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    Trump justice department seeks 2020 election records from Georgia county

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    The justice department on Thursday asked election officials in Fulton county, Georgia to turn over records related to the 2020 election, a request that underscores how the administration is trying to revive one of the president’s biggest falsehoods about the election he lost five years ago.Investigators have cleared Fulton county of malfeasance in 2020. Nonetheless, a Republican majority on the board voted to re-open the investigation last year. On the night of the 2024 presidential election, the board voted to subpoena a slew of documents. This summer, the board passed a resolution asking the justice department to intervene and help them get the documents. The subpoenas issued last year seek records related to voter lists, chain of custody forms, ballot images, security seals, and ballot scanner paperwork.The 30 October letter from the department’s civil rights division, obtained by the Guardian, asks Fulton county to turn over a slew of records that were subpoenaed by the state election board. The letter’s existence was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.“Transparency seems to have been frustrated at multiple turns in Georgia,” Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who leads the civil rights division, wrote in the letter. She also said the voting section had received correspondence from “voter transparency advocates” of “multiple instances of government obstruction of transparency requests, including high-resolution ballot scans, signature verification documentation, and various metadata requests”. She asked the county to turn over the records within 15 days.A spokesperson for the Fulton county elections board did not immediately return a request for comment. A justice department spokesperson declined to comment beyond what was in the letter.The department’s request comes as the justice department has asked 40 states to turn over voter roll information and has sued eight states that have refused. The White House also recently hired Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who worked on cases seeking to overturn the 2020 election results to work on voting issues. Heather Honey, another prominent election denier whose misleading research was used to sow doubt about the 2020 election results, has also been appointed to an election-related role in the Department of Homeland Security.To justify its request, the justice department cited a provision of the Civil Rights Act that requires election officials to retain election records and gives the attorney general the right to request them. The law requires records be retained for 22 months after a federal election – a period that has long elapsed since the 2020 contest.The letter also said the department also needed the records to comply with two federal statutes, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the federal statute that allows DoJ to request election records requires the justice department to provide a “basis” for requesting them. That was absent in Dhillon’s letter, he said.“In DoJ’s letter, I see a purpose: we want to check up on what you did,” he said. “But the letter just cites a general swath of federal statutes without saying anything about why there’s a basis to believe that the records they’re seeking will shed light on a federal statutory violation. [The] DoJ doesn’t just get to go fishing because it’s curious.” More

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      What’s happening with Marjorie Taylor Greene? Why the Maga loyalist has won some Democratic fans

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      For years she was one of Donald Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers. Marjorie Taylor Greene trafficked in racist statements, indicated support for executing Democrats and even floated conspiracy theories about Jewish space lasers. Beneath a red “Make America great again” cap she became an instantly recognisable face of the Maga movement.Yet in recent months the Georgia congresswoman has surprised friend and foe alike. On issues ranging from healthcare to Gaza to the Jeffrey Epstein files, she has broken ranks with Republicans and won unlikely fans among Democrats. The streak of independence has stirred speculation about her motives – and future ambitions.Notably, Greene has stopped short of directly criticising Trump himself and has so far avoided incurring the president’s wrath. But her willingness to dissent from the party line is all the more remarkable under a president who notoriously prizes loyalty and punishes critics.“I was wrong about Marjorie Taylor Greene,” was the headline of an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article last week by political columnist Patricia Murphy, who wrote: “Even if you don’t agree with Greene on everything – or even most things – you have to admire her willingness in this moment to say what is true, even when other Republicans refuse to. Maybe it’s career suicide, or maybe it’s leadership.”Greene long revelled in her role as a far-right provocateur. She led prison visits to rioters arrested after the January 6 insurrection, called for Joe Biden’s impeachment and, at last year’s State of the Union address, confronted Biden while wearing a Maga hat and heckled him during his speech.But since Trump’s return to office, the 51-year-old has increasingly gone rogue on both domestic and foreign policy. She criticised White House plans to send “billions of dollars” worth of weapons to Ukraine and broke from the Republican party’s longstanding support for Israel by describing its war in Gaza as a “genocide”.She was one of just four Republicans to sign on to a discharge petition to release files related to the sex offender Epstein, repeatedly dismissed by Trump as a “hoax”. Speaking at a press conference with the Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, she insisted: “The truth needs to come out. And the government holds the truth.”Greene has been among the most outspoken critics of the stance of the House speaker, Mike Johnson, during the federal government shutdown, arguing that Republicans should be in Washington rather than on indefinite recess and it is they who have the power to end the standoff.She is also siding with Democrats in their drive to continue the pandemic-era temporary expansion of Affordable Care Act premium subsidies to help Americans pay for upcoming insurance rate hikes.In a lengthy screed on social media, Greene wrote: “I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.“No I’m not towing [sic] the party line on this, or playing loyalty games. I’m a Republican and won’t vote for illegals to have any tax payer funded healthcare or benefits. I’m AMERICA ONLY!!! I’m carving my own lane.”It is a battle over the meaning of Maga. Greene denies that she is turning against her own party. She told the Hill website this week: “I am 100% the same person today as I was when I ran for Congress.” Indeed, her voting record in Congress is still closely aligned with Trump. But she claims to be staying true to her populist roots by siding with her constituents against the elites.Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said: “Marjorie Taylor Greene is a very complex person and she’s a complex politician and it looks like she’s making interesting choices. Overall she is still very much a Maga-identified Trump-supporting Republican.“That is what is giving her latitude to be able to deviate from the party line and to deviate from the Trump line when she thinks it is advantageous to do so. One of the things that’s interesting about how she’s doing it is that she invokes basically a delegate-style representation when she does this.”The Guardian put Greene’s political instincts to the test in a series of interviews with voters and found concern about steep premium increases in health insurance if the subsidies lapse.Pete Van Horn, a retiree who is a Republican, said: “We’ve worked all our lives and them prices keep going up. That’s not right. We should get a break somewhere.”Pat Hayman, a retired schoolteacher from Calhoun, Georgia, said of Greene: “She comes on a little hard but I basically agree with it. You know the healthcare system needs overhauling. I’m on Medicare and Blue Cross-Blue Shield, and we’re fine with that. But young couples? To me, it’s a business more so than taking care of [them].”Michael Ross, an electrician from Floyd county, Georgia, laughed: “I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is hilarious. I’ll probably vote for her again. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know what she thinks but I like to see shit stirred up.”He added: “I like her stirring the pot. Is she crazy? She might be crazy. I don’t know. She’s got more information than I got. Like I said: I like to see the pot stirred.”To some observers, Greene’s position is not so surprising. They note that Republicans have never been as dedicated to small government as the mythology of Ronald Reagan implies. Greene, they argue, is in line with the modern Republican party’s economic populism, including Trump’s own thinking.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: ‘There are certainly many smaller government conservatives but she’s far from being a lone wolf here.“In the question of support for working-class and middle-class Americans through government action, she probably speaks for a very large segment of Republicans, and a large group of people who would be Maga as opposed to old guard Republicans.”Others suggest that Greene might have more personal motives for speaking out. She reportedly began to explore the possibility of running for Georgia governor or senator next year, only to be knocked back by the White House on the basis of polling that showed her divisiveness would put statewide seats in jeopardy.Jeff Timmer, executive director of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, believes that Greene’s newfound willingness to speak out “can be attributed more to a woman scorned than the evolution of human goodness in Marjorie Taylor Greene”.He said: “They didn’t want her to run; she’s getting a pound of flesh. ‘You wanted to put your thumb on me and thought I’d just play the loyal soldier? Well, I’m going to defy you on some key things like the Epstein files or healthcare and Medicaid.”Yet Greene has been careful to continue expressing support for Trump. She has avoided – so far at least – an insult-laden rebuke on social media that could spell the beginning of the end of her career, as for so many Republicans during the president’s first term.Her stance could embolden other Republicans to carefully test the boundaries of dissent. The Maine senator Susan Collins has criticised the administration’s handling of the shutdown and taken aim at the budget director, Russ Vought, for permanently laying off thousands of federal workers.The Texas senator Ted Cruz recently compared comments from the Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr – who hinted at punitive measures against broadcasters – to “mafia tactics”.Beyond Capitol Hill, Oklahoma’s governor, Kevin Stitt, told the New York Times that he opposed Trump’s move to send Texas national guard troops to Illinois as a violation of “states’ rights”. And Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, used X to register his own protest, condemning the administration’s cancellation of North America’s biggest solar project.Gillespie of Emory University commented: “What Marjorie Taylor Greene presents is a challenge to the narrative that Republicans are a monolith at this point. Yes, Trump has consolidated power. The ideology in Maga, in the Republican coalition, has certainly shifted in a rightward direction and we have watched politicians adjust to that.“But the Republican party still has some heterogeneity even as it is conservative and so you are going to see people deviate from the party. 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      Palestinian American denied slot at DNC competing for Georgia governor: ‘We’re trying to rebuild the coalition’

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      Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian-American elected to state-level office in Georgia, was fighting for a speaking slot a year ago at the Democratic national convention, hoping to draw attention to concerns among progressive voters about the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.On Monday, she announced her candidacy for governor in Georgia – looking for a different kind of attention.“I’m running to build the movement,” she told the Guardian. “Because for over the 20 years Republicans have controlled our state, hospitals have shut down, the minimum wage on our books is still $5.15 an hour, and our education continues to drop. In order to fix all of those things, the first things, the first thing we need to do is replace who the governor is.”Romman, a 32-year-old state representative, enters a crowded field of Democrats seeking the nomination. Lucy McBath, a Georgia congresswoman, who had widely been considered a frontrunner, withdrew from consideration last year, citing her husband’s health. Jason Esteves, a former state senator, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor, Michael Thurmond, a former DeKalb county CEO, Derrick Jackson, a state representative, and Geoff Duncan, a former lieutenant governor and previously a Republican, are competing in the May primary.She laughs at comparisons with Zohran Mamdami’s progressive run in the New York City mayoral race.“I am not here to define any other candidate but myself, for the average everyday voters, as someone who cares about economic issues,” she said. “A typical voter, for me, is young and progressive, but I’m also going after the older voters that understandably are very cynical and very nihilistic right now, and think this is the way the world is, and it will always be.View image in fullscreen“We are trying to rebuild the coalition. And to do that, we are building it so that we can bring those groups back that just don’t see anybody fighting for them, which inadvertently, by the way, ends up being everybody.”Georgia has elected several Muslim men to the general assembly; Romman became the first Muslim woman in 2022, winning a seat in the Atlanta suburbs of Gwinnett county. She is religiously observant and wears a headscarf in public. Born in Jordan and raised in Georgia, Romman was an activist for years before entering politics, she said.Romman became the face of the Uncommitted voter movement that grew out of discontent with the Biden administration’s seemingly unconditional support for Israel as images of dead children washed through America’s political consciousness last year. She lobbied to no avail for a speaking slot at the convention, so that the party would at least acknowledge the internal conflict.Ultimately, Romman released a message endorsing Kamala Harris, while calling for the combatants to “reach a ceasefire, end the killing of Palestinians, free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages and to begin the difficult work of building a path to collective peace and safety”.Romman acknowledges that most people watching politics probably recognize her from that effort. “But the reality is that I have been doing this work in Georgia for over a decade,” she said. “And while I understand how that plays into all of this … I hope that the same people who paid attention to that nationally and locally will now pay attention to our state and everything that is possible here.”Republicans have held the governor’s seat since 2003 in Georgia with a string of conservatives who have generally eschewed deep ideological partisanship in favor of business-friendly governance, as typified by governor Brian Kemp’s response to political provocations by Donald Trump.Nonetheless, Georgia remains one of 10 states opting against Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. A brain-dead Georgia woman was kept alive earlier this year to prevent the death of her fetus, a medical decision driven by Georgia’s “fetal heartbeat” anti-abortion law. And pro-growth policies have also led to changes to insurance law, housing affordability and employment law that Democrats believe provides a political opening.Romman said she hopes her candidacy will inspire others to run, particularly in districts where Democrats have struggled in the past, and for people to engage their government and pressure conservatives to consider better options.“Nothing that we are pursuing is unpopular,” she said. “The bills are going up on everything: food, your electric bill, your tax bill on your home, if you’re lucky enough to own a home. If you’re trying to buy a home, you’re getting priced out by corporations. The cultural change that I hope people see is in overcoming cynicism and restoring this civic ethos of being involved in government, and seeing government as a place for everybody, not just special interests.” More

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      Georgia governor’s race heats up with entrance of two skeptics of Trump’s 2020 election claims

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      The entrance into the Georgia governor’s race of two prominent figures on the right who stood up to Donald Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election shows how the election interference crisis continues to reverberate in the state’s politics.On Wednesday, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, announced his candidacy. Raffensperger was the recipient of the “perfect phone call” by Trump in 2020 in the wake of his electoral loss in Georgia, pressuring Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn the results.The recording of that phone call led to investigations in Georgia and Washington. Raffensperger’s rejection of stolen election claims and his unwillingness to subvert Georgia election law for partisan purposes landed him near the top of Trump’s enemies list.At a rally in Atlanta during the campaign, Trump called Raffensperger and the outgoing Republican governor, Brian Kemp, “disloyal” and said “they’re doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win”. Kemp is term-limited and cannot run again in 2026.In his announcement address, Raffensperger said: “I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what.”Raffensperger pledged to work toward capping seniors’ property taxes, banning puberty-blocking drugs from minors and eliminating the state income tax.And last Tuesday, former lieutenant governor and erstwhile Republican Geoff Duncan announced his candidacy for governor. Duncan was elected lieutenant governor in 2018 as a Republican, forgoing re-election in 2022 after drawing heated reaction from Trump supporters after repudiating stolen election claims. Duncan testified before the special purpose grand jury in Fulton county examining election-interference claims.Duncan published a book about reforming the Republican party in 2021, and briefly considered running for president under the No Labels brand as an independent in 2024. Presenting himself as a political iconoclast, Duncan announced last month that he had formally switched parties.In the absence of the election-interference case that followed Trump’s efforts in 2020, both Duncan and Raffensperger would have been considered orthodox conservative Republicans by Georgia political standards.But Georgia’s Republican party can no longer be described as orthodox, except in its loyalty to Trump. Delegates to the Georgia GOP convention in January overwhelmingly voted to bar Raffensperger from qualifying as a Republican candidate while they expelled Duncan entirely, citing his appearance at the Democratic National Convention endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential election.The move was largely symbolic; state law provides for no mechanism for a political party to bar a candidate. Nonetheless, the animus from the 2020 election persists.In dueling open letters last year, the Georgia GOP chair, Josh McKoon, described Duncan as “prostituting” himself to CNN as a Trump critic.“[Y]our desperate and ridiculous endorsements of Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris for president, coupled with your inexplicable opposition in 2022 to [Republican Senate candidates] Burt Jones and Herschel Walker, not to mention your comical attempt to run for president as an independent candidate, are violations of the oaths of loyalty you repeatedly swore when you qualified as a Republican candidate for office,” McKoon wrote.Duncan legislated as a “100% pro-life” lawmaker, and supported a 2019 state law banning most abortions – a position he is now repudiating as a Democratic candidate, along with prior positions on gun control and Medicaid expansion. His argument to voters is that cross-party appeal is necessary to beat a Republican in the general election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve never wavered on taking on Trump,” Duncan said in his announcement video. “I’m running for governor to put Georgians in the best position to once again love their neighbors and to make Georgia the frontline of democracy and a backstop against extremism.”Duncan enters a Democratic race that grows increasingly crowded. He faces the state senator Jason Esteves, an Atlanta-area legislator and former Atlanta school board chairperson, as well as former labor commissioner and DeKalb county CEO Michael Thurmond and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Other candidates are expected to announce their bids in coming weeks.Among Republicans, Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, and lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, have already declared their candidacies for governor. Carr stepped down from chairing the Republican Attorneys General Association after learning it had paid for a robocall urging supporters to come to Washington DC and “stop the steal” on 6 January 2021. Carr and Kemp are political allies.Jones is favored by Trump and was a mainstay on the 2024 campaign trail.“Chris Carr and Brad Raffensperger have one thing in common: They are both Never Trumpers,” Jones wrote on Instagram following Raffensperger’s announcement. “There is only one candidate in this race that’s always supported and has the full and complete endorsement of [Trump].”Jones, a Republican state senator in 2020, served as one of the 16 fake electors for Trump – all of whom signed a document, submitted to the National Archives, claiming Trump won Georgia.Fulton county’s district attorney, Fani Willis, had considered charging Jones in the election-interference case, but a Fulton county judge barred her in 2022 from investigating the lieutenant governor after she appeared at a fundraiser for Jones’s opponent. An outside prosecutor determined Jones’s actions as a state senator did not merit “further investigation or further actions” and considered the case closed. More

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      Georgia supreme court ends Fani Willis bid to reverse removal from Trump case

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      The Georgia supreme court on Tuesday declined to hear Fani Willis’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling disqualifying the Fulton county prosecutor from prosecuting Donald Trump’s election interference case.In a 4-3 decision, the state’s highest court let stand the lower court order disqualifying Willis from the racketeering and election interference case that initially snagged 19 defendants, including Donald Trump, in 2023.Georgia’s appeals court removed Willis from the case in December 2024, citing the “appearance of impropriety” created by her relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade.The appellate decision in effect established a new standard in Georgia law for removing a prosecutor from a case, which the Georgia supreme court’s decision allows to stand without review.Trump, while president, is protected from state-level prosecutions, but the other remaining defendants are still subject to prosecution. The case will be reassigned by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, but it is unclear whether Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the council, will be able to find a prosecutor willing to take up the politically fraught, legally complicated case.He said he expected the formal process to begin within a month or so. Skandalakis, a district attorney elected by conservative voters outside of metro Atlanta may simply choose to drop the charges against the remaining 14 defendants, rather than risk the backlash of their constituents and the increasingly vocal and retributive ire of the president. But the primary consideration was a matter of capacity, Skandalakis said.“I have to start looking, today, for a prosecutor to take this case,” Skandalakis said. “You kind of narrow it down to resources – who has the staff – and then you kind of branch out. There are some offices that are too small, that are overrun with cases.”Willis and attorneys for Trump and other defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment.A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to help find enough votes to beat Biden. Four people have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. More

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      Election deniers now hold posts on local US election boards, raising concerns for midterms

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      A number of people who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and often of other elections in which Republicans have not been victorious, have been elevated to positions of power since Donald Trump’s re-election, raising concerns about the potential for partisan meddling in critical parts of the country such as Arizona and Georgia.State by state, activists aligned with the “election integrity” movement have found their way on to local elections boards and elections offices, raising red flags for Democrats who have already started efforts to have them removed.“I think Republicans want to put us in jail,” Fulton county commissioner Dana Barrett said, moments after a contempt hearing in an Atlanta, Georgia, courtroom in August, where she and five other county commissioners were fighting a battle to reject the appointment of two Republican election denialists to the Fulton county board of registrations and elections.The commission’s charter says the board must appoint two nominees made by each political party. A finding of criminal contempt could have resulted in commissioners being jailed until they agreed to make the appointment, but Fulton county superior court judge David Emerson found the board in civil contempt last month for refusing to vote for the appointment as ordered by the court. A $10,000 daily fine for failing to make the appointment is on hold, pending appeal.“At the end of the day, we have no choice but to resist,” Barrett said. “This is not a particularly strategic move on my part, but rather a move to defend the integrity of our elections and to do what I can in my corner of the world to try to help hold this democracy together. If that means I’m resisting, then by all means, I’m resisting.”One of the two appointees in question, Julie Adams, works for the Election Integrity Network, an election denial activist organization founded by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his efforts to overturn the election in Georgia and elsewhere. The other, Jason Frazier, is a consultant for EagleAI, software that collects open-source data of dubious validity to aid activists making thousands of voter challenges at a time. Frazier was a plaintiff in a 2023 lawsuit demanding voter registration purges by the county and the state.“I believe that Jason Frazier and Julie Adams are election deniers,” Barrett said.“We all find ourselves in positions where we have to make tough decisions considering the climate in our country,” said Fulton county commissioner Mo Ivory. “I’m glad to be standing up for the people that put me in office, and continue to fight for our democracy, not for partisan politics, but for what it means to live in a democracy.”In Georgia, board appointments to county election offices are idiosyncratic. Fulton county’s charter gives power to the board of commissioners and to the political parties’ county committees. In neighboring DeKalb county, the appointments are made by the chief judge of its superior court, who is free to reject a nominee by one of the party’s committees if that person doesn’t meet the judge’s legal standards.Such was the case earlier this year, when Shondeana Morris, chief judge of the DeKalb county superior court, rejected William Henderson after a letter campaign by the county’s Democratic committee and voting rights activists. But the judge did allow the appointment of Gail Lee, another Republican activist linked to the Election Integrity Network.During a DeKalb county election board meeting last week, local political activists challenged the qualification of Jason Lary, a former mayor of Stonecrest, Georgia, to run for the city council. Lary recently returned from federal prison, where he was serving a sentence for fraud after being convicted of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal Covid-19 relief funds allocated to the city.Lary is a Democrat and the board has a Democratic majority, but after a brief discussion, the board voted unanimously to kick him off the ballot and strip him of his voter registration, given that he was still under supervision for his sentence and thus ineligible to vote.“The one thing that became clear is the importance of the public to remain vigilant on little things like people who qualified for office,” Lee said at the end of the meeting. “Because if a person hadn’t come for and challenged the candidates then they would have gone forward and possibly had a felon in office.”There’s only so much a Republican activist can accomplish on a five-person board with a Democratic majority, as is the case in metro Atlanta’s core counties. When Adams refused to certify a primary election in Fulton county in 2024, state superior court judges ruled that she was required to do so by state law, a decision affirmed by the Georgia supreme court this week. The duty to certify is “ministerial”, a pronouncement that is obligatory, not discretionary.And many if not most decisions by an elections board involve mundane procedural questions about where to site a voting drop box or how to schedule poll worker training. Even contentious issues often result in unanimous votes.But elections offices are staffed by human beings maintaining sensitive equipment and critical records, all of which are vulnerable to someone with authority and an agenda.Protect Democracy, an advocacy organization, describes a strategy of election subversion in three parts: deceive, disrupt and deny.Disinformation from influencers suggests that voter fraud or noncitizen voting occurs often enough to swing an election. Then these influencers call on their supporters to disrupt election administration and voting process and introduce chaos into the system. Finally, they attempt to interfere or halt the certification process and “declare the true result untrue, unknown, or unknowable”, Protect Democracy’s advocates wrote.The object is to allow the loser to claim victory regardless of the results, forcing a court to either choose a winner or order a new election, delegitimizing a fair vote.Changes wrought by a new law specific to Spalding county, Georgia, populated its board with Republican election activists. The board members and the county’s new elections director called for a hand-count of ballots following elections in 2022 and 2023. The process, observers noted, was painfully slow and riven by inaccuracies that took days to rectify, with an end result that showed Dominion machines had counted votes correctly.They did not hand count ballots in 2024.Spalding county’s Republican elections board members – Ben Johnson, Roy McClain and James Newland – are among the many defendants in a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn a law permitting mass voter challenges passed in the wake of the 2020 election that voting rights advocates argue violates the Voting Rights Act.Meanwhile, Maricopa county’s board of supervisors has been in a political war with the county’s elected recorder Justin Heap to prevent this outcome. Maricopa county contains Phoenix and almost two-thirds of Arizona’s population.Heap, a former state representative, defeated the incumbent Republican in 2024 while refusing to say if he believed the 2020 and 2022 elections were fair and calling Maricopa county elections a “laughingstock”.After Heap’s victory, the board stripped the recorder’s office of its duties to manage in-person early voting and some IT management of voter rolls. Negotiations broke down in May, leading to lawsuits and acrimony. Heap retained America First Legal, a Trump-aligned firm, to represent him in the lawsuit.“Justin Heap is lying about me, and going forward, he better keep my name out of his lying mouth,” Maricopa county supervisor Steve Gallardo said in a July release, refuting claims by Heap that Gallardo had agreed to restore power to the recorder’s office. “Since his election, Justin Heap has taken actions that have confused voters and damaged relationships. This must end. Justin Heap should stop the performative theater and just do his job.”Some states appear to be more fertile ground than others for election denialist’s influence on boards.North Carolina’s Republicans controlled the state legislature with a veto-proof majority last year, even though its former governor Roy Cooper was a Democrat. After Josh Stein, another Democrat, won the governor’s race, legislators stripped the governor of the power to appoint members to state and county elections boards, handing it to newly elected state auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican.The state’s Republican-majority supreme court ratified the law in May after court challenges. Boliek almost immediately replaced 3-2 Democratic majorities with 3-2 Republican majorities across all 100 county election boards.Those appointments have drawn pushback from election denialists as well as from Democratic activists.Places such as Durham county, where less than 10% of voters are registered Republicans, now has a Republican majority on its elections board. But most new board members appear to have been rewarded for their loyalty to the party and not their fidelity to election denialism.“There are concerns that there are people that are getting rewarded as a political favor, as opposed to their working knowledge and their experience in elections,” said Jim Womack, Lee county GOP chair and the president of the non-profit North Carolina Election Integrity Team, speaking to North Carolina news site The Assembly. More

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      in US Politics

      Leaked Ice document shows worker detained in Hyundai raid had valid visa

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      At least one of the Korean workers swept up in a massive immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor factory site in Georgia last week was living and working legally in the US, according to an internal federal government document obtained by the Guardian.Officials then “mandated” that he agree to be removed from the US despite not having violated his visa.The document shows that immigration officials are aware that someone with a valid visa was among the people arrested during the raid at the Hyundai factory and taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention for removal proceedings, where the people arrested remained on Tuesday before expected deportation flights back to South Korea.The document in question reports on the man’s case and was leaked exclusively to the Guardian. It was written by an Ice agent. The Guardian is redacting the identity of the man in question, who arrived in the US in June, because it has not been possible to reach him directly and it is unclear whether he has any legal representation.The document says that immigration agents from Atlanta “determined that [redacted] entered into the United States in [redacted], with a valid B1/B2 visa and [redacted] was employed at HL-GA Battery Company LLC as a contractor from the South Korean company SFA. From statements made and queries in law enforcement databases, [redacted] has not violated his visa; however, the Atlanta Field Office Director has mandated [redacted] be presented as a Voluntary Departure. [Redacted] has accepted voluntary departure despite not violating his B1/B2 visa requirements.”The internal file describes “an actual crime”, according to Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney based in Georgia – but with the crime allegedly being committed by the government, not the immigrant in question. Kuck, who is representing a number of people arrested during last week’s raid, said it is illegal to detain a valid visa holder in this way.“This is outrageous,” Kuck said.The document contradicts claims by the agency that all 475 people arrested during the raid were working illegally or violating their visas. Attorneys scrambling in recent days to provide representation to the men detained had already claimed that immigrants with a valid working status were swept up alongside the people allegedly working unlawfully, and placed in removal proceedings. That view was backed up by an agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive government matters.It is not yet clear whether other people with valid visas were detained in the raid, nor how many were actually alleged to be working illegally at the factory.Approximately 300 people arrested could be put on flights back to South Korea as early as Wednesday, according to one source familiar with events who requested anonymity to speak about what is going on behind the scenes. Non-Koreans arrested during the operation are expected to remain in Ice detention.Last Thursday, Ice led a raid at the Hyundai battery factory under construction in Ellabell, near Savannah, Georgia, and arrested nearly 500 people, the majority of whom were from South Korea, part of a $12.6bn investment program in Georgia by the company. Construction had to be halted on the plant that is designed to supply batteries for electric vehicles.A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the federal parent agency of Ice, said in a statement to the Guardian that: “This individual admitted to unauthorized work on a B1/B2 visa. He was offered voluntary departure and accepted it,” despite this being the opposite of what the leaked document says. When pressed for further clarification, DHS reiterated its first statement. Ice did not respond to a request for comment about legal workers being arrested.“This is a clear violation of the law in detaining somebody who is not lawfully detainable,” Kuck said. “That’s a crime – that’s unlawful imprisonment in the United States. This isn’t an accident. People go to prison for stuff like this.”According to the file written by an agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), an agency within Ice, the man entered the US “with a valid B1/B2 visa”, which allows for some business-related activities and tourism. He was at the Hyundai factory as a contractor with a South Korean company.“‘ Voluntarily’ means something different in immigration than it does in the real world,” Kuck said. “When you basically leave under Ice custody, then you have immigration consequences that come with that, including the loss of visa and possibly an inability to return [to the US].”After the raid, additional Ice officers and agents were sent to the detention facility to process the sheer number of people arrested, according to the agency official who spoke to the Guardian.Although officials say that the people arrested were in some violation of immigration laws, many others with valid legal status were offered voluntary departure, the official claimed. The official added that it is unclear what will happen with any legal immigrants who refuse to be deported voluntarily, since there is “no legal mechanism to remove them if they are not in violation” of US civil immigration laws. There is no suggestion that the Korean man in question has a criminal record in the US.“The arrest itself is illegal and this just might be a way of pushing up [arrest] numbers and covering up mistakes,” the official added.The raid angered the South Korean government, which announced billions of dollars of investment in the US following a new trade deal between the countries. On Sunday, the South Korean and US governments negotiated a deal to take the arrested workers home.“These workers were put in incredibly vulnerable positions,” said Samantha Hamilton, a litigation attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. She emphasized that the men have ended up imperiled simply by taking up the opportunity of work on what was an ambitious international project.DHS and Ice did not respond to requests for comment on allegations that they are pressuring the detainees to agree to be deported. More

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      Fulton county election board faces $10,000 a day fine for not appointing Republicans

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      The Fulton county commission in Georgia will be fined $10,000 a day for violating a court order to appoint two Republicans associated with Trump-aligned groups pushing voter fraud conspiracies to the county’s election board.The county charter states that commissioners “shall” appoint two Republicans and two Democrats nominated by their respective county party chairperson, for two-year terms. When commissioners rejected the nomination by Fulton county’s Republican party chair, the superior court judge David Emerson issued an order requiring the board to appoint them.In a civil contempt case that threatened jail time, Emerson found the Democratic commissioners have “been stubbornly litigious and acted in bad faith in its conduct prior to this litigation by its failure to comply with clear local legislation which forced the plaintiff to file this action,” Emerson’s ruling Wednesday states. Emerson awarded attorney’s fees to the Republican plaintiffs.The plaintiffs were seeking an order of both civil and criminal contempt for failing to comply with the order. Civil contempt has historically meant an ever-increasing series of daily fines until the board complies with the order. But a finding of criminal contempt would have meant jail time until enough Democratic commissioners agree to vote for the appointment.The Fulton county Republican party chair, Stephanie Endres, nominated Jason Frazier for a term and renominated Julie Adams to serve another term.Frazier is among the most prolific challengers of voter registrations in Georgia, and unsuccessfully sued Fulton county in federal court in 2024, attempting to force the board of registration and elections to purge nearly 2,000 Fulton county voters from the state’s rolls before the presidential election.Adams is a member of an election-denial activist network founded by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his efforts to overturn the election in Georgia and elsewhere. As a member of the Fulton county board of registration and elections, Adams refused to certify the May 2024 primary, which led to a Fulton county court case that ultimately compelled her to affirm the election.That case loomed large in court today. The court in Adams v Fulton county held that the act of certification was ministerial – a requirement, not a choice – because of the language in the law, noted Thomas L Oliver III, an attorney for the Republicans.Facing the court’s order, Adams ultimately complied, Oliver said. “Now they want to be on the other side of that argument. It’s pretty rich,” he added.In a previous ruling, Emerson said: “The court finds that the ‘shall’ as used here is mandatory, and the [board of commissioners] does not have discretion to disapprove an otherwise qualified nominee.” Emerson cited the mandatory nature of the language in the Adams case as applicable to the commissioners as well.Don Samuel, the county’s attorney, argued that the commissioners were refusing to complete the appointment because they were hoping to overturn the lower court’s order on appeal, and making the appointment would render an appeal moot. The ministerial function implicit in the language of the law of an elected official and an appointed official is a legal distinction for the appellate court, he said.“They are not defying this court out of disrespect of this court in any way,” Samuel said, acknowledging how their refusal to comply with the order looked in light of Democratic arguments about federal administration officials’ defiance of court orders. “We can’t help but read in the paper about the defiance of the judiciary,” he said. “We are not, despite the plaintiff’s overbroad argument here, we are not in defiance of the order. We’re trying to protect our rights in appeal.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFulton county has seven elected commissioners, five of whom are Democrats. The lawsuit only named those five: Dana Barrett, Mo Ivory, Khadijah Abdur-Rahman, Marvin Arrington and chair Robb Pitts. Pitts, Abdur-Rahman and Arrington did not vote on the appointment, leaving Barrett and Ivory to vote against it for a 2-2 tie.Social media messages from Ivory and Barrett were presented in court, in which the two Democrats pledged not to make the appointment.“Those who oversee elections must be fully independent and accountable,” Ivory said on Instagram.“No judge can compel any elected official to vote in any way,” said Barrett, also on Instagram. “Our elections are under attack in this country … This is just another arena where they’re trying to chip away at free and fair elections.”The law governing appointments to election boards in Georgia is an inconsistent patchwork. In neighboring Dekalb county, the chief judge of the county’s superior court is the appointment authority. Earlier this year, the judge allowed one controversial Republican nominee to be appointed while denying another. In Republican-controlled Cherokee county, an affluent northern suburb of Atlanta, county commissioners rejected the nomination of the county’s Democratic party to the election board, opting instead to find a Democrat they preferred to serve. More

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      ‘A new political era’: fresh Democratic faces seek office to prevent their party from ‘sleepwalking into dystopia’

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      Earlier this year, Liam Elkind seized an opportunity to ask his longtime congressman, Jerry Nadler, what everyday New Yorkers like himself could do to help Democrats stand up to Donald Trump. Nadler’s response, according to Elkind, was to “donate to the DCCC” – the group that helps House Democrats keep their seats. Deeply unsatisfied, the 26-year-old decided to run for office against the 17-term incumbent.In Georgia, Everton Blair also sought answers from his long-serving congressman, David Scott, at a panel event earlier this year. When Blair asked him about Democrats’ legislative strategy, the 80-year-old lawmaker was dismissive. “I don’t know who sent y’all,” he said. Blair, 34, is now making a bid for Scott’s seat.Jake Rakov began to worry when he noticed his former boss, 70-year-old California congressman Brad Sherman, repeating the same anti-Trump talking points he’d deployed eight years prior. To Rakov, 37, it was a sign that the Democratic party’s ageing establishment “wasn’t going to learn”. He is now one of two millennial-aged Jakes challenging Sherman.View image in fullscreenA year after Joe Biden’s age and fitness for office emerged as a major liability in the 2024 presidential election, followed by Trump’s return to power , demand for generational change has reached a fever pitch. A wave of younger, social-media savvy candidates, frustrated by what they see as an ossifying, out-of-touch Democratic establishment, is launching primary challenges against some of their party’s most senior incumbents.The insurgents charge that party elders have failed to act with urgency as Trump targets Democratic cities, voters and values, and they say they’re no longer willing to wait their turn.“If what happened last year was not a wake up call for the Democratic party that we need to do things differently and that we need to let some new voices in, then we should all be deeply worried about the future of the Democratic party,” said Luke Bronin, a 46-year-old who is running against Connecticut congressman John Larson, 77.The 119th Congress is the third oldest in US history, and three members – all Democrats – have died in office this year. More than a dozen House Democrats who will be 70 or older by election day 2026 are facing challengers, according to an analysis by Axios, though not all have said whether they plan to seek re-election.But the push to replace longtime incumbents isn’t just about age, says Saikat Chakrabarti, 39, a former chief of staff to New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is running for the San Francisco congressional seat long held by the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.They say it’s about energy, vision and, crucially, how hard they’re willing to fight – which could explain why octogenarian brawlers like Maxine Waters haven’t faced calls to step aside while some relatively younger members, such as 50-year-old André Carson, have drawn challengers.“It’s being a part of a system for so long you just don’t actually think it’s your job to renew it,” Chakrabarti said.View image in fullscreenPelosi, 85, who stepped down from her leadership position to make room for a new generation in 2022, has not yet said whether she plans to seek re-election. ​A spokesperson for Pelosi declined to comment.While their campaigns are ​​textured by local​ issues and cultural references – Elkind touts his go-to bagel order (un-toasted everything with whitefish salad) and Chakrabarti pitches a publicly owned utility for San Francisco​ – their broader ​messages chime: Democratic elders have grown complacent, clinging to a broken status quo​ – with devastating consequences.Democrats’ popularity has cratered to record lows and the party has bled voters – especially young people, first-timers, and Black and Latino Americans.But the incumbents are pushing back. They argue their years of experience have delivered tangible results. “These guys would start off with zero seniority, just when the district needs the most help,” Sherman, the California congressman, said in an interview. He dismissed claims he’s been timid on Trump, noting he introduced articles of impeachment against him in 2017 and, earlier this year, confronted the president at an in-person briefing on the Palisades fire that devastated parts of his district.“The key to fighting Donald Trump is beating him in the 2026 election,” Sherman said. “If we don’t take the House back in 2026 we may not have elections in 2028.”Many challengers align politically with the incumbents they’re trying to unseat – several have voted for their opponent in the past. They argue the intraparty divide is not left-versus-center but a clash between “the fighters and the folders” – those who see the Trump era as a troubling but passing chapter and those who see it as a constitutional emergency that will determine the survival of American democracy.The younger candidates say the party needs to “meet voters where they are” – on social media, on podcasts, at red county diners and rambunctious town halls. They want leaders who can speak plainly about the ways the Trump administration is hurting working-class Americans – and how Democrats would help.But they also say it can’t only be about Trump. The party needs a full-scale reimagining of what Democrats stand for and how they communicate that to voters – a type of messaging they’ve struggled to articulate in the Trump era.Democrats haven’t always embraced primaries. They can be costly and time-consuming, and create headaches for general election races. But in the midst of deep party introspection and generational friction, more are embracing the contests as a way forward.Groups such as Leaders We Deserve, led by former Democratic national committee vice-chair David Hogg, are actively backing young candidates challenging “asleep-at-the-wheel” incumbents. The effort sparked an internal firestorm and ultimately led Hogg to step down from his role at the DNC.Republicans are watching the primary battles unfold with glee. “Democrats are engaged in a battle between the socialists and the party dinosaurs – and it’s only getting uglier,” Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the national Republican congressional committee, said.Next year’s elections will test Democrats’ desire for generational change but it may not resolve their identity crisis. Some districts will elevate centrist candidates, while others might embrace a democratic socialist. Some crave an anti-establishment streak, ideology aside.And some veteran lawmakers have already chosen to relinquish power. In May, Democratic congresswoman Jan Schakowsky announced that her 14th term representing Illinois’s ninth district would be her last, saying in a statement: “It is now time for me to pass the baton.” Before she made the decision public, Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive political influencer, had already launched a campaign for the seat, asking Democrats: “What if we didn’t suck?”Primed for Congress, but not waiting for an openingAmong the contenders in Democratic primaries are local and state political leaders for whom Congress makes sense as a next logical step. In years past, they might have opted to wait for a retirement and then seek an endorsement from the outgoing congressman. Not any more.View image in fullscreenAt 46, Luke Bronin has a lengthy résumé of service: a lawyer, former Obama administration official, navy reserve intelligence officer and, most recently, mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. But he stresses that he’d also bring “an outsider’s commitment to making some bigger changes”.Bronin has spoken with Larson, the longtime incumbent in Connecticut’s first district, including an hourlong conversation in recent months. What was missing, he said, was any recognition that the job has fundamentally changed since Larson arrived in Washington in 1999.“I didn’t hear a sense of urgency that we need to hear from every single member of Congress,” Bronin said.Bronin thinks Democrats need to be “relentless and clear” about the ways Trump is making life worse for Americans, and “equally relentless and clear” about the Democratic party’s vision for improving their daily lives. He wants to see “an intense focus on issues like housing and healthcare and childcare”, and for Democrats to spread these messages in friendly and unfriendly forums.In a statement, the Larson campaign said the district needs a “proven fighter” to protect against Trump’s attacks on social security and Medicare.“That’s Congressman Larson. That’s why he’s backed by progressive groups, labor, and working people alike,” the campaign said. “What they don’t need is someone pretending to be a new voice who’s actually been in politics [for] decades that’s always been more focused on running for higher office than delivering results.”Chakrabarti, who has spend much of his political career working to elect progressives to Congress, said he began to seriously consider a run himself after listening to a New York Times podcast interview with Pelosi just days after the November election. He had expected Democrats’ crushing defeat to trigger a reckoning – but instead heard a defense of the status quo.It confirmed for Chakrabarti what he had long feared: the Democratic party was “sort of sleepwalking into this dystopia”.But progressives like Chakrabarti take hope from the success of state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary this summer.“When I look at the moment today, the appetite for change, it completely dwarfs what I saw in 2018,” Chakrabarti said, referring to the election year in which Ocasio-Cortez toppled one of the most senior House Democrats as a political unknown.“We’re at the point of a dawn of a new political era.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe crowded primariesSeveral candidates have filed to run in Georgia’s 13th district, a solidly blue area in the Atlanta suburbs, a sign of the vulnerabilities among older members and the enthusiasm to replace them. Scott, who has served in Congress since 2003, has not yet announced whether he will run again. Questions over his health and fitness for office have become public fodder – he lambasted a photographer for taking a photo of him in a wheelchair last year.Some are younger than the average age in Congress (58.9); all are younger than Scott, 80. One contender, state senator Emanuel Jones, is 66. In 2024, Scott fended off a crowded field of primary challengers to keep his seat.Jasmine Clark, 42, was first elected to the state house in Georgia in 2018. She has a PhD in microbiology, an expertise that has served her well in analyzing bills and communicating during the pandemic. If elected, would be the first woman with a science PhD in Congress.View image in fullscreenShe wants the district to have a fighter who can call out the rampant misinformation and disinformation coming out of the Trump administration. The Atlanta area is feeling the consequences of this information environment, she said, pointing to a shooting earlier this month at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by a man alleged to be fixated on the Covid-19 vaccine.“When you have the same people in the same place for a really long time, that stagnation leads to stagnation of ideas as well,” she said. “There should be a healthy turnover, where you still have institutional knowledge while ushering in new ideas. But for whatever reason, we don’t really see that in Congress.”View image in fullscreenEverton Blair, who served on the Gwinnett county board of education, is touting his deep ties to the district where he was born and raised. He sees a lot of opportunities left on the table because of inactive representation.“There’s a general sense of despondency and just apathy right now that we address and we combat by bringing those very voices and people back into the conversation and making sure that they feel represented well,” Blair said.“The leaders who got us into this mess are not the leaders who can get us out of it,” he added.Scott did not respond to a request for comment.In California, Jake Rakov, who served as a deputy communications director for Brad Sherman, the 15-term incumbent he’s challenging, is making a similar case. He hasn’t spoken to his old boss in years, but he has been talking to the congressman’s constituents. Many, he said, are shocked that any member – let alone their own – has been in Congress for nearly 30 years.“We’ve got people in office who’ve been there since the 1990s and are still legislating like it’s the 1990s,” he said, adding: “It is so antithetical to our idea of a representative democracy that it just is immediately offensive to people when they hear about it.”Sherman has also drawn a challenge from Jake Levine, a veteran of the Biden and Obama administrations whose mother lost her home in the January fires. “It’s time for something new,” Levine says in his campaign launch video.Sherman argued that calls for generational change aren’t new. Estimating that he’s taken about 5,000 votes in Congress over the past decade, the overwhelming majority of which his challengers would agree with, Sherman asked: “If you did something right 5,000 times in a row – 100% of the time – is there any chance that you should get fired?”The upstartsUpstart candidates traditionally face steeper challenges against incumbents, but, with the help of slick online content, they’re finding new ways to gain traction. In an Arizona special election earlier this year, Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old influencer and activist, came in a distant second behind a longtime Democratic official whose father held the seat until his death – but she still managed to win more than 22% of votes.Katie Bansil, a 34-year-old political newcomer who works in finance, is challenging congressman Frank Pallone, 73, in New Jersey’s sixth congressional district over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Since launching her campaign, Bansil, who immigrated to the US from the Philippines and grew up in New Jersey, says she’s seen a growing desire for new leadership.View image in fullscreen“I started calling him ‘the asterisk’, because a lot of people have told me, ‘Oh, I just vote for the guy that is labeled as the incumbent,’” she said. “But I think people are actually waking up to the truth about what’s going on.”A spokesperson for Pallone said the congressman has “proven himself to be an effective champion of progressive causes”.“With daily assaults from the Trump administration on our democracy and institutions, Pallone will continue to use every tool to stop the Republican authoritarian agenda of stealing from the poor to give to the rich,” the spokesperson said.Liam Elkind, the challenger to Jerry Nadler, announced his campaign with a splashy video that opened with dirt being shoveled into a grave and his voiceover: “The Democratic party is dying.”“Our system often tells people to wait their turn,” Elkind said. “And look where we are.”A Rhodes scholar, Elkind founded the non-profit food delivery service Invisible Hands during the pandemic. He says that work – along with own experiences as a young person living in one of the most expensive cities in the world – would shape his approach to the job.Like many his age, Elkind doesn’t have health insurance. When he recently went to get a vaccine and was told it would cost $500, “I turned my ass around,” he quipped. “But look, that’s the day-to-day lived reality of a whole lot of people in this country.”View image in fullscreenA spokesperson for Nadler emphasized the congressman’s political strength, noting that he won his most recent election with 80% of the vote.“But this is the great thing about America, it’s a democracy – hopefully still – and anybody can run,” Robert Gottheim, the spokesperson, said, adding that Nadler would “put his over-30-year record of accomplishments against anyone including someone who appears to have no record of accomplishment to speak of”.Elkind said he voted for Nadler and respected his long record as a progressive voice for New York. But, he argued, the moment demands new energy and a break from the past.“The house is on fire, and we need leaders who can meet this moment,” he said. “We deserve to know that the next time a child is kidnapped off of our streets, that our congressman will be on that street in the next hour with a megaphone demanding that child’s release and then will travel to whatever foreign gulag the president has decided to stash that kid in.” More