Month: October 2023

Political Wire: “A federal judge ruled Thursday that Georgia’s district lines must be redrawn to ensure adequate representation of Black voters in Congress and the General Assembly, finding that the state’s maps illegally weakened their political power,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. “The decision could result in the election of additional Black representatives next year, with Democrats…

NY Times: “In April 2016, 11 Black schoolchildren, some as young as 8 years old, were arrested in Rutherford County, Tenn. The reason? They didn’t stop a fight between some other kids. What happened in the wake of those arrests would expose a juvenile justice system that was playing by its own rules. For over…

AP: “Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to jail an Alabama lawmaker charged with trying to obstruct an investigation into alleged kickbacks. In a motion filed this week, prosecutors said state Rep. John Rogers, a Democrat from Birmingham, violated the conditions of his bond by attempting to contact a key witness in the case. Prosecutors…

The Daily Beast: “It’s become something of a rite of passage for punk rock bands across North America to load up their vans and drive down to Florida every October to play The Fest, a long-running independent punk music festival in the quaint landlocked college town of Gainesville. Attendees and performers fly from around the world…

WaPo: “But with the United States’s closest ally now waging a war in the Middle East while critical positions remain on hold, Democrats are getting behind a plan to circumvent Tuberville’s hold. It will only work, however, if some Republicans back it — a test of whether Republicans’ private frustrations with the Republican Alabama senator’s…

WaPo: “Six years ago, groups with ties to the Confederacy had sued to stop the monument from being taken down. Torch-bearing white nationalists descended on the Virginia college town to protest its removal, and one man drove his car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others…. But on Saturday…

Political Wire: “Voters in a Tennessee city have firmly rejected a far-right mayoral candidate after she refused to denounce her white supremacist supporters, and the incumbent mayor decried hate and divisiveness as he celebrated his election win,” the AP reports. “Gabrielle Hanson lost the race by a wide margin Tuesday.”

WaPo: “Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s elections team has admitted in the run-up to pivotal General Assembly elections that it removed nearly 3,400 qualified voters from the state’s rolls, far higher than the administration’s previous estimate of 270. Elections officials under Youngkin (R) acknowledged what it called the mistaken removal of about 3,400 voters in a news…

Cook Political Report: “Among the trio of this year’s off-year gubernatorial contests, Mississippi has emerged as the most surprising race. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves still has the edge, according to Republicans and Democrats nationally and locally we’ve talked to, but it’s morphed into a competitive fight with added intrigue heading into Election Day thanks to…

JewishInsider: “Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina and a leading Republican candidate for governor, found his efforts to declare solidarity with Israel backfiring — by drawing renewed scrutiny to his long history of invoking antisemitic conspiracy theories and casting doubt on the Holocaust…. In a series of previously unreported Facebook posts, which remain publicly available,…