ChrisWeigant.com

Archive of Articles in the "Voting Rights" Category

Friday Talking Points -- R.N.C. Purge

[ Posted Friday, March 15th, 2024 – 17:29 UTC ]

This week President Joe Biden and Donald Trump both secured their respective parties' 2024 presidential nominations. Most Americans, if the pollsters can be believed (and they do all seem to be telling the same story), are not exactly thrilled with this rematch and would have preferred different choices. But we are where we are, so that's not going to happen for another four years.

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Ken Buck Changes The Equation

[ Posted Wednesday, March 13th, 2024 – 15:57 UTC ]

In a surprise move yesterday, Representative Ken Buck announced that he will not be stepping down from his seat at the end of his current term (as he had previously announced), but instead will step down next week. By doing so, Buck has roiled the waters of the Republican House majority and his surprise move also may tend to quash Representative Lauren Boebert's hopes of remaining in the House after November.

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The End Of Primary Season

[ Posted Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 – 15:15 UTC ]

Tonight will be the (unofficial) end of the presidential primary season. If everything goes as expected (and it will), both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump will secure the necessary majorities of delegates to their respective parties' national conventions, and will thus start to be described in the media as "the designated nominee" (or other similar words which convey both the unofficial nature of the milestone as well as the de facto end to the primary races). Neither man will officially become their parties' nominees until the conventions themselves, but nothing that happens between tonight and then is going to matter -- they'll already both have won.

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Friday Talking Points -- A Cinder Block On The Scales Of Justice

[ Posted Friday, March 1st, 2024 – 19:37 UTC ]

This week, the Supreme Court didn't just stick a thumb on the scales of justice for Donald Trump, it tossed on a cinder block instead. By delaying any decision -- for months and months -- on Trump's ludicrous claim to total immunity from everything and anything he's ever done, the court will allow Trump to win even if he loses his appeal. Because Trump's main objective in the January 6th insurrection case against him is to delay, delay, delay. The Supreme Court is aiding and abetting this scheme in rather blatant fashion.

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Friday Talking Points -- Grinding Exceedingly Fine

[ Posted Friday, February 16th, 2024 – 18:04 UTC ]

That headline comes from the end of an aphorism that goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks: "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." Today, the wheels of justice just ground out a penalty of $355 million for Donald Trump, for committing serial fraud in his New York businesses -- which we certainly found to be an "exceedingly fine" result of the case (an "exceedingly fine fine," maybe?). The $355 million can now be added to the $88 million Trump is already on the hook for, after losing two other civil cases (the defamation cases brought by E. Jean Carroll). Plus, in today's ruling, two of Trump's children were fined $4 million each, as well as a $1 million fine for another member of the Trump Organization (making it a $364 million penalty, in all). This was the capstone to a week watching the slow grind of multiple court cases Trump is currently ensnared in, so we thought it was an appropriate place to start our column this week.

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Scheduling Trump's Trials

[ Posted Thursday, February 15th, 2024 – 16:58 UTC ]

Donald Trump will finally be forced to sit in a courtroom to answer criminal charges against him in a trial before a jury of his peers. This trial will begin on March 25th, the judge overseeing the case ruled today. This was the originally-scheduled date for the courtroom drama to begin, which Trump's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to push back as far as they possibly could. The judge just flat-out rejected their pleas for delay, so jury selection will begin late next month.

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Republicans' Refusal To Do Anything About The Border Costs Them A House Seat

[ Posted Wednesday, February 14th, 2024 – 16:59 UTC ]

The House seat once held by George Santos is back in Democratic hands once again, after an impressive 8-point victory in a special election last night. Once Tom Suozzi is sworn in, this will leave Republicans with a smaller majority, meaning Speaker Mike Johnson will only be able to lose two votes from his own party when passing purely partisan bills. This may not have that big an effect, since Johnson already struggles to pass partisan bills with the majority he's currently got (a bill on spying powers had to be pulled today, for instance, since Republicans can't agree among themselves over what to put in it). If Johnson had been wildly successful up to this point and his new smaller margin put that at risk then that'd be one thing, but the reality is the only bills he's been able to move with any chance of becoming law are ones with wide bipartisan support. Not much about that dynamic is actually going to change, even with one more Democrat in the chamber.

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Counting Noses In The House

[ Posted Tuesday, February 13th, 2024 – 16:28 UTC ]

As I write this, there may or may not be a second impeachment vote happening later today in the House of Representatives. Republicans tried to impeach the secretary of the Department of Homeland Defense last week and suffered a rather embarrassing loss, so one would assume that this time around the speaker will do a better job of counting noses before the vote takes place -- and also that this time the vote won't happen if Republicans don't have enough. As we saw last week, the difference of one vote can indeed be critical in such a closely-divided House.

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Friday Talking Points -- A Disservice To Actual Working Clowns

[ Posted Friday, February 9th, 2024 – 19:29 UTC ]

This was a very bad week for Republicans in Congress, pretty much all around. The Speaker of the House proved incapable of counting votes and thus saw two big defeats on the floor, and over in the Senate the Republicans cut off their noses (elephant trunks?) to spite their faces in a spectacular turnaround from their own basic bargaining position. GOP incompetence was on display on both sides of the Capitol, to put it bluntly.

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None Of These Candidates?

[ Posted Wednesday, February 7th, 2024 – 16:02 UTC ]

Last night, Nikki Haley suffered an embarrassing loss in Nevada's Republican primary. But it wasn't the same embarrassing loss as she suffered in New Hampshire -- or will soon be suffering in her home state of South Carolina, for that matter -- since she didn't actually lose to Donald Trump. Instead, in what can only be called a truly meaningless primary, she lost (by a 2-to-1 margin!) not to a competing candidate but rather to: "None Of These Candidates." This is an option on Nevada ballots for voters to register their vote as a protest against the choices provided. Last night, Haley got 31 percent of the vote while "None Of These Candidates" got a whopping 63 percent. That is truly embarrassing, you've got to admit.

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