SAN PEDRO — Councilmember Tim McOsker last week addressed the issue of fireworks.
“Fireworks in our neighborhoods are more than a loud, disrespectful nuisance — they cause significant harm to people and property,” he wrote in his newsletter.
He added, nationally illegal fireworks are responsible for an average of 19,500 fires, $105 million in property damage, 9,100 injuries, and five fatalities annually, often involving children. Both state and local laws prohibit illegal fireworks, but violations persist, posing serious risks to public safety.
On Jan, 22, McOsker introduced a motion with Councilmember John Lee directing the city attorney, in consultation with the Los Angeles Fire Department and Chief Legislative Analyst, to identify ways to strengthen ordinances, including increased penalties, civil fines for property owners, and collaboration with federal agencies to combat smuggling. The motion also calls for the creation of restricted zones and stricter permitting processes for legal fireworks shows. Additionally, enhanced public awareness campaigns will be developed to educate residents about the dangers and legal consequences of illegal fireworks. Finally, the LAFD and LAPD will explore joint task forces and operations to improve enforcement against the sale and use of illegal fireworks.
Restoring power to the richest, whitest men in the room. How long can democracy survive under Trump’s iron grip?
Welcome to the new Confederate States of America.
Much like the old CSA, the new CSA (also known as MAGA America) is devoted to: — Making American as white as possible, — Stripping women and minorities of political and economic power, — Gutting workers’ rights, — Rigging election outcomes, — Leaders nakedly taking bribes, — Using a phony veneer of Christianity to justify brutal policies, — Making queer people invisible, — Reconfiguring schools for indoctrination, — Having militias terrorize minorities and their opponents, and, — Maintaining a government of, by, and for rich white men.
Turn America into an oligarchy run by rich white men
Never in American history has a group of morbidly rich white men this large or with anything close to this net worth sat to watch a president get sworn into office, and never before have so many billionaires been in a president’s cabinet.
Trump has been openly selling legislation; for example, he recently told a group of fossil fuel CEOs that, if they’d give him a billion dollars, he’d gut the nation’s environmental laws that they don’t like.
Seeing the opportunity, the nation’s richest people have flocked to Trump’s side, each presumably hoping for their own desired federal subsidies or an end to regulations, government lawsuits, or anti-trust actions.
And, of course, they all want more tax cuts.
Make America White Again
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited people coming into the country based on race; each year’s immigrants must be selected in a way that maintained the racial ratios that existed in 1890 (before the big wave of swarthy southern European immigrants, most Italian and Greek, that came here during the three decades between 1890 and 1924).
In 1965, Congress passed a new immigration law that ended the racial/country quotas, leading to a rapid increase in Black and Brown immigrants entering the country legally. Combined with illegal immigration, Reagan’s amnesty, and birthright citizenship for their children, the browning of American picked up speed to the point where 2014 was the first year when nonwhite children outnumbered white kids in the nation’s public schools.
To end this trend and make America white again, Trump has, at various times, proposed that America no longer allow immigrants from majority Black “shithole countries,” banned immigration from majority-Muslim countries, will harden the southern border, and last night signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship.
The 14th Amendment defines birthright citizenship, saying:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Trump’s lawyers are arguing that people here without documentation are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of American law because they’re not here legally. Therefore, they say, their children born here are also not “born subject to the jurisdiction” of American law and thus not citizens.
They plan to take their argument to the Supreme Court, where it may receive a favorable hearing. If successful, they might even have a case for stripping citizenship from and then deporting tens of millions of mostly Hispanic American citizens whose parents were undocumented.
Strip women and minorities of political and economic power
Our MAGA Supreme Court majority has already succeeded in several steps toward this goal, by ending abortion rights and gutting both civil rights and voting rights laws.
Four GOP-controlled states are considering charging women who get abortions with murder, and Republicans on the Supreme Court have already functionally outlawed affirmative action and given states the power to make voting harder for Black, Hispanic, and Native American people.
Vice President Vance has written to the Justice Department demanding that they begin to enforce the moribund Comstock Act, which would outlaw the mailing of abortion and birth control medications, among other things (including porn).
Meanwhile, DEI programs in both government and the corporate world are being ended to once again allow companies with white leadership to give preference to white men up for jobs or promotions. Looking at the composition of Trump’s incoming administration and cabinet, it’s reasonable to assume that nonwhite people must be willing to play the role Samuel L. Jackson did in Django Unchained if they want a position.
Gut workers’ rights
In his last administration, Trump put the virulently anti-union lawyer Eugene Scalia (son of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia) in charge of the Labor Department. His current nominee, former Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has a more mixed record, but she won’t be setting the administration’s labor policy: Trump will.
The same Trump who told Elon Musk on a live X event:
“You’re the greatest cutter. I look at what you do. You walk in and say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, ’That’s OK. You’re all gone.’”
Musk laughed and said, “Yeah.” Bezos is also virulently opposed to unionization of his Amazon workplace, and Trump has a long history of avoiding hiring companies with unions to do work on his properties.
Rig election outcomes
When the plantation oligarchs ended democracy in the Old South during the 1840-1860 era, they continued to allow elections. But white men who voted (they were the only ones allowed to vote) for anybody other than the oligarch’s men often lost work, were beaten, and even sometimes lynched.
Republicans today are a bit more sophisticated, but their ability to rig elections has endured.
In the years immediately following the Republicans on the Supreme Court’s Shelby County decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, over 1600 polling places were closed by Republican-controlled states, most in Black neighborhoods. GOP-run state after state passed laws making it harder to register to vote, allowing challenges to voters and purges of voting rolls, and making it easier to refuse to count mail-in votes from cities with Democratic majorities by claiming signature mismatches.
Reporter Greg Palast estimates that if this had not happened and every eligible voter was allowed to vote and every vote cast was counted, Kamala Harris would today be president.
Republicans also work hard to select their voters, rather than allowing voters to select their representatives. While Democratic states have largely abandoned gerrymandering — which could have given Democrats a majority in the House today — Republican states have doubled down on the practice year after year.
Nakedly taking bribes
Donald Trump has rolled out a new meme cybercurrency that will allow any billionaire, company, or foreign country to shovel as much money as they want into his own personal pockets, presumably in exchange for whatever government contract, subsidy, or help they can negotiate with the new president.
The Confederacy, organized and run by a small handful of plantation oligarchs, was also notoriously corrupt, and state governments in the Old South often ran on a naked bribe system.
Phony veneer of Christianity
Slaveholders in the Old South used Christianity to justify their inexecrable practice. Today’s MAGA Confederates are no less hypocritical.
Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality or abortion, although he was explicit that preachers shouldn’t pray in public and that the only way to join Him in heaven was to feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the stranger, house the homeless, and visit those in prison.
None of that matters, though, to the sanctimonious hustlers running megachurches and appearing on TV and radio; their only goal is to increase their own wealth and power. And Trump, who didn’t even bother to put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn in, promises to gift them with money and prestige so long as they keep delivering their parishioners to the voting booths for Republicans.
Making queer people invisible
Republicans across the nation have succeeded in banning thousands of books that feature or even contain queer characters or discuss homosexuality or transsexuality from schools and libraries. They’re also launching legal efforts — with the explicit support of Clarence Thomas — to outlaw gay marriage and adoption, with the ultimate goal of sending queer people back into the closet as they were prior to the 1980s.
Trump, meanwhile, promises to only recognize two sexes, essentially outlawing trans people.
Use schools for indoctrination
Republicans are proposing in their platform to micromanage school curriculum nationwide by “defunding schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination.”
This appears to include removing references to our nation’s history of slavery, patriarchy, and white supremacy; rewriting economic and social studies textbooks to make them more billionaire-friendly; and attacking socialism and communism in ways that may cause students to think that Social Security and similar programs are wrong.
Using militias for terror
In the Old South it was the Ku Klux Klan and the slave patrols.
Today there are dozens of white supremacist groups and independent militias, all devoted to white supremacy and Christian nationalism. Trump’s pardons of the criminals involved in January 6th tells us he’s committed to having the militias that support him rebuild their ranks and get back out onto the streets, but this time on his behalf.
And his continued opposition to gun control signals that, like dictators throughout history and most recently in Hungary and Russia, he wants them armed and dangerous.
Oligarchy is here, now
The bottom line is that the oligarchy of the old Confederacy never really went away and arguably has just taken over the United States 164 years after they first fired on Fort Sumpter, this time with “Tech Bros” replacing plantation owners.
The big question now is whether they’ll be able to hang onto the wealth and power they’ve managed to seize with this election. Oligarchy, after all, is usually a transitional form of government because people get so angry about the government doing everything for the rich and powerful and little to nothing for them that they demand change.
Popular discontent rises until the oligarchs either slam down an iron fist to crush it with violence and thus flip the country into the type of tyranny you see today in Russia, or citizens overcome the oligarchy and restore democracy, as happened in Ukraine when Paul Manifort’s guy (and Putin’s friend) was deposed by the people in 2019, replacing him with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Which way will it go in America? Unless Trump gets really violent really fast (a possibility), we’ll probably know with the results of next year’s midterm elections…
By Greg Palast for the Thom Hartmann Report Chicago, Jan 27
Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.
Stay with me and I’ll give you the means, methods and, most important, the key calculations.
But if you’re expecting a sexy story about Elon Musk messing with vote-counting software from outer space, sorry, you won’t get that here.
As in Bush v. Gore in 2000, and in too many other miscarriages of Democracy, this election was determined by good old “vote suppression,” the polite term we use for shafting people of color out of their ballot. We used to call it Jim Crow.
Here are key numbers:
4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.
By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.
No less than 2,121,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).
At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
1,216,000 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.
3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.
If the purges, challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.
There are also the uncountable effects of the explosive growth of voter intimidation tactics including the bomb threats that closed 31 polling stations in Atlanta on Election Day.
America’s Nasty Little Secret
The nasty little secret of American democracy is that we don’t count all the votes. Nor let every citizen vote.
In 2024, especially, after an avalanche of new not-going-to-let-you-vote laws passed in almost every red state, the number of citizens Jim Crow’d out of their vote soared into the millions. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since the 2020 election, “At least 30 states enacted 78 restrictive laws” to blockade voting. The race-targeted laws ran the gamut from shuttering drop boxes in Black-majority cities to, for the first time, allowing non-government self-appointed “vote fraud vigilantes” to challenge voters by the hundreds of thousands.
Throughout election seasons, The New York Times and NPR and establishment media write stories and editorials decrying vote suppression tactics, from new ID requirements to new restrictions on mail-in voting. But, notably, the mainstream press never, ever, not once, will say that these ugly racist attacks on voters changed the outcome of an election.
Question: If these vote suppression laws — notorious example: Georgia’s SB 202 — had no effect on election outcomes, then why did GOP legislators fight so hard to pass these laws? The answer is clear on the Brennan Center’s map of states that passed restrictive laws. It’s pretty much Trump’s victory map.
Palast -Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won.
America Goes Postal
Let’s look at just one vote suppression operation in action.
In 2020, during the pandemic, America went postal. More than 43% of us voted by mail.
But it wasn’t easy. Harris County, Texas, home of Houston, tried to mail out ballots during the COVID epidemic on the grounds that voters shouldn’t die waiting in lines at polling stations. But then, the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton stopped this life-saving measure.
Why wouldn’t this GOP official let Houstonians vote safely? Maybe it’s because Houston has the largest number of Black voters of any city in America. Indeed, on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Paxton proudly stated, “Had we not done that [stopped Houston from sending out ballots], Donald Trump would’ve lost the election” in Texas. Texas!
Before the 2024 election, prompted by Trump’s evidence-free attack on mail-in ballots as inherently fraudulent, 22 states, according to the Brennan Center, imposed “38 new restrictions on the ability to vote absentee that were not in place in 2020…likely to most affect or already have disproportionately affected voters of color.” You’re shocked, right?
Texas’ requirement to add ID numbers to an absentee ballot caused the rejection rate to jump from 1% to 12%.
So, here’s the question we need to ask. If restrictions on mail-in balloting swung Texas to Trump, how did all these new restrictions affect the outcome of the vote in other states?
In 2020, an NPR study found the mail-in ballot rejection rate hit 13.8% during the Democratic primaries—a loss of one in seven ballots.
Here are photos of a Georgia voter, career military officer and Pentagon advisor Major Gamaliel Turner (Ret), demonstrating for young voters how to fill out an absentee ballot, emphasizing that it must be mailed in promptly. He did, seven days before the deadline. But we only recently learned that Georgia officials disqualified his ballot as received too late.
Major Gamaliel Turner (now retired) about to mail in his absentee ballot. The state of Georgia rejected it. (Photo: Palast Investigative Fund, 2024.)
In 2008, even before the majority of Democrats began voting by mail, when absentee balloting was much rarer, the federal government reported 488,136 mail-in ballots were rejected, almost all on picayune grounds (i.e. middle initial on signature missing etc.). An MIT study put the number of rejected mail-in ballots at 2.9%.
That’s the low-end of MIT’s estimate of mail-in ballots tossed out. Charles Stewart, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, author of the report, notes mail-in ballots requested and never received nor returned could raise the total mail-in ballot loss rate to 21%.
For 2024, that would total 14.1 million ballots that, effectively, vanished from the count.
The “failure to return” ballot was exacerbated in this election by the steep cut in ballot drop boxes, a method favored by urban (read, “Democratic”) voters. Black voters in Atlanta used ballot drop boxes extensively because they feared, with good reason, relying on the Post Office [see Major Turner’s story above].
In response, the Republican Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, signed SB 202 which slashed the number of drop boxes by 75% only in Black-majority counties and locked them away at night. These moves slashed mail-in and drop box balloting, used by the majority of Democrats in 2020, by nearly 90% in the 2024 race.
Even if deemed “on time,” ballots still face rejection. Marietta, Georgia, first-time voter Andrian Consonery Jr. told me his mail-in ballot was rejected because his signature supposedly didn’t match that on his registration. (I needn’t add, Consonery is Black.) In effect, Consonery was accused of forgery — a federal crime — not by the FBI but by self-appointed amateur sleuths. This challenge to mail-in ballots, part of a right-wing campaign, has gone viral.
Georgian Adrian Consonery Jr.’s mail-in ballot was challenged because of a false claim that his signature was forged. (Photo: Zach D. Roberts for the Palast Investigative Fund, 2024.)
In 2020, the federal government reported that 157,477 ballots were rejected for supposedly “mis-matched” signatures. That’s quite a crime wave — but without criminals.
And that’s before we get to the dozens of other attacks on voting that were freshly minted for the 2024 election, attacks aimed at voters of color.
The crucial statistic is that not everyone’s ballot gets disqualified. One study done for the United States Civil Rights Commission found that a Black person, such as Maj. Turner, will be 900% more likely to have their mail-in or in-person ballot disqualified than a white voter.
Now, let’s do some arithmetic. If we take the lowest end of the MIT ballot rejection rate, and only a tenth of the “lost” ballot rate, and then apply it to the number of mail-in and drop-box ballots, we can conservatively estimate that 2,121,000 mail-in votes went into the electoral dumpster.
Whose ballots? Democrats are 51% more likely than Republicans to vote by mail; and, given the racial disparity in ballot rejections, Trump’s swing-state margins begin to look shaky.
The KKK Plan and the New Vigilantes
In 2020, the Palast Investigative Fund uncovered a whole new way to bring Jim Crow back to life: challenges to a citizen’s right to vote by a posse of self-proclaimed vote-fraud hunters.
Four years ago, the GOP took this new suppression method out for a test ride in Georgia when 88 Republican operatives — remember, these are not government officials — challenged the rights of over 180,000 Georgians to have their ballots counted. These vigilantes based their scheme on the program originally used by the Ku Klux Klan in 1946.
One challenged voter: Major Turner, the same voter whose mail-in ballot was disqualified in a later election.
In 2020, the Major’s ballot was challenged by the county Chairman of the Republican Party in Southern Georgia, Alton Russell. (Russell likes to dress up as infamous vigilante Doc Holliday, with a loaded six-gun in a holster.) In a (polite) confrontation we filmed between the Major and Russell, the GOP honcho admitted he had no evidence that Maj. Turner, nor any of the 4,000 others he challenged, should be denied the right to have their ballots counted.
Note: The Palast Fund contacted a sample of 800 of these challenged voters and found that, overwhelmingly, they were Americans of color.
In 2020, this KKK plan, adopted by the Trump organization, proved its value. In that election, Trump almost won Georgia, falling short by just 11,779 votes — only because local elections officials rejected most of the challenges. But for 2024, the Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature changed the law to make it very difficult for officials to deny the challenges.
That emboldened the Trump-supported organization True the Vote to roll out the challenge to every swing state. In 2024, True the Vote signed up over 40,000 volunteer vigilantes. The organization crowed proudly that, by August of 2024, they’d already challenged a mind-blowing 317,886 voters in dozens of states. By Election Day this November, True the Vote projected it would have challenged over two million voters. In addition, Trump’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, founded Eagle AI to challenge hundreds of thousands more including in swing state Pennsylvania.
How many voters ultimately lost their ballots? Almost all voting officials we’ve contacted have refused to answer.
Placebo Ballots
Those voters who’d been challenged but mailed in their ballot would be unlikely to know their vote had been lost. Others who showed up in person at a poll would be told they could not vote on a regular ballot. These voters were sent away or forced to vote on a “provisional” ballot.
If you’ve been challenged or find you’ve been purged off the registration rolls, you’ll be offered one of these provisional ballots, paper ballots you place in a special envelope. Typically, you’ll be promised your registration will be checked and then your ballot will be counted. Bullshit. If you’re challenged, unless you personally contact or go into your county clerk’s office with ID and proof of address, your ballot goes into the electoral dumpster.
A better name for a “provisional” ballot would be “placebo” ballot. You think you’ve voted, but chances are, you did not, that is, your ballot wasn’t counted.
Here’s an ugly number: According to the US Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), in 2016, when 2.5 million provisional ballots were cast, a breathtaking 42.3% were never counted. Think about that. Over a million Americans lost their vote — though, notably, not one was charged attempting to vote illegally. And that was in 2016, before the vigilante challenges and before millions more had been purged from the rolls leading up to the 2024 election.
And here’s the statistic that matters most. Black, Hispanic or Asian-American voters are 300% more likely than white voters to be shunted to a “placebo” provisional ballot.
The Great Purge and the Poison Postcard
The polite term in government agencies is, “List Maintenance.” It’s best known as The Purge — when voters’ registrations are wiped off the rolls. The EAC keeps track of The Purge. It’s a big business. For example, before the 2022 election, when the data was last available, swing state North Carolina wiped 392,851 voters off the rolls.
The majority of removals were based on questionable, indeed, shockingly faulty information that a voter had moved their residence. I’m not talking about the 4.9 million voters purged because they’re dead, or eight million others whose residential move could be verified, nor those serving time in prison nor those ruled too crazy to vote.
I’m talking about a trick that has been perfected by politicians of both parties to eliminate voters of the wrong persuasion: the Poison Postcard. Here’s how it works: Targeted voters are mailed postcards by state elections officials. (Let’s remember, state voting chiefs, “Secretaries of State,” are almost to a one partisan hacks.) Voters who don’t sign and return the cards, which look like junk mail, will be purged.
The Poison Postcard response rate is close to nothing. In Arizona, according to the EAC, just one in ten postcards are returned. And in Georgia, the vote-saving response is barely above 1%. And that’s the way our partisan voting officials like it.
Were the millions of Americans purged before the 2024 election all fraudsters who should lose their right to vote? Direct marketing expert Mark Swedlund told us, “This only means that most people, especially young people, the poor and voters of color, simply ignore junk mail.”
With the help of Swedlund and the same experts used by Amazon — and believe me, Amazon knows exactly where you live — we took a deep dive into two states’ purge operations for the ACLU.
The state of Georgia had purged hundreds of thousands from the voter rolls on grounds they’d moved from their voting addresses. Our experts, going name by name through Georgia’s purge list, working from special data provided us by the US Postal Service, identified 198,351 Georgians who had been purged for moving had, in fact, not moved an inch from their legal voting address.
In 2020, I testified in federal court for the NAACP and RainbowPUSH, presenting our expert findings to get those voters, overweighted with minorities and young Georgians, back on the rolls. Unfortunately, the Trump’d-up court system now gives huge deference to a state’s voting operations, a trend which first took off in 2013 when the US Supreme Court defenestrated the Voting Rights Act.
The results have been devastating. According to the EAC data, before the 2024 election, 4,776,706 registrants were removed nationwide simply because they failed to return the postcard.
Also in 2020, the Palast Investigative Fund produced a technical report for Black Voters Matter Fund on a proposed purge of 153,779 voters in Wisconsin, a plan pushed by Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a group financed by right-wing billionaires. For Black Voters Matter, we brought back our team of location experts who proved, name by name, that the proposed purge was wildly riddled with errors.
Notably, we found that the purged was aimed almost exclusively at African-Americans in Milwaukee and at students in Madison. The non-partisan Elections Board agreed with us, allowing those voters to cast ballots, with the result that Biden squeaked by Trump in Wisconsin by 20,682 votes. (Note: It was not our intention to elect Biden, but to allow the voters, not some Purge’n General, to pick our President.)
Unfortunately, before the 2024 election, the Poison Postcard Purge accelerated. This time, a new Elections Board in Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) decided to use the same discredited purge list to knock off 166,433 voters which, this time, we could not stop. Kamala Harris lost that state by just 29,397 votes. In Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), the Poison Postcards wiped out 360,132 voters, three times Trump’s victory margin.
And before the vote this year, Georgia ramped up the purge, targeting an astonishing 875,000 voters, earning it the #1 ranking for “election integrity” by the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation.
I saw the purge in action in Savannah, Georgia, this October, where 900 Savannah voters, most of them Black, were challenged by one single “vigilante,” according to voting expert Carry Smith. Smith, who wrote her doctoral thesis on wrongful purges in Georgia, was herself on the hit list.
And More
We haven’t even touched on other ways that voters of color, college students and urban voters have come under attack. These include the rejection of new registrations and rejection of in-person votes as “spoiled” (i.e. rejected as unreadable), costing, according to the EAC, more than a million votes — rejections which our 25 years of investigations have found are way overweighted against the Democratic demographic.
After the 2012 election, I was able to calculate, with cold certainty, that 2,383,587 new voters had their registrations rejected; 488,136 legitimate absentee ballots were disqualified, and so on. In that election, a total of 5,901,814 citizens were blocked from voting or had their ballots disqualified. These stats were based on the hard data from the EAC which gathers detailed reports from the states.
Today, with new, sophisticated, and well-financed vote suppression operations, the number of voters purged and ballots disqualified are clearly far higher than the suppression count of 2012. Unfortunately, the EAC won’t release data, if it does at all, for at least a year. We’ve put in Open Records requests to the states, but today’s officials are stonewalling and slow-walking our requests for the data. In no other democracy are the vote totals — or, to be clear, the uncounted ballot totals — a state secret.
America deserves an answer to this question: Excluding a boost from Jim Crow vote suppression games, did Donald Trump win?
From the shockingly huge numbers we’ve discussed here of provisional and mail-in ballots disqualified, the postcard purge operation, the vigilante challenges and so on, we can say, with reasonable certainty, Trump lost — that is, would have lost both the Electoral College and popular vote totals absent suppression.
By how much?
For those who can’t sleep without my best estimate, let me apply the most conservative methodology possible, as I would do in a government investigation.
I’ve updated the 2012 suppression numbers with the newest available data. Not surprisingly, the suppression number has soared, in part because the number of voters has increased by 41.3 million since 2012. But principally, the votes “lost” also zoomed upward because of the massive increase in mail-in balloting by Democrats since 2012, and crucially, the effect of new Jim Crow voting restrictions. Given a minimum two-to-one racial and partisan disparity in voters purged and ballots disqualified, the 2024 “suppression factor” is no less than 4.596% of the total vote.
Those familiar with data mining will note that there is some double-counting in the 9 million voters and their ballots disqualified that I cited at the top of the article. In addition, we must recognize that many voters caught up in the purges and challenges would have cast their ballot for Trump. Therefore, I’ve conservatively cut in half the low end of the range of the calculation of votes suppressed to 2.3% to isolate the effect on Trump’s official victory margin.
In other words, vote suppression cost Kamala Harris no less than 3,565,000 votes. Harris would have topped Trump’s official total by 1.2 million. Most important, this 2.3% suppression factor undoubtedly cost Harris the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. If not for the wholesale attack on votes and voters, Harris would have won the election with 286 Electoral votes.
Tech note from a numbers guy — and Martin Luther King
Until the Elections Assistance Commission gets updated figures from the states next year (and, under Trump, I doubt we will ever get those numbers), 3,565,000 votes lost to Harris is the estimate I would present in my role as a forensic expert in a courtroom as the lowest conceivable suppression factor.
I rarely make a big deal about my own credentials but, since the election, the Web has been flooded by amateur, arithmetic-defying speculation about computer hacking and other unsupported twaddle. Best to stick to hard, verifiable data. And that’s what I do.
For two decades, I was a forensic economist for government agencies including the US Justice Department; taught statistics at Indiana University; provided expert calculations of vote suppression for the ACLU, NAACP, and RainbowPUSH and won the Global Editors Award for my data journalism on vote suppression measurements for reports done for Al Jazeera, BBC, Rolling Stone and The Guardian. The numbers you get here are exactly what I’d present to a Federal court. In other words, kids, don’t do this at home…calculating the “un-count” requires expertise.
I make this point for another reason: The theory that “Elon Musk messed with the voting machines” is, unconsciously, unintentionally racist. With few exceptions, these silly speculations come from those who simply ignore not just the millions of votes officially reported as suppressed, their theories also ignore the horrifically painful experience of Black people turned away from the polls.
Here is a photo of Jessica Lawrence in tears, moments after her 92-year-old grandmother was tossed out of an Atlanta polling station, into a storm, because she’d been wrongfully purged. Any speculation about the nefarious cause of Trump’s must not leave out Jessica’s grandma nor the millions of other citizens of color who were wrongly barred from their ballot.
Jessica Lawrence at an Atlanta polling station just after her 92-year-old grandmother was denied a ballot. (Photo: David Ambrose for the Palast Investigative Fund, 2018.) See Ms. Jordan and Maj. Turner in the film, Vigilantes Inc: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, available without charge on YouTube.
Now here’s the good news
We saw that in 2020 when, despite extreme, even felonious actions by Trump supporters to block, challenge and disqualify voters and ballots, the theft by suppression was defeated.
That was the work of voting rights groups challenging these attacks. The work was done in the courts and, more important, in the precincts, re-registering the purged, challenging the challenges, “curing” disqualified ballots.
The road is long but victory is certain. After the 2016 election, the Palast team uncovered a cruel, racist purge program called, “Interstate Crosscheck” that cost nearly a million voters, overwhelmingly minorities, their rights. This motivated the Rev. Jesse Jackson to launch a campaign that successfully shut down Crosscheck. Unquestionably, Joe Biden could not have won in 2020 without the Reverend saving literally hundreds of thousands of votes. The point is, they can’t suppress all the votes all the time.
In other words, Democracy can win, despite the 2.3% suppression headwind.
And that’s our job as Americans: to end the purges, the vigilante challenges, the ballot rejections and the attitude that this is all somehow OK.
Martin Luther King gave us our marching orders in 1965, in words just as important today.
“Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena. I want to say to the people of America and the nations of the world, that we are not about to turn around. We are on the move now.”
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Environment
Virtual Town Hall on Water Quality
Join a virtual town hall on Jan. 29 with a representative from Mayor Bass’ office, LADWP, WLCAC, and the East Side Riders Bike Club. Learn about efforts to address water quality, access free water testing through LADWP, and ask your questions.
Know Your Rights. Free Community Workshop on Immigration Rights
Janice Hahn’s office, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Cerritos College are partnering to host a free immigrant rights workshop in English and Spanish Jan. 29.
Learn about your rights and how to protect them in various situations. Understand your immigration status and receive information on resources available to you.
LONG BEACH — Officers in the North Division conducted two unrelated investigations leading to the rescue of three human trafficking victims and the arrest of a male adult suspect.
On Jan. 15, North Division officers on patrol in the area of Long Beach Boulevard and Artesia Boulevard observed a female teenager, later determined to be 14-years-old, who appeared to be soliciting for commercial sex work. Officers determined the 14-year-old to be the victim of human trafficking.
On Jan. 20, officers from the High Crime Focus Team conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle. During the stop, officers observed the occupants of the vehicle were the male adult driver and two female teenagers, later determined to be a 16-year-old female and a 17-year-old female. During the course of the investigation, officers determined that the male adult driver was on active parole for pimping and a weapons violation. Officers determined both teenagers were victims of human trafficking and that the suspect had sexually battered one of the victims while in the vehicle. The suspect was identified as Huston Hughes, a 37-year-old resident of Los Angeles. He was booked for a parole violation and sexual battery with prior felony conviction. Bail was set at No Bail.
All three victims were released into the custody of the Department of Children and Family Services, who safely reconnected the victims with their families.
To report incidents of human trafficking:
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, always call 9-1-1.
If you have information about a trafficking situation, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline toll-free (24/7) by calling 1-888-373-7888, texting 233733, or using the online chat feature at humantraffickinghotline.org/chat.
Anyone with information regarding these investigations is urged to call the Long Beach Police Department’s Vice Investigation Detail at 562-570-7219. Anyone wishing to remain anonymous may submit a tip through “LA Crime Stoppers” at 1-800-222-8477 or www.lacrimestoppers.org.
LONG BEACH — Riverpark Coalition and Los Angeles Waterkeeper Jan. 27 announced that the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy or RMC has awarded the Watershed Conservation Authority two separate grants for the Wrigley Heights River Park land acquisition and park planning project during their Jan. 22, board meeting held at Bellflower City Hall. The grants, totaling $19.3 million, will facilitate the acquisition and environmental restoration of approximately six acres of land owned by the Jeanne E. McDonald Revocable Trust (McDonald Trust). This work is a crucial step in the development of a portion of what is commonly referred to in Los Angeles River and other related planning documents as Wrigley Heights River Park North.
Riverpark Coalition
Identified as a high-potential park opportunity site in the RMC’s lower LA River revitalization plan, the Wrigley Heights River Park encompasses two separate parcels along the Los Angeles River at the intersection of the I-405 and I-710 freeways. Riverpark Coalition, a community-based organization of western Long Beach residents who lack equitable access to green space and face disproportionate pollution burdens, has advocated preserving these sites as open space for years.
The acquisition supported by these funds is consistent with RMC’s plan and the 2015 update to the City of Long Beach’s RiverLink plan, unanimously approved by city council that same year.
The land that will be acquired with these funds is one of the last two remaining undeveloped tracts along the Los Angeles River in Long Beach. The McDonald Trust has been collaborating with the RMC to ensure the property’s future as a vital public green space. The property is located in the area of 3701 Pacific Place, where Pacific Avenue/Place ends at the north on-ramps to the I-405 and I-710 freeways.
Juan Ovalle, President of the Riverpark Coalition and Benjamin Harris, senior staff attorney for Los Angeles Waterkeeper, issued the following statement in response to the grants for acquiring the McDonald Trust parcels: “Riverpark Coalition and LA Waterkeeper would like to express our sincere gratitude to the RMC Governing Board for their unanimous decision to approve these grants and to the RMC staff for their extensive research and exceptional work in bringing these projects to consideration. We thank the McDonald Trust for being an open and willing partner in this process.
We acknowledge Long Beach Councilmembers Megan Kerr (Fifth District) for submitting a letter of support to RMC and Roberto Uranga (Seventh District) a member of RMC Board for his vote in favor of the acquisition and planning for this key portion of the northern Wrigley Heights River Park site.
Finally, a sincere thank you to the members of the community for their support in shaping the future of western Long Beach so that all residents have equitable access to green spaces and improved air quality.”
The advantages of preserving this site as a publicly accessible green space are immeasurable. This project will deliver significant benefits to the surrounding communities, and enhance the health and well-being of nearby residents, by:
Promoting Equity and Accessibility: Providing much-needed recreational opportunities for Long Beach’s Westside residents, addressing existing disparities in park access.
Improving Environmental Health: Enhancing air quality through oxygen production, additional carbon capture, and mitigation of dust and fine particulate matter. Additionally, the project will offer opportunities to improve stormwater management and reduce the amount of polluted runoff that ends up in the Los Angeles River.
Increasing Flood Resiliency: The green space will serve as a floodable area for nearby stormwater runoff, mitigating flood risks to surrounding areas and helping to reclaim the Los Angeles River’s natural floodplain.
Enhancing Ecological Value: Building upon the proven success of RMC projects, this initiative will significantly enhance the ecological value of this urban area by creating additional habitat opportunities for native plants, birds, and other critical species.
“The Rivers and Mountains Conservancy’s unanimous decision to award grants for the Wrigley Heights River Park acquisition and planning project is a momentous victory for western Long Beach,” declares Juan Ovalle, President of the Riverpark Coalition. “This is a significant step towards addressing the stark disparity in park access between Long Beach’s Westside, where residents have less than two acres of green space per 1,000 people, and the Eastside, which boasts 17 acres per 1,000 residents. Riverpark Coalition’s community and environmental advocacy, alongside LA Waterkeeper, will continue to unequivocally convey a powerful message: the well-being of our community, the preservation and creation of vital green spaces, and the quality of life for our children are paramount and worth every ounce of our collective effort.”
While the RMC’s acquisition of the McDonald Trust parcels is a significant victory for the environment and the communities of western Long Beach, more must be done to ensure the Wrigley Heights River Park (North) site is protected. Starting in 2021, Riverpark Coalition joined forces with LA Waterkeeper to prevail in a lawsuit brought under the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA and halt InSite’s proposed development of a self-storage warehouse and recreational vehicle storage lot and facility, forcing a full Environmental Impact Report. InSite is still moving forward with the proposed project, located on the western parcel, adjacent to the newly approved Wrigley Heights River Park site. Riverpark Coalition and LA Waterkeeper remain steadfast in their efforts to oppose the development and will continue to promote park space as a more appropriate and much needed land use.
“The Watershed Conservation Authority’s acquisition of the McDonald Trust parcels is a critical first step toward turning the entire area into open space for the benefit of western Long Beach communities,” said Benjamin Harris, Senior Staff Attorney for Los Angeles Waterkeeper. “We are optimistic that this significant milestone will advance our efforts to add green space throughout the Los Angeles River watershed and reclaim the river’s natural floodplain to the greatest possible extent.”
CARSON — Recent devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area have left a trail of destruction, impacted countless homes and displaced numerous families. In response to this crisis, the City of Carson Jan 16 joined with the Prevailing Family Life Center to provide critical support and relief to those affected.
The collaboration, which is named Operation Carson Cares, aims to channel much-needed donations directly to families who have been severely impacted by the fires. Through this partnership, the City of Carson and the Prevailing Family Life Center are committed to assist in rebuilding communities during this challenging time.
“We recognize the urgent need to support our neighbors who have faced tremendous loss due to the wildfires,” said Mayor of Carson Lula Davis-Holmes. “By partnering with the Prevailing Family Life Center, we can efficiently direct resources where they are most needed, providing essential aid to those struggling to recover.”
Community members in Carson are encouraged to contribute to the relief effort by making financial donations through the Prevailing Family Life Center. Donations can be made securely and conveniently through:
Zelle: info@prevailingflc.org Cash App: $prevailingflc Check: Payable to Prevailing Family Life Center. Mail checks & gift cards: Prevailing Family Life Center at 552 E. Carson Street, Suite 104-464, Carson, California, 90745 Drop-off checks & gift cards: Church office available 7seven days a week between 1 and 6 p.m. at 1609 E. Del Amo Blvd., Carson, CA 90746.
For more information on how to donate and support Los Angeles wildfire victims, visit Prevailing Family Life Center’s website https://prevailingfamilylifecenter.org/operation-carson-cares/ or contact 424-209-2556.
Here are the latest updates from LA County’s Coordinated Joint Information Center as of 10 a.m., Jan. 23.
Hughes Fire Fire Size: 10,176 acres, 14% contained Structures Threatened: 14,611 Structures Damaged: 0 Structures Destroyed: 0 Note: Does not include structures believed destroyed, but pending confirmation. Eaton Fire Fire Size: 14,021 acres, 95% contained Structures Threatened: 6,775 Structures Damaged: 1,073 Structures Destroyed: 9,418 Note: Does not include structures believed destroyed, but pending confirmation. Palisades Fire Fire Size: 23,448 acres, 72% contained Structures Threatened: 12,417 Structures Damaged: 904 Structures Destroyed: 6,770 Note: Does not include structures believed destroyed, but pending confirmation.
National Weather Service Extends Red Flag Warning Due to extremely low relative humidity and periods of gusty offshore winds, a Red Flag Warning has been extended through Jan. 24 until 10 a.m. for most of Los Angeles County. There is a potential storm expected to enter the region on Saturday, Jan. 25, and last through Monday, Jan. 27. The latest forecast calls for a quarter to a half inch of rain with 10-20% chance of thunderstorms. For more weather information from the National Weather Service, click here.
Casualties The LA County Medical Examiner has confirmed 28 deaths as a result of the fires. The office continues investigating these deaths and will update their website with additional cases if more deaths are determined during search and rescue operations.
THE PRESIDENT: My fellow Americans, I am speaking to you tonight from the Oval Office. Before I begin, let me speak to important news from earlier today. After eight months of nonstop negotiation, my administration — by my administration, a ceasefire and a hostage deal has been reached by Israel and Hamas, the elements of which I laid out in great detail in May of this year. This plan was developed and negotiated by my team and will be largely implemented by the incoming administration. That’s why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed, because that’s how it should be: working together as Americans. This will be my final address to you — the American people from the Oval Office, from this desk as president. And I’ve been thinking a lot about who we are and, maybe more importantly, who we should be. Long ago, in New York Harbor, an ironworker installed beam after beam, day after day. He was joined by steelworkers, stone masons, engineers. They built not just a single structure but a beacon of freedom. The very idea of America was so big, we felt the entire world needed to see — the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France after our Civil War. Like the very idea of America, it was built not by one person but by many people, from every background and from around the world. Like America, the Statue of Liberty is not standing still. Her foot literally steps forward atop a broken chain of human bondage. She’s on the march, and she literally moves. She was built to sway back and forth to withstand the fury of stormy weather, to stand the test of time, because storms are always coming. She sways a few inches, but she never falls into the current below — an engineering marvel. The Statue of Liberty is also an enduring symbol of the soul of our nation, a soul shaped by forces that bring us together and by forces that pull us apart. And yet, through good times and tough times, we’ve withstood it all. A nation of pioneers and explorers, of dreamers and doers, of ancestors native to this land, of ancestors who came by force, a nation of immigrants who came to build a better life, a nation holding the torch of the most powerful idea ever in the history of the world that all of us — all of us are created equal. That all of us deserve to be treated with dignity, justice and fairness. That democracy must defend and be defined and be imposed, moved in every way possible. Our rights, our freedoms, our dreams. But we know the idea of America — our institution, our people, our values that uphold it — are constantly being tested. Ongoing debates about power and the exercise of power, about whether we lead by the example of our power or the power of our example, whether we show the courage to stand up to the abuse of power or we yield to it. After 50 years at the center of all of this, I know that believing in the idea of America means respecting the institutions that govern a free society: the presidency, the Congress, the courts, a free and independent press. Institutions that are rooted not just to reflect the timeless words, but they echo the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Rooted in the timeless words of the Constitution, “We the People.” Our system of separation of powers, checks and balances, it may not be perfect, but it’s maintained our democracy for nearly 250 years — longer than any other nation in history that’s ever tried such a bold experiment. In the past four years, our democracy has held strong. And every day, I’ve kept my commitment to be president for all Americans through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history. I’ve had a great partner in Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s been the honor of my life to see the resilience of essential workers getting us through a once-in-a-century pandemic, the heroism of service members and first responders keeping us safe, the determination of advocates standing up for our rights and our freedoms. Instead of losing their jobs to an economic crisis that we inherited, millions of Americans now have the dignity of work; millions of entrepreneurs and companies creating new businesses and industries, hiring American workers, using American products. And together, we’ve launched a new era of American possibilities — one of the greatest modernizations of infrastructure in our entire history, from new roads, bridges, clean water, affordable high-speed internet for every American. We invented the semiconductor — smaller than the tip of my little finger. And now it’s bringing those chip factories and those jobs back to America where they belong, creating thousands of jobs. Finally giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for millions of seniors. And finally doing something to protect our children and our families by passing the most significant gun safety law in 30 years and bringing violent crime to a 50-year low. Meeting our sacred obligation to over 1 million veterans so far who were exposed to toxic materials, and to their families — providing medical care and education benefits and more for their families. You know, it will take time to feel the full impact of all we’ve done together. But the seeds are planted, and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come. At home, we’ve created nearly 17 million new jobs — more than any other single administration in a single term. More people have health care than ever before. And overseas, we’ve strengthened NATO. Ukraine is still free. And we’ve pulled ahead of our competition with China. And so much more. I’m so proud of how much we’ve accomplished together for the American people. And I wish the incoming administration success, because I want America to succeed. That’s why I’ve upheld my duty to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition of power to ensure we lead by the power of our example. I have no doubt that America is in a position to continue to succeed.
LA Times, “Dead”? On Jan. 14, I sent the letter, below, to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times. As expected, no response. Erik Kongshaug, former Editor, Random Lengths News
Dearest LA Times, Give us back your Editorial hand. You owe it to us the people of your city. Especially now in the face of our common disaster. Do not reduce us to the ones and zeros of your venture-AI algorithms, to the fears of the privileged versus the fears of the homeless. Only when stripped of human context does the opposing opinion to courage become an opinion driven by fear. In real human context the true opposition to fear reveals itself, rather, as community. So show us that much courage, LA Times, in these times of our shared suffering. Give us your honest opinion as a group, as an institution: As an Editorial.
In today’s e-paper as well as in the print edition, two “Op-Ed”s appeared opposite one another — one from the right and one from the left— with no paper’s “Editorial” in between. Today one can forgive even an experienced journalist for assuming that “Op-Ed” stands for “Opinion Editorial.” In context it really and still stands for “Opposite the Editorial” as it always has historically, in the physical layout of a broadsheet. If the editorial opinion of your paper is to be the opinion of its owner, then own it. By withdrawing your Editorial hand, as you have since the last presidential election, and by replacing it with a more perfect AI glove for privileged narcissism, you leave us truly on the one hand with what Adam Smith only hoped with sufficient human empathy might come to exist as “Invisible.” And on the other, you leave us with what is only the opposite out of context: What Pasadena native Upton Sinclair referred to as “Dead.”
Faked Assassination Attempt Could Become Real
As usual, that 78-year-old senile sex offender disgusting Donald Trump is his own worst enemy. Traitor Trump’s non-stop suggestions to his fascist followers that their fraudulent failure of a Fuhrer be allowed an unelected third term as Putin’s puppet president beginning in 2028 is insane, much like Trump’s pathetic plutocratic posse themselves. Specifically, if you conservative Kool-Aid drinkers want to lose your GOP cult leader Orange Jim Jones to an actual assassination attempt (unlike Trump’s own faked assassination attempt in Pennsylvania which was actually a staged TV event), then keep on talking about a blatantly unconstitutional third term in the White House. Then there’s Trump’s demand that America’s generals behave more like Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler’s generals. That can be arranged. Calling Colonel Stauffenberg! Didn’t you wonder why adjudicated rapist and convicted felon Trump is replacing his original Republican choice for FBI Director Christopher Wray with an imbecile like corrupt Kash Patel, that asinine anchor baby from India? Beta male Mr. Patel is politically dead meat as far as his potential subordinates at the FBI are concerned. And they are concerned, believe me. But being patriots, they will take Patel down eventually, because everyone at the FBI knows Kash Patel is a criminal whack job. Current FBI Director Christopher Wray however sealed his fate when at a televised congressional hearing Director Wray admitted the FBI’s investigation of candidate Donald Trump’s faked assassination attempt concluded Trump was not shot.
Jake Pickering Arcata, CA, USA
Birthright citizenship is a Constitutional right in the United States of America
Donald Trump cannot take that away by the stroke of his pen. Birthright citizenship holds that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen, regardless of their parent’s status, and was included in the 14th Amendment when it was passed in 1866. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” – 14th Amendment The 14th Amendment was created in direct response to the Dred Scott v. Sanford case, which called into question denying citizenship to the descendants of slaves despite their birth in the U.S. Eroding the protections of the 14th Amendment would create an underclass of an essentially stateless population and deny crucial benefits to children born in the U.S. to immigrant parents. It would also harm those with pending Visa applications, which could lead to permanent status. An executive order does not override a Constitutional Amendment. The LACDP stands in solidarity with the ACLU and the 24 states and cities suing the Trump administration over this blatantly racist attack on immigrants in our country. We are committed to supporting and defending Constitutional rights and the core principles of democracy for everyone in the United States. In Solidarity, Mark Ramos, Chair, LA County Democratic party
