Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of June 9

freepress.org:
2024 presidential election results lawsuit moves forward as more evidence has been gathered.

SMART Legislation, the action arm of SMART Elections, is the lead plaintiff in the case. Both organizations are dedicated to ensuring fair and accurate elections.

“There is clear evidence that the senate results are incorrect, and there are statistical indications that the presidential results are highly unlikely,” stated Lulu Friesdat, Founder and Executive Director of SMART Legislation. “If the results are incorrect, it is a violation of the constitutional rights of each person who voted in the 2024 Rockland County general election. The best way to determine if the results are correct is to examine the paper ballots in a full public, transparent hand recount of all presidential and senate ballots in Rockland County. We believe it’s vitally important, especially in the current environment, to be absolutely confident about the results of the election.”

As stated in the complaint, more voters have sworn they voted for independent U.S. Senate candidate Diane Sare than the Rockland County Board of Elections counted and certified, directly contradicting those results. Additionally, the presidential election results exhibit numerous statistical anomalies. The anomalies in the presidential race include multiple districts where hundreds of voters chose the Democratic candidate Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate, but where zero voters selected the Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Additionally, a statistician determined that the 2024 presidential election results were statistically highly unlikely in four of the five towns in Rockland County when compared with 2020 results.

National Park signage encourages the public to help erase negative stories at its sites

An example image of a sign leaked to NPR for Wilson's Creek National Battlefield in Missouri, the site of the second major battle of the Civil War, ahead of its potential installation, asks visitors to identify "any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features."

This is makes my skin crawl. In a country that ostensibly prides itself on allowing people to speak truth to power, this does not belong here.

I just got back from the centrist rally. It was weird as hell

Who comes to a centrism rally for fun? Someone like Liam Kerr, the cofounder of WelcomePAC, the group that brought WelcomeFest to life. On Wednesday, Kerr wore a West Virginia University football jersey customized with former senator Joe Manchin’s name on the back—a tribute to the conservative Democrat most known for sabotaging his own party’s agenda. What’s a buzzy book at a centrist festival? Abundance, the tome by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that has been embraced as a holy text by the Democratic right. (Thompson was also a speaker.) Who’s a big star at a place like WelcomeFest? Someone like Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, a Blue Dog Democrat and one of the few lawmakers in her party who at times votes in line with Republicans. It happened to be her birthday, and attendees toasted her while eating from a big transparent storage bin of gummy bears to celebrate the occasion.

...

Throughout the day, speakers took aim at progressive advocacy groups—referred to simply as “the groups”—blaming them for the Democratic Party’s electoral losses. Substack pundit and WelcomeFest royalty Matt Yglesias made this thesis the focus of his presentation. To argue that “the groups” create “bad incentives for Democrats,” he pointed to Democratic lawmakers’ recent trip to El Salvador to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man illegally deported by the Trump administration. (Evidence shows that talking about Garcia’s case actually hurt Trump, but no matter.) Yglesias returned to his long-held position that Democrats should moderate even further, and prepare to get yelled at by everyone.

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There were scattered references to “everyday people” and calls on the Democratic Party to focus on the issues “keeping Americans up at night.” But campaign finance records reveal that the conference and the organizers of WelcomeFest are backed by several billionaires and other corporate interests, including the Walton family, Michael Bloomberg, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, the Revolving Door Project noted. The conference was also sponsored by the dark-money group Americans Together, which was founded by Joe Manchin’s daughter, Heather Manchin Bresch—better known as the former CEO of Mylan who infamously defended the company’s price gouging of lifesaving EpiPens.

Many of the figures involved in the Abundance faction have financial ties to AI, crypto, and Big Tech as well. One self-identified Abundist (yes, that is actually the name), Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts, made the absurd claim on Wednesday that the left is “carrying the water for the most pernicious, nefarious corporations in modern history,” referring to social media companies.

As for actual policy substance, most of what the speakers promoted amounted to lightly rebranded neoliberalism. During his discussion with Torres, Barro argued that labor unions were to blame for pushing policies that stand in the way of “abundance” in New York. Other sponsors of the conference included Third Way, the New Democrat Coalition, and the Blue Dog Democrats.

Right now there is a press conference with Christi Noam, ICE, and DHS in Los Angeles over the protests.

Almost everything everyone is saying is insane. Noam legitimately thinks she's a hero who is liberating Los Angeles from slavers, pedophiles, and the like, and they are trying to bring peace to the area. Senator Alex Padilla was removed from the conference when he tried to speak up.

Fucking yesterday I saw a video of a non-protestor who was trying to get to her apartment get shot with a rubber bullet for simply walking in the direction of some soldiers. Jesus, everything is falling apart.

Airlines sell flight data to DHS

A contract obtained by 404 Media shows that an airline-owned data broker forbids the feds from revealing it sold them detailed passenger data.

Supreme Court revives lawsuit over FBI raid of wrong house in Atlanta

The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously revived a lawsuit from a pair of Atlanta residents seeking to hold the federal government accountable after FBI agents mistakenly battered down their front door and held them at gunpoint during a predawn raid of the wrong house [in 2017].

The federal government is generally shielded from legal liability, and lower courts had dismissed the case brought by Hilliard Toi Cliatt and his then-partner, Curtrina Martin.

The justices sent their case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to grapple with the meaning of the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows individuals to bring claims for damages for certain actions taken by federal employees that lead to personal injury or property damage.

…

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed with the majority but said they would have gone further, suggesting that the claims brought by Cliatt and Martin have merit and should not be barred. Congress intended to hold the federal government accountable for the types of harm committed by law enforcement officers like Guerra, Sotomayor wrote.

Yeah...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/head-of-rfk-jr-s-maha-institute-believes-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-are-real/

‘Extremely disturbing and unethical’: new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans

Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.

The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.

Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, documents reviewed by the Guardian show.

Medical experts said the implications of rule changes uncovered by the Guardian could be far-reaching.

They “seem to open the door to discrimination on the basis of anything that is not legally protected”, said Dr Kenneth Kizer, the VA’s top healthcare official during the Clinton administration. He said the changes open up the possibility that doctors could refuse to treat veterans based on their “reason for seeking care – including allegations of rape and sexual assault – current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and personal behavior such as alcohol or marijuana use”.