Virginia Democrats are welcoming criminals back to the ballot box.Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) has restored voting rights to 66,085 felons in her first six months in office. That’s 56,000 more than former Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) restored during his entire four-year tenure, according to the official annual reports filed by the secretary of the commonwealth.‘A shameful relic of our Jim Crow past.’“I’m proud that — after contending with my predecessor's efforts to deny Virginians their fundamental rights — we have restored the rights of more than 66,000 Virginians who have served their time,” Spanberger said in a Friday press release. “These Virginians deserve the right to use their vote, make their voices heard, and be recognized as contributing citizens to our Commonwealth and country.”Spanberger's office did not respond to requests for comment. Under Youngkin, applicants were required to submit a formal Restoration of Rights form detailing whether they had completed all terms of incarceration, were on probation or parole, or had been convicted of a violent offense. Felons were also asked if they had “paid all fines, fees, and restitution” or were currently paying them, according to court filings.Spanberger’s administration axed those safeguards.RELATED: Illegal immigrant allegedly attacks Virginia police — after dodging persecution for allegedly choking his wife JASON REDMOND/AFP/Getty Images The new team “re-established processes to both review applications and proactively identify — and restore the rights of — Virginians who have lost their right to vote” and is using “a streamlined, online system that removed unnecessary questions added during the Youngkin administration," according to the press release.The removed questions included the requirement to report probation status and fine repayment. The governor also instructed Secretary of the Commonwealth Candi Mundon King to expand “proactive identification” of eligible ex-convicts.Current eligibility is determined by whether a person has been convicted of a felony and is no longer incarcerated.“By giving these Virginians back their ability to make an impact at the local, state, and national levels, we are empowering our neighbors to take hold of their second chance,” Spanberger said. “This fall, voters can cast their ballots for Virginia to no longer strip so many of our neighbors of their fundamental rights — a shameful relic of our Jim Crow past.”Virginia voters will decide in November whether to pass a constitutional amendment automatic restoration of voting rights for released felon inmates. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
In the latest assault on family values Campus Reform is reporting "The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second-largest teachers union representing approximately 1.8 million members, adopted a resolution on July 19 supporting access to “gender-affirming care” across “all stages of life” and pledging to challenge Trump administration healthcare policies through litigation." This is an insult to the American public, who rejected these policies at the polls by voting for President Trump.
The post EVIL: America Federation of Teachers Passes Resolution Supporting ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care, Vows Legal Challenges to Trump Policies appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Donald Trump's obsession with memorializing himself often spurs strange outbursts to world leaders about arches, a New York Times journalist revealed Friday. The 80-year-old president spends most of his time focused on personal retribution and renovating Washington, D.C., to his own preferences, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who told her colleague Ezra Klein. "This I will say about getting into his mind: Seventy percent of it would be on his renovations," Haberman said. "It’s a legacy thing... It’s, 'What am I leaving behind so the world can’t kick me off the world — or deplatform me or take my name off buildings in Manhattan or take away my Bronx leased golf course?'"Haberman reported that official meetings are often interrupted by Trump's abrupt outbursts on said buildings. "In a meeting, one of the things he was musing about was what should go on top of the arch," Haberman said. "It was, like, should he put a gold version of the 'fight, fight, fight' fist from Butler up there?"In another meeting, Trump called up French President Emmanuel Macron to pepper him with bizarre questions about a major monument he intends to build in Washington, Haberman said. "He calls French President Emmanuel Macron in the middle of another meeting and starts asking him about the Arc de Triomphe in France, asking, 'What’s it like,' and, 'Does it have a visitor’s desk? Do people jump off it?'" Haberman added."This was the conversation that he was interested in, and he’s still talking about this kind of thing — but calls up a foreign leader to inquire about what his arch to himself should look like."Trump has become so consumed by these personal projects that he simply doesn't care about legislative priorities, according to Haberman."He is playing for history, capital-G great man of history — to be remembered by one name, to have left a mark on the world that is just different than a typical president," she said."That doesn’t involve the boring work of trying to pass a bill," Haberman added. "That doesn’t involve the boring work of going to Iowa...This is fundamentally less interesting to him."
Israeli Minister Amichai Chikli accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government of becoming “the command center for Hamas’s rapists and murderers.”
President Donald Trump on Friday argued in favor of the anti-weaponization fund that his administration previously said was dead, as Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) continues to hold up acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination over concerns about the fund. “Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history,” […]
Donald Trump and his dutiful Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, have been targeting ABC’s broadcast licenses, and ABC just challenged this hard in a new filing. In an interesting move, ABC cited Trump’s own social media postings and remarks at speeches to show that he is corruptly trying to censor the network as punishment for its content and viewpoints, in violation of the First Amendment. Amusingly, in those examples, Trump blurted right out in public that he does in fact want the FCC to punish ABC precisely because of its speech. Now this has become a weapon against Trump. We talked to law professor Leah Litman, author of a good book about the Supreme Court. She explains why Trump’s public bullying should undermine his case, walks us through the legal ins-and-outs here, details why ABC might prevail, and discusses how open, explicit corruption is intrinsic to his political project. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 31 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.It’s been a while since we checked in on Donald Trump’s use of government power to silence networks that displease him, and there’s a new development. ABC just put out their challenge to the Federal Communications Commission’s vile efforts to punish it by going after its broadcasting licenses. And something funny happened. Trump’s own tweets and declarations have become evidence of his corrupt intent to use the FCC as a weapon of censorship. And this captures something really essential about Trump’s open corruption and whether our institutions are capable of constraining it.So we’re talking about all of it with one of our go-to people on these things, University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman. Hey, Leah, always good to have you on.Leah Litman: Glad to be back.Sargent: So at the center of this sordid story is FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who’s one of Trump’s most slavishly devoted accomplices. Whenever Trump gets upset about networks telling the truth about him, Carr is right there in the background. In the spring, Carr launched an early review of broadcast licenses at eight TV stations owned by ABC, which is a network Trump hates because of Jimmy Kimmel and other things. Leah, can you just bring us up to date on this, and what Carr is really all about?Litman: Yeah, so Carr has been basically attempting to use the Federal Communications Commission’s power over these media companies in order to get them to ensure there is favorable coverage for the president, and coverage that the president likes. And sometimes he does this by threatening to review licenses that allow these companies to distribute their programming onto other channels. Other times he uses the FCC power by threatening investigations into the companies that might impose regulatory sanctions on them. And so this is not the first time this has happened. You know, we saw, for example, the FCC kind of try to coerce Disney to cancel Kimmel. We saw them trying to strong-arm CBS to cancel Colbert. And they do this, again, by threatening the agency’s regulatory authority to award benefits or impose punishments on companies that are subject to their control.Sargent: And these agencies, particularly FCC, have huge power, right? If they don’t grant licenses, that’s the end of the company. They don’t have business anymore. Yeah. And we should note here that the FCC claimed that its review of the broadcast licenses of these stations was about looking at their DEI policies. And I think we know that’s bullshit, right?Litman: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what this administration thinks DEI stands for. You know, on our podcast, we’ve joked that it’s “dicks, ex-husbands, imbeciles.” In light of the diarrhea—it’s “diarrhea for everyone, because of incompetence,” right? Like, I don’t know. But they kind of use that word as their go-to for saying, we don’t like something that you’re doing, and so we are just going to target you.Sargent: Yeah. There’s almost like a Soviet quality to it. It’s like they really just say it, and they’re visibly full of shit, and they know it. And that’s part of the exercise of power.Litman: Yes, indeed. We can just toss this label out and use that to go after anyone we want. Sargent: And there’s nothing you can do about it. So ABC put out its formal response to the FCC’s review, and it’s scathing stuff. I’m going to read one line. ABC says, “The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: Accommodate the administration’s view of what news coverage should look like, or pay the price.” Leah, that’s the plain truth, isn’t it?Litman: No, absolutely. And I think the president has taken this approach to many different regulatory initiatives or prosecutions. You know, he’s tried to indict, for example, former FBI director Jim Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James. And it’s clear that those prosecutions also serve as a warning, right? Like, do our bidding, or stand down, or you will face the penalty. And so this attempt to bully ABC is just another example of that. And here, in the context of media coverage—and I think another manifestation of this are the president’s litigation against different media companies. You know, he sues them for running a story that he doesn’t like. And here he’s leveraging the immense power of the federal government to serve the same purpose.Sargent: Now, here’s the really good part. In order to show that the FCC is trying to punish ABC for its content and its viewpoints, punish it for its reporting and its speech, ABC cites one of Trump’s own tweets, in which Trump says this directly.
