Don’t lose sight of the country-defining presidential election today in Chile between the Pinochet-nostalgic José Antonio Kast & left organizer Gabriel Boric.
‼️ Shock news : French President Emmanuel Macron just announced he was dissolving the country's National Assembly.
He's calling national elections, which'll decide who'll run the country.
The elections were supposed to be in 2027. Instead, they'll be in early July (!!!).
The runoff of these parliamentary elections will be on July 7th... so 3 days after the UK elections! An extremely short campaign.
More context:
#1: This comes an hour after disastrous election results for Macron in the EU elections. (The far-right got 31% and Macron at 15%.)
#2: France currently has a hung Parliament due to weak results by Macron's party in 2022, tho his party has been able to govern because the conservative LR (despite not being in government) typically bail them out. Upside for Macron is if lighting campaigning gets him a majority.
bolts just covered 2 big criminal justice reforms that became law over last week.
let's jump in:
1️⃣ Minnesota ended prison gerrymandering. This is the practice of counting incarcerated people where the prison is located, which skews political power. boltsmag.org/minnesota-ends…
2️⃣ Oklahoma passed a bill that gives incarcerated survivors of domestic violence a new shot at freedom, when the crime they were convicted for stemmed from their abuse.
Law went thru twists and turns as lawmakers (in this GOP-run state) navigated a veto: boltsmag.org/oklahoma-survi…
OK, it wasn't all about policy break throughs this week.
3️⃣ In Virginia, parole has basically entirely vanished (& it was already very low) as Glenn Youngkin has remolded the board. We reported in collaboration with MoJo.
Three Glenn Youngkin stories in @boltsmag that capture how much a governor matters. (And who he is.)
1/ He ended all automatic rights restoration in Virginia. VA's default now is permanent loss of voting rights, one of single harshest systems in nation. boltsmag.org/virginia-gover…
2/ He recently vetoed a bill that would have barred prosecutors from pressuring defendants to waive away their constitutional rights... for many years! boltsmag.org/fourth-amendme…
3/ Under his governorship and his appointments, the state's already very low parole grants have virtually vanished.
One reason why is his decision to empower a man who responsible for shutting down parole in the 90s. boltsmag.org/virginia-parol…
I skipped the headline story here assuming you've seen it elsewhere, but if not: the Arizona supreme court just declared abortion illegal. 12news.com/article/news/p…
Katie Hobbs, a Democratic governor, would have the power to appoint replacement if the justices are not retained. (Still, note that in Arizona governors choose within a list proposed by a commission.)
A thread about a messed up situation in Mississippi.
It's on how state officials have voided direct democracy thru an absurd excuse, and how they keep refusing to yield that power back to people.
The state constitution gives people the right to ballot initiatives.
It outlines how they should do so, & how they should collect signatures in each of MS's five congressional districts.
The language was written into the constitution in 1992.
In 2000, Mississippi lost a congressional district, down to four.
No one saw a problem with that until 2021: the state supreme court effectively said that, since there were no longer 5 districts in which to collect signatures, no ballot initiative could be valid.
Tomorrow is extraordinary busy election day... and you may have missed critical battles.
So here's a thread with the 15 races I'll watch most closely, across 4 states. It has some of everything: school boards, local politics, DAs, voting rights...
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1️⃣ Let's start with the Arkansas supreme court races.
Because they're so odd. 2 seats, 4 sitting justices running for them, none of which are their current occupants, plus two outsiders. Depending on the results, the big winner may be Huckabee Sanders.
2️⃣ Moving over to the Texas court of criminal appeals:
Ken Paxton & his far-right allies are targeting 3 GOP judges (Sharon Keller, Barbara Hervey, and Michelle Slaughter) who were part of a ruling that restricted Paxton’s ability to prosecute elections. texastribune.org/2023/12/13/ken…