A youth pastor threatened to call federal immigration authorities on an underage girl and her family while he was coercing the girl into non-consensual sexual acts, say Florida police. Read the rest
While speaking at the National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis, Indiana just now, President Donald Trump spoke to pro-weapons advocates about a failed coup against him. Read the rest
John Lambert, a 23-year-old Tennessee man, has been charged by prosecutors with pretending to be a Manhattan attorney and grifting thousands of dollars from his would-be clients.
Oh, and by the way: he was also the co-founder of Students for Trump. Read the rest
Anita Hill was trending, so I knew he's finally made it official! May he never speak without others saying her name. But today, here's his speech advocating for his 1994 crime bill, which shows that its outcome—the imprisonment of millions of black men—was clear to him from the outset. "They are beyond the pale, those people. We have no choice but to take them out of society"
Here he is in 2016 boasting of his involvement in the bill and claiming that, actually, it helped "them."
Here is someone who, in 1994, knew exactly what was going on and denounced the bill in no uncertain terms:
Spread The Vote is a non-profit that works to help educate and empower voters on the voting and political process. Boing Boing invited the group to help everyone understand how primary elections work, and how you can participate in them if you are an eligible U.S. voter. Sign up for their state-specific voter education packages, which are really an amazing educational resource. —Xeni Jardin
UNDERSTANDING PRIMARY ELECTIONS, from SPREAD THE VOTE.
When most voters think of election day, they likely imagine a general election where they vote to determine which candidate on the ballot will win the position of elected office. However, voters may be less familiar with primary elections. This may explain, in part, why voter turnout is so different for general and primary elections. That’s where Spread The Vote comes in. We want every eligible voter to understand and participate in primary elections because they are such an important element of our democracy. Read the rest
Republican Congressman Steve King was removed from committees and publicly rebuked by his own party after his history of racist remarks flowered into open white supremacy. The experience gave him insight into Jesus's crucifixion.
"For all that I've been through -- and it seems even strange for me to say it -- but I am at a certain peace, and it is because of a lot of prayers for me. And when I have to step down to the floor of the House of Representatives, and look up at those 400-and-some accusers, you know we just passed through Easter and Christ's passion, and I have better insight into what He went through for us partly because of that experience."
He knows who the true believers are; they believe in him.
Update: Christopher Matias points out that some outlets are falsely suggesting King was censured by congress; it did not go that far.
Washington Post and NY Mag saying Steve King was censured. He was never censured. pic.twitter.com/NtttWMDcWd
— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) April 24, 2019
Said Dorsey to staff: “Some of you will be very supportive of our meeting [with] the president, and some of you might feel we shouldn’t take this meeting at all." Read the rest
Andrew Paul Joyce: "I made a composite image of all the white men running for president polling at 1% or below. Please be nice to him. He is my son."
A significant drop, but no worse than he's been before, reports Politico's Steven Shepherd.
“President Trump’s approval rating has dipped to its lowest point of his term in the immediate aftermath of the redacted Mueller report release,” said Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s vice president. “This week, 57 percent of voters disapprove, and 39 percent approve of the president’s performance — a net approval rating of –18 percentage points, compared with 55 percent who disapproved and 42 percent who approved — a net approval rating of –13 percentage points — one month ago in the aftermath of Attorney General [William] Barr’s summary of the Mueller report to Congress.”
I'm amazed it dropped under 40%, to be honest. Accepting that four in ten American voters are unequivocally, non-negotiably, unarguably with Trump is the basic political challenge for everyone else. Read the rest
John Quiggin's essay about "Transactional Trumpism" really nailed it for me: if the story is that Republicans chose Trump as their candidate because they were sure that he would enact "the Republican agenda" they didn't get a very good deal: all Trump has managed is the bare minimum that any Republican would have done, putting far-right ideologues on the Supreme Court and handing gigantic tax-breaks to the super-rich. Read the rest
Muckrock's JPat Brown (previously) writes, "Wanted to let you know we've got a text-searchable version of the Mueller Report loaded into our crowdsourcing tool that might be of interest to Boing Boing readers." Read the rest
Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Democratic candidate and a proponent of "democratically influenced capitalism", has his own campaign brand typography. Faces include Aktiv Grotesk ("sleek lines [that] feel equally modern today as they would have in an old Studebaker ad"), Industry ("the visual language of American manufacturing ... industrial, sporty or military") and Domaine Text ("a sophisticated companion to the modern geometry of Aktiv and the stark boldness of Industry")
Here's the (since removed) placeholder text, as spotted by Brett Banditelli.
Says it all, really. Read the rest
After earlier denying that it had considered dumping migrants in sanctuary cities to "punish" Trump's political enemies, the White House today confirmed that it is considering doing so.
"Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only," Trump posted on Twitter.
Trump's tweet came a day after The Washington Post reported the White House tried to pressure immigration authorities into releasing captured immigrants into sanctuary cities, particularly targeting liberal strongholds in hopes of hurting Democrats.
Straight from "immigration president" Stephen Miller's pen, I hazard. Read the rest
