The GOP just tried to kick hundreds of students off the voter rolls

 

This year, MAGA GOP activists in Georgia attempted to disenfranchise hundreds of students by trying to kick them off the voter rolls. Despite their best efforts ALL of the GOP challenges were overruled. The GOP’s attempt to suppress young voters and unjustly kick them off of voter rolls failed, but the threat to our democracy persists. Their attacks haven't gone unnoticed and we’re equipping our Voter Protection Team with as many resources as possible to protect Georgia voters from these spurious attacks. We need your help to sound the alarm and protect Georgia voters from baseless attacks. Please rush what you can to help us fight back and defend the rights of every Georgia voter to participate in our electoral process. We can’t do this without you! If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately: Donate $5 >> Donate $25 >> Donate $50 >> Donate $100 >> Donate $250 >> Donate another amount >> We need YOUR help to reach, protect, and turn out voters in these critical elections. Please chip in what you can! Thank you, GA Dems

Paid for by the Democratic Party of Georgia. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. www.georgiademocrat.org   Democratic Party of Georgia P.O. BOX 89202 Atlanta, GA 30312 United States     Communicating with our supporters is critical to the Democratic Party of Georgia’s continued success, and email is one of the best tools we have to do it.

 

57 House Dems Call On Biden to Prevent Israeli Assault on Rafah

"An offensive invasion into Rafah by Israel in the upcoming days is wholly unacceptable.

COMMON DREAMS

Democratic lawmakers tell Biden evidence shows Israel is restricting Gaza aid

By Jonathan Landay

May 3, 20244:08 PM PDTUpdated 2 days ago

A worker unloads humanitarian aid, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, near the Erez Crossing point in northern Gaza, May 1, 2024. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) - Scores of lawmakers from U.S. President Joe Biden's Democratic Party told him on Friday that they believe there is sufficient evidence to show that Israel has violated U.S. law by restricting humanitarian aid flows into war-stricken Gaza.

A letter to Biden signed by 86 House of Representatives Democrats said Israel's aid restrictions "call into question" its assurances that it was complying with a U.S. Foreign Assistance Act provision requiring recipients of U.S.-funded arms to uphold international humanitarian law and allow free flows of U.S. assistance.

Such written assurances were mandated by a national security memorandum that Biden issued in February after Democratic lawmakers began questioning if Israel was upholding international law in its Gaza operations.

The lawmakers said the Israeli government had resisted repeated U.S. requests to open enough sea and land routes for aid to Gaza, and cited reports that it failed to allow in enough food to avert famine, enforced "arbitrary restrictions" on aid and imposed an inspection system that impeded supplies.

"We expect the administration to ensure (Israel's) compliance with existing law and to take all conceivable steps to prevent further humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza," the lawmakers wrote.

Biden's memorandum requires that Secretary of State Antony Blinken report to Congress by Wednesday on whether he finds credible Israel's assurances that its use of U.S. arms adheres to international law.

At least four State Department bureaus advised Blinken last month that they found Israel's assurances "neither credible nor reliable."

If Israel's assurances are questioned, Biden would have the option to "remediate" the situation through actions ranging from seeking fresh assurances to suspending U.S. arms transfers, according to the memorandum.

UN SAYS FAMINE ADVANCING IN GAZA

Israel denies violating international law and limiting aid in its war against Gaza's ruling Hamas militants, which was triggered by their Oct. 7 onslaught into Israel in which they killed more than 1,200 people and seized more than 200 hostages.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have died in nearly seven months of fighting, according to Gaza's health ministry, which has devastated the coastal enclave and left most of the population of 2.3 million displaced amid dire food and water shortages.

U.N. World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain told NBC News that there was now "full-blown famine" in northern Gaza.

In excerpts of an interview to be aired on Sunday on Meet the Press, McCain told NBC that she hoped for a ceasefire accord so that more aid could be delivered faster.

"There is famine – full-blown famine – in the north, and it's moving its way south. And so what we're asking for and what we've continually asked for is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access," said McCain, the widow of the late Senator John McCain.

U.S. officials say that while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has taken steps that have boosted aid deliveries, the amounts remain insufficient.

The lawmakers also condemned Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in their letter, endorsed Israel's right to exist and expressed support for U.S. efforts to broker a ceasefire and a second hostage release.

Israel, they noted, recently opened more aid routes and crossing points into Gaza that have allowed in more aid trucks.

But the lawmakers expressed "serious concerns" over Israel's conduct of the war "as it pertains to the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid."

They urged Biden "to make clear" to Netanyahu "that so long as Israel restricts, directly or indirectly" aid to Gaza "the Israeli government is risking its eligibility for further offensive security assistance from the U.S."

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Reporting by Jonathan Landay, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien

ISRAEL DENYING AID

Judges are failing to disclose luxury trips, too

 

May 4, 2024

Through a series of shocking investigations last year, we learned that sitting Supreme Court justices had made a habit of accepting and failing to report expensive gifts and free luxury trips from "friendly" benefactors. Apparently, they’re not the only ones who don’t recognize the clear ethics violation at hand. An NPR investigation published this week revealed dozens of incidents in which federal judges failed to disclose all-expenses-paid luxury trips to judicial conferences. According to NPR, many of these convenings featured talks and presentations with “ideological content,” including a presentation from a far-right German politician who has been known to espouse racist and xenophobic rhetoric and an energy company CEO who is “suing the federal government over financial regulations.” The judiciary code of conduct and federal ethics law not only bring into question the propriety of these trips but also, at bare minimum, require judges to disclose gifts like these. The pattern of some federal judges' failure to recognize how their participation in these sorts of activities — and certainly their failure to report these trips — once again spotlights serious ethics problems in the courts. The public should be able to have utmost trust in the independence and integrity of our judicial branch: The legitimacy of the institution depends on it. But right now, there’s no good reason to think we can. WANT MORE FROM POGO? The latest from us, straight to your inbox For updates on POGO’s investigations, upcoming events, and more ways you can get involved, subscribe to our emails. INVESTIGATION Road to Reprisal: U.S. Agency Fired Congo Whistleblower” Retaliation claims highlight human rights and environmental risks and tensions in an agency at the forefront of U.S.-China rivalry in Africa. Read More QUOTE OF THE WEEK “It’s a big deal to make that decision to come forward and speak out. When whistleblowers don’t get the relief they deserve, it has this huge chilling effect on everyone else.” Joe Spielberger, Policy Counsel, in Spotlight PA OVERHEARD   WANT MORE FROM POGO? Eyes on the federal government from every angle:   Paper Trail: Quick links to the news in the world of government oversight The Bunker: Military intelligence from POGO's Mark Thompson The Bridge: Wade through the jargon with Spurthi Kontham 🎧 Bad Watchdog Podcast 📺 YouTube 📱 Instagram 💸 Support our work

pogo.org The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a nonpartisan independent watchdog that investigates and exposes waste, corruption, abuse of power, and when the government fails to serve the public or silences those who report wrongdoing. We champion reforms to achieve a more effective, ethical, and accountable federal government that safeguards constitutional principles.

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WE WILL SURVIVE & PREVAIL IF WE PARTICIPATE!

What I'm telling my graduating students ROBERT REICH MAY 5 Friends, My students are graduating at a tremulous time. The largest campus protest movement of the 21st century. The first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. The most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. Two horrific wars. All of this coming after the first pandemic in living memory, one that claimed the lives of a million Americans. And after the first attack on the U.S. Capitol in history, provoked by the first president who refused to accept electoral defeat. Perhaps most troubling, the nation is bitterly split. Americans are demonizing those on the other side whom they disagree with. (For two weeks in April, “Civil War,” a dystopian film about a bloody alternative reality where America is at war with itself, topped box office charts, grossing more than $50 million.) My graduating student are exhausted and anxious. They are repulsed by the slaughter in Gaza, and angry by the responses of university administrators around the country to the student protesters. They’re cynical about politics. They tell me they don’t want to have children and bring them into a world imperiled by conflict and climate change and authoritarianism. They have lived through mass shootings and culture wars. They recall a Trump administration spewing hate and bigotry and giving tax cuts to the wealthy, and fear another President Trump who’s even less constrained. I tell them that the year I graduated from college, in 1968, America also felt tremulous and chaotic. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. American cities were burning. And the Vietnam War was claiming the lives of tens of thousands of young Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. I was appalled at the unnecessary carnage in Vietnam. I was incensed that the first world, white and rich, was randomly killing people in the third world, mostly non-white and poor. As an American, I felt morally complicit. I was angry at college administrators who summoned police to clear protesters – using teargas, stun guns and mass arrests. The response only added fuel to the flames. American was deeply split. My graduation speaker urged us to resist the draft and seek refuge in Canada. His words caused parents in the crowd to boo. I saw several engage in fistfights. The anti-Vietnam war movement became fodder for rightwing politicians like Richard Nixon, demanding “law and order.” The spectacle also appalled many non-college, working-class people who viewed the students as pampered, selfish, anti-American, unpatriotic. I vividly recall the anti war demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and the brutality of the Chicago police and Illinois national guard – later described by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence as a “police riot”. As the anti-war protesters chanted “The whole world is watching,” network television conveyed the riotous scene to what seemed like the whole world. I had spent months working for the anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. The convention nominated Hubert Humphrey. That November, America elected Richard Nixon as president. I wondered whether the nation could sink any lower. How could we survive? I ask my students to hold on. To use their lives and careers to make America better. To try to heal the world. History, as it is said, doesn’t repeat itself. It only rhymes. The mistakes made at one point in time have an eerie way of re-emerging two generations later, as memories fade.