General News You Want to Talk About

Well, news is reporting that Trump has ended his cruel separation policy (his policy of taking away babies, toddlers, young  and older girls and boys from their families).

A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CARED AND WHO CALLED THEIR U.S. SENATORS AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TO URGE THEM TO ADVOCATE THAT TRUMP END HIS INHUMANE POLICY OF TAKING AWAY IMMIGRANT CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS. 



This NPR article summarizes issues that remain:     What We Know: Family Separation And 'Zero Tolerance' At The Border.  While the Trump administration is no longer forcibly separating additional immigrant children from their parents, the Trump administration is sticking to their "zero tolerance" policy, thus the policy still remains that from now on, immigrant families with children will  be detained in detention centers. 

In addition, the question remains of what will happen to the more than 2,000 children who thus far has been taken from their parents and currently are imprisoned, in the U.S., while their parents were deported out of the U.S. without their children.  Is it a certainty (or is it not) that the Trump administration will try to reunite the children with their parents, and even if this is the goal, will they succeed in reuniting the separated children with their parents who are no longer in the U.S.?   The news have reported that many parents were not given an information about where their children were sent.  In other cases, staff at some detention centers seemed uncertain whether their "tracking system" would be sufficient to reunite the children with their parents.



The news also has reported that there are various detention facilities all over the U.S. and  that some of these children were sent out of the state of Texas to other states with detention centers.  See this New York Times article where various airlines, such as American Airlines, United Airlines and Frontier Airlines refused to transport immigrant children further away from the parents:  Airlines Ask Government Not to Use Their Flights to Carry Children Separated at the Border.





One airline was mislead by ICE agents, who told the airline that the children were part of a soccer team.  But later the ICE agents admitted the children were being relocated to an "assigned camp.  " One of the flight attendants for this flight wrote this heartbreaking message in The Houston Chronicle:

“Since working the two flights, the images of those helpless children have burned into my psyche. The little children whose faces were full of fear, confusion, sadness and exhaustion left me somewhat traumatized as it occurred to me a few weeks later that I might as well have been a collaborator in their transport.”

I sincerely hope that people continue to watch and read the news about the plight of these children and what happens with them.   Only when the people of a country remain ready to fight for and advocate for the rights of people who have very little rights, whether it's immigrants or whether it's children or both, can we try to deter our government from taking actions that are  inhumane and cruel, and run counter to the ideals of our country. 





Some photos from the NPR article:




A photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows the interior of a CBP facility in McAllen, Texas, on Sunday. Immigration officials have separated thousands of families who crossed the border illegally. Reporters taken on a tour of the facility were not allowed by agents to interview any of the detainees or take photos, the AP reported.  U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley Sector via AP











A photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows people detained at a facility in McAllen, Texas, on Sunday.  U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley Sector via AP

















Detained migrant children play soccer at a newly constructed tent encampment as seen through a border fence near the U.S. Customs and Border Protection port of entry in Tornillo, Texas, on Monday.

Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

Some more updates:


While the Trump administration is no longer forcibly separating immigrant babies and kids from their parents, the Trump administration is still  insisting on executing their "zero tolerance policy,"  by criminally prosecuting anyone who crosses the border, even if persons "cross the border" in order to file for asylum (filing for asylum is an established process allowing immigrants to request that refuge be granted by the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, due to violence and political persecution in applicants' native countries). 

Thus, moving forward, the Trump administration will detain families--both adults and children and babies--if these families cross the border, even if they are using the established legal process of filing for asylum. 

However, there is an existing court settlement for a case that prohibits detention of children for longer than 20 days, which is a problem for Trump's "zero tolerance" policy of imprisoning families that cross the border. 

In terms of the vital issue of reunifying the currently imprisoned babies and children, whose parents were deported, a special task force will be set up now (geez!  why wasn't this set up earlier if the knew they were going to separate the kids from their parents??!) and is called the "Unaccompanied Children Reunification" task force.  The same arm of government that deals with public health disasters (the assistant secretary for preparedness and response) will help the Office of Refugee Resettlement with "Unaccompanied Children Reunification." (I guess they are admitting this is a colossal mistake in the magnitude of a disaster!)

And:

Politico wrote:
Hasty immigration order gives way to West Wing tensions
June 22, 2018

Under a 1997 federal [court] settlement, the government cannot hold children with their parents longer than 20 days – not enough time for adults to get a court hearing given extensive backlogs.

[ . . . ]

As the administration scrambles to implement Trump’s directive, a legal showdown over the new family-detention policy appears to be at least a few days away.

The central fight over Trump’s new policy seems likely to take place in federal court in Los Angeles, where Justice Department lawyers filed an emergency request Thursday to alter a decades-old consent decree so that immigrant children can be detained along with their parents. Federal government lawyers said the settlement in the long-running case, as interpreted by U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee and confirmed by an appeals court panel, currently bars authorities from holding children for more than 20 days in most cases.

Source:  https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/22/trumps-quick-fix-on-family-separations-unleashes-internal-tensions-667175






Rallies to attend

There are nation-wide "Families Belong Together" protests and rallies planned on Saturday, June 30 to protest Trump's original policy of separating babies and kids from their parents, as well as to oppose his current "zero tolerance" policy of criminally prosecuting families and placing them in detention indefinitely.  These rallies are planned by Move On and other groups like the National Domestic Workers Alliance 

Go here to  enter your Zip Code to find the closest rally location:  https://act.moveon.org/event/families-belong-together/



Please note for some rallies, you may have to register before attending.


PLEASE CALL YOUR U.S. SENATOR AND U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE

Please continue calling your U.S. Senator and U.S. House of Representative--especially if they are Republican--and demand that the over 2,000 children who have been separated are reunited with their families immediately, AND state that you would like them to oppose Trump's "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting families who cross the border to apply for asylum.

PLEASE DONATE


If you can afford to donate to important civil rights groups who are providing legal assistance to immigrant parents and children who are victims of Trump's separation and zero tolerance policies, please donate to:



ACLU:  https://www.aclu.org/donate-aclu?ms=menu_gift&ms_aff=NAT&ms_chan=web&initms=menu_gift&initms_aff=NAT&initms_chan=web



Raices.org (Texas):  https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/bondfund?source=direct_link&

Note:  Raices has several locations in Texas, where attorneys provide legal counsel to immigrants, as well as providing monetary help with making their bond. 

Parents separated from their children at the border (and other immigrants placed in detention) can’t get released from ICE custody to reunite with their families until they pay the full amount of their immigration bond. Bonds are set at a MINIMUM of $1500, and are usually in the range of $5-10K, even for asylum seekers without any criminal history.

Unlike in the criminal system, bail bond companies either do not help people in immigration proceedings or impose very strict requirements, like private ankle monitors (which families have to pay to “rent”).

Donate to our fund to directly support legal services for detained separated parents and the direct funding for bonds to get parents released!

Source:  https://www.raicestexas.org/



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The private contractors holding immigrant children separated from their parents, along with various U.S. agencies (ICE/Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and the Department of Health and Human Services), have allowed the press to have only limited access to the children.  In particular, babies and toddlers have not been seen anywhere, although news media have suspected 3 "tender age" facilities (the name used by the government) in Texas at one point housed the babies and toddlers taken from their parents. 

Trump is planning for the Department of Defense to receive children on its facilities.  News media have warned the public that if the children are transferred to military bases, that it will be extremely difficult for the press to have access to the conditions under which the children are kept. 

News media also are reporting that already, children are being transported to other facilities during early morning hours, operating in the dark and in secrecy, making it difficult for the press to track the number of children at any one facility.   (What kind of sick game is this?!)  They are hiding the children from the public and from the media.



Because the media is not allowed to take photos or videos of the children in these facilities, the public has limited knowledge of how the children are doing in the facilities after having been separated from their parents.

These images were just released by border patrol @CBP showing the McAllen, Texas detention facility that we were allowed to tour today. For now, we can only rely on what they give us. They will not allow us inside to film on our own. Why? “Privacy”; they don’t want faces shown pic.twitter.com/laZAyEHwij
— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) June 17, 2018

On the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Representative Ted Lieu played an audio recording of ten immigrant children, estimated to be between the ages of 4 and 10 years old, crying at an internment facility after they were taken from their parents.  The audio recording came from a whistle-blower who provided the recording to a well known civil rights attorney, Jennifer Harbury, who provided the recording to respected news media Pro Publica. 

Especially given the secrecy shown by the various immigration agencies and the private contractors, Representative Lieu wanted the public to hear with their own ears the sound of children being traumatized by the cruelty of Trump's separation policy.



C-SPAN
June 22, 2018

Who ever would have imagined that my country would again experience such darkness?!  This kind of thing happened long ago during WWII, when my own parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents were summarily interned without any due process in Japanese internment centers, surrounded by barbed wire, with armed guards.  Just like these children and their parents, the government (and a portion of the American people) regarded Japanese-Americans as a threat, as foreign, so inconsequential that they did not deserve respect and empathy, much less deserve due process rights under our country's Constitution.

We need to do something about this.  We must speak out.  Please read the posts above this message for info about calling your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives to demand the children be reunified with their parents, AND to ask your U.S. Senators and U.S Representative to oppose Trump's "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting families who cross the border to apply for asylum.  In the above posts, you also will find information about "Families Belong Together" Rallies occuring this Saturday, June 30, and how to donate to ACLU and Raices.




Also:  Please register to vote if you have not yet done so. 

For information of how to REGISTER TO VOTE IN YOUR STATE, go here: 

https://marchforourlives.com/vote-for-our-lives/


You may also go here:
https://www.rockthevote.org/register-to-vote/






And  VOTE every chance that you get (in your state's Primary Election, in any Special Election,  and in the vastly important General midterm election in November).  The most sure way to prevent the destruction of civil rights of people is to vote out the Republicans who are enabling and permitting Trump's cruel policies.  

Go here to see when your State's Primary Election is being held:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/2018-state-primary-election-dates.aspx


Seven states (Colorado, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, Utah, and South Carolina) will have their state primaries later today, June 26!  Please vote Democrat for any state offices.    Remember, state legislative majorities and whether your state's governor is Republican or Democrat make a difference in whether redistricting is fair or whether it gives an advantage to Republicans, which is important in November for the races for U.S. House of Representatives (which we need to flip to Democrat!).   And vote for a Democratic candidate for federal races, especially U.S House of Representative in your district.




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Just as in the Supreme court cases involving the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in federal internment centers due to racial prejudice during WWII, the Supreme Court will be on the wrong side of history by upholdingTrump's travel ban against immigrants from five predominantly Muslim countries (with North Korean and Venezuelan immigrants added as a thinly veiled attempt to show the Muslim travel ban wasn't created to ban Muslims). 

In 2016, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed, and Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, with McConnell hoping that the next President would be Republican.   How can Mitch McConnell do this?   It seems the longer certain Republicans are in power, the more I am regularly amazed at and horrified about their abuse of power.   The result of Mitch McConnell's partisan refusal to consider President Obama's nominee, is that conservative Trump-nominee Neil Gorsuch caused the majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices to be conservative. 

Today, the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court of my country, ruled that despite the numerous blatantly prejudiced insults by Trump of Muslims, that national security justified Trump's travel ban against Muslim immigrants from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor gave an angry, impassioned dissent against the majority decision:

New York Times wrote:
Sonia Sotomayor Delivers Sharp Dissent in Travel Ban Case

June 26, 2018

Steely and unwavering, she began: “The United States of America is a nation built upon the promise of religious liberty. Our founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment.”

The crowded courthouse fell silent.

In upholding President Trump’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, Justice Sotomayor continued, the Supreme Court had failed to “safeguard that fundamental principle.”

For the next 20 minutes, she remained resolute as she delivered an extraordinarily scorching dissent, skewering the court’s decision and condemning the ban as “harrowing” and “motivated by hostility and animus toward the Muslim faith.”

[. . . ]

Justice Sotomayor once said that “personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.” She again drew upon that idea in her dissent on Tuesday, in which she accused the majority of “ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.”

That was the crux of the Justice Sotomayor’s damning conclusion: The president’s ban is “inexplicable by anything but animus,” and to argue anything else is to divorce oneself from the facts.

[. . .]

But one of her most striking decisions was to repeat the words of the president himself. Citing more than a dozen instances in which Mr. Trump tweeted or issued anti-Muslim sentiments, it was his words, not her own, that rang out from the bench.

She continued down the list for minutes, reading one example after another.

“On Dec. 21, 2016, President-elect Trump was asked whether he would ‘rethink’ his previous ‘plans to create a Muslim registry or ban Muslim immigration,’” Justice Sotomayor said. “He replied: ‘You know my plans. All along, I’ve proven to be right.’”

“‘People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!’” she read, recounting the president’s 2017 tweet.

“Islam hates us,” she read, citing another example, and added another: “We’re having problems with Muslims coming into the country.”

The conservative justices, staring unblinkingly ahead, remained stone-faced.

She continued that Mr. Trump had never disavowed any of his statements regarding Islam, and thus had failed “to correct the reasonable perception of his apparent hostility toward the Islamic faith.”

In another powerful passage, Justice Sotomayor drew parallels between the decision and Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 ruling that upheld the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

“As here, the government invoked an ill-defined national security threat to justify an exclusionary policy of sweeping proportion,” she said. “As here, the exclusion was rooted in dangerous stereotypes about, inter alia, a particular group’s supposed inability to assimilate and desire to harm the United States.”

Justice Sotomayor continued that “our nation has done much to leave its sordid legacy behind” in the years since Korematsu. But, she reasoned, “it does not make the majority’s decision here acceptable or right.”

“By blindly accepting the government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security,” she said, “the court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one ‘gravely wrong’ decision with another.”

(Emphasis added by me.)

Source:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/sonia-sotomayor-dissent-travel-ban.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-lede-package-regionion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news



The Youtube video of yesterday's episode of the Rachel Maddow show was taken down.   Here is another video, of the ACLU Executive Director speaking about the Supreme Court's decision on Trump's Muslim ban:

Source:  http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show






And here is the Youtube video of Rachel discussing the parallel of the Supreme Court making the wrong decision of the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, with the Supreme Court making the wrong decision upholding Trump's Muslim ban.  U.S Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is my hero. 








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Boy, trouble comes in batches.  Between the children stolen from their parents by the U.S government, the U.S. Supreme Court upholding Trump's Muslim travel ban, and now U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often was a swing vote on the highest court of my country, retiring (with the risk of a more conservative justice being appointed). . . it's been a crappy week.  Not to mention a close family member getting a heart procedure tomorrow.  I turned on the news this morning, heard Justice Kennedy is retiring, promptly turned off the TV, and have been trying to be in denial of how Justice Kennedy's retirement could be disastrous for so many people in my country, for the the right of women to have freedom of choice/reproductive rights, for LGBTQ rights including same-sex marriage, for the right to exercise one's vote without the attempts of the government to suppress one's vote, . . .

We have to keep fighting. 



--> >Please register to vote NOW!  If you haven't registered to vote, do it NOW.  Tell your friends and family and keep reminding them until they do register.  Post it on Facebook, tweet it, instagram it.  To register to vote, go here:  https://www.rockthevote.org/register-to-vote/

Or go here to register to vote:  https://marchforourlives.com/vote-for-our-lives/


-->  >Please VOTE!  In your Primary election, in your Special election if you have one, and most importantly, in the November mid-term election.  Once you find out the date of your state's Primary Election--tell your friends to vote on that date for Democrats and post it on Facebook, tweet it, etc.  Flipping the U.S. Senate and/or the U.S. House of Representatives to a Democratic majority is the single best way to directly combat Trump!





-->  >Please continue to call or write your U.S. Senators and U.S. House of Representative when your fellow human beings or Mother Earth need your help.  To find out how to contact your U. S. Senators, please go here:    https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

You can find your House of Representative’s number by calling the Capitol's switchboard at 202-224-3121.   You also may find your House of Representative's phone number by going here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/



-->  >Please attend rallies like the many "Families Belong Together" rallies organized by Move On and the ACLU to take place THIS Saturday, June 30, and send the message loud and clear, that we will be heard, we will make a difference!  Go here to find your closest "Families Belong Together" rally for this Saturday, June 30:  https://act.moveon.org/event/families-belong-together/




-->  >Please Join liberal groups like ACLU's People Power, Move On, Indivisible local chapters and other liberal groups that will keep you informed about the daily challenges to our democracy.  (Note:  Indivisible and ACLU People Power help get out the Democratic vote by texting voters, writing postcard to voters and calling voters.  Join ACLU or your local chapter of Indivisible to help get out the vote.)  Please also check out 5Calls.org which makes it easy to break down important issues to 5 calls/week that they recommend you make to your U.S. officials. 

Organizations you can join:

--ACLU People Power (enter your email address for alerts):  https://www.aclu.org/action


--Indivisible:  https://www.indivisible.org/

--5Calls.org: https://5calls.org/  and https://5calls.org/faq
 
--Move On:  https://front.moveon.org/




-->  >If you can afford it, please donate to the the ACLU, and/or to Act Blue(even a few dollars help--whatever you can afford).

Resources: 

--ACLU donation:  https://www.aclu.org/donate-aclu?ms=web_horiz_nav_hp

--Act Blue donation. 

You can use Act Blue as a central place to donate to liberal organizations, and/or to Democratic candidates in political race; enter the name of the liberal organization or the name of the Democratic candidate you wish to donate to in the "Search Directory" box.  https://secure.actblue.com/about

"ActBlue is a nonprofit, building fundraising technology for the left. Our mission is to democratize power and help small-dollar donors make their voices heard in a real way."  Source:  https://secure.actblue.com/about   






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I have heard from news media that Trump may announce his choice for Supreme Court nomination as early as July 9 (next week on Monday).

As many of us realize, the next person to be on the Supreme Court is extremely important.  Justice Kennedy, who is retiring, was often a swing vote on important issues like a woman's right to have freedom of choice/reproductive rights, affirmative action, and LGBT rights, including the right of same-sex couples to marry.   Trump is seeking to appoint someone who is young enough to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court for 40 or more years, which would affect an entire generation of people.  Many young people have grown up taking for granted they would always have the freedom of choice.  Well, that right may be taken away from you if the next Supreme Court Justice is anti-choice. 

We need to make our voices heard.  Please call your Senators to urge them to oppose any nominee who is an extreme conservative who will take away so many of our rights.  Please note that all the persons on Trump's short list of possible Supreme Court nominees are considered by many to be not merely conservative, but are extreme conservatives (those on the short list were screened and approved by the Heritage Foundation, a very conservative group which supports anti-choice/anti-reproductive rights).

If you live in Maine, please, please, please make sure you telephone Senator Susan Collins (Maine), and if you live in Alaska, please telephone Senator Lisa Murkowski (Alaska),  the only 2 Republicans who support freedom of choice for women.   Please call them this week, before July 9! 



Senator Susan Collins
Maine: 202-224-2523
Augusta: 207-622-8414



Senator Lisa Murkowski:
Alaska: 202-224-6665
Anchorage: 907-271-3735


Suggested Script for calling Senator Susan Collins (Maine):

My name is ___ and I’m calling from [part of state].

I would like to urge Senator Collins to honor her own record of standing up for women, which includes fighting for women's right to have freedom of choice.   Please tell her I expect her to stop Trump from filling this vacancy with anyone on this list or anyone who is so extreme that they would take away the freedom of choice.

Suggested Script for calling Senator Lisa Murkowski (Alaska):

Hello! My name is ___ and I’m calling from [part of state].

I want Senator Murkowski to honor her record defending health care for Alaskans and for women. I want her to oppose any nominee that would put our health care or women’s reproductive health at risk.

If your Senators are Democratic or other Republican Senators, please also call them NOW (before July 9).  Suggested Script for Democratic Senators and other Republican Senators:

Hello! My name is ___ and I’m calling from [part of state].  ].  I would like to ask Senator [name] to oppose anyone that Trump nominates from his short list.  Each and every pick on that list is an extremist--outside the mainstream of  the general public--who would dismantle our health care, the right to choose, affirmative action, and LGBTQ rights.

  To find out how to contact your U. S. Senators, please go here:    https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm




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Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

As I stated before, he was on a list of potential Supreme Court nominees who were vetted over many years by several conservative groups like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.  Every single person on that list are conservatives who have received a stamp of approval from extreme conservative groups. 

You may want to skim over this article in The Daily Beast.

Consider this:

The Daily Beast wrote:
The Secrets of Leonard Leo, the Man Behind Trump’s Supreme Court Pick

A Catholic fundamentalist who controls a network of right-wing groups funded by dark money has put three justices on the court.  He's about to get a fourth.

07/09/18

When President Donald Trump nominates a justice to the Supreme Court on Monday night, he will be carrying out the agenda of a small, secretive network of extremely conservative Catholic activists already responsible for placing three justices (Alito, Roberts, and Gorsuch) on the high court.

[. . . ]

“The Christian right has been written about a lot, but hardly anyone talks about the Catholic right,” Carter said. “Four Supreme Court justices—they’re more successful than anybody: the NRA, the Israel lobby, Big Pharma, no one else has had that kind of impact.”

[. . . ]

. . .The Federalist Society has mainstreamed ideas that were once considered intellectual outliers: that most of the New Deal and administrative state are unconstitutional, that corporations have free speech and free religion rights, that women and LGBT people are not “protected classes” under constitutional law, and that there is no right to privacy implied by the due process clause of the Constitution (i.e., banning abortion, contraception, and gay marriage are entirely constitutional).

Two decades ago, hardly anyone in the legal academy took these ideas seriously. Now, they are litmus tests for conservative judges.

Source;  https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-trumps-supreme-court-pick




Also note that The Daily Beast article states, "how of the 25 people on Trump’s Supreme Court list, all but one are Federalist Society members or affiliates.  Justice Gorsuch was the speaker at the 2017 Federalist Society gala."

In addition, "of the 18 people Trump has nominated to federal appeals courts, 17 are Federalist Society members or affiliates."


This is scary stuff, folks.  If you haven't been paying attention or worrying about this before, you should now.

We have extreme right groups, whose mission it is to curb the rights of so many Americans, dictating who are the members of our judiciary branch -- one of the two branches of government in the U.S. (the other is Congress, currently with both houses controlled by Republicans) that is supposed to be a check on any abuse of power by our Executive Branch (Trump and his administration). 

And now a new fight begins.  Like all the numerous fights that are occurring during Trump's administration:  You all have a choice.  You can get involved:  Call your U.S. Senators (especially if they are Republican), attend any rallies about this, and most importantly, register to vote and be sure to vote (in your state's primary election, and most definitely in the extremely critical mid-term elections in November 2018).   Or . . . you can be a spectator on the sidelines, and watch history continue to take a turn down the wrong path, the path that will affect countless lives for an entire generation, or longer.


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But aren't these judges supposed to determine what's constitutional or not, instead of making decisions based on their political views (what a government does) ? And do they "revote" about past legalisations, especially old ones like the legalisation of abortion ?

Supreme Court justices can make law by overruling previous court decisions.  But they also may follow precedents as well.  Political views of judges often play a part in how a judge will decide on a case.  (If the political views never played a part on how a U.S. Supreme Court justice ruled in a case, then it wouldn't be such a big deal when a very conservative judge or a very liberal judge is nominated for the highest court of America.)


This article may be helpful.  Here is an excerpt.

Five Thirty Eight wrote:
“Conservative Activist Judge” is NOT an Oxymoron

July 16, 2009



Part of the sad kabuki dance of Supreme Court confirmations is the ritual denial by nominees that they will depart in any way from constitutional prerogatives, and that they will “respect the law” and venerate judicial precedents. Well, geez, if all the Court justices are reading the same Constitution, and the same laws passed by Congress and state legislatures, and the same judicial precedents, and never applying any judicial philosophy of their own, then the Court would never issue anything but unanimous decisions.

The whole point of the Court is to rule laws unconstitutional based on justices applying their philosophical interpretations of the Constitution, and to reverse bad precedents when they recognize them. And the point of presidents nominating justices of similar ideological ilk is to put them on the Court to do just that. If the standard really were that all precedents must be upheld, the Court might as well pack up and do nothing more than administer the judicial system and settle occasional disputes between the elected branches. (Oh, and the Chief Justice could still oversee presidential impeachments … whooopee!) And, of course, by this same logic we’d still have Plessy v. Ferguson on the books, and no state-level protections for civil rights and liberties, and so on.

Source:  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/conservative-activist-judge-is-not/



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Thank you for the information, Poppy.

Also in the news : Belgium didn't qualify for the finale of the World Cup

Sorry about Belgium not qualifying for the final round of the World Cup, Jeremy. 

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A federal judge had imposed Monday, July 10, 2018 as the deadline for the federal government to reunite  102 immigrant children under the age of 5 years old, with their parents.  As of that date, July 10, only 4 children (under the age of 5 years old) were confirmed to have been reunited with their parents.

CBS wrote:
Feds miss deadline to reunite all immigrant children under 5 with families

July 10, 2018

Lawyers for the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday that the federal government will miss a court-imposed deadline to reunite most of 102 migrant children under the age of 5 with their parents from whom they were separated.

[. . . ]

As of Tuesday morning, four children [out of the 102 immigrant children who are 5 years or younger who are being detained ] had been reunited with their parents, according to the joint filing submitted by the government and the ACLU to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

[ . . . ]


One child whose parents' location is unknown may not actually be an immigrant, according to the filing.

"Records show the parent and child might be U.S. citizens," lawyers for the government wrote in the filing.

[ . . .]


In the filing, the ACLU criticized the government's work reuniting the children with their parents. 

"For (the parents) who were deported without their children, (government officials) have not even tried to contact them or facilitate their reunification by today," ACLU lawyers wrote.

There are as many as 2,900 more children five or older who remain in federal custody awaiting a July 26 reunification deadline, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday. 

Source:  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-say-just-4-of-102-young-migrant-kids-reunited-with-parents-as-court-deadline-looms/



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Poppy wrote:Sorry about Belgium not qualifying for the final round of the World Cup, Jeremy. 

Well, after that, they largely won the "small final" (the match opposing the losers of the semi-finals) and they finished on the third place. Yesterday, they were welcomed as heroes in Brussels :

Congrats Jeremy!

In other big news today:  America's President, Trump, chooses to believe Putin that Russia did not interfere with our 2016 Presidential elections, rather than believing America's own intelligence community that Russia did indeed, without a doubt, interfere with the U.S. 2016 elections.

So it's ok for a hostile foreign government ruled by a dictator to determine who is elected in our country, instead of the voters of our own country?!

Watching the words come out of the U.S President sent chills down my spine.

If you haven't yet registered to vote, please, please, please do so now!  Tell your friends and family and keep reminding them until they do register.  Post it on Facebook, tweet it, instagram it.  To register to vote, go here:  https://www.rockthevote.org/register-to-vote/

Or go here to register to vote:  https://marchforourlives.com/vote-for-our-lives/



And please VOTE every chance that you get, AND  please vote Democratic every chance that you get.   So vote in your state's Primary election (and in any Special Election), AND in the extremely critical General election/midterm election in November 2018 for Democratic candidates.

Tuesday, July 17, there is a state-wide primary run-off election in ALABAMA.   Please vote!


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When Trump met privately with Putin in Helsinki (with the translators as the only other persons present), there has been great concern about what agreements Trump and Putin may have arrived at.

Now, it is coming to light one of the craziest, scariest things I have heard since Trump became President of the U.S.  (and that's saying a lot, considering how many crazy, scary acts have occurred during Trump's short presidency)

The Hill wrote:
Russian ambassador: Trump made ‘verbal agreements’ with Putin

7/18/18
 
Russia's ambassador to the United States on Wednesday said President Trump made "important verbal agreements" with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their private conversation in Helsinki on Monday.

[. . . ]

But the Post reported that the highest-level Trump administration officials still do not know what Trump promised Putin during their one-on-one meeting, which lasted more than two hours.

[. . . ]

The Post reported that officials are scrambling to figure out what Trump agreed to.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marina Zakharova said on Wednesday that the Kremlin is already working to implement agreements from the summit, according to the Post.

"A lot of what the president of the Russian Federation talked about is now being worked through,” she said, according to the Post. "Relevant instructions are being carried out, and diplomats are beginning to work on the outcomes."

Source:  http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/397788-russian-ambassador-trump-made-verbal-agreements-with-putin







That's not the worst part.  Here's the truly scary, crazy part:

The Washington Post wrote:
Putin’s push to interrogate U.S. officials Russia accuses of crimes, explained

July 18, 2018

Standing next to Trump, Putin made an offer that Trump later described to Fox News’s Sean Hannity as “fascinating.”

“We can actually permit official representatives of the United States, including the members of this very commission headed by Mr. Mueller — we can let them into the country and they will be present at this questioning [of 12 Russian intelligence officers indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for hacking the Democratic National Committee and interfering with the 2016 elections],” Putin said.

He [Putin] continued:

“But in this case, there is a — there’s another condition. This kind of effort should be a mutual one. Then we would expect that the Americans would reciprocate, and that they would question officials, including the officers of law enforcement and intelligence service of the United States, whom we believe are — who have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia, and we have to — to request the presence of our law enforcement.”

In other words: To give Mueller the ability to interview suspects in Russia, all Putin wanted was to let his people interrogate [American businessman Bill] Browder and “officers of law enforcement and intelligence service of the United States.”

On Tuesday, those individuals were identified. They include Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia (and a prominent critic of Putin), and several federal agents . . .

[. . . ]

That the Trump administration didn’t quickly reject Putin’s quid pro quo offer was criticized by observers.  At the State Department, spokeswoman Heather Nauert didn’t mince words.

“What I can tell you is that the overall assertions that have come out of the Russian government are absolutely absurd,” Nauert said. “The fact that they want to question 11 American citizens, and the assertions that the Russian government is making about those American citizens.”

Allowing an interview of American officials to take place would be of “grave concern to our former colleagues here,” she said, . . .

During the news conference  Monday, though, Trump made a pitch for Putin’s proposal.

“What he did is an incredible offer,” Trump said of Putin.

Source:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/18/putins-modest-proposal-on-interrogating-u-s-officials-explained/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4b370943ea4c


In this same Washington Post article, it is noted that a journalist (The New York Times Maggie Haberman) asked during the White House briefing, “Does President Trump support that idea? Is he open to having U.S. officials questioned by Russia?” 

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded:  “The president’s going to meet with his team and we’ll let you know when we have an announcement on that.”

It's unclear, then, if our President of the United States has agreed and/or will agree to let Russian officials interrogate U.S. citizens, including a former U.S. ambassador (Michael McFaul) known to openly criticize Putin, and an American-born  businessman (Bill Browder) whose allegations of Russian corruption resulted in Browder's lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, being jailed and killed for exposing large-scale fraud of Russian officials. (Note:  Browder persuaded Congress to pass the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which led to Russian sanctions.  See Putin wants to silence one of his biggest critics. Trump is eager to help).
 

In addition, a congressional aide and also several federal agents were identified as persons who Russian officials also wished to interrogate.  These federal agents investigated money laundering of Natalia Veselnitskaya (the Russian attorney who met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and paul Manafort in Trump Tower promising dirt on Hillary Clinton).

Since when does an American President seriously consider handing over Americans to Russia to be interrogated?




-

Tomorrow, Tuesday, July 24, is the statewide primary runoff election for Georgia. 

One very important note:  Do not pick a Republican ballot for the July 24 election!

WABE wrote:
Party Matters In Georgia’s Primary Runoff Election

July 23, 2018

Georgia has an open primary. That means voters can pick a ballot for any party when they head to the polls.

But there’s a catch. If you picked a party for the primary in May, you have to stick with that party in the runoff.

So, say you picked a Republican ballot the first time around. You’ll only be allowed to vote Republican in the primary runoff.

That matters because some of the highest-profile races, like the contests for governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state, will only appear on the Republican ballot.

Those races won’t appear on the Democratic ballot, where voters will pick candidates in two metro Atlanta congressional districts and for state school superintendent.

Source:  https://www.wabe.org/party-matters-in-georgias-primary-runoff-election/



So if you are asked which ballot you prefer, say you want the Democratic Ballot.  Do not pick the ballot with the races for governor, lieutenant governor and secretary of state (which appear solely on the Republican ballot, and not on the Democratic ballot).


Remember, you can go here to see when  is your state's primary election date:

https://ballotpedia.org/Statewide_primary_elections_calendar#Statewide_primary_elections_calendar

Thursday, July 26, was the deadline for the U.S. government to reunite 2,500 kids who are older than 5 years old, with their parents.    However, about 700 kids have not been reunited for various reasons, including the fact that  kids have not been reunited because the U.S. government stupidly deported the parents of these children, while detaining the children and holding them in the U.S.  The Trump administration caused the inhumane tragedy of creating 700 orphans 5 years and older, and this is not counting those babies and toddlers under 4 years of age.   What kind of surreal dystopia is this?  What kind of example of humanity being inhumane is this?

Los Angeles Times wrote:
As reunification deadline arrives, fear and uncertainty persist for many migrant families

July 26, 2018

A mother at LAX threw her arms around her two teenagers, whom she had not seen in two months. Another waited anxiously in south Texas for her 7-year-old boy to arrive from New York. And in a village in Guatemala, a father who was deported in June did not know when he might see his 6-year-old daughter again.

A court-imposed deadline that had government officials scrambling to complete the reunification of more than a thousand migrant families by Thursday led to emotional scenes across the country, as parents and children who had not seen each other for weeks or months were together again.

But much remains unresolved after months of chaos and confusion resulting from the Trump administration’s family separation policies.

Under an order issued by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego, Thursday was the deadline for reuniting the more than 2,500 children who were taken from parents at the border.

With just hours left before the deadline, government officials said Thursday afternoon that they had reunited 1,442 children with their parents.

An additional 378 children had been released to sponsors, were reunited with their parents in other ways or have turned 18, according to court filings.

More than 700 were deemed ineligible by the government for reunification. Among them are 430 children whose parents have already been deported.

Those that were reunited, meanwhile, face an uncertain future — 900 of them have been ordered deported, according to court filings.

The American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawsuit against the government led Sabraw to order the reunifications, is arguing that those families should be allowed to remain in the country for seven days in order to consult with lawyers.

[ . . . ]

But in addition to the deported parents, officials said nearly 300 children would not be reunified with their parents for various reasons. According to the government’s filing, several dozen children had parents who failed a background check or other government review. And the parents of 120 children waived reunification.

[ . . . ]

In court documents filed by the ACLU on Wednesday, a number of parents who waived reunification described signing forms they did not understand because of language or literacy barriers.

Many of these parents “in fact do want their children back and did not remotely understand their rights,” the ACLU said in its filing.

For those families that were eligible for reunification, chaotic scenes unfolded around the country as officials rushed to meet the deadline.

[ . . . ]

"There are people who were in New York and their children were in Houston; there are parents who were in El Paso and their kids were in Chicago. There's one today … the child was in Wyoming and the mother was in Atlanta, and they reunited them in the [Rio Grande] Valley," he said.

[. . .]

With the deadline gone, one of the biggest questions that will remain is the fate of those children whose parents were deported.

[. . . ]

A consortium of nonprofit organizations — including Al Otro Lado and Kids in Need of Defense — recently announced it would step up efforts to find deported parents and reunite them with their children.

“We’re doing the job of the government,” said Nan Schivone, legal director at Justice in Motion, an immigrant rights group based in Brooklyn, N.Y., that is part of the effort. “We shouldn’t have to search high and low for the people the government separated from their kids. The government should have kept better track.”

Source:  http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-family-reunification-deadline-20180726-story.html







None of the numbers given by the U.S. government have been confirmed.  It's also heartbreaking that the U.S. government is concluding that those young people who simply turned 18 years of age while in detention centers are on their own and no longer a concern of the U.S. government.  Imagine your own 18 year old daughter, college freshman age.  How scared would your college freshman children be if after being separated from their parents by the government, being held in custody for weeks or months, only to have it deemed that the U.S. Government is no longer responsible for reuniting these young people with their parents simply because they turned  18 years while in custody.

And what about those 700 kids who the U.S. government are deemed "ineligible" for reunification?!  Who really believes that the U.S. Government is acting in good faith and can be taken at its word that a percentage of these kids truly cannot be reunited with their parents because their parents either failed criminal background checks or because their parents failed "reasonable" efforts to prove they were parents of their children?! 

And the U.S. government deems the children of parents who have been deported also to be ineligible for reunification?!  Well, whose fault is it that the U.S. government was stupid enough to deport parents without their children?!  And on top of that, the U.S. government failed to even try to have a competent tracking system for those parents deported so that they eventually can be able to be reunited with their kids?  It really appears that the federal government realized the reality was that the kids of those parents who were deported would become orphans, without parents.  How deeply, deeply inhumane is that?

And yeah right, 120 parents waived their rights to be reunited with their kids?   Who believes this assertion by the U.S. government?  The ACLU has shown that most, if not all, of these parents didn't understand what they were signing, given that there was a language barrier and they were most likely not represented by an attorney.

This is such a incredibly tragic mess created solely by the callous, inhuman Trump administration.  Thank god for the lower courts, for the ACLU, and for all the non-profits who are assisting with the reunification by paying for airplane and bus travel for the kids, as well as providing food and shelter for the families. 

So much noble work done by various non-profits.  Please consider donating to one of the many nonprofits helping these families with travel expenses (the children were transported to states that were a great distance from the states where their parents were sent), food and shelter, or helping track where those parents who have been deported are.  (I've contributed to RAICES which has been prominent in media coverage and also the ACLU.)

RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services)

Fwd.us (backed by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg)

Catholic Charities

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (Arizona & New Mexico)

Immigrant Families Together

Al Otro Lado

Kids in Need of Defense


And for those groups providing legal services to these families:

ACLU

Immigrant Defenders Law Center

Justice in Motion (New York-based)


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Update on the kids who the Trump administration separated from their parents when their parents were seeking asylum in the U.S.: 

NBC wrote:
Judge calls Trump administration family reunification efforts 'unacceptable'

August 3, 2018


A Honduran child plays at the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center, after recently crossing the U.S., Mexico border with his father, in McAllen, Texas on June 21, 2018.Spencer Platt / Getty Images
-

LOS ANGELES — The federal judge [U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California] overseeing the court-ordered reunification of the 2,551 migrant children separated from their parents at the border blasted the Trump administration Friday for lacking a plan to reunify the remaining 572 children in its custody with their parents and the slow pace of progress.

[. . . ]

The parents of 410 children are currently outside of the United States, likely having been deported before reunification, according to the court filing.

The Trump administration had proposed the ACLU take the lead in locating and identifying what the judge had called "missing parents" of children still in government custody. Sabraw said that plan was not acceptable and placed that responsibility squarely on the government.

"Many of these parents were removed from the country without their child," Sabraw said. "All of this is the result of the government's separation and then inability and failure to track and reunite. And the reality is that for every parent who is not located there will be a permanently orphaned child. And that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration."

The judge said he would soon issue an order to compel the government to provide information on still separated families to the ACLU no later than Aug. 10.

Sabraw said the government must identify a person or team to oversee the remaining reunification process, potentially from the State Department or the Department of Health and Human Services, and produce a plan as to how reunification would be accomplished.

Source:  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/judge-calls-trump-administration-family-reunification-efforts-unacceptable-n897531

Note:  U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw was appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican President.












The sheer gall of the Trump administration to propose to U.S. District Court Judge Sabraw that the ACLU should be the one to figure out how to reunite the children with their parents who the U.S. government deported out of the U.S. without their children!   What the hell?!   Whose decision was it to cruelly and stupidly deport parents without their kids?!  As the judge said--this inhumanity is 100% the fault of the Trump administration.


And the below article also shows that the Trump administration purposely--without a shred of compassion--was targeting for criminal prosecution those immigrants who were parents traveling with their children, over those immigrants who entered the U.S. without children! 

BuzzFeed News wrote:
Parents Were Targeted Under The "Zero Tolerance" Policy, A New Analysis Of Immigration Data Finds

August 2, 2018

The Trump administration chose to prosecute parents with children over adults without kids, according to a new analysis of immigration data, in another sign that the "zero tolerance" policy was manipulated to target families at the border.

[. . . ]

But an analysis of prosecutions during the weeks after Sessions announced the policy found that during May, US border authorities chose to prosecute adults with kids over adults crossing the border by themselves. That same analysis — by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse [TRAC] at Syracuse University — found that only 32% of all adult immigrants caught crossing the border were charged with entering the US illegally that month — an indication that it wasn’t a blanket policy but a targeted effort directed at parents with kids.

In May, weeks after the formal announcement of the policy, US border authorities apprehended 4,458 adults with children, the analysis found, while it arrested 24,465 adults without children. Yet only 9,216 adults were referred for prosecution, far fewer than the number of adults who in theory should have been referred under "zero tolerance."

Since fewer than one out of three adults detained at the southwest border in May were referred for prosecution, US Customs and Border Protection clearly was choosing to prosecute parents while electing not to prosecute adults without kids, the analysis concluded.

[ . . . ]


"It wasn't like [the prosecutions] were automatic; this was a conscious choice," [Susan] Long said. [Susan B. Long is the codirector of TRAC and
an associate professor of managerial statistics at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.]

[ . .  .]

Nearly 3,000 immigrant children ended up being separated from their parents as a result of the administration's [zero tolerance] policy. More than a quarter of those kids remain separated from their parents, despite a court's order to the administration that they be reunited by last week.

[ . . . ]

The separations came, even though officials knew such separations were likely to prove traumatic to the children. During a Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday, Jonathan White, commander of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, said that he had raised that issue with other Trump administration officials on a number of occasions as family separations were being discussed during the previous year.

"Separation of parents from their children entrails significant risk of harm to children," White said. "There's no question that separation of child from parents entails significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child."

David Leopold, chair of immigration at Ulmer & Berne and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said it was not only shocking that the administration knew what would happen but that they chose to target these families anyway.

"They knew this would cause severe psychological trauma," Leopold told BuzzFeed News. "They recognized what they were doing, they had it planned out and the most foul thing about it is they did it intentionally to scare people from applying for asylum in the US."

Taking children from parents as a way to get parents to do something or not do something, such as deterring them from crossing the border, is an old habit of despots and authoritarian governments, Leopold said.

"The wanton disregard for child welfare was done intentionally and knowingly by the US government, the Trump administration," Leopold said. "There's going to be hell to pay for whoever put this policy together, for whoever targeted these children."

Source:  https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/parents-were-targeted-under-zero-tolerance-a-new-analysis





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In other news, there is an extremely close Special Election race in Ohio for a Congressional/U.S. House of Representative seat coming up this Tuesday, August 7 between Democrat Danny O'Connor and Republican Troy Balderson.   Trump has endorsed Balderson, so that alone hopefully should sway you to vote for Democrat Danny O'Connor if you live in the 12th Congressional District of Ohio. 

Please vote if you live in this District.  We need to fight for every single seat--especially for the U.S. House of Representative and for the U.S. Senate--that we can get for the Democrats.  Flipping the two U.S. legislative houses is the single best way to combat and prevent Trump's policies from hurting lives. 

Politico wrote:
Poll: Balderson, O'Connor in dead heat in Ohio special election

08/01/2018


Vice President Mike Pence, right, waves to the crowd with 12th Congressional District Republican candidate Troy Balderson during a rally at "The Skylight" in Newark, Ohio, on Monday. | Brooke LaValley/The Columbus Dispatch via AP
-

A new Monmouth University poll found the special congressional election is Ohio in a dead-heat, just days out from Tuesday's vote.

Republican Troy Balderson has 44 percent support to Democrat Danny O'Connor's 43 percent support among all potential voters . .  .  Another 11 percent are still undecided.

[ . . .]

Independents breaking for [Democrat Danny] O'Connor has helped the Democratic candidate close the gap, the polling memo reported. Currently, independents favor O'Connor over Balderson, 48 percent to 32 percent, with 17 percent undecided.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/01/poll-balderson-oconner-ohio-756873


If you wish to donate to Democrat Danny O'Connor, if you can afford it, your donation may make a difference.  This race is so close that it is very possible Democrat Danny O'Connor may win this Congressional Seat in Ohio!!

To donate to Democrat Danny O'Connor, you may go here:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/danny-o-connor-2




Other elections for national offices/seats in various states coming up this week:

Flippable wrote:

August 7     Ohio                U.S. House District 12, SPECIAL ELECTION

August 7      Kansas           Primary Election

August 7      Michigan         Primary Election

August 7      Missouri          Primary Election

August 7      Washington    Primary Election
    
August 11     Hawaii           Primary Election (Note:  Hawaii Election is on Saturday)

Source:  https://flippable.org/our-targets/calendar/




Elections for State offices for this week:

Ballotpedia wrote:
August 7     California         General for California State Senate District 32

August 7     Kansas            Primary for Kansas State Senate District 13

August 7     Michigan          Primary for Michigan State Senate District 2

August 7     Michigan           Primary for Michigan House of Representatives District 68

Source:  https://ballotpedia.org/Elections_calendar?utm_source=ballotpedia&utm_medium=frontC&utm_campaign=What%20states%20have%20upcoming%20primaries?[/url]


In addition, there are several judicial primary elections on August 7 for these States:   Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Wasington.

Source: Ballotpedia (see above)


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I wish the race currently had Democrat Danny O'Connor in the lead, but I have to say I am happy that it is so close right now.  Because there are still 3,400 provisional ballots to be counted yet--it's still possible Democrat Danny O'Connor may come out on top.  Cross fingers!

CNBC wrote:
Tight Ohio special election is too close to call as Republicans declare victory: NBC News

• The Ohio 12th District House special election was still too close to call on Tuesday night, according to NBC News.
  
• Republicans declared victory for the GOP's Troy Balderson, but Democrat Danny O'Connor has not yet conceded.
  
• No matter the final result, the race will make Democrats more optimistic for their goal of taking a House majority in November's midterm elections.
  

Ohio's closely watched 12th District special election was too close to call Tuesday night as Republican Troy Balderson held a razor-thin edge over Democrat Danny O'Connor for a seat the GOP has held for more than three decades, according to NBC News.

. . . But, with fewer than 1,800 votes separating the candidates and more than 3,400 provisional ballots still to be counted, NBC has not yet called the race. A margin of 0.5 percent or less triggers a mandatory recount in Ohio.

Regardless of the final result, Democrats will take positives away from the race. Balderson was leading by only a percentage point after President Donald Trump carried the district by about 11 percentage points in 2016.

[ . . . ]

In a statement Tuesday night, O'Connor did not concede. He said that, "while we don't know the results quite yet, I know that this campaign left it all out on the field."

Source:  https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/08/ohio-12-special-election-results.html