More than a year after his death, a cache of computer files saved on the hard drives of Thomas Hofeller, a prominent Republican redistricting strategist, is becoming public.
Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina fought in court to keep copies of these maps, spreadsheets and other documents from entering the public record. But some files have already come to light in recent months through court filings and news reports.
They have been cited as evidence of gerrymandering that got political maps thrown out in North Carolina, and they have raised questions about Hofeller's role in the Trump administration's failed push for a census citizenship question.
Now more of the files are available online through a website called The Hofeller Files, where Hofeller's daughter, Stephanie Hofeller, published a link to her copy of the files on Sunday after first announcing her plans in a tweet last month.
Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself with a base of ever older, whiter, more male, more rural, more conservative voters. Demography can take a long time to change—longer than in progressives’ dreams—but it isn’t on the Republicans’ side. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why, while voter fraud knows no party, only the Republican Party wildly overstates the risk so that it can pass laws (including right now in Wisconsin, with a bill that reduces early voting) to limit the franchise in ways that have a disparate partisan impact. This is why, when some Democrats in the New Jersey legislature proposed to enshrine gerrymandering in the state constitution, other Democrats, in New Jersey and around the country, objected.
Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy, and will be for years to come.
From the department of don’t poke the bear 🐻 in the the eye 👀…
I am thinking maybe I should gas up my truck ⛽ tonight when I go out and wash it and buy groceries. 🏪 While the experts see gas prices actually trending lower, we know the president hasn’t been on his best behavior in the Middle East lately. That’s what you get when you elect a professional con artist to the White House.
Earlier today, the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins published a lengthy profile on Mitt Romney, apparently part of Romney’s effort to set himself up as the noble Republican foil to an out-of-control president. These sorts of pieces, which are more about narrative setting than anything else, typically don’t contain a lot of new information, but this had one notable exception. About midway through, the usually guarded senator revealed that, just like fellow lone-voice-of reason-haver James Comey, he was the owner of a secret Twitter account.
Joe Musillo, an equine dentist from New York’s Long Island, works alongside many Latino immigrants at the Belmont Park horse racing track, and he has nothing but respect for them. But Trump’s hard line on immigration still appeals to him. Watch the video to learn why so many of Trump’s supporters care so much about immigration.
"No president ever wants to be impeached. And whether Donald Trump leaves in one month, one year or five years, this impeachment is permanent," Lieu said. "It will follow him around for the rest of his life and history books will record it. People will know why we impeached."
Whether or not you stick your penis into the mouth of your intern and lie about it to Congress, or you spin up a deal with a foreign power to get intelligence on your revival, the truth is to be impeached is a let down to the country. Sure, it's a partisan affair and the Democrats were looking for something to impeach the president for but it's no different than the Republicans 21 years ago. But in both cases it was the loyal opposition publicly doing the definition of impeachment "to call into question the integrity or validity of (a practice)."
President Trump's actions have been a let down for the country and the Senate will have the opportunity to decide whether to remove him - but everybody knows they probably won't. But there is no undoing an impeachment, it will be forever recorded and only fully judged by historians in later generations. I am disappointed with the president's actions but I'm willing to keep an open mind towards 2020. They're may or may not be better candidates than, I'll carefully look at the issues and the totality of the impeachment and what is beyond it.
Barry Goldwater was widely known as a man with extreme views. He is still remembered as the man who said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” But even Goldwater thought Robert Welch went too far.
Welch founded the John Birch Society in 1958 to oppose what he saw as the growing communist influence in America. Through his publications, he attacked whomever he thought was furthering the interest of the Soviets. He also promoted the idea of impeaching Chief Justice Earl Warren and the withdrawing the U.S. from the United Nations.
He named the John Birch Society after an American military advisor in China who had been killed by communist forces. Welch thought Birch would be a suitable model for the anti-communist cause.
When Welch started his society, the hunt for communist agents and sympathizers was still going strong. Many politicians and journalists were gaining notoriety for their declarations of enmity to communism everywhere. But none were more committed than Welch, who attacked anyone he suspected of colluding with Soviet Russia.