BC POLITICS
Saved by @jay_millerjay

NEW w/@akarl_smith: Republicans see an opportunity to begin winning back the suburban voters they lost under Donald Trump's presidency by capitalizing on widespread frustration with pandemic life and directing it at an old enemy: Teachers

 @akarl_smith New NRCC Tom Emmer told staff as soon as he took over to go all in on schools: "It's the teachers unions that want to keep the schools closed. Dems are ignoring the science, and they're standing with their special-interest donors instead of the students." https://t.co/LOiINBsGvi
@akarl_smith Going after public sector unions is a throwback to the last time the GOP was locked out of power in DC in 2009/2010 and it's a message that every faction in the party can get behind -- with the potential for crossover appeal to indies and some Dems.
@akarl_smith The politics have changed since circa 2009, when the school reform movement was at its height w/ broad bipartisan support, including from the Obama admin.

Now, support for unions is at a nearly 20-year high and teachers unions favorability has gone up a bit during Covid, BUT...
@akarl_smith But the frustration over shuttered schools is real and Republicans think they can channel that anger into a grassroots uprising to drive a wedge between suburban voters and the Democratic Party.

"This is the suburban-parent revolt," said Corry Bliss.
@akarl_smith Dems say this won't work because schools will (hopefully) be open before voters vote.

AFT Pres. @rweingarten told me it's "a reckless and irresponsible exploitation of the fear and frustration that everybody feels right now" and attempt to "deflect blame" from Trump+GOP.
@akarl_smith @rweingarten The first real test will be in #VAGov, where GOPer @petesnyder has centered his campaign around "#OpenOurSchools."

"I think Virginia is the beginning of the nationwide earthquake on this," he told @akarl_smith.

It's not "conservative red meat,"he said just "common sense."
@akarl_smith @rweingarten @petesnyder A lot more, with polling data, more voices and other perspective in here: https://t.co/LOiINBsGvi
@akarl_smith @rweingarten @petesnyder P.S. Politics is ALREADY determining school openings more than science, according to a recent study from @BrownUniversity's @AnnenbergInst, which found correlation btwn in-person learning and the district's pres. vote share + strength of teachers unions.

https://t.co/qAdW4QqXyH

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@SethAbramson
(THREAD) Pre-election Russia collusion may take down Trump. It's equally possible the Trumps' pre- and post-election collusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will do it—a course of collusion also connected to the Kremlin. I explain here. I hope you'll read on and retweet.


1/ I must stress how unbelievably complex the "Grand Bargain" theory of the Trump-Russia case is—a different thing from saying it's not substantiated. It's substantiated in *almost every single particular*—it just *also* happens to be very confusing. Not byzantine—just confusing.

2/ The basics: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE all view Iran as their chief regional enemy. Iran is propped up by Russia. Therefore the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis all need a US government willing to find a way to get the Kremlin to *stop* supporting Iran in the Middle East.

3/ The best way to get Russia to stop supporting Iran—or reduce support—was/is to drop all sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as that'd be worth *trillions* to the Kremlin over the next decade. Everyone knew that Clinton wouldn't do this—and that Trump would.

4/ Per the NYT, on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met secretly at Trump Tower with a Saudi and Emirati emissary, George Nader, as well as an Israeli intelligence expert, Joel Zamel, with *significant* ties to both Israeli intelligence *and* Russian oligarchs allied with Putin.
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David Bier
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@David_J_Bier
My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016." https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:
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Rich Weinstein
Rich Weinstein
@phillyrich1
For a few weeks I’ve been wondering about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and just how she emerged as a politico. Her path to Washington is shocking, at the very least. My first question was: What were her campaign positions BEFORE she became a national figure?

1/

So I went to her campaign website and took that web address and looked through the internet archive. When I went back to 2017, it was not her website, it belonged to the group "Brand New Congress."

2/

Here's what the web address https://t.co/Uhz2q4Dpll looks like now:

3/


Here's what the same web address looked like in late 2017:

4/


What's “Brand New Congress?” BNC is a group of Bernie Sanders staffers who got together, decided to make the 2018 midterms all about Bernie policies by taking his ideas & finding 400 Bernie carbon copies to dump into Congressional & other races, creating a 400 headed Bernie.

5/
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Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Last talk about Securing Democracy at #enigma2021: @jackhcable speaking about "THE FULL STACK PROBLEM OF ELECTION

Let's imagine that elections use all the security measures security people have been advocating: risk-limiting audits, paper ballots, etc. Would people trust the elections more?

Jack would argue no. Most people don't understand this stuff and most of the claims people are making can't be disproven. And are massively bogus already.

Georgia did a full recount on paper ballots and it very much didn't stop people from doubting the election!

Are election security results in vain? The point of election security is to convince the loser they lost.

No! Have to focus on the whole stack, from election infrastructure to campaigns to people and mis/dis-informaton


One takeaway from the talk: the parts of the stack must work in tandem. Can't fight misinformation in a vacuum, but must build on other election security measures.
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Annika Brockschmidt
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@ardenthistorian
Here we go. Tag 4 des Impeachments. Trumps Verteidigung.


Es wird argumentiert, dass Trump nur habe sicherstellen wollen, dass die Wahl fair abgelaufen sei. Die Verteidigung zeigt Clips einzelner Demokraten, die der Zertifizierung von Trumps Stimmen 2016 widersprechen. (Dass es 2016 keinen von Obama gesandten Mob aufs Kapitol gab?Egal!)

Die intellektuelle Unehrlichkeit ist so unfassbar, ich weiß kaum, wo ich hier überhaupt anfangen soll; so viele fucking Strohmänner auf einmal.

Die Verteidigung spielt random Clips, in denen Demokraten “fight” sagen, fast zehn Minuten lang. Weil Trump 20mal am 6. Januar “fight” gesagt hat. Dies ist kein Witz. Komisch, dass sonst die Folge nie war, dass ein Mob das Kapitol gestürmt hat und Pence hängen wollte


“Dieser Fall geht um politischen Hass” Ich mein, ja. “Die House Managers hassen Donald Trump.”

So close.
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Love,that is not real,has no passion. Its fire turns into embers, it doesn’t not smell. The day, the night, the moon&year burn without sun, light, comfort&sleep.
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#Reyyan #Miran #ReyMir #EbruŞahin #AkınAkınözü
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PRAISE
The praise in this episode goes foremost to Ebru because she portrayed Reyyan so realistically like a woman who truly lost her unborn child. I was in awe and pain watching her along the episode, all her breakdowns and tears were so real.
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Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

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Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.
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Rudy Havenstein, listening to Nas all day.
Rudy Havenstein, liste...
@RudyHavenstein
I hate when I learn something new (to me) & stunning about the Jeff Epstein network (h/t MoodyKnowsNada.)

Where to begin?

So our new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was "longtime lawyer and confidant of...Robert Maxwell," Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad.


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OK, so that's just a coincidence. Moving on, Anthony Blinken "attended the prestigious Dalton School in New York City"...wait, what? https://t.co/DnE6AvHmJg

Dalton School...Dalton School...rings a

Oh that's right.

The dad of the U.S. Attorney General under both George W. Bush & Donald Trump, William Barr, was headmaster of the Dalton School.

Donald Barr was also quite a


I'm not going to even mention that Blinken's stepdad Sam Pisar's name was in Epstein's "black book."

Lots of names in that book. I mean, for example, Cuomo, Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen - all in that book, and their reputations are spotless.
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