
She took her questions to the office of then-recorder F. Ann Rodriguez. She had so many that, at one point, she bumped her sister’s number off her speed dial list and replaced it with the number for Rodriguez’s office.
And the work was just beginning. “People started getting the voter registration cards back, getting their voter IDs in the mail, and they were so excited to show me or thank me for helping them register,” she said. But then it became, “My mom wants to register now, my auntie, my boyfriend, my uncle. How do I get them a form?” Cázares-Kelly realized she didn’t know. “It was like I pulled a thread from a sweater and all of a sudden this sweater started unraveling.”
One of the things she learned is that the post office on the reservation should have voter registration forms available, but hadn’t stocked them in years. “Having no influence and no title and no anything, I reached out to the postmaster, I reached out to the recorder’s office, and I connected the two,” she said. Soon, the forms were where they should have been all along.
Cázares-Kelly’s voting advocacy quickly turned into an obsession, Sestiaga said. One day, he recalled, “We were cruising through the village on a lunch break or something and she said, ‘If there was a way that I could make a full-time job out of getting people registered to vote, I would do it.’” Teasing her, he told her she’d just have to become the next county recorder. “She was like, ‘Get out of here! Like, I have no interest in politics. I have no interest in campaigning.’”
But she also recognized there was a need for better outreach, particularly on the Nation, he said. So when Rodriguez announced in 2019 that she was going to retire after 28 years of service, it felt a little bit like fate to Sestiago. A lot of other people who knew Cázares-Kelly had a feeling she would go for the seat. “I remember seeing that headline, and I just thought to myself, ‘Oh my goodness, she’s going to run for this,’” her husband, Ryan Kelly, said.
Cázares-Kelly wasn’t sold yet. She was, first and foremost, an educator. She had no desire to be a politician, and the thought of raising campaign money made her uncomfortable.
But it nagged at her how long it had taken to build a relationship with the current recorder’s office. She thought about having to do that all over again once Rodriguez left office. And what if the new recorder was anti-Native? “I was worried,” she said. “Eventually, I recognized that I care about this office and I understand a lot about the needs that are not being met, and I have a sense of duty to at least try.”
Gabriella Cázares-Kelly works in her office in Tucson, Arizona. (Ash Ponders for The 19th)A wall displays framed portraits of Pima County Recorders, including Cázares-Kelly, at her offices. (Ash Ponders for The 19th)
She launched her campaign in 2020, right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. That meant having to canvass neighborhoods with social distancing measures in place, doing no-contact lit drops and outreach through Zoom forums and virtual fundraisers.
Worse, a candidate who wanted to win her community would need to do a lot of driving — and her car was having engine problems. She needed money to get back on the road. When she was registering voters, she sold banana bread to pay for gas. But fixing the car would take a much bigger sum, and she felt bad asking for money from people who might not have any to spare. A friend assuaged her guilt: “I think you’re saying, ‘Hey, community, I’ve invested in you,’” she recalls him telling her. “Now you’re asking, ‘Can you invest in me?’”
She set up a GoFundMe for $3,500 and quickly met the goal. “It was just shocking to me that people would give me money,” she said. But it didn’t surprise her husband, a former teacher who is now a labor organizer with the AFL-CIO. Because she never wanted to get into politics, she had won community support just by being herself, he said. “Gabby walked into the race already having so many meaningful community relationships,” he said.
Those ties had deepened in 2017, when she, her longtime friend April Ignacio and a few others co-founded an advocacy organization called Indivisible Tohono. They have organized everything from sock drives to candidate forums to Pride events on the Nation.
That network of friends was ready to spread the word about her campaign. It helped that she made a TikTok video that went viral, showing her speeding by the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on an electric scooter while wearing a traditional red dress and yelling, “Excuse me, I’m Indigenous, coming through!” That moment became part of her campaign slogan and bumper sticker design.
So when Election Day came, her supporters were hopeful that she might have a shot. “We had a good group of people who are really all rooted in the community,” her husband said. “I think we quietly suspected that it was going to be a landslide victory.”
And they were right. She beat her opponent by more than 80,000 votes.
Ignacio said it was a barrier-breaking moment for Cázares-Kelly. “As a rez girl growing up, we didn’t have the idea that we could do this. We didn’t have people in our community who were doing things like this,” she recalled. “For me to watch my best friend make history, it’s still very emotional. And I think that she’s the star who she’s always been.”
Cázares-Kelly followed the canvassing in Three Points with a Juneteenth event in Tucson, where she gave the land acknowledgment at the opening ceremony, recognizing tribes like her own that have stewarded the land. Then she stayed to mingle with the crowd. As she strolled by the booths — some selling lemonade, others representing the gun reform group Moms Demand Action and the African American Democratic Caucus — people stopped her to shake her hand and fangirl about meeting her.
She’s something of a local celebrity, which she didn’t expect as an elected official doing an administrative job. When she ran, “it wasn’t a sexy position,” she said. “Most people didn’t care about the recorder’s office.”
Two things contributed to her popularity. One is that Cázares-Kelly, despite her initial shyness, is charismatic and funny and beloved by Pima County voters, who cast more votes for her than any other Democratic countywide candidate in the July primary. The other, a more somber reality, is that the 2020 election raised the profile of county recorders after the Trump administration spread unfounded conspiracy theories that votes in Arizona weren’t being counted.
That fundamentally changed how she had to run her office. She immediately created a communications team to counter disinformation and teach people how voting works. In May, they invited a small group of community members and journalists into a highly restricted part of the office to see how ballots are counted. She also recently hosted a series with the Pima County Interfaith Council, visiting five churches to talk about a “day in the life” of the ballot. She draws inspiration from educational programs like “Mr. Rogers” and the “How It’s Made” videos about crayons or peanut butter. “I think people just want to know those types of things,” she said.
She also uses social media to spread information about voting, tailoring the messages to the medium. Twitter is for journalists and other “nerds,” as she put it, so she tends to be wonkier there. Facebook and Instagram are for people like her sister, who don’t really care about the granularity of politics, but might be enticed if she can explain what her office does.
Pima County voters cast more votes for Cázares-Kelly than any other Democratic countywide candidate in the July primary. (Ash Ponders for The 19th)
“I think people have for a really long time been very dismissive of social media,” she said. “But we can very much see a parallel between what happens on Twitter and Instagram and what happens in person.” For example, she said, when Kari Lake, a far-right Republican who ran for governor in 2022 and is now running for the U.S. Senate, sent out a tweet suggesting ballot counting was being slow-rolled to prevent her from winning, “it results in physical phone calls to my office.”
Voter outreach will matter a lot this year, in what former recorder F. Ann Rodriguez describes as a “big election” for both the county and the nation. She points out that Pima is Arizona’s second most-populated county, after Maricopa, which happens to be one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States. And several hot-button issues will bring out voters: This year both abortion rights and the wages of restaurant workers are on the Arizona ballot.
For now, a lot of Cázares-Kelly’s work happens at events like this one, where she can answer questions in person. At the booth for NextGen America, which focuses on getting out the youth vote, she chatted about how the work was going and offered a pro tip learned from years of dealing with registration hassles: Instead of asking if someone is registered to vote, ask if they are registered at their current address. (Sometimes people move without updating it.)
Two booths down, at the Saavi Services for the Blind tent, she talked to Mohammed Falah about a tool called a ballot marking device — a machine that helps people with disabilities vote. It can read a ballot to a person through headphones, offers functions for large print or color contrast and has a controller that people with hand mobility issues can use to select their voting option. She said her office would be happy to demonstrate it for his organization.
The county had the machines before she came into office, but, she said, much of the staff didn’t know how to use them. “They were like a nice decorative thing on the side of the room and if somebody asked to use it, [staff] would have to take out the instruction booklet and troubleshoot,” she said. “Then that person’s having to wait. And often it would lead to people feeling discouraged and embarrassed. And, you know, they may choose not to participate.”
Listening to what the community needs, Cázares-Kelly said, “makes it better for everybody.” Sometimes it’s as simple as having a table with chairs at early voting locations. Older people started requesting that accommodation, she said, “but then we would see people who come in with a boot on their foot.” Once, she watched a mom sit down to breastfeed her child while voting.
Her office has taken other accessibility measures, like making sure that PDF documents are compatible with a screen reader, a tool that can read text aloud or translate it into Braille. All of her social media communications include an image description for the same reason.
As of 2016, there were about 175,600 visually impaired people in Arizona, and the population is aging, Falah said. This means more people will soon need these accommodations. “We are a retirement state,” he said. “If we do not tackle it now, then when?”
A few weeks later, Cázares-Kelly was standing in front of a class of soon-to-be graduates from a training program that helps Indigenous people overcome the unique challenges they’ll face while running for office. Native politicians are often some of the first from their communities to either run or hold their positions and that usually comes with a fair amount of pushback or skepticism.
Cázares-Kelly opened her talk by greeting the students in the Tohono O’odham language. Switching back to English, she said, “You are on O’odham land.” Then she added, with a smirk, “So — you’re welcome.” The group burst into laughter. It felt like a cheeky inside joke for a group of people who’ve likely been asked to do land acknowledgements for non-Native audiences. But the lighthearted moment quickly turned serious as Cázares-Kelly launched into the story of how she became involved in voting rights work thanks to her earliest influence, her grandmother.
Cázares-Kelly grew up in two different communities in the Tohono O’odham Nation. One is called Kupk, a remote place where she spent her summers. The rest of the year, she lived in the village of Pisin’ Mo’o, which had some services, like a bus stop. She lived next door to her grandmother, Catherine Josemaria. Cázares-Kelly refers to her affectionately as her Hu’uli-bat, which is O’odham for “my dearly departed mother’s mother.”
They would communicate across their two languages, her grandmother in her broken English and Cázares-Kelly in her broken O’odham. They were always together, she said. Her grandmother showed her how to harvest traditional foods and she recalls watching her grind corn and clean tepary beans in the kitchen.
But she also remembers another tradition: her grandmother’s voting ritual. It was a right Josemaria did not have until she was 30 years old. She was born in 1918 and granted citizenship six years later, but it wasn’t until 1948 that Native Americans won the right to vote. Even then, for decades, voting barriers like literacy tests specifically disenfranchised non-White and Indigenous people.
But that didn’t stop Josemaria from being politically active. “She was a brilliant woman and she was a community leader,” Cázares-Kelly told the group. “We had visitors every single day of my youth, people wanting to hear her stories and her gossip — she was the gossip queen — and get her advice and have political discussions with her.”
On election days, Cázares-Kelly would comb and braid her grandmother’s long gray hair and pin it up in a bun. Her grandmother would don a dress and a little purse, and Cázares-Kelly would help her into the passenger seat of her car. Cázares-Kelly was too young to legally drive, but it was pretty common to start driving young on the reservation — and extremely important to get her grandmother to the polls. It only occurred to her later that what her grandmother was doing was a big deal, an act of defiance. “She would not have had the full freedom of having a language translator until the mid 1970s, which isn’t that long ago,” she said.
Once they returned home, her grandmother would go to her bedroom and tack her “I voted” sticker on the vinyl faux wood wall next to other stickers she had collected over the years. The oldest ones, Cázares-Kelly remembers, were yellow and worn.
The importance of those stickers stayed with her. They serve as reminders to vote and are a source of pride. It’s part of the reason why in 2022, Cázares-Kelly’s office released new stickers for early voters with the words “I voted” written in English, Spanish and O’odham, one on top of the other.
Her office has also expanded the role of the Tohono O’odham outreach coordinator to spend more time in the field talking to tribal residents and made it a priority to reinstate an early voting site for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. The tribe had sued the previous county recorder after she closed the site in 2018 just a few weeks before an election. (A judge sided with the decision to close the site, saying there wasn’t evidence that closing it made it harder to vote.)
Sestiaga recently told Cázares-Kelly how crucial that voting center has been for him. Even though he’s not a member of that tribe, voting at a site where people look like him makes him feel safer. He used to vote at a church in a predominantly White neighborhood and “going in as the young, Brown-skinned, darkest person in the room, I got looked at. I felt like people were watching me, like I was getting judged.”
Sestiaga is able to vote at that site due to a change the county government made in 2022: Instead of having to go to a specific precinct, a resident can vote at any center in the county. Eleven other Arizona counties use this model and its popularity is spreading. According to the Voting Rights Lab, an advocacy organization, voter centers are more convenient, widely popular and could increase turnout.
The centers also make voting easier for people on the reservation. As with any rural area, if someone shows up at the wrong precinct, it can be a long drive to the right one. And not everyone can afford that kind of error, said Cázares-Kelly. Many people don’t have cars or can’t afford to spend extra money on gas. Public transportation systems aren’t reliable, if they exist at all.
As she wound down her speech at the leadership conference, Cázares-Kelly reminded the students that running for office is about advocating for their communities — not just when it comes to voting rights, but other policy decisions that are shaped by elected officials, like in health care or infrastructure.
“It’s our duty to protect our community,” she told them. “And if that means that we’re not doing it in the traditional way, but we’re having to learn the language of government and policy and funding to protect our people, then it’s our duty to at least try.”
A few weeks after she announced she would run for president, Kamala Harris held a rally in Glendale, Arizona, a sprawling suburb just outside Phoenix. As she watched one of the opening speakers, the governor of the Gila Indian River Community, come up to the stage, Cázares-Kelly exclaimed, “There’s hella Natives up in this piece!”
Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz talked about some of the most pressing issues in Arizona: immigration and abortion restrictions. Harris also promised to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would strengthen protections against discriminatory voting practices.
Cázares-Kelly was happy to hear it. But on the drive back home, she said that some of the things she heard at the rally didn’t resonate with her, like when Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly talked about the “army” Democrats need to win the next election. Her tribe, whose ancestral lands straddle both sides of the border, is heavily surveilled by the border patrol, which has a history of harassing and even deporting tribal members. The military rhetoric, she said, “doesn’t make me feel safe.”
Though she is a registered Democrat and a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, she stands to the left of the Harris-Walz ticket and has felt conflicted by its more moderate stances. Also, as an Indigenous person, her identity is inherently political. One of her idols, Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, a citizen of White Earth Band of Ojibwe, once put it this way: These political systems were not designed to include people like her, but to eradicate and assimilate Indigenous people.
Gabriella Cázares-Kelly poses for a portrait before a Harris Walz campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. (Caitlin O’Hara for The 19th)
“So we’re still fighting the structure of white supremacy and anti-Indigenous sentiment and all of these other issues,” Cázares-Kelly said, “and we’re having to change the culture about what our role is in that.”
Eventually, the conversation turned to her own political future. Already, people have been speculating about whether she’d consider a higher office, but she promised herself she’d stay in the role for at least two terms. “I don’t know how I’ll feel in another four years, but four years has flown by for me,” she said.
It was past 10 p.m. and she was still making her way home. But the long day hadn’t sapped the energy in her voice or her enthusiasm for the job.
“There is so much work to do,” she said.
To check your voter registration status or to get more information about registering to vote, text 19thnews to 26797.
This guy used to write a Substack that I’d read as I had time, but usually always got to his Links writeup. You can see this week’s here; all the bits are choice, but I’m snipping one into this post. It’s a varied lot, but there’s at least something for everyone. When you need something to read, take a look!
Breakfast from the supermarket and bakery, for three people, costs a shade over 7 euros. Two fancy-pants coffees to-go costs a shade over 8 euros.
That seems like the right kind of gearing? Essentials are easily within reach; luxury items you have to think about.
Essentials are like: basic groceries, broadband/phone, roads, education, healthcare, energy, water, rent up to a certain amount etc. “Normal” coffee, house wine, that kind of thing.
It’s very hard to justify, in my head, why these should be the province of profit-seeking companies. Given we all have to have them, why should some people get to leach on that? Yes the profits are taxed but that’s an inefficient way to collect extra money from citizens.
We all form a government which is a kind of enlarged co-operative really. Why don’t we make a basket of essentials, democratically argued about and iterated over time, then nationalise not-for-profits to run supply chains and shops for them?
Just… take essentials out of the for-profit bit of the economy.
Our priorities have lost their way somewhere along the line.
And good for for-profit companies too, right? People without broadband can’t buy from Shein; can’t receive deliveries from Amazon. People without their health, without education can’t staff them. Remove the friction by making essentials work. (snip)
Come to Europe and get low-key radicalised haha
The EU may (or may not) be making technology policy missteps, but they are gently and patiently promoting a certain way of life which feels globally very, very special, and fundamentally counter to the hypercapitalism found elsewhere. (emph. mine-Ali)
Honestly I’d like to see serious economic papers that compare the two approaches. Why not do it this way? Why not go further and, as I suggested, choose radical nationalised businesses for essentials? Genuinely what is the problem with that? Why isn’t it simply obvious that we should live our lives in comfort, with room to participate and be kind to each other, and knock off early to go to the beach early on sunny days? And that’s not compatible with profit-extracting water suppliers etc, and shops run by people not just on minimum wage but without any kind of employment protection?
Why can’t politicians propose these kind of ideas, even as a generational directional plan rather than an election promise, without getting yelled at? (snip)
Hiroshima survivor 
George Galloway
Sachio Ko-Yin and Daniel Sicken
