The Big Lie, Con't

Republicans continue the Big Lie because Donald Trump demands it, and the media continues to allow them to get away with it.

 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) refused to answer whether the 2020 election was stolen when pressed eight separate times in a Sunday interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos.

Asked about conservative Rep. Ken Buck’s (R-Colo.) decision to leave Congress and his departing remark that “too many Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen,” Scalise avoided responding directly in the interview on ABC News’s “This Week.”

“Well, Ken, I’ve worked with on a number of issues, including getting spending under control, getting our economy back on track. He’s talked about that 2020 election as well. You and I have, I think, have talked about that too,” Scalise said. “At the end of the day, getting our country back on track is our focus. And that’s what we’re focused on right now.”

“Can you say unequivocally the 2020 election was not stolen?” Stephanopoulos asked Scalise, after the congressman detailed several other legislative priorities for the party.

Scalise dodged the question.

“What I’ve told you, there are states that didn’t follow their laws. That is what the state constitution — the U.S. Constitution requires,” he said. “Every state ought to follow the laws that are on their books. That’s what the U.S. Constitution says.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Stephanopoulos retorted. “I said, can you say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen?”

“Look, Joe Biden’s president. I know you and others want to talk about 2020. We’re focused on the future. We’ve talked about 2020 a lot. We’re talking about how to get our country back on track, how to get our economy moving, how to stand up to the bad actors around the world,” Scalise said.

“Congressman, I know that Joe Biden is president. I’m asking you a different question. Can you say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen?” Stephanopoulos said, continuing to press him.

Scalise dodged again, citing certain states that he claimed “didn’t follow the laws that are on their books, which is what the U.S. Constitution says they have to do.”

Scalise’s argument is a reiteration of a frequent concern predominantly among voters of former President Trump. They argued that the changes made during the pandemic to allow for mail-in ballots and other measures encouraging voter participation somehow violated state law — even though the changes were largely passed through state legislatures or other legal procedures.

“So you, so you just refuse to say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen?” Stephanopoulos said again.

“You want to keep rehashing 2020. We’re talking about the future,” Scalise said, as the two spoke over each other.

“I just want an answer to the question, yes or no?”

“We’ve asked — look, we’ve talked about this before. But, again, will you acknowledge that there were states that didn’t follow the actual state legislative enacted laws on their book, which the U.S. Constitution says they’re supposed to do?” Scalise said, again refusing to answer.

“I know that every court that looked at whether the election was stolen said it wasn’t, rejected those claims. And I asked you a very, very simple question. Now I’ve asked it, I think, the fifth time that you can’t appear to answer. Can you say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen?”

The exchange continued without coming to any ultimate resolution.

 

Scalise ran rings around Stephanopoulos again and again and refused to answer the question, and the veteran interviewer simply gave up because he was tired of trying to nail jello to the wall. Scalise knew 100% what he was doing and walked away with total victory.

Republican after Republican is allowed to get away with this, and that remains the problem. Our media is not equipped to stop the Big Lie in any way.The worse lies coming from the GOP in the next year plus will be far worse, and our media is going to get rolled even harder as a result.

There are a few Republicans who will admit that Biden was legitimately elected, and that's only because they are term-limited in purple states like Virginia.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) on Sunday acknowledged President Biden was the “legitimately elected president” as Republicans continue to be peppered with questions about whether the 2020 election was legitimate.

Pressed by ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos on whether the 2020 election was stolen, Youngkin said, “Well, I’ve consistently said that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president. He’s sleeping in the White House. I wish he weren’t.”

 

Youngkin doesn't have to face GOP primary voters again, so he doesn't have to lie. If he did,he'll change his tune.

And nobody will ask him why.

Last Call For Virginia Is For Haters, Con't

Supposedly "moderate" Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin has just eliminated the right to vote for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, announcing that his office will no longer automatically restore the right to vote for felons who serve out their sentences. 

 

Governor Glenn Youngkin just gave himself a lot more power to pick and choose Virginia voters. The Republican governor’s administration told state lawmakers in a letter last week that he was rescinding his predecessors’ policy of automatically restoring the voting rights of people with felony convictions.

Going forward, Virginians will no longer regain their rights when released from prison—the most recent policy announced by Virginia officials in 2021—nor at any later point, unless Youngkin deems them to be worthy on an individual basis.

His decision, which a future governor could alter, sidelines many residents who expected they would get to vote in Virginia elections.

“I’ve never voted in my life. I was looking forward to voting this year,” Sincere Allah, who was released from prison the week Youngkin was inaugurated in 2022 and who has since waited to learn if his rights will be restored, told Bolts, in reference to the state’s upcoming legislative and prosecutorial elections. “I can pay taxes, I can be held to the same standard as everyone else when it comes to laws and rules and regulations, but I have no say-so or representation.”

Youngkin’s announcement also puts Virginia in a category all its own: It is the only state where someone who is convicted today over any felony is presumed to be barred from voting for life, with no remedy other than receiving a discretionary act of clemency from the governor.

Virginia’s constitution permanently disenfranchises people with a felony conviction. Only Iowa and Kentucky have such a harsh rule on the books—other states with a lifetime ban, like Mississippi, do not apply it to all felonies—but their sitting governors have each issued executive orders that automatically restore at least some people’s voting rights upon completion of their sentences.

For much of the last decade, Virginia governors adopted a similar approach, enabling hundreds of thousands of people to regain the franchise. Anyone whose rights have already been restored will retain the ability to vote. But for others, Youngkin has now rolled back those reforms.

“We are back to 1902-era policy,” Democratic state Senator Scott Surovell tweeted last week after Youngkin’s administration notified him of the change, in reference to the 1902 convention that designed Virginia’s disenfranchisement system with the explicit goal of disenfranchising Black residents: “discrimination within the letter of the law,” as one delegate termed it. That legacy lived on; as recently as 2016, 22 percent of Black Virginians were barred from voting.

“This language in our constitution is from extraordinarily dark origins,” Surovell told Bolts in a follow-up. “I thought we’d settled this debate over the past twelve years of reform, but apparently… anything’s on the table.”

 

When I say the chief goal of the Republican Party is the eliminate the entire Civil Rights Era and take us back to a Jim Crow time where the citizenship rights of anyone who isn't a white, straight Christian male are completely optional, this is precisely what I mean. It's not a dramatic construct, it's the actual truth.

 

If you can't win in the marketplace of ideas, reduce the number of people allowed in the marketplace.

 

It's the Republican way!

Virginia Is For Voters, Con't

This week's special election in Virginia for a state Senate seat may be the difference in stopping GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin's plans to pass legislation banning abortion.

 

Democrat Aaron Rouse has won a special election for a state Senate seat in Virginia after his Republican opponent conceded in a race that was widely viewed as a proxy fight over abortion.

Rouse, a former NFL player who has served on the Virginia Beach City Council for the past few years, flipped a GOP seat that had been held by Jen Kiggans until she won a congressional seat in November. Rouse defeated Republican Kevin Adams, a retired lieutenant commander in the Navy.

“While the results last night were not what we wanted, I am proud of the campaign that we ran and so thankful for everyone who believed in me and this campaign along the way,” Adams said in a concession statement a day after Tuesday's special election.

Democrats will have a 22-18 majority in the state Senate, and Rouse is expected to provide a crucial vote against efforts by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and GOP legislators to pass a bill that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, instead of the current threshold of around 26 weeks.

“Reproductive rights and freedom in Virginia have been hanging by a tenuous thread, especially in the wake of Roe being overturned, and the only thing standing in the way is a one-vote margin in the Virginia state Senate," Tarina Keene, the executive director of REPRO Rising Virginia, said Wednesday.

"It all comes down to one vote, and having Aaron Rouse added to the state Senate in this precarious time only helps shore up reproductive rights and freedom here in the commonwealth. We know that he is a champion for reproductive rights and freedom and will be a solid vote no on any abortion ban that should be introduced in Virginia now,” Keene added.

Democratic state Sen. Joe Morrissey last week expressed willingness to consider proposals to restrict abortion access, telling WRIC-TV of Richmond in an interview that he would keep an "open mind."

Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a Republican, casts tiebreaking votes in the Senate, meaning Adams’ victory, coupled with Morrissey’s potentially backing the measure, could have put Youngkin in a stronger position to get his abortion proposal through. Republicans control the House of Delegates.

During the campaign, Rouse said protecting access to abortion was a priority, vowing on his website that he would “not compromise” on abortion rights.

Adams, meanwhile, said he would back Youngkin’s proposed ban “while providing reasonable exceptions to protect the life of the mother or in the instance of rape or incest,” according to a statement on his campaign website. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America backed Adams in the race.

 

Rouse won by a single percentage point, and the voters that put him over the top may have just saved Virginia women from a nightmare scenario. 

 

For now, the line holds, but the war won't end anytime soon.

Virginia Is For Haters, Con't

Checking in on the far-right administration of Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, we find that "freedom" in the state means transgender kids -- and college-age adults -- will no longer be recognized by the state without legal documentation by parents.

In a major rollback of LGBTQ rights, the administration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) will require that transgender students in Virginia access school facilities and programs that match the sex they were assigned at birth and is making it more difficult for students to change their names and genders at school.

Under new “model policies” for schools’ treatment of transgender students released Friday evening, the Department of Education is requiring that families submit legal documentation to earn their children the right to change names and genders at school. The guidelines also say teachers cannot be compelled to refer to transgender students by their names and genders if it goes against “their constitutionally protected” free speech rights.

And the guidelines say schools cannot “encourage or instruct teachers to conceal material information about a student from the student’s parent, including information related to gender” — raising the prospect that teachers could be forced to out transgender students to their parents.

School districts must adopt the new state guidelines or “policies that are more comprehensive,” after a 30-day comment period that will begin on Sept. 26, the Education Department said. The Board of Education will not have to vote to adopt the policies.

“These 2022 Model Policies reflect the Department’s confidence in parents to prudently exercise their fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Virginia Constitution to direct the upbringing, education, and control of their children,” the guidelines state. “This primary role of parents is well established and beyond debate. Empowering parents is essential to improving outcomes for children.”

The model policies reverse guidelines published in 2021 by the administration of Gov. Ralph Northam (D). Those guidelines mandated that transgender students be allowed to access restrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities that match their gender identities, stipulated that schools let students participate in sports and programs matching their gender identities and required that school districts and teachers accept and use students’ gender pronouns and identities without question.

In their own guidelines, Youngkin administration officials wrote that Northam’s guidance sought “cultural and social transformation in schools” and “disregarded the rights of parents.” The Youngkin guidelines state the Northam-era policies are dead: they “have no further force and effect.”

The Northam guidelines were developed in accordance with a 2020 law, proposed by Democratic legislators, that required the Virginia Education Department to develop model policies — and later required all school districts to adopt them — for the protection of transgender students. The law does not define the specific nature of these policies but says they should “address common issues regarding transgender students in accordance with evidence-based best practices” and says they should be designed to prevent bullying and harassment of transgender students.

But — in a move that is likely to draw legal challenges — the Youngkin administration has used that same law to issue its own version of the Education Department guidelines. The 20-page document released Friday states it is being issued “as required under” the 2020 legislation.

 

So even if you submit legal documentation -- name change, a new birth certificate, etc --  the state is not compelled to recognize it in any way because of the "religious freedoms" of teachers and instructors. The right to self-identify as transgender means nothing because the state can simply ignore it.

Understand that the GOP wants transgender folk gone, period. Erased. Destroyed. Eliminated.

They are well on their way.

Slum Lord Millionaire

People forget that before his election last year as Virginia Governor, the GOP's Glenn Youngkin worked for the Carlyle Group, a huge private equity firm. When he washed out of the firm as CEO in 2020 after a string of bad investments, he turned to politics.

Now Glenn is making good on those bad bets by changing the rules to advantage him and his rich buddies as governor, and his latest obvious grift is vetoing a bipartisan slumlord prosecution bill, making it easier to condemn tenements, evict tenants, and sell the land to...huge private equity firms. 

 

Housing advocates say legislation passed by the General Assembly on a bipartisan vote would have helped rein in the most negligent landlords. Now they’re questioning Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s veto of the bill from Del. Cia Price (D-Newport News), which received no critical testimony in committee and was backed by both the Virginia Poverty Law Center and the Virginia Apartment and Management Association.

“This is creating a safe space in Virginia for slumlords,” Price says. “I don't know what the governor was thinking but that's what the end result will be.”

Part of the problem now is that cities and counties don’t have great tools at their disposal to deal with absentee landlords, according to Christie Marra, director of housing advocacy at the VPLC. Their main mode of enforcement is citing landlords for code violations, which, if they don’t address, can result in fines as low as $50.

“Some slumlords find that it's a better business model to pay the fine than to actually put money into the repairs,” Marra says.

If the conditions continue to deteriorate, localities’ only real option is to condemn the building, a move which quickly displaces tenants in a tight housing market.

Price’s bill would give localities the ability to take legal action against landlords who don’t address serious violations in a reasonable time frame, including “a fire hazard or serious threat to the life, health, or safety of tenants or occupants.” Judges could order the landlord to make these repairs.

“And if the landlord doesn't make the repairs, that landlord can be held in civil contempt and sent to jail until he finds a way to make them,” Marra says.

In his veto, Youngkin said the legislation “contains unnecessary and duplicative provisions” and suggested tenants should also bear responsibility for conditions: “Landlords and tenants both have responsibilities to maintain safe, decent, and sanitary housing.” Marra said he appeared to misunderstand the bill since it was “not duplicative.”

Price called Youngkin’s claims “factually inaccurate” and said she was surprised by the veto. She said no one from the governor’s office reached out to her about the bill.

“I definitely am not quiet about things that I see going wrong, especially as it pertains to voting rights and civil rights,” said Price, who is a member of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus. “To think that this might be personal is just beyond my comprehension because the people that actually lose out are residents of the commonwealth who the governor swore to protect.”

Eleven House Republicans and five Senate Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the bill. Price will need to recruit a handful more in order to have the two-thirds majority in each chamber needed to override Youngkin’s veto. She said she had little hope Republicans would override any of Youngkin’s 26 vetoes – all bills passed with bipartisan support that were sponsored by Democrats.

 

So yes, it's a combination of petty obnoxiousness and future grifting. But hey, Republican.

Meet Your New Boss, Virginia

Boy, Virginia sure is lucky that they voted in a moderate Republican like Glenn Youngkin instead of awful Democrat Terry McAuliffe...oh wait, I'm being told that Youngkin's "moderate stance" didn't even survive the first hours after his inauguration on Saturday.

Governor Glenn Youngkin signed 11 executive actions on his first day in office, including orders allowing parents to opt out of mask mandates in Virginia schools, withdrawing from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and ending "the use of divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education."

The list of executive orders and directives Youngkin signed is as follows, per his office:

 

• Executive Order Number One delivers on his Day One promise to restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education.
• Executive Order Number Two delivers on his Day One promise to empower Virginia parents in their children’s education and upbringing by allowing parents to make decisions on whether their child wears a mask in school.
• Executive Order Number Three delivers on his Day One promise to restore integrity and confidence in the Parole Board of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
• Executive Order Number Four delivers on his Day One promise to investigate wrongdoing in Loudoun County.
• Executive Order Number Five delivers on his Day One promise to make government work for Virginians by creating the Commonwealth Chief Transformation Officer.
• Executive Order Number Six delivers on his Day One promise to declare Virginia open for business.
• Executive Order Number Seven delivers on his Day One promise to combat and prevent human trafficking and provide support to survivors.
• Executive Order Number Eight delivers on his Day One promise to establish a commission to combat antisemitism.
• Executive Order Number Nine delivers on his Day One promise to withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
• Executive Directive Number One delivers on his fulfilling his Day One promise to jumpstart our economy by cutting job killing regulations by 25 percent.
• Executive Directive Number Two delivers on his fulfilling his Day One promise to restore individual freedoms and personal privacy by rescinding the vaccine mandate for all state employees.

Youngkin was sworn in as governor Saturday, January 15 during a noon ceremony in Richmond.

 

So the end of masks in schools and for vaccines for state employees even though Virginia has reported nearly a quarter-million new COVID-19 cases since January 1, removing the state from an important climate change compact, ending "critical race theory" which isn'y actually being taught in schools but hell if anyone in the Virginia GOP can define it other than "and oh yes, officially ordering his Attorney General to investigate Loudoun County by executive fiat.

We're not sure, we have to investigate though!

It's for the children, you see.

Not often you get to see a Republican be racist, sexist, authoritarian, climate denying, and anti-vax all in one afternoon, but that's the GOP for you.