A thread warning about the “authoritarian theater” Trump and the GOP were about to use, complete with describing their Covid strategy targeting Dem states, and warning about the way the Antifa bogeyman would be used.
The thread really is a surreal walk down memory lane.
3 hours after I wrote it, Trump essentially confirmed what I was saying; he held the teargas photo op, and I continued documenting it in real time, then adding on to it as more dishonest “theater” tactics and ops occurred.
While everyone talks about the Roe and J&J cases at SCOTUS, they are quietly hinting that they may uphold some voting restrictions.
There are three issues at play here - two are specific restrictions on voting; another regards the VRA more broadly.
/1 nytimes.com/2021/03/02/us/…
In a democratic republic, institutional structures are designed and created to balance the inherent risks that a purely direct democracy would pose to a nation’s stability.
The EC is one example of this (although it failed to stop Trump, and is arguably no longer useful).
Philosophically speaking, the majority of the nation would agree that every single eligible citizen should have the opportunity to freely cast their vote, to have a voice in the direction of their government; and the constitutional structures will act as the balancing force.
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Susan Collins’ PAC is under investigation for what the FBI calls a “massive scheme to illegally finance” her re-election bid.
The GOP uses her to pitch these things, because the media continues to allow her to pretend that she is a “moderate,” as if she is materially different.
Now, one important thing that Asha didn’t mention (probably for brevity), is that Barr didn’t act alone.
Tweet 4 in her thread leaves out a huge part of the story, which is what all of the Garland/DOJ/Court talk is about today.
Instead of “I’ll do it,” what Barr really did..
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Barr actually *conspired* with Rosenstein and the OLC (who is supposed to just provide legal counsel), to fabricate a memo that would *justify* his plan to mislead everyone about the Mueller report.
Judge A.B. Jackson realized this & ordered DOJ to release that memo.
I am not a lawyer, but after viewing Judge Amy Berman Jackson's unredacted memo, I think it is pretty clear that Merrick Garland is not protecting Bill Barr.
The parts that I have highlighted here are the parts that were previously redacted; Garland agreed to unredact this.
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Unredacted: Jackson's clear opinion that Barr's DOJ was intentionally dishonest, concealing the content of the OLC memo and misrepresenting its purpose to the court.
Recurring theme here: Jackson exposed the OLC memo for what it was - part of a political PR strategy.
Unredacted: The memo was crafted - at Bill Barr's request - to "recommend" that Barr make a judgement call about Mueller's report.
Why? Because the underlying motivation behind the memo was, "getting a jump on public relations."
If a candidate runs under a marijuana legalization party, and there is documented evidence that he had no interest in pursuing the party’s platform (was simply running to siphon votes), would voters have grounds to sue him for Honest Services Fraud?
In addition to that, if there were evidence of a nationally coordinated scheme to run fraudulent candidates in this way (rather than organic, individual choices by candidates) could that constitute racketeering?
Did the GOP use fraudulent candidates to control the Minnesota state Senate?
The Republican Party currently maintains a majority in the MN Senate by a single vote: 35-34.
It appears they leveraged the growing popularity of two marijuana parties to hold on to power.
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In 2018, two marijuana legalization parties broke the popularity barrier to achieve Major Party status under MN state law.
This allowed them to appear on statewide ballots without needing to collect signatures - but it also meant they lost control over who ran under their name.
Leading up to the 2020 election, as early as June, MN journalists were seeing a trend - candidates running for Senate under these two parties, who had no experience, weren’t even particularly active on the issue, and who appeared to be quite Republican.