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Cummings Hits DHS For Blocking Visits, Outlines Claims Of Abhorrent Conditions

House Oversight Committee chair Elijah Cummings blasted the Department of Homeland Security after it cancelled tours at 11 migrant detention facilities.
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Cummings Hits DHS For Blocking Visits, Outlines Claims Of Abhorrent Conditions

House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) blasted the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday after the DHS cancelled the committee’s scheduled tours at 11 migrant detention facilities.

Cummings sent acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan a letter telling him that the department’s actions were “inconsistent” with McAleenan’s previous testimony that he welcomed congressional visits to the facilities.

The Oversight chair listed several “troubling reports” from the committee’s inspections last week, during which detainees alleged that they were being pressured into signing documents in English without a translator, toddlers were being fed burritos and “hundreds” of detainees were providing up to eight hours of labor in a “voluntary work program” that paid only $1.00-$1.50 per day.

“It appears that the Administration expects Congress to be satisfied with receiving agency tours of facilities–in some cases without the ability to photograph conditions or interview detainees–and not to question the policies or decisions that agency officials make,” Cummings wrote. “That is not the way effective oversight works.”

“Congress has an independent responsibility under the Constitution to determine whether federal programs are operating as they should be–not merely to accept the Administration’s word for it,” he continued.
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Settlement Reached In Ohio Voter Purge Case

One of the disputes fueling the war over Ohio’s purge process was resolved Thursday.
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Ohio Agrees To Let Ballots Of Certain Purged Voters Count In Upcoming Elections


One of the disputes fueling the war over Ohio’s purge process was resolved Thursday, with the announcement of a settlement in years-long litigation related to the purge regime.



Under the settlement, some voters who were removed from the rolls this year and in purges going back to 2011 will still be able to cast provisional ballots and have those ballots counted. The settlement covers votes cast through 2022.

Voting rights advocates cheered the settlement, even as they vowed to continue their outreach to 200,000-plus individuals who are on the list to be purged next month.

Ohio’s use-it-or-lose it system of voter purges — known official as the “supplemental process” — has been a source of controversy that traveled all the way up to the Supreme Court. Under the regime, the state sends mailers to registrants don’t participate in an election for two years informing them that they will be removed from the rolls if they don’t participate in the next four years of elections or otherwise confirm their registrations.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision last year, okayed Ohio’s use of voter inactivity to start the purge process. However, litigation has continued over whether the notices the state sent through 2016 complied with the National Voter Registration Act, which sets guardrails on how states can remove voters from their rolls.

That litigation is what was settled Thursday. While Secretary of State Frank LaRose did not concede that the notices were NVRA violations, he said in a statement that “it made little sense to continue to spend taxpayer resources litigating the legality of a form of notice that is not used anymore.”

(The state made tweaks to the notices in 2016 after the flaws were pointed out. LaRose has indicated that, unlike his predecessor, he would not send inactive voters the notices that start the four-year purge clock.)

The settlement will allow purged voters to have their provisional ballots counted as long as they live in the same county in which they originally registered.

Thursday’s settlement extends a carve-out — known as the APRI exception (named for the plaintiff organization, the A. Philip Randolph Institute) — that courts had temporarily put in place for elections starting in 2016 as part of the litigation. The exception was implemented through the 2018 elections and ultimately covered 8,570 total purged voters who showed up at their polling place to cast a ballot.

It is unclear how many additional people it will cover going forward. An estimated 265,000 voters were purged in January and another 225,000 or so are expected to be purged in September.

But some of the individuals put on that purge list were added because of postal service change-of-address records, not the supplemental process. The exact breakdown of how many voters were put on the list due to the supplemental process versus the change-of-address process is unknown.

In theory the settlement will protect in-person voters who were purged merely due to their inactivity, rather than because they moved or died. Voter advocates still have concerns about the purges’ impact.

Mike Brickner, the Ohio state director of All Voting Is Local, told TPM that poll workers aren’t always fully aware of when they’re supposed to offer provisional ballots and some voters lack the confidence in provisional voting to take advantage of it.

“Part of it is going to be more poll worker training and voter education,” Brickner said.
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Tulsi Gabbard Rules Out Third-Party Bid

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), despite failing to qualify for the September debate, confirmed Thursday that she would not run as a third-party candidate.
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Tulsi Gabbard Rules Out Third-Party Bid


Despite failing to qualify for the September debate, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) confirmed Thursday that she would not run as a third-party candidate.


“I’ve ruled that out,” she told CNN’s Jim Sciutto. “I’m going to continue to focus on moving our campaign forward, continuing this grassroots campaign, continuing to deliver our message to the American people and ask for their support.”

Gabbard is sticking with her campaign for now though, unlike Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who dropped out of the race on Wednesday after also falling short of the debate stage.
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How Franken Resignation Affected Gillibrand

New details have emerged since Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) withdrew her bid from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary Wednesday.
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Report: Gillibrand Campaign Insiders Felt Franken Resignation Foiled Her Bid

New details have emerged since Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) withdrew her bid from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary Wednesday.

According to a Politico report Thursday, people from inside the Gillibrand campaign acknowledged that being the first Democratic senator to call for the resignation of former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) last year over sexual misconduct allegations most likely played into the challenges she faced during her campaign, especially when it came to fundraising. Franken has said he “absolutely” regrets resigning.

A Gillibrand aide familiar with her campaign accounting, which started out as a $10 million campaign war chest, told Politico that it had dwindled to about $800,000.

By the time the polls were released Wednesday, the deadline to qualify for next month’s presidential debate, Politico reported that Gillibrand had already filmed a dropout video that morning and delivered the news to her staff at headquarters by mid-afternoon.

“Franken was definitely a problem in terms of fundraising,” a person familiar with the Gillibrand campaign told Politico. “He just kept coming up, over and over again.”

Jen Palmieri, Hillary Clinton’s former communications director, shared a similar sentiment on there being “no question” that the Franken resignation had a “huge, outsized impact” on Gillibrand’s campaign.

“The sub-current of her entire candidacy was the Franken resignation, and people unfairly pinning that on her,” Palmieri told Politico. “It’s a crowded field, and it’s hard for all the candidates, but that really hampered her.”
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StringerBell said:
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“The crowd today for Governor and Bevin and myself was the greatest crowd ever assembled. It was HUGE!”

“But the fake media is the enemy of the people and it is the worst most horrible media and “news” in the history of this country!”

“They will use made up words like “sparsely” to make it seem like I am less popular! When I am the most popular President who has done more for the country than George Washington and Lincoln combined!”

“And we are BUILDING THE WALL!”
 
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