House Republicans snuck in something else in their new US House rules yesterday, beyond their aborted attempt to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics: a provision to make it easier to give away federal lands. Desi Doyen fills us in on the scheme.
Then, a few updates — troubling ones — on the attempted Wisconsin Presidential 'Recount', where at least 11,000 votes were revealed to have been mistallied (in a state that Donald Trump reportedly won by just 22,000 votes), only half the ballots were allowed to be counted by hand, the cost was about half of what Green Party nominee Jill Stein had been forced to pay, and the final turnout and voter registration numbers in the state are still unknown (ensuring the results still cannot be verified as accurate, even as Congress will accept the Electoral College results on Friday.)
Those are just a few of the reasons why WI is found near the bottom of the list of states in the Electoral Integrity Project's newest report. Most of the lowest-ranked states (14 of the bottom 15) are in the South and/or have both legislatures and governorships controlled by Republicans. The survey, a project of Harvard University and the University of Sydney, also determined the US, once again, to be near the bottom of the list of established democracies when it comes to how world political scientists and election experts rate our elections.
Finally, we open the phone lines today to ask listeners: What now? What can progressives, Democrats, the left, the center-left, the center — basically, the non-Right — do as Republicans take control of Congress, the White House and a stolen US Supreme Court? Lots of thoughts, with lots of perspective from a lot of great callers…though the last caller of the show may offer our favorite plan of action.
You can find Brad's previous editions here.
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