"Registration’s importance to the voting process and the large number of individuals who remain unregistered have spurred several major reforms intended to increase voter registration. Most notably, the federal government’s National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) requires that states allow eligible citizens to register to vote when completing other transactions at state motor vehicle and social services agencies, a provision commonly known as Motor Voter. Since enactment of the law, some states have expanded on this requirement by automating the Motor Voter process. Colorado upgraded its Motor Voter process in 2017, and Oregon became the first state to implement automatic voter registration in 2016, with at least six more planning to implement similar policies in the future. Other states offer Same Day Registration, which allows individuals to register and vote on Election Day, often right at their polling places."
"Like the majority of African-Americans in their 70s, Mr. Mohammad, a retired math professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, saw the Democrats as liberators for striking a deal on civil rights in the mid-1960s. He’s been a staunch Democratic voter ever since – until, he says, now."
“I’m done voting," he says, because it doesn’t do any good. Then adds: “Maybe you gotta be black to understand.”
"Disillusioned by what he calls unmet promises of the Obama era, evidence of state-sponsored disenfranchisement at the polls, and the rise of a new ethno-nationalist vanguard in Washington, he has joined the ranks of what some have called the vanishing black voter."
"Liberal activist Michael Moore lashed out at national Democrats on Wednesday after the party fell short in a special House runoff election in Georgia despite spending tens of millions of dollars on a race that was viewed as a referendum on President Trump."
"Moore and others on the left are furious with what they view as a rudderless Democratic Party that has failed to develop a new strategy or message in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s surprising election loss in November."
"Moore ripped the Democratic National Committee and its House campaign arm for having “no message, no plan, no leaders.” Democratic leaders “hate the resistance,” Moore said, underscoring the lingering tension between the party’s grassroots base and the establishment in Washington."
It states that “an extensive investigation” found evidence that Nixon operatives plotted an “assault on antiwar demonstrators” at a rally at the U.S. Capitol featuring Ellsberg and other anti-war "notables.” The anti-war demonstration occurred near a viewing of recently deceased FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. An accompanying memo by Akerman summarizes his interview with Stone, who said he helped organize young Republicans to join the counter-demonstration but who had no apparent knowledge of the White House plot on Ellsberg.
The attack would be on "long-haired demonstrators, in particular Ellsberg,” the prosecutors' memo states, with the objectives of impugning Ellsberg for protesting near to Hoover lying in state and "simply having Ellsberg beaten up.”
"Experts in homegrown extremism say it’s not so simple — Hodgkinson had no known association to any left-wing extremist group. But they also say that the past few months have seen enough of a rise in politically motivated violence from the far left that monitors of right-wing extremism have begun shifting their focus, and sounding the alarm. They see indications that the uptick in extremist rhetoric and anti-government activism that characterized the early years of the Obama presidency are beginning to manifest on the far left in the early days of Trump’s, and that the two sides are increasingly headed for confrontation."
"In what is sure to ignite another firestorm of debate in polarized Washington, a longtime friend of President Trump said Monday night that Trump is "weighing" whether to dismiss Robert Mueller, the Justice Department special counsel investigating possible ties between the Russian government and the Trump campaign."
"June 11, 1963, Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon. He was attempting to show that to fight all forms of oppression on equal terms, Buddhism too, needed to have its martyrs. John F. Kennedy said in reference to a photograph of Duc on fire: “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one”. Photographer Malcolm Browne captured the scene in Saigon for the Associated Press, and the stark black and white image quickly became an iconic visual of the turbulent 1960s."
"The self-immolation was done in protest to the South Vietnamese Diem regime’s pro-catholic policies and discriminatory Buddhist laws. In particular this was a response to the banning of the Buddhist flag, just 2 days after Diem had held a very public ceremony displaying crosses; earlier in his rule he had dedicated Vietnam to Jesus and the Catholic Church. The growing resentment of Buddhists under Diem was one of the underlying issues of South Vietnam, and eventually led to a coup to put in place a leader who would not alienate Buddhists, who made up 70-90% of Vietnam’s population."