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Tag: 2024 election

  • Los Angeles voters pass Measure HLA

    Los Angeles voters pass Measure HLA

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    Los Angeles has long been America’s most car-centric city, but now a movement is underway to change the way Los Angeles moves.

    NBC4 News projects that Los Angeles voters approved Measure HLA, an initiative that would require the city to redesign streets to be safer for pedestrian and bicyclists while holding city officials accountable.

    What would Measure HLA do?

    Measure HLA, also referred to as Healthy Streets LA, would require the city of LA to implement Mobility Plan 2035, which was adopted a decade ago to encourage the creation of more bike lanes and wider sidewalks but hasn’t yielded a lot of results.

    The ballot measure would mandate the city to implement Mobility Plan projects, such as adding protected bike lanes whenever the city improves roadways.

    Measure HLA would require the city to implement a street modification as laid out in the Mobility Plan whenever there’s an improvement to at least one-eight mile stretch of a road or sidewalk,

    Proponents of the initiative say ballot measure would force city officials to make sure streets are repaved for buses, pedestrians and bicyclists.

    “Today in Los Angeles, in general, most people only feel safe driving a car, and even that isn’t that safe because car crashes have a huge toll,” said Michael Schneider, the founder of advocacy group Streets for All. “It’s about giving Angelinos options.”

    Proponents also argue that Measure HLA would keep pedestrians and public transit users safe as the city of LA had more traffic deaths than homicides in 2023.

    Why opponents want voters to say “no” to Measure HLA

    Opposition to the ballot measure was led by the Los Angeles City Firefighters union, which argues reconfigured streets with fewer traffic lanes will hamper 911 responses.

    “There is an issue with public safety it will delay the response time for the members that I represent,” Freddy Escobar, President, United Firefighters of Los Angeles

    The union also cited a report by Matt Szabo, the City Administrative Officer to argue Measure HLA would be costly to the city, requiring $3.1 billion unfunded liability.

    “You would be adding a mandate without the funds to achieve that,” Szabo said during a city council meeting on Feb. 16.

    Proponents of Measure HLA said Szabo’s estimations were overblown.

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    Conan Nolan and Helen Jeong

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  • Mark Cuban: Biden Could Be on His Deathbed and I’d Still Vote for Him Over “Snake Oil Salesperson” Trump

    Mark Cuban: Biden Could Be on His Deathbed and I’d Still Vote for Him Over “Snake Oil Salesperson” Trump

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    Who is Mark Cuban planning to vote for come November 2024? Joe Biden could be falling off a cliff, about to plunge to his death—or be an alligator’s or lion’s dinner, you get the idea—and the billionaire businessman would still cast his ballot for the president over Donald Trump.

    Speaking to Bloomberg News on Monday, Cuban said: “If they were having his last wake, and it was him versus Trump, and he was being given last rites, I would still vote for Joe Biden.” Later, he told Axios, “I don’t want a snake oil salesperson as president. I’m voting for Biden-Harris over Trump all day every day. It’s the snake oil salesperson vs. the incumbent, traditional politician. One will tell you his snake oil will cure everything that ails you. The other will show you the details of his policies through charts, graphs, and statements. [Biden] is precise and methodical and wants to sell the steak. Not the sizzle.” He added: “Trump voters are happy with their snake oil whether it works or not.”

    Cuban also said Monday that he would be voting for Nikki Haley in the Texas GOP primary as a “protest vote against Trump.” Unfortunately for Haley, that won’t be enough to overcome her current deficit, which, as of the afternoon on Super Tuesday, was just 43 delegates to Trump’s 273.

    Meanwhile, the ex-president scored a win on Monday when the Supreme Court ruled that he can remain on the ballot despite inciting an insurrection after he lost the 2020 election. Responding to the ruling, Quentin Fulks, Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager, said, “We don’t really care,” telling MSNBC: “It’s not been the way we’ve been planning to beat Donald Trump. Our focus since day one of launching this campaign has been to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box. And everything we’ve done since the president announced back in April that he’s running for reelection is to build an infrastructure and apparatus to do so.” Considering that four separate polls show the ex-president beating the guy in November, perhaps the Biden campaign’s plan could use some tweaking.

    Unfortunately for Nikki Haley, not enough voters think treason is a bad thing

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    Republicans are all about the workingman, except when the workingman doesn’t want to die of heatstroke

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    Bess Levin

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  • California primary election 2024: Key statewide, Bay Area races to watch

    California primary election 2024: Key statewide, Bay Area races to watch

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    SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — This year’s California primary election includes some high-profile races for the Bay Area, as well as the presidential primary and other statewide races.

    ABC7 News will have live Election Night coverage as results come in, starting at 9 p.m. You can watch on the ABC7 News app, or by downloading the ABC7 Bay Area App to watch on Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple and Google TV.

    There are primaries scheduled in 15 states including in California on Super Tuesday.

    Polling places will be open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

    You can take your mail-in ballot to the polling place, a drop box or a county election office. As long as it’s delivered by 8 p.m.

    If you prefer to mail it, your ballot must be postmarked no later than Tuesday.

    You will still be able to register to vote on Tuesday as California allows people to do same-day voter registration.

    Here are some key local and statewide races to keep an eye on March 5

    California Presidential Primary

    Donald Trump is strongly favored by Republicans in California. It’s possible he could sweep the state’s trove of 169 delegates, the biggest prize in the nominating contest. Heavily Democratic California probably will be an afterthought in November 2024 – the state’s lopsided electorate makes it a virtual lock for Democrats on Election Day. The last Republican presidential nominee to carry the state was George H.W. Bush in 1988.

    Senate

    California’s Senate race was expected to be a three-way Democratic prizefight, but the possibility of a record-low turnout is elevating the chances of Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star, and could derail the congressional careers of two prominent progressives. For months, Rep. Adam Schiff has had the fundraising and polling edge in a crowded Democratic field. Garvey’s ascent has imperiled the political prospects of Reps. Barbara Lee and Katie Porter. The top two finishers in the March 5 contest, regardless of party, advance to the general election in November in the liberal-leaning state.

    Proposition 1: Gavin Newsom’s Mental Health Plan

    Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging voters to approve a ballot initiative that he says is needed to tackle the state’s homelessness crisis, a change social providers say would threaten programs that keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. In 2004, voters approved legislation that imposed a tax on millionaires to finance mental health services, generating $2 billion to $3 billion in revenue each year that has mostly gone to counties to fund mental health programs as they see fit under broad guidelines. Newsom wants to give the state more control over how that money is spent. Proposition 1 would require counties to spend 60% of those funds on housing and programs for homeless people with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse problems.

    Congress – House of Representatives Races

    District 12

    The District 12 seat has been held by Rep. Barbara Lee for more than two decades and is now up for grabs as Lee eyes the Senate.

    Those running for the seat include Lateefah Simon who’s currently a BART board director. According to CalMatters, she is also the youngest-ever MacArthur genius grant recipient and she is endorsed by Lee herself along with Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    Some other candidates in the race include Jennifer Tran, a Cal State East Bay professor; Tony Daysog, vice mayor of Alameda and Denard Ingram, who serves on Oakland’s rent board.

    District 16

    In November, Rep. Anna Eshoo announced she would retiring in 2024 after three decades in Congress. With her seat up for grabs, several notable public figures joined the race including tech executive Rishi Kumar and former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo.

    CalMatters predicts that with no prominent Republican candidates, there is a strong likelihood that two Democrats will emerge from the March primary to face off in the November election.

    Other candidates vying for the seat include State Assembly member Evan Low, Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, Palo Alto City Councilmember Julie Lythcott-Haims, the only woman in the field, and Peter Dixon a former Marine who co-founded a cybersecurity company.

    Incumbents Challenged

    Other representatives who are having their seats challenged this primary election are Jared Huffman (D – District 2), Mike Thompson (D – District 4), Mark Desaulnier (D – District 10), Nancy Pelosi (D – District 11), Eric Swalwell (D – District 14), Ro Khanna (D – District 17), Zoe Lofgren (D – District 18), and Jimmy Panetta (D – District 19)

    Alameda County Ballot Initiatives

    Measure B

    This measure will align Alameda County recall guidelines with the California state law on recalling officials. This is notable because of ongoing recall efforts against Alameda County DA Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao.

    San Francisco Ballot Initiatives

    Proposition B: Police Officer Staffing Conditioned on Future Funding

    Prop B would fund full police staffing and recruitment for 5 to 10 years, set a minimum officer staffing level and allow SFPD to request its own budget changes. The bill is backed by a coalition of city and community leaders who say it could improve public safety and financial transparency.

    Proposition E: Police Department Policies and Procedures

    Mayor London Breed supports this ballot measure that would grant police more crime-fighting powers, such as the use of drones and surveillance cameras. Proposition E would also reduce paperwork so police have more time to patrol. It would also allow police to pursue more suspects by vehicle, and not just in cases of a violent felony or immediate threat to public safety.

    Proposition F: Illegal Substance Dependence Screening and Treatment for Recipients of Public Assistance

    Prop F would cut off public assistance to people on welfare who are suspected of using drugs, unless they agree to enter a drug treatment program. Opponents say that’s not only ineffective, but also creates barriers to getting real help for those who need it. Mayor London Breed supports the measure. She proposed it in response to increasing public pressure to curb public drug use and address the city’s opioid epidemic.

    Proposition G: Offering Algebra 1 to Eighth Graders

    Prop G would make it city policy to encourage SFUSD to offer Algebra 1 to students by their eighth-grade year and to support the school district’s development of its math curriculum for students at all grade levels.

    San Mateo County Supervisors Race

    District 4 is most competitive, with five candidates vying to replace outgoing supervisor Warren Slocum. However, the biggest candidate name is in the District 1 race. Former Congress member Jackie Speier is running for that seat, but she’s a shoe-in to get to November with only one other candidate running.

    Santa Clara County Supervisors

    The Bay Area’s largest county will have two new supervisors after long-time leaders are moving on. District 2 will have a new supervisor after Cindy Chavez termed out while District 5 Supervisor Joe Simitian is moving on as he tries to win Anna Eshoo’s vacated seat in Congress.

    Voter Information by County

    Alameda County

    Contra Costa

    Marin County

    Napa County

    San Francisco

    Santa Clara County

    San Mateo County

    Solano County

    Sonoma County

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    RELATED ELECTION STORIES & VIDEOS:

    If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live

    Copyright © 2024 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.

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  • The Supreme Court Can’t Stop Doing Solids for Donald Trump

    The Supreme Court Can’t Stop Doing Solids for Donald Trump

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    When he’s not feuding with Taylor Swift or claiming to look like Elvis Presley, Donald Trump spends most of his days raging about how various government officials—often prosecutors but sometimes also former presidents and his own Cabinet members—have wronged him. But on Monday, he was full of praise for nine DC regulars, i.e. the Supreme Court, for ruling that states can’t remove him from the ballot despite the coup that he attempted just over three years ago.

    Speaking from Mar-a-Lago after the decision came down, Trump commended the justices for working “long,” “hard,” and “very quickly on something that will be spoken about 100 years from now and 200 years from now, [something] extremely important.” Later, referring to the unanimous decision, he said he was “very honored by a nine-to-nothing vote.” Not only did the Court allow Trump to remain on the ballot in Colorado, which had disqualified him, but five members of the majority ensured it will be very difficult to prevent other would-be insurrectionists from running for president in the future.

    Per The Washington Post:

    The justices drew a clear distinction between state and national elections, writing that “States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment] with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.” Five of the six conservative justices went further, writing that the disqualification clause can only be enforced for national office through federal legislation—not a federal court challenge or non-legislative action by Congress.

    The three liberal justices, in their sharply worded concurrence, said the majority’s approach “shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily.” The majority, they said, had foreclosed enforcement through the courts if, for instance, “a party is prosecuted by an insurrectionist and raises a defense on that score.”

    In their concurring opinion, justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the majority for “attempt[ing] to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding office.” Even conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed, but didn’t join the liberals’ opinion because she didn’t like their tone. (She separately commented that the suit the Court was being asked to weigh in on “did not require us to address the complicated question of whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced.”)

    Monday’s ruling was, of course, not the only one the Supreme Court is expected to make this term that concerns Trump and, basically, the fate of democracy. Next month, it will hear arguments concerning the former guy’s claims of immunity, which he hopes will result in the justices agreeing that presidents cannot be held responsible for their actions. As he has claimed in the past, Trump wrote on Truth Social today that unless presidents have total immunity from the law both while in office and after, they “will always be concerned, and even paralyzed, by the prospect of wrongful prosecution and retaliation, after they leave office. This could actually lead to extortion and blackmail of a President.… A President must be free to make proper decisions. His mind must be clear, and he must not be guided by fear of retribution!”

    While it would be truly shocking—and seemingly unlikely—for the Court to side with Trump’s absurd immunity claims, as my colleague Eric Lutz noted last month, the justices have already given the ex-president a win by (1) agreeing to hear the case and (2) scheduling arguments for late April, which will delay his federal election-subversion case until who knows when. So the only question now is how big of a gift they want to give him next.

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    Bess Levin

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  • Supreme Court rules Trump will stay on ballot, overruling states

    Supreme Court rules Trump will stay on ballot, overruling states

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    Supreme Court returns Trump to Ballot

    LiveNOW speaks with Nii-Quartelai Quartey, political journalist and national affairs expert, on today’s Supreme Court decision.

    WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump will remain on the ballot this election year after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday unanimously overruled a ruling issued by the Colorado Supreme Court.

    The ruling means Trump is all but certain to face President Joe Biden in November.

    Trump continues to win delegates to make him the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential race. He needs to accrue 1,215 delegates to formally clinch the party’s nomination and could reach that number later this month.

    His main opponent is former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, whose win in Washington DC this weekend was her only primary victory. But Haley has vowed to stay in the race through Super Tuesday, which is this week.

    RELATED: Trump asks Supreme Court to delay his election interference trial

    The court’s ruling largely ends efforts in Colorado, Maine, Illinois and elsewhere to prevent his name from appearing on the ballot, but the former president still faces a number of other criminal and civil cases. 

    What did the Supreme Court say?

    In the 9-0 ruling, the justices cited several reasons to overturn the Colorado decision, including the idea that one state or a few states could determine the national election.

    “The ‘patchwork’ that would likely result from state enforcement would ‘sever the direct link that the Framers found so critical between the National Government and the people of the United States’ as a whole,” they wrote in the unsigned opinion.

    Ultimately, the justices determined that Congress, not the states, has the power to implement the 14th Amendment, which is the clause of the Constitution cited in the Colorado case that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again.

    “…the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, on its face, does not affirmatively delegate such a power to the States. The terms of the Amendment speak only to enforcement by Congress,” they stated.

    PDF: Read the full Supreme Court decision

    Reaction to the Supreme Court ruling

    Trump posted on his social media network shortly after the decision was released: “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!”

    Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold expressed disappointment in the court’s decision as she acknowledged that “Donald Trump is an eligible candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary.”

    Trump speaks after SCOTUS decision on election ballot

    The U.S. Supreme Court sided unanimously with former President Trump in his challenge to the state of Colorado’s attempt to kick him off the 2024 primary ballot. The former president spoke on the decision, Israel-Hamas war, and other topics.

    Colorado’s effort to keep Trump off 2024 ballot

    Last December, a divided Colorado Supreme Court declared Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

    “We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” wrote the court’s majority. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

    Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.

    Colorado high court removes Trump from 2024 ballot

    The Colorado Supreme Court has disqualified former President Trump from appearing on the state’s ballots in 2024. LiveNOW’s Andrew Craft spoke about the ballot decision with Hans von Spakovsky from The Heritage Foundation.

    Trump appealed to the nation’s highest court, and both sides agreed that the justices should take up the case and issue a conclusive ruling soon.

    RELATED: Trump Colorado ballot case goes before seemingly skeptical US Supreme Court

    The case was brought by Trump critics who are registered as Republican and independent voters in Colorado, but organized by a liberal public interest group. The Colorado Supreme Court’s seven justices were entirely appointed by Democrats, though they split 4-3 in ruling against Trump.

    Trump lost Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020 and doesn’t need the state to win this year’s presidential election.

    Maine joins Colorado in effort to keep Trump off ballot

    Also last December, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause.

    Secretary of State Shenna Bellows found that Trump could no longer run for his prior job because his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3, which bans from office those who “engaged in insurrection.” Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Trump’s position on the ballot.

    Trump appeals Maine ballot ban ruling

    Former President Trump has appealed the ruling to remove him from Maine’s 2024 primary ballot for his role in the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’s decision was announced last week.

    While Maine has just four electoral votes, it’s one of two states to split them. Trump won one of Maine’s electors in 2020, so having him off the ballot there, should he emerge as the Republican general election candidate, could have outsized implications in a race that is expected to be narrowly decided.

    Illinois rules against Trump

    Last week, with less than three weeks until Illinois’ primary election, a Cook County judge ordered the Illinois State Board of Elections to remove Trump from the state’s primary ballot.

    Judge Tracie Porter told the board to remove Trump or “cause any votes cast for him to be suppressed,” for violating section three of the 14th Amendment, or the “disqualification clause,” for engaging in insurrection, according to court documents.

    That order was later stayed after Trump appealed the ruling.

    What is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment?

    Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits anyone who swore an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from holding office.

    RELATED: Supreme Court to hear case that could undo Capitol riot charge against hundreds, including Trump

    The clause was added in 1868 to keep defeated Confederates from returning to their former positions of power in local and federal government. It prohibits anyone who broke an oath to “support” the Constitution from holding office.

    Has Section 3 of the 14th Amendment even been used?

    It’s the first time in history the provision has been used to prohibit someone from running for the presidency.

    The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on the meaning of Section 3.

    Timeline: Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot

    A timeline of what transpired during the deadly Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

    Legal historians believe the only time the provision was used in the 20th Century was in 1919, when it was cited to deny a House seat to a socialist who had opposed U.S. involvement in World War I.

    Trump’s alleged role in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot

    In December 2022, the House Jan. 6 committee’s final report asserted Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

    Trump “lit that fire,” the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, wrote.

    RELATED: Jan. 6 prosecutions: A look at cases, charges by the numbers

    The 814-page report released late Thursday came after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained more than a million pages of documents. The witnesses — ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves — detailed Trump’s “premeditated” actions in the weeks ahead of the attack and how his wide-ranging efforts to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    ‘Web of lies’: Biden talks Trump’s role in January 6 Capitol Riot on 1-year anniversary

    President Joe Biden, on the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol Riot in Washington, D.C., spoke about the insurrection, noting it was the first time a president who just lost an election tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Biden says the rioters were looking to subvert the constitution and “they failed.”

    In a series of recommendations, the seven Democrats and two Republicans on the committee suggest that Congress consider barring Trump from holding future office. The findings should be a “clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our Democracy and to give our vote only to those dutiful in their defense of our Constitution,” says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a foreword to the report.

    Trump’s repeated, false claims of widespread voter fraud resonated with his supporters, the committee said, and were amplified on social media, building on the distrust of government he had fostered for his four years in office. And he did little to stop them when they resorted to violence and stormed the Capitol, interrupting the certification of Biden’s victory.

    Was Trump charged for his role in the Jan. 6 riot?

    In 2021, Trump was impeached by the U.S. House for a historic second time, charged with “incitement of insurrection.”

    He was acquitted by the U.S. Senate. Even after voting to acquit, the Republican leader Mitch McConnell condemned the former president as “practically and morally responsible” for the insurrection. McConnell contended Trump could not be convicted because he was gone from the White House.

    Can Trump even be prosecuted?

    Supreme Court agrees to hear Trump immunity claim

    Legal analyst Randy Zelin speaks with LiveNOW’s Andrew Craft after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Donald Trump’s presidential immunity case.

    In a case separate from the Colorado ballot ruling, the Supreme Court last week agreed to hear arguments in late April over whether Trump can be criminally prosecuted on election interference charges, including his role in the Jan. 6 riot. The court’s decision to step into the charged case, also with little in the way of precedent to guide it, calls into question whether Trump will stand trial before the November election.

    RELATED: Donald Trump cases: Tracking civil, criminal charges against former president

    The former president faces 91 criminal charges in four prosecutions. Of those, the only one with a trial date that seems on track to hold is his state case in New York, where he’s charged with falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn actor. That case is set for trial on March 25, and the judge has signaled his determination to press ahead.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Los Angeles.  

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  • Trump Campaign Says Nikki Haley’s Victory In DC Shows She’s ‘Queen Of The Swamp’

    Trump Campaign Says Nikki Haley’s Victory In DC Shows She’s ‘Queen Of The Swamp’

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    Life

    Screenshot: CBS Evening News

    Nikki Haley won her first Republican primary contest of the 2024 election on Sunday in Washington, D.C. The win earned her 19 delegates and the title of the first woman to win a Republican primary in history.

    Haley won 62 percent of the vote compared to Trump’s 33 percent. A mere 2,035 voters participated in the primary contest which will likely represent the only win for the former South Carolina governor heading into Super Tuesday (North Dakota holds their GOP primary today).

    The former President had just come off a clean sweep of GOP primaries in Idaho, Michigan, and Missouri on Saturday. He is expected to sweep once again on Super Tuesday when 15 more states are up for grabs.

    “It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement.

    With Super Tuesday fast approaching, Trump sits at 244 delegates to Haley’s 43 with 1,215 needed for the GOP nomination. 854 delegates will be at stake on March 5th.

    RELATED: Man Jokingly Asks Nikki Haley To Marry Him – When She Asks For His Vote He Says ‘I’m Going To Vote For Trump’

    Trump Jabs At Nikki Haley

    Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, seemingly took the loss to Haley in stride. In fact, his campaign had a blast in responding to the news.

    “Tonight’s results in Washington D.C. reaffirm the object of President Trump’s campaign — he will drain the swamp and put America first,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s Campaign Press Secretary said in a statement.

    “While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo,” Leavitt added. “The swamp has claimed their queen.”

    There aren’t too many political pundits who think Nikki Haley’s win in Washington, D.C. will change the momentum of the race. The fact that Trump’s campaign has already turned it into a liability for her is evidence of that.

    “President Trump will fight for every American who is being let down by these very DC insiders and devastated by Joe Biden’s failures,” added Leavitt.

    RELATED: Nikki Haley Blames Trump for Low Military Recruitment Numbers: ‘Very Sad State Of Affairs’

    Haley Celebrates The Swamp Victory

    Nikki Haley celebrated her GOP primary victory in Washington, D.C. in a post on the X social media platform.

    “Let’s do it. Thank you, DC!” she wrote. “We fight for every inch.”

    A moral victory in the cesspool of American politics is, most assuredly, little more than an inch in Haley’s flailing campaign.

    Trump, meanwhile, took to his own social media platform to also celebrate Haley’s win, using one of his nicknames for her in the process.

    “I purposely stayed away from the D.C. Vote because it is the ‘Swamp,’ with very few delegates, and no upside,” Trump maintains. “Birdbrain spent all of her time, money and effort there.”

    Trump, in a separate post, urged Republican voters to deliver a resounding victory over Nikki Haley on Super Tuesday and on March 12th.

    “Each of you is going to have the opportunity to help us bring this primary to a quick, victorious, and decisive end,” he said.

    Haley has vowed to stay in the race “as long as we are competitive.”

    Follow Rusty on X

    Popular Conservative ‘Catturd’ Predicts Mitch McConnell Will Try To Take Down Trump

    Rusty Weiss has been covering politics for over 15 years. His writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, Fox… More about Rusty Weiss

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  • The Supreme Court could decide Monday whether Trump can be barred from the 2024 ballot

    The Supreme Court could decide Monday whether Trump can be barred from the 2024 ballot

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    WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump could learn Monday whether the Supreme Court will let him appear on this year’s ballot as the leading Republican presidential candidate tries to close in on his party’s nomination.

    The justices are expected to decide at least one case Monday, with signs strongly pointing to a resolution of the case from Colorado that threatens to kick Trump off some state ballots because of his efforts to overturn his election loss in 2020. Any opinions will post on the court’s website beginning just after 10 a.m. EST.

    Trump is challenging a groundbreaking decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that said he is disqualified from being president again and ineligible for the state’s primary, which is Tuesday.

    The resolution of the case on Monday, a day before Super Tuesday contests in 16 states, would remove uncertainty about whether votes for Trump will ultimately count. Both sides had requested fast work by the court, which heard arguments less than a month ago, on Feb. 8.

    The justices seemed poised then to rule in Trump’s favor.

    RELATED: Takeaways from the Supreme Court oral arguments on the Trump 14th Amendment case

    The Colorado court was the first to invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision aimed at preventing those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Trump also has since been barred from primary ballot in Illinois and Maine, though both decisions, along with Colorado’s, are on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case.

    The Supreme Court has until now never ruled on the provision, Section 3 of the 14th amendment.

    The court indicated Sunday there will be at least one case decided Monday, adhering to its custom of not saying which one. But it also departed from its usual practice in some respects, heightening the expectation that it’s the Trump ballot case that will be handed down.

    Except for when the end of the term approaches in late June, the court almost always issues decisions on days when the justices are scheduled to take the bench. But the next scheduled court day isn’t until March 15. And apart from during the coronavirus pandemic when the court was closed, the justices almost always read summaries of their opinions in the courtroom. They won’t be there Monday.

    ALSO SEE: Trump faces deadline to ask SCOTUS for delay in election interference trial

    Separately, the justices last week agreed to hear arguments in late April over whether Trump can be criminally prosecuted on election interference charges, including his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The court’s decision to step into the politically charged case, also with little in the way of precedent to guide it, calls into question whether Trump will stand trial before the November election.

    The former president faces 91 criminal charges in four prosecutions. Of those, the only one with a trial date that seems on track to hold is his state case in New York, where he’s charged with falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn actor. That case is set for trial on March 25, and the judge has signaled his determination to press ahead.

    Copyright © 2024 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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  • Nikki Haley wins the DC’s Republican primary, gets her 1st 2024 victory

    Nikki Haley wins the DC’s Republican primary, gets her 1st 2024 victory

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    WASHINGTON — Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary in the District of Columbia, notching her first victory of the 2024 campaign.

    Her victory Sunday at least temporarily halts Donald Trump’s sweep of the GOP voting contests, although the former president is likely to pick up several hundred more delegates in this week’s Super Tuesday races.

    Despite her early losses, Haley has said she would remain in the race at least through those contests, although she has declined to name any primary she felt confident she would win. Following her loss in her home state of South Carolina, Haley remained adamant that voters in the places that followed deserved an alternative to Trump despite his dominance thus far in the campaign.

    The Associated Press declared Haley the winner Sunday night after D.C. Republican Party officials released the results. She won all 19 delegates at stake.

    “It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement, noting that Haley became the first woman to win a Republican primary in history.

    Washington is one of the most heavily Democratic jurisdictions in the nation, with only about 23,000 registered Republicans in the city. Democrat Joe Biden won the district in the 2020 general election with 92% of the vote.

    Trump’s campaign issued a statement shortly after Haley’s victory sarcastically congratulating her on being named “Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.”

    Haley held a rally in the nation’s capital on Friday before heading back to North Carolina and a series of states holding Super Tuesday primaries. She joked with more than 100 supporters inside a hotel ballroom, “Who says there’s no Republicans in D.C., come on.”

    “We’re trying to make sure that we touch every hand that we can and speak to every person,” Haley said.

    As she gave her standard campaign speech, criticizing Trump for running up federal deficit, one rallygoer bellowed, “He cannot win a general election. It’s madness.” That prompted agreement from Haley, who argues that she can deny Biden a second term but Trump can’t.

    While campaigning as an avowed conservative, Haley has tended to perform better among more moderate and independent-leaning voters.

    Four in 10 Haley supporters in South Carolina’s GOP primary were self-described moderates, compared with 15% for Trump, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 2,400 voters taking part in the Republican primary in South Carolina, conducted for AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. On the other hand, 8 in 10 Trump supporters identified as conservatives, compared to about half of Haley’s backers.

    Trump won an uncontested D.C. primary during his 2020 reelection bid but placed a distant third four years earlier behind Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Rubio’s win was one of only three in his unsuccessful 2016 bid. Other more centrist Republicans, including Mitt Romney and John McCain, won the city’s primaries in 2012 and 2008 on their way to winning the GOP nomination.

    ___

    Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina.

    Copyright © 2024 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Microsoft-Powered Chatbot Just Disappeared

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Microsoft-Powered Chatbot Just Disappeared

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    Those concerns are part of the reason OpenAI said in January that it would ban people from using its technology to create chatbots that mimic political candidates or provide false information related to voting. The company also said it wouldn’t allow people to build applications for political campaigns or lobbying.

    While the Kennedy chatbot page doesn’t disclose the underlying model powering it, the site’s source code connects that bot to LiveChatAI, a company that advertises its ability to provide GPT-4 and GPT-3.5-powered customer support chatbots to businesses. LiveChatAI’s website describes its bots as “harnessing the capabilities of ChatGPT.”

    When asked which large language model powers the Kennedy campaign’s bot, LiveChatAI cofounder Emre Elbeyoglu said in an emailed statement on Thursday that the platform “utilizes a variety of technologies like Llama and Mistral” in addition to GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. “We are unable to confirm or deny the specifics of any client’s usage due to our commitment to client confidentiality,” Elbeyoglu said.

    OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix told WIRED on Thursday that the company didn’t “have any indication” that the Kennedy campaign chatbot was directly building on its services, but suggested that LiveChatAI might be using one of its models through Microsoft’s services. Since 2019, Microsoft has reportedly invested more than $13 billion into OpenAI. OpenAI’s ChatGPT models have since been integrated into Microsoft’s Bing search engine and the company’s Office 365 Copilot.

    On Friday, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the Kennedy chatbot “leverages the capabilities of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.” Microsoft said that its customers were not bound by OpenAI’s terms of service, and that the Kennedy chatbot was not in violation of Microsoft’s policies.

    “Our limited testing of this chatbot demonstrates its ability to generate answers that reflect its intended context, with appropriate caveats to help prevent misinformation,” the spokesperson said. “Where we find issues, we engage with customers to understand and guide them toward uses that are consistent with those principles, and in some scenarios, this could lead to us discontinuing a customer’s access to our technology.”

    OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED on whether the bot violated its rules. Earlier this year, the company blocked the developer of Dean.bot, a chatbot built on OpenAI’s models that mimicked Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips and delivered answers to voter questions.

    Late afternoon on Sunday, the chatbot service was no longer available. While the page remains accessible on the Kennedy campaign site, the embedded chatbot window now shows a red exclamation point icon, and simply says “Chatbot not found.” WIRED reached out to Microsoft, OpenAI, LiveChatAI, and the Kennedy campaign for comment on the chatbot’s apparent removal, but did not receive an immediate response.

    Given the propensity of chatbots to hallucinate and hiccup, their use in political contexts has been controversial. Currently OpenAI is the only major large language model to explicitly prohibit its use in campaigning; Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Mistral all have terms of service, but they don’t address politics directly. And given that a campaign can apparently access GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 through a third party without consequence, there are hardly any limitations at all.

    “OpenAI can say that it doesn’t allow for electoral use of its tools or campaigning use of its tools on one hand,” Woolley said. “But on the other hand, it’s also making these tools fairly freely available. Given the distributed nature of this technology one has to wonder how OpenAI will actually enforce its own policies.”

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  • Trump Accuses Biden of “Conspiracy To Overthrow the United States of America”

    Trump Accuses Biden of “Conspiracy To Overthrow the United States of America”

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    Former President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks on President Joe Biden, baselessly describing the Biden administration’s border policy as “a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America” in a pair of rallies on Saturday.

    Trump, of course, is himself currently facing 91 criminal charges, including “conspiracy to defraud” the United States for his conduct on January 6, 2021, but on Saturday he cast Biden as a criminal threat to democracy. “He talks about democracy,” Trump said of Biden. “He is a danger to democracy.”

    Trump’s speeches in Virginia and North Carolina—two states that will hold Super Tuesday primary contests this week and that Trump hopes to carry in the general election in November—were laser-focused on the U.S.-Mexico border, which Republicans perceive as an electoral liability for the Biden campaign. Monthly migrant encounters at the southern border reached a record high of nearly 250,000 in December, though that number has since declined.

    In his speech in Richmond, Virginia, Trump floated the baseless claim that Democrats are attempting to bring undocumented migrants into the U.S. and “trying to sign them up to get them to vote in the next election.” In Greensboro, North Carolina, he conjured images of “foreign armies” brought in to do electoral battle for the Democratic Party and “collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.”

    “That’s why a central question in this election is whether the foreign armies Joe Biden has smuggled across our border will be allowed to stay, or whether they’ll be told to get the hell out of here and go back home,” Trump added. “We’ll take them back home.”

    In recent months, Biden has attempted to out-flank Trump on immigration on the issue, backing a bipartisan border bill negotiated in the Senate that would, the administration argued, constitute “the toughest and fairest reforms to secure the border we have had in decades.” Trump, who is seeking to keep immigration front of mind for voters throughout the election season, campaigned vociferously against the bill and successfully rallied Republicans to oppose it.

    Both candidates made dueling visits to the border on Thursday, with Biden accusing Trump of “playing politics on the issue.” Trump, meanwhile, met with Texas Governor Greg Abbott and declared that migrants crossing the border “look like warriors to me.” (Many border officials, “including some who worked for Mr. Trump, have said that most migrants who cross the border are members of vulnerable families fleeing poverty and violence,” The New York Times reported Saturday.)

    Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa responded to Trump’s speeches in a statement: “Once again Trump is projecting in an attempt to distract the American people from the fact he killed the fairest and toughest border security bill in decades because he believed it would help his campaign,” Moussa said. “Sad.”

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    Jack McCordick

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  • The Biden Campaign Fills Out Its Digital Team Ahead of Super Tuesday

    The Biden Campaign Fills Out Its Digital Team Ahead of Super Tuesday

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    President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is staffing up on digital, with four key hires ahead of the Super Tuesday primary elections.

    On Sunday, the campaign named Ryan Thompson as chief mobilization officer and Kate Conway as creative director. Cat Stern was named director of digital persuasion and Clarke Humphrey is being brought on as a senior adviser for digital persuasion. A Biden spokesperson told WIRED that Stern, formerly vice president of paid media at the Democratic marketing firm Authentic, will be leading a digital ads program along with Humphrey, who will also work with its network of influencers. Humphrey previously served as White House digital director for the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response team. The pair’s program will be “focused on creative testing and being in more places than ever.”

    “I’m thrilled to bring on four experienced digital operatives as we turn to the general election,” Rob Flaherty, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement to WIRED. “This is a team that doesn’t just understand how to reach voters in a climate that is more personalized and more online than ever before—they are some of the leading architects of the cutting-edge tactics needed to win this election.”

    The announcement comes as the Biden campaign is shifting its focus toward how it can reach more voters online throughout the general election cycle. During the Super Bowl in January, the Biden team launched a TikTok account despite lawmaker fears that the app could be used by the Chinese government to spy on US citizens. Earlier this year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said that the app reaches more than 170 million Americans, including many young voters who supported Biden in 2020.

    “We’re in a new phase of the campaign where people are tuning in, and we want to make sure we’re reaching people in as many places as possible,” Flaherty told WIRED of the decision to join TikTok in February.

    Flaherty, who previously served as digital director for the White House, was named deputy campaign manager in August. Thompson was previously the chief digital officer at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where in 2018 he managed a $15 million email-list-building budget that ultimately raised more than $106 million. Conway also worked at the DCCC, where as creative director she built up their in-house creative team.

    Over the past four years, the Biden campaign has made significant investments in digital. Since Biden’s inauguration, his team has built relationships with dozens of social media influencers across platforms like Instagram and TikTok to spread the president’s message online. The administration has gone as far as holding briefings with creators over pressing topics like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In December, the White House held its first-ever holiday party for political content creators.

    While young voters overwhelmingly supported Biden in the last presidential election, their support has been waning, according to recent polls. The campaign’s continued investment in its digital work will be critical for reengaging these voters with whom Biden is falling out of favor.

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    Makena Kelly

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  • Trump Leads Biden By Four Points: NYT/Siena Poll

    Trump Leads Biden By Four Points: NYT/Siena Poll

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    President Joe Biden is trailing former President Donald Trump with general election voters because of his perceived lack of leadership and voter concerns about where the nation is heading, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll published Saturday.

    The Trump-Biden breakdown among registered voters as a whole (48 to 43 percent, respectively) was even worse for the President than among likely voters (48 to 44 percent), continuing a dynamic that has held throughout this campaign in which Biden slightly outmatches his rival among the voters who are actually likely to show up in November.

    But while that dynamic has given Biden a lead in previous polls—the last Times/Siena poll in December found Biden down two points among registered voters but up two points among likely ones—it wasn’t enough this time to give him an advantage. Saturday’s tally was the largest lead Trump has ever had in a Times/Siena poll—including in the 2016 and 2020 races.

    The poll comes as voter attitudes toward the economy remain resoundingly pessimistic, and the President faces growing questions about his age and his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Biden’s approval rating in Saturday’s poll was a dismal 36 percent, with 47 percent of voters expressing strong disapproval—the highest number of his presidency. Only 18 percent of voters felt Biden’s policies had helped them personally. Over double that number said the same for Trump.

    Perhaps the poll’s starkest finding is that two-thirds of the electorate believes the country is “on the wrong track.” Trump is winning 63 percent of those voters. 

    “Mr. Biden is very unpopular,” the Times’ Nate Cohn wrote bluntly on Saturday. “He’s so unpopular that he’s now even less popular than Mr. Trump, who remains every bit as unpopular as he was four years ago.”

    In addition to his unfavorability numbers, the poll indicates that Biden’s lead among women and racial minorities is slipping away. Biden maintains a slim six-point lead among minorities without college degrees, a demographic that voted for him by 50 points in 2020. Women are now equally split between the two candidates, while Trump leads among Latino voters.

    In a further sign that the electorate that pushed Biden to victory in 2020 may be unraveling, 17 percent of voters who cast ballots for him in 2020 aren’t supporting his re-election. A full 10 percent of Biden 2020 voters said that they plan to back Trump, who—despite a more fractious primary campaign—is still winning 97 percent of the voters who voted for him last time.

    One piece of encouraging news for the Biden campaign is that among so-called “double haters”—voters who disapprove of both candidates—Biden came out on top by 12 points. The candidate who won that part of the electorate, the Times noted, emerged victorious in both 2016 and 2020.

    Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler responded to the poll Saturday by saying the campaign is “ignoring the noise.”

    “Polling continues to be at odds with how Americans vote, and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden,” he said in a statement. “Whether it’s in special elections or in the presidential primaries, actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does, and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform while Donald Trump and the party he leads are weak, cash-strapped, and deeply divided. Our campaign is ignoring the noise and running a strong campaign to win — just like we did in 2020.”

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Donald Trump wins Missouri caucuses. Michigan and Idaho Republicans will also weigh in on 2024 race

    Donald Trump wins Missouri caucuses. Michigan and Idaho Republicans will also weigh in on 2024 race

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    By Jonathan J. Cooper, Associated Press

    Donald Trump has won Missouri’s Republican caucuses, one of three events Saturday that will award delegates for the GOP presidential nomination.

    The former president, who is especially strong in caucuses, added to his delegate lead with that victory and made gains at a party convention in Michigan. Idaho was scheduled to hold its caucuses later Saturday. His last major rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, is still seeking her first election-season win.

    There are no Democratic contests on Saturday.

    The next contest is the GOP caucus Sunday in the District of Columbia. Two days later is Super Tuesday, when 16 states and American Samoa will hold primaries on what will be the largest day of voting of the year outside of the November election. Trump is on track to lock up the nomination days later.

    Michigan

    Michigan Republicans at their convention in Grand Rapids began allocating 39 of the state’s 55 GOP presidential delegates. Trump won 33, with six yet to be allocated.

     

     

    But a significant portion of the party’s grassroots force was skipping the gathering because of the lingering effects of a monthslong dispute over the party’s leadership.

    Trump handily won Michigan’s primary this past Tuesday with 68% of the vote compared with Haley’s 27%.

    Michigan Republicans were forced to split their delegate allocation into two parts after Democrats, who control the state government, moved Michigan into the early primary states, violating the national Republican Party’s rules.

    Missouri

    Voters lined up outside a church in Columbia, home to the University of Missouri, before the doors opened for the caucuses.

    “I don’t know what my role here will be, besides standing in a corner for Trump,” Columbia resident Carmen Christal said, adding that she’s “just looking forward to the experience of it.”

    This year was be the first test of the new system, which is almost entirely run by volunteers on the Republican side.

    The caucuses were organized after GOP Gov. Mike Parson signed a 2022 law that, among other things, canceled the planned March 12 presidential primary.

    Lawmakers failed to reinstate the primary despite calls to do so by both state Republican and Democratic party leaders. Democrats will hold a party-run primary on March 23.

    Trump prevailed twice under Missouri’s old presidential primary system.

    Idaho

    Last year, Idaho lawmakers passed cost-cutting legislation that was intended to move all the state’s primaries to the same date in May — but the bill inadvertently eliminated the presidential primaries entirely. The Republican-led legislature considered holding a special session to reinstate the presidential primaries but failed to agree on a proposal in time, leaving both parties with presidential caucuses as the only option. The GOP presidential caucuses will be on Saturday, while the Democratic caucuses aren’t until May 23.

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  • Judge orders Trump removed from Illinois primary ballot

    Judge orders Trump removed from Illinois primary ballot

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    An Illinois judge ruled Wednesday that former President Donald Trump’s name should be struck from the March 19 Illinois Republican primary ballot because he engaged in insurrection in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and is disqualified from holding the office of president.

    Cook County Judge Tracie Porter made her ruling based on the case law surrounding the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision in December that removed Trump from that state’s ballot based on the “insurrection clause” of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing the Colorado decision.

    While Porter ruled primary votes cast for Trump should not be counted by Illinois election officials, she stayed the effect of her ruling until March 1 in anticipation of an appeal in higher state courts and a ruling from the nation’s highest court in the Colorado case.

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  • Illinois Kicks Insurrectionist Trump Off The Ballot

    Illinois Kicks Insurrectionist Trump Off The Ballot

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    A judge has ordered that Donald Trump be removed from the ballot in Illinois and that none of the votes he gathers be counted due to his participation in the 1/6 insurrection.

    Trump Removed From The Ballot In Illinois

    Judge Tracie Porter ruled:

    The case was brought by the non-partisan democracy advocacy group Free Speech For People who reacted to the ruling in a statement:

    To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

    In today’s ruling, Judge Porter categorically rejected the Board’s interpretation and reversed the Electoral Board. She also rejected Trump’s arguments that he did not engage in insurrection, that he did not swear an oath to support the Constitution, that the presidency is not an office under the United States, and various other gimmicks that Trump tried to use to avoid the merits. Instead, she found that Donald Trump incited, fomented, and facilitated the violent January 6, 2021 insurrection that overran the U.S. Capitol, nearly assassinated the vice president and congressional leaders, obstructed the congressional certification of electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election, and, for the first time in our nation’s history, disrupted the peaceful transfer of power.

    Judge Porter ordered the Electoral Board to remove Trump’s name from ballots. Implementation of the order is stayed if, by March 1, Trump appeals the ruling to the Illinois Appellate Court or Illinois Supreme Court or if the US Supreme Court issues a ruling in Trump v. Anderson which is inconsistent with this ruling.

    The Trump campaign attacked Judge Porter and vowed to immediately appeal.

    What Does This Ruling Politically Mean For Trump?

    No matter how the Supreme Court rules in the 14th Amendment case, these rulings are all bad news for Trump. The media often looks at Trump’s numbers within the Republican Party to claim that these rulings of ballot disqualification do not politically harm him, but the electorate that matters most in the general electorate, and anytime that Donald Trump has to defend his incitement of an insurrection, it harms him with Independent and swings voters.

    Trump has already shown in the Republican presidential primary that he is failing to unify his party. One-third of Republicans continue to vote for someone else who is not Donald Trump.

    Donald Trump has now been disqualified from the ballot in three states, and with each ruling, he is being labeled an insurrectionist who is disqualified from the ballot.

     

    A Special Message From PoliticusUSA

    If you are in a position to donate purely to help us keep the doors open on PoliticusUSA during what is a critical election year, please do so here. 

    We have been honored to be able to put your interests first for 14 years as we only answer to our readers and we will not compromise on that fundamental, core PoliticusUSA value.

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  • Listen to Michigan campaign rebukes Biden with strong ‘uncommitted’ Democratic primary results

    Listen to Michigan campaign rebukes Biden with strong ‘uncommitted’ Democratic primary results

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    As expected, President Joe Biden handily won Michigan’s Democratic primary election on Tuesday. But all eyes were on the Great Lakes State to see if a grassroots campaign urging people to vote “uncommitted” in protest of his handling of the war in Gaza could gain traction here, with Michigan becoming more influential in the national race after moving its primary election to earlier in the year.

    Launched by leaders from metro Detroit’s large Arab American community who call for a ceasefire in Gaza, the “Listen to Michigan” campaign bet that Democrats opposed to the war would turn out for the protest vote, but it wasn’t initially clear what benchmark would be considered a success. (There are some 200,000 Arab American voters in Michigan, while Biden beat Trump by about 150,000 votes in the 2020 general election.) Publicly, the campaign set a goal of 10,000 “uncommitted” votes, but that was an inadequate gauge; there were about 20,000 uncommitted voters in each of Michigan’s past three primary elections. So to make a statement, tens of thousands of Michiganders would have to vote “uncommitted” this time.

    The campaign declared victory Tuesday evening, with more than 38,000 votes for “uncommitted” shortly before 11 p.m. and 29% of votes in — enough for the campaign to send at least one delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

    “Our movement emerged victorious tonight and massively surpassed our expectations,” the campaign said in a statement. “Tens of thousands of Michigan Democrats, many of whom voted for Biden in 2020, are uncommitted to his re-election due to the war in Gaza.”

    Critics warned if these voters don’t support Biden in November that the Listen to Michigan campaign could help Trump, whose authoritarian bent would be worse for Gaza, Arab Americans, and democracy.

    But in a video statement, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, one of the most prominent supporters of Listen to Michigan, said the campaign was about participating in democracy to make its supporters’ voices heard.

    “We must protect our democracy, we must make sure that our government is about us, about the people,” she said, adding, “This is the way we can use our democracy to say, ‘Listen. Listen to Michigan.’”

    Tlaib said that she was proud to bring her 18-year-old son to vote for the first time ever on Tuesday. Her sister Layla Elabed is a campaign manager for Listen to Michigan.

    A similar group, the “Abandon Biden” campaign, declared victory well before polls even closed on Tuesday, saying that it had campaigners posted in Dearborn, the center of metro Detroit’s Arab American community, and “not a single person has said that they will vote for Biden,” the campaign’s Hassan Abdel Salam told Metro Times via email.

    “Whereas Biden won by 90% in 2020, there will be virtually no support this year for Biden,” he said. “It is not an understatement to say that this is an earthquake.”

    click to enlarge

    Viola Klocko

    A multicultural coalition in metro Detroit has rallied in opposition to the war in Gaza.

    Filmmaker and activist Michael Moore, who endorsed the Listen to Michigan campaign and famously predicted Trump would win in 2016, also anticipated a big turnout.

    “This is a movement that’s only about two weeks old and it has caught on fire, let me tell you, my friends,” he said on his podcast Rumble with Michael Moore. “I’m just telling you this as a Michigander, there are people by the thousands who are going to vote.”

    On Tuesday, Politico reported that Biden’s campaign was privately “freaking out about the uncommitted vote” in Michigan. Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, Governor Whitmer — a loyal Biden ally who has repeated the talking point claiming that anything other than a vote for Biden in the primary will help Trump in November — expressed empathy for the uncommitted voters while speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday.

    “Today, I anticipate that we will see a sizable number of people vote uncommitted,” she said, adding, “There’s a lot of people who are hurting.”

    When asked how Biden can win these voters back in November, Whitmer said, “It’s going to be important that the administration continue to engage with leaders and individuals in the Palestinian community, the Muslim community, the Arab American community, as well as the Jewish community.”

    Andy Levin, a Jewish former congressman who also supported the Listen to Michigan campaign, said that Biden must heed the warning and push harder for a ceasefire.

    “Joe Biden can get the vast majority of these people to vote for him if he changes course,” Levin said, according to The New York Times. “If he doesn’t change course, there’s nothing I can do to get folks to vote for him.”

    Israel’s bombing in Gaza has killed more than 30,000 people, with many more at risk of starvation and illness.

    This article was updated with more recent results from the primary election.

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    Lee DeVito

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  • Donald Trump Dubs Himself a “Political Dissident” in CPAC Speech

    Donald Trump Dubs Himself a “Political Dissident” in CPAC Speech

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    In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, former President Donald Trump cast the 2024 presidential election as a quasi-religious day of reckoning for his political opponents. 

    “For hard-working Americans, Nov. 5 will be our new Liberation Day,” he said. “But for the liars, and cheaters, and fraudsters, and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their Judgment Day.”

    The line underscored the apocalyptic tone that suffused Trump’s speech, which was peppered with warnings of “hoards of illegal aliens stampeding across our borders,” Hamas coming to “terrorize our streets,” and the utter “collapse” of public services including education and healthcare. “If crooked Joe Biden and his thugs win in 2024, the worst is yet to come,” Trump said. “Our country will go and sink to levels that were unimaginable.”

    “When we win, the curtain closes on their corrupt reign, and the sun rises on a bright new future for America,” he added. “I believe it’s our last chance.”

    Throughout his campaign, Trump has consistently portrayed himself as a singular bulwark against onrushing tyranny, a theme he reprised on Saturday. “Our country is being destroyed, and the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me,” Trump said. “I stand before you today only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident. I am a dissident.”

    The line recalled Trump’s comments last week comparing his legal woes to the persecution of Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic panel colony under mysterious circumstances. President Joe Biden, Western leaders and Kremlin critics have all blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny’s death.

    Continuing what has become a campaign theme, Trump accused President Biden, without evidence, of orchestrating the 91 criminal indictments against him. “He indicted me,” Trump said of Biden, adding that his legal cases were “Stalinist show trials carried out at the Joe Biden orders.”

    Trump’s speech came as he coasted to victory in Saturday’s South Carolina Republican primary, besting the state’s former two-term governor Nikki Haley by more than 20 points. Sensing his hold on the nomination growing even more potent, Trump didn’t even utter Haley’s name during his CPAC speech.

    Biden campaign rapid response director Ammar Moussa responded to the speech by calling Trump a “loser.”

    “Under his presidency, America lost more jobs than any president in modern history, women in more than 20 states have lost the freedom to make their own health care decisions because Trump overturned Roe, and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party lost their damn minds putting Trump’s quest for power over our democracy,” he said.

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Nikki Haley Has Done Immense Damage To Trump In South Carolina

    Nikki Haley Has Done Immense Damage To Trump In South Carolina

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    The myth of Trump’s strength as a candidate is taking another hit in South Carolina, as Nikki Haley’s continued presence is showing Trump’s weakness.

    Haley gave her rationale for staying in the race:

    This has never been about me or my political future. We need to beat Joe Biden in November. I don’t believe Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden nearly every day. Trump drives people away, including with his comments just yesterday. Today, in South Carolina, we’re getting around 40% of the vote.

    That, that’s about what, that’s about what we got in New Hampshire, too. I’m an accountant. I know 40% is not 50%, but I also know 40% is not some tiny group. There, there are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative. I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I would continue to run for president. I’m a woman of my word.

    Video:

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    A bigger problem for Trump was that 59% of Haley supporters in South Carolina say that they won’t support Trump in the general election:

    If Haley hadn’t been in the race, Trump could have pretended like the Republican Party was unified around him, and he could have sold the myth of strength. Haley’s presence and the opposition vote she has put up in multiple states expose Trump’s weakness.

    Sure, Trump is winning these states by double digits, but there are a whole lot of Republicans in these primaries who aren’t voting for him.

    Every day that Haley stays in the primary is another day that Trump’s weakness is visible.

    Trump wanted Haley gone because he can’t afford a long primary race, but Haley has also shown Joe Biden and the Democrats that the Republican Party is not unified around Trump, and there are potential anti-Trump Republican votes that can be targeted in November.

    Haley is doing immense damage to Trump simply by refusing to leave.

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    Jason Easley

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  • Key Bay Area school bond measures and parcel taxes: What you should know

    Key Bay Area school bond measures and parcel taxes: What you should know

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    More than a dozen Bay Area school bond measures and parcel taxes are slated for the March 5 ballot this year, aiming to secure a minimum of $1.9 billion over the course of several years to improve school facilities and student learning outcomes.

    Property owners would foot the bill for the funds for their local schools.

    Here is a quick guide to the bond measures and parcel taxes being proposed in cities and counties across the region:

    San Mateo County

    Location: Daly City
    Ballot proposition: Measure C
    Proposal: Raise $1.6 million per year
    Cost: $88 per parcel
    Duration: 9 years
    Votes needed to pass: 66.6%
    Purpose:

    – Attract and retain teachers; prevent layoffs

    – Protect core academics in math, science, reading and writing

    – Help students read at grade level

    – Expand hands-on science learning opportunities

    – Maintain reduced class sizes

    – Upgrade classroom technology

    – Enhance school libraries, music and art classes

    – Support after-school and enrichment programs

    – Provide competitive compensation for teachers and school employees

    Location: Woodside
    Ballot proposition: Measure E
    Proposal: Raise total of $36 million in school bonds for new facilities
    Cost: Annual property tax of $30 per $100,000 of assessed value
    Duration: 8 years
    Votes needed to pass: 55%
    Purpose:

    – Maintain funding for science, technology, engineering and math programs

    – Supplement teacher salaries

    – Sustain music and arts programming

    – Keep school libraries open

    Location: Pacifica
    Ballot proposition: Measure G
    Proposal: Raise $70 million for Pacifica School District
    Cost: Annual property tax of $30 per $100,000 of assessed value
    Duration: 35 years
    Votes needed to pass: 55%
    Purpose:

    – Modernize outdated elementary schools with updated classrooms and science labs

    – Construct local affordable workforce rental housing for teachers and staff

    – Replace aging portables and heating/cooling systems

    – Ensure access for students with disabilities

    Location: San Carlos
    Ballot proposition: Measure H
    Proposal: Raise $176 million in bonds for San Carlos School District
    Cost: Annual property tax of $30 per $100,000 of assessed value
    Duration: 35 years
    Votes needed to pass: 55%
    Purpose:

    – Repair aging classrooms, leaky roofs, heating, cooling, plumbing, and electrical systems

    – Upgrade science, technology, engineering, arts and math classrooms

    – Improve fire and safety systems

    – Enhance accessibility for students

    Santa Clara County

    Location: Sunnyvale
    Ballot proposition: Measure C
    Proposal: $214 million in bonds for school facilities
    Cost: Annual property tax of $15 per $100,000 of assessed value
    Duration: 34 years
    Votes needed to pass: 55%
    Purpose:

    – Continue renovation and modernization of local elementary and middle schools

    – Upgrade school safety and security measures

    – Improve access to technology

    – Ensure accessibility for students with disabilities

    Contra Costa County

    Location: Antioch
    Ballot proposition: Measure B
    Proposal: Raise up to $195 million in new bonds
    Cost: Annual property tax of $48 per $100,000 of assessed value
    Duration: 25 years
    Votes needed to pass: 55%
    Purpose:

    – Add classrooms at John Muir Elementary School

    – New gymnasium at Orchard Park School

    – Add a building at Park Middle School

    – Modernize Antioch Middle School’s gym

    Location: Martinez
    Ballot proposition: Measure C
    Proposal: Renew an existing parcel tax, about $850,000 annually
    Cost: $75 per parcel
    Duration: 8 years
    Votes needed to pass: 66.6%
    Purpose:

    – Continue funding of science, technology, engineering and math programs

    – Continue to supplement teacher salaries

    – Maintain music and arts programming

    – Keep school libraries open

    Location: Moraga
    Ballot proposition: Measure D
    Proposal: $52 million in bonds
    Cost: Annual property tax of $30 per $100,000 of assessed value
    Duration: While bonds are outstanding
    Votes needed to pass: 55%
    Purpose:

    – Upgrade science, technology and engineering classrooms and labs

    – Replace leaking roofs and unsafe windows

    – Repair and replace aging plumbing and electrical systems

    Alameda County

    Location: Alameda
    Ballot proposition: Measure E
    Proposal: Raise $24 million with a parcel tax
    Cost: $0.585 per square foot (cap of $15,998, or $598 for unimproved lots)
    Duration: 9 years
    Votes needed to pass:66.6%
    Purpose:

    – Attract and retain teachers

    – Sustain programs reading, writing, math, science and arts

    – Support struggling students

    Location: Albany
    Ballot proposition: Measure G
    Proposal: New parcel tax to raise $4.8 million annually for education programs and teacher salaries, would replace current flat rate of $490 per parcel
    Cost: $0.55 per building square foot ($25 per unimproved lot)
    Duration: Until ended by voters
    Votes needed to pass: 66.6%
    Purpose:

    – Attract and retain teachers and counselors

    – Protect science, math, arts, reading and language instruction

    – Support music, art and theater programs

    – Maintain small class sizes.

    Location: Berkeley
    Ballot proposition: Measure H
    Proposal: Renews Berkeley Schools Excellence Program, estimated at $44 million annually
    Cost: Special parcel tax of $0.54 per building square foot ($25 per unimproved lot)
    Duration: 8 years
    Votes needed to pass: 66.6%
    Purpose:

    – Continue high-quality public education

    – Provide support for struggling students

    – Attract and retain quality teachers

    – Keep school libraries open

    – Support music/arts programs

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    Ryan Macasero, Harriet Blair Rowan

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  • More Than 48,600 18-Year-Olds Are Registered to Vote in Ohio, a 35% Increase From Late August

    More Than 48,600 18-Year-Olds Are Registered to Vote in Ohio, a 35% Increase From Late August

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    click to enlarge

    Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal.

    On the campus of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

    Ohio has seen a recent spike in young voter registration.

    More than 48,600 18-year-olds are registered to vote in Ohio as of Jan. 6 — a 35% increase compared to late August, according to data analyzed by the Civics Center, a nonpartisan organization trying to increase voter registration. 

    “What we typically see is that registration rates, especially for the youngest voters, can go up very significantly when young people become more aware of elections in which their votes will matter,” said Laura Brill, founder and CEO of Civics Center.

    2024 is going to be a big election year between the presidential election, Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, a potential anti-gerrrymandering amendment proposal, three Ohio Supreme Court races, and the Ohio House of Representatives elections. Oct. 7 is the deadline to register to vote for the Nov. 5 general election. Early voting for the March 19 primary started Wednesday and the deadline to register to vote was Tuesday. 

    “When young people are registered, they tend to turn out at high rates when they know that their votes will make a difference,” Brill said. “I think a lot of it depends on whether the candidates and parties are really getting the word out to young people about what’s at stake.”

    Ohio’s November 2023 election enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution and legalized recreational marijuana. 

    “There were multiple, very high profile elections going on in Ohio,” Brill said. “It provided a concentrated deadline for people to focus on to get registered.” 

    However, there is still a long way to go with getting young people registered to vote. More than 100,000 18-year-olds in Ohio remained unregistered to vote as of January, according to the Civics Center. 

    Buckeyes For Voting Rights

    Ohio State University senior Cassie Mohr helped launch Buckeyes For Voting Rights, a nonpartisan organization that helps students register to vote. 

    “We just want every student at Ohio State that’s eligible to vote … to be able to cast their ballot comfortably and easily,” said Mohr, who is studying political science and public affairs. 

    She first started helping people register to vote back when she was a senior at Westerville North High School, just north of Columbus. 

    “I realized that a lot of students, a lot of 17-18 year olds, want to register to vote, but they don’t register to vote if nobody presents them with the opportunity,” Mohr said. “If nobody helps guide them through the process and helps them fill out the form and everything, then it’s something that people forget about.”

    Nearly 90% of Ohio State students were registered to vote for the 2020 presidential election and 75% of students voted in that election, according to the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education.

    “The hope is since voting is a habitual process, that we can get them engaged to talk about what issues matter to them,” Mohr said. “And then once we can get them engaged, then hopefully we can make them a lifelong voter.”

    Ohio’s photo ID law

    A law went into effect last year that makes it harder for out-of-state college students to vote in Ohio. 

    Under the new law, Ohioans must show a photo ID in order to vote, meaning an unexpired Ohio driver’s license, a state ID card, U.S. passport or military card. A college or university ID does not count as a photo ID. 

    Out-of-state college students who want to vote in Ohio must get a state issued ID card, but that invalidates their driver’s license in another state. 

    Because of this, Mohr is concerned it will prevent some people from being able to vote — especially since Ohio State has more than 12,000 out-of-state students.

    “I think that it’s going to put a huge strain on county board of elections offices,” she said. “This photo ID law is going to create a lot of chaos in November.”

    Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin are all strict photo ID states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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